Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  She wandered to the battered nightstand next to the unmade double bed. An empty bottle of whiskey lay on its side, pointing to an ashtray with a few cigarette butts and a wad of dried-out gum.

  She opened the drawer, and a few batteries rattled around. There was also a box of condoms and a prescription vial for marijuana.

  “Anything good in there?”

  She whirled around, nearly slamming her fingers in the drawer, to face Jake, framed by the bedroom door. “You scared me. How’d you get in?”

  Holding up a key between his fingers, he said, “Matt’s parole officer sent two keys. I kept one for myself.”

  “Of course you did.” She opened the nightstand drawer again to finish her inspection. “What did you need me for?”

  “You’re the rightful heir. I can’t just nose around in here by myself.” He stepped into the room and kicked at a pile of clothes. “Find anything of importance?”

  “You mean like the phone number or instructions from the guy who paid him to plant those cards for me?” She held up the box of condoms and shook it. “Nope. Just these. Need some?”

  She fired the box at him, and his right hand shot out and caught it. He squinted at the writing on the box and tossed them onto the bed. “Not my brand.”

  Heat touched her cheeks, so she buried her nose farther into the drawer. “Nothing much in here. I think it’s more likely that Matt was lying to you about getting paid to torment me with the playing cards. He was just scamming to get more money out of you.”

  “Maybe.” Jake crossed the room to a feminine-looking carved dresser, its mirror hidden by the clothing piled on top of it. With one hand, he swept the clothes onto the floor. “Just like a teenage girl, Matt has some photos stuck in his mirror. And you said he was a cold bastard.”

  “I didn’t even notice those.” Kyra joined him and hunched over the dresser. She scanned the mostly old pictures and zeroed in on one of a hodgepodge family at the same time Jake jabbed his finger at it.

  “Is that one of Matt’s foster families? The foster family you shared?”

  Kyra snatched the picture from the mirror. “No. Matt’s too young in this picture. He was older when we were in the same family.”

  “Wonder why he kept that one.”

  “Maybe it was someplace where he was relatively happy.” Kyra left the photo on the dresser. “Do you want to check the closet? I’ll look through these dresser drawers, but I think we’re on a hopeless mission here.”

  “Maybe, but it seems strange Matt would go through the trouble of leaving a will with you as his beneficiary if he had nothing to leave you.”

  Jake turned from the dresser, and Kyra let a small breath escape as she slipped the photo into the pocket of her sweater.

  “Probably just his way of messing with me.” She opened the top drawer of the dresser and scooped her hands through the jumbled boxers and socks. The corner of an envelope poked one of her fingertips and she shook it free of the underwear covering it.

  Keeping the envelope in the drawer, she read the printing on the outside—the name and address of a storage facility in Van Nuys. Squishing the envelope, she traced the edges of a key inside.

  She dropped the envelope into the pocket that contained the photo and twisted her head over her shoulder. “Any luck in the closet?”

  “Not unless you like leather—a lot of it.” Jake slid the closet door closed with a bang. “He did have his motorcycle at the shop with him when he died. That’s yours, too. It’s a nice Harley.”

  “Do I look like the Harley type?” She poked a finger into her chest.

  Tilting his head, he squinted. “Yeah, I could see you cruising Highway 1 with your blond hair streaming behind you, a pair of these leather chaps encasing your thighs.”

  “Careful.” She shook her finger at him even as a little thrill of pleasure zinged through her veins at the look in his eyes. She dusted her hands together. “Well, I guess that’s it. If someone did pay Matt to leave me the cards, we’re not going to find any evidence of that here.”

  “I guess not.” Jake scratched his chin as he surveyed the bedroom. “Even for a recent parolee, Matt traveled light.”

  “Don’t forget. Before his stays in the joint, Matt was a foster kid. Traveling light is our modus operandi.” She adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

  “Thanks for inviting me along.”

  “Did I have a choice?” She raised her brows and then swept out of the room. “Maybe you can have Matt’s parole officer let his roommate know I’m done here.”

  “Huh?” Jake emerged from the bedroom, his hand in his jacket pocket. Had he gone back for the condoms?

  “I said, Matt’s parole officer can tell the roomie he can have Matt’s stuff.”

  “I’ll let him know. Now let’s get out of here.” Jake picked up a prescription medication bottle from the coffee table and shook it. “Matt’s roommate probably doesn’t mind you coming in here to look around, but he wouldn’t be happy to know a cop had been nosing around his place.”

  As they walked into the apartment’s courtyard, Kyra asked, “Did any of Andrea’s other friends say anything about a stalker?”

  “Not that I know of. We haven’t talked to all of them yet.”

  “And I suppose you don’t know if anything’s missing from her place.”

  “Nope.” Jake stopped in the middle of the sidewalk between his car and hers.

  “What?”

  “I always thought it was odd that the Copycat Player took the fingers and the jewelry. Most serial killers are satisfied with one trophy.”

  “And you never found the missing fingers.”

  Jake shrugged and pulled his car keys from his pocket. “My theory is that he did it to match the MO of The Player, and really didn’t care about the fingers.”

  “I know, but what do you do with a pile of severed fingers?” Kyra hunched her shoulders and clenched her teeth.

  “Probably destroyed them or dumped them, but he still had the jewelry. He didn’t destroy all the evidence.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My car’s back this way. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  She waved as a warm glow kindled in her heart. When Captain Castillo had invited her to join the serial killer task force a few month ago, Jake hadn’t been thrilled. He’d been double-crossed by a therapist before and didn’t trust them. Now he wanted to catch up with her.

  She clicked the remote on her car and slid behind the wheel. She buzzed down her window and waved her hand outside as Jake’s car passed hers.

  She watched him turn the next corner. Then she pulled the photo from the pocket of her sweater and studied the unhappy faces of the children clustered around a man and a woman—Buck and Lori Harmon.

  Buck Harmon had his hands on the shoulders of a young girl, who clung to the hand of an older girl. Lori Harmon held a bawling baby on her hip, her hand on the head of a scruffy boy with a dirt-smudged face, her fingers digging into his scalp, forcing him to face the camera. Matt hovered at the edge of the group, a scowl twisting across his face.

  Kyra’s nose stung. She pulled a lighter from her pocket, the final item she’d taken from Matt’s apartment—her sad inheritance. Holding the picture out the car window, she flicked the lighter and touched the flame to the corner of the picture. The orange fire raced across the photo, eating up the faces and the memories with it.

  She let the mini inferno get close enough to her fingers to feel the singe. Then she dropped the picture to the street and drove away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jake waited until he got back to the station before whipping out the remaining photos that had been tucked in the mirror above Matt’s dresser. One was missing—because Kyra had taken it.

  He shoved his sunglasses to the top of his head and squinted at th
e first picture, which must be Matt at around the age of six or seven, alone with a scrawny young woman who looked like a hippie. Mom?

  Another picture showed the same child, presumably Matt, with a boy and a girl, sitting in a row on a floral sofa, each holding a book among some Christmas wrapping paper.

  He shuffled through the rest and put them in order according to Matt’s age in each picture, creating a timeline of his foster families. Kyra had the one that should’ve been at the end, the photo of the foster family she’d shared with Matt.

  There had been four or five kids along with parents in that picture, but he hadn’t gotten a good look at the tall blonde girl holding the hand of a younger girl because Kyra had snatched it out of his hand too quickly. It made sense, though. Matt and Kyra were the oldest children in that home, teenagers ready to be released to a world that had already discarded them. Matt had gone one way—drug, crime, prison; Kyra had gone another—college, career, success, thanks to the intervention of Quinn and his wife, Charlotte.

  Why would she want to hide that picture from him and lie about it? Jake grunted and stuffed the photos in his bag. He thought he and Kyra had gotten past the deception hurdle of their relationship.

  He’d had to do his own snooping to figure out Kyra’s mother, Jennifer Lake, had been one of The Player’s victims twenty years ago and that Kyra had changed her name and identity when she went to college. He’d understood why she’d kept that from him and the rest of the task force, but why all the mystery surrounding her relationship with her foster brother Matt Dugan?

  When Dugan had contacted him, it wasn’t just about who had paid him to plant the playing cards for Kyra to find. Dugan had also promised him some dirt on Kyra. He hadn’t trusted Dugan, but the man had died of a drug overdose before Jake got to him. Kyra had been there at the time he slipped into unconsciousness.

  If Matt and Kyra had engaged in some sexual relationship as Matt had hinted, Jake wouldn’t care about that. Hell, they’d been two lonely, misplaced teens at the time. Who could blame them for finding solace in each other’s arms? Was that why Kyra had snatched the photo? She didn’t want any questions about her time in the foster family with Matt?

  Jake grabbed his bag and exited his vehicle. Maybe he should just leave it alone. If he and Kyra got...closer, she’d tell him what she wanted to. Still, how could they get closer if she kept hiding things from him?

  His marriage had ended because his wife had been cheating on him, and he’d been too busy with work to notice or care. He didn’t want to go overboard in the other direction with Kyra.

  He stalked into the Northeast Division and dropped into his chair at his computer. He shuffled through a few messages on his desk, pulling out the one from Andrea’s ex. He was following through on Kyra’s advice. Sometimes Kyra got more out of witnesses and people of interest than hardened detectives. Captain Castillo had recognized her value and assigned her to the serial killer task force for the Copycat Player. Jake had resisted her presence at first, but had come to recognize her value. The insane chemistry between them hadn’t hurt, either. Not that they’d acted on it.

  And now? She was hiding something from him again.

  His fingers flew across the keyboard to access Matt Dugan’s data. He didn’t have permission to see Dugan’s juvenile records, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t view his file from the Department of Children and Family Services.

  He pulled up the DCFS database and could only get so far. Pushing back from the desk, he crossed his arms. Who did he know in DCFS?

  Billy careened into the war room waving a piece of paper. “Hey, partner. We fast-tracked the DNA test on the gum and we have a match.”

  Jake smacked his desk. “I knew he’d made a mistake. Is it some felon matched in CODIS?”

  “Uh, no.” Billy parked himself in front of Jake and held out the paper. “It’s Jeremy Bevin’s, Andrea’s ex.”

  Jake slumped as if someone had just stuck a needle in him and popped him. “Jeremy? He has an alibi, and are you telling me he copied a serial killer’s MO to kill his girlfriend?”

  “It happens.” Billy lifted one stylishly clad shoulder. “And his alibi is his good friend who was helping him set up stuff in his new place. Could be covering for him.”

  Jake rubbed his eyes. “Probably not, but let’s get the footage from his apartment building or street to verify. I need to talk to him, anyway. Let’s bring him in.”

  An hour later, they had Jeremy sweating bullets in an interrogation room while Billy reviewed the security footage from Jeremy’s apartment building on the night Andrea was murdered.

  The video showed Jeremy and his friend carrying some boxes into the building, leaving and returning with more boxes, a pizza and a six-pack. They didn’t leave again that night. The next morning the friend took off and Jeremy left later, presumably for his meeting with Andrea, which never happened.

  Billy clicked his mouse to end the tape. Jake, who’d been hunched over Billy’s shoulder, straightened up and said, “Alibi is solid.”

  “Then how the hell did his gum get wedged into that lock?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out right now.” He crooked his finger at Billy and the two of them went downstairs to the interrogation room.

  Jeremy jerked his head up when they walked into the room. “Wh-what’s going on? Why am I in here?”

  Jake yanked out a chair while Billy took up a position in the corner, folding his arms. “I thought you had something to tell me.”

  “Well, I do, but—” Jeremy’s gaze jumped to Billy in the corner, whose smile seemed downright sinister “—why did you stick me in here?”

  “We had to check out your alibi, Jeremy.” Jake splayed his hands on the metal desk, his thumbs meeting.

  “I thought you already called George, and he verified it.”

  “We did, but someone used chewing gum to muck up a lock so the door from the house to the garage wouldn’t lock. We checked the gum for DNA, and it matched the sample we took from you when we first questioned you.”

  Jake studied Jeremy’s face, which blanched first and then heated to a bright red. “Mine? My gum? I wouldn’t need to do that. I still have my key.”

  “Could’ve done it to throw us off.” Jake held up his hands. “But we know you didn’t because we looked at the surveillance video from your apartment building. Your alibi checks out.”

  “Whew.” Jeremy wiped his brow and then sat up, shoulders straight. “I mean, of course it did. I told you, I’d never hurt Andrea. I loved her. Still love her.”

  “The question is, when were you last chewing gum at Andrea’s?”

  “I am a gum chewer.” He reached into his pocket and flipped a pack of sugarless gum onto the table. “I’m a former smoker. Gave it up for Andrea.”

  Billy made an impatient move in the corner. “Okay, we know how much you loved her. Now answer the question. When were you last chewing gum at that house, and do you throw it in the trash or spit it on the ground? And, no, we’re not going to arrest you if you admit you spit it on the ground.”

  “Sometimes I spit it in the gutter. I figure people are less likely to step on it there.” Jeremy’s fingers nervously fiddled with the pack of gum. “Before I went to Andrea’s and found her...body, I was there a few days before that to pick up some boxes from the garage.”

  Jake gave a sidelong glance to Billy. Was he thinking the same thing? Was the killer watching Jeremy at that point and specifically used Jeremy’s gum to implicate him?

  They had to collect more video from the area for different times.

  Jake nailed down the day and time of that visit, as close as Jeremy remembered, and he sat back in his chair. “Ms. Chase indicated that you told her about a stalker Andrea had?”

  Jeremy wiped a hand across his brow as the questioning turned away from him and his visits to Andrea’s hou
se. “Yeah, Andrea accused me of following her, but it wasn’t me. She didn’t get into it that much. Told me to stop following her and coming by the house uninvited. When I denied it, she dropped it. I don’t know if she believed me or not.”

  They probed him for more info, but he clearly didn’t know anything else.

  Jake scooted back his chair. “You’re free to go, Jeremy. If you remember anything else, give me a call, especially if you recall seeing anyone hanging around Andrea’s house or neighborhood.”

  Jeremy stood up so hastily he had to grab the chair before it fell over. “That guy, the one who killed Andrea... He saw me spit out that gum and picked it up to fix the lock and frame me, didn’t he?”

  “We can’t know for sure.” Billy pushed off the wall he’d been propping up the entire interview. “But we think this guy was watching Andrea long before he killed her.”

  * * *

  KYRA GLANCED UP as Jake, Billy and Jeremy filed out of an interrogation room. They all wore grim expressions, and Jeremy looked a little pale around the lips.

  Clutching files to her chest, she raised her eyebrows at Jake as he met her eyes. He gave a quick shake of his head.

  She followed the two detectives up the stairs while Jeremy peeled off and headed for the exit. She quickened her stride to catch up to Jake as he entered the task force conference room, which they’d reassembled in record time after Andrea’s murder.

  “Could Jeremy tell you anything more about the stalker?” She tagged along behind Jake as he went to his desk. He slammed down the lid of his laptop, but not before she saw the familiar logo of the LA County Department of Children and Family Services.

  She tapped the lid of the computer with an unsteady finger. “Andrea didn’t have a child, did she?”

  “No, that’s another case.” Jake dropped into his chair and swiveled it around to face her. “Take Billy’s chair. He’s on his way out.”

  She sat across from Jake, their knees almost touching. “What did you find out from Jeremy?”

  Bending his head toward hers, he said, “I don’t know if you heard yet, but the DNA on that gum was Jeremy’s.”