Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #9)(109)

“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 motherf*cker 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 on death row right now, a mere hundred and twenty-five miles away in Somers, Connecticut, and he was about to get the injection, in spite of the number of appeals his lawyer had filed. But what was really f*cked-up? Thomas DelVecchio, Sr., had a fan club—that was worldwide. With one hundred thousand friends on Facebook, merchandise on CafePress, and songs that had been written about him by death-metal bands, he was an infamous celebrity.

Fucking hell, as God was his witness, all that shit made José mental. Those idiots who idolized the f*cker should come work his job for a week. See how cool they thought killers were in RL.

As things went, he’d never met DelVecchio, the elder, in person, but he’d seen plenty of video from various DA and police department interviews. On the surface, the guy was straight-up lucid and as calm as a yoga instructor. Pleasant, too. No matter who was in front of him or what was said to inflame him, he never wavered, never broke, never gave an indication that any of it mattered.

Except José had seen the tell in his face—and so had a few of the other professionals: Every once in a while, he’d get a twinkle in his eye that made José reach for his cross. It was the kind of thing a sixteen-year-old boy might have when he saw a cherry ride drive by or an apple-bottomed girl with a belly shirt. It was like sunlight glinting off of a sharp blade—a brief flash of light and delight.

That was all he’d ever given away, however. The evidence had convicted him; never his testimony.

And that was the kind of murderer who left José staring at the ceiling while his wife slept beside him. DelVecchio Senior was smart enough to stay in control and cover his tracks. He was self-reliant and resourceful. And he was as relentless as the change of seasons. . . . He was Halloween in a parallel universe: Instead of a normal Joe with a mask on, he was a fiend behind a friendly, handsome face.

Veck looked just like his dad.

“Did you hear what I said.”

At the sound of the kid’s voice, José refocused. “Yeah, I did.”

“So is this it for you and me,” Veck said sharply. “You saying you don’t want to work with me anymore? Assuming I still have a job?”