Dark Falls (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 1)

by Lori Ryan

  He and Ava might not be anything more than friends at this point, but he still felt a protective rush when he thought of her being hurt.

  “Where?” he asked, his voice tight.

  Rhys rattled off an address that let John breathe again. Small place, not a great part of town, same as before.

  “They’re escalating. Beat one of the employees. He’s on his way to the hospital, but patrol is holding the scene and has the other employee there for us.”

  John and Eric stood, Connie hopping up like a jumping bean next to them.

  “We’ll head to the scene,” Eric said.

  Rhys nodded and gestured over his shoulder to where his partner, Mason England, stood. Mason looked a little like a tank with short-cropped dirty blond hair. He and Rhys could almost be twins, except for their eye color. Mason’s were green to Rhys’s blue.

  “Mason and I are going to head over to Penny Al’s, see if he’s heard anything about how this stuff is being sold.”

  Penny Al bought and sold all kinds of things. He didn’t own a storefront, but sold out of his trailer home on property twenty minutes outside of downtown. Back in the day, he was where you went to fence stolen goods, but he seemed to have gone clean. Still, he didn’t have a storefront, so he didn’t receive the notices of stolen goods the pawn shops did. It was worth talking to him.

  John and Eric nodded. They all knew Penny Al still had contact with the kind of people who might be buying this stolen property. He might hear things the pawn shops didn’t.

  “Connie, you’re with us,” John said as he and Eric headed toward the elevator. While they were talking to the witnesses on scene, they could send the kid to interview other store owners nearby and check for video footage in the surrounding areas that might have caught something as the suspects approached or left the scene.

  Chapter Four

  The minute John, Eric, and Connie entered the shop, Eric’s joking ended. He was as professional as the rest of them when they were working, especially when there was an injured victim like they had in this case.

  On the way to the scene, they’d gotten word the victim was an elderly man. He would survive, but he had several broken bones in his face. This hadn’t been a light beating.

  John scanned the small space. It was a long, narrow store set between a liquor store and one of those places that sold things for a dollar. Two uniformed officers stood by the door, one logging who entered, the other talking quietly to a younger man who was probably their witness.

  The store was lined on either side with standard jewelry store glass cases, and most of the merchandise was gone. A few pieces sat discarded on the floor or still in the shelves. One glass case wore the evidence of the fierce beating the man had been given. Blood spattered and smeared the surface.

  It had been vicious and cruel, the kind of gratuitous violence that told them something had shifted with their suspects with this one. Whoever had delivered this beating, they liked taking advantage of the glass cases in the shops they were hitting. The last victim had been slammed into one of them, as well.

  John looked to the witness and saw the man had gone stark gray, looking like he might pass out. He didn’t seem able to take his eyes off the bloodied case, and John knew he was likely seeing the attack play out over and over.

  John stepped between the case and the witness, purposely blocking the man’s view.

  Connie and Eric stood to the side.

  “Sir, my name is Detective John Sevier. This is Detective Cantu and Officer Underwood. I know you’ve given a statement to the officers here, but I need you to talk me through what happened here.”

  The man nodded, still seeming a little stunned.

  “Can you start by telling me your name, sir?” John prompted.

  “Jordan Morgan.” The man was in his twenties, maybe five-ten or eleven inches, but it was only a rough estimate since he was sitting down. He wore a cheap suit that looked like he’d probably worn it every day that week, going by the wrinkles.

  “Have you worked here long, Jordon?” John asked, trying to bring the man back to them. He looked at the man’s pupils and assessed him for signs of shock. If he needed medical attention, they needed to get that for him before they questioned him. EMTs had been on the scene for the other victim, and normally they’d spot it if this guy needed care, but John wanted to be sure.

  Connie stepped up and handed a cup of water to the witness. That seemed to wake the man up, and he nodded and took a sip.

  “I’ve been here a couple of months.” His gaze tried to go back to the bloody spot behind John, but John shifted his weight and caught the man’s attention again.

  “Dale was here forever,” he said. “He’s been working here since he was in his twenties, he told me.”

  “Dale is your coworker?” John prompted.

  Jordan nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us what happened when you were robbed today?”

  John didn’t take notes. Connie was scribbling beside him, and he knew Eric would be writing down anything they needed to record behind him, as well. That’s the way they worked. Whoever wasn’t doing the questioning took notes.

  “We were getting ready to close. It was a little early, but as long as the owner doesn’t find out, we do that sometimes. No one was here.”

  John nodded. “So you close at what time, usually?”

  Jordan blinked at him. “Eight. Sometimes there’s a person or two still here then. Sometimes not, so we ain’t all that strict about it. We were just going to lock up at seven-forty-five tonight. That’s all.”

  The poor kid said it like if they hadn’t started locking up early, this wouldn’t have happened. Like karma had somehow sent them a beating for the minor infraction of skipping out of work a few minutes early.

  “And then what happened?” John was asking wide open questions right now, not wanting to lead the witness in any direction or another.

  “I had my back turned to the door. I was cleaning the cases.” His eyes shot past John again, but he brought himself back this time.

  “I heard a loud crash, a bang. They kicked the door. I mean, it was unlocked, they didn’t need to kick it in or anything, but they did.”

  John didn’t have to say anything to Eric. He knew his partner would be sending a message to the crime scene techs that were on their way. There was a good chance they’d get a pristine shoe print on that door that they could match when they caught someone. Assholes always thought they were cool kicking in doors, but it left some beautiful evidence behind.

  He waited for the witness to continue. Behind him, he could hear the techs arriving and speaking with Eric.

  “They had guns,” the witness offered.

  “Can you tell me what the guns looked like? Long or short?” For the most part, when someone had a gun held on them, what they saw was gun. It was hard to see anything other than down the center of the barrel. It was too easy to get lost focusing on that spot where the bullet would come from. John’s job was to try to dig information from this guy’s brain, and then he’d show him pictures and see if they could narrow things down some.

  “Uh,” Jordan said, “short. Handguns.”

  “What color were they?”

  “Black, I think?” Jordan paused. “Most were black. I think one guy had a silver one.”

  “Okay, so let’s focus on the black ones first. Did they have a round cylinder where the bullets would go, or were they more like the ones you see police using in TV shows?”

  Jordan sat taller, realizing he was giving good information now. “Like the TV shows. All of them, even the silver one. They were that kind with the thing you jam in with bullets.”

  John nodded. “Okay, good. I’ll show you some pictures of different handguns later to see if you can help us narrow that down, but let’s talk about the men. What can you tell me about them?” Again, he went with broad first.

  Jordan shrugged. “There were four of them. Black clothes. Masks.”
r />   “What kind of masks?”

  Over the next few minutes, the witness told them things John already knew. The boots, the jeans, the colored hair sticking out.

  “That leader,” Jordan said, “he didn’t need to do what he did.”

  “The leader?” John hadn’t heard any of the previous witnesses talk about any of the particular suspects acting as a leader.

  “Yeah, the big guy. The one who hit Dale.” He swallowed. “He was in charge.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Jordan made a face as he seemed to think about the question. “Just something about how he moved. When they came in, two of them sprayed the cameras with something, then they all went to the glass and started breaking shit. They were pulling things out of the cases, like they had an assignment, but he came to Dale and told Dale to empty the safe.”

  “Anything else?” John asked.

  “When he started to hit Dale, the others seemed to hesitate to stop him. They seemed surprised. Only one other guy got in there and pulled him off. He was the smallest of the bunch, but he was the only guy who got in there and stopped the big guy.”

  They’d already gotten him to estimate the heights of everyone, so John knew he was talking about the suspect Jordan had said was an inch or so shorter than him. John had also confirmed with Jordan that he was five feet ten inches tall, so that made one of their suspects five feet eight to five feet ten, give or take an inch or two.

  The uniformed officers had informed them that the manager was on his way in to download the surveillance video for them. Now that this had risen to the level of at least aggravated assault, they could have their tech people take the time to analyze the few seconds of video they might get for heights of all the suspects. The crime scene guys would measure the door height and other prominent items in the room, and that would let the technicians make some pretty accurate measurements once they got ahold of the video.

  “He didn’t need to do it,” Jordan said, confusion evident.

  “What’s that?” John asked.

  Jordan’s eyes went to the post behind John again. “Hit him. He didn’t need to hit Dale. Dale told him he was going to open the safe. He was just nervous, that’s all. His hands were shaking. He told the guy his hands were shaking, and he needed a minute, and the guy just lost it. Started hitting him and wouldn’t stop. He was enjoying it.”

  John nodded, his jaw set and tensing by the minute. At least one person in this gang was escalating, and John didn’t like where this was headed.

  Chapter Five

  John dialed Ava’s store before pulling out of the parking lot the following evening.

  He recognized her voice as the one that said, “McNair Fine Jewelers, how may I help you?”

  He remembered nights of listening to that voice for hours. She had the kind of low, sultry voice that made his cock stand at attention even if she was doing something like reciting the damned phone book. And when she said his name with that voice? If she cried out when they were in bed? Damn, that did things to him.

  He could easily picture the face that went with her husky voice. Long brown hair he used to love to run his hands through while she slept. Deep brown eyes that somehow seemed to hold a light all their own, and a smile that some might say was almost too big, but that worked for her. She was gorgeous, and when she hit him with that smile, everything stopped.

  He cleared his throat, shaking himself out of the memories. “Ava, it’s John Sevier.”

  “Hi, John. Is everything all right? I set up a news alert about the robberies after you left. I saw what happened on the local news site yesterday, but there hasn’t been much information.”

  He looked at his watch. No, there wouldn’t have been many updates because there wasn’t much news. They didn’t have many leads. The doctors had put the victim in a medically induced coma, but hoped to wake him tomorrow.

  John and Eric were heading home for the night. A few of the others were going to follow up on some other things overnight, but he and his partner were going to be the ones interviewing the victim in the morning, so it was agreed they needed to get away and catch some sleep and recharge.

  Still, John hadn’t been able to make himself drive home. He was still cranked, and he realized he didn’t want to let his visit to Ava’s store be the end of things. He wanted to see how she was, find out more about what she was doing and what her life was like.

  He realized she’d thought he was calling about the robberies, and that was totally fair. It was probably weird for him to call out of the blue.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re chasing leads on that. But I was calling to see if you want to grab dinner.”

  “Dinner?” she asked.

  This was stupid. She would think he was asking her on a date, and that was really the last thing he wanted her to think. But he wanted to see how she was doing, what she’d been up to for the last decade.

  He rushed to explain, hoping she’d understand this was just a friend thing he was asking for. “I just thought it would be nice to catch up, you know? It’s been a long time.”

  He could almost hear her relax over the phone. “I’d like that.”

  “I’m leaving the station now. I can come get you at the store?”

  He could hear her moving around in the background as he talked.

  “No, I’m on my way out. My employees are closing tonight. I’ve got to drop Janna off at home. Can you pick me up at my place in an hour? Is that too late?”

  “Not at all. That’s perfect.” She gave him her address, and they said goodbye. That gave him enough time to run home and shower and change.

  Chapter Six

  “Hey Pop,” John called out, walking into the living room of his dad’s house. It wasn’t where John had grown up. They’d lived in another town, but his dad had sold that place a few years back and moved to Dark Falls.

  “Pop?” He worked his way through the house and out back to the garage, which was where he’d likely find his dad.

  John could always count on finding his dad either in the garage or just coming in from working on a car. His dad restored old cars for people all over the country, working on one hand-picked project at a time in the garage behind his house.

  “What brings you here?” His dad spoke from under the hood of a ’55 De Soto Fireflite Hemi.

  “Pie. I’m looking for pie,” John said, patting his stomach. It was close to dinner, but he didn’t care. The truth was, he was coming by to slip more cash to his dad. He’d already put it into the canister on the top shelf of the pantry on his way through the house. It was the only way he could get his dad to let him pay back the debt he owed him.

  “No pie,” his dad laughed, coming out from under the hood, already wiping his hands on a rag. “But I’ve got carrot cake.”

  His dad had once been a cook in the Navy. When he was injured and honorably discharged, he’d gotten a job at a diner three towns over, going in before anyone else was awake and functioning to bake the pies, cakes, and pastries. He’d always said it was a hell of a change from Navy cooking, but anyone could see his dad loved baking.

  When he started restoring old cars for a living, he had quit that job, but he still baked regularly, and John took advantage of that fact as often as he could.

  “Perfect. Vegetables.” John grinned as his dad huffed over John’s interpretation of a serving of vegetables.

  “Why the De Soto?” John asked when his dad had put a serving of cake in front of him at the kitchen table.

  The car was a nice one, but it wasn’t the usual job for his dad. After years of work, his father had built a reputation for quality work that let him choose the restoration jobs he took. Some of the wealthiest car collectors paid him to restore unique cars that usually needed months of hunting down the right parts or modification of parts to get the restoration done right.

  A ’55 De Soto Fireflight was a fairly easy job, something that could be done by someone with a lot less skill and talent
than his dad.

  His dad laughed. “One of my clients let his grandson choose his next restoration. I didn’t have the heart to turn him down.”

  John tried to smile, but it was stiff, so he chose to fill his mouth with cake to avoid answering.

  The cake went to sawdust in his mouth, but he used the milk to chase it down anyway.

  There was the kind of heavy silence that said his dad knew where John’s mind had gone, but neither was going to try to fill the quiet space.

  “Your sister is coming for a visit in March,” was what his dad finally offered when they’d both made some progress on their food.

  John’s smile came back as he answered. “Who’s she bringing?” His sister, Penny, was forever bringing home men she swore were “the one.” Whoever he was, the guy was always subjected to the grilling from hell by their dad and John and within days of the trip home, she’d decide Prince Charming didn’t measure up after all and dump the poor bastard.

  John felt for the guys in a way. Here, they thought they were coming home with her, meeting the family, and getting ready to “take the next step,” only to find out she was done with them a week later.

  John ducked his dad’s playful slap to the back of the head and stood, taking his plate to the sink. The rule in their house had always been that you bussed your place. His dad would do the dishes once you got them to the sink, but you had to clear them.

  That’s not to say John didn’t do chores growing up. He’d been responsible for doing his own laundry from the age of ten up, and every weekend he was expected to mow the lawn or rake leaves. When it snowed, he and his sister bundled up to clear the walkways and driveway. When you lived in a household with a single parent and an income that didn’t have room for a ton of extras, you had jobs to do. It was as simple as that.

  “You staying for dinner?”

  John shook his head, but a stab of guilt at not spending more time with his pop kicked him in the gut. His thoughts went to his planned dinner with Ava. He didn’t mention it to his dad. Any talk of dinner with a woman would get his dad’s hopes up that he might be dating again, no matter how much he explained he and Ava were only friends.