Justice Betrayed

by Patricia Bradley

  She knew he hated detailing cars. But the way she smiled at him made turning her wager down impossible. He’d just have to win. “You’re on. But you have to do the same for my four-wheel-drive pickup if I win.”

  “Deal. But I won’t lose.”

  She cleared the first round without breaking a sweat. He didn’t know how she made it look so easy as she left the steps and hopped on top of the cube and then dropped to the floor and sprinted across to the dummy. When she pulled it across the line, he stopped the clock. One minute thirty-four seconds. The best time for the day and six seconds faster than he’d ever completed the course.

  She didn’t say anything when he passed her on the way to the starting line. She didn’t have to—canary feathers were practically caught in her teeth.

  He bounced on his feet, loosening up as he waited for the whistle to blow. The first round went quickly, and as he started the second round, he felt good about his time and was barely winded. He cleared the bar and made quick work of the steps, then rounded to the cube and went up and over it with no problem. When he reached the dummy, he dragged it to the middle of the gym.

  Without looking, Boone knew it was the best he’d ever competed. He checked the scoreboard.

  7

  RACHEL HELD HER BREATH as she waited for Boone’s time to appear. She had him down two seconds from her time on her stopwatch, but she could have started her timer too soon.

  One minute, thirty-five seconds. Yes! She’d beat him by one second!

  She wanted to do a happy dance, but catching the flash of disappointment on Boone’s chiseled features, she dialed back her excitement. Then dimples appeared in his cheeks as he acknowledged her win with a smile. Now she wished he’d tied her.

  “Good job,” she called as he trudged toward her. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to hurry over.

  “Not good enough. Congratulations.”

  A lock of brown hair dangled over his forehead, and she clasped her hands together to keep from reaching out and brushing it back.

  “Thanks.”

  “How do you do it?” he asked.

  “Terri says it’s the ballet.” She chuckled when he gaped at her. “It prepares me mentally and . . .” She struggled for the right words. “My body feels lighter when I put myself in that mind-set. Helps me to run faster and do the obstacles more efficiently—which I need since the cube slows me down.”

  He considered her words. “I guess that makes sense. When do you want me to detail that heap you call a car?”

  She palmed her hands. “You don’t have to. I couldn’t resist baiting you.”

  “No, a deal is a deal. How about now? You can pull it around to the car wash.”

  Why had she made that stupid wager? Because he’d riled her by not moving her race time up. The Judge always said her temper would get her into trouble. Her phone rang and she glanced at the screen. Langley, one of the uniformed officers. “Give me a minute.” She turned away from him. “Sloan.”

  “We have a murder victim, and he had your card in his wallet.”

  A shiver ran over her arms, leaving goose bumps. Over the seven years she’d been a police officer, she’d handed out her card to hundreds of people, but as far as she knew, none of them had ended up dead. Until now. “Do you have a name?”

  “Vic Vegas.”

  The sickening thud Rachel felt was her stomach hitting the floor. “What’s the cause of death? And the circumstances?”

  “Bullet to the chest. He was at home, and the house has been trashed. Doesn’t look like anyone broke in, so he may have known his attacker. Can’t tell what’s missing and what’s not. His daughter is too distraught to be of any help.”

  The skin on the back of Rachel’s neck prickled. If it turned out he was murdered because of the files he’d mentioned or something he’d uncovered about the Harrison Foxx murder . . . She should have taken him more seriously. “I’ll be there ASAP.”

  She hung up and turned to Boone. “Afraid the detailing will have to wait. I have a murder to investigate.”

  “It’s your weekend off.”

  “I know, but I have history with the victim.” He listened intently while she gave him the details from the uniformed officer’s report.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Rachel bristled. Ever since Boone showed up on her shift, he’d hovered over her. “Why?”

  “Why not? I’m your lieutenant, and besides, anyone else would welcome my input.”

  “That’s just it. I’m the only one you micromanage.” She didn’t see him hovering over the other investigators. He must think her really incompetent.

  “I’m not riding herd on you because I question your tactics or ability. I can see you being assigned to Homicide after you make sergeant, and you’ll be a good investigator, one the department will be proud of. But for now—you’ve been here barely six months.”

  Oh. Not because he was trying to get rid of her. She rocked back on her heels. Boone thought she was a good detective? Even so, the last few days of him picking her cases apart rankled, partly because he came into those cases late and didn’t have all the background information. And partly because she wasn’t accustomed to it. The lieutenant in Burglary had never criticized her work.

  “Look,” he said, resting his hand on the gun at his waist. “For the record, I’ve micromanaged, as you call it, every investigator in my department. I’m treating you no different. So, if you’re ready, we’ll check out this homicide.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing the defense that threatened to spill from her lips—even though she wanted to say she’d never seen him question any of the other investigators. But it’d do no good. She’d never noticed before Boone became her superior how much he was like the Judge. Always right. Always in command. But he was her superior. Time for her to remember that and forget what they’d had in the past. Even so, it’d be a while before she embraced his constant assessment of her work.

  “You’re welcome to ride along with me,” he said, his tone softer.

  It was going to be hard enough working with him without being thrown together in the close quarters of a pickup. “Thanks, but then you’d have to bring me all the way back downtown.”

  “No problem.”

  “I’d still prefer to drive my own car.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  In the gym locker room, Rachel quickly changed into jeans and a sleeveless pullover and hurried to her Civic. The faint tick, tick, tick when she turned the key drew a groan from her lips. She’d put off buying a battery one time too many. She tried again, but no amount of coaxing would put life in the battery. So much for her independence. It took all the self-control she possessed to refrain from slamming her fist against the steering wheel.

  Two options stretched before her. Call Boone to return to the parking lot and pick her up, or . . . She didn’t have time for the second option. It’d take too long for AAA to get here and replace her battery.

  Rachel clenched her jaw and yanked out her cell phone as she exited the car. Before she could dial Boone’s number, he pulled in behind her and lowered his window.

  “Car trouble?” he asked sweetly.

  “Yes. Dead battery, so if the offer’s still open, I’ll ride with you.”

  “Sure. Once we’re done at the crime scene, I’ll stop at a parts store so you can pick up a new one. I’ll even put it in for you.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him she knew how to install a battery but instead grabbed her shoulder bag that contained notepads and pens along with the photo Vegas had left with her. “Appreciate that.”

  Boone’s red Ford pickup had a running board, and she used it to climb in the seat. After buckling up, she focused on the road.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he asked.

  Her mouth twitched. “I’m not used to asking for help.”

  “Or accepting it. I’ve always wondered, why is that?”

  This was the very reason she didn�
�t want to ride with him. She didn’t want him psychoanalyzing her. “You know the Judge. Independent is the only way I know how to be.”

  “How is your dad, by the way?”

  “Fine. He asked about you just last night.” She still smarted from her father’s assumption that Boone had broken off their relationship.

  “The Friday night dinners,” he said. “Is he still trying to get you to return to the law firm?”

  “Did the sun come up this morning?” She’d quit courting her father’s approval a long time ago. “When he raised me to be independent, I don’t think he considered I might not follow in his footsteps.”

  “You’ve made a good cop.” He took the Mt. Moriah exit off the interstate. “Tell me what you know about Vegas.”

  “There’s not much to tell.” She quickly filled him in on the details of Vic’s visit, and it wasn’t long before they turned onto the street where Vic Vegas had lived. She surveyed the ranch-style brick homes. The well-tended flower gardens and trimmed yards gave the neighborhood the feel of permanency, like the residents had lived here most of their lives.

  Boone pulled behind a white van with a medical examiner logo on the side door and killed the motor. “The murder he wanted you to investigate. Was it recent?”

  “No, seventeen years ago.” She pulled the photo from her bag and handed it to him. “He gave me this yesterday. His friend, Harrison Foxx, is the one accepting the trophy from me. He was murdered a few days after the photo was taken.”

  “You knew the victim prior to yesterday?”

  “Not really. I was helping my mom the night the photo was taken.”

  He studied the photo. “You think the two deaths are related?”

  “I don’t know. The officer who called said there were no signs of forced entry and that the house had been trashed.” She chewed her bottom lip. “The thing is, Vic told me he’d been trying to solve his friend’s death. That he’d been asking questions and had compiled files on the case—files I was waiting for him to bring this morning. What if someone killed him for those files?”

  Once again, guilt reared its ugly head. Vic might still be alive if she’d followed up on the files instead of waiting until today. “I should have taken him more seriously when he said he’d been investigating the murder.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  She stiffened.

  “I’m not being critical,” he said. “You have to quit taking offense every time I ask you a question.”

  Rachel forced her body to relax. “I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just that you sounded like the Judge.”

  He laughed. “Do you still call him the Judge to his face?”

  “Yep. Have since he was appointed to the bench. Before that, only under my breath.” She thought of her distant, somber-faced father. “The robe suited him long before he became a judge. But back to your question about Vic Vegas. It’s kind of hard to take seriously a person in a white jumpsuit with their dyed black hair combed in a pompadour.”

  “I see your point.”

  Her shoulders slumped as she remembered it’d only been after Vic had mentioned the connection to her mother that she’d even been interested in the case. “That doesn’t change the probability that the files are gone now. I should have insisted on getting them yesterday.”

  “Maybe they’re in the house,” Boone said and opened his car door.

  She had a gut feeling they wouldn’t be.

  An incoming text chimed on her phone. It was Gran asking what time Rachel would arrive for their outing. She sucked in a breath. Vic’s death had blown away all thoughts of the shopping trip.

  Another of the balls she was trying to keep in the air just hit the ground.

  8

  BOONE FOLLOWED RACHEL into the small brick house. She was a little prickly when it came to her father. But if Judge Lucien Winslow were his father, he might be prickly too. Not that he didn’t admire the Judge and enjoy talking with him. His fairness in the courtroom was legendary. But so was his total control. Boone had been in the courtroom once when a defense attorney tried to slip in evidence that had already been disallowed. When the Judge finished with the attorney, he’d practically slithered out of the courtroom.

  From the doorway, Boone surveyed the living room, glad he wasn’t a tech working the crime scene. Someone had been in a hurry. Books had been dumped from their shelves, table drawers emptied, papers scattered and wall hangings stripped from their frames. Making sense of this mess, let alone photographing it, was better suited to someone other than him.

  “I don’t think the murderer found what he was looking for,” Rachel said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “There’s nothing left untouched. If the files had been found, something would be intact.”

  “Good point.” He turned to one of the techs. “Where’s the body?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  They found the medical examiner, Laurence Caldwell, finishing up his investigation.

  Boone’s gaze went around the room. Either the killer didn’t believe the kitchen held anything of importance, or he’d found what he was looking for. Or she. Other than a few open drawers, nothing was out of place. He steeled his emotions and turned his attention to the body on the floor. Death was never easy to view, even though he’d seen it often enough. The man on the floor had lived and loved and now he was dead, taken before his time. He deserved justice, and Boone hoped they found it for him.

  Since Vegas was still wearing an Elvis jumpsuit, Boone assumed the murder took place not long after Vegas returned home. “Can you give us an idea how long the victim has been dead?”

  “Judging from rigor mortis and body temperature, I’d say at least eight hours. Probably happened at 12:48 a.m.,” Caldwell said.

  The ME had never expressed a definite time at a crime scene before. “How can you be so precise?”

  Using his pen, Caldwell touched the dead man’s watch on his left arm. “First bullet went through here, stopping the watch at 12:48, then it traveled through his wrist, severing the ulnar artery. My hypothesis is he realized the person was going to shoot him and he threw up his arm. But that’s not what killed him.” The ME pointed out a bloodstained hole in the jumpsuit. “The fatal bullet was the one to the heart.”

  “You’re sure of the sequence?” Rachel asked.

  He nodded. “Too much bleeding from the wrist for it to have been after the heart wound.”

  Boone made notes on his iPad. “Anything else you can tell us?”

  “Since he hadn’t changed out of that”—he indicated the jumpsuit—“I assume he’d just gotten home.”

  Sounded like the ME thought no one in their right mind would wear the Elvis costume any longer than they had to.

  Caldwell looked over his glasses at them. “I’m assuming he was an Elvis impersonator.”

  “Tribute artist,” Rachel said, swallowing hard.

  She looked a little green around the gills as she turned away. Probably hadn’t seen that many murder victims, and he felt for her, remembering his first cases. Her phone dinged, and she took it out.

  Rachel glanced at the screen and then looked up. “The uniformed officer who was first on the scene is next door with the daughter. Want me to interview her?”

  What was up with that? It was primarily her case, and not like her to ask who should do the interviewing. Did him being here bother her enough to make her insecure? He’d never intimidated her before, and he didn’t know what to do about it other than to step back and let her take over. Which meant dialing himself back. Not an easy task for someone as take-charge as he was. “It’s your case, and she’d respond better to you. I’ll stay here and see what I can find out. When you finish, I’d like to compare notes about the case.”

  Rachel tried not to let her surprise show. Ever since they’d stepped inside the house, Boone had been in charge and she’d been relegated to second fiddle. Happened every time he was with her on a case. Not that it wa
s particularly his fault or he even noticed—it was just the way it was. She stopped at the door. “See you in a bit.”

  A text chimed again. More than likely her grandmother again. A quick check confirmed it was the other grandmother. Nana had been invited to go along on the three o’clock shopping trip, and she wanted to know when to be ready. Sometimes Rachel wished her grandmothers had not learned to text.

  I’m tied up on a case. Terri will pick you up at three fifteen.

  Ooh! Can’t wait to hear about it.

  Wrong message to text. Her family was divided into two camps on her career, and Nana championed the law enforcement side, much to the Judge’s chagrin. She was the one person he couldn’t intimidate. Correction. The one person other than his mother. Gran and Nana. Having two strong-willed grandmothers could be a headache, especially when they were usually on opposite sides.

  Rachel pocketed her phone and climbed the steps. Officer Langley answered the doorbell, relief showing in his eyes.

  “How’s the daughter holding up?” she asked.

  “Not good. She hasn’t stopped with the crying, and I’m not sure how much help she’ll be. Name’s Dianne Colson, and she’s in the den.” He handed her his pad. “Here’s what I have so far.”

  She scanned his notes into her phone. “Thanks. You want to interview a few of the neighbors? I’ll check with you when I finish here and grab the ones you haven’t talked to.”

  “Gladly.” Like most men, Langley probably wasn’t comfortable around crying women.

  The house was laid out similarly to the one next door, and she had no trouble finding the den. Two women looked up as she entered the room. One held a tray with a teapot and two cups, which she set on the coffee table. The woman was older and heavy in the hips, and Rachel guessed her age to be close to Vic’s.

  The younger woman huddled on the hearth, shock registering on her splotchy face. Rachel knew how she felt, and while time helped, the memory of finding her mother always hovered in the back of her mind.

  “Ms. Colson? I’m Det. Rachel Sloan, and I’m sorry about what happened to your father.”