by Karen Rose
‘Like you said,’ Fitzpatrick said grimly when they’d surrounded the gurney. ‘Just his ring finger, complete with a ring. Missing the tip.’
‘His teeth appear broken too,’ Lucy added. ‘I don’t think you’re going to find ID.’
‘The ring on his finger’s the ID,’ Stevie said. ‘Whoever did this left it behind for a reason. Can you get it off?’
Lucy tugged at the ring and held it up to the morning light. ‘University of Maryland Medical School,’ she read.
Fitzpatrick frowned. ‘Wonder what the doc did to get his knees capped?’
Lucy dropped the ring into the evidence bag Drew held open, then gingerly pulled the victim’s sleeve back, revealing a gold wristwatch. ‘It’s a Rolex.’ She removed it and placed it in Fitzpatrick’s outstretched gloved hand.
‘Not a robbery,’ he said and studied the back of the watch. ‘Inscription says “Thanks for the memories.” They spelled “memories” with an extra “m”. Wait.’ He squinted at the inscription, then rolled his eyes. ‘Make that “Thanks for the mammaries.” ’
‘I’d say you’re looking for a plastic surgeon,’ Ruby said dryly, and Lucy felt an appalling urge to laugh out loud. Gratefully, she stifled it. This was not funny.
‘A plastic surgeon who really got on someone’s wrong side,’ Fitzpatrick said.
‘Dr Trask?’ Alan said quietly. ‘He’s got something in his mouth.’
The object was dirty white and looked like it might have been a handkerchief. Stevie and Fitzpatrick bent closer but Lucy put a hand between them and the victim. ‘I need to remove it in a protected environment.’
Fitzpatrick straightened with a scowl. ‘We know, we know, back at the morgue. Look, he probably doesn’t, but at least see if he’s got a wallet in his breast pocket.’
‘That I can do.’ Lucy probed the man’s chest with her fingertips, then flinched, her hands stilling abruptly when what she felt wasn’t anywhere close to being right.
‘What else?’ Stevie asked in a tone that said she really didn’t want to know.
Lucy pressed a little harder against the beige trench coat to be sure. Once again there was no resistance where there should have been a ribcage. This is very bad.
‘They’re not supposed to do that, are they?’ Fitzpatrick asked blandly. ‘I mean, your fingers sinking into his chest like that.’
‘No, they’re not.’ She looked up grimly. ‘I don’t know if this is your cause of death or not, but there’s a big hole here where his heart used to be.’
Stevie let out a breath. ‘I think this guy just moved to the top of your priority list.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Indeed.’
Monday, May 3, 8.15 A.M.
Clay Maynard hung up his phone with a frown. He’d had one hell of a night last night and this morning wasn’t looking much better.
‘Well?’ his assistant asked from the doorway of his office.
‘Evan missed checking in both last week and this morning, he’s not answering his cell, and he’s not where he’s supposed to be. The foreman at the construction site just said he never showed up for work last week so he fired him. What did you find?’
‘The landlord of the place Nicki rented in his new name said he hasn’t shown up yet.’ Alyssa Moore bit her lip. ‘This doesn’t sound good. Could Margo have found him?’
‘Not if he did what Nicki told him to do.’ A headache was brewing. ‘He said Margo would kill him if she found him.’
‘She’s already tried twice. Maybe three times was her charm.’
‘Dammit,’ Clay hissed. ‘We gave him a new life. All he had to do was claim it.’
Alyssa sat in the chair next to his desk, crossing long legs that made his headache even worse. He’d been engaged to her older sister Lou four years ago when he first met Alyssa. Back then Alyssa had been a scrawny tomboy always getting into scrapes. Now she was a leggy eighteen year old getting into a whole different kind of trouble, which was why Lou asked him to hire her as his assistant. Though Lou and he called off their wedding, they’d stayed close – close enough that she didn’t mind hitting him up for favors, like keeping an eye on her baby sister.
Luckily Alyssa was a decent assistant, because keeping his promise to keep her out of trouble was turning out to be a lot more trouble than Clay had bargained for.
‘Do you mind?’ he snapped at Alyssa, gesturing to her skirt. ‘I pay you enough to buy clothes with more material than that.’
Alyssa rolled her eyes and tugged at the skirt. ‘Oh my God. You sound just like Lou. Or my dad. I’m not sure which is worse.’
‘I don’t know,’ Clay muttered. ‘They both carry a gun.’
Alyssa’s older sister and father were cops. Lou was a Maryland sheriff and Mr Moore had retired from a Boston beat. That Clay was a former cop was the reason Mr Moore had allowed his younger daughter to come to work at Clay’s PI agency.
That and he’d wanted his daughter as far away as possible from the teenaged Romeo who Alyssa had been convinced she couldn’t live without. One month in Baltimore and Alyssa had forgotten all about the boy back home. Unfortunately, she’d discovered a whole new crop right here. But that was the least of Clay’s concerns.
‘You didn’t mind my skirt last night,’ she said. ‘That creep never even suspected you were planting a tracker under his car. He was too busy staring at my legs.’
Clay closed his eyes and blindly searched a drawer for his bottle of painkillers. He’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d seen Alyssa leaning against her car, where his much more experienced partner, Nicki, should have been.
Except Nicki was on vacation at the beach an hour away and had not answered her phone all day yesterday.
‘Yes, I did mind,’ he said. ‘I was going to go it alone, but you were already there, waiting for him. What were you thinking, showing up like that?’
‘That you needed help,’ Alyssa said quietly. ‘That the little boy needed help. You had one chance to plant that device. If you hadn’t, where would that little boy be now?’
‘Probably halfway to Mexico,’ Clay admitted.
He’d been hired by a woman desperate to find her son. Her estranged husband, a dangerous foreign national, had grabbed the boy and the cops hadn’t been able to find either of them. Clay had been able to draw the husband out with a message from the wife, knowing the man wouldn’t risk bringing the child.
He’d wanted Nicki to pretend to have car trouble, distracting the husband with her cleavage while Clay planted the tracking device, hoping the husband would lead them to the boy. Alyssa had done the distracting instead while Clay had done his job, and now the boy was safe with his mother. The husband was in jail, awaiting arraignment on a whole laundry list of charges.
It had been risky. But that’s why desperate people hired Clay and Nicki.
Nicki was also a former cop – and Clay’s first patrol partner. She’d left DCPD years after Clay had started his agency, right about the time Clay’s old PI partner had married and moved to Chicago. Clay and Nicki now shared the agency and a mission. They helped desperate people when the cops couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
Sometimes that meant breaking a few rules. They were good with that.
Nicki had been dependable, but Clay had been fixing a lot of her mistakes lately. She’d been preoccupied. Moody. He hoped she was using this vacation to work through whatever shit that was messing with her mind.
‘We saved the day,’ Alyssa said. ‘I did a good job.’
‘You did. But you could have been killed. Promise me you won’t do that again.’
‘Promise to train me.’ She lifted a brow. ‘And I won’t do it again until I am.’
Clay ground his teeth. ‘I’ll think about it.’ He resumed his search for the painkillers.
‘Left bottom drawer,’ Alyssa said. ‘I reorganized your desk.’
He blinked into the drawer. So she had. ‘Wow. Thank you.’
She inclined her head regally. ‘You are welco
me. So, back to Evan?’
‘Yeah. Evan.’ Nicki had asked him to keep an eye on her clients while she was away, but he’d gotten wind that the child’s father was about to bolt hours after Evan had first missed a check-in. The search for the boy took priority. Now, Evan was two days more missing than before. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Should we assume the crazy-assed stalker bitch from hell found him?’
‘Shit.’ Clay shook out his last three tablets. Seemed like he’d just bought that bottle. Probably because he had. ‘I don’t want to, but we have to now.’
‘You’re gonna eat a hole in your stomach,’ Alyssa chided mildly.
He ignored her, chasing the pills down with cold coffee. ‘Margo couldn’t have found him if he’d followed Nicki’s instructions. He must have gone back.’
Alyssa sighed. ‘I thought Evan was smarter than that.’
‘He has kids, and that always makes people stupid. He probably wanted to see them one more time before he became Ted Gamble.’
‘So what are you gonna do?’
‘Go look for him. If he’s dead, we need to report Margo. If he’s changed his mind, we need to recover all of his new ID.’ He checked his watch. It was a five-hour drive to southern Virginia with traffic. ‘I can be in Newport News by mid-afternoon.’
‘I’ll get the name of the hotel Nicki used when she went down there.’
Alyssa went back to her desk while Clay reread the contents of the file written in Nicki’s precise hand. Evan Reardon had made some stupid choices. The most stupid was cheating on his wife with Margo Winchester, a pole-dancing floozy, but a close runner-up was thinking he’d be able to walk away when he was done with her.
Margo made good on her threat to expose their affair. Evan’s wife left him, taking their three kids. She was staying with her folks and all she’d told Nicki was that Evan was not the man she’d married. Then she’d shut the door in Nicki’s face.
Evan still hadn’t married Margo and the woman had become violent. He’d approached the police, but that hadn’t gone so well. Margo’s dad, like Alyssa’s, was a cop. Unlike Alyssa’s dad, Margo’s was not a good cop. Evan had been harassed, followed by the police who seemed to be looking for something to use against him.
So Evan hadn’t reported the stalking and it had become worse. He’d finally come to Nicki when Margo began threatening his kids. He wanted to draw her away from his children. He wanted Margo to think he was dead. Drastic, but he’d been desperate.
Helping people start over was what Clay and Nicki did best. New identities were harder in the post-9/11 world, but still possible if one had the right skills. Clay and Nicki had the skills. They always made sure the client was telling the truth, checking out all aspects of the story. This one was stickier as bad cops were involved.
Bad cops existed, Clay knew. It was the main reason he himself was a former cop. He’d been unable to look the other way and made the wrong bad cop mad.
He sighed, wishing again that Nic hadn’t picked this week to get away from it all. They’d had some close calls, but had never lost a client. Maybe until now. He closed and locked his briefcase. He needed to find out what happened to Evan Reardon.
Chapter Three
Monday, May 3, 8.30 A.M.
JD waited behind his car while Stevie parked hers in the garage adjacent to the morgue. The ME’s rig had left the scene an hour before, so hopefully Dr Trask had some new information for them. He and Stevie had spent the time interviewing the neighbors, but no one had seen anything.
Stevie locked her car. ‘I meant to thank you for covering for me this morning.’
‘Not a problem. I may need you to do the same for me some day.’
They were nearing the morgue door and JD steeled himself. He really hated the morgue. He didn’t know how the MEs stood working here every day.
‘I’d say this case is a trial by fire for you,’ Stevie said.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve seen worse.’
‘The man’s been pounded into pulp, his fingers removed, and his heart cut out. And that’s before we’ve looked under his clothes. And you’ve seen worse.’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ he repeated mildly. And he had. Which was sad.
‘You ever work a torture case in Narcotics?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said and she rolled her eyes.
‘Dammit, JD, are you gonna make me dig this out of you with a grapefruit spoon?’
His lips twitched, just a little. ‘Sorry. I’m not used to all the questions.’ He was not used to having a partner try to get into his head, but he’d known Stevie would. Getting into minds was her thing.
‘You say you’ve seen worse. In Kandahar?’
JD frowned. She knew where he’d been. And what he’d done. Not many people knew, but her husband – JD’s best friend – had. ‘Yes.’
‘Paul said you gave him permission to tell me.’
He had. Paul never would have said a word if he hadn’t given the okay. ‘Back then I never thought we’d be partners.’
Stevie smiled sadly. ‘I can forget. Pretend I never knew.’
‘No, it’s okay.’
‘You do know you have nothing to be ashamed of, right? You served your country, JD. You did right.’
JD thought of all those lonely days and nights, sitting alone, his sight trained on the spot through which his target would eventually pass. And of the self-loathing that inevitably followed once he’d pulled the trigger. He’d been alone when he came back home, even though he’d had Maya. He’d gone through the motions, working his job, even participating in sports. He’d been a hell of a shortstop. But he’d still been alone.
Until the night Paul beaned him with a softball and insisted on driving him to the ER. To this day JD wasn’t certain it had been entirely an accident. Paul became his first real friend. Earned JD’s trust. Welcomed him into his family.
The night Paul was murdered, JD had found himself alone again. Then Maya had died, taking away even the illusion of having someone. But those days were past. Like Kandahar, they were memories he rarely allowed himself to access.
He opened the morgue door for them. ‘We’re here.’
Stevie looked like she wanted to delve deeper, but thankfully she let it go. ‘I didn’t know you’d met Lucy Trask already.’
Her new topic made him uncomfortable again, but in a different way this time. ‘I hadn’t really. Dr Trask did an autopsy I witnessed when I was in Narcotics. I was with her for maybe thirty minutes. We never actually spoke until today.’
‘Really? I never would have guessed that,’ she said shrewdly. ‘Lucy’s a good pathologist. Thorough. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as shaken as she was today. Thinking that vic was her friend was hard. Lucy doesn’t get close to many people.’
She pushed the door open to the autopsy suite where Lucy Trask stood behind an exam table. She was covered head to toe – a gown over her scrubs, a mask over her face, and her hair with a surgical cap. She looked just like she had the first time he’d seen her. Except this time the body she stood over was full-sized.
Her head was bowed, her attention focused on the victim on the table.
‘Whatcha got?’ Stevie asked and Trask abruptly looked up, startled. Her eyes met JD’s for an unguarded moment before dropping back to the victim. But in that moment he’d seen surprise – and something else.
Interest. It had been a long time since he’d spent time with a woman, but not so long that he could no longer recognize interest when he saw it flare. She’d been aware of him before, at the scene. Now she was wondering. He found himself standing a little straighter even as his chest tightened. Because he was wondering, too.
‘Quite a lot,’ Trask said, her voice brisk. ‘I was preparing to do the cut.’ She pulled the mask away from her face, leaving it to dangle around her neck. ‘But now that you’re here, you can look at him before I get started. What’s left of him anyway.’
She wasn’t exaggerating. There w
as almost too much damage to take in. The two focal points were the victim’s damaged face and the huge hole in his chest. His missing fingers just added to the macabre sight.
Stevie grimaced. ‘What did they use on him, anyway?’
‘All kinds of things. I told you at the scene that his legs were broken. X-rays showed three breaks in his right femur, two in his left. I’m thinking a bat was used. This hole in his chest is post-mortem. The removal of his eyes, tongue, and the finger amputations were not.’
‘The tongue was in the handkerchief?’ Fitzpatrick asked and she nodded.
Stevie sighed. ‘So, what was the cause of death?’
‘I don’t know yet. I can tell you this guy had some work done on his face.’
‘I kinda figured that one on my own,’ Stevie said dryly. ‘And me, not even a doc.’
Trask shook her head. ‘I mean, he had plastic surgery.’
‘How can you tell?’ JD asked. ‘Looks like every bone in his face is smashed.’
‘Every bone is smashed, but he’s got cheek implants. Showed up on the X-ray.’
‘We can get serial numbers,’ Stevie said excitedly. ‘And then ID this guy.’
‘We can,’ Trask said. ‘I’ll get the implants out when I do the cut. The killer must not have known about them.’
‘Could be why he took the heart,’ Stevie mused. ‘Maybe it was traceable too.’
‘I wondered that,’ Trask said. ‘We’ll know when we get the victim’s name.’
‘How did he cut out the heart?’ Stevie asked. ‘That’s not an easy thing to do.’
‘No, it’s not. Determining that will take more time than I’ve had so far, but whatever he used was powerful enough to cut through all the muscle and the bone. The lines of the cut are pretty smooth. He didn’t hack his way through.’
‘There’s a surprising lack of blood,’ Stevie noted.
‘That’s because the body was washed before being re-dressed.’
‘And the hole in his chest?’ Stevie asked.
