by Alexa Grace
"What's that?"
"Mandy Morris had given birth within weeks of her death."
Lane disconnected the call and leaned back in his seat and felt anger wash over him. He had two immediate thoughts. The first was how could anyone have killed this girl? The second was this sick bastard is going down.
Like most cops, he knew the leading cause of death for young women is homicide at the hands of the husband or lover. So finding the baby-daddy jumped to first on his to-do list.
Lane checked into the Comfort Inn, ate pizza and spent the rest of his evening hunched over his laptop making interview plans and appointments for the next day. He wanted to talk to Mandy's dorm roommate as well as visit area hospitals to find out where she'd given birth. He vowed the name of the baby-daddy would be his by the end of the next day.
He pulled out the information he'd gotten from the college earlier in the day. He learned that Mandy Morris was a good student who was on a scholarship that paid all her expenses as long as she stayed enrolled in college, taking classes and maintained at least a B average. Student records revealed perfect attendance had diminished. She had missed numerous classes this term, which fit precisely with a pregnancy timetable.
He turned on his laptop to view her bank records. There were direct deposits of $500 to her checking account every two weeks from F.H.A.A. Since she was not working and had a scholarship, these deposits made him curious. Mandy made debit transactions to a grocery store, a pharmacy and small amounts for cash from the ATM. No payments were made to a physician, which he found odd since she was pregnant. In addition, there were no payments for rent. Something that popped out was a direct deposit of $10,000 from F.H.A.A. that had been made six weeks prior to her death. Who the hell was F.H.A.A. and why were they paying her this much money?
Her phone records revealed she'd made multiple calls to F.H.A.A. The last call was made the day before her murder. Other than that, the only calls she made the month before she died was to a pharmacy, a Pizza King, and a Chinese restaurant. It seemed odd to him that someone her age didn’t call or text any friends.
It was close to midnight when he closed his laptop and turned on the television. Exhausted, he fell asleep watching a Seinfeld rerun.
He awoke on fire, panting and aroused. Damn it. Not again. He glanced at the time on his phone — 4:00 a.m. The dreams had started again. Not that they'd ever stopped. This one was in erotic Technicolor and started with the back of a blue dress Frankie was wearing. He pulled on her stuck zipper, his knuckles rubbing against her satiny skin, the sexual electricity sharp between them. He plucked a tiny piece of fabric from the zipper teeth and the zipper flowed down easily.
Lane slid his hands inside her dress and around her waist, pulling her closer to him until he could feel her heat. He pushed the dress to the floor to reveal her perfect, naked body. Turning her around, he possessed her mouth in a deep kiss that sent fire shooting through his body down to his toes. Beads of sweat formed at his temples, the heat becoming unbearable as he pushed her onto the bed, her soft body beneath his hard one.
The dreams were his punishment for leaving her like he did. One night with her and he experienced a sexual explosion like no other. He'd had sex with a lot of women but none who made him feel like he had died and gone to heaven. He always had the control, but with Frankie, he didn't give a damn who took charge as long as he was having mind-shattering sex with her.
Lying next to her that night, the realization had branded him that she was the one he might not be able to leave behind and it terrified him. So he'd held her while she slept. At dawn he slipped out of her bed and out of her life.
When had he become such a bastard? Why in the hell did he do that to her? That was a stupid question with a puzzling answer. She scared the crap out of him. With the SWAT team, he'd crashed through a well-known and armed drug dealer hideout and had not blinked; but this gorgeous, spunky woman and her effect on him made him shake in his boots.
Now he'd lost her. He knew he had. It was his own damned fault. He cursed and threw a pillow across the room. He then got out of bed and headed for the shower — a cold one.
Chapter Two
It was the first time Lane had been in the Indiana University Memorial Union, but the Starbucks was easy to find. He simply followed the mass of students who were cursed with 8:00 a.m. classes to the coffee shop. He ordered a double espresso, sat down at a table and waited for Mandy Morris's roommate who promised to meet him. He scanned the crowd for a young woman wearing a red I.U. t-shirt with white letters and jeans. Christie Allen described herself as being 5'5" tall, blue eyes, with long brown hair she liked to wear in a ponytail. Unfortunately, he'd seen at least a dozen girls matching that description within the last five minutes.
A girl, he assumed to be Christie Allen, plopped down in the chair across from him. "You didn't say you were a hottie over the phone." She let her gaze travel over the length of his body in a sexually explicit way.
Shooting her a glare, he said, "I'm a detective, not a hottie. I want to talk to you about your roommate, Mandy Morris."
"I'm not sure how much I can tell you. Are you buying me a latte?"
"That depends on how valuable your information is."
"Mandy's been my roommate since the spring semester of last year."
"Are you friends?"
She rolled her eyes. "With that homely dork? No. She was my roommate, if you can call her that. She spent most of her time in the library so she wasn't around much, which was fine with me. It gave me more alone time with my boyfriend."
"Did Mandy have a boyfriend?"
"I thought so, but I never saw him. She started staying out all night starting last April. I thought maybe she was out with a boyfriend."
"What's his name?"
"I don't know," she answered with a huff. "We didn't exactly run around in the same circles, if you know what I mean."
Lane shot her another glare. The more he learned about Mandy Morris, the angrier he became about how badly people had treated her.
"Was she friends with anyone in your dorm?"
"I don't think so. She kept to herself."
"You're not much help."
"Does that mean you aren't buying me a latte?"
Lane gulped down the rest of his espresso and rose to leave. "That's right. Your information is not all that valuable."
He walked away and wondered how someone could be so self-involved as to not even wonder why a detective was asking questions about her roommate. Did Mandy Morris have anyone in her life who cared about her?
Lane purposely waited until midnight to visit the hospital where he thought Mandy delivered her baby. He knew there were fewer employees on the night shift and he might get one of them to talk about Mandy Morris. In addition, if he could find a birth certificate, he'd find the baby's father.
He headed toward the nurse's desk where two nurses worked on a computer. They were so intent, neither saw him approach their area. He watched the nurse closest to him. She looked like she was in her thirties with highlighted brown hair shaped into a bob. She wore glasses that kept sliding down her nose as she typed. Finally, she noticed him and jerked slightly in surprise. She rose and approached him. Her name tag read Danielle.
"I'm sorry I didn't notice you. I'm afraid visiting hours are over."
"Not a problem. I was enjoying watching you work, Danielle." Lane gave her his best flirtatious smile and was pleased to see her blush. He needed information from her that she was not supposed to give him and waiting weeks for a subpoena for Mandy's medical records was not an option. Lane pulled out his badge as well as Mandy Morris's photo.
"Do you remember this young lady? She gave birth about six weeks ago?"
She glanced at his badge then the photo. She lingered more than a second as she eyeballed the photo, frowning slightly, and biting her lower lip. In that moment, he knew from her body language she remembered Mandy. She looked nervously over her shoulder at the other nurse who was endin
g a phone call. A buzzer sounded from a patient's room and the other nurse responded she'd take care of it, and headed down the hall.
"Danielle, I think you recognize Mandy Morris. Why don't you tell me about it?"
"I'm sorry..."
"I'm Detective Lane Hansen. But you can call me Lane." He reached for her hand to shake and squeezed it gently sending another blush to her face. He shot her a reassuring smile. "Tell me about Mandy."
She glanced nervously over her shoulder obviously looking for the other nurse who was nowhere in sight. "I remember her. She had her baby boy here. One night I overheard her crying and I went to her room. I held that poor girl for fifteen minutes as she sobbed. She wanted to hold her baby and she said the day nurse told her it wasn't a good idea since she was giving him up for adoption. I went down to the nursery and brought him back to her. She rocked him back and forth on the bed for hours. I told her she could change her mind and keep him. She said she didn't think the adoption agency would let her."
"What's the name of the agency?" Lane asked as he pulled out his notepad.
"Forever Homes Adoption. They're a new agency here with their own clinic and everything."
"Did you see the baby's father? Did he visit her?"
"I don't think that poor child had any visitors."
"Danielle, I need the name of the baby's father."
"I can't give that to you. The privacy laws prevent me from..."
"She was murdered. The killer dumped her body like garbage in a wooded area. The baby's father may be her killer. I need to find him." He knew he was screwed if she didn’t give him the name. A subpoena for the records could take time he didn’t have.
Just as she was about to respond, the other nurse returned and sat in front of her computer. Danielle moved to a filing cabinet and pulled out a manila file folder. She looked at him with her index finger pressed against her lips, her eyes pleading with him not to say anything. She placed the file on the counter near him, opened it and pulled out a white sheet of paper. With her finger, she pointed to a section of the birth certificate that listed the baby's father — Billy James. Lane jotted the name in his notepad and smiled at her.
"Lane, it was nice talking to you." She patted his hand and glanced at the file as she closed it. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
Back at the Comfort Inn, he threw his jacket on the bed and opened his laptop to search for Billy James. He opened his driver's license database and found a Billy James, twenty years old, who listed an apartment address not far from the I.U. campus. Bingo. This had to be him.
He then went to Google where he spotted the entry that listed Billy James, I.U. student on Facebook. The profile photo matched the one from the driver's license database.
Lane clicked on the link and entered the Facebook world of Billy James. He looked at his photo albums, most of which included an intoxicated Billy toasting beer cans with his drinking buddies. Another album held several photos of Billy with a raven-haired young woman who wore a lot of makeup. Definitely not Mandy Morris.
He jotted down Billy's apartment address and planned a surprise visit. He'd learned that unexpected interrogations elicited the most information. He grinned. He was looking forward to it.
Frankie Douglas sat in her red sports car in a business parking lot next to a pizzeria on Kirkwood Avenue in Bloomington, watching the building with her camera within reach. Insurance scam assignments were lucrative for her small private investigation company and this one was turning out to be a gem. Her focus was Jerry Richards, a man who hadn't worked in three years and was living on his insurance company's disability checks. Her mission was to discover whether Mr. Richards was indeed physically disabled. Thus far, she had taken photographs of him mowing his lawn with a push mower, jogging around his neighborhood, playing basketball with his son, and wrestling with a large dog in his front yard. She'd followed him to Bloomington for some additional photographs before she met with the insurance company.
Frankie yawned and stretched as much as she could in her small car and daydreamed about the bills she'd pay off with the hefty check she'd get for this job. She poured a cup of coffee from her thermos and listened to the birds chattering to each other in oak trees lining the street. She pulled out the newspaper she'd plucked from her front porch earlier, and began reading a story on the front page about a young girl's body found in a wooded area near Kramer. It was a strange place to dump a body. The wooded area was near the old and the reportedly haunted Mudlavia Hotel located near Kramer. The hotel and spa had been built by a natural spring and in its day and served as a popular place to stay for the rich and famous. It was destroyed by fire in the 1920s, but haunted or not, that didn't stop curiosity seekers from visiting it throughout the years.
She noticed movement outside the restaurant and saw Jerry Richards lifting a keg of beer from the back of a Budweiser truck. She grabbed her red digital camera and got several shots of Jerry carrying the keg into the restaurant. Poor Jerry, too disabled to work, but able to lift and carry heavy beer kegs. Right. She chuckled to herself and went back to her newspaper. A couple more photographs and she'd head home. Not bad for a day's work and it wasn't even noon.
Taking another sip of coffee, she flipped to the local section. Suddenly her car door ripped open, and a large hand squeezed on her arm.
“Ouch, you’re hurting me.”
"Who are you?” A livid Jerry Richards leaned in just inches from her face. “Why are you taking pictures of me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. Let go of my arm." She tried to pull her arm out of his grip, but he just squeezed harder and pulled her out of the car then pushed her against the side and waved his finger in front of her face.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" He rammed his index finger into her shoulder, pushing her against the car.
"Sir, please calm down." Though she was angry he was touching her, she used a soft tone of voice and spoke slowly in an effort to calm him. "I can see that you are upset about something."
"Damn right I am. I saw you taking pictures of me. I saw you!"
"Sir, if you must know, I'm a bird watcher and I was taking a photo of a White-Breasted Nuthatch that is nesting in that tree," she said as she pointed.
"Bullshit!" He screamed.
Lane steered his SUV down Kirkwood Avenue en route to Billy James's apartment. He'd just choked down two sausage and egg McMuffins and was toying with his GPS when he noticed a red sports car that looked just like the one belonging to Frankie Douglas. He shook his head. Great. Just great. When I sleep, she haunts my dreams, now I'm imagining her while awake. Why would she be this far from home? As he got closer, he saw a tall blonde woman being pinned against her car by a guy who looked like he'd been eating way too many donuts. The woman was gorgeous. The woman was Frankie.
He flipped on his emergency lights, squealed his brakes, shifted lanes, and did a U-turn at the next traffic light and raced back. By the time he slid his SUV behind her red sports car the guy was screaming and hammering her with his index finger. No freaking way.
He eased out of his car, removed his navy suit jacket, loosened his tie, and moved toward them. Frankie was talking calmly and seemed to have the situation somewhat in control so he paused when he reached the back of her car.
"Hand over the camera, bitch!"
It became obvious to Frankie that her calming methods weren't working and Mr. Jerry Richards was heading to the land of out-of-control.
"I am not giving you my camera."
Richards pushed her to the ground, then reached into her car, snatched her red digital camera off the passenger seat, and shoved it in his jeans pocket.
Frankie dusted herself off and stood to face him. "Unless you want to get arrested for theft, you'll give my camera back to me."
"Go to hell!" Richards shouted before he pushed Frankie hard against the car.
Before Lane could move, Frankie grabbed Richards's thumb bending back his wrist until he shrieked wit
h pain. She jerked Richards's arm behind his back and dropped him to the ground. Still gripping his arm, she pushed her knee into his back to hold him in place.
Lane eased up next to her dangling a pair of handcuffs on his thumb. "Need these?"
She grabbed them from him and snapped them around Richards's wrists. "What are you doing here, Lane?"
"I'm on a case and I might ask you the same thing."
"On an assignment. Mr. Charming here has been bilking his insurance company for disability for the past three years. Does he look disabled to you?"
"No, I don't think so. And I think you can get off him now." Trying not to grin, he held her arm to help her to her feet.
