A Deadly Secret

by Debra Sage

  “Nah, not that I’d heard. Only thing going with the hospital is the stuff we’re involved in. That doesn’t touch her life. She doesn’t know about it, and I kept it that way. She’d be pissed if she’d knew that much. She’s in the dark about most of our business dealings. Safer that way for all of us.”

  Blade nodded. “Yeah. Less people know, less problems we have. I could go talk to our contact, see if they heard any rumors around the hospital. Maybe there’s something she wasn’t telling you, just like things you weren’t telling her.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to snoop around and get some answers. You know who to talk to.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got this.”

  “Thanks, man. You learn anything, you let me know.”

  ***

  When he showed up unannounced, Blade wasn’t met with pleasantries.

  “What the hell are you doing here? I can’t be seen talking to you,” the man said.

  “I’ve got some questions. There’s something going on, and you’re the only contact I have. One of our guys…his sister was killed. She worked here. You know who I’m talking about, right?”

  The man’s throat hitched. “Yeah, I knew her.”

  “We’re trying to get more information. Nothing makes sense. Look, ask around. Or did you know of any problems she had at work? Anybody there could have done this?”

  The man rubbed the back of his neck. His palms were sweaty. “I don’t know. She was one of dozens of employees. I mean…”

  “Right, I get that. Either way, I need you to do some digging and see what you can find. It would do us a solid. We’re in business together, whether you like it or not.”

  The man looked down, trying to keep his anxiety at bay. Don’t show yourself. “Yeah, sure. Wait…there is one guy that used to argue with her a lot. I mean, I can’t say if he’d go to that length…anyway, you might want to look into a guy named Greg. Greg Stevens.”

  “Stevens. Got it. Thanks, man. Keep up the good fight. When’s our next batch coming?”

  “I only discuss that with the big dog,” he said, cutting Blade short. “Now get out of here, and don’t come around. You could blow both of our covers with a stupid move like this.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry. Nobody saw me,” he said. He walked into the darkness, and as stealthily as he’d arrived, he disappeared into the night.

  As Blade slipped away, he couldn’t help but notice how nervous the man seemed. Beads of sweat lined his forehead. Sure, he didn’t want their business revealed to any outsiders, but it was more than that. He seemed rattled by the questions.

  ***

  Jack’s fingers trembled as he raised the coffee cup to his mouth. He’d been this close to being found out. He probably shouldn’t be drinking caffeine so late at night, but he didn’t care. At this point, only the warm beverage could comfort him, along with the shot of whiskey he’d poured into his mug.

  He’d already pulled out his boot knife and was about to dig it deep into Amanda’s tire when the cop called out to him in the parking garage. He quickly dropped the knife and slid it under her car, pulling out his phone to snap pictures of the vehicle’s damage. He was tired of nobody respecting him. They called him a glorified cop. A wannabe.

  Amanda’s string of trouble would come to a head, and he’d be the one to save her. When she came out to the garage and found the tire damaged, he’d be there and fix it. He’d be the hero of the moment, and the one to comfort her over another disaster. Nobody would whisper behind his back again about not being a real cop. They’d finally see him for who he really was, a hero in disguise.

  Chapter 14

  Lee pushed himself away from the breakfast table. He had a lot on his mind. Everything was falling like a stacked line of dominos. He kissed his wife good bye, then headed into work. The new car was nice. The smell of leather filled the interior. It hadn’t been in the plans, but after Greg got his new car, he kicked himself for not thinking of doing it earlier.

  Thank goodness he’d thought to put the tarp down before he loaded Dawn’s dead body into the trunk of his car. He hadn’t meant to kill her. Not at first. Dawn was the highlight of his days and nights. Life at home was hardly a treat, and work, well, work was overwhelming from the moment he got there until the moment he left. He worked long days and nights to keep things running like a well-oiled machine.

  He just didn’t expect her to say those things and to accuse him like that. The way she looked at him crushed his soul. The chemistry between them was dynamic. When their bodies came together, the sexual charge that sparked gave him the energy to keep slogging through life. He adored the girl. It’s not like he wanted to marry her, though. He had a family, a wife, and enough responsibilities. He liked things the way they were.

  When she pushed for more, he bided his time with something fancy. The last was a promise of sorts, that if she stuck by his side, things would eventually change. He said he’d leave his wife one day, but it was a lie. The custom jewelry piece he made came with a secret code, just for her eyes. She knew they had to keep things quiet, but he said the symbol which was the letter P with two lines through the base was their future. P was his middle initial, which kept his name off it. He’d said each of those lines represented the two of them, heart and soul.

  She was touched by the unique gesture. He’d only done it once before and it was brilliant. The woman in his past loved it just the same way. Why be clever a second time, when the same symbol would work just as well?

  It held her off for a little while, but the day she called him out about the drugs…

  If it had just been him involved it would be different, but it went deeper than that. There were so many layers to the puzzle that there were no easy answers.

  He wrapped his large hands up around her lithe throat and squeezed. It took longer for her to lose consciousness than he anticipated, but he held fast. He’d never planned to hurt her…ever. This wasn’t premeditated. It was panic, need, and desperation.

  When she fell to the floor, he caught his breath, realizing what he’d done. Only it was too late. He’d snapped and there was no going back. There were two choices—turn himself in or dispose of the evidence.

  At least the evidence was gone. He traced his footsteps carefully, certain to not leave a trail that led to him. He knew about DNA. He went above and beyond, hiding her identity. His only stupid move was where he’d dumped the body. He was short on time. His wife had been badgering him about where he was, and work kept calling.

  Work. Yeah, at least he could quickly dispose of the parts he’d dismembered. If he could have taken the body along and tossed it in the incinerator maybe it would have been smarter, but he didn’t want things coming back to his work. Stupid of him not to do something different, but he wasn’t a natural-born killer.

  He waited until dark and stumbled off the trails of the park. There were heavily wooded areas and after dark, the park was closed. Well, it’s not like gates closed or anything, but it was simply assumed. Nobody was there. It was risky, but he didn’t have a lot of time to think all the details through.

  When he got back to the hospital, he tossed a large green bag into the incinerator, then locked himself in his office. He called his wife from the phone in his office to give him an alibi. The time would be noted if they backtracked. As for his coworkers, he didn’t need to answer to them. He ran that damn hospital.

  When he went to trade in his car, thankfully, he remembered to grab the hammer from the trunk. What a fool. He only thought of it at the last minute. He’d almost left behind a crucial piece of evidence. He should have tossed it in a trashcan after wiping it down with bleach.

  Lee drove to the hospital and pulled into the parking garage. He turned the radio louder and finished listening to a song. With a deep breath, he turned off his car and went to start his day.

  Drugs. Devil Riders. Murder. What the hell happened to him? He used to be such a simple guy.

  As for Amanda, she was the one that got away.
It was his own damn fault. He was still married. He’d been going through a separation with his wife at the time, but couldn’t pull the trigger on a divorce, not with kids involved. He kept dragging things along. She finally cut him loose. Somehow, he ended up back with his wife, but it was Amanda who had stolen his heart.

  None of that mattered anymore. Besides, he washed those memories away with another cute nurse. He’d do the same when memories of Dawn faded. It was the only way to stay happy in his marriage. Twisting fate? Maybe, but until his kids were finished with school, it was the way it would have to be. At this point it was cheaper to stay married, and if he did get snagged in his latest crimes, she wouldn’t be called to testify against him.

  Lee dropped his laptop case in the office and locked the door behind him. He slatted the blinds over the window that looked out into the hallway. There was work to be done. Smuggling expired medications wasn’t an easy process, but he had it down to a science and things usually moved along smoothly when everybody did their part.

  That’s where the Devil Riders came in. He moved the product to them, they distributed, and they both split the profits. He never meant to fall into this, but when the dollar signs were as big as they were, it was hard to walk away. The money and power fed a part of his ego he didn’t know he needed until it was too late. Like a hardcore addict, he needed his fix.

  He slipped the fake panel away from the side of his desk and pulled out a ledger. After everything that went down, he was moving things around, and finding new places to hide and shuffle the goods. Lee reached lower and farther back, then pulled out his “other” work phone, the one that didn’t register to him.

  He texted a message to one of the leaders, set up another shipment, then shoved the phone into his laptop bag. It was going into a safe deposit box along with the ledger. The days of simple hiding places were over. After Dawn died, everything changed. What if she’d already told somebody? She’d warned him she was going to the police.

  It was time to shift phones again. He used prepaid, disposable phones and swapped them out monthly. He was moving the cycle up to two weeks. Any paper trails would be locked away. As for moving the product, they might need to find another way. A middle man would cut out on profit, but doing it at the hospital any longer might not be smart with everything else going on.

  ***

  There was one other tangible risk. Blade was poking around and asking too many questions. He could be a liability. Lee would have to think long and hard about adding another victim to his list. Every person that got in his way also meant another possible thread that could tie him to the original crime. He’d rather fly under the radar, but when that ass showed up at his workplace, he’d crossed the line, risking them both.

  Blade needed to learn his place in the world, and while Lee Brock might not ride a motorcycle or wear a Devil patch, he was a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes when pushed, the smartest action was to push back. In this case, he’d need to calculate things carefully. The Devil Riders wouldn’t hesitate to cut him down if they thought he’d crossed them. They needed him as much as he needed them if they wanted to keep running the meds he was supplying. It was a highly profitable venture, and nobody wanted to walk away from that kind of money.

  Chapter 15

  Alex fingered the paper he’d printed out. It held the name and address of the jeweler they’d finally tracked down for the pendant attached to the necklace they’d found at the scene of the crime. It took longer than they’d expected, because the jeweler apparently wedged it in a tiny crevice that made it hard to see on regular examination. Once they’d found it via microscope, it seemed to be a bit damaged or a bad stamping.

  He’d have expected it to be more evident, but it simply wasn’t a regular mark one would find on a traditional manufactured piece of jewelry. It told them that it was most likely custom work that was done separate of their other collections, and maybe they didn’t want it to be identified. And with no legal stamping required on some non-precious metals, they were lucky to find anything at all.

  The engraving was a single letter with lines through it. There was no inscription otherwise.

  Alex would pay a visit to the jeweler and see what he could learn. Hopefully, the jeweler had good, solid records on the piece and could shed some light on their case. It might have nothing to do with it, but they hoped it offered them a lead to someone. Maybe it was a piece she picked up at a craft show or had made for herself, but there was only one way to find out.

  Grasping at strings, they’d take any tangible evidence or lead they could at this point.

  Bryce came up behind Alex. “Any news?”

  Alex spun in his chair. “Nah, just printing out the jewelry info we found. I’m going to ride down and pay the jeweler a visit, see if he can pull some records and see if the necklace holds any relevance to the case.”

  Bryce nodded. “I got a call from Round Valley Waste Removal. Seems they found some bone fragments in the bottom ash of the hospital’s trash incinerator. We’re going to have the lab examine it and see if we have a match to our victim. It could be something. They aren’t the biomedical group that handles the pathological waste, so for bone to be in their ash doesn’t look good. The question becomes—if the hospital has a biomedical waste disposal system, why would there be human remains in their regular trash system, which is a massive violation of protocol? What’s going on? I’m crossing my fingers on that one. Otherwise, we haven’t gotten any new leads, and it looks like the case is going nowhere fast.”

  “I’d like to take a closer look at Mark Abbott. I’ve got him coming in for an interview with his lawyer. I told him he needed to be here within twenty-four hours, so I expect him here by tomorrow, since you know he’ll push his timeline and stall. He certainly didn’t show up today.”

  “What do you think?” Bryce asked.

  Cam joined the conversation. He’d just entered the room with a fresh cup of coffee.

  “Did he get away with murder once? Get cocky, and strike again? He tried to get rid of the body last time if it was him. Since he’s not highly familiar with our area, as he said, then there’s a good chance he saw a wooded area and thought it was a safe bet to dump the body, not knowing it was a popular trail. Sure, the body was off the trail, but still… Would a local risk that?”

  “Okay, if you’re going around to the jeweler and our guy shows up, I’ll get on it. Do you want to be here?” Bryce asked.

  “If I can. If I’m tied up on other details, take Cam in with you so he can pick up some pointers on interrogations.”

  “Yep, sounds good,” Bryce said.

  ***

  Before Alex could leave the office, a call came through. “Mason Ridge Homicide Division.”

  Cam watched as Alex nodded, then quickly wrote down a license plate number.

  “And you saw that when?” he asked, before scribbling something else on the scrap of paper in front of him. He listened to the caller on the line. “Okay. Right. Thanks. And your name?”

  The caller hung up. Alex jotted down the number shown on his caller ID. At least he had that.

  “What was that about?” Cam asked.

  “Possible lead.” Alex clapped his hands together, and ran the tag through NCIC. The license plate came back to Thomas Lewis. Her brother. Crap. It was probably nothing, but it wouldn’t hurt to go out and talk to him. What exactly did he know? And what was he doing at his sister’s house the week that she was found murdered? Could he have had anything to do with her lethal ending?

  He’d spoken to the parents of the deceased, but they never mentioned the brother. The more digging he did, the more reasons he had to see the man. Turns out he had a connection to Mark Abbott, the very person who they were expecting to see. The Devil Riders came up a second time in this investigation, and it cast a wide spotlight on a group of people he wasn’t looking to tangle with.

  He’d need to pay the guy a visit. This time he’d take his partners with him. Better to ha
ve a little back-up. Alex filled in Bryce on the new information and told him he’d bring Cam along. That way if Mark showed up, Bryce would be there for the interview. One of them needed to be available.

  “You want me to go talk to her brother?” Bryce offered. “You can do the interrogation on this other guy.”

  “Yeah, sure, that could work. Either way, the sooner we talk to the brother, the better. I’m not sure how he wasn’t on our list earlier.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “I’d try to get him at his house. The club might be dicey. Not sure how many guys will be there at the time. The Devil Riders aren’t our biggest fans. They’ve had a few run-ins with the guys down in Philly.”

  Cam chimed in. “You think he’d take down his sister? Kill her like that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you’re about to go find out. I wouldn’t think so, but who knows what this is all about?”

  Bryce gave Alex a nod. “You’ve got the address?”

  Alex wrote the address down, and handed it him. “See if you can find out what he has to say about our guy Mark while you’re at it. Does he think he’s capable of it? What does he think of the guy, if he’s willing to talk. They’re probably as thick as thieves, so I doubt he’ll be talkative, but it can’t hurt to ask.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I want to nail somebody for this heinous act,” Alex growled. “The animal capable of what they did…”

  “Keep a clear head.” Bryce put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “It won’t do us any good to get worked up. Let’s look at what we have again before I head out.”

  Alex grunted. “Yeah, I know. It’s just so freaking inhumane.”

  “Okay, so our victim is Dawn Lewis. She’s found in the park, dismembered, and clothed. Wasn’t a sex crime. No evidence of semen. We’ve got a small shred of plastic wrap with blood on it, a necklace and pendant which may or may not have anything to do with our victim or the case, but was found near the scene, so we’re assuming it does. We’ve got a couple of people that we’ve spoken to, nobody stands out as a primary suspect, though we’ve got some possibilities. Better to play our cards close until we have something more solid,” Bryce said.