Merciless

by Diana Palmer

  “Sweet,” she whispered. She moaned. Her body shivered under the driving thrusts. She wrapped her long legs around his hips and lifted, lifted, arched, dying to end the tension, to make it like it was before, to know utter ecstasy.

  She cried out, sobbing, as the tension suddenly broke for them both and they lay straining together, shuddering, as the climax shook the bed.

  He moved lazily afterward, his body teasing hers in a caress that was beyond her dreams of closeness.

  “This is how it should have been, how it would have been, if I hadn’t been drugged,” he said at her ear, his voice drowsy with satisfaction. “I would have loved you like this, slow and sweet, until you dug those short nails into my hips and bit me.” He laughed softly. “I didn’t know women really did things like that. I thought it was fiction. When I heard you cry, the first time, I thought I was hurting you, until I looked down into your face.”

  Her arms slid around his neck and she sighed with exhaustion. “I wanted you so much that night. It was really sweet, most of it. Just at the last, you were out of control and I was very naive. It hurt, and there was no time afterward to do it again. I had to get you to the hospital. Then when I knew Markie was going to grow in my body, I had to make a decision.”

  He lifted his head and looked at her. “You made the right one. He’s a wonderful boy.” His eyes darkened. “My son.”

  “Yes. Your son.” She smoothed back his long hair. “You don’t have to marry me….”

  He chuckled. “It will look better if we’re married. I won’t be able to stay out of your bed.”

  She sighed as she looked into his eyes. Her own were bright with tears of joy.

  He smoothed his cheek against hers. “Now we have to face unpleasant things,” he said quietly. He drew away from her, fascinated by the process of intimacy, more fascinated with how they both looked afterward. He smiled.

  She flushed, gazing at him. That made his smile broader. He slid into his pajamas and pulled the sheet over her. She was looking decidedly embarrassed.

  He sat down beside her. “We decided to bury my mother, Cammy, in Jacobsville,” he said. “But first we have to find a way to flush out the killer. He’s going to pay for what he’s done.”

  “Some of those men you’re paying must have been watching Harold Monroe since he made bail,” she said. “That’s our starting point.”

  He nodded. He brushed her hair away from her cheeks. He looked very possessive. “But first we have lunch. Then we go and pick up our son from school. I have things to tell him,” he added with a secretive smile.

  Joceline smiled back. Even through the tragedy, she had the first hope of a happy future.

  Jon and Kilraven went alone to the funeral home in Jacobsville to make the arrangements. There were two men in suits there, very official-looking, who went into one of the viewing rooms when the brothers came in.

  The funeral home director seemed unsettled when they asked about making arrangements. He hesitated, smiled with a little embarrassment, showed them into his office and then left for a minute.

  The door was open. The brothers noted that he went into the same room where the men in suits had gone. He was back in a minute.

  “Yes, now where were we?” he asked as he sat down at his desk and pulled up a file on the computer. “Yes, the funeral. You do realize that your mother requested a closed casket and that she wanted no one, especially her sons, to view her?” he asked solemnly.

  That was news to both of them. They said so.

  “How do you know that?” Kilraven asked suspiciously.

  The funeral home director, Mr. Adams, flushed. He looked back at the screen. “She came to see me earlier in the week,” he said quickly. “She had a premonition, she said.” He glanced at them. “She made the arrangements herself.”

  Kilraven looked at Jon. The funeral home director was oddly stiff. “Well, she had these moods,” Kilraven said at last, and the director relaxed visibly. “I guess it makes sense.”

  “She wouldn’t want people staring at her,” Jon said quietly. “I’d feel like that, too. It’s okay. I understand,” he told the director.

  “So do I,” Kilraven added. “We’ll need to contact her minister and we’ll need pallbearers…”

  “We’ll have no end of offers from both our agencies,” Jon reminded his brother. “Not a problem.”

  “We’ll contact her minister,” the director offered, “and take care of all the other arrangements. You’d like an arrangement for the casket?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call the florist,” the director added.

  “Have you had any calls about Cammy?” Jon asked suddenly.

  “In fact, we have,” he replied. “Several newspapers, a television journalist and some man who never identified himself,” he said, reading notes he’d made on the computer. “I thought it was very odd.”

  “No chance you recorded it.” Jon sighed.

  The man cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve never had any need to,” he began.

  “Of course not,” Kilraven agreed.

  The director outlined the service and they set a date for the funeral and arranged with a company to open the gravesite Cammy had already paid for in a memorial garden in, of all places, Jacobsville. The brothers had wanted to bury her there, but she’d already anticipated it and bought a plot. They smiled at her efficiency, through the sorrow.

  Jon had supper with Joceline and Markie. He was sad about Cammy, and it showed. He was going back into work the next day, despite the protests from everybody.

  “I’m perfectly able to work,” he argued.

  Joceline glowered at him. “You’re just out of the hospital and your mother has been…”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, intercepting the word before it could upset him. “But life goes on. You have to come in, too.” He smiled at Markie. “Not you, I’m afraid,” he said with a smile. “You’ll have school.”

  Markie sighed. “Okay, Dad,” he said.

  Jon actually flushed when he heard the word. “That sounds very nice,” he said gently.

  Markie grinned. “My daddy works for the FBI. The other kids are going to be soooo jealous!”

  Jon and Joceline both laughed.

  “Another thing we have to plan is a wedding, and quickly,” Jon added.

  “Can I be the flower boy?” Markie asked.

  They burst out laughing again.

  “No, but you can carry the rings. How about that?” Jon asked.

  “That would be okay, I guess,” he said, and dug into his spaghetti.

  Jon was uneasy. He’d been so full of grief, and too fascinated with Joceline and his new status as Markie’s father, to start to make sense of all that had happened. But now he was trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Jay Copper had said that he sent his nephew Peppy to help Dan Jones murder McKuen’s first wife, Monica, and their daughter, Melly. But Peppy, alias Bart Hancock, had escaped the charges, thanks to a missing tape and only hearsay evidence to carry to court. Hearsay, especially from the family of the deceased, would not convince a jury of guilt.

  Subsequently, Jon had arrested Harold Monroe for human trafficking and the less-than-brilliant career criminal had managed to have the charge dismissed thanks to the retraction of the charge by the main witness. Joceline’s apartment had been broken into. A file involving Bart Hancock had gone missing. Jon had been shot.

  Then a witness had come forward who’d been planted in Monroe’s cell during his confinement awaiting trial on the trafficking charges. The inmate was wired. He gave evidence that Monroe had bragged about helping to kill three-year-old Melly Kilraven and had even told the inmate the location of the hidden shotgun that he’d used on her. That had led to his rearrest on a murder charge. Incredibly, he was allowed bail at the hearing and soon after, Cammy Blackhawk had been murdered.

  But there was something wrong here. Joceline had mentioned it. How had anyone known that she�
�d taken the file home? How did someone know where Cammy Blackhawk would be so that he could kill her? How had Harold Monroe, of all people, managed to pull off Jon’s shooting, Cammy’s shooting and, further back in time, the murder of Kilraven’s wife and child? The man could barely talk on the phone and think at the same time.

  Jay Copper’s sister, Bart Hancock’s mother, had committed suicide when she was told that her brother and her son had been implicated in the murder of a child. Bart Hancock had been charged with the murder of children in Iraq years before, but was never brought to trial. Harold Monroe was notorious for fumbling whatever crime he attempted. He was always being rescued by his vicious uncle.

  But Monroe had apparently bragged about being Melly Kilraven’s killer, and even blabbed about the location of the murder weapon. Was that in character? And the inmate who just happened to be in the cell with Monroe, and offered to collect evidence, was just a little too convenient to suit Jon’s sense of logic.

  He leaned back in his chair and his black eyes narrowed. He was fitting puzzle pieces together. He took a sip of cold coffee, grimaced and regained his train of thought.

  Joceline had taken home a file on Bart Hancock. She hadn’t told anyone, except Betty at the office. And a parttime secretarial worker had overheard, but her dad was a homicide detective. Unlikely that she’d be involved in a robbery.

  And Betty had no reason to want to hurt coworkers. Perhaps Joceline’s phone line had been tapped. No. Rourke had put equipment on her phone for a trace; he’d have found evidence of a wiretap. That ruled out the possibility that someone had listened in on her conversation. Which took the ball right back to the office, where Betty worked.

  He picked up the phone and punched in Betty’s extension.

  “Yes?” she answered in her sweet tone.

  “Hi,” he replied. “Could you come in here, please?”

  “Sure thing.”

  A couple of minutes later, she tapped on the door, opened it and walked in. She closed it behind her and sat down in front of the desk.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Joceline brought a file home with her…”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, shaking her head. “She was so upset! I told her they wouldn’t fire her over one mistake,” she chuckled. “And we still had an earlier version on the computer’s hard drive, anyway. It was just a paper copy.”

  He turned his computer around. “Can you bring it up on the screen?”

  “Sure.”

  She punched in the information, waited, waited, frowned. “That’s very odd. It isn’t here. I know I scanned those documents into the computer.”

  “What exactly was in them?” he asked.

  She sat back down, still frowning, and pushed back her short, curly blond hair with a nervous hand. “I’m not absolutely sure,” she said. “There was no really sensitive information in it, just some remarks by the arresting officer about Bart Hancock’s mother making threats when they took him in for questioning in a local murder case. Oh, and his daughter being under suspicion for an assault that proved fatal, but that she was never charged. She was a juvenile at the time.”

  Jon sat up. “His daughter?”

  “I believe it was his daughter. I don’t remember anything else.” She grimaced. “Now I’m going to be in trouble, too. I don’t know how that information went missing!”

  “I’ll talk to the SAC,” Jon said gently. “Nobody’s going to blame you. But we are going to want to know how that file was removed.”

  “We do background checks on all the people we hire,” Betty said worriedly. “There’s no way we could have anybody here with a criminal background.”

  “Not all people who commit crimes have criminal backgrounds.”

  “Yes, some people never get caught.” She studied him. “I hope they catch whoever shot you,” she said bluntly, “and also the person who killed your brother’s wife and child, and Mrs. Blackhawk.” She shook her head. “It seems they planned to wipe out your whole family. But why would they threaten Joceline and her little boy? It makes no sense. She isn’t part of your family.”

  But she was. So was Markie. Nobody outside of the family knew. But obviously, somebody else did. He’d asked Joceline about Markie’s birth certificate, but she hadn’t listed a name under “Father.” On the other hand, there was the record on Jon’s brush with hallucinogenic drugs the night Markie had been conceived, and the record of Markie’s birth nine months later. Both those events were on records that could be accessed. Someone could have connected those dates and checked them out. His brother had done that, and had told him after the fact. It wasn’t too far-fetched to think someone else could have done the same investigative work. Perhaps a law enforcement person with access to computer records. And they knew Jay Copper had somebody on the inside, somebody with a badge. They’d never found out who it was. Such a person would have access to databases of crimes that civilians couldn’t access.

  “You’ve connected something,” Betty guessed.

  “Yes. All of this ties into computer records that only someone in law enforcement could get access to. Well, legally, I mean.”

  She pursed her lips and frowned. “Anyone in this office with the right clearance could get to them. And the offices aren’t locked during lunch hours.”

  “They should be. I’ll bring it up with the SAC.”

  “Good idea.”

  “That part-time girl we’ve got working for you,” he began slowly. “What do we know about her background?”

  She laughed. “Phyllis? Her dad’s a homicide cop at San Antonio P.D.,” she said. She pulled the computer keyboard into her lap, punched in codes and brought up Phyllis Hicks’s file. She turned the screen back to Jon.

  “She’s working on a degree in computer programming. Her specialty is going to be cybercrime, and she wants to work here as an agent. She got the entry-level position part-time so that she could continue her college studies.”

  He was looking at her photograph and wondering why it seemed so familiar. “Who’s her father?”

  “You know him, he worked with Gail at one time,” she added, naming Kilraven’s mother-in-law. “His name is Dave Hicks. He’s a police detective.”

  “I remember. Mac said Hicks was at the hospital with Marquez when Rogers got shot.” He hesitated. “We never found out who shot her, either.”

  “Another mystery.” She shook her head. “So many shootings. Marquez got blindsided, you recall, when he and Gail were working on the Senator Will Sanders case.”

  “Everything goes back to Sanders’s arrest for murder,” he mused. “Not everyone knows that he’s Jay Copper’s illegitimate son, and Copper is a maniac about protecting his family. All these shootings happened when the investigations began into the case that Copper was finally arrested for, the murder of a young girl who’d been to Sanders’s house. But he was also charged with conspiring to murder Dan Jones, who’d been involved in silencing the witnesses, and he was charged with masterminding the murder of Mac’s wife and child.”

  Betty nodded. “Wasn’t there some talk about Jay Copper’s sister, Bart Hancock’s mother, being a mental patient? I know she spent some time in institutions before Copper started making big money as the senator’s right-hand man.”

  “She did. Hancock has never been normal. But I didn’t think he had children.”

  “If memory serves, Hancock only had one child, a daughter. He wasn’t married to the child’s mother, because she found out what he was doing overseas just after she had the child. Hancock’s daughter would be the granddaughter of Hancock’s mother, who committed suicide.”

  Jon was frowning. “Do we know her name?”

  “I believe it was in the missing file,” Betty said. “But I’ll bet Joceline could dig that information up in a heartbeat,” she added with a grin.

  “I won’t take that bet,” he replied, chuckling. He picked up the phone. “Hey, Rocky, how about digging up the name of Bart Hancock’s daught
er for me? Yes. That’s the one. You bet.” His voice had dropped to a purr. “Yes. Thanks.”

  “Rocky?” Betty mused.

  “It’s an in-joke,” he replied. He sighed. “And you’ll hear some gossip, so I’ll be the first to tell you. Joceline’s little boy is my son. I didn’t know until a few days ago,” he added, noting Betty’s shock.

  “That party, where you were drugged,” Betty said at once.

  “Yes.”

  “I wondered. You see, Joceline is such an upright person,” she added gently. She smiled. “Better marry her.”

  “The license is already applied for,” he said, and smiled. The smile faded. “First, we have to get through a funeral, though.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Betty said. “I know your mother got on your nerves, but she was a good person.”

  His face tautened. It was painful to discuss Cammy’s death. “Yes. She was a good person.”

  Betty got up. “I’ll file a report about the missing information,” she said. “Good idea.”

  She paused at the door. “Glad to have you back,” she said, then smiled and left.

  Joceline came into the office a minute later, looking very disconcerted.

  He got up and took her by the shoulders. “What is it?”

  “I found out who Bart Hancock’s daughter is.”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You see, he didn’t marry her mother. But her mother married a policeman a few years later, who adopted her daughter and gave her his name. The policeman is now a detective with San Antonio P.D. His name is Dave Hicks.”

  “Yes, Betty and I were just talking about him.” He sat up straighter. “Phyllis Hicks is our part-time clerical worker who’s in college part-time, but can’t spell. And she’s Bart Hancock’s daughter? Does she know?”

  “That’s something we’ll have to find out, I’m afraid.”

  Bart Hancock’s daughter worked in their office. She had access to computer records, telephone conversations and just about any other sort of information she might care to dig out. And what she didn’t know, her adoptive father could find out in a heartbeat through his police contacts. He might not even know why she was asking for the information, if she was the person who’d relayed Joceline’s movements, and Cammy’s, to a shooter.