An Offer You Can't Refuse: A Miami Mafia Crime Thriller

by Sal Bianchi

  “So he took all the money out of his account,” Nick reiterated. “Even though he was left with nothing to pay his bills, and this all coincidentally happened a month before Carlisle Rutherford was found dead? Seems pretty suspect.”

  “It does.” Stein nodded. “There was something else, too. I managed to recover a deleted email. It was a bit a miracle, to be honest, considering how corrupted the files were, but it was still there. It was from a throwaway account. You know, one of those services that will generate a onetime use email and hide your location behind a proxy. Anyway, the email only contained an address and a time.”

  “Was there anything significant about the address?” I asked impatiently. Stein was a brilliant information analyst, but he had a tendency to ramble and meander on his way to the point of whatever it was he wanted to say. Though it was probably hypocritical of me to complain, considering my own tendency to space out and get distracted.

  “There was.” Stein nodded again. “The address is for a bakery here in Miami, and two months ago, one of the employees there was found dead in the bakery’s kitchen.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Are you kidding me? First Ryan and now Shane? How do these cases keep leading to other murders?”

  “Well, that’s for you boys to find out,” Stein replied. “I’ve already forwarded the information to your tablet. The body was found early in the morning by a man named Chris Davis. According to the report he gave the police, he discovered her body early in the morning before the store was even opened. Apparently, she was the keyholder at the time and went in half an hour early every morning to start the ovens.”

  “Did the police look into him?” Nick asked.

  “They did,” Stein replied. “It was easy to rule him out in this case since the security camera caught footage of the killer. Unfortunately, he was wearing a hood, and it was still early enough in the morning that it was too hard to make out fine details. The camera footage shows a man entering the store just a few minutes after the victim, Josie Keller. He leaves a few moments later, and ten minutes pass before Chris arrives, but he has a completely different height and build.”

  “Can we see the security camera footage?” I asked.

  “Sure, it’s included in the files I forward to you,” Stein replied.

  I pulled my tablet out of my bag and switched it on. Because we handled such sensitive information, we communicated from emails that could only be accessed through our personal tablets, and we could only unlock those tablets via a fingerprint scan. Once it was open, I quickly scanned through the email Stein had sent me until I found the video file. I set the tablet on the table so that Nick could see it too, and I could see Roland pointedly looking away while fiddling on something with his phone. Since he worked here, it really wasn’t a big deal if he watched it too, but it was kind of funny watching the rookie awkwardly try to figure out what he should be doing.

  Just as Stein had described, the video began with a young woman approaching the bakery and unlocking it before going inside. I grimaced as I watched the footage. She looked like she was still just a teenager. It was a tragedy anytime anyone was murdered, of course, but it always seemed especially awful when it was a kid just starting out their life.

  I continued to watch the clip until the suspect appeared. Even though it was the middle of summer, he was wearing a heavy black puffer coat with the hood up. Honestly, that in and of itself was so suspicious in the height of summer in Miami that it was amazing to me that no one had come forward with any information about it.

  It was early enough that the first rays of sunlight were barely beginning to illuminate the sky, so it was impossible to make out the killer’s features beneath his hood. Because of the puffy coat, I couldn’t even say with certainty whether the suspect was male or female, but judging by their height and the width of their shoulders, it was much more likely that it was a man. I watched as he looked up and down the street casually before moving forward to unlock the door. That time of the morning was probably when there were the least people on the boardwalk. The previous night’s party-goers would have already stumbled home, vacationers would probably still be sleeping in, and even most of the locals wouldn’t be heading to work for another hour or so.

  “Wait,” I exclaimed as I suddenly realized something. I rewound the clip to an earlier point, right before he got moved to open the door. “Look! He has a key!”

  “So he does,” Stein muttered as he leaned forward to examine the video more closely.

  “Agent Stein, what was the time on the email?” I asked, though I had a good suspicion I already knew what the answer would be.

  “Six-thirty,” Stein replied. “Why--”

  He pursed his lips as he realized why I’d asked. The time stamp on the video showed that it was just after six-thirty in the morning the moment the killer went into the bakery.

  21

  Nick

  Our first stop was the home of the man who had discovered Josie’s body, Chris Davis. According to the police report, Chris was scheduled to come in fifteen minutes after Josie, which meant that the killer had only had a fifteen-minute window of opportunity to kill her and make his escape unseen. Though we’d already confirmed that Chris was too short and thin to be the killer, it was possible he’d seen something important since he’d arrived just moments after the murder took place.

  Davis lived in a modest apartment in the city. According to the information that Stein had given us, he’d quit working at the bakery soon after Josie was killed. Some might have seen that as an admission of guilt, but I didn’t. Few people could ever really understand the absolute terror that came with seeing a dead body for the first time, especially one that had been killed as brutally as Josie had been. I could understand why he’d want to put it behind him as quickly as possible.

  “Apartment three-one-three, right?” Jase confirmed as we made it up to the third floor of the building where Davis lived.

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod.

  “Okay.” Jase moved forward and knocked on the door.

  I heard movement on the other side of the door for a moment before it creaked open just a crack. A short man with thick, curly hair and dark skin peered out at us.

  “Hello,” Jase smiled pleasantly. “I’m Agent Park with the--”

  “Go away!” the man yelled before slamming the door angrily in our faces.

  “What the hell?” I muttered in confusion. Getting screamed at wasn’t that unusual, but usually not this quickly. I sighed and stepped up to the door before pounding on it twice.

  “We just want to talk to you about what happened with Josie Keller!” I called through the door.

  Silence met my outburst, and I slumped my shoulders in disappointment. Just as I was about to ask Jase what we should do now, the door burst back open.

  “Why?” the man demanded, his face red and his lips twisted into a vicious snarl. “So you can tell me that ‘you’re doing everything you can’ and that ‘these things take time’? I’ve heard it a hundred times already, and you useless pigs never do anything to find Josie’s killer.”

  “Wait,” I called as he began to pull the door closed again. “We’re not cops. And we might have a lead about who killed Josie.”

  The man froze completely at my words. He was staring down at the ground and breathing heavily. He looked like he was considering something carefully.

  “All right.” He finally nodded and looked up at us. “Come on in.”

  He stepped back into the apartment, and Jase and I followed close behind him.

  “Close the door behind you,” he called curtly as Jase stepped through the door.

  I watched as Davis trudged over to a worn green couch in the center of the room. I noticed as I stepped inside that everything in here looked worn and well-used. It was a harsh contrast to the opulent and luxurious homes we’d been in the past few days.

  “Thank you for speaking with us,” I remarked as I took a seat on one of the armchairs opp
osite him.

  “Yeah,” he grumbled as he eyed Jase warily. “So you said you’re not cops? What are you, then?”

  “Oh. Well, Agent Park works for the SDCT,” I replied. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “A fed?” the man chuckled. “That’s even worse than a cop. Whatever though, you guys said you knew something about the guy who killed Josie?”

  “We might.” I nodded. Usually, I would let Jase handle interviews, since he was the one with the badge. However, this man seemed to be extremely wary of law enforcement, so he’d probably be more responsive to me. “You are Chris Davis, right? You’re the one who found her that morning?”

  “Yeah.” Davis nodded uncomfortably.

  “Can you tell us what happened that morning?” I prompted. “With as much detail as you can remember. Even if it doesn’t seem important, there might be something that was overlooked.”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Uh… I went into work like usual. It was six-forty-five. Josie always got there at six-thirty so she could turn the ovens on and get everything started, and then I’d come in fifteen minutes before the shop opened to help her get everything set out. I walked inside, and at first, I thought she wasn’t there because I didn’t see her anywhere. Usually, she’s out front by then, getting all the displays ready. Anyway, I started walking toward the back, and I could feel that the ovens were on since the kitchen was hot. I thought maybe she was in the bathroom or something. Then I went back to grab some trays from the storeroom, and she was just there.”

  “Was she already dead when you found her?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Davis croaked as he put his head in his hands. “It must have just happened, though, because she only came in fifteen minutes before me. If I’d just been there a little earlier… I mean, it was just fifteen minutes! Her neck was bleeding so much. She was still warm, man! I called nine-one-one, but she was gone. She wasn’t breathing anymore.”

  There were tears streaming down his face, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him. It was clear that her death really affected him.

  “Were you and Josie friends?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Davis sniffed. “She’s the one who told me about the job opening at the bakery. She even gave me a reference. She was such a nice girl, and she was so happy about being a mom. What kind of monster kills a pregnant girl?”

  “She was pregnant?” I exclaimed. Nothing in the report Stein indicated had mentioned that.

  “Yeah,” Davis nodded. “She had just found out. She was so excited about it, always talking about how her deadbeat ex-boyfriend Ian was gonna step up and be a dad. If you ask me, that SOB is the one who killed her.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked. The report had mentioned an ex-boyfriend, but they had broken up a few weeks prior, and he’d had an alibi, so the police had quickly cleared him.

  “Things weren’t good between him and Josie,” Davis explained. “Josie caught him cheating on her, and they had this big, messy breakup like a month before she died. She found out she was pregnant after they had already broken up, and she told me that she was going to tell him about it and make him marry her. I told her she was nuts, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “Did she ever tell him?” I asked. The more details I heard, the more suspect the ex-boyfriend sounded.

  “I don’t know,” Davis scoffed bitterly. “Someone slashed her throat three days after that. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty big coincidence?”

  “It does,” I frowned.

  “Finally,” Davis huffed. “Someone who doesn’t have their head stuck up their own butt. I kept telling the cops that Ian had something to do with it, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Let me guess,” I muttered. “He had a bunch of pictures up on social media that conveniently placed him somewhere else during the time the crime took place?”

  “Yeah,” Davis scowled. “How did you know? He posted a bunch of pictures of himself with some girl out on his boat that morning. Does that mean something?”

  I exchanged a frustrated look with Jase. Once again, we’d come upon a case where the most likely suspect had an airtight alibi, backed up with photo evidence.

  “It might,” I nodded. “You’ve been a really big help, Mr. Davis.”

  “Nah, it’s nothing,” he shook his head. “I just want whoever did this to get caught. Josie was one of the few good people in this world, man. She didn’t deserve that.”

  I smiled at him sadly before standing up to leave.

  “I’ll come back and let you know as soon as we solve this case,” I promised.

  “Thanks.” He nodded as he got up to show us out. Once Jase and I were standing outside again, he opened his mouth as if to say something. After a few seconds, though, he just nodded awkwardly before closing the door.

  “That was rough,” Jase muttered as we made our way back down the stairs.

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  “If the pattern continues,” Jase sighed. “I’m guessing we’re going to find some connection between Ian and a different crime. Ryan Rothschild was connected to the Rutherford case. Shane was connected to this case, which means Ian will probably be connected to a different one, right?”

  “Probably, but what the hell does this mean?” I grumbled in frustration. It was like some seriously screwed-up version of a chain email. “We need to call Stein and have him find out who Ian is and see what he can dig up about him.”

  “All right,” Jase said as he fished his phone out of his pocket. I walked silently back to the car beside him as he called Stein and asked him for the information. Once we were back inside in the car, I leaned back in my seat and tried to make sense of everything that had happened so far. It seemed like the deeper we looked into this, the more questions we had without getting any closer to the truth.

  “Great, thanks,” I heard Jase say before he ended the call and dropped his phone onto the center console between us. “Stein said he’ll get right on it and call us when he’s got something.”

  “Okay,” I sighed. We still had no idea how all the cases were connected. Shane, for some reason, had the address of a crime scene hidden within the depths of his computer, but it was the wrong crime. What did Josie and Ian’s domestic drama have to do with him? It was as though the pieces of a puzzle had all been scattered and put back together in the wrong places.

  It had scarcely been five minutes before Jase’s phone went off with a loud buzz.

  “That was fast,” I muttered as I plucked the phone off of the console and answered the call. I put it on speaker so we’d both be able to hear Stein.

  “Hello?” Jase called. “What did you find?”

  “A lot, actually,” Stein replied. “Turns out your suspect is quite the socialite. His full name is Ian Brooks. He’s the son of a fairly renowned neurosurgeon. It didn’t take long to find pictures of Josie with him on his social media platforms. It was just as you said, too. He posted a bunch of pictures of himself on a boat the morning that Josie was killed.”

  “So he matches the current pattern,” Jase replied.

  “That he does,” Stein agreed. “What’s more, he’s having another party tonight. If you want to talk to him, that’ll probably be a good opportunity. I’ll send the information over to you now.”

  “Thanks, Stein,” I replied. I wasn’t confident that this wouldn’t just lead us on another wild goose chase, but we had to follow whatever lead we could.

  “No problem,” he responded. “I’ll let you two go now. See you back at the office.”

  “Right, bye,” I replied before ending the call. I watched as Jase pulled his laptop out of his bag and started to look through the information that Stein had forwarded to him.

  “The party’s tonight at eight,” he informed me. “On a yacht.”

  “A yacht?” I scoffed as I took the tablet from him. Displayed on the screen was a post from one of Ian’s social media accounts. He was bragging about the party he had planned for tonight on his father’s mas
sive yacht.

  “Did Stein send us the address for where it’s docked?” I asked as I started to scroll through the email.

  “Yeah,” Jase replied.

  “Okay,” I nodded. “If we’re going to crash the party, we’re going to need to get there early in case they decide to go on the water.”

  “What do you mean crash it?” Jase asked apprehensively.

  “What?” I scoffed. “You think they’re going to let a couple of narc-looking guys just waltz in and ruin the party? Our best bet is to sneak in and find Ian. We need to go get changed before we head there.”

  Jase was giving me a belabored glare, but I was too excited to pay him any mind. Even if we kept running into walls during the case, the thought of sneaking into a private party gave me a thrill. The fact that I could get away with calling it work just made me more pumped.

  22

  Nick

  There were still a few hours left until the party, so Jase headed back to the office to give Flint a report and wrap up a few things. In the meantime, I headed back home to change.

  I parked my car in my usual spot by the entrance and headed inside. The first thing I did was check my email for any new client requests. That came up empty, but I did have one message on my work phone asking for a consultation on a missing person’s case. Even if it was just one case, I still felt happy that my little agency was starting to get more cases. After those fake reviews first spread, there was a period of about two months where I didn’t get any work, and I nearly had to close the business. The only reason I was able to stay afloat was that I ended up getting my first consultation with the SDCT right around that time.

  I walked through my apartment and into my bedroom before stripping off my button-down shirt. Any time I was working on a case with the SDCT, I tended to dress a little more professionally. When I was just doing my normal job, however, I dressed as casually and unassumingly as I could. It was important to blend into the crowd when I was tailing someone, so the less I stood out, the better.