Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series

by Hart, Liliana

  “Are you sure you want to go casting that stone?” I asked more calmly than I felt.

  “It’s different between us, and you know it. I’ve heard things about what happened with Jack in D.C. that don’t appear in any official reports. And they aren’t good. He knew enough about the victims to know what kind of home life they had. He knew about Fiona’s abusive husband and could have planted the necessary items to implicate George. And his own Detective was having an affair with the second victim. Do you honestly believe he had no idea about that when it was happening right under his nose?” He asked, shaking me a little. “And then what about Dr. Hides?”

  “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Brody. Jack’s my best friend. I’d know if he’d done something like that.”

  Wouldn’t I?

  “What about Dr. Hides?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, but I saw Jack in Nottingham early this morning while I was getting gas at the Diamond Shamrock. It was after we were finished at the crime scene, and you weren’t with him. Dr. Hides hadn’t been dead long when you’d gotten to him. And Jack knew exactly where to go and what he had to do to get rid of those files.”

  I remembered that Jack had asked for an hour to get things in order before we went to see Harvey Wallace. My stomach felt heavy, like I’d swallowed a ball of lead, and I had to ask myself if Jack could have taken that hour to kill Dr. Hides. Was a man I’d known my entire life capable of such a thing? There was no doubt that Jack was capable of violence. You could always see it just under the surface, and his temper had gotten him in trouble when he was younger. But he’d learned to keep it under control as he’d gotten older. And one of Jack’s best traits was his sense of honor. He had a strict moral code that made him one of the best men I’d ever known, but that didn’t mean he didn’t bend the line every now and then to get what he wanted.

  “And I bet if you ask him, he won’t have a solid alibi for the time of either murder,” Brody pressed on.

  I tried to think back frantically through the last four days. I wanted to say that I could give Jack an alibi, but I couldn’t. He’d been off-duty the night before Fiona’s murder. He’d told me he had a date, but I didn’t know who with. I’d seen Jack Sunday morning before Fiona was buried, and I remembered he’d looked tired and worse than I’d seen him in years. Had he come straight to me after killing Amanda Wallace? I did know one thing, Jack had been the one to call me and tell me the news of both murders. And now I didn’t know what to think, or who to trust.

  “You need to leave,” I said dry-mouthed, pointing towards the door.

  “Just promise me you’ll be careful, Jaye. I don’t like leaving you here with all of this going on.”

  “I’ll lock up behind you. Just go. Please,” I begged.

  “All right. But I want to tell you that I hope it’s not Jack for your sake. You may not believe it, but the last thing I want is for you to be hurt. In the mean time, I’ll keep digging and maybe I’ll find out something that will point to someone else.”

  I stayed silent and flinched when I heard the sound of the screen door slam behind him. I couldn’t watch Brody drive away. I was too busy trying to keep myself upright. What he said couldn’t be true. Jack would never do those things. But the doubt was there, planted firmly, and I knew it would only grow over time until the issue was resolved.

  I lost the battle to keep my dinner down and barely made it to the bathroom before I was violently ill. When my stomach was empty I dunked my head under the faucet and came up sputtering. I couldn’t think of these things now. I had Amanda Wallace and Dr. Hides waiting for me.

  I couldn’t keep my personal world from crumbling around me, but I could always help the dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Holy crap,” I said for the second time in less than a minute. It was five o’clock in the morning, and the night had been filled with one surprise after another. I was revved on coffee and no sleep, and I had a decision to make. I had to decide whether or not I could trust Jack.

  I’d known Jack my whole life and couldn’t imagine him not continuing to be a part of it. Jack was more to me than a best friend, and I realized I didn’t care what Brody thought. I could trust Jack with my life. I knew this deep down inside. But I was probably going to have to confront him with it anyway just to get the thoughts out of my head.

  I could never tell when Jack was lying to me, probably because I was so bad at that particular skill myself, but I felt that if I asked him directly I’d somehow instinctively know the truth.

  I gathered my completed files, shoved them in my briefcase and grabbed another cup of coffee to go in one of the insulated mugs I bought by the case. I would have to contact John Luke Stranton to come retrieve Amanda Wallace as soon as the Here and Gone opened, but that was still several hours away.

  I headed towards my Suburban and noticed the only lights on the entire street were coming from my windows. It was too cold for me to head back inside to shut them all off to save on the electricity, and I was much too tired to make the extra effort.

  I’d been wearing the same clothes for almost twenty-four hours, I had no idea what my hair looked like, and I hadn’t had anything in my stomach but coffee since I’d purged my dinner the night before. But boy did I have some damned skippy news.

  The streets were dead, as I’d expected them to be at this time of the morning, and there were only two cars parked in the lot in front of the police station. One of them was Jack’s cruiser.

  I took a deep breath and was glad I’d decided against putting food in my stomach. I wasn’t feeling all that hot again, and I was starting to have second thoughts about confronting Jack.

  I looked through the big, glass-front windows that ran the length of the station and walked inside. It was Jeremy Mooney’s turn to work the night shift obviously since he was sitting behind the desk reading Field and Stream and eating a Snickers bar.

  It was sweltering inside, probably the heater was broken again, and it smelled a little like boiled cabbage and Pine Sol. The floor was industrial tile and all the desks were lined in rows, all stacked with piles of papers and no sense of order whatsoever. The phones were quiet at this time of night, giving the place an eerie quality.

  “Quiet night?” I asked, scaring the daylights out of Mooney, causing him to drop his Snickers and reach for his gun.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said, throwing up my hands.

  “Geez, J.J. You scared the hell out of me,” he said pressing a hand over his heart.

  “You were pretty absorbed in the wonders of Field and Stream. I came to see Jack. Is he in his office?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been home since yesterday morning. I told him about 3 A.M. to throw in the towel. I think he’s finally sleeping.”

  “I hate to wake him, but I’ve got some important information. You might as well stay here and keep reading. There’s no need for him to be mad at both of us,” I said and headed back to Jack’s office.

  Jack’s office was a box that was glassed in on three sides. The back wall was covered in wood paneling and a cheap door led to a small private room. A small bathroom with a stand-up shower connected next to it. Jack kept a trundle bed made up just in case he needed a place to crash, and he kept clean clothes in a chest of drawers. It was his private space but hardly what you’d call a home away from home.

  I shut the door to his office and was grateful he habitually kept the blinds to all the windows closed. I didn’t want Jeremy being a witness to what I was about to do.

  The door that led to Jack’s one-room sleeping quarters was locked. I put my ear next to the door but couldn’t hear anything. Jack wasn’t a snorer so I couldn’t tell if he was actually asleep or not. I grabbed the Polaroid camera that was sitting on his desk, checked it for film and then dug around in his bottom drawer to look for the spare key to the door.

  “Here goes nothing,” I whispered.

  The key turned in the lock sound
lessly, and I pushed the door open and slipped inside. And there was Jack, just as I’d known he would be. Jack hadn’t slept with clothes on since he was five years old, and some things never changed. But it was obvious some things had changed. Holy cow! I hadn’t seen Jack naked since he was twelve. What a difference those puberty years could make.

  I moved closer and got the camera ready. I mentally counted down from five in my head and then snapped the picture. I figured the noise and flash would have woken him, but he was still breathing deep, so I snapped a couple of more and then did some looking of my own.

  “I can’t imagine what you’re doing,” he finally said, startling me enough to where I let out a squeak. “If you keep staring, you’re going to make me blush.”

  I had no idea how long I’d been standing there ogling Jack. I must have been out of my mind, but I was caught now and had to bluster my way through.

  “I’m black-mailing you,” I said holding up the pictures of him naked.

  “You think there’s a woman in this county that hasn’t seen me naked?” he asked.

  “No, probably not. But my roommate from college is a graphic designer, and I can get her to superimpose your picture, let’s say, with another man,” I said, waving the pictures over his head. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “Give me those,” he growled, moving as fast as lightning and rolling with me to floor. This was not a position I’d ever been in before, and I had to say it wasn’t completely unpleasant. One hundred and eighty pounds of naked Jack Lawson was pinning me to the floor, and all I could think about was what Brody had said about him killing those women. I needed serious help.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, I thought, banging my head against the floor. Jack had gotten hold of the photographs, but he hadn’t bothered to get off of me. I opened my eyes, and he was looking at me closely. I could feel every inch of him pressed against me. I mean every inch, and I had no idea what I should be feeling. Lust? Definitely. Where had that come from? It was a first for me. Fear? Even more definitely. That was the kicker.

  “Why are you trying to blackmail me?” he said. His mouth was only an inch away from mine, and all I’d have to do was move just a little for our mouths to touch. But instead I opened my mouth to speak. Usually a bad idea with me. My mother always told me I’d never learned when to keep my mouth shut.

  “I wanted something to blackmail you with so you’d tell me the truth on whether or not you killed those women,” I said, all of a sudden feeling stupid, foolish and like a traitor for even saying it. I knew better. Deep in my gut I knew better. Dammit.

  “What did you say?” Jack asked, raising up slightly, but still holding me down.

  “Never mind. It was a stupid thing to say. I recant. You don’t have to answer the question.”

  “Like hell I don’t,” he yelled, getting off of me and walking over to the chest of drawers to pull clean clothes out. “Why the hell would you ever think something like that about me?”

  I didn’t say anything, but he already knew the answer by looking at my face.

  “Ah-ha, let me guess, your new boyfriend told you I could have been the one to do it. I’m sure he made it pretty convincing since he sees me as competition. Is that it?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. That’s the only denial I could make because Brody had made me think those things about Jack. And I wasn’t going to touch what Jack said about him being Brody’s competition. I loved Brody, more than I’d ever let myself love anyone in that way, the lousy, spineless commitment-phobe.

  Or maybe it wasn’t love. How the hell was I supposed to know? Maybe I didn’t have the capability to love someone in that way. Or maybe I was one of those people who made it hard for other people to love me in return. But I knew one thing for certain. I did love Jack. He was the only family I had left. We had something special. We had a history. And friendship. I was an idiot.

  “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t mean it. I swear. It’s been a hard twenty-four hours for me. Please, Jack,” I begged. “I’m sorry.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, walking into the bathroom and shutting the door with a finality that scared me.

  The phone on Jack’s desk warbled and broke the silence he’d left in his wake. I was still on my knees in the middle of a room that was barely the size of my closet, feeling like my whole world had just shattered.

  “Get that, will you,” he yelled through the door.

  It was on its fourth ring by the time I answered. “Sheriff Lawson’s office,” I said.

  “Is Jack in?” a deep voice asked on the other line.

  “He’s unavailable right now. Can I take a message?”

  “This is Agent Carver. That asshole had better not be sleeping, especially since I’ve been up all night working on this mess for him. He’s going to owe me a big one after this.”

  “Oh, Agent Carver, this is Dr. Graves. I’m the coroner who’s been working with Jack on these cases. He told me you’d be calling soon.”

  “Ah, so this is the infamous J.J. Graves,” he said. I could tell he was smiling by the tone of his voice. “Jack’s told me all about you. You seem like a handful.”

  “He says that occasionally,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, I’m glad I caught you because now I can give you all the information instead of having to wait for a return phone call. I’m ready to hit the sack.”

  “You’ve found a match for like crimes?” I asked.

  “I’ve found something interesting, that’s for sure. I can’t begin to tell you how many unsolved sexual assaults we have in the system, or even unsolved sexual assaults that resulted in homicide. But I’ve found a pattern I thought was interesting. I’ve got unsolved cases in Atlanta, New York, Baltimore, Portland and Trenton.

  “In Atlanta the perp used a knife. All vics were women. He slit their throats ear to ear after he raped them. There were four bodies total, and then the murders stopped after a couple of weeks and no one’s heard from him since. Crimes unsolved.

  “In New York, we had four more victims, all women, sexually assaulted, and all four killed with a single gun-shot to the right temple. He staged them all to look like suicides. All four of those also remain unsolved.

  “In Baltimore, we’ve got three victims. If there was a fourth they never found her body. These women were all buried alive in different parks throughout the city.”

  “Rape?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yep. In Portland the victim’s were beaten to death, and in Trenton more variations with a knife, only a lot messier than the first time around.”

  “Were any of the victims men?” I asked, curious to see if my suspicions rang true.

  “Actually, yes,” he said. “How’d you know? The fourth victim in the Portland murders and the third victim in Trenton were both men. And they were both sodomized. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  “The same,” I said. “Third victim was a doctor, older man, purported suicide by hanging at first glance, but when I got him on the table I realized he’d been raped as well. He wasn’t found nude, so I didn’t even suspect a rape. Our guy doesn’t care about leaving his DNA lying around.”

  I heard papers shuffling across the phone line and knew Agent Carver was checking for the same. “I’m not seeing it here,” he said. “He didn’t leave anything behind with these victims.”

  “I guess maybe that’s why he feels like he can with the victims here in Bloody Mary.”

  “I’m going to fax everything I’ve got to Jack’s office,” Carver said. “I want you to call me if you need help. He’s gotten three, but in all the cases except the one where he buried them alive there were four victims. And I think that’s just because they never found the fourth body.”

  “We’ll call if we need you,” I assured him and disconnected.

  My brain was tired, and I was seeing double. I heard the fax machine ring and start to whine out sheets of paper. I lay down on th
e floor to wait for them to finish. Jack was still in the shower, and it wouldn’t hurt to rest my eyes for a few minutes. And if a few tears fell it was only because I was too tired to control them.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I woke disoriented and weirdly enough, floating, but it turned out it was only Jack, picking me up off the floor and sitting down with me cradled in his lap. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his familiarity and comfort. He wiped the traces of tears off my cheeks with his thumb and kissed the top of my head, then my cheeks, my chin, my lips.

  My breath hitched painfully, and varying emotions bombarded me. Confusion, love, anger, sorrow, and not the least of which was attraction. Not good. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  “Shh. . .It’s okay. Me too,” he said. And we sat there for a while, each lost in our own thoughts, but it was only so long before the real world intruded again. I awkwardly dislodged myself from Jack’s lap and moved to the chair on the other side of his desk.

  Jack’s office was Spartan to say the least. He’d once told me he’d work out of the back of his car and not have an office at all if it would let him hire one more cop. The blinds on the windows were bent and only attached to the window frame by years of dust. The gray carpet was worn and threadbare in places, and his desk was metal and dented on every side like it had been dropped down a couple of flights of stairs. There were no plants or photos anywhere around, nothing personal to try and cheer the place up a little.

  “Was that Carver on the phone?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, he’s faxing a few open cases he thought would peak your interest. He’s got similarities in several different states that could be our guy. The only difference is that he didn’t leave any DNA at the previous crime scenes, so you might not be able to tie him to our murders without a confession.”

  “And it might not be our guy at all.”

  “Possibly. But this feels right, especially after what I found out during the autopsies. Dr. Hides was raped,” I said. This news got Jack’s attention, and he had his cop face back in place, ready to absorb the details. “Carver told me there were two male victims who had also been raped in two separate cases.”