(Riley's POV)
"I'm not saying you're obsessed." Danny said, as she absently tossed a baseball up into the air and caught it again. "But you're definitely obsessed."
As per usual, I was doing what I could to ignore my partner, and she was doing everything she could to make that an impossible task. Since we'd recently solved an individual (and much less interesting) murder, I was right back to analysing the data from a case I was truly invested in. I'd been over it all a dozen times already, but I wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a single thing. Currently, I was re-watching surveillance footage from the blocks surrounding the crime scene.
"I mean, it's been a week since she killed anyone. That we know of." She continued, as though I needed reminding. "We've got no leads, no clues, and we're no closer to finding out who this chick is."
Unfortunately, the cameras at the actual scene of the crime had somehow been remotely disabled during the time of the murder, so we had to make do with what was left. Which wasn't much. And with the media having caught wind of this killer a couple of months ago, creating fear and hype around her and even going as far as to nickname her, the pressure was on. What's more was that, since this particular killer favoured the blood of crooks, she wasn't very high on our priority list. Not when there were cop killers and armed robbers and kidnappers all over the city who were targeting innocent people. So the force wasn't as supportive of my relentless pursuit as I might have liked.
But for me the situation was very black and white. Killers were killers, and they deserved to be put away. Which is why I continued to sit at my desk and dedicate my every waking minute to going over every last scrap of evidence we had against the so called 'Pink Pistol,' a nickname I greatly despised. Her latest victim had been an accountant, though the NYPD had always suspected him as the money man for several big names in the world of crime.
"We could be out snagging a proper homicide right now. One that isn't impossible to solve, with blood and guts and suspicious wives and shady best friends." Danny had never been discreet about how much she loved her job, especially the gruesome parts. "You remember field work right, Wolfe?"
I rolled my eyes and spun around in my chair. "Do you know how many people would kill to be on this case? Every cop in here is green with envy, and you're complaining."
"I get it, all right, but the Pink Pistol will still be here waiting for us when we get back. Staring at old CCTV footage isn't going to get us anywhere." She argued. "Come on dude, there's a maggot-eaten, blue-lipped, dead and decaying body out there somewhere with our names on it."
I sighed. When Danielle Silver was first assigned to be my partner four months ago, I'd been relatively happy with the pairing. She had the second most collars of the year, and I'd heard that she was a driven detective. That wasn't a lie, she was most certainly driven, but whatever it was that was driving didn't seem to have any brakes. Danny was always on the look out for a newer and better case, and if she sat behind a desk for too long then she went a little crazy.
She threw the ball up into the air again, but this time another hand reached in and caught it. Danny and I turned to see the Captain standing over us with a raised brow.
"Wolfe. Silver." He greeted us. Captain Watts was a tall, broad shouldered man with greying hair and an air of authority that seemed to follow him wherever he went. He also used to be my father's partner back when they were just detectives. "How's it going?" He asked.
"Fine, sir." Danny and I answered simultaneously.
"Any new leads on our femme fatale?" This time when he spoke, he looked directly at me.
"Not right now, but I'm going over everything with a fine tooth comb so if anything turns up then you'll be the first to know." I assured him.
"I see." Captain Watts didn't sound surprised. "But you still have no suspects? No substantial evidence?"
I frowned. "Uh, no sir. But like I said, we're doing everything we can."
"Listen, Riley." Watts started, his voice softer and less Captain-like. "You shouldn't feel ashamed to admit it if you're out of your depth. If you can't handle this case then we can always hand it over to-"
"Out of my depth?" I scoffed. "I can guarantee you that no other person in this department would have been able to do anything any better. I have gone above and beyond for this case; there's not a single detail I've let slip through the cracks. I've got this, OK?"
The phone on my desk rang and Danny picked it up. "Detective Wolfe's glamorous assistant speaking, how can I help?"
The Captain lowered his voice."You're a hard worker, I know that Riley. And soon enough, you're going to be one of the best detectives this department has ever known, just like your father. But you spent a long time in narcotics, maybe it wasn't fair for me to hand you such a high profile case so soon after joining homicide."
"I'm ready for this, Captain. If I start to feel like it's getting bigger than me then I'll willingly admit that, but until then just trust me to do my job. Please." I pleaded, allowing a small hint of vulnerability to seep into my voice, since I knew very well that the Captain had a soft spot for me due to his closeness with my dad.
He sighed, defeated. "Fine, but I'm going to be keeping a close eye on you. We need to catch her."
"Yes sir."
Captain Watts nodded once, evidently satisfied with how his talk went, and then made his way back towards his office. I might have felt guilty about using his former relationship with my father to get my own way, if he hadn't brought him up to try and get his way.
Danny put the phone down with a sly grin on her face. "Guess who just killed Nicholas James?"
"You're kidding me."
She opened my drawer, took out my service weapon and handed it over to me.
"Merry Christmas, Wolfe."
///
Not twenty minutes later, the two of us pulled up outside James' house, which was already crawling with police officers and crime scene investigators, and if I wasn't mistaken, there was also a reporter at the bottom of the driveway. If that was true then there would be more to come.
"Shit." I cursed as I climbed out of the car. How they found out about this so soon was beyond me.
But then I got a better look at the reporter, who by now had also seen me, and as I took in her wavy black hair, dark skin and irritatingly confident posture, I realised with a not-so-internal groan that I knew her. Danny followed my gaze, and as she spotted who it was that I was looking at, she sucked in a breath of air between her teeth.
"Uh oh, ex alert." She ducked through the police tape. "I'll wait inside. Closer to the dead body and further away from your relationship drama."
"Traitor." I muttered, before I reluctantly approached my ex. "Jess. Little early for the vultures to be circling, isn't it?"
Jess cast a sarcastic smile my way. "Well, you know what they say about the early bird. Besides, the man's dead, nothing premature about it."
"You know what I mean. How'd you find out about this so soon?" There was a very obvious lack of warmth or affection in the way we spoke to one another, but that boat had sailed a long time ago, and I had no intention of swimming after it. After all, it wasn't so long ago that she'd almost ruined my career.
"Come on Riley, you know I can't reveal my sources." She clicked her pen. "But I might consider bending the rules a little if you can give me an official statement to print. Did the Pink Pistol really kill Nicholas James?"
"Seriously?" I shook my head. "You haven't changed a bit."
"You're right. I'm still the same girl you loved."
"More like the same manipulative bitch that almost cost me my badge." I took a breath, forcing myself to suppress my anger before the situation got out of hand. "Get the hell out of here, all right? No one's gonna tell you a thing."
"We'll see." Is all she said as I turned my back and ducked through the police tape. If I never saw her again it'd be too damn soon.
Once inside, I tied my hair back and put on a pair of latex gloves; then walked down the hall towards the dining room. Danny was waiting for me just through the doorway, surrounded by several crime scene investigators making their way carefully around the scene.
"Check it out." She nodded towards the man seated towards the head of the table. "Double tap to the head. Pink lipstick stain on the cheek. This is definitely our girl."
"Did you speak to the medical examiner?" I asked, studying the room and making sure to watch where I stepped as I proceeded towards the body.
"I did. By the way, guess who they sent? I'll tell you. They sent Mark." She said his name like a teenage girl said the name of the jock she was crushing on. "That's the third crime scene in a month we've seen him at so far, you know what that is don't you?"
"His job?" I guessed uninterestedly.
"Fate. It's fate. And he had his hair in that casual, tousled way that he does and I swear he remembered my name this time." She sighed happily. "Next time. Next time I'll ask him out."
This was another thing no one had warned me about when I'd been paired with Danny. Just how much she loved to talk about meaningless things that had absolutely nothing to do with me or with the case.
"Brilliant. I'm happy for you, truly. Now what exactly did he say?"
"Well first, he said 'Good morning Detective Silver.' You know but I got the feeling that he wanted to call me Dann-"
"I meant what did he say about the body." I gestured towards James, impatience plain in my voice.
"Oh." Danny deflated. "Uh, the time of death was around 8pm last night. Cause of death - well, that much is plain to see." She explained. "Nothing out of the ordinary, really."
"You mean aside from the fact that she killed old Nick here?" I regarded the clean plate and empty wine glass with a furrowed brow. "She was definitely invited in. Likely a friend of his, or maybe some kind of colleague."
"Colleague?" Danny asked. "You think she worked with him?"
"Or maybe for him. Let's face it, a lot of the people she's killed have had ties to gangs, but she's never targeted any of Eli's crew before. So why the sudden change?" I noticed that James had barely eaten any of his food and had hardly touched his wine. Had she killed him and then carried on eating her own meal? What kind of sick--
"Maybe they were romantically involved. Could have been a crime of passion." Danny suggested with a shrug.
"No. It's too clean, too controlled. If they really had been lovers then the kill probably would have been messier and more chaotic." We had just one report of the Pink Pistol killing someone out of emotion, and the only tell-tale sign of it being her had been the lipstick stain on his cheek. Even though the method hadn't aligned with her usual kills, we knew it couldn't have been a copycat because the media didn't know about her yet, not to mention the brand and shade of lipstick had matched the lipstick found on every other body. "When she kills someone like this it's because somebody else wants to use her to send a message."
"So, what are we thinking, she's got her fingers in all the pies? Someone from another gang hired her to take out the competition? Or perhaps his own crew turned on him."
"Probably the latter." I replied. "I doubt it was an opposing gang; they'd have gone straight for the head of the snake."
"So the snake is the culprit." Danny hummed. "It's unlike Eli to get someone else to take out one of his own."
"You're right." I had thought it was strange for him to get someone else to kill Nicholas in such an impersonal manner. "Hard for him to kill a good friend, I guess."
"What an upstanding citizen."
"Who found the body, do we know?" I asked as I started to make my way back towards the doorway.
"The maid. She's waiting for us to take a statement in the next room."
Danny and I disposed of our gloves and then joined the maid in what appeared to be a living room, or at least a glorified version of one, although in reality it was about the size of my apartment. Two times over. The maid sat on the sofa, hands slightly shaking, with a single officer standing in the doorway watching her. There was an untouched glass of water on the coffee table in front of her.
"Let me handle this one, huh?" Danny whispered. "I can't see us needing bad cop right now."
"Whatever you say." I wasn't exactly fond of dealing with people anyway. Especially not civilians who expected the friendly, comforting face I found hard to deliver.
Danny took a seat next to the maid but I stood off to the side.
"Hello. My name's Detective Silver, I'm here to take your statement." Danny spoke softly and kindly. "I appreciate that you'll want to get out of here as soon as possible so we'll try to keep this brief. Can I get your name?"
The maid kept her eyes down. "Mia." She croaked.
"Mia, what time did you find your boss? And was there anyone else around when you did?" Danny asked, taking out her notepad and pen and getting ready to write down any necessary notes.
"7am. I always get here at 7am. There was nobody else around - I checked the entire house while I was waiting for the police to arrive." Mia wiped a tear from her cheek.
"I see. Do you know who Mr. James was supposed to be meeting with last night?"
Mia's eyes flickered up to meet Danny's for a second, and then she went back to looking at her lap. She shrugged. "He meets with a lot of people."
Danny exchanged a brief look with me.
"Listen ma'am, all we want to do is catch whoever murdered your boss, and the best way to do that is if you're honest with us. So please, who was Mr. James having dinner with?" She asked again.
For a moment, Mia looked like she was debating whether or not to answer her. It didn't take long for her to come to a decision.
"I don't know her name. All I know is that she was someone Nick had worked with before, and he seemed pretty happy about her coming over." Mia looked at Danny as she scrawled down some notes. "She did this, right? The Pink Pistol?"
Danny stopped writing. "What do you know about the Pink Pistol?"
"Only what I've read in the papers. She's an assassin; she kills criminals." Mia shook her head solemnly. "I guess it was only a matter of time."
Danny finished taking Mia's statement, though it was pretty fruitless. She had no physical description, no name, no nothing. Plus I knew for a fact that there would be no fingerprints left behind, and I'd done this enough times to know that if they managed to pull some DNA from the lipstick stain then there would be no match on the system. Apparently, the Pink Pistol had no priors, because her DNA wasn't on any of our records.
When we left the house, Jess was still lingering just beyond the perimeter, now surrounded by a growing crowd of people. She was attempting to badger some poor officer about what he'd seen.
"Man, you just can't escape her." Danny remarked as we climbed back inside my car.
"I mean, she's a crime journalist. Running into her is an unfortunate occupational hazard." I strapped on my belt and started the engine. "Almost as unfortunate as getting shot at."
"Speaking of which, have you found a new roommate yet? There's no way you're gonna be able to keep paying the rent on that inner city pad on a detective's salary." Danny said, rolling the window down and resting her arm on the frame.
"Not yet." I'd been searching for a suitable roommate for a while now, ever since Jess left, and if I didn't find one soon then I'd be forced to move out. The problem was that most of the people that had responded to my ads were exactly the kind of people I wouldn't dream of living with. What I needed was someone who respected my privacy; who valued their own privacy just as much, and who was neither loud nor a slob nor a sex crazed lunatic. Which was turning out to be too high a bar.
"Your issue is that you're too particular. I mean, you're a cop, you spend most of your life at work anyway." Danny pointed out while I pulled out of the driveway. "It's not like you're marrying them, for Christ's sake."
"Do me a favour and mind your own business." I deflected, no harsher than I had intended it to sound.
"Whatever you say, Wolfe." Danny was unperturbed, as usual. "Hey, where are we going?" She asked, finally realising that I was driving in the opposite direction of the station.
I smiled. "We're going to pay Eli a visit."
///
Elijah Cuban was a notorious crime lord, and even though we suspected him of being responsible for most of the city's organised crime, we'd never been able to put him away for anything. There were many reasons for this: first, he could afford excellent lawyers with his illegal gains, ensuring that whenever we did manage to find a reason to slap the cuffs on him, some faceless attorney with a silver spoon up their ass and a suit that cost more than a year's rent at my apartment would spring him before the day was through.
Another reason he was such a slippery bastard was because he bribed his grunts into willingly becoming fall guys, meaning they would confess to any crime Eli was accused of. His scapegoats were usually kids, too, so they'd never have very long or sustainable sentences.
During my time in narcotics, I spent a lot of time going after Eli's drug rings across the city, and successfully managed to put away a lot of his dealers and exposed several manufacturing sites. In fact, the reason I got promoted to homicide so fast was because after going undercover for a long time, I was finally able to bring down the men almost solely responsible for handling Eli's drug trade. However, it didn't take as long as I'd have liked for Eli to bounce back from that, and now it seemed he was just as powerful as ever.
He also owned several legit businesses across town, though the one he frequented the most was a greasy diner not far from the subway. Which is exactly why Danny and I found ourselves walking right through the front door of the diner and towards the corner cubicle at the back. Sure enough, there he sat, surrounded by a few of his closest acquaintances.
Eli was an unmissable presence; a giant of a man with a shaved head, a pressed suit, and a black tear tattoo under the corner of his right eye. We stopped at his table and he eyed the two of us with a curious expression.
"Hello, Mr. Cuban. Good to see you again." Danny started. She'd met him a few times before now in relation to cases she'd been working.
Eli leaned back against the leather seat. "I wish I could say the same. What do you want?"
"Well, this is my partner Detective-"
"Wolfe. I know." He interrupted gruffly, eyes fixed on me. I assumed he was trying to intimidate me, but fear wasn't something I was very good at. "Your face was all over the papers after you busted a bunch of my guys. You got some nerve coming in here."
"Somehow I doubt you'd kill a cop in broad daylight, Mr. Cuban." I took a step closer, and the men on either side of him tensed. "At least not by your own hand, am I right?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." He said, not even bothering to try and sound confused.
"I'm talking about Nicholas James, your second in command. He was murdered last night and I think you had something to do with it." I explained plainly.
Eli laughed. It was a deep, rumbling laugh that came across as more cruel than anything.
"I see. Tell me, was there a lipstick stain on Nick's cheek? Because while I was very fond of him, I can guarantee you that we were in no way that close." As he spoke, his men sneered smugly at us. "And I don't suppose you've actually found anything that links me to the scene?"
"Not you. But the Pink Pistol? Well, we're pretty close to catching her, and if you help us speed up the process then maybe we won't offer her a reduced sentence for giving up you and your guys." I was lying about how close we were to catching her, because in fact, even given this new murder we were no closer than we had been a week ago. But I hoped that if Eli was afraid, and that if she was afraid, they'd get sloppy.
"The Pink Pistol? What makes you think I know anything about her?" There was a change in his tone now. He sounded angrier; more defensive.
"Actually, we have some pretty damning evidence to attest to it." I could feel Danny watching me as I spoke, likely wondering what I was possibly hoping to achieve by lying through my teeth.
"You're bluffing." He concluded. "Now, I'm sorry detectives but I'm going to have to ask you to leave the premises until you come back with a warrant." He nodded towards the man sitting directly to his left, who stood up obediently.
"Don't worry, Eli. We'll be back." I promised. "And you tell your friend that we're coming for her."
Eli glared at me for a second, up until the point where I thought he might actually react, but instead he just glanced at his man again. However, Eli's lackey made the regrettable mistake of laying his hand on me, and it was pretty much out of instinct that I spun around, twisted his arm behind his back, and slammed his head against the counter. He yelped out in pain.
"Detective Wolfe." Danny hissed. "What the hell are you doing?"
I clenched my jaw and unapologetically shoved the man back towards the cubicle, making eye contact with Eli once more. He looked shocked. I didn't say anything else to him but I think the look I gave him in that moment said it all. Then we left the diner.
"What are you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?" Danny asked once we were outside, standing in the way of the driver's side door. "You could get suspended. Or fired."
I arched a brow. "You think those guys are the type to call the fuzz? Relax, I barely even hurt the guy."
"Maybe they won't, but a witness might." She sighed. "Look, I don't know how you did things back in narcotics, but in homicide we don't go around slamming people into counters. The last thing we need right now is to be investigated by IA. I'm serious, do you want this case to be handed off to somebody else?"
"All right, I get it." I cast a look over my shoulder, back towards the diner. "I just need to catch this girl, you understand?"
"I understand, and we'll catch her." She stepped to the side and opened the door for me. "But we're going to do it by the book."
I nodded reluctantly and got inside the car. By the book. That was something of a new concept for me, but if that's what was necessary to bring the Pink Pistol to justice, then I'd do whatever it took. Because one thing was certain: I was going to find this girl.
Even if it took me a lifetime.