The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set Book 2)

by John W. Mefford

  Nick, who had taken an Uber over to the Sommerville police station to join Terri and me for this last-minute evidence-review session, nudged my arm, whispering in my ear. “Too many cooks in the kitchen.”

  I raised an eyebrow, then gulped another mouthful of lukewarm coffee, the only thing keeping my sleep-deprived brain functioning at the moment.

  “My grandfather used to say that when he was watching all his sisters bicker over how to cook the Thanksgiving turkey. He’d try to put in his two cents, but they never listened. So he’d turn around, walk to the bar, and pour himself a scotch. I would be standing right at the doorway. He’d pat my hand a couple of times and mutter that phrase under his breath on his way to his chair in the living room. Then he wouldn’t move until dinner was ready.”

  For a brief second I could feel a familiar yearning for having those typical family moments growing up. I couldn’t recall anything like that; I never had a lot of family around.

  I shifted my eyes to Nick for a second. “All the cooks haven’t stopped the pot from boiling over. Everyone is in CYA mode.”

  Nick gave me a fist bump on that one. Not that we at the FBI were immune to clusterfuck meetings, but usually, rank or the alpha of the group would win out, and the rest would follow. I glanced at Terri sitting in one of the few chairs. She had just brought her hands to her head as two men stood and argued above her—the lead of the CSI unit, a portly fellow named Kerr, and her detective lieutenant, a beast of a man who must have stood six-six and went by the name of either Sir, Lute, or just plain old Jackson.

  The door swung open, and everyone stopped talking midsentence. A uniform who looked like he hadn’t started shaving yet stammered to get the words out.

  “Come on, spit it out, man,” Jackson barked.

  The kid swallowed once. “Tripuka’s lawyer, Winston Wise, has already posted bail. Tripuka is being processed right now, and then he’ll be released on the terms that he’ll check in with his parole officer once a day.”

  “Can’t we lose his paperwork or something?” Longfellow, one of Terri’s detectives, leaned over my shoulder and palmed the table where there were dozens of preliminary reports and pictures. “What are we running here, a bed and breakfast? We can have a say when these known felons are being released to the public. We may not be able to stop it—at least not like we could in the good old days—but we can damn well make it as tough as possible.”

  A few grunts in the room, apparently no one willing to talk in detail about the good old days.

  The kid spoke up. “Does that mean I should tell the boys downstairs to purposely lose Tripuka’s file or figure out another way to purposely delay his release?”

  “Kid, don’t be so blatant about it, but yes, figure something out to keep this maniac behind bars.”

  “Okay, Detective Longfellow.”

  Jackson wiped a hand across his face, the loose skin so rubbery it appeared the bags under his eyes had been pulled below his nose. “Hold on.” He took a glimpse over at Nick and me before returning his glare to the kid and Longfellow. “We’ll have no such thing. That’s not how a professional law enforcement department works, and both of you know that. Follow the law, just like we have every other time. Understood?”

  The kid said, “Yes sir,” and then shut the door behind him.

  Terri, meanwhile, gave the evil eye to Longfellow.

  “We might have ten, fifteen minutes before he’s released. A killer walking the streets.” Jackson actually tugged on his face this time. It was like watching a cartoon character. He slowly turned his exaggerated face to his counterpart from the CSI team, Kerr.

  “Everyone in here is working their tails off. If your team had pulled its weight…” His eyes dropped to look at Kerr’s sizable tire around his waist. He rolled his eyes as he lifted his sights back up. “Then we could have saved a life, maybe more.”

  “You’re fucking insane, Jackson. Oxygen levels aren’t the same at your level apparently.”

  I felt like I’d just witnessed a middle-school hazing incident. The maturity level of this outfit had reached an all-time low. I couldn’t take any more, even if I couldn’t make evidence appear out of thin air like Jackson desired.

  I stood up just as the door swung back open. It was Red, the CSI technician who had found the tablet.

  “Do you have any good news for us?” I asked before anyone else.

  She touched the rims of her glasses. “I’m afraid not. We—”

  “Well, there you go. We get screwed up the ass again,” Longfellow said, throwing his hands to the ceiling.

  I could almost see spears shooting out of Terri’s eyes as she glared at Longfellow, who was now standing next to me. I ignored the excuse of a detective and turned to Red. “Please continue.”

  “I was just going to say that we’ve got preliminary results back on both the tower computer and his tablet.”

  All heads turned in her direction. Then not a single person moved.

  “The computer was completely clean. A few documents and spreadsheets, but most of those had to do with his prior incarcerations. We found a few other grocery lists, fantasy football documents. Nothing prominent.”

  Terri spoke up. “So no pictures of women?”

  “Nope.”

  “Browser history?”

  “Typical stuff: news, weather, sports sites. Raciest one we found was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue website. Pretty typical guy stuff.”

  “But you were able to penetrate the security on the tablet? What did you find there?”

  She turned to me, nodding. “Not sure why he had it hidden in his mattress, frankly.”

  “Why?” Jackson asked.

  “Again, nothing real special stood out. Apps from Facebook, ESPN, Angry Birds and a few other games.”

  “Dammit!” Jackson pounded a fish into his opposite hand.

  “The only thing that was a little strange were a few pictures we found on there.”

  “Pictures of prostitutes in the act, or just naked women, or what?” Longfellow said. He apparently hadn’t felt the vibes from just about everyone in the room to shut his trap, although I was keenly interested in the answer.

  “Heck no, nothing like that. Just random things.” She poked a finger inside her thick head of red hair and scratched her scalp. “I don’t know, pictures of little figurines, dolls, medals of some kind. A bunch of stuff like that. Very random and not very interesting to our case.”

  Jackson barked at her. “So you’re saying you couldn’t find any real evidence that connects Tripuka to the murder of our vic, Emma Katic.” He swatted a hand toward me and Nick. “And definitely nothing on the FBI cold case. A complete strikeout, right?”

  “I…uh,” she stammered.

  “Lay off, Jackson.” Kerr poked a finger into the lieutenant’s arm. Jackson looked down at Kerr’s finger, then glared at him. Kerr didn’t stop there. “You can’t find evidence if it doesn’t exist, unless you’re in the business of evidence tampering.”

  Jackson tightened his shoulders as his lips spread apart, showing off a set of yellow teeth. I assumed he smoked.

  Kerr was on a roll. “Have you thought about looking in the mirror? Your team of so-called detectives identified Tripuka as the only real suspect in this murder. And what did it give us? Squat—that’s what it gave us. Even if Tripuka is the perp, your team focused on his apartment and truck. So we found nothing. That’s because there was nothing to find. Get us the right suspect, or put us at a location where an actual crime was committed, and my team will find the evidence if it’s there.”

  Jackson growled between his teeth as Kerr reached to the table and gathered up a notebook and a few loose papers.

  “Sir, there is one more thing. The hair,” Red said.

  “Oh, right.” Kerr straightened back up. “Is that our smoking gun?” he asked.

  “Who knows? But one of the veterans on the team swears the strands of hair are female, you know, based on his experience a
nd all.”

  A few mumbles.

  “That would hold up in court thirty years ago, maybe,” I said. “It’s going to take DNA analysis.”

  “We’ve sent off a sample, and even though we’ve ordered a rush job on it, it’s still going to take upwards of a week, maybe five days if we’re really lucky.”

  “That’s what I thought. Thank you for the information.”

  She huffed out a tired breath and left the room. As the door shut, another cloud of BO passed by me. It almost brought tears to my eyes.

  Jackson addressed the team for another five minutes, trying to save face and put a positive spin on the case. We all knew he was blowing smoke up our collective asses. It was a huge disappointment. The meeting broke up, and we spilled into the detective cube farm, where I finally took in fresh air.

  “This place, sometimes, is so damn…” Terri’s lips drew a straight line as she walked up to me and Gimpy, otherwise known as Nick on crutches.

  “Frustrating?” Nick offered.

  “Disturbingly inefficient?” I countered, tossing my coffee into a trash can.

  “Both, times ten.” She tried to smile as she walked to her desk. I padded behind Nick, whose speed on crutches was sloth-like.

  I emptied my lungs, my body already sucking fumes. I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose, reminding myself that sleep wasn’t optional if I expected to pull this investigation out of the ditch and find incriminating evidence on Tripuka—or whomever the culprit was.

  “You look like shit,” Nick said to me.

  I cocked my head to the side. “I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, and you just toss that grenade in the room? Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Terri, on the other hand, barely had a wrinkle in her suit. Somehow her makeup had remained intact, and her hair had an easy flow to it, where it didn’t look like she’d just rolled out of bed.

  My simplistic, perhaps carnal thoughts, went from a bed to Brad. Dammit, I’d forgotten to reply to his text. I put that on my mental to-do list as soon as I had a spare moment.

  “You really know how to charm the girls, Nick,” Terri said.

  Nick and I instantly looked at each other. We held straight faces for about two seconds, then we both erupted into laughter. The kind of laughter that pulled tears from your eyes.

  “Damn, what got into you guys?” Terri said with a perplexed smile.

  Nick was red from laughing so hard. Well, his pale skin could turn red with a cool breeze, but right then, he could have led Santa’s sleigh with his glowing head.

  “It’s…nothing.” He almost lost his balance and tumbled to the floor.

  I thumbed moisture from under my eyes, knowing my face was a hot mess by now. Terri didn’t know our little secret—that Nick was, in fact, gay. He and his significant other, Antonio, had been together for more years than any straight couple I knew.

  “Okay, so you guys still see me as an outsider. I get it,” she said, acting as if she’d been reduced to some type of law enforcement subclass.

  “It’s not that, I promise you. When this is all over, we’ll grab a drink somewhere, and when the alcohol is flowing, who knows what secrets I’ll tell?” I winked.

  Nick shrugged his shoulders and found a chair to sit in. He propped his crutches against a desk. “You two need some sleep. What can I do while you get some shut-eye?”

  I knew he was right. “Well, check in with Gretchen and see if she’s made any progress on Tripuka’s past.”

  “The cellmate angle? Because I can tell you that as of last night she had yet to make any progress. Just getting the list of his cellmates is proving to take an act of Congress. If and when we talk to anyone who knew Tripuka, I’m not sure we’ll get anyone to talk, not unless there’s an incentive. Guys like that don’t like ratting on anyone unless there’s something in it for them.”

  “Good point. While she keeps an eye on the past, you focus on the present, or at least the recent past. We still don’t know if Tripuka left his apartment two nights ago during the time the ME believed Emma was murdered.”

  “Right. I’ll see what I can think of on that front. What else?” He grabbed a sticky and a pen off Terri’s desk and started writing a few illegible words.

  “Two other things come to mind. First, find Susan Miller.”

  “The girl Tripuka assaulted when she was just sixteen,” Nick said.

  “According to him, it was only statutory because she was under age by a week and thought they were in love. He said she only went along with the charge because her father forced her to. But her father has a much different story. We need to know the real story.”

  Terri chimed in. “Not sure what Nick can do. The parents aren’t going to give us her contact information. They’re trying to protect her.”

  I looked at Nick. “I’m too tired to think, but I know you’ll figure it out.”

  He nodded. “Next?”

  “Get me those pictures that were on Tripuka’s tablet.”

  “Those silly things?”

  “They’re part of his profile. Silly to you and me might mean something entirely different to a guy who kills women and cuts out their eyes.”

  Nick jotted down another note. “Damn, he’s a sick sonofabitch.”

  An idea popped into my mind, and I was out the door in no time flat.

  ***

  I couldn’t help but stare at the shoddy repair work on the ceiling in the reception area at Dr. Strickler’s office. I heard the pop of bubble gum and then a sucking noise. I glanced down at Ashling, who was trying to blot the gum remnants off her face with the bigger wad from her mouth.

  “Taste good?” The scent of wild berry filled up our space.

  “Eh,” she said, still working on the gum cleanup, reminding me of our cat, Pumpkin, licking his paws to clean his face.

  Ashling appeared remarkably relaxed, considering the assault and resulting fight for our lives at the hands of her Neanderthal ex-boyfriend just a couple of days earlier. Then again, she always seemed calm. Now that I knew she’d been involved with an abusive guy, her inner turmoil had probably been off the charts. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had an ulcer.

  “When is the ceiling going to be fixed?”

  She shrugged her shoulders while bulging out her dark-rimmed eyes. “Could be a while. I heard Dr. Strickler on the phone with the insurance company. Seems they don’t want to pay up for his trigger finger. He wasn’t happy. So I think we’re at a standstill.”

  A moment later, Dr. Strickler opened the door to the back. “Come on in, Alex.”

  “I appreciate you fitting me in for a few minutes.” I followed him through the door and down the hallway.

  “As long as you don’t mind watching me clean out the fridge. I think we could fossilize a few of the items in there.” He chuckled as we walked into a small breakroom where a white fridge sat in the corner.

  “What’s that noise?” It sounded like an animal dying within the bowels of the fridge’s gurgling motor.

  He waddled to the side of the clunker. “Twenty-three years. It’s the most reliable thing we’ve got around here.”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “Now if I can just get Dr. Swift to not leave his wife’s lasagna in here for months at a time, we could avoid an outbreak of mold.”

  “Dr. Swift?”

  “Yes, he’s my part-time partner. Sees a few patients three days a week. Semi-retired, but likes to keep his mind sharp.”

  The moment he opened the fridge door, I had to hold my hand over my face. He swatted his arm a couple of times. “Damn, this might be the worst yet.”

  He removed a couple of dishes that had wrinkled plastic wrap covering only a small part of each. Another wave of something foul hit my nose, and I quickly dug through my purse until I found a tube of Carmex lip balm. I removed the cap and hovered it just in front of my nose, setting up my best line of olfactory defenses.

  “On your voicemail to me, you said you h
ad something from your professional life to discuss.” He lifted what looked like a piece of chocolate cake. His bushy mustache twitched a couple of times before he dumped the remnants in the garbage.

  “First of all, this is confidential, correct?”

  “If you want it that way, sure,” he said.

  “More than anything, I just need to bounce a few things off you, someone who is educated in the study of psychology but isn’t jaded like me by a never-ending interaction with killers.”

  With his head still stuck in the fridge, he said, “We’re all impacted by our environments, whether we’re killers or accountants, or accountants who have killed.”

  I paused for a second. The doc’s statement was a simple observation—rather obvious—yet it was good for me to hear it said out loud. I moved on to my main topic. “What do you think would motivate a man to kill a prostitute?”

  “A prostitute. That’s a complex question. We could probably sit down over dinner and discuss it for two, three hours.”

  He looked up from his fridge task and smiled. Was he essentially asking me out on a date? I didn’t want to go there, not with my shrink, and not with him. I just needed Dr. Strickler to keep being Dr. Strickler, not my love doctor. I had Brad to fill that role. Crap…I’d once again forgotten to send him a simple text. He was, after all, the man I cared about. After this appointment, I would send him a message. I couldn’t be that self-absorbed.

  “Alex, are you with me?”

  “Sorry, just thinking through this crazy case I’m working…well, two cases actually.”

  He went back to digging though the fridge. It appeared that he’d understood my non-response about his hint of a dinner—it was not happening.

  “You see, Alex, murderers of any kind are rarely one-dimensional people. Like others in society, they have their own unique set of interests and desires, disappointments and pleasures. They can even have customary goals and dreams.”