by Celeste Raye
She said, “That was amazing.”
He smiled. “Worth waiting for?”
“Yeah.” She curled in closer then asked the question he had known she would ask, would have to ask, and that he had been dreading. “Are you going back?”
‘” I have to. I just do not know when. I know they are mounting what will be the last defense against the Orcs in both the Fae world and my own. They have to. They can’t let the war keep dragging out. Once upon a time, there were so many more dragons than there are now that war against those creatures and others was not such a hardship. But now? Every dragon lost is a big loss.”
Her fingers clamped down on her wrist. “I will go with you.”
“I…” He knew that was not what she wanted. This was her world, and she did not want to leave it. Everything that she was, it was tied into this world. She was not Christy or Heather or any of the women or men who had gone to his world to be with the dragons. And he was not one of those dragons. This world had always felt right to him; it was where he belonged, and he knew that. “I hope it does not come to that.”
They lay there in silence. He could feel her heart beat against his body and his eyes closed. The day had been hard and long, and he was exhausted. He yawned, a long and cracking yawn, and she sighed softly as she curled into his body yet again her hand resting on his chest. The touch of her skin against his was a thing he had longed for, and for so long. It felt like an eternity had passed since they had been able to just be together and he knew that he would have to leave again, have to keep that promise that he had made to help fight back against the Orcs.
This was his world, but if he did not do something to stop the Orcs, eventually they would find a way into this one.
Gina sat bolt upright. He blinked and asked, “What is it?”
She turned her upper body so that she was facing him. The sleepy look was gone from her face, but there was something else there now: a look of sheer and clear understanding. It was like a lightbulb had gone off behind her skin. She asked, “How does somebody avoid having an arrest record, Craig?”
“By not doing anything that could get them arrested.” He was sort of dumbfounded by the question, but the look on her face told him she was onto something.
She nodded. “That, yes. But how do people who are always in trouble, who have addictions and other issues, keep from getting arrested when they get into trouble?”
He sat up, trying to get a grip on what it was she was asking him. “I don’t understand.”
“The Orcs!”
He blinked “Say what?”
She yanked at the sheets; her forehead wrinkled and her eyes shone. “The Orcs, Craig. They hid in the mud, remember? They were right there and in plain sight, but we didn’t see them because we were looking for them on the ground, not in it; you know what I mean?”
“Orcs. Mud. Clever little bastards. Got it. Yes.”
He did not really get it, but he could see that she was excited and working something out in her head, and that whatever it was, it was big. But what was it? He caught one of her hands. “Gina, you have to spell this out for me.”
“Ramone,” she said triumphantly. “He informs on people, right? He does that, and we don’t bust him. We do not bust him, Craig.”
“He is an informant so he gives up other dealers to stay out of jail. Yeah.” Something came to his mind, but he couldn’t quite form the thought he knew was there. “Yeah, you are right.”
Gina leaned in, her hair swinging forward to conceal part of her face. She pushed it behind one ear and said, forcefully. “The ones that never had a record but clear addiction woes—is it possible that they were informants?”
Excitement swirled through him. “More than possible. But there is only one way to found out. First thing in the morning, we need to try to get into the closed files in the narc division.”
She laid back down. He could feel the hammering of her heart beneath his fingers. “Jack could get those files for us.”
He nodded. “Yeah, he could.”
They lay there, sleepy and smiling. He said, “You are a genius, and a damn good cop, Gina.”
“Thank you.” She yawned and snuggled in beside him. His eyes drifted shut, and he went to sleep with the feeling that he was finally home drifting through him.
Chapter Fifteen
Gina woke up to see rosy dawn light at the windows. Craig lay beside her, his magnificent body only half covered by the sheet. She let her eyes feast on his body and a wicked smile lit her lips when she took in the slight erection straining against the sheets., She wanted to run her hands down his chest and flat belly, cup that chubby and long length of his and wake him up with her mouth wrapped around that flesh, but they had work to do so she crept out of the bed quietly and went to the kitchen to make the coffee. He spoke from behind her, “Good morning. By the way, the view in here is fantastic.”
She grinned as she spun to face him. She had not bothered getting dressed. He had, if you counted the fact that he had put his pants on but had not bothered to button them all the way to his waist. The little trail of hair running down his belly toward his concealed member made her stomach flutter with butterflies. “I can say you are entirely correct. The view from here is amazing.”
He said, “I put on my pants so I would not ravish you.”
“I got out of bed for the same reason.” She grabbed mugs and handed him one. “We have to get moving. I wish I had not been so tired last night. If I had not been, we would already be at the station.”
He took the mug and doctored it with the powdered creamer and sugar she kept on the counter. “Well, let’s get going.”
She dashed toward the bedroom with her mug in hand. They gulped down coffee while they hurriedly showered, together, and dressed again. The shower did nothing to ease the desire that kept washing over her. It took every ounce of her self-control not to make love to him under the steamy spray, and she knew he was struggling to keep himself in check too.
Well, after today they would have, maybe, a large cause to celebrate. They might have an actual and real lead on the Gripper!
They raced to the station. Everyone was either in a field meeting or out on the streets. It was the time of the Gripper so beat cops were busy trying to keep the people who lived and worked on the streets from being killed and the detectives were busy trying to work the huge piles of other cases that were always in their laps. The city had a massive problem with crime, and the Gripper was just one part of that problem.
Gina said, “Hey, where’s Jack?”
Craig looked around. “I don’t know. Let me text him.” He grabbed his phone and hit the screen and then said, “Let’s get all the files. We will cross check the deceased with known informants in the databases that are open. That is a start. Peterson!”
Peterson, coming through the door, waved and headed toward them. His youthful face wore a look of tiredness and Gina could see that he too had gotten little sleep last night. Gina said, “Hey, come with us to the room we are using. We have an idea. Bring those missing files with you and the mugshots too.”
He nodded and headed off to retrieve it all while they headed into the room they were using. They took seats and Gina grabbed files and started poring through them. She said, “This is the first year here. The vics were one Jane Doe and these two guys. We were wondering, hell even the FBI was stumped by the fact that the Gripper does not seem to have a set victimology. What if his vics are all informants? What if he is a drug dealer who somehow knows who the informants are, and once a year, he decides to loose his inner serial killer and take them out?”
Craig said, “You know, that is a good thought. I mean, what if it started out as a way to get rid of rats on the street?”
Peterson, coming back in with the files he had collected and an iPad, said, “Hey, that’s an idea there. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before?”
Gina said, “Let me see here. Yeah, okay, look. Jane Doe. They never had a
nything on her, but she was emaciated and showed signs of heroin addiction. The coroner then was…well, Robert. Holy shit. Robert has been the coroner every year. He found heroin and other substances in her system, and she was a heavy user. Really heavy. Yet we can’t match her fingerprints to any in the system. Nobody ever bothered doing a DNA test on her; I guess the body was….oh. It says here that the bodies back then were iced for a year. A whole year but then they weren’t able to be held anymore because of the need for space in the morgue. So, the evidence was collected and sampled, and the body was sent to be cremated. We need a DNA sample from her, and fast.”
She snatched her phone out of a pocket and made a quick call. All she got was bad news. Robert said, in a tired voice, that the samples had all been taken by someone at some point and never returned. That the flesh and hair that had come from the vics that had died within those first ten years of the Gripper’s reign were all gone. He assumed that they were still being held by the FBI.
Gina made another call. The FBI was less than helpful. They had nothing on that; it all been sent back to the coroner. They could find the evidence chain, maybe, and would get back to her later. She called Robert back, but he was adamant that the samples had never been returned.
Gina groaned and set her phone back down on the table. “Bad news. When the FBI came through back in the day and took over the case they somehow lost a decade’s worth of DNA and body evidence.”
Craig’s eyes went wide. “What the hell?”
“Yeah. I know.” She stared down at the files. “We have to find that. If we could get that, we might be able to now, at this late date, figure out exactly who our Does are and were. If we knew who they were, we might be able to link them to informant names and then from there try to find out who they ratted on.”
Peterson said, “Hey, look here.” He grabbed the file and peered down at the photo of the Jane Doe then he shoved the iPad over. “She’s about the right age and height and weight, or she would have been before she got on heroin. Look, foster kid. Just twenty. She was reported missing by a friend, who also said she was probably just gone in search of greener pastures and warmer weather. The friend? It was one Ramone; you know, the guy that works—”
Gina’s chair scraped back. She took the iPad and stared down at it. She said, “Get me this photo printed, now, please. Craig, we need to go see Ramone.”
He was already on his feet. He said, “Yeah. Jack isn’t answering right now. He must be working something. Come on, let’s get to Ramone and see what he can tell us about her.”
Peterson was already hitting buttons. He said, “It should be in the printer now.”
Gina and Craig dashed out after telling Peterson to stay there and keep up the good work. They snatched the printed photo from the copy machine and headed out. Gina peeled away from the lot with a screech of tires. Craig said, “Whoa. You are going to kill us if you don’t slow down.”
She laughed. “You know, for a guy who can actually fly, you sure are scared of speed.”
He burst into laughter. “Yeah, it is two very different things. So, there is that.”
They hurtled down the streets, the sirens going and her foot solidly connected to the gas pedal. Ramone was in his usual spot, and the other guys out there gave him and them wary looks. Gina held up the photo, “Who is this, Ramone?”
The other guys on the corners pressed closer. Ramone took a fast glance at the old photo. “Damn, ain’t seen her in years. What was her name?”
One of the other guys said, “Lisa something. She was one of Crab’s girls, I think. Then she got all strung out and went rogue, started working without a pimp or a net. She got gone I think.”
Ramone said, “She got hit by the Gripper then, didn’t she?”
Gina nodded. “You reported her missing.”
Ramone gave the other guys an uneasy look. “Yeah, but that was because I had not seen her in a while. She had a friend I knew, and she was worried about her. Then the friend took off for Florida or something, so I thought maybe they had hooked up and decided to try to make it work down there. They say the weather’s good down that way. Lots of places for folks who don’t actually have a roof to lie down at night and not freeze to death or just get moved along, if you catch my drift.”
He was choosing his words carefully. Gina could sense that. There was more to what he was saying than what he was seeing, but whatever it was, he was not about to say it with the other guys around. She said, “You all want to go in on charges? I am talking to Ramone about a murder case here. Unless you know something, screw off. Or maybe don’t. Maybe I will haul every one of you in and have a nice chat about murder in the station with you all.”
They vanished, twisting off like ghosts. Gina waited until they were out of sight and then she crowded closer to Ramone. “You would know, so tell me: was she a rat?”
Ramone groaned, “I got the feeling you are trying to hem me up, Officer. I mean…for real.”
Craig said, “We will do more than that if you don’t start talking. Fast.”
Ramone shot looks all up and down the street. He whispered, “Listen, I ain’t ratted on nobody in a long time. I had to when I did, and I did not care for it, contrary to popular belief. Everyone I ever told on had a real grudge against me, the killing kind. It was my best bet. Some of them dudes got life and never knew why they got caught. They were dumb as hell and would have got caught anyway, to tell you the truth.”
“Answer the question,” Craig barked.
Ramone slicked his hair back with a shaking hand. “I get made as a rat out here I am as good as dead. They sealed the files, you know. You only know because that old cop must have let you in on it. I do good stuff out here. I keep an eye open for the whole damn cop force. You guys always come to me when you want to know something, from murder to drugs. Why you pushing up on me?”
Gina tried another tack. “You knew her? Like, not just as a customer, didn’t you? That is why you reported her missing.”
Ramone took another good long look around. “Yeah, but you still can’t let that get out. She was one of the girls that was on the stroll. You know, she was a hooker. But somehow or another, she always stayed clean. The busts would come in, and she always seemed to be able to get back and off the street and away from trouble, if you see what I mean.”
Craig asked, “Are you saying she was a rat?”
Ramone snorted. “I am saying I looked out for her. Girl was pretty, you see. Not just that, she just did not have a chance. Foster kid. Not a single soul to give a shit about her. She should have had a better life. Might have if she had had any other early life, you know what I mean? Hell, I have seen hundreds just like her, but she was different, really sweet. She was scared all the time, and I used to feel bad for her, even after she got on the horse and rode it a few times around every block, you know what I mean?”
Yeah. He meant even after she had gotten on heroin he had liked her, felt something for her. Gina took a deep breath. “Why did you report her missing?”
He shrugged. “Hell, it was before the Gripper was a household name, before any of us knew that that was—or what was going down. I thought maybe she got hit, by then she was working on the blocks on the other side and the pimps that run that stretch, or did back then, were some mean dudes and their girls weren’t any more pleasant to an outsider. But nobody had seen her.”
He had cared for her then. He had cared enough to worry about her and to try to find her when she had gone missing. Gina sighed. “I see. Ramone, are you telling me she was not a rat but that you kept her out of trouble?”
He nodded, slowly. He said, “And no, I do not even bother anymore to try to help anyone, so I never reported anyone else missing. I guess I have figured out that some people are just lost souls, and besides, I do not have that kind of juice anymore. The strolls are mostly gone too; they are all on the other side of town and the drug deals that matter do not go down out here. We are just nickel and dime guys. You guys are
after them dealers flashing their wads and living high uptown, which is all right by me and most of us down this way.
“But our clientele is about the same as always, the same dead people just shuffling along in their bodes until the Gripper comes along to take them away. Dude’s like the Grim Reaper of the skid row. Really. Like I said, I keep my nose clean on and off this street. I do not get myself into anything I can’t get out of, and I do not rat anyone out anymore either.”
Gina tucked the printed sheet of paper into her pocket. “All right. Thanks.”
Craig asked, “Ramone, did anyone you know who was a rat back in those days, go missing?”
Ramone laughed, a long and rusty chuckle “You kidding me? Hell yeah. Most.”
Gina phrased her next question carefully. “Could the Gripper be a dealer, Ramone?’
Ramone snorted. “You got it all wrong, sister. All wrong. No way. We would know. Hell, these streets know everything.”
Craig put in, “Except who the Gripper is.”
Ramone nodded. “Yeah, that is true. But we would know if it was one of our own.”
Gina asked, “How?”
“You can’t hide that kind of thing, not down here. The bodies get dumped here, but they don’t get killed here. You know that.”
She did know that. Every single thing said the Gripper tortured his victims first and then killed them and then dumped their bodies back here in this neighborhood. The apartments and other buildings down here were too close together. Someone would see or hear him doing that. Ramone had a point. Whoever the Gripper was, he had access to this hood but a place outside it to take his victims.
