The detective shook his head. “Trust me, that’s the first thing I thought of. They both have alibis for the night of the murders.”
“For all five of the deaths?”
“I called all ten of the women. I half think I should stop taking investigation tips from those two and start getting dating advice.”
Sam snorted. The Baker boys did have a way with women, but it was kind of necessary for their lifestyle. Not that the detective would understand that. “Just meet me down here at three. I’ll buy you lunch. Or breakfast. Whatever you’d call it at that point.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs at three and you’ll buy me coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.”
Sam nodded, half surprised that he’d changed his mind. As long as she got Nick and Travis to stop messing with something so serious, she could sleep at night. “Will do,” she said as she started back up the stairs until they reached the third story. “This is my stop.”
The detective continued up without stopping. All she heard was the faint, “I know,” before he was out of sight.
Derek frowned at the traveler’s mug his strange neighbor handed him. “You made me coffee?”
“It’s caramel latté. My mother bought me some fancy coffee machine thing a few years ago and I never use it. She’ll probably be happy that someone is enjoying it.” She pushed the cup toward him.
He took the large traveler’s mug and eyed the black cat on the outside of it. “Do you have cats?” He took a sip.
“No, actually—”
“Holy fuck, this is amazing.” He took the lid off the mug and smelled the liquid inside, trying to figure out what trick made it taste so damn good.
His neighbor laughed. “You can have the coffee machine if you want. Don’t know why she got it for me. She knows I can’t sleep half the time. Last thing I need is caffeine.”
Derek half heard her as he took another deep gulp of the drink. “Samantha Harris, right?”
She cautiously nodded. “So you know my exact apartment and my name? Should I be worried, Detective?”
“Call me Derek. And no, you don’t have to be worried. When I smelled your, well, hobby, I ran a quick check to make sure you weren’t a dealer or into anything heavier.”
“Does that mean you support the legalization movement?”
He hadn’t had nearly enough sleep to get into a political discussion. “I’m paid to enforce the rules, Ms. Harris. Not make them.”
“Fair enough. And if I’m calling you Derek, you have to call me Sam.”
Sam.... Even through all the dark layers, she didn’t strike him as a tomboy. Probably a nickname that her mother hated and she went along with to piss off the family.
“So do you have a company car with a radio?” asked Sam.
“A radio is necessary for your little operation?”
“Assuming Nick and Travis haven’t changed their tactics in the last ten years. And since they aren’t the most original bunch, I’m guessing this will still work.”
“This way.” Derek led Sam on the one-block walk to the parking garage he parked his Crown Vic in. New York City wasn’t friendly to auto owners, but he needed to be able to move around the city freely depending on the cases he was working.
And as much as he’d like to think that Nick and Travis weren’t as predictable as Sam seemed to think, he had a feeling she was right. Derek had had a bad feeling about those two from the second he was assigned to listen to their asinine theories about the Bay Side Butcher.
Nick and Travis Baker were local celebrities in Jersey. Their psychic act had even made it on the local TV stations a few times. It was easy enough to see the appeal. There were hundreds of videos of them online connecting with someone’s long-lost love and bringing their audience to tears. Which really made the number of women they were banging on a nightly basis make more sense.
Derek had worked in his precinct for thirteen years and with his captain for eight of those years, but Captain Voss had never given any sign of his belief into the paranormal. But with new bodies popping up every week, much faster and more organized than the normal progression of a serial killer, he’d insisted that they bring in the outside help.
Not that the week they’d been “assisting” had brought in any leads. In Derek’s opinion, dealing with them was taking away from time he could be following up on other leads.
That was, if he had any other leads. After five deaths, the killer hadn’t slipped up in any tangible way for Derek to get anything solid.
Derek hit the unlock button on his keypad. “I’m here.” As he sat in the driver’s seat, he finished off the caramel latté and handed the black cat traveler’s mug back to Sam. “So where are we going?”
Sam pulled a printed set of directions out of her bag and handed it to him. “At this time of day, it should be about half an hour drive. We probably have enough time for a stop if you need one.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Derek as he headed to the nearest bridge off the island.
Sam sat back and looked out the window. Derek glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to figure out what her deal was. He didn’t remember the last time he’d sat in silence with someone he barely knew. Most people had a compulsive need to fill those gaps. Either babbling on about things that didn’t matter or letting out secrets they’d never normally share with a stranger.
It was probably his favorite interview technique. Was the easiest one, too. Sit in silence until the suspect told him exactly what he wanted to know. But Sam was either sure enough in herself to be okay with the silence or she already knew exactly how to keep from giving away too much.
A cell phone cut through the quiet, but Derek knew it wasn’t his. Sam fidgeted in her seat until she pulled out her phone from the zipper pocket in the blue leather jacket. “Shit,” she muttered as she answered the phone and brought it to her ear. “Jackson. How’s it going?”
Her tone was apprehensive and Derek tried to figure out who this Jackson was. He hadn’t ever seen her coming or going from the building with any guys, but she was an attractive woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had a guy or two.
“She never should’ve told you about that,” she said into the phone with an annoyed tone. “I don’t care if it’s true. If I want you to come over, I’ll call you.” There was a pause as this Jackson guy talked. “Now really isn’t a good time. Yeah, for sure. I really do appreciate you calling. Okay, bye.” Sam hung up the phone and tucked it back into her pocket. “This day keeps getting stranger and stranger,” she said softly as she looked back out the window.
Derek wasn’t sure whether she was talking to him or not, but he was willing to bite. “Is there a problem?”
“Just an invasion of my privacy. Nothing that I’m not used to, though.” She looked over to him. “Do you have to be back at the office any time soon?”
“As soon as possible. But after a while, you need to get out. You can only stare at the same pictures and interviews for so long before your brain shuts down. This will be a good reset.”
“We could all use a good reset every now and again.”
There was a pause as she studied him, and Derek’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. It was strange enough to drive in silence, but remaining quiet while she looked him over was a whole other struggle.
“I have a lot of questions I want to ask,” she said suddenly. “But I know you probably can’t answer any of them, so I’m trying to contain myself.”
“Well, you can feel free to ask whatever you want. But you’re right that I can’t give out details about an ongoing investigation.”
“Figures.”
Once again she went quiet and Derek was utterly perplexed. He didn’t remember the last time someone hadn’t asked for some sort of details about his cases. Especially for a case as publicized as this one. As sad as it was, one or two dead girls like this wouldn’t even entail coverage on the smallest news stations around. B
ut the third murder was enough to get the attention of the locals, and by the fourth, it was making national headlines.
Now that a fifth girl was dead, all hell was breaking loose.
Derek was half convinced Sam was a reporter wannabe who was pulling his chain to get a story, but more than that, he really wanted to believe that Nick and Travis were full of shit.
“This is our exit,” she said.
Derek got off and Sam directed him through the streets until they were at an industrial part of town.
Sam leaned forward and studied the buildings. “Okay, here’s a good place to stop.”
He parked the Crown Vic in front of a large three-story brick building with no windows, signs, or doors. Must be the back of it. “Now what?”
“Now comes the tricky part.” She grabbed the speaker piece of his police radio and started to fiddle with the dial.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She didn’t stop her slight tuning adjustments, listening to each channel before she turned the dial slightly again. “I don’t know the frequency they use. It’s been too long since I’ve done this.” She kept turning.
“You’re trying to listen to what? Where are we?”
“We’re at the studio where their little productions are performed. They’re all a bunch of frauds. There are a thousand other ways they could make easy money, but for some reason they always got a kick out of preying on people’s hopes and dreams.”
“And they just happened to tell you about this?”
“Well, back in high school they were doing it on a smaller scale. Nick would find some schmuck at the mall and either talk to them or eavesdrop until he knew some of their secrets. Then Travis would offer them a palm reading—the first five minutes free, of course—and from there, they could get hundreds of dollars. Since then, they’ve scaled up the business.” A mix of voices came over the radio and Sam smiled. “Here we go.”
At first, it sounded like gibberish to him until he was finally able to listen to one of the voices over the others. “So who are you hoping to talk to today?”
Another voice, this one an older woman, answered, “My husband. He was taken so suddenly in a car accident three years ago. I never had a chance to say good-bye. My daughter says this is all a scam, but I figured, why not try?”
“They’re recording the audience?” asked Derek.
“From what I’ve heard, they have cameras all over the place. They use the normal radio frequencies and can switch which mic they listen to.”
“From what you’ve heard? Who told you this? I’d think that this is the kind of secret that wouldn’t be well known.”
“Their family and mine go way back, and our families are good at keeping secrets.”
“Except for the fact that you’re telling me.”
“Well, I never fit in that well,” she said with a sardonic smile.
“If anyone with a radio can hear this, they’re obviously not too concerned about secrecy”
“Someone with a radio who happens to be in a very small radius of their studio,” pointed out Sam. “But you’re right. If they get the national TV deal they’re in negotiations for, I’m sure they’ll do something more sophisticated. Until then, at least you have your proof that they’re frauds.”
There’s that. “Are you free to come with me to the station to tell my captain this? He’ll like it better coming from someone who’s not me.” Considering he hadn’t listened to a damn thing Derek had said about these two frauds.
Sam jerked back as her eyes widened. “I don’t really do police stations.”
“Come on. It’s not like you’re under arrest.” Derek put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. “Just make sure you leave any contraband in the car.”
There was a special kind of depressing that came along with government offices, thought Sam as Derek led her to his captain’s office. She’d been to a few offices here and there, and most businesses had art on the wall and coordinated carpet and walls to match the branding or whatever mood they were trying to achieve. Granted, even with this effort, the effect was normally bland, boring, and sometimes downright ugly.
But government offices didn’t even try. Everything seemed to be a washed-out blue or white. The only items breaking up the monotony were the personal pictures and items set on the working spaces of all the officers.
The officers who were all following her progression deeper and deeper into Derek’s precinct. Any other time, she loved the attention of standing out in a crowd, but right now she wished she had normal-colored hair and lipstick that wasn’t making her look as if she belonged in a lineup.
“Here we go.” Derek opened the door to one of the offices that lined the perimeter of the building. From what she could tell, they were in the section of the precinct for detectives, because these men—well, mostly men and a few women—were in business attire instead of the dark-blue uniforms of the other officers.
Derek knocked on the door even as he opened it. The man behind the desk looked up and waved Derek inside, obviously not upset about the intrusion.
The captain wore a white shirt with a patch on the shoulder that probably signified something, but Sam couldn’t get a good look at it from her angle.
“Captain Voss, this is Sam Harris. She approached me about some interesting backstory about our friends Nick and Travis Baker.”
The captain frowned. “I thought we’d talked about this already,” he said in a low, gruff voice. His black hair was peppered liberally with gray and silver; his eyes and lips were lined with wrinkles. Sam couldn’t tell whether he was late fifties or whether the stress of his job had prematurely aged him.
“I can wait outside if you two need to—”
“No, you’re fine. Sam told me that she used to go to school with these guys. That she was around when they first started the scam. Then we took a drive by their little studio and I heard for myself that everything they say the spirits tell them is actually picked up from hidden mics in the audience.”
The captain turned his disconcerting gaze to Sam.
She straightened in her chair, looking intently down at his paper-covered desk. Just let this be over quickly....
“Sam Harris?” asked the captain.
“Yep,” she croaked out through a suddenly dry throat. She still didn’t look up at him. Instead, she focused on her hands, which had started to shake again. Damn it. She’d need something soon to keep her from getting worse.
“Pierce, why don’t you give me a few minutes to talk to Ms. Harris?”
Sam jerked to look at Derek, her eyes pleading with him to stay. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she tried to say in a normal, not freaked-out voice.
“Sir, I don’t think—”
“For goodness’ sake, I’m not going to arrest her. I just have a couple quick questions and I think she’s going to want some privacy. Pierce, I’ll call you back in when I’m ready.”
Derek looked as though he wanted to say more, but instead he tightened his lips and nodded. He set a hand on Sam’s shoulder and gave a quick squeeze that was probably supposed to be comforting, but in her rapidly deteriorating state, the unexpected touch caused her to jump and avert her gaze back to the desk.
Once she heard the door close and realized she and this captain were alone, she forced herself to look up.
The captain leaned forward on his elbows as he considered her. “Samantha Harris. I know of a few different Harrises.”
“It’s a common name.”
“If you went to school with Nick and Travis Baker, I’m guessing you’re one of the Harrises I’m thinking of.”
Sam clenched her jaw. Shit. This was bad. “What exactly did you want to ask me?”
“Well, I’ll do you the favor of cutting right to the chase, Ms. Harris. Are you a witch?”
A shiver of unease shot through her. She was so stupid. What had she been thinking to get involved in something as big as a murder investi
gation? She looked the captain straight in the eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He leaned back in his seat. “I know all about the families. My uncle was married to one of the cousins from the Adams branch. Of course, the rest of the family thought Monica was just eccentric, but she showed me things that I can’t unsee. I know about your normal code of confidentiality, but we need your help on this case.”
Sam shook her head. “Trust me, I’m no help to anyone.” She could barely take care of herself.
She tried to think about what the captain was telling her. Monica Adams.... She’d heard of the rebellious woman before, but not more than gossip and whispers. She had married a mortal, which brought up enough stink between the families, but then when she’d gotten divorced, things had gotten even worse.
Sam wouldn’t be surprised if Monica had tried to rock the boat further by blabbing about family secrets, but this was drama she didn’t want to be sucked into.
“Just hear me out,” said the captain. “There’s something paranormal going on with this case. Whether it’s a wannabe or the genuine thing, my detectives are at a disadvantage here. I thought Nick and Travis would be able to help, but if you think they’re hurting more than they’re assisting....”
“This isn’t a paranormal thing. Witches, if they did exist,” she added carefully, “wouldn’t go around killing women all over the city.” And if they were doing it, the women wouldn’t be found anywhere. Ever. Let alone splayed out in the open for anyone to stumble over.
“Well, it wasn’t my first thought. But consider the facts. The first woman was found in the middle of an urban farm. The second was found on the shore of the harbor. Third was at the top of a building and the last was found—”
“Right outside the coal mine,” finished Sam, remembering the details from the earlier newscast.
“Exactly. I thought that would be the last one. That we’d missed our window to solve the case and that whoever it was had gotten away. But now the fifth victim was found at a hospital. Which meant whoever this is knows about all six of the elements.”
Beauty and the Shapeshifter (Evil Rising Book 5) Page 25