The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set Book 2)

by John W. Mefford

  He waved a hand at Terri, acting like he was dismissing her.

  I took a chair from a table, turned it around, and sat, now eye to eye with the baddest guy around, or so we were to believe.

  “Are you aware that one of your girls died?”

  He scratched a few whiskers, his eyes on the cash. “I heard.”

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Nothing,” he said, turning his gaze to me. “I don’t get involved in other people’s business. I wish other people had the same courtesy.” He cocked his head, his voice laced with attitude. I wondered if this was going to work, on his turf. He believed he was untouchable. I had to bring him down to earth, to make him feel vulnerable.

  I held my Glock in the air, then unlatched the clip of ammunition and slapped it back in. I had an audience. I threw my arm downward, slamming the metal gun into Finley’s kneecap. He cried out and grabbed his knee.

  “What the hell you go off and do that for, you—”

  “Courtesy,” Terri said.

  “Fuck courtesy. I think this crazy woman just broke my kneecap. I used to be able to run a four-four forty with these knees.”

  I inched the chair closer, and I could smell his boozy breath.

  “Listen, Jasper. I don’t care about your four-four knees or your street cred. That was a shot across your bow—a last warning. Share everything you know, or we will make one call. Then it’s all over. Your whole world will implode.”

  “Okay.” He grimaced, showing off his single gold tooth. “This girl, Pandora, she worked for me a bit. Off and on.”

  “Two nights ago. Do you remember seeing her?”

  His eyes looked to the ceiling. “I don’t know. Maybe. The days and nights kind of blur together. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Think harder. Two nights ago. It’s important.”

  “Shoopey, did you see her?” he asked his accountant, the man in the Celtics cap sitting at the cash table.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I can check, but I don’t think she came in for any type of…exchange.”

  “What the hell is an exchange?” Terri asked.

  Shoopey looked to his grand master, who flicked a hand and nodded. “It’s when they give us a percentage of their proceeds, and we reciprocate the transaction with a nice bonus.”

  “Coke?” Terri asked.

  “I don’t want to implicate myself. I just count money.”

  I recalled Candy saying she saw Emma on the street. Either she was lying or she could have gotten her days mixed up.

  I turned back to Finley. “Did you know her real name?”

  He huffed out a breath, as if our conversation was taking years off his life. “I think it’s Emma.”

  “She has two kids.”

  “So?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “I got kids in five states, at least the ones I claim.” He rocked back in his chair, laughing hard at himself. No one else joined him. In fact, I looked at his girl, and she had her hands over her face.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  No response.

  “Hey, she’s asking you a question,” Terri said.

  The girl lifted her face to show off a pair of raccoon eyes, a trail of black tears streaming down her gaunt cheekbones.

  “Misty. My name is Misty. And you guys are really freaking me out. It just hit me that you’re not just giving CD a hard time. I think it’s true, right?”

  I nodded.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t keep doing this, CD. I just can’t. It’s going to kill me, or I’m going to get picked up by some nut job who wants to get his jollies by killing us working girls.”

  Finley said, “You just need a couple of days to unwind. Why don’t you get Shoopey here to give you an extra bonus for that work you did for me earlier. Then you can go to one of those fancy spas in Back Bay. Go ahead, Shoopey, give her a few bills.”

  “I don’t want your fucking money. I just need to sober up and stop taking chances with my life, dammit.” She clawed at the carpet as a new round of tears fell from her face, then she moved to her knees. “Can I go now?” she asked me and Terri.

  “Did you know Pandora…Emma?”

  She shook her head. “No. I usually work only by request through CD or Shoopey, then I go to where the customer is. I guess you could say I’m higher end.”

  CD only nodded, as if she were affirming his business model.

  I turned back to him. “So you’re not sure if you saw Emma two nights ago. What about her typical customers? Do you guys know who they are?”

  “Some. Why?”

  I nodded at Terri, who had already pulled out her phone and flipped to Vince’s mug. I took it from her and showed it to CD, then over to Shoopey, and even Misty. The other guy on the couch had his eyes shut.

  “Hard to say. Kind of looks like a lot of customers,” Finley said.

  Terri handed out her business card and told everyone to call her if they remembered anything about Emma, her whereabouts two nights ago or her customers.

  “We’re taking the coke with us,” I declared.

  “I would put up a fight, but it’s not going to do me much good, is it?” Finley asked.

  “Nope. But I know you’ll get your hands on more drugs within a day or two.”

  He smiled, and his gold tooth sparkled from a nearby lamp.

  Terri and I turned to leave.

  “Hold up. One quick thing,” Finley said, lifting from his chair.

  We turned. He was about my height, maybe shorter. Kevin Hart came to mind, minus the easy smile.

  “If you ask around, you might hear a couple of folks saying me and Emma got into an…argument.”

  “We’re listening,” Terri said.

  “It was a few days ago. Maybe a week. I don’t know, but it wasn’t two days ago. Anyway, she owed me money. I’d given her a loan of some product, just to keep her from going nuts, and she hadn’t repaid it. So I got on her. She kind of went ballistic on me, tried clawing my eyes out. She’s got daggers for nails, man.”

  “Did you beat her like you did that other girl?”

  He gave me a blank stare. “I didn’t touch her. But I did call her every name in the book. I don’t like it when people cheat me out of my money, even if they got a habit they can’t kick.”

  I wanted to give this asshole a lecture, but it wouldn’t do any good and certainly wouldn’t help us find Emma’s killer.

  “Thanks. Let us know if you remember anything else.”

  He nodded, and we left with the bag of coke hidden inside my jacket. On the way down the stairs, Terri read her phone. “Search warrant finally came back.”

  “Judge approved it?”

  “Yep. Want to make it an all-nighter?”

  “If we can keep Tripuka off the streets, I’m game,” I said. “I can’t say for certain he’s our killer, but something about him is off.”

  16

  Miss Lucille stood just off her back porch wrapped in a blanket, as red, white, and blue lights flashed across her angst-ridden face. It was obvious she wasn’t enjoying any aspect of the late-night search of her garage apartment, the home of her tenant, Vince Tripuka.

  I paused for a second to let a woman wearing a CSI jacket walk past me. She was carrying a black plastic chest that undoubtedly was filled with all sorts of tools to collect evidence: bindle paper, electrostatic dust lifter, glass vials, acetate sheet protectors, a flashlight for oblique lighting, all sizes of tweezers, and evidence bags. She probably had a hundred other tools back in her van.

  Gravel crunched under my shoes as I made my way over to Miss Lucille. I nodded, but she hardly paid me much attention, her gaze on the people coming in and out of the garage apartment. We’d already spoken a bit earlier, when I woke her in the middle of the night to let her know we were going to be conducting a search. She proceeded to shed a few tears, then gave us the spare keys to the apartment.

  Between cops,
CSI personnel, and SMEs (subject matter experts) from the FBI whom I’d brought in to support the Somerville team, there were about fifteen people on site. So far, not a single person had complained about the crazy hours—it was now almost five a.m. As a point of emphasis, once all the teams were on site, Terri had gathered everyone together and given them a pep talk, her message succinct: the suspect, Vince Tripuka, would likely walk if the team didn’t find and process evidence connecting him to either of the two murders, Emma or Gloria Lopez from ten years earlier. But, she reminded them, if anyone had the notion of planting evidence, she would personally testify at their trial to ensure a conviction.

  While I inwardly questioned her timing and even her approach, that woman had a pair on her that would rival anyone from the football team for which she used to cheer. The CSI team had been moving nonstop for a good three hours.

  “Do you think he did it?”

  I glanced to my left to see Miss Lucille still staring at the movement in and around the apartment. The entire area around the garage looked like the setting for a breaking-news media scene with all the spotlights the Sommerville officers had set up. The floodlight attached to the garage was still not working—Miss Lucille had mentioned that light being out when she’d let her dog back in the house, the night of Emma’s death. “That’s why we’re here, to gather evidence that allows us to make that conclusion.”

  “I understand. But do you, Special Agent Alex Troutt, think he killed that poor girl?”

  I paused, considering my response. “I don’t know. I’ve learned over the years that guessing and hoping doesn’t do us any good at all. We use every legal means possible to gather facts, then sift through everything to determine what is truly evidence, not an opinion or even an assumption. Once we stack up enough of the evidence cards, it points us in the right direction.”

  “Doesn’t that take a while to do, especially when you don’t have an eyewitness or the actual murder weapon?”

  I turned my head slightly to her. She knew just enough of the process to be dangerous, probably from watching too many of those CSI TV shows. “It can, yes.”

  “But didn’t I hear your partner say that you only had a few hours until Vince would be let out of jail?”

  I knew Terri’s pep talk had been ill-timed. “We’re really not at liberty to discuss the details of the case.”

  “But don’t you think I should know if a potential killer is going to be let loose in just a few hours, especially since this is probably where he’ll show up after he’s released? It’s a safety issue.”

  A moment later, I heard a few sniffles. I put my arm around her and said, “Miss Lucille, I can understand how traumatic this is on you. You will be safe, even if we have to assign an officer or agent to watch your home.”

  She released a choppy breath. “Maybe I’m naïve, but I just don’t think Vince would hurt me, even if he is the awful person you think he is. More than anything, I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Arthur,” she said, quickly grabbing a tissue from her robe pocket and bringing it to her mouth. “I’ve shamed his good name by having all of this going on.” She waved a blanket-covered hand in the direction of the garage. “While he was very compassionate and I’ve tried to carry on in the same manner, it’s just plain stupid for me to rent an apartment to a murderer.”

  “I wouldn’t blame yourself, Miss Lucille. How could you have known? And right now we don’t know for certain that he’s done anything of that sort.”

  “Right. Follow the evidence,” she said behind a few more sniffles.

  I saw Terri emerge from the apartment, wearing blue latex gloves. She was speaking to another cop. She glanced down at me and nodded. My heart skipped a beat.

  “We’ll talk again before we leave, Miss Lucille.” I walked over to the garage, shuffled around two CSI people holding large plastic bags, then made my way up the wooden set of stairs.

  “Did you find the murder weapon?” I asked the moment I hit the landing, my eyes already peeking inside.

  “No lead-in question or introduction?” Terri asked, moving to her left to allow another cop to get by. “You just go straight for the home run.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I guess I would have done the same.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “You would have yelled at me from across the yard.” I winked, then stepped just inside the apartment. While I’d taken a brief look inside when we used Miss Lucille’s keys to open the door, I’d quickly exited to give the real pros more time to do their work.

  “Gotta admit, you have me pegged, Alex.” She moved up next to me as we watched the rest of the team continue the search process.

  “Excuse me,” a lady said, coming out of the bedroom holding a monitor and a cable. Just behind her a man carried one of those tower computers.

  Terri said, “That’s either ten years old, or it’s one of those new-age computers that can be built at home, which means Vince is a real gadget guy.”

  The computer guy looked our way. “I think it’s about nine years old and has less processing power than my two-year-old phone.”

  “We don’t care if he was trying to fly a rocket ship to Mars. We only care if it has valuable information on it. How long will it take to search through the files and let us know if there is anything noteworthy?”

  “Eh. On a computer this old, there’s only so much security that can be loaded. Not long. I’m guessing within a few hours.”

  “Cool, thanks.” I felt a burst of energy, knowing we might finally get a true perspective of Tripuka’s private life, where he spent his time, his hobbies…what his passions were.

  “By the way,” the man said, stopping briefly at the door, “we might find more jewels on his hidden tablet.”

  Terri stuck out a hand. “Hidden? Where?”

  “We found it under the pillow top of his mattress.”

  Without wasting another second, I led the way to the bedroom where we found a woman placing a tablet inside an evidence bag.

  “Nice catch,” Terri said.

  “Thanks.” A redhead wearing gold-rimmed glasses sounded all business. She picked up her own tablet and typed on it, likely logging the piece of evidence.

  “Can you show me where he had it hidden?” I asked.

  She walked to the foot of the bed, lifted a brown and orange floral comforter, then the sheet, and pointed at a small slit between the pillow top and the actual mattress.

  “Anything else in there?”

  “Nope. Just big enough for the tablet.”

  An FBI agent was on the other side of the bed, carefully peeling back the matted, stained carpet in the corner. “Did you see anything that makes you think Tripuka has stashed something under this top-notch carpet?” I asked him.

  “No. Just being thorough. Plus, if he hid his tablet in his mattress, he’s got the mindset to conceal personal property. I guess not everyone who does that is a murderer though.”

  “True. But they usually have a significant other or someone they’re hiding it from. For what reason, we don’t know.”

  I turned back as the CSI person started to walk out of the door with Tripuka’s tablet.

  “How long until—”

  “I was waiting for you to ask. This is a new model, and they’re difficult to hack. Maybe he knew that when he bought it…maybe he didn’t. Even with your SMEs helping us out, it’s hard to make promises on the unpredictable. Could take us two hours to get in—”

  “We’ll take that,” Terri said while sifting through clothes hanging in the closet.

  Red shook her head, a brief look of exasperation. “I was about to say, it could just as easily be two days, maybe more. And that’s with us working nonstop, which I’m willing to do.”

  “Have at it, and let me know when you find something,” Terri said.

  “Will do,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “For what it’s worth, I really hope we find the evidence
we need. There is something about this that really sticks with me. And I think it’s because Tripuka, or whoever killed those girls, preyed on women in their most desperate state—addicts who are hooking just to pay for that next fix. Sometimes I don’t know how we can think that humanity has really evolved, not with psychos like Tripuka out in the world. Well, I’ll stop pontificating and get on this.”

  She walked out of the room.

  I ambled over to Terri, as Red’s words rattled in my mind. “I guess there’s no weapon then?”

  She tried to smile, but her nose wrinkled. “Not a single gun on the premise. Even his knife set was dull and old.”

  “His red pickup. I didn’t see it outside,” I said.

  “We had it impounded the moment the warrant was approved. It’s already in our garage with another three-person team poring over it. I just talked to them before you came up. No weapon in the car either. But they are looking for trace evidence. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “If we’re thorough enough, we won’t need luck. But I know it’s not easy, especially with this clock ticking in the back of our minds.”

  Terri and I finished sifting through Tripuka’s few sets of clothes in his bedroom closet when we both heard a technician saying, “…logged into our evidence database. And this piece of evidence might be significant.”

  I quickly walked into the living room area, the eyes of a mounted deer head staring me down from the opposite wall. I turned my back to the dead animal as a technician slid a tablet under his arm.

  “What did you find?” I could feel Terri right behind me.

  “A few strands of hair in the corner of this tiny closet here.”

  “Good. Let’s get it analyzed. Although DNA analysis might take a while.”

  “True, but in my years of doing this, I’d bet my reputation those are female hairs.”

  Terri and I locked eyes and she said, “But do we have enough time to prove it before he’s released?”

  Unfortunately, I knew the answer to that question.

  ***

  Whoever came up with the phrase Keystone Cops must have foreshadowed the scene I was witnessing. Stuffed into a small conference room with four chairs were nine people. One comment couldn’t be finished without another person jumping in to counter that point and offer up another idea. Multiply that by four, then add in someone new popping into the room to give us updates every couple of minutes. In addition to the lack of effectiveness of the group, the air had become stagnant and humid. A waft of BO had just invaded my personal space, and I quickly stopped breathing through my nose.