Harlequin Intrigue July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “I know. Don’t worry about it.” Jake clapped Billy on the back. “Castillo sent me a text with the news. Thought I was too close to the situation.”

  Billy’s eyes widened. “He sent you a text? That’s cold, man.”

  Jake brushed it off. The text hadn’t surprised him at all—neither the content nor the delivery. He didn’t disagree with Castillo’s determination that his relationship with Quinn and Kyra might cloud his judgment and hinder the investigative process into Quinn’s homicide, and notification by text suited Castillo’s purposes right now. The captain hadn’t been alone with Jake since Jake discovered his theft of Tony Galecki’s drug money.

  It suited Jake’s purposes, too. He preferred to keep Castillo off balance.

  Billy smacked a piece of paper on Jake’s desk. “I made a list for you. These are the most recent missing persons reports. They’re all entered, and you can look them up online now.”

  “I’ll do this right away, partner.”

  Grabbing his jacket, Billy turned toward Jake. “You know I’ll keep you posted on everything.”

  “I know that. Go get our man some justice.” Jake held out his fist for a bump and Billy obliged.

  When his partner left, taking most of the task force’s CSI team with him, Jake pulled out his phone to text Kyra. He’d expected her to be here when he got back, and her empty desk had given him a start.

  He breathed a little easier when she responded that she had an appointment with Wade Russell, Ashley’s brother. The poor guy had been traumatized by his sister’s murder. Hell, Billy was still devastated by his own sister’s disappearance after all these years.

  Jake had gotten through three reports for women who looked nothing like Copycat Four’s victim when a call came through on his work cell from the desk sergeant downstairs. “McAllister. Whatcha got, Lomeli?”

  “I have a call on the line from a hysterical woman about her roommate who didn’t come home last night. Today, she found her car parked in the place where the roommate was last headed, some church.”

  A muscle in Jake’s jaw ticked. “She was going to church yesterday on a weekday?”

  “AA meeting.”

  “Put her through. What’s her name?”

  “Remy Tran.”

  The first thing Jake heard from Remy was a shaky breath and a sob. “H-hello?”

  “Ms. Tran? Remy? This is Detective McAllister. Can you tell me everything you told the sergeant?”

  She repeated the story she’d told Lomeli, adding that her roommate was supposed to come home after the AA meeting for a get-together at the roommate’s house they shared in Alhambra. “I was kind of setting her up on a blind date with one of my friends, and thought maybe she got cold feet. But when she didn’t come home the rest of the night, I freaked. Tina never does that. She’s not into partying, you know?”

  “What does Tina look like, Remy?”

  After Remy had given him an accurate description of the woman they’d just found with a card between her lips, Jake swallowed. “What’s Tina’s last name, Remy?”

  “Valdez. Tina Valdez. I’m by her car right now.”

  Jake shot up in his seat. “Don’t touch the car, Remy. You got that?”

  “No, no. I haven’t touched the car because I know there’s something wrong. The stuff from Tina’s purse is all over the seat and floor. I can see her phone. She’d never leave her phone, never leave her purse. Then I just heard another body was found at Angeles.” She broke down, and Jake couldn’t get her to listen to another word for several seconds.

  Where was Kyra when he needed her?

  When Remy’s sobs had tapered off to hiccups, Jake continued in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “Give me the address of the church, Remy, and I’ll be out as soon as I can. I’m going to call the Pasadena PD for you because they can get there before I do. Can you hold on for a few more minutes?”

  “Y-yes.” She recited the church’s name and address.

  After reassuring Remy again, Jake called the Pasadena PD and told them to secure the car and the area around it. Then he grabbed his jacket and went in search of a CSI team to send out to Pasadena. Billy had already gathered the A team for Quinn’s house, but the LAPD housed a large number of professionals.

  He burst into the lab, and a young woman glanced up, her eyebrows disappearing beneath her thick, dark bangs. “Detective McAllister? Clive isn’t here. He went out to the Quinn scene.”

  “I know that. You’re...?”

  “I’m sorry.” She scooted around the table in the center of the room where she’d been hunched over a laptop. “I’m Lori Del Valle. I’m a fingerprint tech, too. I just started last year.”

  Definitely not the A team.

  “I have a possible crime scene in Pasadena. We need to process a car. I need a photographer and a CSI who can vacuum properly and test fluids. Now.”

  “We have a team.” Lori jerked her thumb over her shoulder, her dark eyes shimmering with excitement. “I’ll tell them. Address?”

  He gave her the address, and she scribbled it down. “The scene is being secured by Pasadena PD. I’ll meet you all out there.”

  Jake strode out of the lab and almost collided with Kyra. She grabbed his arm. “I heard on the news she was another copycat victim.”

  “Verified. Are you busy right now?”

  “Just have some notes to do. Why?”

  “I think we located the victim’s car. It’s at a church in Pasadena.”

  Her fingers dug into his arm. “Church? Another AA meeting?”

  “That’s right. The roommate’s there, and she’s distraught, to say the least. Might help to have you there.”

  “I’ll be right on your tail.”

  Five minutes later, Jake pulled out of the parking lot and flicked on his strobe lights to cut through traffic faster. The sooner he reached that car, the better.

  With traffic slowing in the rain, the trip northeast to Pasadena took him twenty minutes. Kyra wouldn’t be there for another fifteen.

  Remy Tran had used the term parking lot loosely. A small patch of asphalt with spaces for five cars, tops, bordered one edge of a community room at the back of the church. The little red Honda protected by crime scene tape huddled on a gravel strip not meant for parking but used anyway.

  Jake looked up at the building when he exited his car. He didn’t expect to see cameras, and his surveillance confirmed his hunch. His gaze shifted to a petite woman, her black hair covering her face as her head dropped between her knees. Yeah, Remy needed Kyra, stat.

  Jake introduced himself to the PPD cop and flashed his badge. “I have a CSI team on the way. I appreciate your securing this for us.”

  The cop gave him a thumbs-up. “The fact that this creep is doing his hunting in our area has us ready to go. Anything you guys need from us.”

  “Have you talked to the roommate?”

  “Can’t get much out of her. She’s destroyed.”

  As Jake walked toward Remy, her head popped up, and she jumped to her feet, wringing her hands. “Are you the cop I spoke to on the phone?”

  “That’s right, Remy. I’m Detective Jake McAllister.” He gestured to the curb. “Do you want to sit back down?”

  “No.” She paced away from him a few feet and wiped a hand across her wet and swollen face. “What next? Are you going to take her car away?”

  “We’re going to get inside first and search it here.”

  “The car’s unlocked now, but it was locked.” Remy’s hand plunged into her purse, and the keys jangled in her trembling fingers. “I have an extra key. I told you I didn’t touch the car, but I pressed the remote to unlock it and it clicked, so I know it was locked. I left it unlocked.”

  “That’s fine. Thanks for telling me.”

  “C-can I stay here while you look?”

/>   “Of course, but can you do something for me first? You don’t have to right away, but if you’re up to it, can I show you a picture of the victim we discovered today?”

  “Dead?” She covered her mouth with both hands. “A picture of someone dead?”

  He’d blundered. “I’ll tell you what. There’s someone on the way, Kyra Chase, and she’s going to sit with you. If you feel like looking at the picture, so we can ID your friend—if it’s her—let Kyra know. That’s all. No pressure.”

  She sank to the curb again, wrapping her arms around her knees and bowing her head.

  Jake pulled out some gloves and a few bags for evidence on his way to the roped-off car. Head down, he examined the area around the car. Gravel moved easily, and he spotted shoeprints that looked like the soles of Remy’s flip-flops. The rain had created a few puddles in areas where divots formed in the gravel. Signs of a struggle.

  He stepped over those spots, hoping to retain any evidence, and opened the driver’s side door. Tina hadn’t left her keys in the ignition, and the killer probably wouldn’t have been able to lock up the car with the key fob inside the vehicle. Copycat Four took her keys, which meant he probably had the key to the house she shared with Remy.

  He checked the interior of the car and didn’t see any blood or any other disturbances, except the purse. He shook out an evidence bag, plucked up the mostly empty purse with his gloved fingers and dropped it inside. He scanned the contents from the purse that littered the passenger seat and the floor beneath it.

  The items represented standard issue for most young women’s bags—a tube of lipstick, a small bottle of aspirin, a few pens, random coins—things his own daughter had started carrying in a pocketbook. He squeezed his eyes closed and reached for the wallet.

  A few credit cards and a grocery store rewards card occupied the slots, but the plastic enclosure where someone might typically keep a license was empty. He ran his thumb along the plastic, and it slid off. How had he removed the license wearing gloves? Latex gloves like the ones he had on wouldn’t have given him enough traction to get that license. He placed the wallet in a separate evidence bag.

  He heard a commotion and glanced over his shoulder. The CSI team, including Lori Del Valle, had arrived together in a van, and Kyra had just pulled up in her car. He backed out of Tina’s vehicle, clutching the evidence bags.

  Back on firm ground, he waved at the CSIs. When they formed a semicircle around him, he pointed at the ground. “We need some photos here. Looks like a scuffle took place outside the car, but I’m not sure the rain and wind left any footprints. The flip-flops belong to the roommate, who discovered the car. You can take her prints, too, to rule them out.”

  One of the techs he didn’t know asked, “Any blood in the car or other bodily fluids?”

  “Not that I can see.” He held up the evidence bags. “These contain the contents of her purse, and I want particular attention focused on the wallet. He removed her driver’s license.”

  He gave a few more instructions and then cut off Kyra making a beeline to the forlorn roommate hunched over on the curb. “That’s Remy Tran. She’s really upset. I told her you were on your way. She didn’t want to look at a picture of the dead woman.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. She’s her roommate, so she probably has pictures of Tina on her phone. I’ll have her show you one of those and you can compare it to the deceased.”

  Jake smacked his forehead. “Of course.”

  Kyra lowered her voice as they walked toward Remy. “Anything in the car?”

  “Not much. Seems like the killer accosted Tina outside the vehicle, and then threw her purse into the front seat before he abducted her. He also snagged her license, or maybe he had her take it out for him.”

  When they reached Remy, Jake introduced Kyra and left them together. While he waited, he asked the deputy a few more questions, and talked to several of the bystanders who’d gathered in bunches, their eyes narrowed, their whispers hushed.

  Kyra waved him over, and he approached her and Remy, who had at least stopped crying and had gotten to her feet.

  “Show him the picture of Tina, Remy.” Kyra patted Remy on the arm.

  Bracketing her phone with trembling fingers, Remy held out her phone to Jake.

  Jake studied the two smiling young women, and his gut rolled. The woman next to Remy had shoulder-length brown hair and expressive brown eyes...and she now lay on a slab at the coroner’s office.

  His gaze shifted from the photo on the phone to Remy’s tear-filled eyes. She knew already, had known from the moment she’d heard about the body and found her roommate’s car on the side of this church. “I’m sorry, Remy.”

  Remy sagged, and Kyra caught her before she sank to the ground. Jake knew Kyra could handle this woman’s grief a lot better than he could, so he turned back to Tina’s car.

  The tech’s vacuum whined as it sucked up fibers and fragments from the back seat of the car, to be analyzed later. Lori, the fingerprint tech, hopped out of the van and strode toward him.

  “Detective McAllister, I dusted the purse and the wallet.”

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought you’d just take those back to the station to wait for Clive.”

  “You know, Clive—” She shook her head. “Never mind. You said the wallet was important, so I thought we could take care of it here.”

  This one was ambitious. He’d have to warn Clive to watch his back.

  “Okay, that’s great. Thanks.” He started to pivot, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “The thing is, Detective McAllister, I found something on the plastic shield of the wallet. Someone left a latent print...and it didn’t belong to Tina.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sitting across from Jake at the Uncommon Grounds coffee house, Kyra listened to him berate himself with a curve to her lips. That’s one of the things she loved about him. Most men would’ve glossed over his interaction with Lori Del Valle without a second thought.

  “I just dismissed Lori, didn’t expect her to have anything, and she turns up with that print. I’d been thinking of her as second-rate all along when I couldn’t get Clive. Even worse, I suspected her of playing office politics when it sounded like she was going to criticize Clive.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, which stood up on end. “Do you think I did that because she’s a woman?”

  “You have a lot of strong females in your life, starting with your daughter. I think you underestimated Lori because you thought of her as part of the B team when Billy took all the CSI first-stringers to Quinn’s. Face it. You had low expectations of the entire team, regardless of their gender.”

  “You’re probably right. That just makes me an ass.” He swirled the dregs of his coffee and took a sip.

  “I mean, when you growled at me for joining the task force, I didn’t think it was because I was a woman.” She lifted her shoulders and winked. “I knew it was because you hated therapists.”

  “Definitely an ass.” He rubbed his thumb on the back of her hand. “Speaking of therapists, did you reach that Chai Gellman character?”

  “His name is Shai Gellman and he’s a renowned hypnotherapist, not a character.” She rapped his knuckles with a plastic spoon. “I left him a message, but he hasn’t responded yet.”

  “You’re sure you want to do it?”

  “Of course I do.” Kyra tapped her head. “Those memories are buried in there somewhere, and I want access to them. Look, Quinn may have been overreacting from the beginning. It doesn’t sound like I had much to offer in the way of a description of The Player, and maybe I don’t know.”

  Jake said, “I want to be there with you when you go.”

  “I’d like that, but you know it’s not all going to come to me in one appointment. It could take several sessions, and it might not work at all.”

>   “I’m prepared for that. Are you? Maybe we won’t need it. Maybe the CSI A team will gather enough evidence at Quinn’s house to find his killer and ID him as The Player.”

  “Maybe you should’ve sent the B team to Quinn’s instead of the first team.” She planted her elbows on the table. “What did you mean when you said Lori Del Valle criticized Clive? I’ve never heard of anyone criticizing him before.”

  “Did I say ‘criticize’?” Jake popped the lid off his coffee and stared inside the cup as if trying to read tea leaves instead of coffee grounds. “She didn’t exactly do that. It was during one of my finer moments when I told her I’d expected her to bring the wallet back to the lab at the station for Clive, rather than dust for prints herself. She started to say something about Clive and then backed off, so it seemed as if she was going to badmouth him. She could’ve just been thinking he’d be busy with the other crime scene. Anyway, Clive trained her well, and she lifted the latent print off the wallet.”

  “And it’s not Tina’s.”

  “It’s not Tina’s. We also have the AA connection. I didn’t get a chance to tell you.” He grabbed his work phone, which he’d been toying with ever since they sat down for coffee to wait for Billy to get back from Quinn’s, and tapped it a few times. “Tina was wearing her AA anniversary medallions at the time of her murder.”

  Kyra leaned over the table to look at the picture on Jake’s phone. Her pulse jumped as she noticed the purple bruises around Tina’s neck beneath the gold chain of the necklace. Yeah, it’s a good thing Jake hadn’t shown the picture of Tina’s dead body to Remy.

  He cupped the phone in his hand again. “That’s why the location of the car piqued my interest. I knew we were probably looking at another AA meeting abduction.”

  “You called that in on the way over here?” She and Jake had headed straight to Uncommon Grounds after the crime scene. It had been too late for lunch and too early for dinner, and Jake needed to decompress after searching Tina’s car.

  “Called that in and asked one of the task force officers to track down the meeting Tina attended, and to see if he can schedule a group get-together like the one you and Billy had with Ashley’s group. I also asked Lori to send the print over to Officer Reppucci so she could enter it into AFIS, the national fingerprint database.”