by Jan Coffey
The sound of people crying came from the front of the apartment. One woman was pleading, but a male voice cut her off. No one was in the kitchen, and he continued down the dark hallway toward the front room.
“I’m only saying this one more fucking time,” the man threatened. “Where is she?”
“Please,” she begged. “Just let the girls go. Please, they're just bab—”
The sound of the blow that silenced her drew terrified shrieks from the girls.
Gavin peered into the front room. A burly gangbanger was facing the woman, his back to Gavin. The two girls were huddled together at his feet. The woman who’d been struck was slumped in the center of the room, holding her bloodied face, another woman kneeling beside her.
A second thug was standing over them, holding a collapsible police baton in his left hand.
“Gimme the neena,” he said, holding out a hand to his partner. “I’m tired of looking at these old bitches.”
The front door swung open and another thug burst in.
“We just got a call, man. Heat coming. Grab them kids. Let's go!”
Looking past the girls, he spotted Gavin.
Gavin had no choice. There was no backing away.
Especially when the hood reached behind him and came up shooting.
Gavin fired back. He didn’t miss.
As the man went down, Gavin aimed at the other two. The burly gangster spun around to fire, but ended up sinking to the ground as Gavin nailed him in the shoulder. The other guy ran for the door.
Gavin moved to the window. Outside, the multicolored flashers of a cruiser lit up the block. The BMW took off, only to screech to a stop at the end of the street as a second cruiser cut it off.
Gavin kicked the guns away from the men who were down and glanced at the two women who were now huddled with the kids by the sofa.
A patrolman came up the front steps, gun drawn.
“Jonesy, it’s me. MacFadyen.”
“Came as quick as we could. Jeez, Mac, what a mess!”
Gavin stood by the door over the first man he'd shot, the blood pooling under the body.
“Ambulance?”
“On the way.”
“Do you know him?” Gavin asked.
“Never seen him before.”
Gavin crouched down to take the man's wallet out of his jeans pocket and flipped it open.
There, inside, was Terri's badge.
CHAPTER 4
Her last appointment of the day. Lacey smiled, nodded, took notes, said what needed to be said, that photo—and the sick caption—blazing in her mind.
She finally escorted the clients outside to their car and stood alone in the dark, watching the taillights disappear down the road. It was only then that she allowed the sick feeling clenching her stomach to gain the upper hand.
“No…no! It can't be!”
Her footing turned to quicksand. Hours of restraint gave way to complete collapse. Lacey crouched down, hugging her knees to her chest. Bile rose into her throat and she thought she was going to be sick. She closed her eyes, taking quick breaths. Her stomach churned, protested, but nothing, thank God, came up.
The photo. The country road. She hadn’t gone to the site of the accident. Had refused to even drive by it, but from the police description she knew that picture was the place where Terri's body had been discovered.
Some sick bastard had staged the reenactment to get at her. Tears ran down her cheeks, soaking into the dirt. Chills coursed through her limbs, sharpening the constant pain in her hip. She shivered violently, sitting there, exposed for an eon, as the coldness of the night seeped into her bones.
Finally, Lacey stood, took two deep breaths and brushed away the tears. She had to figure out where that picture came from, who had taken it. And how it had been inserted into the wedding album.
Pulling herself up the porch steps, she was glad that Amy was long gone.
The month after Lacey returned to Connecticut, Terri had rented Amy the apartment in the renovated barn at the far end of the property. They were neighbors and had become friends. Still, Lacey wasn't ready to talk to Amy about this. Not when she still had to wrap her own head around the reason someone would do it. Not when she still had to figure out a way to keep the raw pain of her sister’s death from clawing her to shreds.
She paused inside the door, then locked it before going to her office.
She’d uploaded the file for Jeannie's wedding book directly from her computer onto the publisher's website. Opening the directory now, she checked the folder and went through the thumbnails of wedding photos.
The image was there, just as it showed up in the album—which meant that the breach had been on her home computer.
Someone had been inside her home.
No. That was impossible. No one had touched her system. No one could have accessed her files. The only one working here was Amy, and she had her own special laptop. She couldn’t possibly have done it.
She opened the file on the publisher’s website. Paging to the photo, she stared at the caption. Road Kill.
Lacey sat back in her chair, fighting the grief ready to crash through her thin barrier of control.
The flashing lights on the modem caught her eye and it got her thinking. Was there a way to trace the intruder? She had a wireless network that could reach Amy’s place, and firewalls and virus protection that came with the initial installation. She knew enough about the entire set-up to do her job, but nothing more.
She went back to the files in search of the date that was associated with the photo. That was when she noticed the folder of the same name under her picture directory. Road Kill.
Lacey's hand shook as she opened a slideshow of the contents. More images.
The first photo was of the same country road. Fog, but no visible body. The second photograph was a duplicate of the one inserted into the wedding album. And the next one… tied Lacey's insides into a knot.
The photo was a close-up of the body. The spandex running shorts, the white t-shirt with the blue and white logo, the dark curly hair tied back in a ponytail. Terri had spent the night before with Lacey in Westbury. She'd borrowed Lacey's clothes that morning for her jog.
The last photo was a close-up of Terri's face. Her head was partially buried in leaves. Blood and dirt smeared her face. Her green eyes were open. But she was dead.
This was no reenactment.
Lacey shoved the chair away from the desk, her stomach protesting the images her mind was trying to process. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t not think. And she couldn’t breathe.
The autopsy report said that Terri had died of head trauma. Brain hemorrhage on impact. The local police told her that Terri’s body had remained there for eight hours before being discovered.
She couldn’t stop her tears. Invisible needles pierced every inch of her skin, digging deep into her, threatening to deaden what was left of her heart.
Terri had always been with her, embracing her. At the height of her misery, a thousand miles away, Lacey had felt her sister’s arms around her. And now she could hear, echoing in her head, the words Terri had said to her every time she’d been knocked down in life. We’re survivors, Lacey. The two of us are survivors.
Lacey batted away tears and turned from her desk. Through blurred vision, she could see the basket still filled with sympathy notes on a side table. Going to them, she picked up the business card she’d left on top.
Gavin MacFadyen. Private Investigator.
His was one of the few names that Terri frequently mentioned over the years. A friend. Someone to trust.
She stared at the card. Nothing fancy. Just the essential information. She recalled the sincere dark eyes that made her believe he cared. But she also couldn’t forget the stir of excitement and apprehension she’d felt for the few moments when she stood with him outside the funeral parlor. When he held her hand, she’d felt it. He was all raw muscularity and power. Authority and dominance.
The kind of man that made her to want to run.
A loud bang against the porch railing in front of the house set Lacey’s heart racing. She dropped the card in the basket, grabbed the phone, and moved to the front window. The light from the house stretched far enough into the yard that she spotted the upended trashcan. Thursday mornings were pick-up, but rolling the barrel out to the curb was the last thing she’d been thinking about tonight.
Stuffing her cell phone into her jeans pocket, she grabbed the cane. Her once-shattered bones always picked the wrong moments to act up. She stepped out into the night. A fine, cold mist had started to fall.
Pieces of trash littered the ground. Hitting the cane against the railing a few times, she made enough noise to scare off any hungry critters. Seeing nothing, she righted the trashcan.
Hauling the barrel to the curb, she took deep breaths. The distinct smell of wet autumn leaves was still a new scent to her. This was her first fall living in New England.
The years in jail didn’t count.
The leaves were slick under her shoes, the night mist cold on her face, leaves and twigs crackling into the soft earth.
Until she heard a sound.
“Who’s there?” Clutching the cane tightly in one hand, she turned in the direction of the noise. A deep buffer of trees separated her property from the neighbor’s yard.
“Amy?” she called out. “Is that you?”
Lacey’s scalp prickled as a damp breeze came up. Someone was out there. Standing. Waiting. Silent.
She swept the cane around her and the hollow sound of it striking the trash barrel echoed through the night. Looking around her with apprehension, she snapped the lid onto the can tightly and left it at the curb.
Lacey hurried toward the house, leaning heavily on the cane. Damn it. She was more dependent on it now than she had been seventeen years ago, when she’d thought shattered bones and torn-apart heart were the worst things that could happen to her.
Now she knew better…
~~~~
A shadow materialized from behind a tree. Cold eyes watched Lacey move up onto the porch, and stared at the door and lit windows long after she had disappeared inside.
CHAPTER 5
“Alisha Miller. Thirteen years old.” His face grim, John Trevor read from the pages of the report in his hand. “The night Watkins picked her up and took her to the hospital, she had alcohol, marijuana, and crack cocaine in her system.”
Gavin’s former boss looked across the desk at him.
“She tested positive for STDs and told the nurse she’d been forced to have sex with five men that night.” Trevor dropped the folder onto his blotter.
Gavin had come to the Union Avenue police station to fill out paperwork for the shooting in Newhallville last night. He was no longer with the NHPD so the assistant chief’s sharing of this information was way outside standard department procedure.
“The girl was put in a group home after being released from the hospital,” Trevor continued. “Couldn’t stick there. Disappeared a week later.”
“Why go to a group home?” he asked. “Why not to her mother?”
“Unsafe home. That was Watkins’s recommendation, too.” Trevor paused, reading. “Let’s see…DCF has been trying to yank the twins. The paperwork has been in the works for a while.”
“And now Alisha’s back on the streets.”
Trevor looked at him sharply. “You didn’t walk out that door too long ago, MacFadyen. You know there's only so much we can do for these kids. We pass them along to Social Services when we can, but it takes a miracle to get them out of this cycle before they end up disappearing into the weeds. We lost our street liaison in that last budget go-around.”
Every city department was fighting for their scrap of shrinking funds. New Haven was no different. Crime rates climbed while funds for cops and social programs got slashed. It was pitiful, but it was a fact of life.
Gavin glanced out the window at the bright fall morning. Glistening leaves were swirling in the breeze. His sister Elsie had been fifteen when she ran away. And then no news, no trace of her, until her decomposing body was found in a ditch in Jacksonville, Florida. That’d been five months and ten days after she’d gone missing. The coroner’s report said that she’d been dead for most of that time. The bastard who’d killed her was never found.
He looked back at Trevor. “What was Terri’s involvement with Alisha anyway?”
“The girl is a part of a homicide case Watkins was working. Alisha’s pimp was killed in a shootout. Naturally, they were part of the Bratva organization. Watkins was working on the girl, trying to gain her trust, but Alisha was scared shitless. She actually called the pimp her boyfriend. She was upset that he was dead.”
Gavin knew Alisha was afraid from the thirty-second phone call. She had good reason to be.
Bratva’s signature work, headless corpses washing up along the coast, had been established years ago when he’d been consolidating turf along the shoreline, muscling out the smaller players and taking larger pieces of former Mafia territory. The word was that executions were carried out by Bratva himself, but the murders could never be pinned on him. He was smart and ruthless.
Today, Bratva controlled virtually all of the drug trafficking, sex trade, and private gambling from Stamford to Newport, including the north coast of Long Island. Every gang and small time operator in New Haven—from the black Elm Street Gang and the Jungle Boys to the Latin Kings and the Mara Salvatrucha— either worked for Bratva or paid him tribute.
An FBI task force hadn’t made any headway into his organization which could be because the guy was totally connected. And protected. By politicians, judges, and more than a few cops on his payroll.
“Watkins had been able to pin down Alisha enough to find out that it was Bratva’s people that were gunning for the pimp.”
“A little dissension in the ranks?”
“Your partner thought that the mope was trying to squeeze a little extra out of Bratva’s till. Never a good idea with that guy. He had something damaging to the organization…maybe even to Bratva himself.”
“And those gangbangers I ran into worked for the organization?”
“Yup.”
The two thugs Gavin shot were at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The one carrying Terri’s badge was in critical but guarded condition. The other one was listed as fair. And a lawyer was probably already camped out at the courthouse with a wad of cash, ready to post bail for the rest of the pricks.
“I don’t suppose the two that can talk are saying anything about how they came to be in possession of Terri's badge?”
“I can’t give you specifics, but I can tell you that Watkins was sticking her nose deep into Bratva’s shit following up on the pimp’s murder.”
“So it could be Bratva that hit her.”
“It’s a possibility, but we don’t have anything that supports that. I personally went a couple of rounds with those guys out at the Newhallville station. They were giving up nothing.” Trevor leaned forward. “We’re not letting it go, Mac. We'll find out where every one of these bastards was the day Watkins was killed.”
“And their cars. There might be paint and glass evidence. What about the forensic report on Terri's clothes?” Gavin realized what he was doing and stopped. It was easy to start thinking like he was part of the team.
“Look, MacFadyen, we'll do whatever needs to be done. We haven’t forgotten that Watkins was one of our own. But just so you know, we can’t even assume that her badge was lifted from the scene of the hit-and-run. We don't even know if she had it on her when she went jogging that morning.”
“Where was her weapon?”
“In her locker here at the station. Why?”
“When she was off duty, Terri kept her badge with her pistol. She only carried an identification card tucked under her driver’s license.”
“Not this time. I’m the one who went through her locker after we heard the news. There was no badge ther
e. She left it somewhere else.”
If Gavin was going to point fingers, it was not going to be at the assistant chief. His instinct and his years of working with the man told him the guy was honest to the core.
Trevor leaned back in his chair. “The day after the accident, Lacey Watkins turned over whatever department-issued stuff she could find. She didn’t have the badge either. She said she'd look for it once she got a chance to sort through the rest of her sister's stuff.” Trevor closed the file on his desk. “I'll keep you posted on developments, but it all has to be off the record. Meanwhile, if Alisha calls you back, give her my direct number. I'll get her some help.”
That was Gavin’s cue to get out and he stood.
“Listen, Mac,” Trevor said. “I know it’s hard, her being your partner. But we’re working it at this end. We really are.”
~~~~
On the way out, Gavin went down to the Investigative Services section to get his darts from Jake Allen. Weaving through the maze of cubicles, Gavin immediately realized he was the morning’s entertainment. The novelty of him leaving the force and starting his own business had not worn off for these guys.
“Hey, Gavin. Are you hiring?”
“What the hell, Mac! You didn’t get to shoot up the town enough when you were on duty?”
“These fucking retirees, always making more paperwork for us.”
“Hey, MacFadyen. Is it true you’re ‘shooting’ to be the next chief?”
There were a dozen other remarks. Gavin shook hands with the two section new-hires who were smiling at the ribbing he was getting.
“Christ, Mac. I thought we got rid of you,” a sergeant called after him.
Jake Allen was on the phone and Gavin nodded to Luke Brandt, who swung around in his chair and nodded back. The two detectives shared back-to-back desks in a cluttered cubicle. Gavin spotted his leather dart case on Jake's desk.
“I see you’ve got a couple of new faces in the division.”
“Yeah. I’m thinking those two rookies are glad you came in and took the heat off ’em,” Luke said. “They’ve been getting hammered all week.”