The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  And now he was gone.

  When the officers left—all but Hal—Hailey had wanted to go too. Hal stayed, letting Camilla and Ali climb over him, turning them upside down and tickling their bellies until Ali got the hiccups from laughing so hard. It was the first time Hailey had heard them laugh since John’s death.

  Hailey fought not to cry.

  When the girls were finally asleep, tucked into the bed they’d all shared those first days, Hal sat with her on the front porch, in the muggy, cold San Francisco air, and drank coffee in silence.

  Chapter 1

  One Year Later

  After her leave of absence, Hailey spent most of the spring readjusting to working beside Hal. For the first few weeks she wondered why she developed an ache in her neck—until she remembered her long-standing rule: never stand closer than two feet from Hal while talking to him. Barefoot, Hal was six-four where Hailey was only five-four in heels. When they’d first started working together, she’d spent so much time looking up during conversations that she’d developed chronic neck pain.

  Hailey was a pale white, the color gracious people call alabaster and others might call pasty, while Hal was so dark-skinned black that unless his eyes were open wide enough to catch the whites, they melted into the shadow between his cheeks and nose. Her head was a mound of dark curls while Hal’s was shaved bald. Despite the physical differences, Hal had never acted in a way to suggest that he was bigger, stronger, or better than Hailey, even though he was at least two of the three.

  More and more, Hailey thought he was three for three.

  Monday morning, after working all weekend, Hal announced that they had a lead on the Dennig murders. Several weapons matching ones stolen from Dennig Distribution more than a year before had turned up in the arrest of a local weapons dealer. The Triggerlock group—who handled weapons-related crimes—was putting together a sting.

  Hal pushed the DA’s office to resubmit their request to exhume the body of Nicholas Fredricks, a lobbyist working against guns and gun manufacturers. His fingerprint had been found on both the NRA buttons found at the murders—both the Dennigs’ murder and the killing of Colby Wesson, an heir to the Smith & Wesson company, up in Sacramento.

  Monday afternoon, when Hailey was practically asleep on her feet, Hal came bursting into the department like a storm, waving a piece of paper. “They approved the court order.”

  Hailey inhaled sharply. “They’re letting us exhume the body?” They had been waiting a year to get access to Fredricks’s corpse.

  “Yep.”

  It had been fourteen months since Abby and Hank Dennig were murdered. The defensive wounds on her and lacerations on him were consistent with a letter opener that Abby Dennig kept in the car. Cause of death for her was strangulation, exsanguination for him. Tox screens showed that both Dennigs had taken some form of sedative in the hours before their deaths. The Crime Scene Unit had ruled out other blood types, but the vehicle had contained no fewer than thirty unidentifiable prints and a dozen hair samples that didn’t belong to the victims or their kids.

  According to several of the couple’s friends, the Dennigs had been in the midst of filing for divorce at the time of their deaths. The scene suggested the two had killed each other.

  The Dennigs had two children, both girls. Just like Hailey and John had. Now, those girls had no parents. They had family, but it wasn’t the same. Kids needed their parents. It was the kind of case Hailey would have been a bulldog about. Except for the timing …

  When the Dennig case had fallen on Hailey’s desk, she was also working a serial rape case alongside Jamie Vail. And trying to solve the murder of one of their colleagues.

  She never should have caught the Dennig case.

  But she did, because Jim had insisted.

  Murder by spouse was the right call, based on practical assumptions. Occam’s razor—the simplest explanation was usually the right one.

  This time, it wasn’t.

  After Hailey had closed the investigation, a sheriff up near Sacramento linked Colby Wesson’s suspected suicide to the Dennigs’ murders via a partial fingerprint on a small, round anti-NRA button, identical to a button found in the minivan where Abby and Hank Dennig were killed.

  The print matched a man named Nicholas Fredricks who worked for a local organization on gun violence. He was a big lobbyist in DC for stricter gun regulations, and he’d had the ear of some very powerful people.

  Fredricks made a decent suspect. He was certainly outspoken on gun control. And his short temper was well-documented. He’d twice been arrested for assaulting police officers charged with using unnecessary force.

  There was just one small problem with Nicholas Fredricks as a suspect—he had been dead for twelve years.

  Now, over a year after Hailey had been on the case, they still only had the two partial prints, each on a separate button. And they were no closer to solving the puzzle of who was killing these people. Or why. Anti-gun activists were usually passive. They argued against violence. But this one was different. This killer was using violence against gun supporters.

  Which meant, somehow, the fight was personal.

  The court approval to disinter the body of Nicholas Fredricks meant the investigation could finally move forward.

  Hailey looked at the time on her phone. She was half tempted to go pull him out of the ground now.

  “I’ll let the cemetery know we’re coming tomorrow morning,” Hal said as if reading her mind.

  *

  Parked outside her in-laws’ house, Hailey took two puffs of her albuterol inhaler and mounted the steps to the front door. Her front door now, she reminded herself.

  A few months after John’s funeral, she’d sold her house and moved in with Jim and Liz. Her work schedule made living alone with the girls impossible. Not without being able to afford live-in care. Which she could not.

  Surprisingly, living with Jim and Liz had been comfortable, enjoyable even, although it took some time to get used to how Liz liked to make every dinner a formal event. The house was easier when Liz wasn’t around—more casual. Unfortunately, that often meant that the girls weren’t there either. Tonight she was taking Camilla and Ali to Cirque du Soleil, which meant Hailey would be home with Jim and Dee. They’d probably be working, which might give her a chance to get caught up on her paperwork.

  She threw her keys on a table in the foyer and made her way to the kitchen, where she found Jim eating a sandwich on a paper plate and drinking a cabernet sauvignon Cinq Cepages from a crystal glass. Hailey sniffed the air. “Tuna?”

  He nodded. “You want some?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” she said. “That’s quite a combination.”

  He smiled. “I know. A terrible waste of a good vintage, but I was starving.”

  She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. She and John used to banter this way—casually teasing each another. She had never imagined having this kind of banter with her father-in-law. One on one, he was surprisingly kind. And funny. He had John’s quick wit.

  She’d been so angry with him for getting her assigned to the Dennig murders. He’d only been looking out for a friend. If she’d had this kind of relationship with him when the Dennigs were killed, she would have offered to take the case. She would have wanted to help him.

  John would have loved to see them like this.

  “You want me to make you something else, other than tuna I mean?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “This is fine. There’s more in the fridge if you want some.”

  “Thanks.” Hailey made herself a sandwich while Jim finished his.

  He refilled his wine glass and she wondered if this was the first bottle. Lately, she had noticed Jim was drinking more. Had it started with John’s death? She couldn’t recall now. “Wine?” he offered.

  She set her plate on the table across from him. “No, thanks.”

  “There’s beer in there. The kind you guys like,”
he added.

  You guys. As though John were still alive. She still woke some mornings, expecting him beside her in the bed or to come in from the bathroom.

  Sometimes, she still woke up angry about something he’d said or done. Then she remembered he was dead.

  “Christ,” Jim muttered.

  Hailey searched for an excuse to leave the room. But she didn’t really want to be alone either, so she accepted the offer for a beer. John would always be in this room. She sat at the table while Jim got her a beer from the refrigerator. Pyramid Hefeweizen, her favorite.

  “You want a glass?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Didn’t think so.” He set the bottle in front of her and sat back down, pushing the paper plate with the crumbs to the center of the table and running his thumb along the dark rim of his wine glass until the crystal sang.

  Hailey drank from the cold bottle, thinking Jim would bring up John. Over the last few months, the sharp pain of new loss had faded into an ache. Even when she wanted to talk about him, the ache was still there.

  With Camilla and Ali around, the subject of John became silently forbidden unless one of them brought him up. When the girls asked about him, his death, heaven, his bones—and the questions sometimes seemed limitless—they didn’t hold back. They followed the advice of the child psychologist and told the girls they would always answer their questions.

  Over the course of the months, the torrent of questions had dried up. The questions now caught her off guard like ghosts hovering in closets.

  “Rittenberg came to see me today.”

  She was wrong. It wasn’t John that Jim wanted to discuss—it was his friend Tom Rittenberg, another man who had lost his child. His daughter, Abby Dennig, was the victim of the killer they were still hunting. Hailey had met Tom Rittenberg a few times. He’d done well in the insurance industry, and since retirement, he’d become involved in supporting local politics. He was short and a little round, with reddish cheeks that made him look a little like Santa Claus—something Camilla had pointed out at a fundraiser once. But since his daughter’s death, he was shriveled and frail, all the joy gone.

  She took a bite of her sandwich and said nothing.

  No question, this was going to be about Nicholas Fredricks.

  “He told me about the court order.”

  Hailey said nothing. The order gave them authority to disinter Abby as well as her husband if they found the need.

  “No one likes to think about their child being dug up.”

  Hailey drank from the bottle. “I don’t imagine anyone likes to think about them being buried.”

  “Touché.”

  Hailey pushed her half-eaten sandwich away. “We’re not looking at the Dennigs, Jim. Just because we have authority to disinter the Dennigs doesn’t mean we will. At the moment, I can’t see a reason why we would. We’re only interested in Fredricks right now.” She would never have shared these details with Jim a year ago. But Tom Rittenberg had lost his daughter, and Jim would be thinking of John. Tom and Jim had each lost their only child—within a month of one another.

  It was Jim’s turn to be quiet.

  “Did he say he was going to try to stop us?” Hailey asked.

  “He didn’t mention being opposed to it.”

  Tom Rittenberg was a powerful businessman with close ties to the political heavyweights in town, including Jim and the mayor. He’d also been president of the NRA for a time, something Hailey had held against him when they first met. Now, she wished he were still their president. His gun politics were a lot more reasonable than the guy leading the NRA now, who was practically suggesting they arm kindergartners.

  Hailey waited for Jim to say more on the subject, but he was silent. “I’ll let you know what we find,” she finally said.

  Jim looked surprised. “Thank you.”

  She nodded.

  “I also got a call from Inspector O’Shea today,” Jim said.

  “About John.” It wasn’t a question.

  “They have another suspect,” Jim said. “They wanted to come back and look at the den again.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said they were welcome to come,” Jim said.

  Jim’s sister stood in the doorway. How long had she been standing there?

  “Oh, hello, Dee,” Jim said. “Come sit. We were just catching up.” He rose and pulled a chair out for her. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said without moving from the doorway.

  “You didn’t,” Hailey told her.

  Holding her locket, Dee crossed the room with the slow grace of someone with royal blood and smoothed her slacks as she sat. “I’d love a glass of wine.”

  Her brother filled a glass for his sister.

  Hailey often wondered why Dee lived here. A success in business, she had plenty of resources, but she had never been married and seemed to like being close to her brother. John had mentioned a few times during their marriage that he was surprised she’d stayed away as long as she had.

  Dee had moved in with Jim and Liz a few months before Hailey and the girls did. She’d been working back east and decided she needed a change. Now, she occupied the large basement suite of Jim and Liz’s house and worked for Jim.

  “You were out?”

  “Tom took me to dinner.” The skin on Dee’s neck appeared flushed.

  Hailey recalled how grief-stricken Tom Rittenberg had looked at John’s service, which had been a cruel reminder of his own daughter’s funeral just a few months earlier. She was glad to hear he had someone, though she had a hard time picturing the lively Rittenberg with reserved Dee.

  “You’ve seen a lot of him,” Jim commented.

  “We enjoy each other’s company,” Dee said.

  “You deserve it,” Hailey interjected.

  “Agreed,” Jim said, raising his glass.

  The three clinked their drinks.

  Jim paid a strange deference to his younger sister, indulged her. And she him. They were sweet together, sometimes more like an old married couple than Jim and Liz. Hailey had never had a sibling, but the relationship between Jim and Dee seemed unusually close.

  A quiet woman, Dee was hard to read. She spoke carefully, as if she expected her every word to be examined and weighed. Except with Camilla and Ali, who adored her. Watching Dee with them, Hailey was sure Dee regretted not having a family of her own.

  Nobody talked about that either.

  The doorbell rang and Jim frowned, while Dee, who sat closest to the door, made no move to answer it. Jim stood to get it as Hailey’s phone buzzed on her hip. She answered the call. “Hal?”

  “There are two ways to look at getting called in again,” Hal said, his tone light and playful. Hearing him made her realize he had been like that less often lately.

  Hailey felt Dee’s gaze on her. “I’m listening.”

  “One, we’ve worked our asses off all weekend, we’re being called in again before I’ve finished my first beer, and the game just started.”

  Hal would be reclined in the worn, navy leather chair that had been his father’s, a Bud propped on his lap and the remote within easy reach.

  “And the other way to look at it?” she asked.

  “This call saves you from dinner at the senator’s.” He drew out the s like a snake’s hiss. “You are there, aren’t you?”

  “I like the glass-is-half-full view,” Hailey said, ignoring the dig at Jim. Old habits died hard. She’d have done the same thing a year ago. “Nice touch. So what is it?”

  Hailey heard the groan of Hal’s chair as he sat forward and pictured the way he perched his elbows on his thick legs when he was serious. “I got the call. Ryaan Berry’s informant says a group is being put together to try to move the guns stolen from Dennig Distribution. I’m going to join.”

  Ryaan Berry was an inspector in the Triggerlock department. Hailey had heard she was also part of the small group of
women officers who gathered monthly for dinner at Tommy’s Mexican down in the Sunset. The Rookie Club, someone had dubbed the group, although Hailey didn’t see herself as a rookie anymore. She also hadn’t been to a dinner since John’s death.

  Hailey scanned the address on her phone. “What time do you need me there?”

  “An hour would probably be about right.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour. Call if you need me sooner.” Hailey ended the call, dumped her beer into the sink, and tossed out the sandwich.

  Dee fingered her locket with one hand and held her wineglass with the other. “Heading back in tonight?”

  “Yeah.” Hailey reached for a glass in the cabinet. Something pinged in the front hall. She froze, her hand outstretched.

  The sound, though soft, was distinct.

  Hailey drew her gun. “Get down,” she hissed to Dee.

  Another ping of the bullet through a silencer cut the air. Then, the sound of shattering glass.

  Dee dropped to her knees and crawled around one of the table’s legs, huddling in the center of the rug.

  Hailey crept to the edge of the kitchen and pressed her back to the thin slice of wall beside the refrigerator. She waited for footsteps. The creak of the front door. Anything.

  The big grandfather clock in the hallway ticked out a rhythm. Her heart pulsed in her throat. The refrigerator at her back kicked on. Startling her. She listened for sounds. The house was silent.

  She rounded the corner into the hall slowly, barrel first, crouched low. “Jim!”

  No answer.

  She turned into the dining room, cleared it and continued along the hall.

  The window beside the front door was broken, glass scattered across the dark wood floor, confirming that the shots had come from outside. There was no sign of Jim. “Jim!”

  The front door stood partially open. She froze, unsure if the suspect was inside or out.

  The hallway was the only route to the back of the house. If Dee stayed under the table, she was safe.