The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  They parked in front of Suite 1025. No other cruisers yet. Before business hours, only half a dozen cars stood scattered around in front of the various doctors’ suites.

  Neither Joe nor the captain rushed. Noticing the details was more important at this stage. You never got a second chance to get a first impression of your crime scene.

  Philip Brogevich, MD the brass plate announced discreetly next to the entry, then below that, Psychiatrist. The handicap ramps were new, a sign on the railings warning that the paint was fresh. The door stood half-open.

  Joe glanced up and around. The pawnshop’s security cameras had been removed when the building was renovated. Either Philip hadn’t gotten around to putting new ones up yet, or he hadn’t thought he would need that kind of security in Broslin.

  The captain strode in, and Joe followed him into the reception area where the receptionist sobbed, standing by her desk, wringing her hands as she spotted them. Doris Paffrah was in her late fifties, a grandmother of six, widow of a local fireman, the type who was first to offer help if anyone needed it.

  She gestured with a limp, helpless hand toward the half-open door that led to the office. “He’s—he’s—” She sobbed again, unable to finish, and the knot inside Joe’s stomach grew harder.

  He took her by the arm. “Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Paffrah? We’re here now. We’ll take care of it.” He grabbed a cup of water from the water cooler and handed it to her before stepping after Bing.

  Oh hell. Joe stopped on the threshold, rubbed a hand over his eyes as he took in the scene before him.

  Phil sprawled on the floor on his back, blood covering his head. A single deathblow, judging by the damage, delivered with a blunt object.

  Sorrow hit, a sharp jab of grief. What a terrible waste of a life, of a decent man who deserved better. No matter how long he’d be a cop, Joe didn’t think he’d ever get used to senseless violence—an affront to him, always personal. This was his town, the people he had sworn to protect and serve.

  An antique black Bakelite desk phone lay in the corner, covered in blood. “Looks like we have the murder weapon.” Joe scanned the phone, then looked back at Phil.

  His friend had gained a good twenty pounds since they’d played on the high school football team together. He had a receding hairline now and circles under his eyes. Probably because he wasn’t getting much sleep with the new baby. Joe had vaguely noticed those things when they’d had a beer the other night, but now everything came into sharper focus as he catalogued the crime scene in his mind. He stepped forward. “Fresh clothes.”

  The captain liked to talk cases out. He believed it made investigators think more clearly. So Joe followed with, “He didn’t spend the night at the office. Had just come in when he was attacked. Suit and tie neat, shoelaces tied in tidy loops. Doesn’t look like he rushed or was particularly upset when he dressed this morning. He didn’t know he was walking into trouble.”

  He glanced toward the back door patients used to leave after their sessions so they wouldn’t run into the next patient waiting at the reception, avoiding any awkwardness. Open or locked? Better not touch the knob until it’d been dusted for fingerprints.

  The captain straightened. “The coroner will determine time of death, but I’d say he was killed within the last hour or so.”

  “Looks like it.” The blood hadn’t coagulated yet. “Office hours are from nine to four. It’s eight thirty now. If he’s been dead for the past hour, that means he was killed around seven thirty.” Joe stepped back to the door to call out to Doris, “Do you know if he had an emergency call to meet a patient before the office opened?”

  Doris blew her nose. “That wouldn’t go through me. Some patients have the emergency number that goes straight to him.”

  “What patients?”

  “People who have a history of suicidal thoughts. Things like that.”

  “You have a list?”

  She shook her head.

  Bing stepped up next to Joe. “We’ll need that. How many active patients did he have?”

  “Around a hundred and fifty? I’m not sure. I can check. Some people only see him once every six months for maintenance.”

  Bing’s jaw worked silently for a second. “I’m going to put in for a warrant for his patient files. I’d appreciate it if you could get them ready for handing over.”

  Doris’s swollen eyes widened. “You think it was a patient?”

  “That’s one possibility. Also could have been someone else he knew. Or an act of random violence. You keep any drugs here?”

  “No. The pharmaceutical company reps drop off samples now and then, but we take those to the free clinic.”

  Bing went back to Philip.

  Joe strode to the front door. No sign of forced entry. “Was this door unlocked when you came in?”

  Doris stared for a startled second. “I had to unlock it.”

  “How about his office door?”

  “Closed. I opened it to see if Dr. Brogevich had anything in his Out bin. He stayed to catch up with work yesterday after I left.”

  “The back door?”

  “I didn’t check. He would have locked it last night before he went home. He always did.”

  Bing came back out of the office again, glanced at Doris. “I’m going to need you to cancel today’s appointments, as soon as possible. It’d be better if patients didn’t start showing up. To avoid contaminating the crime scene.”

  Then he turned to Joe. “As long as you’re here, why don’t you canvass the neighbors? In case anyone saw or heard anything.”

  He checked over the office door, not because he didn’t trust Joe, but because that was the way they did things. They checked and double-checked.

  Joe walked out, grabbed some police tape from Bing’s car, and cordoned off a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot area in front of the entrance, tying the tape to the railings on the new handicap ramps that stretched in front of each suite. He checked the ground. No cigarette butts that they could send to the lab, no garbage. No footprints either, since the entire lot was paved.

  He strode over to the pediatrician’s office next door. Still closed. He glanced through the window. Nobody behind the reception desk. The suite on the other side of Philip’s stood empty. The ob-gyn beyond that hadn’t come in yet either, his receptionist just arriving.

  The few people Joe found, he questioned, but nobody had seen or heard anything. The offices were soundproofed for privacy. If there’d been an argument or struggle, it probably wouldn’t have been heard even if the murder had happened in the middle of the day.

  Jesus, Philip.

  Joe went on being a cop, doing the cop thing. But part of him was still catching up to Phil’s death. Why? He was going to figure that out, dammit.

  People were visibly shocked by the news of murder. They had a million questions and wanted answers. Joe had to put them off as politely as possible. Even if he had information, which he didn’t, he couldn’t discuss the case at this stage.

  By the time he strode back to Suite 1025, Detective Harper Finnegan was arriving. A couple of years older than Joe, whiskey-brown hair, square jaw, nose broken in a bar fight—not in the line of duty. He pulled his cruiser up to the captain’s, staring at Joe as he got out. “What happened to your face?”

  “Ran into an argumentative phone pole on the four-wheeler.” Since he’d gone undercover to catch a dirty cop, the assignment was strictly confidential. Only one person at each station knew about the undercover op—Captain Bing in Broslin and Chief Gleason in Philadelphia.

  Harper looked skeptical, but he didn’t push. He knew that if Joe was evading the question, he had to have a good reason. He ducked under the yellow police tape flitting in the wind. “Dispatch said homicide.”

  “Philip Brogevich.” Joe updated him on what little they knew so far as he followed him in.

  Doris was still on the phone, crying quietly as they passed by her.

  The captain looked up inside the
office. “Harper.” He paused for a second. “How is your caseload?”

  “Filed all the paperwork on the shoplifting teenagers.”

  “I want you to take lead here.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “I’d like to be assigned to the case. I can help Harper.”

  The captain raised an eyebrow. “The victim was your friend.”

  “It’s a small town. Everybody is everybody’s friend.”

  “How did the canvassing go?”

  “People are still getting in. Nobody has seen or heard anything unusual.”

  The captain stepped forward. “I need to get something from the car. Why don’t you walk with me?”

  Officer Mike McMorris, another one of Broslin’s finest, pulled up as they stepped outside. Joe and Mike had been hired at the same time, had learned the ropes together, become friends. Like Harper, he stared at Joe’s face as he got out of his cruiser, the morning sun glinting off his cropped, reddish hair.

  “Rough date? Hey, I got a joke for you.” When Mike grinned, his Irish freckles danced. “Guy comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. He shoots the guy, turns to the wife, and asks, ‘What do you have to say about that?’ The wife says…” Mike paused a beat for effect. “’Keep it up and you won’t have any friends left.’”

  Joe groaned while the captain shook his head with resignation.

  “So who smacked you?” Mike wanted to know, his attention back on the scar. “Losing your touch with the ladies?”

  “Never gonna happen.” Joe offered a cocky lift of his chin. “Four-wheeler accident last night.”

  The captain popped the trunk of his cruiser. “Glad you’re here, Mike. Why don’t you secure the premises?”

  As Mike went to station himself at the door, Bing hauled out his crime-scene kit, a large black plastic container that had an orange handle and a million compartments inside to stash all the swabs and bottles of chemicals.

  He cast a sideways glance at Joe. “It’s not just about you and the victim being friends. I don’t want you to jump straight into a homicide after last night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The captain let a couple of seconds pass as he set the crime-scene kit by his feet. “I didn’t come to your house this morning just to check on you. I came to ask a favor.” He paused. “I need you for protection detail. Woman and child. Nasty ex-boyfriend. She moved. He probably won’t find her. But to be on the safe side.”

  Joe thought of Lil’ Gomez. “I don’t think I’m a good bet in the protection-detail department.”

  “It’s a personal favor. She’s a friend of Sophie’s. Sophie said you might remember her. Wendy Belle.”

  The name hit Joe like a sledgehammer. Everything inside him stilled. Wendy.

  “We’ve met.” He’d run into her at Sophie’s house a while ago when he’d been providing protection detail to Sophie, back before Sophie and Bing had gotten together.

  Wendy Belle was a professional model. She had the looks to twist a man into a lust pretzel, lips that begged to be tasted, and those mysterious gray eyes that Joe hadn’t been able to forget since he’d first looked into them.

  Being a small-town football hero, then a policeman, he’d had his share of dates. Uniforms were a chick magnet. He’d been raised to be a gentleman, took good care of his dates in and out of bed, kept in shape, put in more time at the police station’s gym than anybody else. He appreciated women, and they appreciated him right back.

  More often than not, women walked up to him with their phone numbers. Not Wendy. He’d been dazed by the instant, visceral wave of lust at their first meeting, but she hadn’t taken him seriously, not for a second. She’d taken one look at him, and she’d dismissed him.

  Which was probably why he’d shown up a month later at a fashion-show fund-raiser she participated in. He’d put big money in the plate—okay, big for his cop salary. His gesture didn’t impress her, as he’d stupidly hoped, but impressed some of the other models, and they’d invited him to the after-party.

  He’d caught her sneaking out early. Pouring rain outside, and not a cab to be had. He offered her a lift home. She offered him a cup of coffee for his ride back out to Broslin. Which had turned into—

  “It’s a temporary thing,” Bing said.

  Joe rubbed his chest with his fist. He didn’t want to be responsible for Wendy, or her toddler son, Justin. He especially didn’t want Wendy to see him like this, all busted up. Not that he was vain.

  “Her ex, Keith Kline, has turned threatening, from what Sophie says. I don’t know all the details,” the captain went on. “Wendy and the boy are staying here in Broslin, at Sophie’s place, temporarily. Sophie’s out at the log cabin with me.”

  His lips flattened. “The cops in Wilmington aren’t doing anything because the guy hasn’t committed any actual crime yet that can be proven. From what Sophie tells me about him, my gut says he will. Sooner or later he’ll hurt her bad. Point is, Wendy is scared. He knows it, and he’s being an asshole. Keeps pushing her.”

  Joe tried to line up that batch of new information in his head, fit it into the picture he’d formed of her. Their first meeting had lasted five minutes, the second an hour and a half. Obviously, there were a lot of gaps.

  Yet all that darkness the captain was talking about didn’t seem possible. She’d been nothing but light and perfection both times he’d met her. Still, he knew how abusers manipulated and how hard the abused worked to keep their problems hidden.

  The thought of Keith Kline, or any other idiot, laying hands on Wendy didn’t sit well with him. The ex sounded like he could use a little talking to. Joe knew the type. Bullies. They started with threats, then knocked people around when they didn’t get what they wanted.

  Bing said, “Sophie figured if Wendy was in Broslin, at least she’d be in my jurisdiction. If the jerk shows up and tries anything, I’m going to come down on him like a ton of bricks.”

  “But you can’t give her a protection detail.”

  “For one, she won’t ask for it. The bastard has her scared but good.” Bing’s eyes steeled. “She wouldn’t even talk to me about it. But even if she did, I couldn’t justify twenty-four-hour surveillance on a domestic violence complaint that was never substantiated and didn’t take place in my jurisdiction.

  “I figured, since you’ll be taking a sick day, maybe you could drive by a couple of times, hang around at the house with her. All friendly like, since you know each other. Nothing official. If you’re on sick leave, you can hang out wherever you please.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her.” Even if he didn’t need time off. He was sore from the crash, but he’d taken beatings ten times worse on the football field.

  “I appreciate it. If you can do that today, it’ll give me a chance to figure out what we can do to keep her safe long-term.”

  Joe glanced toward Phil’s office, where Mike stood guard at the door. “I’d like to be the one to notify Marie.”

  The news was damn tragic no matter who brought it, but she might take it better from someone she knew. Joe had met her a couple of times. She was from Delaware. She and Philip had met at college. “I could drop by on my way to Sophie’s place.”

  Bing nodded. “You take my car and drive over. I’ll ride back to the station with Harper when we’re done here. You can drop the cruiser off when you get a chance.”

  “About working on the case—”

  “I’ll make sure Harper keeps you up to date. Then we’ll see. Right now, focus on getting the rest you need after last night and spending some time with Wendy.” Bing cleared his throat. Flashed Joe a pointed look. “She’s a nice young woman. Vulnerable right now. I don’t want her feelings hurt.”

  Not so subtle code for Don’t hit on her.

  Joe flinched. No worries there. His last encounter with Wendy…. Hell, she’d been the one to hurt his feelings.

  The best sex of his life, and she’d kicked him out as soon as it was over, told him not to bother wi
th calling because it was strictly a one-time thing. Told him, actually, while he’d still been inside her.

  He groaned at the memory as he slipped behind the wheel, turning on the heat the second he had the engine started.

  His day was shaping up to be an ass kicker. Which was saying something, considering that the day before included his arrest, a concussion, and a near drowning.

  Deathblow: Chapter Three

  The bitch had moved out on him again. Keith stood in the middle of Wendy’s apartment, dark rage gathering inside him. A vein throbbed at his temple.

  She definitely wasn’t just out shopping. All the baby shit was gone, the heat turned down. She didn’t plan on being back for a while.

  He would have to teach her respect. Again. His hands fisted as he walked through her living room.

  He never should have let her go. He had, after the baby was born, because the brat cried all night, and she was no good for sex anyway. He was a man. He had needs. If he had other women, it was her fault, nobody else’s.

  Her absence had been fine for those first few weeks. He’d expected her to beg him to let her back. She hadn’t. She always had some excuse for why she couldn’t return—the lease she’d signed here, whatever.

  He hated the damn place. He wanted to see it burn. And maybe he would. But not today.

  Did she think that she could outsmart him? That he wouldn’t find her?

  He paced the apartment, stopped in her bedroom door, then walked inside, opened her top dresser drawer, and stared at the jumbled mess of silk. He reached in, began folding and reorganizing.

  Who did she have but him?

  Not that many people. Her parents in Florida and her bitch friend, Sophie, in Broslin.

  Wendy needed a lesson.

  * * *

  “I don’t need a babysitter.” Wendy kept her voice down, since Justin was watching his favorite TV cartoon about three tap-dancing sheep, sitting on the couch in Sophie’s living room.