Heart Break: An Isabel Swift Novel (The Isabel Swift Detective Series Book 1) Read online

  Heart Break

  An Isabel Swift Novel

  MF Moskwik

  Copyright © 2015 by MF Moskwik

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2015

  ISBN 978-1511505130

  For my MPM

  -MFM

  Introduction

  Ben Carter is running.

  Tree branches slap his head, battering his gray-brown hair, and the leaves and sticks on the forest floor crackle underneath the weight of his swiftly moving black boots.

  I’m too damn loud, he thinks. He looks over his shoulder. Still no one-that’s good. Where is he?

  Pain builds in his side, and each of his ragged breaths feels like a knife thrust between his ribs. The grizzled deputy sheriff runs through the pain, just as he was taught to do decades ago in the academy. He’s fifty now, and his twenty-five years on the police force haven’t been kind, giving him a bum knee, a shoulder that’s been dislocated twice, and a mechanical ticktocker in the spot where his heart should be.

  Damn pacemaker! he thinks.

  His foot catches on an exposed root, and the unexpected break in his momentum jars him out of his desperation.

  Think, Ben. Think!

  It is three miles to the main road and five miles to the nearest neighbor. If his pursuer catches him, Ben needs to be near people, near someone who can save him. His cell phone reception is spotty, and his home is at least twenty minutes away by car from the friends and coworkers who would be his backup.

  Izzy. Izzy would come, he thinks with startling clarity. And she’d bring the cavalry with her. The whole damn department. He comes to a fork in the path, and he has a choice—three miles to the road, five miles to his nearest neighbor, or waste the precious twenty-second lead he has on his pursuer to call for backup.

  Ben looks over his shoulder again. Still no pursuer.

  I swear to God, Izzy, you’d better pick up.

  He pauses just long enough to press the speed dial #1 on his phone, and then he starts for the road.

  The trill of her cell phone rings in his ear.

  “Carter?” a woman answers.

  “Izzy. Izzy! I need help!”

  “Carter? What’s wrong? Where are you?” she asks. He hears a commotion on the other end, the sound of keys, movement, and the unmistakable loading of a gun.

  That’s my Izzy, Ben thinks with relief. “I’m in the forest-Old River Road. I’m on foot, somewhere between my cabin and the road. It’s another two and a half miles, and I don’t think I’ll make it.”

  “Carter, what’s wrong?” asks the woman. Her voice is measured, aware, and probing, and the only sign of her worry is a slight lift in the pitch of her words.

  “No time to explain. Just get here, and bring an ambulance, ASAP.”

  “Carter? Your phone is going in and out. Carter? Carter?”

  “Izzy? Izzy?” he cries into his phone. As he runs, he looks at the bars on his phone—zilch.

  He tosses the phone to the side in disgust and continues to run for the road.

  “Argh. Crap!” A sharp pain grips his shoulder. The pain radiates from his shoulder to his back, neck, and jaw. He is short of breath, and he breaks into a cold sweat. With rivulets of clammy perspiration beading his brow, he continues to run, but like each of his labored breaths, his steps are irregular, short, and jagged.

  All I need is another half mile, he thinks. Please.

  An intense white light blinds him, and he stops, disoriented. His stomach clenches, and its contents threaten to rise and erupt from his mouth. He sucks in big gulps of air, but none of his breaths can make it pass the vise-like grip of pressure in his chest.

  “Damn it!” he gasps. Another hard, sharp clench of his stomach cripples him, and he stumbles to his knees. Pain claws and twists his innards, and his desperate grunts break the silence of the forest. He feels faint, and when the green forest around him fades into a snow-white blizzard, he falls to the ground with a thud.

  Ben feels himself slip in and out of consciousness, each time waking to the feel of an ice-cold hand gripping his heart. In the haze of intermittent awareness, a dark figure comes into his view. The bright, overcast sky casts perversely beautiful shadows on the face of the person gloating over his prone form, hiding the man’s identity.

  Ben stares at his would-be murderer and burns the figure of this man into his brain, silently willing that the shrouded form of his killer should somehow find its way to the people who will find his body.

  The man points a small black box at him.

  “You’re better than this. Don’t do it. You won’t get away with it. Rodriguez. Hinojosa. There’s dozens of us. One of us will stop you,” Ben warns.

  The man presses a button, and a light on the box burns bright red.

  Another wave of nausea and pain comes over Ben. He groans, clutching at his chest. For the last time, he feels a piercing, frigid fist close painfully around his heart, and it stops.

  With his last earthly thought, Ben Carter prays, but not to God.

  Find me, Izzy. Find my body and catch him.

  And with this final act of blasphemy, Ben Carter surrenders to the void.

  Chapter One

  Isabel makes it to the sheriff’s station with only five minutes to spare. She used to show up a half an hour early so she could change, grab a cup of coffee from the break room, and give shit to her fellow cops.

  But that was before Carter died. It has been two weeks since his heart attack and while she is ready to get back on the street, she is not sure if she is ready for the inevitable awkward whispers and stares of sorrow.

  If one more person tells me how sorry they are, I think I’m going to have to draw my gun and shoot something, she thinks with macabre humor. Okay, maybe I’m not ready to be out on the streets after all, she thinks.

  A memory comes to her. “Laughing’s the only way out, kiddo,” her mentor, Ben, would say with his rumbling bass voice. “Laugh at something, and that’ll keep it from getting to you.”

  As Isabel checks her uniform in the mirror one more time, she draws a shaky breath. Dear God, I hope I’m with Rodriguez today.

  Isabel avoids the slowly dispersing crowd in the locker room and heads straight to the briefing room, where she is just able to snag the last seat at the back of the room. Behind her, the detectives of the Westchester Sheriff’s Department begin to line the walls.

  In front of everyone, a tall, thin man with dark skin and curly hair clears his throat. “Okay, settle please. Let’s get started.” He waits thirty seconds as the rest of the officers file into the room, and then he begins to pass out sheets of paper. “As usual, nothing’s happening today in Westchester County, New York. Except that it is.” The man hands out a few more papers, and sends the rest around the room. “In addition to the usual traffic stops, bar fights, car thefts, and cases of vandalism, over the weekend, there was a second break in at a lab, this time at County Forensics. That’s the second lab in two months, people, and the first case, the one at the medical college, st
ill hasn’t been solved. Uh, no offense, Rodriguez and Marley.”

  “None taken, Captain,” replies a middle-aged man with greying hair and a tall, bearlike figure from the row of detectives at the back of the room.

  “Thanks,” acknowledges the Captain with a nod. “This break-in is the same as the first: no injury, nothing of obvious value taken. No cash or computers. Just a bunch of broken beakers, dozens of scared folks, and some missing equipment.”

  “Captain Williams?” asks a short woman with long dark hair and pale skin. Her short leg bounces nervously under the table, and the hand not raised twirls a pen rapidly around her finger.

  “Yes, Chang?”

  “Are the cases related?”

  “I don’t know, Chang, but that will be a good thing to check out. While you’re out today, be on the lookout for strange equipment or devices that seem out of place. Also, people with unexplained injuries—there was a lot of broken glass in the lab, and I can’t imagine someone not getting hurt in that mess.

  Isabel grunts with frustration and raises her hand. “Sir?”

  Captain Williams acknowledges her with a nod.

  “What exactly are we looking for? What type of equipment? What does it do? What does it look like?” Isabel looks around the room and finds her fellow officers nodding. “I mean, are we talking equipment like a microscope? Something from a meth lab? Mad scientist evil death ray?”

  “And is it dangerous?” asked another detective from the detectives’ row.

  “Not dangerous. At least, I was not made aware of any hazards. Other than that, I really don’t know. The nature of the device was deemed classified.”

  A mutter of disbelief and concern ripples over the officers, and the tension in the room ratchets up noticeably.

  Isabel bites back a sarcastic laugh and raises her hand. “So it could be a mad-scientist death ray?”

  A wave of quiet laughter breaks over the room, and Williams shakes his head. “Glad you have a sense of humor about this, Swift, ’cause you’re on the case.” Williams gestures toward the whiteboard to his right. “Everyone else, your assignments are on the board. Get out there. Serve and protect. Please.”

  Isabel hears a quiet guffaw to her left. “Rodriguez. To what do I owe the distinct displeasure?”

  “Your first day back, Swift? I wouldn’t miss it,” says the twenty-five year veteran of the Westchester Sheriff’s Department. “Then again, I never pass up the chance to show a cocky young-un’ how it’s done.”

  Isabel snorts. “Really? So shooting out the tires on your own cruiser in order to catch a suspect is how it was done in your day, old man?”

  “It is when your suspect’s about to hijack your squaddie ’cause your trainee forgot to guard the back entrance.” Rodriguez, for a brief second, drops the act and looks at Isabel keenly. “You ready for some action, Swift?”

  For a second, Isabel is a rookie once more, heading out on her first assignment with her training officer. “I’m ready, boss.”

  Rodriguez considers her briefly, but the mask Isabel recognizes as BS quickly returns. “Better be. I don’t want some evil death ray taking me out, Swift. In five years, I’m hoping for a cushy retirement on my 30-year pension. That’s all I’m asking for. Got it, rook?”

  Isabel smiles in response. “I thought you were never gonna call me that again.”

  “Yeah, but in this job, you’re always a rookie at something.” He points a finger at Isabel.

  “What about you, Rodriguez? That apply to you?” she asks.

  “You kidding me? I was born with a pair of cuffs in my mouth, you know what I’m sayin’?” Rodriguez guffaws and then points to his biceps. “Not to mention this pair of guns right here.”

  Isabel feels a laugh threatening to break through her no-nonsense mien and is grateful for the twisted, faux-macho sense of normalcy her former training officer imparts. She glances at the partner assignments and sees that her former training officer is paired with Marley. “Your new rook is waiting for you, Rodriguez. Get out of here. Go serve and protect.”

  “And go find your death ray, Swift.” Rodriguez gives her a nod of respect and then a wink. “Give ’em hell.”

  ***

  Swift leaves the briefing room and finds her way to Williams’ office. She leans her head against the door and hears voices.

  “Sir?” she asks as she knocks on the door.

  The voices cease. “Come in, Swift,” calls the captain.

  Swift enters and sees the captain replace the receiver of his desk phone into its cradle. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir—”

  “No, that’s all right, detective. What can I do for you?”

  Isabel sighs. “The case. It’s just that Rodriguez and Marley are already looking into the first robbery at the labs. I just think that maybe it would be better for them to take this robbery too. Consolidate the effort.”

  Williams tilts his head and considers her request. “That’s a good point, Swift. I thought about it, but I’m assigning you this case instead.” Williams holds up a palm to forestall her protest. “It’s a jurisdictional problem, I’m afraid. Lab is county, but the device and the compound are state-funded research, so Rodriguez and Mark are out, and an investigator from the state is in. I need you to make sure he does the job right.”

  Isabel’s eyebrows shoot upward in angry surprise. “Babysitting? You have me babysitting?”

  Williams sighs. “Just a minute, Swift.”

  “If you think I’m not ready, sir, I’m ready. I’m back. I’ve done my grieving and I’m ready to be on the streets. I don’t need a softball assignment—”

  “This isn’t a softball assignment, Swift. I need someone with diplomacy. Tact.”

  Isabel snorts. “Yeah. Because that’s what I’m known for.”

  “All right, then, someone who can make sure that Detective Inspector Wonderful gets the job done.” Williams returns to his chair and unearths the file from his desk. “Here’s everything you need to know.”

  Isabel takes the file from him. “Detective Inspector?”

  “British. On loan from the UK. Has connections with the state, which is how he landed the consulting job with them. Forensic scientist, so you can ask him all you want about your Mr. Evil death ray hypothesis.”

  Isabel looks over the file. “Mark Jameson. With the Yard for eight years. PhD in forensic science.” She looks up in surprise.

  Williams rolls his eyes. “All right then, Doctor Evil Death Ray hypothesis. Whatever. The lab is county, so they’re one of us. Let’s make sure we take care of them.” He makes a pointed glance at the clock behind Isabel’s head. “Daylight’s burning, Officer.”

  Isabel turns to leave the office. Her nose is still in the file when Williams calls out to her. “Iz?”

  “Yes, Captain?” she replies. If she had been less distracted by the file, the use of her first name would have been a warning. Instead, it is only when she drags her eyes away from the file that she catches the look of compassion as it crosses the Captain’s face.

  No, damn it, she thinks crossly. Don’t say it. Don’t say it!

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” the Captain says.

  Isabel blinks. Damn you, she thinks as anger flushes her face a dark hue. She blinks again. “Anything else?” she asks in a non-reply.

  Captain Williams sighs and shakes his head. “That’ll be all, Swift.”

  Isabel turns and shuts the door quickly. She is grateful for the folder—with her head in its pages, she is able to hide her face long enough to regain control of the tears that threaten to spill from her lashes.

  Chapter Two

  The Westchester County labs are twenty minutes by car from the sheriff’s station.

  Izzy makes it there in ten.

  As she emerges from her cruiser, she surveys the scene.

  Crime scene personnel move in and out of the glass doors at the front of the building. A few more technicians are engaged in analysis of the entrance itself and the groun
ds around the building.

  The self-assured clomp-clomp-clomp of her work boots announces her presence to the staff that scurry across the landscape.

  “Officer,” greet several of the technicians as she passes.

  Izzy nods to them as she walks by. She’s been on the force for three years, long enough for her to know many of the officers and crime scene technicians for Westchester County.

  She’s never been in the county labs before, though. Lab results were usually called in or couriered to the sheriff’s station, so she’s had little reason to make the drive to the county’s facilities for toxicology, environment, and forensic analysis.

  The information in the file directs her to the second floor labs, and a quick jog up the stairs and down the hall brings her to a large open room filled with benches and equipment.

  And glass. Broken glass. The floor is covered with it.

  Izzy stops at the doorway of the lab to don protective blue booties. As she gingerly steps into the lab, a blond man with gloves, an evidence bag, and blue booties accosts her. “Swift. Watch the glass. It’s sharp,” he cautions.

  Izzy nods and crouches to peer at the glass. “It’s evidence.” She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and uses it to pick up a large fragment of flask at her feet. “Prints. Blood. Hair. We’ll need to check for it all.”

  “The bastard took out all our glassware. And our door,” the technician says as he points toward the entrance.

  Izzy stands and runs her fingers over the twisted metal keypad. “So much for the coded lock.”

  “You’re telling me.” The technician sighs and gestures toward the floor covered in glass shards. “Worse than a needle in a haystack . . .”

  “ . . . is a thumbprint in a bunch of glass? Sorry, Jenkins,” Izzy replies. “Sweat equity. Thanks to you and your team for the hard work.”

  “Thanks, but it won’t be us. We’ll send it off to state, since it’s their rodeo, and besides, it’s not like our lab is able to handle anything right now,” he says as he gestures to the mess in the room.