Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “Except for The Player,” Kyra said softly into her swirling tea.

  “The bastard never left his DNA.” Jake tapped one finger on the table. “Weird, how neither the Copycat Player nor Copycat 2.0 has left his DNA at the scene. There’s almost always a sexual component to a serial killer’s motivation, and yet no rapes, no semen, no DNA.”

  “We know why Jordy didn’t feel the urge to rape his victims. He took his sexual aggressions out on hookers after the slayings.” She flattened the empty packets of sweetener with her thumb. “I wonder how this guy satisfies that urge.”

  Glancing to his right, Jake hunched forward. “God, I hope nobody is listening to this conversation.”

  “Ugh, you’re right.” She picked up the menu and scanned the salads and sandwiches. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

  Jake peered at her over the top of his own menu. “The fingerprint? No, I wanted to tell you about the phone that sent me the text about the Harmons.”

  “Yes?” She clutched the laminated menu so hard, its edges bit into her fingers.

  “As I suspected, it was a burner phone and it’s already out of service.” He tapped his menu against hers. “Sorry to disappoint you, but we sort of knew this person wasn’t going to call from a cell that could be traced.”

  “Because he called you—a cop. But when he contacted me via email, he couldn’t do so completely anonymously, could he? Maybe he figured I wouldn’t have the resources to track him down at the library.”

  Jake said, “You do now. I requested a subpoena for the library’s video footage for the day and approximate time you received that email. We’ll get to have a look at who sat at those public computers in the library and sent you the photo.”

  “That’s fantastic.” She clapped her hands together and held them under her chin as if in prayer, but this man had already answered her prayers. “D-do you think you’ll get the subpoena?”

  “It’s related to a serial killer case. Are you kidding? The mayor would be willing to give me the key to the entire city if it would help me bring in another killer.” He stopped talking when the waitress came back to take their orders.

  As she watched the waitress approach another table, Kyra whispered, “Do you know Mayor Wexler?”

  “I’ve met him a few times. He’s close with Chief Sterling. The guy loves his power.”

  Kyra closed her lips around her straw. She could tell Jake a lot more about Ben Wexler than probably even the chief knew, since Wexler’s wife, Monica, was her client. Some secrets she still needed to keep from Jake.

  They got through the rest of their lunch without a word about murder, rape or DNA, but when it came time to pay the bill, Kyra slapped her hand on the check. “This is mine if you clue me in when you get the subpoena. I want to be looking at that library video with you.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, and—” he pinched the corner of the bill between two fingers and tugged “—you don’t need to pick up lunch to bribe me.”

  “It’s not a bribe. I invited you.” She yanked the bill from his fingers and fished her debit card from her wallet.

  He drove her back to the station. She stopped outside the building and waved him on. “You go ahead. I’m going to make a call outside.”

  “Good idea. Thanks for lunch.” He marched into the station without a second glance.

  She hadn’t fooled him with her phone-call excuse, but he hadn’t objected, either. He must agree with her that it was best to keep their relationship outside of work private—not that coworkers on the task force didn’t have lunch together. She’d just had lunch with Billy yesterday, but rumors were not already swirling around her and Billy.

  A young woman with black hair waved at her across the parking lot and then skipped toward her. “Kyra, right?”

  Kyra glanced at the woman’s tatted-up arm and blinked at the bright eyes and ready smile. “Rachel? Blackburn, right?”

  “That’s right. I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me.”

  “Of course I do.” Kyra waved her hand up and down the woman’s casual slacks and blouse, a pair of black flats on her feet. “I didn’t recognize you at first with the...uh, makeover.”

  The last time she’d seen Rachel, when her phone had been stolen by the Copycat Player to report the location of a body, she’d been sporting multiple piercings, heavy, dark makeup and black combat boots.

  “Oh, I still inhabit that other persona, but I just got hired as an LAPD dispatcher. Detective McAllister was true to his word and got me in.”

  “I’m sure Human Resources was blown away by you and didn’t even need McAllister’s recommendation.” Rachel had impressed both her and Jake with her keen perception and intelligence, so much so that Jake had gotten her hooked up with a job as a dispatcher.

  “Thanks, but we both know a recommendation from Detective McAllister is worth a lot.” Rachel screwed up her mouth. “With most people in the department.”

  Rachel had already discovered that J-Mac had a reputation with the LAPD and not everyone appreciated his tactics.

  “Do you like the job so far?”

  “I do. It’s great. Hoping to learn all I can, finish my degree and then apply for a sworn position.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make a great cop, Rachel.” Kyra pointed to the building. “You going inside?”

  The two walked into the station together and split up on the first floor. Jake was already hard at work by the time Kyra made it to her desk. Her sandwich and salad should’ve made her sleepy, but the discovery of Mindy Behr’s body that morning had everyone amped up, and phones rang off the hook and spontaneous discussions broke out across the room. Nobody needed coffee with the energy bouncing off the walls, but gallons of the stuff disappeared anyway.

  A few hours into the afternoon, Jake caught her eye across the room and tapped his personal cell phone. Two seconds later her own phone buzzed, and she glanced at the text.

  As she read Jake’s words, her pulse danced in her throat. The judge had signed off on the subpoena for the video at the Santa Monica Public Library. Jake promised to let her know when he planned to head out there to view it.

  She texted him back with a thumbs-up emoji and let him know the library was open until nine o’clock this evening and that she had a client at five.

  The rest of the afternoon flew by in a blur. At a few minutes before four o’clock, Kyra packed up her laptop and wedged the case on her chair. She sauntered to the back row of desks where J-Mac and Cool Breeze held court and leaned against Billy’s desk.

  “Everything go okay at the crime scene today?”

  “As okay as that kind of thing can go, and of course we collected the print.” Billy slumped in his chair and extended his long legs in front of him. “You know, I think I would’ve been able to keep it together even if the victim had been an African American female, but this experience has given me new resolve to find my sister.”

  “Really? Are you going to reopen the case?”

  “I don’t have the authority to do that, and missing person cases don’t fall under robbery-homicide anyway. I do, however, have a line on a PI. I’m going to call him and schedule an appointment. I can’t work this job and hold my breath every time we get a call on a young Black female. I need to know. My family needs to know.”

  “Let me know if I can be of any help, Billy.” She dropped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed. “I mean that.”

  Jake had been trying to ignore their hushed conversation from the desk next to Billy’s, but he finally looked up. “Are you calling it a day?”

  “I am. I have a client in my Santa Monica office, and then I’m heading home.” She hoped Jake got her meaning that she’d be ready to go to the library with him, without blurting it out in front of Billy. It was one thing for Billy to know about their budding relationship, if that was what you could ca
ll it, and another to flaunt the fact that she and Jake were working on a sideline to the case.

  She could handle just one person at a time finding out that she’d stabbed her foster dad to death.

  Jake winked at her. “Have a good session. Is that what you therapists say?”

  “No, never. Have a nice evening. I’ll see you two tomorrow. Hope you get a hit on that print.”

  “Ditto.” Jake held up his hands, crossing the fingers of both.

  Kyra made the drive home toward the coast, antsy to drop by Quinn’s house to let him know she’d taken his advice and told Jake about her past. Quinn would also want the details on 2.0’s latest murder, but Jake could serve him those details better than she could, detective to detective.

  The fact that Quinn approved of and liked Jake thrilled her. If Jake met Quinn’s high standards, then she knew she could trust Jake—and she could. Jake hadn’t backed away from her when he found out about Buck Harmon; nor had he gotten mad at her for keeping it a secret from him.

  Jake came across trauma like hers every day at his job. He’d been a homicide detective for almost ten years. Other people’s misery had soaked into his bones by now, and he hadn’t reached saturation point yet.

  Maybe that was why the murder of those two African American women had hit Billy so hard. He’d been soaking it all in, just like Jake, but those deaths in particular had pushed him to saturation because of his missing sister.

  She snorted and pulled into the parking space for her office. She was guilty of analyzing both detectives without even seeing them professionally—not that she could ever take on Jake as a client now, and not that he would ever seek out help.

  He’d had an incident with a former coworker of hers, Lizbeth Kruger. Lizbeth had submitted a report to the parole board on a killer Jake had locked up, allowing for his early release. The guy had killed again, and when Jake found out, he went ballistic on Lizbeth at the station. Kyra had missed the fireworks, but Jake’s towering rage had earned him a reprimand and mandatory anger-management sessions. She could only imagine how that went.

  As a result, Jake had no fondness for therapists, but he seemed to be coming around where she was concerned. That thought put a little smile on her lips that she couldn’t erase until she sat down with her client, who had just lost his job and whose wife had left him because of it.

  When the fifty-minute session ended, Kyra checked her phone and saw the text from Jake that they had a meeting with one of the librarians at 7:30 p.m. She recorded notes from the session on her laptop, left a note for her office mate, Candace, and drove home.

  After she threw together a quick pasta dish, it took her twenty minutes to decide to leave on her work clothes instead of changing into something more casual. Jake would still have his suit on, and she didn’t want the librarian to think she didn’t have a right to view that footage.

  Jake had indicated he’d pick her up, and they’d go to the library together. She’d told him to text her when he was out front and started pacing at 7:05 p.m. Ten minutes later, her doorbell rang.

  She squinted through the peephole and sighed at Jake standing there holding Spot. She yanked open the door. “You didn’t have to walk all the way up here, and you certainly didn’t need to pick up Spot. He’s gonna get white cat hair all over your suit.”

  Jake unceremoniously dumped the cat on the ground and brushed off his slacks. “Little cat hair never hurt anything.”

  “Your partner would be shocked to hear that. Do you think Billy would ever allow a cat to shed on his suit?”

  “Billy has two small children. When he’s with his boys, he’s a mess. Don’t let him fool you.” He nudged Spot with his foot as the cat curled his body around Jake’s ankles. “And I’m not going to call for you at the curb.”

  She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Did you park illegally again? Because I know for a fact there’s no parking out there at this time of night.”

  He cleared his throat. “I may have squeezed in too close to a fire hydrant. Do you want to stand here talking about cat hair, Billy and parking, or do you want to get to the library and find out who play...La Prey is?”

  “Let me grab my purse.” She eased the door closed to keep Spot out and picked up her purse from the counter. Jake was right. Now that the moment had come to find out who’d been tormenting her, she was dragging her feet. She felt light-headed, as her fright-or-flight response kicked in.

  When she opened the door, Jake had Spot in his arms again. “He’s just doing that because he wants to be fed.”

  “Aw, I thought it was because he liked me.”

  When the door closed with a snap, Spot leaped out of Jake’s arms and stalked away with a swish of his tail.

  Kyra laughed. “He knows he’s out of luck.”

  Her mouth dry on the short drive to the library, Kyra kept licking her lips and fidgeting with the strap of her purse.

  Jake parked his vehicle and shot her a glance. “This is a good thing. It’s going to be okay. This will help us get to the bottom of a lot of things, and I’m convinced it’s going to shed light on these copycats. Hold on to that idea.”

  She dropped her chin in a jerky nod. She was less convinced than Jake that whoever was taunting her had knowledge about the copycat killers, but the thought gave her resolve.

  Marching into the library next to Jake with a subpoena in his pocket, Kyra drew back her shoulders, feeling a confidence she had lacked the previous time she’d sidled in here with her lies about a stalker.

  She just hoped Inez wasn’t working the night shift.

  When they entered through the glass doors, Jake veered left toward the circulation desk as opposed to the reference desk, and Kyra blew out a tiny breath from between her lips.

  She hung back as Jake gave his name, flashed his badge and asked for Renee. Now, that was how you got results.

  A short woman with chin-length dark hair streaked with gray approached the counter. “Detective McAllister, I’m Renee Shelton. I’ve been able to cue up the video from the date and time in question. Do you want to come around to the back?”

  Jake shook hands with Renee and introduced her to Kyra. They both circled the long counter and met Renee at the end where she pulled open a swinging half door for them to step through.

  As she led them to the back, she glanced over her shoulder. “I set up the computer in the office. Do you need me there to work it, or would you prefer to look at it on your own?”

  Jake answered, “As long as it’s cued up where we need it, I can handle the rest.”

  Renee ushered them into a small office with a computer set up on a table, two chairs in front of it. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Let me know if you need any assistance.”

  They pulled the chairs up to the computer and Kyra sat on Jake’s left, as he placed his hand over the mouse. “This is perfect. The cameras are pointing right at the public computers.”

  Kyra stared at the familiar setup of the computers, all empty now. She jabbed her finger at the workstations. “Do we know which one it is, specifically?”

  “I passed the info you gave me from Brandon to the library, and Renee indicated it’s the computer at the end. He should be showing up anytime now.”

  Kyra watched the flickering images of other people coming and going in the library, even sitting down at the public computers. She sat up when she saw Yolanda, the homeless woman from the day before, sprint toward the computers, her Santa Monica College sweatshirt bunched up around her waist. From the way she was moving, she wasn’t as old as Kyra had imagined before. The sun had damaged her skin, aging her beyond her years.

  “That woman was there the other day.” Kyra sucked in a breath as Yolanda sat at the computer they were watching, her bags over her shoulder, a piece of paper clutched in her hand. “She must leave before La Prey gets there. Maybe he kicked her off that
computer.”

  She hunched forward, her eyes watering as she focused on Yolanda clicking away on the keyboard, most likely bringing up articles on fashion. The minutes ticked by. Kyra’s gaze darted to the clock in the upper-right corner of the video, the seconds racing.

  Jake sat back in his chair and clasped his hands between his knees.

  Kyra shot a glance at him, and he was no longer looking at the video.

  She said sharply, “What?”

  “That’s it, Kyra. That’s who sent you the email.”

  “It can’t be.” She cranked her head back and forth between the lying computer and Jake’s grim face. “I met that woman. She’s not all there. Why would she be sending me emails with the Harmon picture?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.” But it was, and her stomach knotted.

  “He paid Yolanda to send that email to cover his tracks. Player played us...again.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Kyra’s cheeks flushed red, hot with anger, and she smacked her hand on the table next to the computer. “No! I met that woman. I talked to her. She couldn’t have done it.”

  “Why? Because she’s a little spacey?” Jake grabbed the mouse again and backtracked to the moment Yolanda sat down at the computer. “Look at her hand. She has a piece of paper. Those could’ve been her instructions.”

  Kyra sucked in her bottom lip and drummed her fingers on the edge of the keyboard.

  “What?” Jake’s word had a sharp edge, but from the look on her face, Kyra remembered something.

  “When I first met her, she told me she worked at the library and people paid her for information. I gave her a twenty just to talk to her...and because I felt sorry for her.” She kicked the table with the toe of her shoe. “Damn, and all this time she knew.”

  “That’s the good news.” Jake circled Yolanda’s face with his finger. “She’s obviously a regular here. We’ll find her, talk to her, pay her if necessary and discover who hired her.”