Dark Justice (Croft Family Mob Series Book 1) (47 page)

She was no different.

Only now, he was intently interested in this woman.

Digging out some ice and a hand towel, he checked out her fridge. She needed to eat, and he hoped she didn’t mind him ordering dinner for her.

He didn’t cook.

When he opened the door, he saw that she clearly did. It was full of prepared food, and looked like she enjoyed cooking.

The inside of the fridge looked like she was feeding an army.

Something didn’t fit here.

She walked in off the street, needed a job, was loyal, stubborn, and lived in a tiny apartment that looked like she didn’t plan to stick around.

Yet the kitchen said otherwise.

She was a mystery.

Heading back toward her, he carried the ice. He noticed she’d taken off her fitted jacket and was in her skirt and plain white shirt.

Her hair was down, and she had her leg up, waiting for the ice.

The woman had the longest legs he’d ever seen in his life. He was acutely aware since he was a leg man. On any woman, that was the first thing he noticed.

Marissa’s had always been a point of fascination for him. Dimitri knew he shouldn’t fantasize about her, but he couldn’t help himself.

He wanted to touch Marissa’s legs, but that was a line he simply couldn’t cross.

“Here’s the ice. Would you like me to get you some of the food in your refrigerator? Sorry that I looked, but…”

She stared at him. “No.”

The tone said it all.

This woman was up to something. Dimitri’s gut was screaming, and he always listened to it.

“Okay, Marissa. Take tomorrow off. If you need anything, here’s my private number. Call it any time. I’ll come.”

She didn’t get it.

She didn’t understand why he was so worried about her. As his fingers gently propped the ice bag on her injury, he was carefully soothing her.

This wasn’t the man she knew from work.

Dimitri Gideon was badass.

This side of him confused the hell out of her.

He fluffed the pillows behind her and smiled at her. “Will you be okay? Do you need me to…?”

“No! I’m fine, thank you. You should go. I’m sure you’re very busy and have better things to do.”

Dimitri only grew more curious with her dismissal. Women flocked to him. They wanted to be with him, but this one? Yeah, she wanted away from him.

What the hell was this? Someone should tell Marissa that playing hard to get was the worst thing to do with a man. It immediately made them want to get their hands on them. He was no different.

He loved a mystery, and this was far from done.

Marissa Pierce had piqued his interest.

It was on.

He left his card on the coffee table and headed toward the door. “I’ll lock up. Thank you for what you did today, Marissa. I’ll see you in two days.”

He left.

Dimitri wasn’t quite sure why he was compelled to stay outside her place and around the corner, but he was. He just had that feeling.

Now he would see if he was right.

Forty minutes passed, and he saw her. He’d been right. That both irritated and pleased him.

Marissa was in jogging pants, a hoodie, and carrying the containers of food.

As she limped along, he decided it was time to follow her. Yes, it was wrong.

Still…

She hadn’t wanted to leave work, but here she was, wandering the bad section of town—injured.

It confused him.

What sane person did this kind of thing? Did she want to get attacked, hurt, or raped?

When he parked at the end of the block, he watched her, trying to figure out what she was doing.

Marissa began going from homeless person to homeless person, offering them food. She was feeding them. As they took the offered meals, she then held up a picture.

Dimitri would give an arm and a leg to see who was in that photo.

Was it a man?

That bothered him. Was this woman looking for a lost love? Was she seeking someone who mattered to her? That bothered him.

She could have come to him.

He would have helped her.

As she moved on, and he focused on the people she spoke to, he memorized their faces.

He might have to find them again.

Marissa continued on for the next thirty minutes before limping back toward her place. All the containers of food were gone, and she looked exhausted.

Of course he followed, telling himself it was to ensure her safe return to her place.

Out of the blue, before she climbed the stairs, she stopped dead in her tracks. When she turned her head, staring right at him in the tinted out vehicle, his heart skipped.

It was as if she knew he was there, and it caught him off guard.

She didn’t look away.

There was no fear.

It impressed and confused him. Instead of panic, there was determination and challenge in her eyes. Truthfully, that called to him more than her truly excellent legs. There was something about a fighter he loved.

That fire always called to him, and Marissa had it in her. He could see it.

As quickly as it started, it was gone. She looked away, and then hustled up the stairs and into her building, closing out the world.

She closed him out.

It said it all.

Dimitri was left to wonder what the hell had happened, and what the hell was going on? This woman was a punch to his gut. She stole his breath.

Something didn’t fit.

Marissa Pierce wasn’t who she said she was, and that was going to be a problem.

For him.

And for her.

He’d get to the bottom of this, if it was the last thing he ever did.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Terrace Glen

Monday Night

When they got there, the family was still working on all the files, data, and information.

Chris Ford was flipping through all the cases of the dead women, trying to find something that correlated to them.

It wasn’t working.

As far as he was concerned, their lives didn’t intersect.

Well, other than the Methadone clinic, they didn’t tie together. He was using Dimitri’s fancy equipment to run search after search.

Nothing was coming up.

It was a dead end.

The hookers weren’t going to be the center of this. His gut was telling him to look elsewhere.

“Anything?” Emma asked.

He laughed. “Other than a killer headache? No. I can’t tie them together. I’ve been through these files over and over again, and there’s nothing there.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Damn!

“Emma, I know you don’t want to hear this—none of us do, but are we one hundred percent sure that Seth Bell isn’t guilty of this? Maybe we’re trying to free a guilty man.”

Everyone looked at her.

She closed her eyes. On this new team, this was her role. She was the solver. Greyson and Dimitri were the muscle, Curtis did his hacking, Kat did her felonious breaking and entering, and Natasha was the one who hid in plain sight.

She was the only one who could make this call.

She was the only one letting everyone down.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “My gut is telling me he’s not guilty, but the ex-cop in me knows that if we can’t connect it, there’s a reason. Maybe he did do this. Maybe he’s the one who should be behind bars.”

Greyson sympathized with her.

No one wanted to be wrong.

No one wanted to see a person put to death if there was the slightest chance they weren’t guilty.

Still…

They had to look at all the possibilities.

“Okay, here’s what we do. We have one more viable suspect. It’s Bryan Calhoun. He owns the little shop not far from where Trent Webb lives. He told us that the man was always calling the cops on the hookers and pimps. They would be setting up shop outside his business.”

Curtis got ready.

He knew he was up.

“Run him. Let’s see what we can find with his name on it. If there are any police reports, let’s try to connect him to the five dead women. While we do that, we rerun the suspects again. If we still get nothing, I’ll tell Miranda Bell that we couldn’t find anything to exonerate her brother.”

“I’ll do it,” Greyson offered.

Emma shook her head. “No, this is on me. This is my job, Greyson. This is my duty. We all have our place on this team, and my responsibility is to look at all the information and find the connection. It’s also to tell the woman we either failed or succeeded. She may not like it, but there is the possibility that her brother did this.”

They knew that sucked for Emma.

The woman wouldn’t be happy.

She slipped out of her jacket and got ready to work. “I wish I could see all the information. It would make it easier. I feel like I’m missing something.”

Greyson had an idea.

“Be right back.”

When he left, Emma started talking to the team.

“Let’s do something we didn’t do before. Let’s start with Seth Bell. Right from the start, we assumed he was innocent. Let’s forget he’s going to die in less than a week, and work it like he’s on our suspect list.”

This was the only thing they’d missed.

This was the only part of the case they’d overlooked.

“I want him run. Let’s see if we can tie him to this, and then we’ll eliminate him first.”

They got to work.

There was the flurry of typing fingers as everyone on the team did their searches. At the beeps, Emma knew that it was about to begin.

Tessa was first up. “He was at work all five nights that the women turned up missing. The reason he was accused was his partner wasn’t there a couple of nights to corroborate his whereabouts. The other nights, Jesse was either off walking the strip, or off picking up food for their break. He was alone at certain times of the night.”

Emma listened.

“Is it possible that he abducted, took, killed, and then dumped these women that quickly?” she finally asked.

“He would have had to use his cruiser,” Chris stated. “I have the report from Detectives Laden and Bristol. They had that vehicle pulled apart to test for any DNA.”

“Any?”

“None was found other than his and his partner’s. It came back clean. There wasn’t even a hair found in the trunk. The back seat had various DNA, but nothing that tied him to the dead women.”

“How the hell did a prosecutor ever win this case?” Emma asked. “There is no way a sane judge in this city ignored the holes in this and didn’t think it was total BS.”

They happened to agree.

This had to be some cover up.

It was the only thing she could think of at that point. They were looking for a scapegoat, and they’d found a gay one.

“We can’t connect him,” Tessa said.

The alarm for the gate went off, and Emma headed to the screen. It was Dimitri.

“All the chicks are back in the nest. Now I can focus,” she admitted.

Curtis laughed. “I don’t think Dimitri would appreciate you calling him a chick.”

He was probably right, but she’d adopted him as one of her own regardless of what the man wanted.

He’d have to get accustomed to it.

Greyson strolled in, carrying a whiteboard. “Randall had this in storage. He was writing musical ideas all over it. I kept it just in case.”

Emma was glad.

Now she could write all of the details down. Maybe something would stick out to her.

When Dimitri walked in, he noticed they were still working. “Did I miss anything?” he asked.

“No, we’re just getting started. How’s Marissa?” Emma asked.

“Good.”

He let it go. They had enough shit on their plate right now. The issue with his employee would have to wait. Once he got his hands on his equipment, he was going to start a little project of his own.

“Okay,” Emma said, scribbling down Seth’s name. “Who’s our next most likely suspect?” she asked.

They all knew who it would be.

“Jesse Post,” Curtis said, as he was typing.

“Why?”

She needed to hear it talked out.

“He had the second most frequent contact with the dead women. He lived in the same neighborhood as Norma Hatch, he was with Seth when he arrested Glenda Mateo.”

Emma made notes on the board under Jesse Post’s name.

Curtis continued, “Sallie Mae Patton was arrested by both Seth and Jesse, and last but not least, the women were all dumped in fountains where the twosome patrolled.”

She made more notes.

“Jesse called off a couple times, one of which was when the last victim, Daniella McPherson turned up dead.”

Yeah, he was suspect number two.

Dimitri added his opinion. “He also said that he didn’t know Adam Price, his partner’s lover, but he did. We have confirmation from Miranda.”

She wrote that down.

“Why did he lie?”

No one had an answer for that.

Greyson poured himself some bourbon, and then some for Dimitri. The man looked like he needed a drink. “Maybe he just forgot or misspoke?”

Emma didn’t know.

That was the issue.

“Could it be him?”

Tessa wasn’t sure. “Honestly, Emma, how would he pull it off? They were together most of the time. He would have had to take a girl, stashed her, dumped her, and covered his tracks until he got back to his partner.”

Tessa was right.

The only way it would work was if they were involved in it together. They would have had to be partners in this crime.

“I don’t think it’s Jesse. He couldn’t have pulled it off alone. On the days he wasn’t with his partner, maybe, but the days they were together…”

Yeah, she had a point.

Emma needed information.

“Steele, did you find anything in the autopsy reports?”

He glanced up. “Not yet, Emma. I’m still going through them. You can tell I was just starting out. My notes are a mess. I thought my files were complete, but they’re not. I don’t have toxicology in them. I swear I ran it.”

Dante patted him on the back. “It was your first major case, babe. You’ll figure it out.”

Emma hoped so.

All they knew was the women were raped and strangled. “Keep searching, Steele. I have faith in you.”

He was glad someone did.

This felt off to him.

What was he missing?

“What about Gerald Darden?” Emma asked. “He had contact with all the women. Is it possible that he simply killed them, dumped their bodies, and got lucky with the trace?”

“But why is he focused on Seth?”

“It feels personal,” Greyson offered. “It feels like someone trying to get even with him. A pimp will just kill one of his girls, dump her, and move on. This feels calculated to me.”

To her too.

“Well, if we’re focusing on calculation, then we can’t forget to include Corey Powell,” Paris offered.

She wrote his name on the board.

“He was bitter that he’d been passed over to be a cop, but a gay man got the job. That would make him angry,” stated Curtis.

Dante and Steele both agreed.

They’d both been afraid they’d be victimized by straight men who felt that they couldn’t possibly have earned their jobs. It was why they kept their sexuality quiet for all those years. It was a tough world out there for a gay man.

“Do we have evidence that says he had contact with the women? Or that he was off those nights?”

Tessa pulled up the file that Mace Bristol and Sawyer Laden had constructed.

“No idea. Our two favorite detectives didn’t look into it, and that’s going to be hard to find out.”

Shit.

Chris spoke up. “There’s no way to dig that up. It’s too far back. The LVPD went digital after Seth Bell’s incarceration. It would be on paper, in some box, in a room where no one can find it.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

She put a star by his name.

“We can’t eliminate him, so he stays on the list. When we interviewed him, he was more than forthright, but he wanted to be a cop, he hung out with cops, so he might know how to manipulate a crime scene.”

They agreed.

“Who’s next?”

“If we’re playing the revenge game,” Curtis said, “then we have to look at Tucker Bell. Dimitri said he hated cops, right?”

The man nodded. “He does hate them.”

Emma glanced at Paris. “What kind of person is doing this?” she asked. “Can you re-profile for me?”

“I already have,” he offered. “This person is very good at what they do. They’re used to killing.”

Emma thought about the list of women who matched the same criteria they had.

“Do you think he’s still killing?” Emma asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s got this need to hurt women. He’s not going to want to let that anger go. You’re going to be looking for someone who wants control. Since he’s raping them, that’s the ultimate power over someone. You take away their will, their ability to say no, and you own it.”

It made sense.

A killer raping hookers was going to be important.

“Can someone run every single person’s mother?” asked Paris. “Or sisters? There’s going to be a tie in there somewhere. A man who does this to women has some sort of disconnect from his past. A sane, normal man doesn’t behave like this. Look around the room. No one here rapes or kills.”

Well, Dimitri killed, but he hated violence toward women. Since Dimitri had had violence all his life, he perpetuated that cycle. But rape?

His sister had been abused like that, and he rallied against it with all he had.

That meant that this killer had likely been sexually assaulted by an authority figure who was female, or he was forced to watch his mother be abused. He was lashing out.

Emma had to keep that in the back of her mind.

“Steele, no trace from the rape? Can you relook at that specific part of the cases? Maybe something was missed.”

He would, simply because he was fresh out of Medical school. Anything was possible.

“It’ll take me some time. I have to reconstruct each autopsy in my head. It’s a process.”

“I can’t give you more than a day. I’ll need it by tomorrow. We’re on a tight deadline.”