Bex Wynter Box Set 2

by Elleby Harper

  Seeing her father’s rabid fury left Fairchild’s reality teetering precariously and forced her to reassess everything she knew about her life.

  Fresh tears burned tracks down her cheeks. She compelled her mind inwards, recalling every number she had ever memorized in an attempt to obliterate the images. She wanted desperately to disappear inside the buzzing white noise she created. But two questions intruded behind the numbers.

  Had her parents been tainted by the evil world outside?

  If so, was she still safe?

  Chapter 2

  Thursday, March 1

  At the sound of DCI Nicholas “Cole” Mackinley’s voice, a rough burr of sanding paper, Bex Wynter’s shoulders tensed. With her back to the two men entering the small staff lunchroom, she continued to stir her coffee until the powder dissolved, hoping to pass under their radar.

  “Poor bugger was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He’d just pulled the car over for speeding with his sarge breathing down his neck when he realized the driver was his wife, driving her friend’s car home because the friend had had too much to drink.”

  She hadn’t been privy to Cole’s relaxed leadership style before. Their interactions were limited to terse boundary disputes between the Bridesmead CID, Cole’s turf, and the Youth Crimes Team, Bex’s domain. It was a continual tug of war between who would claim the interview rooms for the day or who had prior rights to the car pool. Since the Youth Crimes Team specialized in crime committed by those too young to vote, Cole had a habit of dropping his team’s cases on her to investigate if there was a whiff that the offender might be under eighteen.

  A side-splitting belly laugh exploded from Detective Inspector Oliver Yabsley. A tiny frown furrowed Bex’s brow. What Cole had said wasn’t that funny. Yabsley was sucking up to his superior, Bex judged.

  “Shit! Charlie didn’t give his missus a ticket did he?”

  She heard Cole chuckle in response. The sound was little more than a throaty vibration, but Bex could visualize the smiling lift of Cole’s slightly crooked mouth. He tended to use that chuckle, wrapped up in an affably self-satisfied attitude, whenever she attempted to bargain over using the facilities both teams shared in the same building.

  Hell, it wasn’t her team’s fault that they had been shoehorned into the existing Bridesmead Criminal Investigation Department. The building was in a prime location on Little King Lane, just a stone’s throw from New Scotland Yard on Victoria Embankment and wedged between the National Crime Agency and Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street. Instead of being thankful for the upgrade to facilities and refurbishment of the nineteenth century building occasioned by the move, Cole and his entire CID unit acted as though they were providing the favors.

  “The knucklehead did just that. Figured it was better than having his boss write him up for nepotism. Charlie then had to live with his wife’s cold shoulder for the next six months! Still, that’s what he gets for abandoning CID to go back to traffic. And he thought that was an easier option!”

  Bex finally quit stirring her coffee. She couldn’t keep standing at the sink any longer. They would begin to think she was deliberately eavesdropping on their conversation.

  Grasping the hot mug, Bex veered away from the kitchen counter, trying to avoid the men. Given the cramped space that was difficult. Bex didn’t think of herself as petite, but, standing six foot three, Cole’s well-defined frame fairly filled the area.

  “DCI Wynter, enjoying a break from paperwork with a bit of earwigging?” he asked, his wide mouth curling into a smirk.

  Silver threads laced through inky black hair gave Cole’s unlined face a gravitas it didn’t deserve, thought Bex.

  “DCI Mackinley,” she acknowledged tersely. Had he just stooped to name-calling her an earwig? Annoyance made her retaliate. “Not much to enjoy in this swill you Brits call coffee, but I’m doing my best.”

  “Ought to try Dill’s Sandwich Bar. Their coffee is rich, hot and best of all it’ll keep you up all night, just like a Scotsman.”

  Forced to look upwards to meet his glance, Bex noted laugh lines crinkling around sharp hazel eyes, more green than brown. She suspected he was baiting her and suppressed a wince, instead pasting on a fake smile to prove he hadn’t fazed her.

  “Then I prefer the lunchroom swill.”

  Yabsley guffawed, his chipmunk cheeks puffing in and out. His stoic, pudgy face was saved from ugliness solely by the grace of his Roman nose.

  “Plus they make the best chip butties this side of the Thames!” Yabsley waved a half eaten sandwich in her direction.

  “I’ll keep that in mind if I want to chow down on a cholesterol overload,” she snapped, heading for the stairs. Bex had learned from her landlady, Georgie, that a “chip buttie” was two pieces of white bread filled with slices of fried potato, the British equivalent of French fries, generously slathered with salt.

  One floor down Bex squeezed into her office, little more than the size of a large clothes closet. In fact she was pretty certain it had been used for storage space before the refurbishment.

  She had barely settled herself behind the cheap chipboard desk when her most junior team member, Detective Constable Reuben Richards, stuck his head round the open door.

  “Got a bit of an odd phone call, Boss,” he said. His nose wrinkled. “That smells like lunchroom coffee. I thought you hated the brew that came out of the instant coffee jar? Should’ve popped down to Dill’s. They make—”

  “Yes, I know, a great cup of coffee,” she interrupted him. “Just watch it, Reuben, or I’ll be stealing your upmarket coffee sachets next. Believe me, today I could do with the sugar hit. Now, what about that phone call? Are you sure it’s something you can’t handle?”

  “The caller’s been bandied around from one section to another, but I think she’s finally reached the right destination. Sort of.”

  Bex released a heavy sigh. The stack of paperwork on her desk was demanding her attention. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “The caller wants to talk to the woman who solved the school bus kidnapping. She saw the police officer talking on the television last year.”

  “That’s Detective Superintendent Sophie Dresden then,” Bex said with decision.

  The Youth Crimes Team had worked to free twenty-two schoolgirls, including Detective Sergeant Eli Morgan’s daughters, from a sex-slave ring, but, as usual, Dresden had been the one preening in front of the cameras and accepting the public’s accolades. That was fine by Bex, who would rather solve crimes than talk about them.

  “Trouble is, the caller’s just a kiddie. I don’t know if bothering Dresden is the diplomatic thing to do.”

  Reuben rubbed the back of his neck, almost as though he could feel Dresden’s eyes boring into him. Bex understood his hesitation. Dresden was a tough, no-nonsense woman who didn’t suffer fools or wrong decisions lightly.

  “What do you mean the caller’s a child?”

  “Well, you can hear it in her voice. Wouldn’t give her name, just insisted she needed to speak to the police lady on television.”

  “And you brought this to me because?”

  Reuben offered her a sheepish grin.

  “Well, I figured you worked on the case more than Dresden and you’re a woman, so maybe you could field the call without bothering the super.”

  “You’re very considerate of Dresden, but I can’t say the same for me,” Bex said with asperity. “Are you suggesting I impersonate a superintendent?”

  “It won’t kill you,” Reuben said.

  “Dresden might if she finds out!”

  Reuben made puppy dog eyes at her until Bex heaved an exaggerated sigh of surrender. She certainly couldn’t imagine Dresden being pleased to be bothered by a child, even if that child turned out to be a gushing fan.

  “Alright, transfer it through.”

  She picked up the receiver on her landline.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Detective Superintend
ent Sophie Dresden?” The crystalline voice on the end of the line was strained.

  Bex hesitated over the lie, but it would solve Reuben’s problem if the girl thought she was talking to the right person. After all what was she going to ask? How did you find the kidnappers? How do I become a police officer? Bex felt confident answering those questions.

  Eight months of living in London had done nothing to soften the edges off her New York accent, so she had to concentrate to make her voice approximate Dresden’s pronunciation. She knew she hadn’t nailed it, but it would have to do.

  “Yes it is.”

  There was a heartfelt sigh at the other end of the line.

  “What’s your name?” Bex asked.

  “Fairchild.” The voice was soft and breathy, hardly more than a whisper.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m eight years, sixteen weeks and three days. I like to calculate my age in weeks rather than months, because months can be rather imprecise, I think, and could make you believe I’m either older or younger than I actually am. With weeks there’s no ambiguity, is there?”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way, before, but yes technically you’re right. What can I do to help you, um, Fairchild?” Bex hesitated over the use of a name she was unsure was first name or surname.

  “I don’t know what you can do. That’s why I’m calling you. I saw a news announcement that you were in charge of the team that saved all those girls on the hijacked school bus. The text caption had a phone number and I remembered that. You did save those girls, didn’t you?” Her voice ended on a note of anxiety.

  “Yes I did,” Bex answered truthfully.

  “So therefore you must be one of the competent police officers. Because most of the time the police don’t get it right, do they? Because if you did, there wouldn’t be so much evil in the world, would there?”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence in me. I think the police win more times than you’re giving us credit for,” she assured the little girl. “Is something troubling you, Fairchild?”

  Sounds of quiet breath were all that broke the silence at the end of the line for several seconds before she spoke again. “Do you think it makes you evil to kill a bad man?”

  Bex was stunned. She bit her cheek, wondering at the best way to answer the question.

  “I’m not sure it’s ever okay to kill anyone, Fairchild. Bad or not. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I think my parents killed someone. If they did that he must have been a bad man.”

  Bex’s senses snapped to high alert.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I saw my dad cut a boy’s heart out. And then he cut him into pieces.”

  Bex fought to stifle her shocked gasp. If what Fairchild said was true, it certainly sounded as though she’d witnessed a murder. On the other hand she might have watched some particularly violent show on TV and simply had a nightmare. With children it was difficult to gauge just how much was truth and how much was gruesome imagination.

  “Fairchild, where are your parents right now?”

  “I don’t know. They’re fighting evil on the outside, I guess.”

  Fairchild’s words made her parents sound like superheroes and Bex again wondered if the child simply had an overactive imagination.

  “Do they know you’re calling me?”

  “No. I tricked my mother into leaving her phone with me. But when she discovers it’s missing she’ll come back for it. Detective Superintendent Dresden, I think they might’ve killed more than one boy.”

  Bex’s pulse raced.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I also found some cards that belong to other people.”

  “Do you know what type of cards?”

  “They were different colored cards. Mainly blue and pink.”

  “What kind of information did the cards have on them?”

  “Numbers. I memorized a lot of the numbers. I think they might have also had names and pictures. I’m not so good with those. But I can tell you the numbers if you want.”

  Bex’s skin prickled with goosebumps. Was the child telling her she’d found a cache of identity cards and driver’s licenses belonging to people who could have been killed?

  “Okay, Fairchild, give me the numbers you remember.”

  She rattled off strings of numbers and Bex jotted them down. Could an eight year old really remember that many numbers? A swift count of her list showed eleven sets of numbers.

  “You did the right thing calling the police, Fairchild. Listen, in case you need it here’s my direct phone number.” Bex said the numbers slowly and clearly. “Can you remember that?”

  “That’s easy,” Fairchild sniffed.

  “Now, can you tell me where you live?” Bex’s concern was that Fairchild truly inhabited a house with a murderer. What would happen to her if her parents discovered she’d made this call?

  “In a house with no wind — oh, I have to go.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, March 1

  Bex toyed with the pen on her desk, doodling around the numbers she had written down. The girl’s voice with its sweet childishness, haunted her.

  I think my parents killed someone. I saw my dad cut his heart out. And then he cut him into pieces. I think they might’ve killed more than one.

  Could the call be a prank by one of her team members? She recalled Reuben’s cheeky face. He might possibly think something like this was funny. Or could it be one of Cole Mackinley’s detectives hoping to get one up on the Youth Crimes Team by sending her off on a wild goose chase?

  Yes, more than likely that was the answer.

  No, the voice at the end of the line had been too sincere, too genuinely childish to be a prank!

  Anxiety clutched her with a cold, hard grip. The only way she was going to put Fairchild’s words to rest was to check into it.

  She opened a new tab on her computer and logged into the national police database. She tapped in the first number. It matched a driver’s license for James Holbrook, aged nineteen. Holbrook had an impressive rap sheet for a nineteen year old. He had numerous break and enter charges, one count of assault, and a charge of causing death by careless driving for knocking down and killing a pedestrian during a joy ride in a stolen car two years ago. Released on bail he had never returned to court. After two years he was still listed as a missing person.

  Bex typed in the second number Fairchild had given her. It turned out to be a youth identity card for sixteen-year-old Mikayla Parkinson, reported as missing by her boyfriend, Caeron Meadows. There was a note in the report that the girl might be pregnant. Her rap sheet listed numerous charges for shoplifting plus an assault on a police officer at the time he was arresting her boyfriend for drug dealing. The officer had been stabbed in the back with a screwdriver, but luckily had survived. Mikayla had been missing since last September.

  The third number belonged to Mehmet Sahnan, aged seventeen, under arrest for rape and deprivation of liberty. Sahnan had been sentenced to juvenile detention but had done a runner and was listed as currently missing. She remembered the case. It was an early one for the Youth Crimes Team and she had had to pull one of her officers, Quinn Standing, into line for leaning too hard on Sahnan.

  Quickly she went through the other numbers in Fairchild’s list, her fingers flying over the keyboard, her eyes darting through screen after screen of personal information. All the numbers matched licenses or ID cards for young men and women aged between sixteen and twenty-two at the time they went missing. Most had been missing for years.

  Eleven numbers.

  Eleven missing people.

  Eleven potential murder victims?

  Bex closed her eyes for a moment, anxiety sweeping through her body on a rising tide. Her mind buzzed like a raging swarm of bees, racing to make sense of the information before her. Gory wounds. Severed body pieces. Her heart was stuttering as flashbacks assailed her fro
m her first case as a New York Police Department detective. A raw rookie to the homicide ranks, she had been paired with 55-year-old veteran Walt Slusarczyk to tackle an unsolved serial killing. It had been a bonding experience she never wanted to repeat, but the incident had honed her investigative skills and taught her to trust her instincts.

  It took a conscious effort to calm her heartbeat and banish the lingering images, but she couldn’t ignore the tension wedged tight in her gut. She returned her attention to the information she had just gathered, but she didn’t need to read it over again. Her skin was crawling with dread because her instincts screamed she had stumbled across a serial killer.

  Each of the missing persons had a pattern in common: they had all been through the criminal system, many of them multiple times. These kids were tough cookies and had faced serious charges ranging from armed burglaries and assault to rape and murder.

  There were two big problems though. The first was the lack of bodies, which would make it difficult to convince the top brass that the department’s stretched-to-breaking point resources should be redirected to this case. The second was Dresden’s unwritten but rock solid mandate that the Youth Crimes Team only investigated crimes committed by offenders under eighteen. She had no interest in them taking on crimes against kids and in fact had almost fired Bex’s inspector, Quinn Standing, when he defied her directive.

  Bex knew Dresden wouldn’t let her tackle the investigation, despite the evidence giving credence to Fairchild’s claims that she had watched her father murder someone in cold blood. How safe was Fairchild in his care?

  Bex jolted upright, leaving her cramped office to seek out Reuben. He was hunched over his computer, one ear bud embedded deeply as he listened to whatever sounds were thundering out of his smart phone. She tapped him forcefully on the shoulder to get his attention.