Justified

by Carolyn Arnold

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  Keep on reading for a sample of Sacrifice, book 3 in the Detective Madison Knight series.

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  Preview of Sacrifice

  Finding justice comes at a high price…

  When a young man washes up on the shore of the Bradshaw River, Detective Madison Knight and her partner are called in to investigate. But the case takes a complicated turn when he’s identified as the son of local business tycoon Marcus Randall. As one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the city, he has a lot of connections, and one of them just so happens to be the Stiles PD police chief.

  Madison and Chief McAlexandar have butted heads before, but with this case, her drive and determination to find the truth just might cost her the job she worked so hard to get. She’s got her eye on Randall, despite the chief’s protests of the man’s innocence, and she’s not the only one. The Secret Service is after him for suspicion of fraud and counterfeiting, and they want Madison’s full cooperation to aid their investigation.

  Stuck between the chief and one of the most powerful men in Stiles isn’t the ideal place to be, but if Madison’s going to find justice, she has no choice but to risk it all.

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  Prologue

  HE EQUATED HIS PAST DEEDS to shades of gray with no distinction between black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. He knew others would see things differently, but it didn’t matter. Few people possessed the ability to intimidate and influence him. The man he was meeting had the power to do both.

  He walked into the dimly lit Fairmont Club, and as he followed the maître d’ to a back table, he inhaled the smells of grilled steak mingled with imported cigars. Appreciatively, he watched her hips sway as if she put extra effort into it.

  “Patrick, how nice of you to join me.” The man in the pressed Armani, with whom very few conversed with on a first name basis, sat at the table. A glass of Louis XIII Black Pearl, priced at fifteen hundred an ounce, was in front of him.

  Patrick noticed the man’s bodyguard sitting at a nearby table. He was Armani’s prized stallion who instead of being stabled was toted about and showcased. The man went by Jonathan Wright, but Patrick doubted that was his real name. He was super intelligent and a former marine. Wright nodded his approval and went back to his steak and red wine.

  Another young woman, a potential Asian model, stood at the edge of the table. “Your regular, sir?”

  “French with a twist.” Patrick smiled at the waitress remembering the feel of her skin and the smell of her musky dew. Although a married man for thirty years, he didn’t think his wife had noticed him missing that night.

  A few minutes later, the waitress came back with his Perrier water and lime in a rocks glass. The weight with which she set it on the table told him her memories were back, but she had to act like a civilized woman; after all she was working. She had to know, with a body like hers, she begged men to take advantage of her. He still believed he could have her again if he were at all inclined.

  Armani held up his glass in a toasting gesture before swirling it lightly and taking a deep inhale. He followed with a small draw on the cognac. “When are you going to join me and have a real drink?”

  “I’m on the job.”

  “Time for that new chair, my friend.”

  “Is that why you called me here?” Patrick smiled. Maybe the time had come to be repaid for past favors?

  Armani let out a laugh. “Hardly. I need your help with something.”

  Patrick’s heart palpitated with adrenaline as it did every time this man made that statement. It was too late in his life to change to one of innocence. Should his past deeds ever require an accounting, his only option would be a bullet to the brain. “You name it.”

  Armani played things smart, though. He always reminded him of the stakes involved first. “You help me with this and I’ll ensure you make Mayor.”

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  Chapter 1

  THE PUNGENT ODOR HIT MADISON instantly upon opening the morgue doors. She pinched the tip of her nose, but it did little to save her from the smell of decomp becoming embedded in her lungs and sinus cavities.

  “Whoa, he’s a ripe one.” Terry, her partner, stepped through the doorway behind her. He grabbed for a cloth mask from the dispenser mounted on the wall and handed her one.

  Cole Richards, the ME, stood by the body as a tall, dark guardian. “It’s the exposure to the air accelerating the putrefaction process. That is why the autopsy must be done tonight,” Richards said.

  Madison noted Richards talked with his eyes on the dead, an unusual thing for him. Maybe something about this death touched him on a personal level? She looked from Richards to the body.

  The male victim, estimated in his early twenties, lay on the metal slab, a white sheet draped over his extended abdomen to his shoulders. His skin was almost black and appeared separated from the bone as if one could peel it off like the rind of an orange. His face, like the rest of him, was distorted and bloated beyond recognition. His eyes were open and vacant, clouded by death. His arms lay above the sheet to his sides. Some of his fingers were missing nails. The skin of one fingertip had been removed. Madison deduced Richards had taken it for identification purposes and forwarded it to the lab.

  There was no wallet found on the body, nor any identifying marks to flag him in the missing persons database. The only things on him were a napkin with a woman’s name and number, a wad of cash, and a prepaid, untraceable cell phone. He wore a gold chain with a pendant that had the letters CC engraved.

  The body had washed up on the shore of the Bradshaw River, which ran through the city of Stiles and fed from a lake an hour away. The property belonged to a middle-aged couple, without children, by the last name of Walker. The wife had found the body when she went to get wood for their woodstove. She said he hadn’t been there the day before. They had interviewed the couple at length and obtained their backgrounds, which came up with nothing noteworthy.

  “How long do you estimate he was in the water?” Madison asked.

  “As simply a deduction from what is before me, at least two to three weeks.” Richards pulled his eyes from the body to look at Madison.

  Was pain buried there? It was as if he read her thought. He returned his attention to the body.

  “I’m basing this on when he surfaced,” Richards continued. “In cooler water, bacteria causing decomp multiplies more sluggishly. If this was a warmer season, and it was three weeks later, we’d have a skeleton. Stomach contents will provide the approximate time of his last meal
and what he ate. I’ll also be consulting with a friend of mine, Wayne McDermott. He’s a forensic climatologist. He can provide us with recent temperatures so we can get a closer estimate for TOD.”

  “So what are your thoughts? Dead when he went in or did he drown?”

  “This is still to be determined. He is young and appears to have been in excellent shape.”

  Madison’s eyes diverted to the body. The currents of the Bradshaw River had swept away any trace of a fit male adult. His bloated features made him appear more like a character from a sci-fi movie than a once living human being.

  “Assuming he was alive when he hit the water, it is unlikely that he had a heart attack on entry. Quick results would show frothy liquid in the lungs, but because he was submerged for a considerable time, any trace of this would be gone. Tissue samples from his lungs, however, will be taken and sent to the lab for further analysis. We’ll also extract bone marrow in search of diatoms.” He must have noticed the expression on their faces. “These are microscopic organisms which are specific to a region. If it made it to his bone marrow, he was alive when he went into the water. We could also find evidence of this in his kidneys, should this be the case. This will prove whether he drowned in the Bradshaw or was dumped in the river.” His eyes went to the body. “We’re not going to get these answers just by looking at him.”

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Terry asked.

  “His neck is broken but, it might simply be the trauma the body experienced as it went down the Bradshaw. I will require a full tox panel be run on him. We’ll find out if he had any drugs or alcohol in his system. As you know, that will take at least a week.”

  Madison latched eyes with the ME. “Well, let’s assume he did drown. How would we know it was homicide?”

  A faint smile touched Richards’s lips, exposing a slit of white teeth. “It is dubbed the perfect murder. But until we can establish his identity, concrete his background, and get the tox results back, I will not be finalizing COD on paper.”

  “He could have jumped in. Suicide?” Terry rubbed at the back of his neck.

  “Possibly, but unlikely. The reason for this is the natural tendency to surface. Drowning suicides usually involve the use of a heavy object to counteract that instinct.”

  “Maybe he didn’t think things through and acted on impulse. Most suicides are executed in the moment. He could have got caught in the current and pulled under the ice. His restraint could have broken free from the body.”

  “I prefer not to speculate.” Richards’s eye contact scolded Terry. “But at this point, I would treat this case as suspicious leaning toward homicide. Look at this.” Richards lifted the left hand of the victim.

  Madison noticed the circular impression on the backside of the hand. “Cigarette burn, or possibly something larger.” She studied it, and a few seconds later glanced at Richards. “It’s almost large enough to be a car lighter or a cigar.”

  Richards’s eyes narrowed, pinching the dark skin around his eyes.

  “So our vic was definitely in some sort of struggle before ending up in the river. But intention is going to be hard to prove.”

  Madison glanced at her skeptical partner. “Hard, but not impossible.” She went back to Richards. “So, you don’t have an ID and only a speculative conclusion as to the cause of death. Why did you call us down here?”

  Richards pulled back the sheet and pointed to the victim’s shoulders. “This.”

  There were darkened lines, a subtle contrast, two widths, a mirror image to each other, and one on each shoulder close to the neck.

  “Bruising.”

  “Yes, contusions.”

  “From what? What would cause something like that?”

  “That I’ll leave for you to figure out.” Richards placed the sheet back over the body. “But if our guy did drown due to forcible action, these marks could have come from our murder weapon.”

  -

  Chapter 2

  STEPPING OUT OF THE MORGUE, Madison braced a hand on her hip above her holster. “So, we’re left without an identity and only have a surmised cause of death.”

  “Richards seems pretty certain it was a drowning even though he didn’t want to speculate,” Terry mocked the ME.

  Madison had noted that too. Richards was typically a person who ran based on facts, not assumptions. She had found it strange how he kept coming back to drowning as the COD without being certain.

  “And here we are, another Sunday night spent on the job.”

  “Terry, what else would you be doing?”

  “Hmm.”

  Her phone rang, but she said to Terry, “If he was drowned, we have to prove someone did this to him. It’s not going to be an easy case.”

  “Even more fun.” He plastered on a fake smile and passed a glance to her phone. “And figures we get the case, and not Sovereign.”

  “The only reason we got it is because he’s got the flu.”

  “Think they’re calling it a super bug.”

  Madison shrugged it off. Her phone kept ringing, bringing with it the reminder she had to take care of something. “Gotta go.”

  She headed for the elevator, pushed the button for it, and answered the call without consulting the caller ID. “Knight.” She answered professionally, but she had a feeling she knew her caller.

  “Don’t worry about coming for me.” It was Blake, a man she had been seeing for a few months.

  She looked at her watch. 11:00.

  Hours had passed since they last talked. They had been at her sister’s for a dinner and get together with her parents, who were up from Florida. Originally Madison had staged a fake call to get out of it, but then the real one came in. Blake, playing the good boyfriend, stayed behind.

  “Sorry. I’m caught up now.”

  “You said that hours ago. Besides, I’m home now and you’re on the hunt. I get it. Just don’t get on me when a case loads me down.”

  She detected amusement in his voice. That was the one benefit of dating another professional. He understood what it was to forfeit all else to focus on what needed to be done. “Who drove you?”

  “Chelsea. She even wrapped you up a take home platter. You’ll have to come over here to get it.”

  Chelsea was her younger sister, the seemingly perfect one, at least in the eyes of her mother. A family woman, a mother of three, married to the perfect man, living in the perfect neighborhood. One thing that wasn’t perfect about her though was her cooking. Now Blake would know this.

  “Yum.” Madison laughed and it cooled rather quickly, as thoughts of leaving him there slapped her.

  He must have sensed the mood shift across the line. “Are you upset with me for some reason?”

  She wanted to answer him outright but didn’t have the energy required for the argument. She disregarded his question and came back with her own. “How did it go anyway?”

  “Not too bad.”

  She sensed hesitation. “And Mom?” Madison didn’t know why she asked the question because she really didn’t want the answer. She was sure she already knew it.

  Blake’s end went silent.

  “She’s not happy. You can say it.” She felt as though a stranger had invaded her world. He didn’t need to see this side of her life, the side her mother tried to dominate. What was I thinking inviting him?

  “Well—” he cleared his throat “—things came to an impasse. I defended you. Your father seemed to like that, with my being a defense attorney and all.”

  “I don’t need you defending me.”

  “I was just—”

  “Don’t bother telling me. Mom told you how the service eats people alive, probably tried to talk you out of a relationship with me.” Her voice rose with each word. She turned around to face Terry who diverted eye contact.

  “She’s just conc
erned.”

  “But she doesn’t need to be.”

  “Maddy, may I see you tomorrow?”

  The elevator chimed its arrival. It seemed to have taken forever to reach the basement today. Terry came on beside her.

  “Can I get back to you?”

  “I’m sensing a brush off, and after you took me home to meet the parents?”

  “Night, Blake.” She hung up without waiting for him to respond.

  What did all this say about her as a person? Was she getting defensive because her mother had a point? Maybe it was selfish of her. Not when it came to her career but that she had pulled someone else in to her life. In some ways, things would be less complicated if she stayed completely unattached. What was she thinking allowing her heart a portion of an opportunity to welcome the security of a real relationship? As long as there were killers to catch, she didn’t have time for one.

  “So how’s that going?” Terry gestured to the cell she held clenched in a hand.

  There was only one floor. She should have taken the stairs and gotten some exercise.

  “You took him to meet your parents, didn’t you? How did that go?” Their eyes matched.

  “How did you know?”

  “I overheard you and Cynthia talking about it the other day.”

  “I’m not sure how that concerns you. Not even sure how it really concerns Cynthia.”

  Cynthia Baxter headed up the forensics lab and specialized in documents, fingerprints, and other patterned evidence. But she was more than a colleague; she was a close friend.

  “You did take him.” Terry’s face beamed. “Your relationship must be progressing. Before you know it, there will be a wedding.”

  “Terry, shut up before I punch both of your shoulders hard enough you’ll lose all feeling.” She stared at him, daring him to say one more thing before she turned toward the lit floor number. She would never let the relationship get to the point of marriage. And to think she could have avoided this conversation. How long would it have taken to walk up one flight of stairs?