by CJ Lyons
“Fancy new accessory you’re sporting there, boss,” Krichek quipped, nodding to the glass protruding from the swath of bandages.
“Yeah, I think you’re taking this body piercing fetish a bit far,” Ray added, but his gaze was fixed on Luka’s face, checking to make sure that he was all right.
“Only hurts when I laugh,” Luka said. “Anything at the house?”
“Ahearn’s there. Widow took a sedative, so nothing more from her. Has a neighbor—that Hansen guy—sitting with her. So far nothing on the search—” Ray glanced at Krichek.
“Place is weird,” Krichek took over. “Downstairs like something out of a magazine, upstairs, most of the rooms were empty.”
“And their bedroom? Cheap furniture and boxes.” Ray shrugged. “Either they never unpacked after they moved in—”
“Or they were getting ready to run,” Luka finished. Which meant Tassi might not be as innocent as she acted. “Any sign of Spencer’s cell?”
“No,” Ray answered.
“I’m waiting to hear back from the carrier to ping its location,” Krichek added. “When’s Harper getting here? She should be helping with the scut.”
“She’s working her own case.” Luka gave Ray a quick rundown of what he’d found so far at the office—including their dumpster-wielding intruder. Krichek went into the office to start work. “Dig into Dean, see if you can get him talking. He knows more than he’s sharing. And Matthew Harper—” Luka glanced around the parking lot. Matthew’s SUV was gone.
“Harper? As in our Harper?” Ray asked.
“Her father. He’s Standish’s—or Spencer’s—attorney. And minister.”
Ray groaned, immediately realizing the complex implications the reverend’s presence presented. “Think he knows who Spencer really was?”
“No idea, but we’ll need to formally interview Tassi. But first we need as much intel as we can get about how involved she was with her husband’s scams.” He beckoned to Sanchez, who stood behind Ray, bouncing from one foot to the other like a kid. “Sanchez, what did you find?”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” the tech said in a rushed voice. “Every hard drive has been purged. Like military-grade level, completely overwritten not once or twice but at least a dozen times. I’ll take another look in the lab, but chances are, we got nothing.”
Ray swore.
“Okay then, we’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Luka said. “Walk and talk. Someone’s got to know something. Starting with the widow. I want her in my office tomorrow.”
“Ahearn won’t like it,” Ray said. “She’s got a lot of friends in high places.”
“He’ll like it if we can close this quickly and quietly. You and Krichek dig up everything you can so we’ll be ready for her.” He thought for a second. “Do a full background check on Dean and invite him in for a formal interview as well.”
The medics had loaded Luka into the back of the ambulance when he waved Ray back. “Let’s ask Leah Wright to help us with Tassi’s interview. That way no defense attorney can claim that we ignored her emotional distress.”
“You got it, boss. Have fun in the ER,” Ray said as he slammed the ambulance door shut, the vibration making Luka wince. Funny how he hadn’t noticed the pain at all while interviewing Dean or discussing tactics.
He felt embarrassed about being forced to abandon his crime scene—even if it wasn’t his fault. He made a list of priorities: obtaining any camera footage of their intruder, full background checks on everyone involved, tracking down the financials to verify the documents Spencer had included with his deathbed confession, getting the postmortem to the top of the ME’s schedule, reviewing Spencer’s SUV’s black box, finding his missing cell phone, talking with the Denver authorities as well as anyone possibly involved with Spencer’s current Ponzi scheme… and that was all mere preparation for his interviews tomorrow.
As always it came back to the three Ps: profit, passion, power. If what Dean said was true, then there were a lot of people who could lay claim to all three motives for wanting Spencer dead. Had the man killed himself to avoid their retribution?
That question led to more: how complicit was Tassi? And, even if she somehow was ignorant of her husband’s misdeeds—which Luka sorely doubted—how far would Spencer’s victims go to get their money back? Would they assume Tassi knew where it was?
Now that Spencer was dead, was his widow in danger?
Fourteen
As Harper returned the cooler to her car and headed over to Second Avenue to find Macy, she couldn’t help but feel frustrated by her inability to convince Heidi to accept a way off the streets. But she also understood the girl’s wariness—she was under-age, so if she left Freddy’s protection, she’d either need to make it on her own on the street or she’d be forced into foster care. A kid like Heidi could easily be swayed to choose the devil she knew in Freddy and his so-called love.
Halfway down Second, Harper spotted a skinny blonde sheltering in the shade of a doorway. Macy. Lily’s friend was only a year older than Lily, Harper remembered from Macy’s arrest report. How was it that she was getting older and these girls were getting younger and younger every year? As if there was a never-ending supply to replace the ones used up, burnt out, or dead.
What would it take to change things? In a country that could put men on the moon, surely there was a way to break the endless cycle of girls and women being used, abused, and tossed away like garbage? Like Lily had been. She flashed on the image of her body, battered and bruised beyond recognition. What was worth doing that to someone, anyone?
Harper knew nothing of her own mother’s circumstances, but after joining the force and seeing the realities and lose-lose choices that women faced, particularly pregnant women, she couldn’t help but wonder if her mother had given her up in the hope of Harper avoiding a similar fate. Harper couldn’t even begin to imagine the strength it took to make that kind of sacrifice, to lose a child forever in the hopes that you were giving them a better life. The thought made her send a quick prayer of thanksgiving for the mother she had never known, as well as the family that had made her one of their own.
She parked the car across the street from where Macy stood. As she crossed the road, she caught Macy’s eye. At first the girl turned away, shoulders hunched as if denying Harper’s existence. But by the time Harper reached the doorway, she’d turned back around and was slumped against the wall in a belligerent posture, her glare containing more attitude than seemed possible for a stick-thin, five-foot tall—without the five-inch heels—teenaged girl.
“Hear about Lily?” Harper started.
Macy’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. We all did.”
“I haven’t seen her around in a while. Know who she’s been hanging with?”
Her shoulders jutted up in a knife-edged shrug. One spaghetti strap of her sequined top slid down, but Macy ignored it. “Thought she got out.”
“When’d you see her last?” Harper assumed a relaxed posture, holding up her own side of the wall.
The August heat was doing little to mask Macy’s body odor. Harper caught a whiff of an acrid garlicky tang—and it had nothing to do with what Macy was eating and everything to do with the meth she’d been smoking. Probably why she was clutching her tiny purse so tightly.
When Macy didn’t answer, Harper aimed a pointed glance at the small, sequined bag. They both knew what would happen if Harper took a look in the bag—an arrest for felony possession was a lot harder to walk away from than an arrest for solicitation. Not to mention that it was Sunday, so she would be guaranteed a one-to-two-night jail stay before she could be arraigned and bail set. Withdrawal from meth? Not something Harper would wish upon her worst enemy.
Another shrug, this one more tentative. Which Harper translated as Macy acknowledging that she had seen Lily recently, but wasn’t going to talk without incentive.
“Want some coffee? A bite to eat?” There was a diner down the block. It wasn�
�t much to look at, but they served breakfast all day and night. “I’m starved.”
“Should be working.”
“C’mon. My treat.”
Macy wrapped her arms around her chest, edged a glance beyond the doorway.
“Who you working for these days?” Harper asked. Heidi had said Philly, but when Harper had checked with Vice that morning, getting up to speed on current intelligence on local traffickers, she’d seen that he’d been arrested last month for assaulting a customer and was still in jail. Which meant either Macy was trying to go indy—a dangerous choice, being on the street without protection—or someone had taken over Philly’s stable. Harper took a long look up and down the block, making sure no one saw Macy talking to her. If a pimp saw a cop alone with one of his girls, there’d be a price to pay—for the girl.
“No one. Just myself.”
“Is that safe?” Harper was certain that Macy was lying about answering to a man—whether she called him a pimp or not. For some reason, the girls on the street loved to boast about their independence, even while under the thumb of men who laid claim to their time, any money they made, and their bodies. It was as if their feeble protests of freedom blinded them to the fact that they were modern-day slaves: replaceable, forgettable, disposable.
“Gotta know how to take care of yourself is all.” Her words ran together, a bit blurred, making Harper wonder how high she was.
“Who was Lily working for?” Harper asked.
“Lily? No one.”
“Do you know where she was staying?”
Macy blinked slowly and shook her head, wobbling on her heels as they left the doorway and headed toward the diner. Clearly on something more than meth.
Harper steadied her with a hand on her arm, noting the track marks there—old and new. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Macy yanked her arm away from Harper. “Just fine.” Tears seeped from her eyes, smearing her make-up. She stopped, leaned against a shop’s display window. “Lily. Why’d she do it? Why’d she come back?”
Bingo. “When did you see Lily, Macy?”
Macy shook her head, the tears streaming even harder. “She thought—she said—”
A neon orange Mustang slid to the curb, honked once. Macy whirled away for a moment, palms swiping her face, then turned back, a wide smile stretching her features—a smile that didn’t make it anywhere near her eyes. “Gotta go.”
“Macy, wait—”
“It’s not what you think,” Macy said, her tone almost pleading. “He’s my boyfriend, loves me.”
The driver honked again, this time a short, angry burst. Macy rushed over, yanked the door open, and fell into the front seat. Before Harper could do more than take down the plate, the car sped away.
Nothing she could do except run the plate and see if it led to anyone with warrants. That could give her leverage enough to pull Macy’s boyfriend in, allow her a chance to speak with Macy alone, in private.
Frustrated, Harper stalked across the street, back to her car. She plopped her weight down into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. It was as if Lily Nolan was invisible, already vanished from everyone’s memory. And if that was true, how was Harper going to find her killer?
Fifteen
After Luka arrived in the ER, the first thing the doctor did was to send him to X-ray to determine how deep the glass had penetrated. The next thing was to wait while they gave him a dose of antibiotics via an IV and prepared to remove the damn thing, starting with cutting off most of the left leg of his slacks. Which gave Luka plenty of time to sit on his bed, comparing what he could see of the glass sticking out of his now naked leg with the X-ray on the computer beside him that revealed the jagged point beneath the skin, digging into his muscle. The doctors and nurses hadn’t seemed very impressed once they had decided that no blood vessels were damaged and a trip to the operating room wouldn’t be necessary, but seeing the complete picture in vivid white against black of the X-ray impressed the hell out of Luka. Imagine if he’d landed on his back or belly, or God forbid, his neck.
After a thousand worst-case scenarios flitted through his mind—including a few minutes of self-flagellation for not catching the guy, or at the very least seeing enough of him to identify him—he spent his time trying to figure out what the shard of glass could be part of. Not a soda bottle. His glass—given that it had taken up residence several inches inside his body, Luka felt possessive of the inconvenient piece of glass—was too tall and the curve too wide. Liquor bottle? Or wine, perhaps? How about a pickle jar?
Random thoughts but far better than worrying about things beyond his control—like his open cases, now in the capable hands of his team. Ray would call him if anything broke in the Spencer case, while Harper was hard at the frustrating and usually fruitless work of locating cooperative witnesses in the Lily Nolan murder. Which left Luka bored and restless, his imagination spinning out possible theories—less than theories, actually, since he had no facts or evidence—about Spencer’s life as a conman and whether his death had been suicide, a bizarre accident, or murder. Luka’s gut said murder, but he needed the autopsy results to back him up. Otherwise Ahearn and the powers that be might close his investigation, allowing the feds to take over to pursue the financial crimes. Although, with Spencer dead, he was certain the case would be a low priority—after all, unless they found evidence that Tassi was involved, there was no one left to prosecute.
Which actually gave Tassi a pretty good motive to get rid of her husband—especially as it sounded as if, thanks to the Reverend Harper’s legal skills, her money was protected from any claims against Spencer. He made a note to follow up on her alibi and financials.
His musings were interrupted by the arrival of two doctors dressed in surgical garb and a nurse. As the first surgeon explained what to do, the second, obviously junior, surgeon followed his instructions while the nurse made sure they didn’t screw up. Which was why Luka appreciated nurses so much. They had to dig deep and do several layers of stitches through his muscle—mattress sutures—so in addition to the local anesthetic they gave Luka nitrous oxide to breathe, which might have colored his perception of events. It definitely made time go faster and although he felt tugging and pulling, he really couldn’t complain of any pain.
Once they were finished, Luka was surprised to see that it was almost seven. He felt as if he’d wasted most of the day because of this side trip to the ER. As he waited for the nurse to return to remove his IV and finish dressing his wound, he heard a knock on the open door.
“Luka?” Leah said. “What happened?” She stepped inside and saw the X-ray displayed on the computer screen. “Ouch. You doing okay?”
“Better now. Just waiting for discharge. What are you doing here?” Then he remembered—she was meant to be at the fair with the kids. “Did something happen? Is Nate okay?”
“He’s fine. We had a bit of an adventure at the fair—a pregnant lady went into labor and I had to deliver her baby. I’m waiting on Ruby and the kids to come pick me up, since I rode here in the ambulance.”
Luka realized he also didn’t have a ride home—Ray would have taken his departmental car to return to the station. “Me, too.”
“What happened?”
He started out feeling more than a little embarrassed but by the time he’d finished the story, Leah had sunk into the chair beside his bed and was listening in rapt attention. “Luka, you were so lucky. What if he’d had a gun?” They both knew there was no easy answer to that. “Did you call Nate? Or Pops? Tell them you were injured?”
“No,” Luka admitted. He’d thought about it but had no clue how to handle it. This whole idea of family waiting at home for him was still new. “Didn’t want to worry them. Figured once they saw I was fine, it’d save them getting upset.”
“Luka.” She sighed. “It doesn’t work that way. You can’t take a shortcut past emotions. And Nate really needs honesty from you.”
“And I’m honestly fine. So wher
e’s the problem?” He changed the subject. “How’d he do? At the fair with the judging?”
She looked sheepish. “I have no idea. Had to leave before we found out, and I haven’t had a chance to call them.” She gave him a look of consideration. “Actually, I could use some advice. The woman who gave birth, she was all alone. No phone, no wallet, no ID, and she won’t tell anyone her name. She appeared out of nowhere—I think she was running from someone. She seemed terrified.”
“Going into labor all alone would do that.”
“Yeah, but this is more. She said she was frightened someone would find her. Like she was running away from someone. And even now, her baby is fine, but she’s refusing to talk to anyone. We had to register her as a Jane Doe.”
Luka knew that Leah had excellent instincts. “You want me to see if I can find out who she is?”
“I’m not sure. Getting the police involved might make things worse, spook her. But if she is in trouble—” She blew out an exasperated breath. “Perhaps all she needs is a good night’s rest in a safe place. I’ll try again tomorrow morning.”
“There’s not much we could do unless social services think the baby is in danger. Then we could get a court order to force her to give us her identification, maybe also fingerprints. But even that doesn’t mean we’d be able to find out who she is.”
“Yeah, that sounds way too confrontational. If she’s a victim of domestic violence or the like, I don’t want to scare her off. There has to be another way.”
“If you think of anything, let me know. And I might also need your help.” He explained the crime scene he had been at that morning, about Tassi and how scattered she’d been. Not to mention her possible motives for murder. “Could you interview her? See if there’s signs of mental distress or—”