“Do they have this equipment in Paris?”
“Yes, it’s a state of the art facility, but the bodies are here.”
“I’m on this new task force. I’ll see if I can keep you involved, but you have to go to Paris. That’s non-negotiable. Decide now.”
“You can keep me involved?”
“I’m not promising, but I’ll try. But if you’re dead, I can’t do that, now can I?”
She hugs herself and cuts her gaze. “Right.” She inhales and looks at me. “Keep me involved. I want to help.”
“When do you leave?”
“This afternoon.”
“I’m going to have Kane’s man take you to the airport.”
“Okay.”
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial Kane. “Yes, beautiful?”
“Can Jay take Beth to the airport? She’s on her way to Paris.”
“You think she’s safe in Paris?”
“You don’t.” It’s not a question. He thinks the Society is a part of this. I wonder if there will ever be another case where one or both of us won’t at least suspect their involvement.
“Why don’t I have one of my men go with her?” he suggests, in what is a generous offer.
I glance at Beth, standing there looking like a delicate flower, and I agree. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Make her listen. Scare the fuck out of her if you have to. You’re good at that.”
“Thanks,” I say, because it’s true, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s a compliment.
“I tell you you’re beautiful, you say fuck you. I tell you you’re scary, and you say thank you.”
“Your point?”
“We’ll discuss my point in person. I’m at my apartment headed to my office here in the city. I’ll call my secretary to arrange for a car, and one of my men will be at Beth’s disposal. A second car will be waiting on you. Don’t shoot the driver. And Lilah, Purgatory still exists, and it’s waiting on you.” He hangs up.
Purgatory still exists, and it’s waiting on me.
Purgatory being what I call my thinking room. He just told me that he kept my room in his apartment here in the city, our apartment at one point. I slide my phone back into my jeans’ pocket. “Kane’s doing more than providing a ride. He’s sending someone to Paris with you. Don’t fight it. Just go with it.”
“I can’t travel with a stranger.”
“People travel with bodyguards all the time. They don’t know them. They just like knowing they know how to shoot people and kill them. That’s where you need to be right now.”
“I’ll be in Paris. Are you suggesting I’m not safe there either?”
“You can’t even tell me how those women died, Beth. You could die. Don’t be stupid.”
She pales. “You’re such a bitch.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are we doing this autopsy or what?”
“You do it. I need to go to the police station and get my hands on the evidence they haven’t already fucked up.”
“That crime scene was the worst disaster I’ve ever seen. It was almost like the killer knew Williams and chose her like he chose us.”
She’s right. That’s exactly how this reads. “Call me if you find anything and before you leave for Paris.” I turn for the door.
“Lilah.”
“Yes?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at her.
“You and Kane are back together?”
Only a few days ago, I would have quickly rejected that idea. Now, it’s not a question I’m ready to answer at all. “Call me, Beth,” I say and exit the office.
I walk through the facility, and when I reach the front office, the female guard is no longer there.
A man has replaced her, a tall, broad, stoic-looking man, and I don’t like it. I stop in front of him. “Who are you?”
“Clint.”
“Clint. Where’s the female guard?”
“She quit. I’m her replacement.”
“When did she quit?”
“Last week.”
Holy fuck. “She was here less than an hour ago.”
“If she was here, she wasn’t on duty.”
“Where were you an hour ago?”
“I took lunch. My lunch coverage was here.”
“And that’s who?”
“Rick.”
“Who was on shift last night?”
“Rick.”
“Do you have a picture of Rick?”
“I don’t,” he replies.
I show him my badge. “I need your supervisor’s name and number.”
He doesn’t so much as blink. “Of course.” He reaches in his pocket and hands me a card for Edward Davis. “I’m an ex-Marine, Agent. I assure you I’m here to serve and serve well.”
I dial the number, and a man answers. “Ed here. How can I help you?”
“Ed, this is FBI Agent Lilah Love. Tell me about Clint.”
“He’s an Ex-marine. Highly thought of. What’s the problem?”
I eye Clint. “Meet me at the police station, and I’ll let you know.” I hang up.
Jay walks in the front door. “About damn time,” I say. “Is Beth’s ride here yet?”
“On the way now.”
“Stay here with Clint.”
I walk through the facility and back into the exam room to find Beth already working. “You need to leave now.”
She pulls her mask down. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
It was just a matter of time. Hang out with me. Become a potty mouth. “Serious as Beethoven at a Jay Z concert. Not as serious as Jay Z at a Beethoven concert. As serious as—”
“Stop. Please stop with the horrible, poorly timed jokes. I get it. You’re serious.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Why the sudden urgency?” Beth demands. “Why do I need to leave now?”
“We’re on Kane’s schedule,” I say and then proceed to mumble off some kind of nonsense about traffic and the car she’s using to get to the airport. It’s a bunch of bullshit that somehow works. Fifteen minutes later, she’s updated her paperwork, given me the contact information for the medical examiner who will take over for her on this case, and I’ve loaded her into the damn car with one of Kane’s men.
“Now what?” Jay asks, clearly planning to be my out of the closet shadow.
“Now, you make me believe you’re gone again.” I proceed to ignore him and the car waiting on me and start walking, not to be an idiot passing up a free ride, but I need to call Tic Tac on the way to the station and do so without an audience, even if that audience works for Kane.
Quickly fading in with the bustle of the Manhattan crowds, I navigate the sidewalks as I punch in Tic Tac’s number. “I need stuff.”
“You always need stuff.”
“I need the security footage for the morgue last night through right now, specifically home in on a Hispanic female guard. I also need information on the security company, the owner, and two additional guards: Clint and Rick. And I need all of this now. The owner is on his way to meet me at the police station.”
“What am I looking for?”
“That Hispanic guard quit last week, but she was there last night and today. And wait, shift attention to Detective Williams for about ten seconds. I’m about to be in all kinds of confrontation-ready moments with that wicked excuse of a detective. What do I need to know?”
“She shot and killed a suspect last year that earned her heat with Internal Affairs, including a psych exam. And no, I can’t get you the exam.”
I hang up on him and call Lucas. “Lilah,” he greets. “Should I shout out a hello to Kane as well?”
“You two need to get along.”
“Then you two are obviously a thing again.”
“I didn’t call to talk about Kane.”
“You avoid all conversations about Kane. What does that say about you with him, Lilah?”
>
“That unlike you, I don’t like to broadcast my life across all of the Hamptons and beyond. What did you find out for me?”
“I sent you a text. Jess Monroe looks legit. Nothing negative to be found at all. Military service for five years. His father is a Commander. The FBI recruited him, and he’s had an exceptional career.”
Military service. That takes me back to my conversation with Clint. “What branch of the Military?”
“Marines.”
Like Clint. “I’ll call you back.”
“Lilah—”
I hang up and call Tic Tac. “See if there’s a connection between Agent Monroe and Clint the security guard.” I arrive at the station. “Text me unless it’s big.” I disconnect and hurry up the steps and inside the building.
In a few flashes of my badge, I’m at the elevator. I’m about to get on when a familiar rather tall asshole gets off, he’s over six feet of asshole in fact. Nelson Moser, a detective I know from recent dealings with him, is most likely connected to the Society. He also worked with my ex-partner Greg, and set him up. And then there’s the man he shot and made it look like it was justified.
“Lilah bitch Love,” he snaps, his expression as hard as his features.
“If it isn’t Dirty Moser,” I say. “Oh, I better be nice. You might shoot me in the back and say someone else did it.”
He steps closer to my side and says, “Smart girl.”
And with that obvious threat he walks away. He needs to be gone. He’s going to be gone if I get my way, and on this, I will.
I continue on to the third floor, and get busy gathering together the team of staff working these cases, all of whom I consider suspects. It’s not long before I have six of the key personnel in a conference room, but there’s one important person missing, the lead detective. “Where’s Detective Williams?”
Thomas, a thirty-something redhead from the forensics portion of the investigation, explains, “No one can reach her. She’s not responding to messages.”
There’s a short discussion, and everyone agrees: she’s missing. “This isn’t like her at all,” Sally, a gruff, fiftyish woman with wild brown curls declares. “We have a major case launching. She should be here.”
This is headed south in a big way fast. “Let’s have a unit swing by her house and do a wellness check.” One of the girls stands up and volunteers to make it happen.
I wave her onward and then discuss the plan of action with the rest of the team. “What do we know about the victims?” I ask, a pad of paper in front of me, my intent to extract all I can from this team and compare it to what Tic Tac has for me, the likes of which I’ve only scanned. The group shoots out a recap of basic information:
Victim one: Mia Moore
Age: Twenty-eight
Hair: Blonde, natural
Occupation: Ex-Model turned advertising executive
Parents: Dead
Boyfriend: A rather famous photographer
Siblings: One older brother who is in the Army and overseas right now
Victim two: Shelly Willit
Age: Twenty-eight
Hair: Blonde, bought from a box, which was likely a bad decision on her part, considering Umbrella Man seems to favor blondes
Occupation: Romance novel editor at a major publishing house
Parents: Alive, married, in Texas, both are school teachers
Boyfriend: None
Siblings: None
Hair color, age, city are connected dots. The rest are not but that doesn’t matter. This could be about women who snubbed him or women who were nice to him or a great many other ways these women could align for Umbrella Man. I don’t miss the fact that he’s killing blondes and playing with a brunette.
“Have the families been notified?” I ask.
“Detective Williams handles that,” That information comes from Lily, a petite brunette, one of the research girls, girl because she reads like a twenty-five-year old teen who needs to grow the fuck up.
“Now you do,” I say.
“But—but—”
“You will fight harder to solve the case when it gets personal. Go make it personal.”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t finish that fucking sentence. Go now.”
She grimaces and hurries out the door. I assign the rest of the team random tasks I need completed when Sally pokes her head in the door. “Detective Williams isn’t answering her phone or her door.”
I don’t even think before I answer. “Tell the officers to go inside her apartment.”
Sally pales. “What if she gets mad?”
“She was at a crime scene last night with what I believe to be a serial killer in play and now she’s missing. Are you worried about her being mad or dead?”
Sally goes even paler. “I’ll have them go into the apartment.” She turns away and disappears into the hallway.
I hand out a few more directives and send the team off to do their jobs, all but one that is: I ask Thomas to stay.
“Fingerprints, DNA, what do you have for me?”
“No fingerprint matches in the database. We do have some DNA samples in both victims’ apartments. Obviously, we’ll need to work on collecting those samples to know what connections to compare. Usually Detective Williams would handle that process.”
Of course she would. “Now you do.” I don’t give him time to tell me that’s not his job. It’s his fucking job, and I move on. “Talk to me about the cigarettes at the crime scene.”
“Cigarettes?” He frowns. “There were no cigarettes in evidence.”
“There were fucking cigarettes.”
He doesn’t even blink before he holds up his hands. “They didn’t make it to me.”
They didn’t make it to him. “Joe Baggley. Do you know him?”
“Yeah, I know Joe.”
“I personally handed him one of the evidence bags. Find him. Find it. Put my number in your phone and call me the minute you do.” I leave out the part where Detective Williams handled one of the evidence bags herself. She’s not blonde, but I have a feeling she’s dead or gone, the latter of which comes with a loose meaning, yet to be fully defined.
Thomas stands up and his eyes, blue eyes that are intelligent and cold, in a familiar, straight out of my own looking glass way. He’s not something to turn your back on. “She’s not coming back, is she?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m smart enough to see the writing on the wall.” He turns and walks out of the room, in what feels like a calculated moment.
If I were anyone but me, he might even stir unease in me, but I’m not, and he doesn’t. I wonder if this disappoints him or perhaps thrills him.
Sally rushes back into the room. “She’s not in her apartment, but there are no signs of a struggle.”
Because the Umbrella Man doesn’t do struggles. He’s all about power and control.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The officers on scene at Detective Williams’ apartment find nothing unusual enough to justify a full legal search, so I’m forced to order them to leave. She could have quit her job because the scene last night was too much for her, especially after her internal investigation last year. She could just be off drunk on booze and chocolate and needing to sleep it off. I even consider the idea that Detective Williams is the Umbrella Man but dismiss the idea. She’s not him.
That said, the fact that she’s gone, added to the fact that evidence has disappeared, leads me to believe the police station is not my best location to work. Well, that and the fact that half of everyone here gives me those blank kind of stares that say no one is home. I swear half of them are doing crack or at least three shots of tequila before arriving to work. I can only hope they’re working for the Society. With the case file in my briefcase, I’m ready to leave this hell hole, but I have one more stop: Detective Williams’ very personal space.
Entering her
office, I pull the door shut and sit down, beginning a search that quickly feels as sterile as Mia Moore’s apartment. Everything is in perfect rows, labeled to exactness. There is no dust. There are no doodles on the desk calendar. There is no sign that a human resides here. I consider again the idea that Detective Williams is the Umbrella Man but that idea still won’t take root. That said, in this, I do see an OCD-type personality as a potential connection between Williams, Shelly, and Mia, between them and the Umbrella Man, who is calculated in all ways. Could it be a shared boyfriend or family member? I open desk drawers and start my search of Williams’ work area, but there’s still nothing personal, nothing here that even feels like it’s connected to an opinion on anything, not even a menu choice to a favorite restaurant.
I thrum my fingers on the desk, considering what I know about Williams, when an “oh fuck” moment comes to me. This space I’m in right now is owned by the kind of person who would have put on that orange suit and meticulously protected the crime scene. That’s not the Williams I met at the crime scene. Was that the real her or is this the real her? Did someone, did he, Umbrella Man, or even the Society, for some reason, clean up her workspace? Questions for her staff erupt in my mind, but I also need to know where the hell Ed, the security company owner, is right now, because if he shows up after I leave, another shit show could erupt. I dial the number to his office, and it goes directly to voicemail. I dial the reception desk next. “He’s unavailable,” a woman tells me. “Can I take a message?”
I hang up.
He’s either running or lawyering up. I need to just show up at his office. Grabbing a sheet of paper, I jot down the address for the security company as well as the address for Mia’s boyfriend, North Madison. With my destinations in mind, I stand up and head for the door, only to have it open, a big, familiar detective I knew from back in the day now taking up the doorway, a deep scowl on his otherwise handsome face. “Houston, we have a problem,” I say, and that’s not just a nickname. His actual last name is Houston.
“Yes, we do,” he says, motioning me back into the office for what appears to be his request for a private word. “You’re in my office.”
Considering he’s just called this his office, not that of Detective Williams, I find this development interesting enough to do as he says. I give him space and watch him shut the door. “Your office?” I ask.
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