Vicious (26 page)

“I’d like to go with you today. Hayes can work with Harper and Cook.”

Expecting anything but that, the request puzzled Jess for a second, and then she understood. “I guess you saw through my big plan.” No use denying it.

Lori nodded. “You’ve been keeping us at arm’s length.” She reached out, squeezed Jess’s hand. “We’re in this together. We want to help keep you safe.”

That confounding tidal wave of emotions swelled up again. When had she become such a blubbering bundle of emotions? “I just don’t want—”

“We know. But this is what we want. We want to help end this.”

Jess managed a shaky, watery smile. “Okay. You’re with me today.”

“I’ll pass along your instructions to the others.”

Jess watched Lori cut through the crowd around Dan’s house. She was wrong to try and protect her team. They were more than capable of protecting themselves.

Hopefully today they would get a break in the case. Ellis’s part in this was still unclear to Jess. He would have a motive for being involved beyond simply following orders from Spears. The Vance sisters were young. They might very well have less of a personal motive and more of a grandiose reason for being puppets for Ellis and, by extension, Spears. Whatever their reasons, Jess intended to find them.

Her attention shifted back to Dan. Black stamped off, visibly angry or upset. Dan headed her way. She hoped the news wasn’t as bad as it had looked.

“You okay?” The smile that tilted his lips under the circumstances made her heart stumble.

“I’m okay.” She searched his face and saw the strain there. “The question is, are you okay?”

“Guess so.” He glanced back at this house. “It looks like we’ll be finding a new place to stay for a while.”

“We’ll stay at my place.”

He shrugged. “Thompson gave the place the all clear. We can do that.”

Suited Jess. “You’re okay with my place?”

“As long as we’re together it doesn’t matter where we stay.” His gaze slipped down to her belly before returning to meet hers. “I need you to be extra careful, Jess.”

“I will,” she promised. “Everything I do is about more than me now.”

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “It’s about us. All
three
of us.”

She wished she could leave it there. But she had to know. “What’s Black saying this morning?”

Dan swiped what was likely soot from her cheek. “Besides insinuating that I burned down my own house to destroy evidence?”

“Please tell me he’s not really going there?”

Dan shook his head. “I don’t know, Jess. I think this might not be going away so easily.”

The hope she’d held out wilted. Whether Dan chose to blame her or not, she had devastated his life. He was being framed and his home had been destroyed. The painting of them in bed together and the headstone crept into her thoughts.

Her being here had already cost him so much. Whatever happened she intended to see that she wasn’t the reason he lost his life.

Birmingham Police Department, 11:59 a.m.

Jess stared at her new smart phone. It looked and felt almost like her old one, but all the photos and contact information were missing. She should have signed up for that backup plan she’d been offered. Oh well. Lori was forwarding contact numbers to her.

“I hate this.” Jess set the phone aside and studied her new Glock. “I hate this even more.” She’d had the other one, her second weapon in her entire career, for twelve years. This one looked basically the same. The weight was the same or very close, but it felt different. God, she despised change. She couldn’t imagine how Dan felt.

“The call with Upshaw is in five minutes,” Lori announced.

At least something was going right this morning. “I’m ready.”

Dan was back in his office. He’d stopped by to check on her after his trip to the AT&T store. He had a flashy new phone too and a new weapon. That was one of the perks of living in the same city where you grew up—you had contacts. Dan had put in a call to a friend and weapons were delivered to them at the office. The forms were filled out, the background checks done and they were good to go.

Except it was all different.

She glanced at the temporary bag on the floor next to her desk. The clerk at the phone store had felt bad for Jess and provided her with a nifty tote bag that sported the AT&T logo. Until she had time to shop, it would have to do.

She grabbed a bag of M&Ms from her drawer and decided a snack was in order. Lori had insisted on taking her to a drive through for breakfast after leaving Dan’s. She hadn’t been hungry but Lori had been right to insist. Jess needed to eat.

The whole morning had passed in a whirlwind of smoke and purchases. It was lunch already and she felt as if she’d moved backwards rather than forward. Hayes had gone for burgers. Jess rolled her eyes. This kid was going to be addicted to chocolate and red meat before he or she was even born.

She was going to be a horrible mother.

Another chirp from her new phone and Jess jumped. Every time her phone made the sound indicating she had received a new contact it startled her. Mainly, because her thoughts were all over the place. She didn’t want to think what would’ve happened if Dan hadn’t woke up this morning.

Though she doubted killing her in a simple house fire was what Spears intended, she felt certain he was attempting to create havoc and more distraction. He had certainly accomplished that objective.

When the fire marshal’s report was in they would know the point of origin and the cause of the fire.

Was Spears the reason Captain Allen had disappeared? There was always the chance someone in the department wanted to get back at her or at Dan, but still the idea that it was Spears wouldn’t stop nagging at her. Maybe she was getting paranoid but she didn’t think so.

Harper and Cook were in the field, knocking on doors and making calls, following up with friends of the victims as well as those of the suspects. The Vance sisters and Ellis had to be somewhere.

Jess’s attention settled on Lori. She would be disappointed that Jess had kept the pregnancy a secret from her. But she couldn’t tell Lori before she told her sister. There was an etiquette to these things.

As if she’d felt Jess’s eyes on her, Lori turned to her. “We’re almost ready.”

“I was just thinking,” Jess admitted. “We’ve hardly had a minute to catch up this week.”

Lori looked at her for a moment without speaking. “Sherry took Chester to a friend’s until this is over. She refuses to tell Chet where they’re at. How’s that for catching up?”

Jess winced. “How’s Chet handling it?”

Shoving her hair behind her ears, Lori gave an uncertain shrug. “We were both upset at first, but then we kind of decided she’d probably made the right decision even if she went about it the wrong way.”

Made sense. “I think you’re onto something there.” Jess closed her eyes and gave her head a little shake. “We can’t predict where this is going.”

“Are you holding up okay?” Lori asked gently.

Jess shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”
Under the circumstances
.

“All right, here we go,” Lori announced. “Our guy is calling early.”

Jess washed down a gob of M&Ms with a chug of water before joining Lori at her computer. William Upshaw was calling from his cell phone but Lori had forwarded hers to the computer for the larger screen. Skype was one of those new ways for teleconferencing Jess had ignored.

“Mr. Upshaw, this is Detective Lori Wells and Chief Jess Harris.”

Jess produced a smile for the man. He was mid fifties with gray hair, brown eyes. He had no wife and no kids. The really strange part was that he still lived with his mother in the house where the murder had taken place. He worked at a grocery store stocking shelves in the same job he’d had since he was seventeen.

His face told the story. This man had died the same day his sister did.

“Mr. Upshaw, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. We need your help very badly.” Jess hoped his silence was not an indication of how this was going to go.

He cleared his throat. “You’ve read the statement I gave to the police when my sister died?”

“Yes, sir,” she confirmed.

“I haven’t changed my story in all that time. Why would I change it now?”

Good question. She could try a psychology trick or two for prompting his cooperation but she had a feeling that wasn’t going to work with this man. “I don’t expect you to tell me anything different about your actions, sir. It’s Richard Ellis I wanted to talk to you about.”

He flinched and averted his gaze. “What about him? I haven’t spoken to him since that day. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.”

“He’s very much alive, Mr. Upshaw. We believe he’s responsible for the gruesome murders of four people just this week.”

He shook his head. “I can’t help you with that. I don’t read the papers or watch much television. Current events don’t interest me.”

For a guy who professed such indifference to the media and the news the smart phone he was using at this very moment was just as high tech as the one Jess owned. He could text, Google or virtually anything else he wanted to do right from the palm of his hand. He had never used Skype before but he knew what it was. He’d added it to his phone for this interview.

He wasn’t fooling Jess. He knew exactly what was going on in the world around him, he’d just opted not to be a part of it any more than necessary.

“Ellis and two of his friends murdered four people but that wasn’t enough to satisfy their appetites,” Jess informed him. “Once the victims were dead, they butchered their bodies and ripped out their hearts. Anything you might recall about him could be useful to our investigation, Mr. Upshaw. We don’t want him to keep getting away with murder and I’m certain you don’t either.”

There was a flicker of something like remorse then he blinked it away. “You read my statement. I haven’t remembered anything else.”

“Ellis did this same thing in Europe for years,” Jess went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They didn’t find enough evidence to charge him so he got away with all those murders, too. He’ll keep getting away with it and using people to do his dirty work. People who might not have otherwise harmed another person. People like you, Mr. Upshaw.”

He jerked. “I don’t know what you mean by that statement. We were neighbors. That’s all. Neighborhood kids hang out together, you know.”

Jess had taken a risk going with her gut instinct. She decided to push a little harder. “Richard Ellis did something to cause your father to react the way he did. You were there, Mr. Upshaw. You know what he did.”

“I didn’t…” His voice trailed off.

“If you help us, I might be able to stop the man who devastated your family.”

Emotion brightened his eyes and Jess knew she had him.

“I knew he was still out there… doing those despicable things. I was going to write a letter.” He shrugged. “That way by the time the police started asking questions it wouldn’t matter.”

“Are you going somewhere, Mr. Upshaw?” He hadn’t left Boston in all this time so she doubted that was the case now. Maybe he was sick.

He shook his head. “My mother’s dying. Her doctor said maybe another couple of months. I promised her I would never tell what happened. She doesn’t want my sister’s name sullied.”

“I’m sorry about your mother, Mr. Upshaw, but you must know every minute we waste is one that could cost someone else their life.”

“I can’t do that to her.” He shook his head. “I’ve already taken everything else she had. I won’t take that, too.”

Jess tried a different strategy. “If you tell me the truth, I won’t put that information in my reports. You can take it to the Boston PD yourself, when you’re ready. There’s no reason for me to do that as long as I can get Ellis on the murders here. To make that happen, I need your help.”

The hesitation that followed had Jess’s hopes sinking.

“I was fifteen. I had nothing but cars and girls on my mind.”

Jess nodded. “That’s probably true of all fifteen year old boys.”

“Rick didn’t like my sister. She yelled at us all the time. She didn’t want us near her friends. And I think something happened between her and Rick and he really hated her after that.”

“You have no idea what happened between them?”

“I think it was about that picture he painted of her. He had a crush on her and wanted to impress her. He worked really hard for days and days painting her portrait. When he gave it to her, she laughed. She told him he was pathetic and that he didn’t have enough talent to paint a door much less a portrait.”

“Did Ellis change after that incident?”

Upshaw nodded. “He did. Started trying to turn me against her. There was a lot going on with my family, too. They were laying off at my dad’s factory. I overheard my parents talking about how they didn’t know what they’d do. They’d used up their savings on my medical bills. I had Polio and it was tough for all of us.”

He didn’t speak again for a bit. Jess struggled to be patient.

“My sister got mad at me for something dumb I’d done and she told me that mom and dad hated me. She said it was my fault they were so worried about bills. She said she wished I’d never been born.”

“Siblings say that sort of thing sometimes.” She and Lil had said horrible things to each other from time to time.

“I know,” he agreed hollowly. “Rick used it to convince me that my sister was evil. He hatched this plan about how he could prove it to me. He said that if he got her into bed and then I joined them I’d see how evil she really was. I mean, what kind of sister would have sex with her brother, right? My family’s devout Catholics. Just talking about it was enough to send us to hell.”

He shook his head. “Rick bought some weed and we all got high. It wasn’t like the weed I’d smoked before. This was powerful. We all ended up in bed together kissing and touching.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “My father came in and he went ballistic. Rick laughed and told him he should join us. My father suddenly had his shotgun.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how he got the gun. I was really messed up by the weed. My sister was screaming and telling us to get out of her room.”