by Debra Webb
“You mean like a network?”
“Nash has suppliers in Mobile, Memphis, Atlanta, even as far away as Mexico. What he does here fuels the business in those places.”
She shook her head, chewed on her lower lip.
His throat ached to lick those full lips. Get a grip, buddy.
“Explain to me how this ties in to why Nash will want to negotiate for you.”
Braddock had to stop getting off track. “Because of what he did to my niece, he knows I won’t stop until I nail him. He can’t buy me off. Or scare me off. He tried that. I don’t get frustrated and walk away. I keep pounding at his people. I was so close with Shelley.”
CJ looked away.
Yeah. So close. Close enough to get her killed.
“Nash wants me off his back,” Braddock went on. “He made big promises to Shelley if she could make it happen. But she didn’t care about his promises. She just wanted free of him.”
CJ’s eyes glistened with emotion when her gaze met his once more. “Will taking Nash down do it? I mean, won’t someone else just step up to the plate and take his place in the village?”
“They’ll try. And people like me and my partner will just have to see that it doesn’t take root. Nash’s power has built over time. He’s like those annoying little weeds that crop up in a nice lawn. If you ignore them, they’ll take over. You have to wipe them out as soon as they crop up. The new chief is working hard to clean up a mess that accumulated over two decades, but we have to be able to tie Nash to the murders to take him out.”
“If Nash wants you out of his way, why doesn’t he just do it? You know,” she said with a shrug, “pop a cap in your ass or whatever it is guys like him do?”
He smiled. Fair question. “I’m a cop. There are those at HPD who will look the other way for a few extra bucks, but most aren’t willing to pretend they don’t see when one of their own is murdered. Nash isn’t going to risk having his resources dry up on him or, worse, turn on him. He has to find a way to get rid of me that doesn’t include blatantly killing me. Plus, I can be slippery, too. I’m not going to make whatever he decides to do easy for him. He already knows that.”
“Are you saying he’s tried?”
He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve had the usual tactics attempted. My car’s brakes were tampered with more than once. The first apartment I lived in got a sudden gas leak. One or all may have been coincidental, but I don’t take the risk. I pay attention. Don’t let him catch me by surprise. He’d like nothing better than to see me suffer a little accident.”
She shuddered, got up, started to pace. “So, what was it Shelley was supposed to give him? Some sort of evidence?”
“Nash wanted her to video me in a compromising position. You know, drugs, sex. She was supposed to slip me a mickey, so to speak, and then she and some of her friends were going to make it look as if we were—”
“I don’t need to hear the dirty details.”
Braddock heaved a sigh and went on. He hated like hell to tell her this part. “We had planned to . . . last weekend.”
She sat in silence a long moment, absorbing the impact of his statement. Stewing, probably, over the pain he’d already caused her without adding this insult to the injury.
“Okay.” She seemed to gather her strength around her. “Why didn’t you . . . do this thing the two of you had planned?”
He tamped back the emotions that accompanied the answer. “She was supposed to call me when she had it set up, but she didn’t call. When I tried to call her, I got her voice mail.”
CJ blinked, her face a visible stage for the emotions playing out inside her. “I can see how what Shelly was supposed to give him would make you look bad, but how was that supposed to stop you?”
“He wanted leverage to be able to use me, I think. At least that was Shelley’s impression. Nash figured if he could get me in a malleable spot, he could up his ante of HPD assets.”
She thought about that a moment. “So I go in, tell Tyrone I want the truth about what happened to Shelley. He laughs in my face.” She sent a knowing look at Braddock. “Then I say that if he’ll tell me who killed her, I’ll give him something he wants.”
Braddock stood. “No. You tell him that and you may get asked for more than you want to give.”
Embarrassment darkened her cheeks. “I didn’t think of that.” She leveled her gaze on his. “So what do I say?”
“You tell him one thing and one thing only.”
Her gaze held his.
“That you can deliver me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
North Huntsville Clinic, 11:00 AM
Fucking bitch.
Carter glowered at the Camry he’d parked next to in the clinic’s lot. If he found out she had played him . . .
What the hell was he thinking, if?
She would regret this.
He tossed back a couple of Vicodins, shoved out of his BMW, and stalked up to the entrance. He’d tried to find her ass last night. But she’d ignored his calls. She wasn’t stupid. She’d likely figured out that he’d heard from CJ about the autopsy report. Well, if she thought she could avoid answering his questions, she was insane.
Despite the lack of vehicles in the parking lot, the waiting room was jam-packed. Pathetic losers. The poor from neighborhoods all around the clinic’s Mastin Lake location walked here each Saturday. To see that stupid bitch.
Carter cut through the line at the reception desk and elbowed his way to the front. “Tell Lusk I need to see her outside,” he ordered the girl behind the desk. No way was he speaking to her in here.
The harried receptionist stared up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What?”
Carter glanced at the lengthening line in front of her desk. “Never mind. I’ll find her.”
When he got his hands on Lusk . . . his body shook with rage. He pushed through the door leading to the exam rooms, came face-to-face with the object of his fury.
Surprise flared in her eyes. “Cost. What’re you doing here?” She closed the chart in her hands.
“What the hell did you do?”
She blinked, glanced around the corridor. “What’re you talking about?”
He backed her into the closest room. The patient seated on the exam table looked from Cost to Lusk.
“Get out,” Carter demanded.
The startled woman hopped off the table, pulled the paper gown around her more tightly, and hurried from the room.
“You can’t come in here—” Lusk began.
Carter slammed the door, cutting her off. “She wasn’t pregnant!”
A hint of fear flashed in the bitch’s eyes. “What?”
Fury exploded inside him. “Don’t you try that shit with me,” he roared. “Shelley wasn’t pregnant. The ME found no evidence whatsoever of a pregnancy.”
The fear vanished, replaced by a smug smile. “I guess the lab made a mistake.”
Desperation, outrage, too many emotions to label coalesced inside him. He fisted his fingers in her blouse and shoved the bitch against the wall. “You fucking played me! She was never pregnant. You did this to get back at me.”
She had the audacity to laugh. “Worked, didn’t it?”
The desperation overpowered all else. “Do you have any idea what you put me through? You made me think I’d gotten that whore pregnant!”
“You, of all people, should know how to practice safe sex, Doctor.”
He shook his head. Wanted to kill her. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Lusk stared into his eyes, amusement twinkling in hers. “Don’t I?”
“I’ll get you for this.” He released her, turned his back, and hauled the door open.
CJ stood in the corridor, the shock on her face confirming she’d heard the entire conversation.
She stared at him. Just stared.
“If you’re finished,” Lusk snapped, pushing him aside to get out the door, “I have patients—” She drew u
p short. “Patterson?”
CJ shifted her furious stare from Carter to Lusk. “My sister trusted you.”
Lusk dropped the chart she’d been hanging on to as if it provided some protection. She held up her hands. “Wait. I didn’t—”
“Yes,” CJ accused, her voice shaking with fury, “you did. I heard every word the two of you said.” She moved closer to Carter, looked him dead in the eye. “Shelley was not your entertainment. She was a person.” She shook her head, fell back the step she’d taken. “You’ll both regret this.”
When she rushed out the door, Carter resisted the impulse to go after her.
It was no use.
He was fucked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Braham Spring Park, 1:15 PM
“We’ve seen this before.”
Braddock crouched next to his partner. “Yep.” He shook his head, surveyed the young woman’s body. Partially nude and sprawled on her back in the grass near the picnic tables, she’d been found around noon by the lawn service personnel.
Cooper set the purse on the grass between her feet. “Wallet, including ten bucks, is still here. Tube of lip gloss, mascara, and her driver’s license. Couldn’t have been here too long or the ten bucks would have been long gone.”
The ME wasn’t here yet, but Celeste Martin had been dead long enough to be in full rigor. Her skin had that gray death cast. What was visible of the torso was badly bruised. Her face was bruised, both eyes blackened. A fly lit on her cheek, crawled toward her open mouth. Braddock waved it away. Someone had beat the crap out of her before killing her. His gut clenched.
“No blood on the ground,” he noted. “No way she bled out here.” He cocked his head to study her left side. “Looks like she lay on her side for several hours after death.” He pointed to the darkened area along the length of the left side of her body where the blood had pooled initially after death. Once the heart stopped beating, gravity ensured the blood settled in the lowest point of the victim’s positioning. “Probably dumped here sometime this morning before daylight.”
“Whoever sliced her throat was clean and efficient. One stroke.” Cooper leaned closer to the vic’s face. “Most of the tongue is missing. The removal not quite so clean. She must have moved around some.” Cooper sat back on her heels. “Just like the Hispanic girl from six months ago.”
“That one worked for Nash, too.” And he just kept getting away with it.
Cooper nodded, then set her gaze on his. “She’s the one who talked the most to Patterson.”
“She’s the one.” The outrage was stoked into a full burn. “Tests will probably confirm the blood found on CJ’s bed came from this woman.” The ME would estimate time of death, but he was reasonably sure she hadn’t been dead much more than a day. He needed to break this news to CJ before she heard it some other way.
“We got company.”
Braddock looked up expecting to see the meat wagon. Not so lucky. The chief. Perfect. He and his partner stood, walked beyond the cordoned-off crime scene perimeter to meet the boss.
“Prostitute?” Chief Burton Spencer asked.
“Looks that way, sir,” Cooper answered. “We’ll need to confirm it, but we believe she’s one of Nash’s.”
Spencer planted his hands on his hips and shook his head. “God almighty, we got to find a way to nail that slippery bastard.” He glanced at Braddock, making no attempt to disguise the sympathy in his eyes. “You holding up all right on this? I don’t want any mistakes.”
“Yes, sir.” Braddock gritted his teeth. He could not allow his emotions to show. If Spencer thought for a second he wasn’t handling this objectively, he’d be off this case. “We’ll get him.”
Spencer had been chief of police in Birmingham for twenty years. He’d come here a year ago with a special agenda: to turn HPD back into what it once had been, particularly the west precinct. He wanted Nash, and those like him, cleaned up. Quickly but legally. The only thing he hated more than scumbags like Nash were dirty cops.
“That’s three west-side murders in the space of one week,” he reminded. “We’re going to take some heat on this.”
By heat he meant bad publicity. Since arriving on the scene Braddock had already gotten a couple of calls from local reporters who wanted to know what the hell was going on.
He glanced back at the sheet now draped over Celeste Martin’s body. It felt like a war. Nash was fighting to keep his people in line and the cops out of his business.
The only way to end this was to cross the line.
That was something he would have to do alone. CJ would give Nash the message, then Braddock would take it from there.
Before someone else died—images from his niece’s murder and half a dozen others flashed in his mind—like this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
3021 Appleton, 1:35 PM
Mr. O’Neal no doubt thought CJ was crazy, but she didn’t care. She’d knocked on his door and borrowed a number of tools, more than a hammer and nails this time. Though he hadn’t been able to go to the garage with her, he’d told her where to find what she needed.
Hammer, small crowbar, screwdrivers, and flashlight.
Her neighbor hadn’t always been wheelchair-bound. He’d once been quite the handyman around the house as well as a shade-tree mechanic. And he still had the tools to prove it.
Tools in hand, she’d begun her mission.
That had been a full hour ago.
And she still hadn’t found anything other than dust and the occasional earring along with a few nickels, dimes, and pennies. Not even a quarter for her trouble.
“Shit.” She surveyed the mess she’d made in Shelley’s room. She’d pulled up several loose floorboards and turned a small hole in the wall behind an old junk sale painting into a new entry into the next room.
Braddock had said that her sister was planning to video an encounter that would get him busted. To do that she would have needed equipment. A setup. The way people who videoed their sex activities did. But there was no equipment anywhere in the house that she’d found. Nothing.
And yet it had to be here.
She had practically torn apart the sparse furnishings. Two windows, walls, floor, and a dinky closet were all that remained. She’d explored every crack in the wall in addition to all the loose floorboards. She’d torn the closet apart.
Think! CJ looked at the bed. If she were going to video a sexual encounter, the most logical place to set up the camera would be aimed at the bed. The only thing on the wall across from the bed was the closet.
Just get it over with and look again.
The closet door stood open already; all the clothes and shoes it had held were now piled on the bed. CJ stepped into the small rectangle and slowly checked the wall. No cracks. No holes. She looked up at the shelf overhead. Nothing there, either. But the ceiling . . .
CJ grabbed the one chair in the room and dragged it to the closet. She climbed onto the seat and poked her arms above the narrow shelf. The ceiling seemed awfully close to the shelf . . .
The boards moved. Her breath stalled in her lungs. The ceilings in this old house had once been old-fashioned beadboard, the kind that came in four-inch strips. Most of the rooms had been plastered at some point. But not inside the closets.
She pushed until the boards were out of the way.
It was nothing. Dammit! Just the small square hole that provided entrance to the attic.
Frustrated, CJ stepped off the chair and considered whether she should clean up the mess now or later.
Later, she decided. She should check the other two bedrooms. Just in case. She’d checked this one from top to bottom already.
Wait. She looked up. She hadn’t checked the ceiling. Hadn’t even thought about anyone trying to go up in the attic. Truth was, she hadn’t even known where the attic access was.
There was a small round hole on the ceiling above the center of the bed and right next to the light picture. The hole was so smal
l she almost missed it. It didn’t really appear big enough to provide camera access, but it was worth a look.
She climbed back onto that chair, considered her options, and then just went for it. It took a bit of pulling and swearing, but she finally levered herself into the attic.
On her hands and knees, CJ surveyed the rafters and uneven boards that made up the floor. The steep pitch of the roof made the attic large enough for another floor. Light from the small windows on each end kept the darkness at bay to some extent. She’d had no idea it was so large. And dusty. She sat back on her heels and swiped her palms together to dispel the black dust. Years of burning coal in these old houses had left its mark.
Between the dust and the smothering heat, it was difficult to pull in a decent breath. Boxes were scattered about. Medium to large boxes with product imprints boasting the contents. A part of her wondered what was inside. Remnants of her and Shelley’s childhood?
No time to get lost on memory lane. She pushed up to her feet and moved carefully between and around the boxes. Years of dust covered everything. She tried to estimate where the center of the room below would be.
Right here. She stopped, stared down at the box at her feet. Now that she really looked, it was the only one not layered in dust.
Anticipation detonated in her veins.
A hand on each side of the box, she lifted.
It felt empty.
When she tossed it aside, her heart stumbled into a frantic pace. A video camera, the kind used for security purposes, and accompanying VCR sat on the old wide plank floor where the box had been.
She dropped to her knees. An electrical outlet had been wired directly into some of the light fixture’s wiring. The red light on the VCR glowed, indicating there was power. Hands trembling, she reached for the eject button. A grinding sound, then nothing.
No tape popped out.
Dammit. She bent down, pushed back the door on the VCR, and tried to see inside. Black hole, but no tape. The camera had no storage tape or disk.