by Dale Mayer
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “If you don’t, you don’t.”
“No, but it would help identify the victims if I did.”
He stilled. “I wonder.”
She pulled back slightly so she could look up at him. “What?”
He leaned closer to the paper and studied the image. “I wonder if they are actually dead.”
She gasped. “Oh, I never considered that. After seeing the first man in the morgue, I naturally assumed…”
“And that’s a problem. Because there’s nothing natural about this.”
He had his phone out and called the cops as she studied the little bit of flesh she could see on the image. There was no way to know if the man was dead or not. In fact, she was assuming it was a male butt, however, that didn’t make it so. This image also only showed one cheek. So not a good enough look to distinguish the sex or vitality of the person.
Morgan stepped away from her as he reported the find to the same cop they’d been dealing with so far. It definitely made it wiser to keep working with the same officials. She couldn’t imagine trying to explain these events to different cops over and over again.
She walked into the bedroom and wandered the room. It looked the same to her, but she knew the cops would ask if anything else was disturbed. She couldn’t see anything. She had minimal clothing here and it was all sitting in the top drawer that Morgan had quickly emptied for her. At the time she’d never questioned it, but now she realized that anyone looking at the dresser would know for sure that she’d moved in.
Did that matter?
She had no idea. Opening the top drawer, she realized it must have mattered because her few personal items had been tossed. Her folded clothing was no longer folded and her few toiletries had been dumped from the small bag she carried them in.
“Morgan?” She turned to see him shutting off the phone. “The drawer has been tossed.”
He frowned and walked over. His frown deepened when he saw it and he immediately reached to pull out the next drawer. It appeared untouched. He checked them all, but only the first drawer appeared disturbed.
She strode to the night table on her side of the bed. She thought she’d put a few items in there but couldn’t remember.
She pulled the drawer open, but only the book she’d been reading was there. And it appeared to be fine.
Next she turned her attention to the bed. If her drawer had been tampered with… had the bed? She tossed the covers back and searched through the layers. It appeared to be fine. She straightened the bed, realizing there was an odd silence behind her. She turned to see Morgan studying her intently.
She gave a self-conscious shrug. “I figured if they tossed my clothing, they might have done something to my side of the bed.”
“And did they?” he asked.
“Not that I can see.”
He nodded and went to his side where he systematically checked it over.
“Nothing here either.”
“Good.
Unable to leave it alone, she dropped to her knees and checked underneath. After a quick search of the empty space, she stood up again and shook her head. “Just the wire from the phone.”
“Good.” He turned his head. “I think that’s the police here now.”
She walked to the window just in time to see the cruiser pull up into the driveway. “It’s them.”
He nodded and walked out. She stayed where she could look out at the world, wondering at the creepy layer she’d bumped up against. She knew crime was out there. And all other sorts of nasty things, but she’d been relatively untouched until now.
She’d heard complaints from others but she hadn’t had any personal experience on the issue. Now, she not only could sympathize, she was equally terrorized. Morgan had re-entered her life, and everything was as deep and dark this time as it had been light and superficial last time.
Things were different this time around. More serious. Older. And with all the troubles, they’d gotten a lot closer. Somewhere along the way, she’d realized she did trust him. She wasn’t sure that she trusted him to not walk away again but she knew he’d do his best to keep her safe. And that meant a lot. Now to keep him safe, too.
Voices coming up the stairs finally reached her. She nodded to the same cop that they dealt with each time and motioned to the bathroom. She felt his sharp gaze but ignored it. What was there to say? He walked into the bathroom and several men followed. She shifted to the chair by the window and slumped lower. In the background, she heard Morgan explain where they’d gone and how it had been there when they got home. He explained about the drawer. She opened her eyes to watch as the cop opened the drawer and checked the contents himself. Great. More strangers rummaging through her underwear. She had an impulse to throw the whole damn lot out and buy new.
She rubbed a hand over her forehead and sighed. “We didn’t check your closet.”
“His closet?” the cop asked delicately.
“Yes, I don’t have anything in here. Just what I brought for a few days after the shooting,” she muttered. “I don’t actually live here.”
He nodded.
“But you knew enough to check the bed?” he asked with a tinge of humor in his voice.
“No, I was just afraid that if it was my clothing, then maybe they messed with my side of the bed.” She watched as the men turned and looked at the bed. “But I didn’t see anything, so it was probably just my imagination.”
“What was your imagination?” he asked.
“The bedding looked disturbed. Not like I thought I’d left it. But I wasn’t thinking clearly, so I don’t know.”
Just then, Morgan gave a strangled sound and launched himself toward the bed. “Earlier you said the only cord was from the phone.”
She nodded. He moved the bed out of the way and the cops crowded in beside him. The bed was shoved over and angry mutterings rose above their heads.
She watched, her curiosity rising by the minute.
“Morgan, what’s wrong?”
With an angry expletive, he turned and held something in his hand. “It’s a camera embedded into the headboard.”
A camera. On the headboard. Watching them.
She raced off the chair and just barely made it to the toilet before her stomach emptied.
*
Morgan winced as he heard Jazz heaving in the bathroom. He glanced over at the cop, the camera, the cords dangling in his hand from the way he’d ripped this out. In a hard tone, he asked, “Can you do anything with this?”
The cop shrugged. “Maybe. We might have done more if you had left it in place.”
“That couldn’t happen.” He tilted his head in the direction of Jazz.
The cop nodded in understanding. “We need to search the room to make sure there aren’t more.”
Anger rose up, sending a wave of red through his mind and brain. “There had better not be.” He turned to look around the bedroom. “Where the fuck would they be?”
“Easy. Let my team search the house. Take Jazz downstairs and let us do this.”
Morgan glared at him. His fists clenched. Damn it, he wanted to beat something.
“Morgan.” Jazz leaned against the bathroom doorjamb. He dropped the camera in the cop’s hand, realizing he was right. He walked over to Jazz’s side and placed an arm around her. “Come on, we’re going downstairs. The cops are going to search for more.”
He could feel the shudders rippling down her slight frame. He hated to bring up the concept, but they had to make sure. “They are going to search the entire house. We’re going downstairs and put on coffee. They won’t need long.”
She nodded, and he led her out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the stairs. She glanced back once. “Do you think they watched?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “No, I don’t,” he said firmly. “I think they installed it today. They used the
image as a distraction to stop us from looking further.”
“That makes no sense. As soon as you know someone has been here, aren’t you automatically going to search the rest of the room at the bare minimum?”
“Maybe, and we found something, right? You found your clothing tossed.”
She nodded slowly.
He managed to get her into the kitchen and onto a chair. “The cops are here. They will be looking for anything and everything. We’ll give them time to do their thing and we’ll stay out of their way.” He bustled around and filled the coffeepot and ground the beans. By the time he had it dripping, he had found the rest of the muffins and placed them on the table with two cups.
Jazz sat like a zombie and stared out the window. The look on her face… he winced. She looked like her world had shattered.
Chapter 10
Jazz didn’t know what to think any more.
“Do you have video cameras outside?”
“No. I’m about to get some though,” he said in hard tones.
A broken laugh escaped. “That would have been a good idea for yesterday.”
“And might still save us another time.” He made a note on a scrap piece of paper. “I have a buddy I can call on.”
Of course he did. Typical males. Especially biker males. They always had a buddy for every type of need they could come across. She’d found being a homeowner without that system a real pain in the ass. She was damn capable. But not when it came to fixing the plumbing or installing a security system. She wouldn’t feel good until she had a system set up.
“Would he put one in my house, too?” she asked quietly.
His gaze shot in her direction. Slowly, he nodded, “I can ask him for you.”
“Please do.” She had no idea how expensive it was going to be, but she’d find the money somewhere. Although not being able to work was going to have a major impact on her business. It was depressing.
“Although I’d prefer you’d stay here with me,” he said in a low, intimate tone.
“I’m not sure I can,” she whispered, hating to think of anyone watching them at their most intimate moments. “I don’t know that I can ever relax enough to feel comfortable here again.”
“The camera wasn’t there before, I know that.”
“How?” she cried. “How can you know that? They could have been watching you and all your previous girlfriends. Maybe this guy has been getting off on watching you for weeks, if not months.”
Her hand was covered by his, long fingers sliding gently between hers, reassuring yet enticing at the same time.
“Would you prefer to go to your house for a few days?”
She shuddered. Here where there were cameras and drive-by shootings or her house where she’d been shot. And it had been empty since. Meaning if anyone had wanted to install cameras in her house, it would have been a piece of cake. No one lived there, so the damn house was an open invitation.
“Do you think the cops would search my house, too?”
Her fingers were wrapped up gently in his. “I’ll ask them to. It’s quite possible that both houses were targeted.”
“Are video cameras expensive? Does the price help to narrow the field down of who could have done this?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Anyone can get them likely locally and if not, at least over the Internet.”
“Of course they could,” she said. “You can buy anything that way.” She snorted. “So again, the stalker is shifting the chess pieces and we’re reacting.”
“There’s not much else for us to do.”
“And that sucks,” she snapped.
“But it’s the safest way for you both,” said the strange voice from the doorway.
Jazz winced at the sight of the cop and the bag of electrical equipment in his hand. “Did you find more?”
He shook his head. “Just the one. And it was an amateur job. You would have most likely found it soon enough. The video feed also wasn’t live, but it did have audio capabilities.”
“What?” Jazz jumped up. “Did you say there was no video?”
“No, that wasn’t connected,” the cop said. “Video feed is much more complicated than audio, but still, they could have planned to come back and fix it. If it was set up today, then they might not have had a chance to set up the live feed.” He lifted the bag and gave it a shake. “As he can’t now, you have to consider that he knows we’ve found the equipment and he could be pissed.”
“Or he doesn’t know but assumes that the equipment isn’t functioning.”
Jazz preferred that latter option over a pissed-off stalker. That couldn’t be good for anyone.
“So what do we do?” she whispered in a low voice. “Our lives have been completely tossed into the air at this bastard’s whim. There are still no answers and he’s getting more intrusive.”
“And that’s the message you need to take away from this. He’s dangerous and he’s escalating. We can’t know if he’s had anything to do with any killings at this point, but we do know he’s shot you,” the cop nodded at Jazz.
“And yet you can’t find him…” she said bitterly.
“Easy, Jazz,” Morgan said. “It’s not their fault.”
She buried her face in her hands. Then realized he was right. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Stay safe. We’ll see how many of these pieces we can pull together to find the right answers.”
“Are we still thinking this was one person?”
Jazz stared at Morgan. “It would be so much worse if there was more than one person who hates us.”
“But we have to consider if the same person could shoot, install a camera, break and enter, and ride a bike.”
She snorted. “I know dozens of people that could do all the above. Everyone in my store can do that – particularly if that camera was installed by an amateur. Meaning that we all do research and we all shoot – not particularly well, but we play paint ball. Same difference.”
The cop stared at her in silence. She continued, “Morgan and likely every single biker he knows would also qualify. In other words, you have nothing.”
“Not true. We have a pattern. We have bullets. We know what the bike looks like. We know what parking stall he’s using, and he’s aware of your movements coming and going enough to take advantage and come here.”
She groaned. “But there is no name, sex, or residence where you can go and pick him up.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Jazz, let’s take off. Go away for a few days. You can’t work anyways and we need to get out of this nasty cycle.”
She brightened. “That sounds lovely.” Then she realized something else. “But he’s just going to be here when we get back, isn’t he?”
“The cops will be working hard while we’re gone.”
“I think you should leave.”
“I don’t,” Jazz snapped. “Here we know what we’re doing and what he’s doing. If we leave, then he’s got an open field to set up new plans. We’ll come back after a few days of feeling safe and he takes us out.”
Morgan threw his hands up in the air. “We aren’t going to be able to let our guard down no matter if we leave or not.”
“Then I’ll stay and see this through.” She turned back to the cop. “Can you confirm from the images that the men are actually dead?”
His eyebrows shot up. “We are making no assumption at this point. The men could be sleeping or unconscious at the time the pictures were taken.”
“Can you send the images across the country?”
“We already have,” he confirmed. “So far no hits. We’ll send this one as well.”
“What about other countries?” Morgan asked. “Jazz gets men and woman up from all over the world as clients. So in theory, the victims could be from anywhere.”
“We’re working on it.” He held up a different bag. This one held the image from the mirror. “I am assuming you have no identification
for this person either?”
“No, I have no idea who it is, or who the artist is. I did see a two in the pattern. Therefore I’m wondering if we have three at this point and Billy is the first victim.”
He stared at her. “That’s new.”
She shrugged. “Not really. It’s quite common to not number the first in the series.”
“Really?” He frowned. “We’ve been looking at this the wrong way if that’s the case. The first one is the most important.”
Morgan stepped forward. “Billy’s case? What difference does him being first mean?”
“There’s always something that sets off this chain of events. If Billy was first, then that’s the focus and find the event that started this.”
“That makes sense. And his life was a mess. It definitely leaves the field wide open when you’re considering who might have wanted him dead.”
“Did you?”
“A week ago, I’d have said no. Now that I know more shit he’s pulled…” she glared at Morgan, “yes.”
At the confused look on the cop’s face, Morgan said quietly. “My brother was behind the breakup between Jazz and I. She didn’t know until yesterday after my brother had already been killed.”
*
Morgan couldn’t let the cop’s eagle eye stay on Jazz. He knew she was innocent. She might look guilty in a superficial sweep of the evidence, being the only one they’d found using the dragon tattoos in her work, but she hadn’t shot herself and neither had she hired someone else to do it for her.
The narrow look on the cop’s face said he was considering all possibilities, and that was good. It’s what he was supposed to do. Except while he was focusing on Jazz, the real shooter was staying under the radar. And that was no good.
“We need to find this guy.”
The cop nodded. “We are working on it. We’ll see if we can get anything off this camera and we’ll delve deeper into your brother’s life now.” He studied Morgan. “Speaking of which, how was your last year with him?”
Morgan winced. “Bad. But more as in non-existent.”
Knowing there was no help for it, he gave a quick rundown of what had his life with Billy had been like and ended with a terse explanation of the last year.