Dylan spun to her open laptop and angled the screen toward her. Six lists of names in distinct columns filled the screen, with one name highlighted on each page. Six pages, six lines, each matching the same name. Daniel Nguyen. “I reached out to the conference organizers after I made the same connection and had them send over their registration lists. It looks like that’s exactly what he did. We can place him in these six cities at the times of these six murders. We also can’t discount the fact he was the first officer who responded to Del Howe’s murder scene yesterday morning. That still leaves nineteen murders we can’t tie him to, but what are the odds this isn’t our guy?”
“We’ll need more than a registration list to prove he actually attended the conferences. Travel records, receipts, hotel reservations.” Remi traced her finger across the trackpad of her laptop and focused on Nguyen’s Gresham PD photo. “But it’s enough to have Captain Paulson bring him in for questioning.”
* * *
FLORESCENT TUBES ABOVE reflected off the yellowing tiles around the interrogation room. Dylan folded his arms across his chest as he leaned against the wall near the one-way glass. The scents of sweat, body odor and bodily fluids he’d rather not think about from the hundreds of suspects previously questioned in the room filled his lungs.
Sergeant Daniel Nguyen was the latest.
“What the hell is this, Captain? You said you had a few questions for me about yesterday’s scene. Why are we meeting in here?” Daniel Nguyen’s brown gaze cut from his captain to Remi in the seat across the table from him. “And what is she doing here? She was banned from stepping anywhere near this investigation.”
An animalistic growl vibrated up Dylan’s throat. His arms lowered to his sides as battle-ready tension hardened the muscles across his shoulders. “She is a federal chief deputy United States marshal, and you’ll talk to her like one, Sergeant.”
Remi’s chin angled over her right shoulder, putting Dylan in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t need him to defend her, he knew that, but he wasn’t going to stand there and let Nguyen talk down to her, either.
“We’re just talking, Daniel. That’s it. The conference room is being set up for the union meeting taking place in an hour. No need to read into anything.” Captain Elijah Paulson tapped the file folder in front of him, the one Remi and Dylan had handed over to him less than an hour ago with the alleged connections between the sergeant and the twenty-six murders. A long trail of white-gray facial hair shook as the captain spoke.
He’d flat-out denied his sergeant had had anything to do with the New Castle Killer case and the resulting murders of everyone involved, but in the end, with the evidence Dylan and Remi had gathered, the captain couldn’t ignore the truth. “Marshals Barton and Cove brought some information to my attention today, and I wanted to sit you down and clear the air. For all of our sakes.”
Nguyen’s expression flattened as he interlaced his fingers across the steel surface of the table. He leaned back in his chair, seemingly at ease, confident. “Then ask.”
“The medical examiner identified the victim found at the scene as Del Howe.” Remi slid an older photo of the man they believed to be the New Castle Killer across the table toward the sergeant. “Have you heard that name before or seen the victim prior to responding to the 9-1-1 call yesterday morning?”
Nguyen placed his hand over the photo and brought it in for a closer look. In less time than it’d taken him to blink, he pushed it back toward Remi. “No.”
“Are you familiar with the New Castle Killer case?” she asked.
Visible tension bled into the sergeant’s neck and arms. He shook his head but refused to meet anyone’s gaze as he tried to force a casualness into his body. “No.”
“Daniel.” The captain kept his voice far more gentle than Dylan would have in his position. “According to your birth records, you’re related to one of the New Castle Killer’s victims. Tony Rasmussen. You’re his uncle, his mother’s brother.”
Sergeant Nguyen closed his eyes, pressing his mouth into a tight line. His callused fingers arced over the table between him and his interrogators, the whites of his knuckles proof he was straining to keep up the façade. He stroked one hand down his face as he realized he’d been caught in a lie. “What happened to Tony doesn’t have anything to do with the Howe investigation.”
“We believe Del Howe was the New Castle Killer. We believe he was the one who killed your nephew.” Dylan watched for the faintest hint of surprise or of being caught off guard, but Sergeant Nguyen kept his control in place. Interesting. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Nguyen’s head shot up, panic creasing the lines around the edges of his eyes. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone. I bring murderers to justice, not take the law into my own hands because she couldn’t find the man who butchered my nephew.” The sergeant motioned to Remi, and an explosion of anger spread behind Dylan’s sternum.
He peeled away from the wall. “You have no idea how far she went to recover your nephew, Sergeant—”
“You admit you know who Del Howe really was then?” Remi said. “That he was the man who killed your nephew.”
“I knew.” Defeat took the fight out of the sergeant’s expression, and he collapsed into the back of his chair, hands below the table where Dylan couldn’t see them. “Do you know what that son of a bitch did to my family? He didn’t just kill my nephew. My sister hasn’t said a word since she received the news her only kid won’t be coming home. She couldn’t handle it. Her husband couldn’t, either. He left her. He didn’t know how to deal with her grief, and my sister had to be institutionalized. She stopped taking care of herself, stopped eating. Her body is alive, but my sister died that day your detectives told her Tony was dead.”
“Is that why you killed Del Howe?” Dylan straightened. “The sheriff’s department didn’t get to him fast enough, so you took matters into your own hands? Did you think killing the bastard responsible for taking away her son would help her recover?”
Nguyen set his hands back onto the table and picked at the cuticles at the base of his nails. “That was my plan.”
“Damn it, Daniel, what the hell did you get yourself into?” Captain Paulson scrubbed a hand down his face.
“I didn’t kill him.” The sergeant’s square jaw worked overtime as he leaned forward over the table. “Believe me, I wanted to. I had the detectives assigned to Tony’s case update me on any new information, but once they stopped responding to my requests, I couldn’t sit there and watch my sister waste away. I had to do something. I called in every favor I had to get copies of the files on all three victims and dove into the case myself. The first few months, I had nothing. There were no new leads, the killer seemed to have gone dormant, you were fired from the sheriff’s department and the police had all but given up on finding Tony’s killer.”
“How did you uncover the killer’s identity?” Remi asked.
The sergeant’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “I paid the New Castle County medical examiner for the toxicology report after the second victim’s—Brett Smith—autopsy. From there, I was able to trace the sedative found in the remains to a website selling it on the black market. I threatened the administrator, and he gave me the credit card information of all the buyers who purchased the drug three months before the Tony went missing.”
“Del Howe was on that list?” Dylan asked. “Where is the report now?”
“I destroyed it.” Daniel Nguyen’s head dropped as the reality of that decision hit him. Setting one hand on the edge of the table, he enunciated every other word with a tap of his fingers. “I didn’t want anything leading back to me after I’d finished with what I wanted to do to him. Only, I never got the chance. Someone beat me to it yesterday morning. You have to believe me—I didn’t kill him.”
“So your alibi for the murder is that you
couldn’t have killed Del Howe because you were in the middle of planning how to kill Del Howe.” That was a new one. Only problem was, with the destruction of a key piece of evidence, Daniel Nguyen couldn’t prove he hadn’t had anything to do with Del Howe’s death.
“There’s already evidence leading back to you, Sergeant. Every officer involved in your nephew’s case has been systematically hunted down and killed over the past two years.” Remi took the file folder from Captain Paulson and opened it flat onto the table. She skimmed through the first few pages inside then slipped one sheet across the table.
It was a printout of the registration information Dylan had collected from the conference organizers early this morning. “We have proof you registered for law enforcement conferences in these cities within these dates I’ve written along the tops of each list from the organizers.” She handed him another piece of paper from the same file. “During which six investigators were murdered in those same locations. How would you like to explain that?”
“I... I can’t.” Confusion rippled the lines stretched across the sergeant’s forehead as he studied the documents in front of him. “I wasn’t in these cities on these dates. Wherever you got this registration information from, that wasn’t me.”
“A credit card in your name was used to register for each conference, Daniel.” Captain Paulson’s voice deepened with a combination of disappointment and sorrow. It was his turn to pass a collection of documents to his officer. “I had the cyber crime squad run your financials after Marshals Barton and Cove brought this to my attention. We can match the payment information to a card opened two years ago when the killings first started.”
“But did you check these dates against my shift schedule?” Nguyen asked.
“We have one of our marshals double-checking the dates and interviewing your partner now. But, Sergeant,” Dylan said, “you’re going to want to get ahead of this while you still can. Del Howe was dead approximately eight to twelve hours before the 9-1-1 call was logged. You haven’t given us an alibi that proves you weren’t at that cabin before you responded, and you’ve been linked to at least six of the twenty-six murders we’ve uncovered during this investigation. Chief Deputy Barton can put in a good word with the district attorney, but you’re going to have to give us something here. Something that shows us you’re telling the truth.”
“I had nothing to do with any of this, and my shift schedule will prove it. I didn’t register for those conferences because I’ve wasn’t at those conferences.” Daniel Nguyen pressed his index finger into the table. “I was here, doing my job. If they were paid for with a credit card in my name, check with the credit reporters. My house was broken into two years ago while I was on graveyard shift. All that was taken was the binder where I keep my personal documents. It was in my fire safe. Birth certificate, social security card, passport—anything someone would need to steal my identity.”
A flood of hesitation washed through Dylan as the sergeant shook his head. “Whoever you’re looking for, it’s not me. But you’ll be hearing from my lawyer and my union rep all the same.” Nguyen turned his attention to Remi. “You were the one Del Howe was surveilling, Chief. I wasn’t the only law enforcement officer with a grudge against him.”
CHAPTER SIX
Remi closed the door to the interrogation room behind her, the evidence file against Sergeant Nguyen in hand, and faced Dylan and Captain Paulson. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t read him as a killer. There are too many pieces to this investigation. They all seem to fit, but I think he’s telling the truth.”
“It’ll be easy enough to check when the credit card used to register for the conferences was applied for and activated, and to look into the break-in he claims happened two years ago.” Dylan folded his arms across his chest, accentuating powerful muscle fighting to break free from his T-shirt. He nodded toward Captain Paulson. “You can check in with the officer we asked to run the dates of the murders against Nguyen’s shift schedule. Should give us some answers as to where we go from here.”
Remi ignored the warmth bubbling behind her sternum. Dylan had stood up for her in that room when Nguyen had pointedly blamed her for what’d happened to his nephew. Unnecessary, but it was the thought that counted. The US Marshals Service had been born and bred as a boys’ club since the seventies, and it’d taken every last ounce of her fight to land her position as chief deputy. Nobody had helped her along the way. Nobody had supported her. That was the way she preferred to rise through the ranks, by her own merit, but that didn’t minimize the appreciation she had for him right then.
The captain shook his head. “As much as I hate the idea one of my own is involved with what happened to Del Howe out in those woods, I gotta admit, I don’t feel bad for the man if what you said is true.”
“Believe me, nobody does, but that doesn’t mean his killer should go free. No one is above the law.” Remi exhaled hard as she came down from the last few adrenaline-fueled minutes. “What do you think our chances are of getting a search warrant for the sergeant’s house? He claims he destroyed the toxicology report that led him to Del Howe, but maybe there’s still something we can use to prove he wasn’t the one who killed the vic.”
“I’ll call the judge now to let her know what we have. If she’s in a good mood, your chances are high.” The sound of Captain Paulson’s heavy footsteps bounced off the tile floor as he headed for his office.
Daniel Nguyen’s last words echoed in her mind. He was right. The sergeant wasn’t the only law enforcement officer who held a grudge against Del Howe, and the evidence inside the victim’s closet had proved it. The New Castle Killer had been closing in on her, putting the entirety of her team at risk. She would’ve done anything to keep that from happening, to keep them safe, including the deputy at her side.
“I can read your mind, you know.” Dylan’s voice pulled her attention back into the moment. “The sergeant might not be the only officer who wanted Howe to pay for what he’d done, but the evidence against him is a hell of a lot stronger than what they have against you. They can’t pin the New Castle Killer’s death on you, Sheriff.”
There was that word again, the label she’d taken so much pride in when she’d served New Castle County.
Remi slid her hand into her cargo pants as the tattoos on her forearm itched for attention, but that was an itch she’d never be able to scratch. Not as long as she kept running from the past.
“I doubt Daniel Nguyen killed any of those victims, including Del Howe. His shift schedule won’t match up with the conference dates and the credit card company will reveal his identity was stolen. I’m sure of it. Whoever killed the New Castle Killer used his identity in order to frame the sergeant and to get access to the department’s personnel files. The killer learned he was the uncle of one of the victims and made him the perfect fall guy.” Remi started toward the captain’s office.
A strong grip surrounded her arm and twisted her into a wall of muscle. Dylan’s exhales swept across the overly sensitive skin of her neck as he lowered his voice, and her nerve endings caught fire. “Everyone involved in the case has been targeted and killed. I’m not going to wait for him to catch up to you.”
His body heat penetrated her long-sleeved shirt and warmed her insides, and Remi fought the urge to lean into him more, to revel in the connection between her and another human being. Not just any human being. Dylan.
She’d left Delaware behind for a reason, but her heart had yet to catch up with her logic. She’d run from the past, but a piece of her held fast to what they’d had together. However casual she’d written them off then, the same couldn’t be said for now. She lowered her voice, sure to keep their conversation between them. “You know as well as I do, anything we find in that house won’t be admissible in court if we don’t wait for a search warrant.”
“If we have Daniel Nguyen’s permission to search, we don’t have to wait,” h
e said.
Confusion flooded through her. “Then why have Paulson call the judge for a search warrant?”
“Because I want the captain focused on clearing his sergeant’s name instead of on the fact you could still be a suspect.” Dylan’s grip loosened, but he didn’t release her completely. Steel-gray eyes lifted above her head, distant. He was trying to protect her. But, truth be told, he was more at risk of becoming a suspect in Del Howe’s murder than she was. The surveillance photos proved the New Castle Killer had been closing in, but the forensics was sure to prove Dylan had been in that cabin before the body had been discovered by Annabell Ross and her hiking partner.
Remi shifted her stance to keep the captain in her peripheral vision. “The killer is either law enforcement or is using Sergeant Nguyen’s identity to access law enforcement files. Once the captain confirms his officer was working during the dates and times the victims were killed, the suspicion will be back on me. The more evidence Gresham PD uncovers, the less we’ll be able to convince them I’m not involved.”
“I’d guess we’ve got about thirty minutes before he realizes where we’ve gone,” he said. “Should be enough time to get a head start.”
“Okay.” She had to think through this and ensure the consequences of investigating on their own didn’t blow up in their faces. “You get written permission from the sergeant for us to search his property. I’ll get the gear.” Setting her hand over his heart, she pressed her fingertips deeper into the hardened muscle. His pulse beat strong beneath her palm. “Be careful.”
Dylan set his hand over hers and squeezed. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot in five.”
She handed him the file and headed for the bullpen of officers, ringing phones, witnesses and offenders. Nervous energy skittered down her spine as the captain’s door swung open, but she’d already reached the glass double doors leading to the parking lot.
Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 25