Empathy (11 page)

“A FINE?” I MOCK.

“Let it go, Braxton.” Swallowing the growl at him using my last name, I leave the chief’s office.

“Yo, Blake,” Donovan calls to me, coming over to meet me at my desk. I tilt my head in acknowledgment. “I need a list of security guards at your brother’s college, and their shifts. I figured you may already have this information as you’re so protective of him.”

My eyes assess him. “What’s this about?”

He drops a folder on my desk. “A victim who found her parents murdered goes there, which puts her on our watch list. We have reason to believe she may still be in danger.”

I kept my features relaxed as I picked up the case file, flipping through the details. “Why do you think that?”

Taking a seat, his ass parks on the edge of the desk, making it creak. “The way her folks were killed is gruesome. He enjoyed the kill. The profilers believe he’s psychopathic, and if so, he shouldn’t have hesitated to kill her. They think this may have been orchestrated because of her.” I drop the folder and wait for him to continue. “We think he may be watching her, and might strike again. We have her brother under watch but according to her interviews, she isn’t close with him and she doesn’t have any other family she’s close to. It was just her parents, so we don’t know if, when or who he will strike again.”

I fold my arms, leaning back to look up at him. “You think he’s separating her from loved ones?” I want to laugh. These are detectives, profilers, and this is what they come up with.

“We think she’s what drove him to commit these crimes. We have no person of interest to back it up, though.”

I tap the folder. “What about the brother?”

He shakes his head. “Nope, he has an alibi and no motive.”
No motive? No motive they are aware of.
“We’re just waiting for the Masters’ lawyer to come back from the Bahamas to question him about their financial situation, but as far as we know they’re clean and this is connected to Melody.”

My arms unfold and rest on my knees, my eyebrow cocking. “Melody?” I question at him using her first name.

He straightens. “Miss Masters,” he corrects, his eyes gazing at the folder. “She’s twenty years old and has no family. She reminds me of Emily.” Emily is his wife. She lost her brother and folks in a house fire and couldn’t take the grief. She tried to kill herself before she met him, and he gave her something to live for.

“I know her,” I spoke out, shocking him. His head turns to me so fast it looks it could sprain.

“What?”

“She’s a friend of Ryan’s. She stayed overnight last night. I woke up to find her in my bathroom.”

His jaw tics, eyes narrowed on me. “He taking advantage of damaged women now?”

Heat soars up my spine, my body turning rigid. “Fucking watch it when you talk about my brother, Donovan. That’s your only warning.” Ryan has a reputation around here for bedding everyone in high school, including a lot of sisters of people we grew up around. Unfortunately, some I now work with. “They are just friends, they weren’t alone.”

“You think he would mind answering a few questions about her?”

I don’t like this shit at all, this is the reason I don’t take jobs where I live. This is my own fault. I should have been more thorough when researching the target but I focused on the brother and his background rather than delving into the fact he has a half-sister away at college. “I will talk to him and find out anything of interest.”

He pats my shoulder. “Okay, good. I need you to tail her for me.”

I’ve been watching her anyway. I can’t get her out my head, so better to be doing it as the law than as a fucking stalker. “Yeah, sure.”

I don’t really have a choice. I’m new; young for a detective. I need to work up the ranks and that means doing the crappy jobs we would usually put a uniform officer on. They must be worried about her to use resources like this.

I need coffee. I jump up to go to the coffee pot, stopping when two women stand in my path. “Can you help her?”

I scan the sheepish girl averting her eyes, her hair lank around her face, her clothes hanging from her frail frame. “With what?” Patience is a virtue, and something I don’t have much of when it comes to other human beings.

“She saw something bad but she’s scared to report it.”

My eyes fall back on the fidgeting girl. “What did you see?”

She shakes her head and her friend speaks for her again. “Like I said, she’s scared to tell. You guys can protect her right?”

Pushing back the urge to roll my eyes and shake the jumpy bitch, I try the gentle approach; that seems to work for Donavan and the other detectives. “Listen, I can help you, protect you, but you have to give me something because right now you’re being vague.”

The friend scuttles forward, coming too close for my liking, her cigarette breath brushes against my chest and her eyes grow wide with excitement. “Murder.” She raises her eyebrows, impressed by the fact she has information on a murder. Any normal person would be scared or saddened even, but no, she’s caught up in the drama of it. Shit, we’re a flawed race.

I place my hand on her shoulder, adding pressure so she backs up. I lower my knees to gain eye contact from the witness “That true?”

She looks around the bustling precinct then nods.

Guiding her to an interview room to give us some privacy, and hopefully make her less jittery, I tell her friend to take a seat outside. She opens her mouth to argue but I’m already closing the door on her.

“Take a seat… Miss?”

“Jade, just call me Jade.” She lowers herself into a seat. I’ll need more than that but for now I‘ll take it. It had to be Jade, right? God was playing with me, he had to be.

“Okay, Jade. I know you’re scared right now but I want you to take a deep breath and explain why you’re here.”

Her hands clasp in front of her on the desk. “I was out back of Club Blue,” she murmurs. “Scoring some coke.” Shocker. This bitch doesn’t think we can spot an addict.

“And?”

“I finished… paying for it.” She squirmed, meaning she finished sucking his dick. “Then went back in but I had put my purse down when I was…”
On your knees
. This time I can’t stop my eye roll. “Anyway, I went back for it and there was a guy.” She gags, her hand going to her mouth.

I jump up to grab a trashcan from the corner of the room and hand it to her. She retches a few times, the blood vessels in her eyes popping. “He was standing over the guy I scored from, bashing his head in with a rock or something. I managed to run away. He didn’t hear me, he was too into what he was doing.”

“When was this?”

“A couple days ago. Monday I think.”

She thinks? God, why do they pump their body with that junk, it completely distorts their reality.

“You sure this is what you saw, Jade? It would have been dark, and you were no doubt intoxicated. Had you taken any drugs prior?”

Her posture grows rigid. “I know what I fucking saw! HE KILLED HIM. His cum was still coating my mouth, that’s how quick it was. He must have been watching. He could have killed me!”

I leave her in the room, telling her I’ll be back. Her friend jumps up when I open the interview room door. “She’s going to be a while,” I say.

She smacks her lips together, chewing on gum.

“Shit, I need to pick my kid up. Tell her I had to leave.”

Ignoring her, I make my way to Lieutenant Nash’s desk. “You better have coffee,” he quips as I approach.

“Do I look like a waitress?”

He grins. “Not any I have had the pleasure of meeting, thank fuck. What’s up?”

“I have a woman claiming she saw a murder out back of Club Blue. Do we have any reports to back that up?”

He taps his fingers over his keyboard. “I would know if we had. We did have a sexual assault there last night, but no murders.”

He brings up a profile of a pretty brunette. “Mary Keys, reported someone forcing her into the toilet and violating her.”

I grind my teeth. Sexual assault is a trigger for me. I’m such a contradiction. I hate scum who violate people in that way, yet I can kill, violating their right to live. “Any leads?”

He shakes his head. “Came at her from behind. What’s this woman claiming to have seen?”

“A dealer bludgeoned out back in the alley.”

His eyebrows rise. “Well, take Rossi and go check it out, but I’m sure someone would have come forward by now. That’s a busy place.”

The stale stench of beer hits me in the face as I pull the door open to Club Blue. The dark blue walls and mirrored bar make the empty space in-between feel even more cavernous and cold. The place is still; no music, no people.

“Hello!” I call, seeking any movement. A click and then squeaking of a door behind the bar sounds in the room and a blond guy appears with a crate of beer bottles. He jumps when he sees us, his eyes narrowing.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I flash my badge, giving a narrowed stare of my own. He rolls his eyes, but his shoulders have become rigid.

“You people have already questioned all the staff. These girls get drunk, become slutty then regret it and cry abuse,” he spits.

I eat up the space between me and the bar, bringing my hands down harder than necessary. “We’re not here for that. Someone reported a murder.” I let that filter in to his brain for a few seconds, watching his posture stiffen more.

“Here?” he asks.

“That’s what we want to know.”

His hands came up in a surrender manner. “I don’t know nothing about no murder.”

“Do you have a back exit into the alley behind the club?”

He nods, pointing towards the back end of the establishment.

“Is this open when the club is open to customers?”

He shrugs. “People use it to go out and have a smoke.”

I lift my chin towards the door for Rossi to follow and make my way over

“It fucking stinks of piss and sweat,” Rossi says. I hate that I’m put with this idiot while my partner, Zach, is taking time off.

“You’re in an alley at the back of a club. Just breathing down here we could pick up a disease.” I notice a camera on the side of the building straight away. “Does that work?”

“Yeah,” the bartender replies

“I’m going to need the tapes from as far back as you have them until today.”

“You think this woman is legit?” Rossi asks, but it’s muffled by his hand over his mouth. I shrug, going to the dumpster a few feet from the fire exit. I pull on some gloves and lift the lid, noticing how full the dumpster is.

“Find out what day the trash gets collected.”

His footsteps carry away from me. The alley is wide, a good twelve feet, and fifty feet long with multiple back entries from the adjoining building. If someone did commit murder here, it would have been spontaneous. No way would someone plan to murder here.

Lifting the lid on the last one, the smell of death and decomposing flesh seeps into my nostrils. I flip the lid over and lift a few bags. There’s blood covering a body that rests at the bottom.

“Today. They collect the rubbish today,” Rossi calls.

“Call CSI, we have a body. Looks like he’s been here a few days so Monday night seems right, which means our forty eight hours before the trail runs cold is already chilly. I need you to canvas for witnesses, establish a correct time frame. You can get all that from the video tapes. We need motive and a suspect.”

Rossi flips his phone out to make the call just as the bartender re-emerges.

“I need a list of the staff here and their roles. I want to know who’s been putting out the trash. We need to get this crime scene secure before any more evidence gets contaminated. You’ll need to keep the bar closed tonight.”

He agrees, rushing back inside.

“I can still smell it.” My eyes trail from the screen to Rossi who’s holding up a pot of hand cream, inhaling it like it’s a baked good.

“Stop being a pussy. Where did you get hand cream?”

His eyebrows almost touch his hairline. “It’s my girlfriend’s. I get dry hands from writing up paperwork all day, don’t judge.”

God, if he thinks I judge him on that alone he is wrong. The fact that he is useless and hates the smell and sight of the dead, yet became a homicide detective is so agitating I want to shove his face inside a dead body until he’s used to it.