Murder in the City: Blue Lights (3 page)

Then, she saw Sean Moseman, the murderer she’d been forced to set free.

A jolt shot through her. He was standing just outside the tape. Smiling at her.

Chapter Three

She wanted to slap that smug look off Sean Moseman’s face. She wanted to put him away in a cell forever. Or better still put him on death row.

That was what he deserved.

The thought of that beautiful girl he’d murdered lying in the ground drove her crazy.

Lainey glared at him. It was all she could do not to get out of her car and walk over to him.

She closed her eyes and sucked in several deep breaths. In for three counts. Out for three counts.

Finally when she felt her head wasn’t about to explode, she opened her eyes.

Detective Brice stood in front of Sean Moseman, blocking Moseman from her view, as he spoke to the murdering sack of… What was that conversation going to be like between the detective and the man who’d walked free?

She started her car and drove away. A phone call to Detective Brice later might be in order.

One way or another, she was going to make Sean Moseman pay.

* * *

Brice stood, deliberately blocking Moseman from looking at Lainey. He’d seen how the man had watched her, hungrily, but with a taunting expression, as if he had a bone to pick with her, a score to settle.

“What are you doing out here, Sean?”

He could smell the guy from this distance. Alcohol rolled off of him.

“I heard about the goings on in the hood. Decided to check it out.”

“Where’s your bottle?”

“Done drank it all. You gonna try and arrest me for public drunkenness? Want to see if I can get off of that charge as well?”

“Are you drunk, Moseman?”

“Nope. Just had a little celebratory drink. Plan to have me one every night this week.”

“You celebrating getting away with murder?”

“Uh uh.” He tilted up the side of his mouth in an ugly grin. “I’m celebrating justice.”

Moseman’s dirty clothes hung on his lank frame. He was skinny but with an underlying muscle that said he could beat a woman to the ground with little effort.

He’d done that a few times to his girlfriend Simone before she’d finally tried to leave him.

Then he’d killed her with a brutal force to show her how much he really loved her.

“Justice? Justice would be you beneath the dirt and that girl still alive.”

“Simone was no loss to the world. Whoever did her in did the world a favor. She was a skanky ho.”

“Because she wanted to break up with you?”

“’Cause she slept around. She was pregnant with another dude’s baby. That’s a ho.”

“So you killed her.”

“I ain’t killed her.” He smiled smugly, knowing Brice had been digging for a confession. “But whoever did kill her, did the world a favor. A skanky ho like that ain’t needed on the planet.”

Brice wanted to knock him to the ground but instead he just grinned at him. “So, you did the world a favor, killing that beautiful woman? Seems to me the world is short women like her. She was real sweet too, to hear the other guys in the neighborhood talk.”

Sean’s face twisted with the same jealousy that had caused him to kill Simone. “Nice try, Detective Brice. Nice try.”

He slunk away, trying to pretend comment about the
other guys
hadn’t gotten to him.

But it had.

He’d slip up at some point and when he did, Brice would drag his sorry ass into the bowels of the prison system to rot forever.

* * *

“Julie, get up. Time for school.” Lainey pushed open the door to her little sister’s room.

Julie struggled to a half sitting position, her blonde hair tousled, her blue eyes still looking half asleep. “Why didn’t you take me with you, last night?”

“Yeah,” Lainey snorted. “And explain to your teachers that Julie is sleeping in class again because she was out on another crime scene.” Julie went to a year round school, thank goodness. It worked out well for Lainey’s job.

“I’m going to be a cop. I need to learn,” Julie said in a way that made Lainey believe that in another ten years Julie would be walking a beat.

After college that was.

“Why not be a lawyer?” Lainey looked at Julie with a cocked eyebrow. Julie had started becoming so insistent about her choice of career paths.

“You’re the lawyer. I’ll catch them and then you’ll put them away.” She gleefully imitated slamming a prison door shut.

Julie was probably as scarred by the bitterness Lainey had felt in the past about the loss of their parents as she was by the actual loss itself.

“Whatever. Just get up and get ready for school. Pronto.”

Lainey walked back to her room with a cup of coffee in hand. Caffeine would be about the only thing getting her through the day.

Julie popped into her room a minute later, in her little starter bra, struggling to get her shirt over her head. Any day now, she’d need that bra. But as of yet, it was just an accessory, about as necessary as a necklace.

But, Lainey needed to accept Julie was getting ready to leave the little girl phase behind. No more dolls or teddy bears. Just boys, boys, boys, she feared.

It would be all on Lainey to make sure she grew up right. Julie was destined to be a beauty, already looking so much like their pretty mother. Julie’s crystal blue eyes that always sparkled with fun, and her heart-shaped face with smooth skin surrounded by blonde hair would attract teenaged boys in herds.

Lainey would have to work to keep them under control.

“So, what are your plans today?” Julie said in a good imitation of an adult.

“Well,” Lainey said in a mincing tone. “I’m going to try to put a bad criminal away for a long time. Then, I’ll probably deal with a lot of petty criminals and hope they don’t grow up to be felons.”

Julie laughed and fell down on Lainey’s already made bed. “Dude, you’ve got too much sympathy for the bad guys.”

Lainey looked at her sharply. “Have you been listening to those cops again?” Julie really had been on more than her fair share of crime scenes. And, often, while Lainey went inside the yellow tape, she left Julie in the car and told the nearest uniformed cop to keep an eye on her and that she’d take it personal if anything happened to her.

So, inevitably the cop would hang by the car, making conversation with the precocious preteen.

In another few years, she’d need to advise the younger cops of Julie’s actual age. Because something told her Julie would probably get their Mom’s curvy figure.

“Can I put a turquoise streak in my hair?” Julie walked up behind Lainey, looking over her shoulder into the mirror as Lainey put on makeup to hide the dark circles.

Lainey flashed her eyes at Julie and shook her head. “Maybe when you go off to college and I don’t know your hairdresser.”

They’d only just recently started having enough extra money to go to a nice hair salon. Before that, it had been beauty school freebies from a friend of Lainey’s.

“Kendall’s mom let her get a pink streak.”

“Yeah, well Kendall’s dad also left her mom for another woman. Kendall’s mom is trying to make sure Kendall doesn’t stop loving her and that mom’s house is as fun and cool as dad’s.”

Julie nodded. Because Lainey had nailed it.

“That was lousy the way he cheated on her mom. Kendall gets really mad about that still.” Julie flounced back onto the bed.

“I just made that bed.” Lainey turned to look at her. “How’d you know I went out last night?”

“I heard Mrs. Maxey’s voice and figured that meant you were going out.”

Thank God for Mrs. Maxey.

She was a little lonely since her husband had died and seemed to really want to help out. And the money Lainey insisted she take couldn’t hurt either on a fixed income.

Mrs. Maxey had been like an aunt to them since their parent’s death.

Julie’s life wasn’t like other little girls. Sometimes Lainey missed the sisterly type relationship she and Julie should have had, with joking and no responsibility on Lainey’s part to raise her little sister.

“Maybe I would look good with a purple highlight?” Lainey looked at herself in the mirror and lifted a front strand of her brown hair with a finger. “What do you think?

Julie guffawed, her head fully back. “That’ll be the day. I’ll get my turquoise streak one day. But you,” she pointed a finger at Lainey, “will never get a purple streak.”

Julie stood and walked up behind Lainey, shrugging innocently. “Unless I catch you in your sleep one night.”

She danced away as Lainey grabbed for her. “There’s always Halloween,” Lainey said.

Julie flicked on the little television that sat to the right of Lainey’s dresser. “Hey, breakfast,” Lainey said.

“I just want to see the news for a minute. See if you’re on it.”

Lainey smiled to herself. There was nothing Julie liked more than to see Lainey giving a sound bite on television, preferably one about a guy she’d just put away for a bad crime.

“Oh, look, that girl that was missing, they found her.”

Lainey turned to the TV and listened to the anchor for a minute. “She ran away? Well, thank goodness she’s safe.”

“She ran away?” Julie looked at Lainey indignantly. “She scared her parents for no reason at all. She could have at least left a note saying she’d run away. Everyone thought she’d be found dead.”

Lainey nodded. Missing girl cases didn’t always turn out so happily for the parents.

“Her parents are rich too,” Julie spouted off. “They probably bought her everything she wanted. What’d she have to be unhappy about?”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ve all learned way too much about that family’s personal life this week.” A banker had stood beside his crying wife on television, pleading for the safe return of their beautiful teenaged daughter.

The girl’s picture had been flashed everywhere. If that had been Julie missing…

Lainey looked at Julie, who glanced up under her eyelashes as if she could read Lainey’s thoughts. “That would never be me,” Julie said in a very adult tone. “I would never run away. Without leaving a note,” she added in a joking tone.

“The bus will be here in ten minutes. Breakfast.” Lainey turned off the television and waved Julie toward the kitchen.

Alone since their parents were killed by a drunk driver, they’d developed an easy routine. Lainey was mom, pure and simple. She’d gone from big sister to mom in the space of one phone call telling her that their parents were dead.

* * *

Another night, another crime scene. Lainey flashed her badge and stepped under the yellow crime tape. That was three people killed this week in the same neighborhood.

Detective Brice walked toward her. “Got ourselves a crime spree.” He nodded a greeting.

“Who’s this one?”

“A hooker who lives three blocks over.”

“A female.” None of the victims were similar. “Two guys and a girl. Are you seeing any patterns?”

Brice nodded. “Actually yeah. There’s a bullet casing left that I think’s gonna match a couple of bullets from the previous two.”

“How do you know so soon?”

“Because nobody uses them anymore. It’s an old style gun, revolver, single action type, with old style bullets. The shooter used two guns, on the last case with the two druggies. But, on this one used the same, single shot type revolver as one of the guns on the last crime.”

Lainey felt her eyebrows arch. “The same gun?”

“Won’t know for sure until it gets processed. But, seems that way.” He turned around to face the crime scene, putting himself side by side with Lainey.

She was starting to enjoy this perk to the job, seeing him on a regular basis. It felt good, almost like a relationship.

She could smell him, some hint of cologne, yet an all male scent underneath it. “There’s something else,” he said. He eyed her from the corner of his eye, his gaze sweeping down her body.

Chapter Four

A flash of heat and awareness swept through her. It had been hard to eat this week, with a heightened sense of expectation that she might see him at any time.

A call could come, from him or dispatch, in the day or in the middle of the night. His voice might ease down the phone line telling her to meet him somewhere.

She’d slide into jeans and disappear into the night to rendezvous with this attractive male.

Who’d check her out from the corner of his eye when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Every nerve ending tingled, alert to his presence.

Brice half turned toward her, angling his body so that he was just inches from her left arm. The hair on her arms stood up, as if reaching for him.

An aching desire rose from deep within her, a need for him, to touch him, wrap her arms and entire body around him. Feel his skin, his hands, his mouth on her.

Damn, she had a bad case of it.