by Kylie Brant
“Not until she drops the load of guilt she’s hauling around with her. It’ll factor into every decision. Color every response. I know my people,” he repeated, settling back into the luxurious leather of the town car. Before hiring someone on, he familiarized himself with every facet of their background. Observed them in their line of work. Many people looked fit on paper, but psychologically were a poor match for the demands of his company. It wasn’t enough to know their lives inside and out. He made sure he walked around inside their minds before offering them a job. He didn’t think he’d made a mistake in hiring yet.
And he didn’t want to be wrong about Marisa Chandler.
“She’s not you.” Paulie had an uncanny and damned annoying habit of reading his mind at times. “People deal with trauma in their own way. You can’t dictate the road posts to their recovery.”
“She’s strong. And I’m not dictating,” he countered. “I’m just handing her a map.” He pulled out his cell and checked for the one message that would keep them in Philadelphia another night. When he didn’t find it, he muttered a curse.
Paulie nosed the car down the street and checked in his mirror to be sure the vehicle with their security detail followed. “Our guy didn’t take the bait?”
“It was a stupid plan,” muttered Adam. And one he’d only succumbed to under pressure.
“It was worth a shot,” the other man corrected. In conjunction with four different city police departments, and the bureau that seemed only too eager to jump into the mix, Adam’s would-be assassin had been identified. Tyler Jennings had been raised in Philadelphia and should have felt comfortable making a move here.
He should have fallen for the look alike masquerading at the Ritz, while Adam and Paulie stayed at a much more modest nearby hotel. The fact that he hadn’t, when they had proof that he’d followed Adam to the city was troubling.
“He’s smart,” he said grudgingly. The man would have to be to have evaded law enforcement in four cities so far.
“And tenacious. He won’t give up.” Paulie slanted a glance at him. “His name still doesn’t ring a bell?”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t know him. Hadn’t even heard of him until we made the ID a couple days ago.” There was no reason he should have. He’d put away his share of men just like Jennings over the years, and there were always more to take their place. Men without scruples who sold their services to the highest bidder.
He didn’t care about Jennings. The man was just a tool. Adam wanted whoever had hired him.
“I still think this is tied somehow to the Mulder kidnapping you worked with Kellan and Macy last winter in Colorado.”
Because this was familiar territory, Adam leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eye. “There’s no proof of that.”
“It was during that time that we started getting hacking attempts into our financials,” Paulie said doggedly. They were driving down a street edged in neon. To his credit, he gave barely a glance at a sign giving directions to a casino.
“Which the new fire wall you constructed took care of.”
“Well, of course.” He shrugged without modesty. “But the attempts on your life started almost immediately after that case. Makes me wonder if Castillo might have been telling the truth about LeCroix’s son being alive. About him maybe wanting revenge for you killing his father.”
“Enrique Castillo is a miserable self-serving child-trafficker. He blames me for his life sentence. Anything he’d say is suspect. And John LeCroix was hardly the last man I’ve been in contact with who wants me dead.” Although to be sure, the man had come a damn sight closer to succeeding than most.
Broodingly, he fingered the scar on his throat. He almost preferred LeCroix’s methods. At least he could fight back against an enemy he could see. He had a feeling he was going to run out of patience with this current game long before Jennings did.
Nate glanced up as Risa pushed into the office, then stared. “You look . . . tired,” he amended when her eyes slitted. “Late night last night?”
“I stayed up awhile working on the profile,” she said brusquely.
He had enough experience with female moods to gauge hers at a notch past dangerous. And enough wisdom to keep his mouth shut, accordingly.
She set her computer case on her desk and unzipped the side pocket to withdraw the file folder. Turning, she tossed it on his desk. “Keep in mind it’s an evolving document. It’ll change as we have more details on the case.”
“I’m familiar with profiles.” His tone was mild. He was becoming something of an expert of treading with caution. Living with Kristin recently was like serving as tiger bait. He never knew when one false move would have her pouncing.
The hell of it was, Tucker was starting to pick up on the undercurrents, and his behavior had taken a turn for the worse. Bedtime last night had surpassed battle status and taken on the elements of a full-fledged war. By the end of the night Kristin and her son were both in tears, and the old cravings had returned full force. Nate would have smoked a rolled-up newspaper if he could have figured a way to get nicotine in it first.
“There’s coffee.” He felt a need to point it out and hoped it’d have the same effect on her it’d had on him when he came in.
“Ah. Bless Darrell.” She got up and headed to the pot he’d filched from the staff room. He opened his mouth to warn her. Shut it again.
She poured a cup and carried it back to her desk before taking a healthy swallow. Her sputtering cough had him grinning. “It’s Darrell’s day off. Flo made this.”
She aimed a hard stared his way. “You might have told me that sooner.”
“I might have.” He hid his grin by tucking his head down and unrolling the map on his desk. “But you didn’t take as big a taste as I did and misery loves company.”
Risa grimaced and took another sip, more cautiously this time. “Well, if nothing else, it should clear the fog out of my head this morning.”
“And then some.”
“I took a look at the LUDs last night.”
He raised his brows. “I have a team combing through the phone records already. No calls to duplicate numbers have been placed or received.”
“Couldn’t sleep, remember?” Despite the words, her tone was slightly less caustic than it’d been earlier. Caffeine was a good jumpstart. And Flo’s coffee was high octane. “Did your guys mention that all three victims received a call from a public phone in the last month?”
He lifted a shoulder, unimpressed. “Informants use public phones all the time. They didn’t come from the same number.” Couldn’t have, or the detectives would have caught it.
“No.” She put her coffee down and took out a thick green binder. He recognized it as the one she was keeping her case file in. “But they did all come in on the same date. All within a half hour of each other, in fact.”
Letting the edges of the map roll back, he looked instead at the page in the binder she was indicating. “Okay, this one went out to Roland Parker and the number is identified as being located inside Hanley’s Market on the sixteen hundred block of Post. But fifteen minutes later someone placed a call from this number”—she riffled a few pages before finding her spot—“which is identified as a phone booth on the corner of Collins and One Ninetieth, to Patrick Christiansen.” She waited, but whatever she was getting at escaped him. “Collins and One Ninetieth is three blocks away from Parker’s home address.”
He studied her. “You think Parker placed the call.”
“Twelve minutes later Tull received a call from a public phone located inside Joe’s Tavern.” She hitched her hip on the corner of his desk to stab the page emphatically. “Everyone uses informants, yeah, I get that, although mine all seemed to have cells even before I did. But this isn’t coincidence. It can’t be. I don’t know what it means, but it’s a link.”
He flipped the pages again to look at the numbers, dates, and times she’d highlighted. The calls had only occurred onc
e in the last thirty days, as she’d noted. “I need to go back further,” he muttered. “See if this is a onetime thing or if it occurs regularly. If it shows up in other months . . .” Looking up, he gave her grin. “Good catch, Chandler.”
The smile she graced him with hit him like a fast left jab to the solar plexus. Jesus, her smile should be outlawed. With effort, he hauled a bit more oxygen into his lungs and cleared his throat. The slim hip and thigh perched perilously close to his arm were encased in navy today. There was nothing remotely sexy about the no-nonsense suit she wore, although he couldn’t say the same about the red top beneath it. It hinted at cleavage and the curves that might lurk beneath the tailoring.
He jerked his gaze back to stare blindly at the pages in front of him.
“What’s with the map?”
Welcoming the change of subject, he unrolled it again. “Got a blow-up of the area around the convenience store where we think Christiansen was snatched. This line”—he traced the yellow highlighting—“is one possible route that would have skirted any traffic cameras on the way to the Wakeshead Park. The pink highlighting shows another path. The only other routes take him miles and miles out of his way, which would have slowed him down considerably.”
“Not to mention upping his risk.”
“Exactly. With the estimated time of death, we can be reasonably certain one of these two routes were chosen. I have Hoy and Mendall going door-to-door on both routes, checking for any businesses along the way that might have security cameras pointing toward the street. ATMs. Anything that may have caught the vehicle as it went by.”
“And the phone books?”
“Shroot caught that assignment.” Something inside him lightened at the memory. “He . . . uh . . . expressed his undying gratitude in advance.”
“I’ll bet.”
To his relief she gathered up her binder and removed her shapely ass from his work space. He made a mental note to have that corner of the desk bronzed. “I swung by Nora Parker’s house, Roland’s widow, on the way to work. She ID’d him as the man in the still IT got us from that old video segment.”
She turned and gave him a sharp look. “And the other?”
Somehow he’d known that question had been coming. “She didn’t recognize the other one in the video. The one they called Johnny. I also ran the names by her that Bonnie Christiansen recalled as being part of her husband’s card club. Struck out there, too.”
“Roland didn’t happen to belong to a card club, did he?”
“She said no. She also said he didn’t have a second job.” He hesitated, feeling a stab of guilt for what he was about to say. “I think she’s lying.”
Risa reached for her coffee again. In college he’d faced all-American linebackers intent on mowing him down on the field, but she appeared to be made of far stronger stuff than he was. One swallow had been more than enough for him.
“About . . .”
“The extra job.” He watched her sip, felt slightly better about himself when she winced a little as she swallowed. “She didn’t want to talk about it. But the tells were there. I’m having the captain make a case to the brass for a warrant on the three victims’ financials. With Christiansen’s widow acknowledging that he worked somewhere, although she was vague with the details, we should be able to present an argument that the intersection for the three victims might lie in something they were working off the job, rather than on it.” He didn’t envy Morales his task of selling it to the administration, but with the bars came the responsibility.
“I don’t suppose you had time to go through the ViCAP reports while you weren’t sleeping last night,” he said, joking.
To his shock, she nodded. “I did. Didn’t see anything that jumped out at me, though.”
“Wow, you really didn’t sleep.” His attention drifted back to the unrolled map once again. “Got a full day’s work in before most people woke up.”
“I’d like to go to the first two crime scenes. Get a feel for them.”
“You’ve got all the pictures.”
“I want to see them,” she said stubbornly. “You don’t have to go along. I know my way around Philly.”
He sat back, vaguely annoyed. “I do have to go. You won’t get past the officer stationed at them otherwise.” Pushing back from his desk, he shrugged into his beige suit jacket. “Okay. Afterward we’ll hit the area surrounding the convenience store, look for a spot the offender could have stashed his car.”
“Sounds like a lot of driving,” she observed.
He nodded unenthusiastically. Philadelphia recently had been named the tenth-worst congested city in the nation in terms of traffic. Opening up a desk drawer, he took out a new supply of gum and pain reliever for the headache that was sure to result.
“If we’re going to be on the road that much”—she set her cup down and picked up her purse—“you can stop somewhere for better coffee.”
The warehouse Nate parked in front of was at the end of a street, flanked by the Schuylkill River on one side and a couple empty lots on the other. An occasional truck rumbled down the road toward them, but all turned off before reaching midway down the block.
Risa slammed the car door behind her and tilted her head up at the building. Windows had been covered with plywood and painted a dark brown. There had once been huge matching doors on the front of the structure, large enough to swing inside and allow semis to unload. But what was left of the doors hung useless on their hinges now, yellow police tape crisscrossing the gaping opening.
A fresh-faced uniformed officer posted at the door straightened at their arrival. When Nate badged him, he relaxed visibly. “How’s it going?”
“Been quiet here, detective. This street doesn’t see a lot of traffic.”
Nate bent to pick up a couple hard hats left inside the doorway, handed one to Risa. “We’re going to look around.”
“Yes, sir.”
Donning the hard hat, Risa gingerly stepped inside the shadowy building. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the center of the space, where a large blackened circle stained the dirt floor.
“The offender went to a little trouble finding this place.” Nate’s voice was impassive. “We think he used that hoist chain to keep the victim upright before the fire was started.”
Risa looked at the massive rusted chain and hook hanging down from one metal beam overhead. A chill broke out over her skin. The chain was blackened but the beam appeared untouched.
Turning back toward the double doors, she frowned. “Doesn’t make sense. There’s no fuel to keep the fire spreading . . . oh-h.”
“Yeah, before he left he must have sprayed more of the gasoline mixture toward the front doors. Probably broke in the back door and exited the same way.” He nodded toward the doorway in the rear, which had a yellow X of tape crossing it.
Silent now, she moved into the center of the blackened area. There would have been no one to hear the victim’s screams. Even if the warehouses farther up the street employed watchmen, little sound would have escaped the brick and mortar building. Glass was a noise conductor, but the windows had been replaced with wood long ago. The structure’s distance from the other buildings gave it an air of seclusion. There would have been no hope of rescue.
She moved across the area to peer out the back entrance. A rutted path—alley would be too generous—was worn into the weedy ground outside the structure. The land did a gradual roll into the river, about half a block away. “He pulled up here, all the way to the door. Left the vehicle out back. Who’s going to see it? Walked Parker through this door. Shut it behind him.” And with that door swinging shut, the victim’s hope for help had vanished.
Turning, she was surprised to find Nate on her heels. She nearly ran into him. “Where did you find the ID? And the badge?”
“His ID was just inside the back entrance. The badge was over there.” He gestured to the opposite shadowy corner. “No trace evidence, other than the body and the fuel residue the la
b identified on it. The offender took the fuel container with him.”
“After he left a fuel path for the fire to follow to the entrance. He needed for the body to be found,” she mused aloud. “A place like this, the fire could have burned itself out. No telling how long before the body was discovered. He wants immediate attention. Why does he need it? Thumbing his nose at the force in general? Doesn’t feel right.” Turning on her heel, she surveyed the blackened circle again. And the heavy hoist chain and hook. “He needs the attention but not necessarily from us. He wants to generate unease. Fear.”
Nate frowned. “From who?”
“From his future victims.”
There was less to see at the next scene. It wasn’t as well chosen as the first or third spots had been. The offender had secured Tull to a tree to keep him upright. The spreading fire had torched that tree and those around it.
Risa scanned the charred remains of the wooded area. It looked like a forest fire had raged a crooked path through the space, leaving devastation in its wake.
“Once the trees torched, I understand the fire could be seen for miles. It probably drew the quickest response of the three.”
“And he left the badge and ID over there, right?” She pointed toward the clearing several hundred yards away. Nate made a sound of agreement. “Took a chance that they wouldn’t be found, that far away from the victim. But he wanted to be sure they didn’t get destroyed in the fire. That wouldn’t have suited his purpose at all.”
Nate’s cell rang. While he answered it, she moved closer to the clearing, turning to get a different angle. Neither scene was familiar to her. She hadn’t dreamt of any but the third one. It was useless to wonder why. There had never been any rhyme or reason to the visions. What they showed or what remained hidden. Little about them was clear at first. If the same one repeated, sometimes more was revealed with each recurrence. Sometimes not.
Much remained open to interpretation. Some showed scenes from the past, others dealt with future events. They couldn’t be summoned by force of will, and the details from the scene couldn’t be sharpened. They were tortuous in every way. Hideous visions of agony that haunted her sleeping hours. Nebulous intangibles that spoke more to emotion than logic.