Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [146]
“What did Internal Affairs say.” Not a question. And those dark blues stayed locked on the database. “That’s why you’ve come, right.”
“Well, and also to deliver the coffee. Looks like you were taken care of, though.”
“Reception downstairs.”
Ah, yes. The two Kathys, Brittany spelled Britnae, and Theresa. They probably all thought the guy was a hero.
José cleared his throat. “Turns out the photographer already has some harassment charges pending against him because he’s got a habit of showing up in places he’s not welcome. He and his lawyer just want to make it all go away, because another trespassing-into-a-crime-scene thing is so not going to go well for him. IA has taken statements from everyone, and bottom line, it’s a simple assault on your part—nothing aggravated. Plus the photog says he’ll refuse to cooperate with the DA against you if it comes to that. Likely because he thinks that it’ll help him.”
Now those peepers shifted over. “Thank God.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
Veck’s eyes narrowed—but not in confusion. He knew exactly what the hitch was.
And yet he didn’t ask; he just waited.
José glanced around. At ten o’clock in the evening, the homicide department’s office was empty, although the phones were still ringing, little chirping noises springing up here and there until voice mail ate the callers. Out in the hall, the housekeeping staff was all about the rugsuck, the whirring of multiple vacuums coming from far down the way, by the CSI lab.
So there was no reason not to talk straight.
José shut the main door anyway. Back with Veck, he sat down again and picked up a stray paper clip, drawing a little invisible picture with it on the desk’s fake wood top.
“They asked me what I thought about you.” He tapped his temple with the clip. “Mentally. As in how tight you are.”
“And you said . . .”
José just shrugged and stayed quiet.
“That motherfucker was taking pictures of a corpse. For profit—”
José held up his palm to cut the protest off. “You’ll get no argument there. Fuck it, we all wanted to beat him. The question is, though—if I hadn’t stopped you . . . how far would it have gone, Veck.”
That got another frown from the guy.
And then shit got real quiet. Dead quiet. Well, except for the phones.
“I know you’ve read my file,” Veck said.
“Yup.”
“Yeah, well, I am not my father.” The words were spoken on a low-and-slow. “I didn’t even grow up with the guy. I barely knew him and I’m nothing like him.”
File that one under: Sometimes You Luck Out.
Thomas DelVecchio had a lot of things going for him: He’d gotten straight As in his criminal justice major . . . top of his class at the policy academy. . . . His three years on patrol were spotless. And he was so good-looking he never bought his own coffee.
But he was the son of a monster.
And this was the root of the problem they had. By all that was right and proper, it was not fair to lay the sins of the father around the neck of the son. And Veck was right: On his own psych assessments, he’d come up as normal as anyone else.
So José had taken him on as a partner without a second thought about that pops of his.
That had changed since last night, and the issue was the expression that had been on Veck’s face when he’d gone for that photog.
So cold. So calm. With no more affect than if he’d been popping the top off a soda can.
Having worked in Homicide almost all of his adult life, José had seen a lot of murderers. You had your crime-of-passion types who lost it over a guy or a woman; you had the stupid-ass department, which in his mind covered drug- and alcohol-related as well as gang violence; and then you had the sadistic sickos who needed to be put down like rabid dogs.
All of these variations on the theme caused unimaginable tragedy for their victims’ families and the community. But they weren’t the ones who kept José up at night.
Veck’s dad had murdered twenty-eight people in seventeen years—and those were only the bodies that had been found. The bastard was