by Stacy Green
“Gionese.” Something in Erin’s exhausted brain sparked. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Because it’s been tossed around in the investigation of the drug cartels,” Beckett said. “The FBI believes someone named Gionese is a major carrier for the Mexican cartel working its way up here. We don’t know if Aleta is affiliated in any way, but since she managed to get one of the best defense attorneys in town within a couple of hours after we detained her, I’m thinking there’s a good chance.”
“But if she’s from that world, she’s been exposed to killing,” Erin said. “The cartels don’t leave witnesses, and they always leave a message.”
The good news kept coming. Bonnie’s computer contained over fifty amateur sex videos starring herself, Aleta, and Malek in violent rape fantasies that turned Beckett green when he described them. In one particular video, Aleta beat the hell out of Bonnie, calling her a whore in both English and Arabic, threatening to kill her if she didn’t behave. Beckett believed the video wasn’t scripted. But Malek and Aleta weren’t the only movie stars in Bonnie’s world. Reese, from the Adult Literacy Center, took his turn at violence as well. His financials showed Yari Malek extorted Reese for more than $25,000—a damned good motive in any cop’s book. So Reese, and his intact kidney, had been left to sweat it out in a holding cell while the forensics crew combed his apartment. Beckett seemed particularly excited about the scratches on Reese’s arms, claiming they could be defense wounds, but Erin felt only numbness.
“We found Virginia on the security footage from The Point,” Beckett whispered as Erin tried to eat something. “There’s about ten blurry seconds of her talking to a tall person in black who may or may not be Tori, but there’s nothing to trace. And he didn’t leave any sort of paper trail from The Point, either.”
Judy Temple came to pay her respects and quietly reminded Erin to look into her family history. Erin didn’t tell her she didn’t need to. In a crying jag the day after Brad’s death, her mother talked about an aunt who died from an aneurysm around the same age as Brad. Erin stowed the information away to deal with later. All of her energy went into caring for her daughter.
Abby kept asking why this happened. In her young mind, life was still supposed to be black and white. There should have been a logical explanation for everything; telling her bad things happen didn’t cut it. And trying to explain something went wrong in Brad’s brain only scared her.
“Could that happen to you or me?” She asked, her big blue eyes loaded with tears. “I don’t want you to die.”
Thinking about Judy Temple’s warning turned Erin cold inside. But she lied to her child and promised her she wouldn’t die.
“Mother of the Year,” Erin whispered as she poured another shot of tequila. When the wake at her parents’ house finally ended, she crossed the acre yard for the Princes’ posh guesthouse. Abby wanted to sleep with her grandmother, and Helen had been such a wreck she thought it would be good for both of them.
So Erin had the night to herself. She celebrated by doing shots of tequila, the first drink she and Brad ever got drunk on. Brad threw up, and Erin teased him for being a lightweight. He didn’t touch the stuff for two years.
The guesthouse sat tucked away on the eastern end of the Princes’ property, bordered by a thatch of evergreen woods thick with wildlife. The builders had the foresight to put in a large bay window on the eastern wall, complete with a cushy window seat. Erin curled up on the seat, a new tequila shot in one hand and a lime in the other. She leaned her head against the cool glass. Over the past few days, some of the heavy cloud cover dissipated, allowing a few stars and the quarter moon to be visible. In the meager moonlight, the woods seemed dark and much deeper than they actually were. Erin wished a deer or maybe a raccoon would come out. Anything to draw her attention away from the parasitic sense of loss.
Brad wouldn’t want her to be like this. In fact, he would be ragging on her day and night. But this was a contingency no one prepared for, and she had yet to figure out how to navigate life with such a gaping wound.
The doorbell chimed, and she nearly dropped the shot. Midnight had come and gone. Her parents had gone to bed and hopefully fallen asleep. But maybe Abby had a nightmare, and someone had come to fetch Erin.
Erin left the shot and the sticky lime on the kitchen counter and hurried to the door, not bothering to check before she opened it. The last person she expected to see stared back at her.
“Lisa.” Erin didn’t have the energy for this. Her half-sister had gone home two hours ago, citing an early morning.
Lisa played with the collar of her designer coat. The stress of the day had melted off most of her makeup, and the circles under her eyes betrayed the truth: an overworked woman in her mid-forties. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Erin debated. She couldn’t handle a fight with Lisa. Not tonight. But she saw no sign of animosity in her sister’s liquid brown eyes.
“I won’t stay long,” Lisa said. “Not even long enough to take off my coat. Dad’s going to be out of the office for the next few days, so I’ve got to pick up the slack.”
Calvin Prince had taken his son’s death extremely hard. Although he’d grudgingly accepted Brad’s sexuality, they were never close. Calvin now wore the regret like a crushing suit of armor.
“Is this about the company?” In their wills, Erin and Brad had left their trusts to each other, with stipulations made for Abby. Neither of them had shares in the company, so she didn’t see what Lisa would need to talk to her about.
“No, it’s about you. About us. Brad.” Lisa bit her lip, her mouth twisting in a way that told Erin she didn’t want to say whatever she stewed over. “About fixing things between us.”
Erin’s knees weakened. Her stomach growled. Was she about to pass out? “Listen, I really appreciate you coming to make amends. And that’s something we can discuss, but not tonight. I’m just beat.”
Lisa’s cheeks flushed, the vein in her forehead pulsing the way it always did when she got angry. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Fair enough. Can we talk in a few days?”
“I’ll call you, I promise.” Erin intended to fulfill her promise. Lisa had swallowed a lot of pride tonight. Erin headed back to take her last shot before passing out.
Her phone flashed with a text. Beckett. Her stomach dropped out as she read.
Found Yari Malek.
“You didn’t have to come.” Beckett stood at the edge of the Potomac watching Dan Mitchell and his assistant negotiate a bloated corpse into a body bag.
Erin waved him off. She never welcomed death, but she welcomed the distraction. Her stomach, however, didn’t appreciate the gas station coffee she sucked down to thwart the effects of the tequila. She popped in a breath mint. “Hell of a place for a body dump. If we’re sure that’s what this is.”
Yari Malek floated to the surface underneath Arlington Memorial Bridge, mere feet from the backside of the Lincoln Memorial. Erin gazed up the hill at the monument. From this angle, it could have been a beautiful stone building surrounded by ornate pillars. Lincoln’s impressive statue sat on the other side of the wall, overlooking the Reflecting Pool, meaning the backside of the monument wasn’t a spot most tourists ventured. But it could be seen from Ohio Drive, which ran between the grounds and the river. At 3:00 a.m., moderate traffic still lumbered across the bridge overhead, and a car came by the scene every few minutes, the driver’s mouth gaping.
“We’re sure it’s a body dump,” Mitchell said. “I can’t tell how long he’s been in the water exactly, but my best guess is a few days. She slashed his throat and then went for his abdomen. She probably stabbed him a couple of times and then forced him outside. It’s hard to tell thanks to decomposition, but I’m betting his kidney is missing. Oh, she carved her initial on his forehead too—after his heart stopped.”
“Jesus Christ.” Erin halted a few feet from the unzipped bag. The smell hit her in the face like a hammer. Her stomach roiled against it,
and she gagged, the liquor and crappy coffee threatening to make a second appearance. Mitchell tossed her a tube of Vicks. She swiped a generous amount beneath her nose and edged forward.
With skin blue and swollen to the point of bursting in places, Malek was virtually unrecognizable. Fish had chewed out his eyes and part of his nose. But the crimson J in his forehead couldn’t be missed.
“Why not the whole name?” Erin asked.
“No time is my guess.” Beckett walked beneath the bridge, the structure partially hidden by the tall, reedy weeds browned from the cold weather. “I’m assuming it’s night, so traffic was slow. But her time was still limited, so she stopped with the J. Then she shoved him in the water.”
“Did she weigh him down with something?”
“Looks like it,” Beckett said. “There’s a rope tied to one of his ankles. It came loose from whatever she used, and he floated up.”
“Pure luck, at least for us.” Mitchell arranged the corpse’s swollen hands over its chest. “Otherwise, she would be off the hook for this murder. We would have never found him.”
Erin turned away from the putrid face of what had once been Yari Malek and tried not to think about Brad in his casket. He might have been peacefully asleep, except he was still and silent and horrifically stiff. She cleared her throat and ignored her stinging eyes. “Where are we with Brian Reese?”
“Fowler broke him down an hour ago,” Beckett said. “He claims that after Bonnie’s murder, he and Malek had words.”
“Reese thought Malek killed her?”
“Malek thought Reese killed her,” Beckett corrected. “Reese just wanted to get out of paying Malek any more money, because Bonnie was dead. Malek said that didn’t matter; he still had the proof to ruin Reese’s career. They apparently fought—a convenient excuse for the scratches on his arm. He swears that happened two days before Malek disappeared, and he left him alive.”
“Of course he does.”
The Potomac’s current rippled, and small waves quietly broke on the shore.
“What about Aleta?”
“Says he doesn’t know her. We can’t prove he’s lying; she wasn’t in the video he made nor can we pick up her voice behind the camera. And we still haven’t found her. The Gionese family lawyer claims she’s no relation. No one believes him.”
“So did Reese pay Bonnie too?”
“He says no. We can’t find any record of it so far.”
“But Virginia Walton found out about them, right? He threatened her into silence.”
Beckett shrugged. “Reese says no. We’re searching Virginia’s computers at school and work for any correspondence about it. I’d feel good about him as the killer if Sarah hadn’t come by the station earlier in the day. Someone left this in her mailbox.” He handed Erin a piece of white notebook paper carefully stored in a clear plastic bag. “She found it after we brought Reese in. He probably had it delivered, but the timing bothers me.”
A lump grew in Erin’s throat as she read the letter, all the noise from the road sounding as though coming through a vacuum.
Dear Princess,
I keep on hearing you might be the one to catch me, but you won’t manage it. I don’t like whores and tattletales, and I won’t quit until things are right again.
Great fun the last job was. I gave the lady time to fight, and she flopped like a dying pig. How can you catch me now when you don’t even know where to look? I saved some things from the last job, and now they’re so crusty I can’t hope to use them. Too much red, but I like it so much. Maybe next time I’ll cut the lady’s eyes out. Good luck with your nightmares.
Jane the Ripper
P.S. Mina thinks you’re a real princess. I know it’s all a lie.
Erin thrust the letter back at Beckett. She didn’t have the strength to be upset about being made a fool of yet again. The killer’s brazenness terrified her.
“So she didn’t care if someone found Malek’s body,” Erin said. “She wanted me to know she’s still out there. This was delivered to Sarah’s parents’ house?
“No,” Beckett said, his eyes roaming the letter again. “Her rental. Her roommate came home and found it stuck in the door, addressed to you in care of Sarah Archer. Her roommate told her she saw a dark-haired woman walking about a block away from their rental before she got home and discovered the letter, but they live in an area heavily populated with college students. It could have been anyone walking. Sarah and the roommate are terrified.”
“Of course, their rental doesn’t have any security cameras.” Erin stared at the black water, half-wishing the river would rise up and swallow her. “If Reese isn’t our guy, then it’s got to be Aleta. She’s a Gionese and knows what she’s doing. She told us she liked pain. Where are Sarah and her roommate?”
“Roommate’s staying with her boyfriend. Sarah’s safe at her parents’. I told her to stay there and make sure the doors were locked and all the security armed.”
Beckett rolled his neck, looking up at the murky sky. “I think we can take Tori off our list. He’s a coincidence. My gut tells me Simon Archer discovered Aleta’s involvement with Bonnie and hired her to do his dirty work. Jane the Ripper is a ploy.”
Erin didn’t respond. Some twisted part of her felt disappointed at Jane not being real. What a story to tell. Christ, I’m losing it.
“Aleta’s probably not a legal citizen, but her daughter is, assuming she was born here—and if we’re right about Mina being Aleta’s daughter, Simon Archer could have threatened to have Aleta deported,” Beckett said. “Mina would stay here. She did whatever she had to do to save her daughter. Including killing three people. You’re a mother. How far would you go?”
“I’d kill for Abby,” Erin said without hesitation. “But I have options. There are people I could go to for help. My father ...”
“If Aleta is really another one of Malek’s victims, she’s been brainwashed and broken down,” Beckett said. “She didn’t have someone like your father to go to. Simon Archer might have seemed like the devil to her. Then again, if she is related to the Gionese affiliated with the cartel, Simon Archer might have signed his own death warrant.”
Erin’s stomach growled, the tequila reminding her that her last meal had been this morning. “She lied and managed to disappear as soon as her lawyer got her cut loose. How brainwashed can she be? How do we know she’s not the master manipulator she made Yari out to be? She completely played us.”
Mitchell zipped up the body bag, and Beckett turned to Erin. “To be honest, I feel like I’m drowning in a big pool of shitty theories that don’t quite add up.”
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She answered without bothering to look at the ID, hoping Abby hadn’t awoken to a nightmare and found out her mother wasn’t there. “Prince.”
“Princess!”
The high-pitched, childish cry paralyzed Erin. “Mina, what’s wrong?”
“Jane’s going to hurt us!”
“Mina, where are you?” Erin waved frantically at Beckett.
The little girl answered with a scream. Then silence.
For the second time in two weeks, Erin knocked on Neil and Carmen Archer’s door. After Mina’s frantic call, she and Beckett decided to split up. Fowler joined Beckett at the strip club to try to force something out of the dancers and manager, while Erin talked to the Archers.
Her patience long gone, she steeled herself against the confrontation. Neil Archer wasn’t going to like what she had to say, but a child’s life was at stake. She no longer had any empathy for Bonnie’s parents. They failed the girl time and again in her life, and they continued to fail her in death.
Neil wrenched the door opened and glared at her with hollowed eyes reminiscent of a war veteran unable to speak of the things he witnessed. “What do you want at this hour?”
“The truth.” She shouldered her way past him and into the foyer. “Get Carmen, because you’re both going to tell me everything I need to know.”
&nb
sp; “Investigator Prince.” Neil Archer’s voice thinned to the consistency of a razor blade. “I don’t know what kind of show you’re trying to run, but we aren’t the bad guys. Our daughter is a victim, and you’ve done nothing to find out who killed her.”
“Listen to me.” She slammed the front door and then stood on tiptoes to get in his face. He probably caught a whiff of the tequila from hours ago, but she’d gone past the point of caring. “Your daughter is dead, and you’re not helping us find out who killed her. I buried my twin brother less than twenty-four hours ago, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and stay there. But I’m trying to find a killer before someone else dies. So let’s start with Ted Moore.”
Neil Archer jerked, stepping back as if she’d planted her fist in his chest—a scenario that wasn’t out of the question at this point. “Ted Moore is dead.”
“No shit,” Erin snapped. “But I’ve got a little girl calling me claiming someone is going to get hurt again, and we just dredged our only suspect out of the Potomac. So it’s time for you to come clean about who abused Bonnie.”
“Investigator.” Carmen Archer descended the stairs like a withered ghost, tightening her fuzzy robe. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother. But there’s simply no way Bonnie’s abuse has anything to do with this.”
“I think your brother is the key to this whole thing, and it all goes back to Bonnie being molested.”
“Simon?” Neil Archer stood motionless as an old tree stump and just as oblivious. “I don’t understand.”
“Bonnie blackmailed someone in the last six months for a lot of money, and she told Sarah more cash would be coming.” Erin didn’t have time to worry about the Archers’ feelings. “The most logical person is the man who molested her—or the uncle who helped cover it up. Ted Moore’s return to the area and the timing of his documentary gels with the deposit. But Ted Moore’s dead, and the only other person with something major to lose is your brother. Bonnie likely blackmailed them both.”