“Oh, here and there, when you bring him around with you. Like you did on your last case.” She grinned mischievously. “Actually, they all think you’re hot, too.”
“Well, then that’s okay.”
Zoe and Julia laughed together again. He loved to hear them laugh. He loved to see them together. Happy as a lark, Zoe raced off to the kitchen. “I’m gonna put in the pizza. It’s got everything on it that I could think of. Hope you like it, Julia!”
“Oh, I will. I like everything. Ask your dad.”
After Zoe was gone and happily clanking around in the kitchen, Julia and J.D. shared a smile. “She’s just a great kid, J.D. I still can’t believe you have a teenage daughter. Man, what a surprise that was.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He’d had a casual affair with Zoe’s mother but hadn’t known she had had his baby until she was dying of cancer years later and called him about his paternity. After she died, Zoe came to live with him. It was rocky as hell at first, but things were good now. “She’s really special, Julia.” It had taken awhile to admit that, but now—now he didn’t know how he got along without her, teenage angst, the Biebs, and all.
“So the trial’s going badly?” Julia asked, unhooking her hip holster and placing it on the coffee table. She sank down on the couch and waited for his answer.
“Not so much that. It’s pretty much open-and-shut. Just long and drawn out.”
“Did Will tell you anything about the new case we got today?”
“No.” J.D. paused. “Wait. What do you mean, we?”
He sat down on the couch beside her, and Julia kicked off her shoes and leaned back against the cushions. She sighed. She looked a little tired, but as pretty as ever. Again he marveled at the resemblance between Julia and Zoe. Now he could see it more than ever. All that long, straight black hair. Julia was taller, around five seven, but Zoe would probably be that tall or taller once she reached adulthood. Julia’s eyes were large and golden brown and intelligent, but at the moment, they looked worried.
“Chief Mullins assigned me as Will Brannock’s liaison. Tam will come aboard as soon as she’s free. It’s a bad one, J.D. A federal judge was murdered, right in his own house.”
“I knew a murder case came up today, but Phil Hayes didn’t have time to fill me in on the details. What judge are you talking about?”
“Lucien Lockhart. You know him, right? I remember your mentioning him.”
J.D.’s frown darkened. “Can’t say I’m surprised somebody finally got him. He’s about as corrupt as they come.”
“He’s known for corruption?”
“He’s known for worse than that. There are rumors of collusion, inside jury tampering, all kinds of illegal things.”
“Well, that’s interesting. You’re not the first one to mention that.”
“Hey, in there,” called Zoe’s excited voice. “Do you like black olives, Julia? Say yes!”
“Black and green both,” Julia called out, winking at J.D. “Love ’em!”
“You got it! I do, too!”
Julia glanced around the living room. “So where’s Audrey tonight? Working late?”
“She had a family obligation. She said to tell you she was sorry she couldn’t be here to welcome you to town.”
“So I take it you’re still all gaga over her?”
“That makes me sound ridiculous.”
“I think it makes you sound sweet.”
“Oh God, that’s even worse.”
J.D. couldn’t help but think that there was a lot of smiling going on since Julia got there. “Seriously, Jules, I’m so glad to see you. It’ll be great to have you around all the time. A lot better than only seeing you at Christmas now and then, or playing phone tag the rest of the year.”
“Yeah. I needed a change.”
J.D. knew what Julia was talking about. She’d lost her partner three years ago. Bobby Crismon had been killed in action, right in front of Julia. The two of them had been surprised by an enraged husband high on meth. She’d had a tough time dealing with it. She was better now, looked better and felt better, and he hoped this change of scenery would really help her. Maybe someday she’d sit down with Audrey and talk it through.
“You uncover any leads yet?” he asked Julia about her new case. She was a hell of a good detective; had won more commendations than he had. He was proud of her and let everybody know it.
“Lockhart had a call girl out at his house last night. Brannock and I are going to interview her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Man alive, you’ve had to hit the ground running. How about this? You can have my bedroom while you’re here. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“She can sleep in my room,” yelled Zoe from the kitchen.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Zoe has ears like an elephant,” J.D. said in exasperation.
“I heard that,” Zoe yelled, and then they heard her laughing at him.
“See?”
Julia smiled. “I might crash here for a day or two, but you really don’t have room for me. Zoe needs her privacy here and so do you. I’ve got a friend in Chattanooga who lives somewhere out on the Tennessee River. She has an apartment she’ll let me live in until I get my feet on the ground and decide what I want to do. No charge, either.”
“Who’s that?”
“Cathy Bateman. Her last name’s Axelrod, now that she’s remarried. You remember her, don’t you? I got to know her when we went through K-9 training in Nashville together. We got to be really close friends. She and Charlie Sinclair both handled the K-9 units in this area, so I’ve already got some good friends living around here.”
“Well, you’re welcome to stay here. You know that, don’t you? We’d love it.” J.D. hesitated and lowered his voice. “I may not be living here much longer. In fact, you could end up getting this place, if you’re interested.”
Julia smiled knowingly. “Why not? As if I didn’t know.”
J.D. grinned, too. “She’s the one, Jules. I never thought I’d say that again, not after my divorce, but she’s an angel.”
“You’re good together. I could see that the night she had us all over to her place for dinner.”
“So hurry up and pop the question, J.D.,” yelled Zoe from the kitchen. “You big scaredy-cat!”
Julia laughed and J.D. shook his head. Zoe was something else.
“Pizza’s ready,” Zoe announced from the doorway. “And I made homemade coconut cream pie for dessert. Audrey makes the best coconut cream pie in the whole world, and I got her to give me the recipe. She gave me the pizza one, too, Julia. She’s teaching me to cook. Did I tell you?”
J.D. followed his sister and daughter into the kitchen. His own stomach was growling, and Zoe’s cooking did smell good. Now he had all the women he loved in one town, where he could take care of them and make sure they were all safe and sound. Life was good—it sure was, and getting better all the time.
Chapter 4
Pulling up at the entrance of his driveway, Will Brannock swiped the card on his security box and waited impatiently while the barred gate slowly opened. Despite the fact that he was dead tired, he didn’t expect to get much sleep. Not that insomnia was anything out of the norm. He drove the Hummer up the long, black-topped driveway to the house, wondering what Julia Cass would think of his place. The big house on Chickamauga Lake was his one refuge. He loved living on the water—any kind of water, river or ocean or lake, just so he could take a boat out and get away. Water skiing and fishing and swimming, all of it. He had the money to possess this kind of private sanctuary where he could be alone, relax, rest, and rejuvenate, without constantly having to watch his back. Once he’d checked for intruders, that is.
He’d worked with Julia Cass all day long, and if he ever decided to bring her around, which he probably wouldn’t, he expected she would wonder how he afforded this kind of place. But so what? What did he care what she thought? Why was he even thinking about her being there? Or thinking abou
t her at all? Now that they were temporary partners, their relationship was strictly professional. Julia Cass would never pass through his gate. None of his friends or colleagues had ever been here, not even J.D. And that was for their own good. Nobody else was going to die because of him and the vicious people who wanted to see him dead.
As soon as he reached his large three-car garage, he searched for pry marks and glanced up at the windows for movement, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Turning his head and waiting as the garage door rolled up, he gazed out over the lake, looking for any suspicious boats, any flash of light that might indicate binoculars or a high-powered scope. After all these years, he was still a hunted man. It paid to be cautious and always on the alert.
Inside the garage, he pressed the button and waited for the door to come down and lock into place before getting out of the truck. He stepped down from the cab, checked the lock on the inside door for signs of tampering, and then entered the back hallway. He listened for any sounds but heard only the loud clicking of claws on the red-oak hardwood floor as his three dogs scrambled to get to him. Somebody had dumped two of them out on the road near his gate and he’d picked them up, fed them, and they’d been with him ever since. Spot and Rover, both lovable little twelve-inch beagles, were always glad to see him, no matter what kind of mood he was in. Kneeling down, he petted the hysterically baying beagles, rubbing their ears the same as he had Julia’s beloved Jasper. He knew how she felt. He loved his dogs, too.
At the end of the hallway, his other dog finally showed up. His mother’s haughty and fairly maniacal white miniature poodle. Afraid it would be bitten by a scorpion at her desert home, she had asked Will to keep the prissy little dog where she’d be safe. The other dogs tolerated her and so did Will, but just barely. The shrill yap sometimes put him on edge, but she was a good watchdog because she hated everything and was more than vocal about it. As if she was doing him a favor, she ambled up to him and waited for him to acknowledge her. He picked her up, his palm cradling her little chest, and she pushed up against his fingers when he scratched her ears.
After a moment, he put her down and checked out the house, the three canines clicking around in his wake. Once he was satisfied there were no signs of illegal entry or intruders, he unbuckled his hip holster and placed it and his nine-millimeter on the brown granite island in the large kitchen. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the pool and the lake beyond. He loved it out here, where it was quiet and wooded and private, where he could think and safely let down his guard.
Inside the fridge he found some deli ham and cheese left over from the night before, and he made a sandwich, slopped on enough mayo to make it worth it, pulled out a Bud Light, and took the food out on one of the decks overlooking the lake. Dusk was falling. The heat was letting up some, now that the sun was down. He slapped at a mosquito on his arm; they’d be out in full force soon. His orders were to form a task force. He needed to think about the case, think about what kind of person could have committed such a horrendous crime. Severed tongues were not run-of-the-mill mutilations. This was a case that was going to be messy, dangerous, and he had a distinct feeling they’d only found the first body out of God-knows-how-many to come.
Again he found his thoughts wandering back to Julia Cass. The way he understood it, she’d been lead on most of her cases in Nashville, but she’d pulled back today, giving him complete authority and waiting for his direction. They could work well together. He liked women like her, women who were cool and calm and smart. The fact that she looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones didn’t hurt, either. And hell, a woman who liked dogs was always a good thing. He’d always had dogs himself. He caressed Spot’s head. Rover was on the deck with his tennis ball, waiting for him to throw it. Both were good little watchdogs and loved to run the rabbits and squirrels in the woods on his property, and the poodle yipped and carried on if Will looked at her sideways. Here in Tennessee, they were his only family.
Right now he had to think about the murder. Lockhart was a federal judge, for God’s sake, and he’d been mutilated in his own backyard in the middle of an exclusive neighborhood of Chattanooga. This was no simple break-in and murder, no house invasion, no robbery gone wrong. This was a targeted killing with a definite message put out for investigators to decipher. Half a tongue balancing stacks of dimes on a scale. ONE written in blood. They had to figure out what it all meant. Julia Cass already thought it was the work of a serial killer. Will agreed.
Fetching a second beer, he walked through the quiet house to his computer room and sat down just as the security lights flared on all around his property. Maybe this wasn’t the first case in which a killer used a severed tongue, dimes, and scales as his MO. He needed to search all the FBI databases, which the TBI had access to, and see what he could turn up. It wouldn’t be hard to find another murderer this depraved, here or anywhere else in the world. He took off his Reeboks, popped the beer tab, and keyed in the web addresses for the Quantico databases. This was going to be a long night, and so were a lot of others before they caught this guy.
The Elite Escort Service didn’t look so elite to Julia Cass. Will had picked her up at her brother’s house at seven thirty on the dot. Now that his red-haired, clingy lovebird had flown the coop, he was prompt personified. She had been ready for an hour before he got there, champing at the bit, even. Raring to go was putting it mildly. Unfortunately, it looked like the so-called classy call girls weren’t so classy after all. Ginger and her ilk were apparently housed in a circa 1930 shabby redbrick warehouse in a deserted industrial area near downtown. She leaned forward and looked up at the building’s facade. Faded yellow letters across the second floor spelled out Smith Toilet Company. Wow, what more could a hooker ask for.
She glanced over at Will, who hadn’t said two words to her on the way downtown. He was dressed today in a very nice charcoal-gray suit—expensive, Julia would say, if she knew anything about men’s designer suits, which she didn’t. The crisp white shirt, blue silk tie, and spit-shined black shoes didn’t look too shabby, either. He looked good, of course, but somehow she liked him better yesterday in his Alabama T-shirt and jeans. She had on black pants and a white polo shirt. Both of them had buckled on their matching guns. Will had a brown leather hip holster. She did, too. They were quickly becoming Starsky and Hutch and a good title for a TV movie: Twin Guns Visit Ginger the Call Girl.
“I spent most of the night going through law enforcement databases,” Will said, shoving the gearshift into park. “I found no reference to other cases that involved severed tongues and dimes and scales. At least, not all three in the same case.”
“I spent time on the Internet, too. Nada. Tongues, maybe. But the dimes and scales are a unique twist. Our perp likes to be different.”
Will leaned against the steering wheel and stared at her. He was so serious, no kidding around, no flirting. Would the real Will Brannock please stand up? Julia thought.
“Our gang database said that cutting out tongues is a practice of several U.S. gangs,” Will continued. “One of them operates out of Chattanooga. The Battle Street Ten gang. You ever heard of them? They are known to cut out tongues as retribution for betrayal.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them. So you’re thinking this is gang-related? What about the dimes and scales?”
“Who knows? Criminal gangs adopt all kinds of weird practices and initiation rites. I think it could be their work. Maybe they were sending a message.”
“Want me to look into CPD’s records of gang activity here in the city? See if I can come up with a name known for mutilations?”
“Yes,” Will said. “When we talked to Maria Bota yesterday, did you notice the tat on her left ring finger?”
“No, I didn’t see any tattoos. Is it a trademark?”
“Yes, a triangle made of six red dots.”
“And the significance?”
“Any female wearing that symbol is the initiated woman of a Battle Street Ten gang member.”
&n
bsp; “So we’ve already got a definite tie to that gang.”
“Damn right.”
“So we interview her again?”
“You got it.”
Traffic was nonexistent in the warehouse district, probably because everybody in Chattanooga had enough sense not to come down there. They got out of the Hummer and crossed the narrow street. Julia pressed a doorbell affixed to a heavy, black metal door that looked like a horde of Mongols had tried to ram their way through it.
“They don’t appear to be spending much money on curb appeal. Maybe a potted philodendron would be more friendly, or cheerful yellow paint on the security bars,” Will said, a bit of yesterday’s jokester shining through for almost one second. They both glanced up at the barred windows on all five stories. An iron fire escape clung to the front like some giant insect’s skeletal remains. Escape hatch for fleeing floozies?
“I suspect they don’t get many customers down here,” Julia replied. “These girls probably prefer to meet their beaus elsewhere. I worked vice awhile in Nashville. I know.”
Will grinned down at her. “Nab any Nashville political types?”
“A few. Most of those guys are way too careful. I never saw a politico who risked having a prostitute come to his house, like our naughty judge. Most of the men we ran into met their paid dates in ritzy hotels.”
“Judge Lockhart must have felt pretty confident in his power.”
Julia said, “His first mistake.”
“Yeah, and his last.”
A familiar, raspy, deep female voice drawled out from the speaker next to the doorbell, “Yes, who is it?”
Will leaned close. “TBI Special Agent Brannock and CPD Detective Cass. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”
“Just a minute, please.”
It was more like five minutes before the latch released from the inside, and Will pulled the door open. He looked inside for lurking armed assailants, and then stood back and allowed Julia to precede him. She did so, but warily. The stairway inside was steep and narrow and unadorned, with banisters affixed to both walls. The door at the top of the steps was closed, but it opened when they were about halfway up.
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