Murders of the Zodiac Boxed Set

by Paris Morgan

  Shea looked around at all of us. “Why don’t you take Ryan down to the cafeteria and get something to eat? Otherwise, he’s never going to leave my side, and I know he’ll feel better if you tell him everything that happened last night.”

  “No, I’m not leaving you,” I protested, sitting beside her on the bed.

  “Yes, you are. Flora is here, and I’ll be just fine. Now go.” Shea poked me in the chest.

  “We’ll be fine, and when you get back I’ll go get something.”

  I sighed. I hated it when all the women ganged up on me. Shea was right, I really wanted to know what had happened.

  “All right, I give in.” I kissed her and then joined the others by the door.

  The door swung shut behind me, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief that I didn’t have to think about anything for just a few minutes.

  Adam threw an arm around my shoulders. “Long night for all of us. Let’s get you caught up. I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” Leslie echoed.

  ***

  “So once we had everyone rounded up, we spent the rest of the evening taking their statements and matching up names to members,” Adam gave me the lowdown as we set at the table.

  “That woman you’d met before? Her name is Didra Beauregard. She comes from old money, and her father is somebody here in Dallas. I got her information, but she was the date of someone. She’s not a member of the club. We turned her loose,” Adam clarified.

  “Do you think she’s the one from the plane? Wasn’t she going to California?” Leslie asked as she took a bite of her food.

  “She looked a lot like her, and there was something about her private plane having difficulties which was why she was on a regular flight. First-class had been sold out, but they’d found her a seat after we took off.”

  “Hmm… I mean, did you get a vibe or something about her?”

  I shook my head no. “It was just strange to see her again in such different circumstances.”

  “We can have Kevin run a background check on her,” Leslie reminded me.

  “Yeah, I’ll give him a call to see if he can do that. I just want to know a little more about her. Most people clam up when you tell them you’re a detective, but she didn’t seem the least bit fazed.”

  “If she comes from money, then she wouldn’t be that scared. Her daddy can probably buy the city and have her crowned queen if she wanted it,” Leslie scoffed.

  “Anyway, how many were arrested last night?” I started to consume the food in front of me like it was my last meal.

  “Seventy-five members, twenty employees, and about thirty guests. We rescued over one hundred women and young teen girls, who were being held.” Adam glowed with the accomplishment.

  “That was just for this club. If we figure that each of the others had about the same amount of numbers, then we took down a lot of high-powered players in one sweep,” Leslie grinned.

  “What was Agent Watson’s reaction to all of this? Did he continue to help throughout the night?” I pushed back my empty plate with a sigh.

  “Yeah, he did. We kept an eye on him, but once all those guys were processed, he couldn’t make any excuses about why they were let go. We let Homeland take care of the victims, and they’re going to use our evidence to make a case since its multiagency. I might have pulled a few favors to get it out of the FBI’s hands.” Adam’s tone was filled with satisfaction.

  “Do you think that Kevin has more information like that for us?”

  “I sure hope so, but that’s something we’re going to have to deal with another day because I’m exhausted, and you’re going to stay here until that baby is born,” Leslie commanded.

  “Couldn’t agree more.” I just hoped that we could get a few things worked out before the real event happened. “I’ll give him a call and see if we can meet in the next few days.”

  “That works for me. I’m going to take Flora home, but if you need us, we’re only a phone call away,” Adam offered.

  “Yeah, sleeping in those hospital chairs is for the birds.” I stood and took my tray over to the trash. “Make sure she gets some rest.”

  ***

  Two days later, we drove Shea back home to be on bed rest until the baby decided to try and enter the world for a second time.

  I’d left a few messages on Kevin’s phone, but hadn’t heard anything back from him yet. Since I’d been more worried about Shea, I hadn’t really had a chance to worry yet. Now that we were back at the Demeter ranch, and Shea was comfortably settled, Flora had told me to get lost.

  “Seriously, Ryan, there’s no point in you hanging around here all mopey when you can at least get some office work done. You’ll be able to hang around when the baby gets here.”

  “I just don’t want to leave her if she might need me,” I protested.

  “Ha. You’re itching to get out of here. You’ll go stir crazy.”

  She was right. After I checked on Shea for the first thirty times, she’d probably be ready for me to out of her hair.

  “Okay, I do need to run an errand, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t make that promise. Stay gone, and don’t come back unless you have pickles!” Shea yelled from the other room.

  I stuck my head in the door. “Of course I’ll bring pickles. Thank you.”

  She blew me a kiss, but that didn’t seem good enough. I wanted a real one.

  Surprised, she leaned in and met my lips.

  “Keep that up and you’ll be having another baby after this one is born,” Flora snickered at us.

  “Yeah, yeah, keep talking, but you and Adam might be surprised what your future holds,” I retorted.

  “Oh, look at you, being all psychic,” Flora teased.

  “Hey, everyone else around here is, so why shouldn’t I get in on it?” I gave her a wink and walked out the front door, feeling lighter than I had in days.

  I knew where Kevin’s house was, and while I didn’t want to blow his cover, I was worried. It couldn’t hurt to just drive by. At least I could tell this nagging voice in my head that nothing was wrong, and tell it to go away.

  His house was only about thirty minutes from where we were staying, and since it was already mid-morning, there wasn’t really any traffic.

  Wanting to make sure things were good, I intended to just drive by, but when I saw Kevin’s car in the driveway, I found myself pulling up to the curb.

  Giving it one last try, I dialed his phone.

  “Hello,” a female voice purred.

  “Um…I was looking for my friend.” I pulled the phone away and glanced down to see if I’d dialed the right number.

  “Yeah, he’s not available. In fact, I’m glad you called. It took you long enough.”

  “Excuse me? Do we know each other?”

  “Not exactly, but you’re about to hate me. Give me a call after you’ve been inside.”

  The line went dead.

  Instead of going inside, I dialed Leslie.

  “I just had a very weird phone call. I was calling Kevin and a woman answered, and said I would hate her when I went into his house.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound good. You want me to text Adam and meet you over there?”

  “Yeah. I suddenly don’t want to know what I’m going to find. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be good.” I shuddered at what my imagination was coming up with.

  “I think Agent Watson needs a call as well,” I muttered after Leslie hung up.

  “Agent Watson, this is Ryan. A very unusual thing just happened and I need you to meet me at Kevin’s house. I’ve called and left messages but he hasn’t responded, so I’m pretty sure something has happened to him.”

  “Ryan, you could have blown his cover.” Agent Watson let out a sigh. “Look, I appreciate the fact that you’re concerned, but what you should be doing is enjoying the peace and quiet before the baby gets here.”

  “Well, I can’t just ignore it, sir, because I’m
sitting outside his house and his car is home. He should be at work. I didn’t want to go inside by myself, but we need to check it out.”

  “Ahh, “Agent Watson groaned in frustration. “I’ll be over there shortly. Why can’t you detectives just work on your case and stop looking into things that aren’t broken?”

  “Because someone has to care about all the things that are slipping through the cracks.”

  “Are you accusing me of something?” he demanded.

  “No, but our people deserve to have the same respect that other divisions get when they’re undercover. You’ve just left Kevin out here on his own.”

  “How dare you say that! I’ve had weekly check-ins, and we all worked under his direction just the other night.”

  “You only worked with us under duress.” I couldn’t hold my feelings in any longer.

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. I’ll be there shortly. Don’t go in, and for goodness’ sake, don’t touch anything,” he ordered.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

  He hung up, and I couldn’t help but think that he had responded to my accusations. He just hadn’t said anything to defend himself from what I’d implied.

  ***

  All three arrived at the almost same time and I got out to join them, wanting to drag my feet.

  “So he’s not answering his phone and his car is here?” Agent Watson questioned.

  “Well, I’ve left a few messages since Saturday night and its Tuesday morning. He should have responded by now.”

  “Let’s proceed with caution,” Adam warned as we went around to the back door.

  Only salesmen or non-family guests used the front door in most places. Although we’d never been to his house before, we followed the driveway around the side of the house.

  The door was partially open, and we all instinctively drew our guns. This was a really bad sign.

  Adam went first and paused, barely inside the door. Agent Watson bumped into him and Adam moved to the side so that he could see.

  “Oh, God,” Agent Watson exclaimed as he turned and raced past us and out to the bushes where he threw up.

  Adam faced me and shook his head. “I don’t think you should go in there. It’s hard enough to see crime scenes, but when it’s your friends, it’s worse.”

  I sank to the porch steps because I couldn’t stand any longer.

  “How did it happen?”

  Adam had stepped out of the house. “He was beheaded like the others. She also left us a message. All of his computers and equipment are gone. She has them.”

  Agent Watson walked out to the car for a bottle of water and returned, standing back from the house itself. “How can you tell?”

  “There are empty spaces where all the hard drives were and wires going to nowhere,” Adam answered calmly, but the anger in his voice was directed at Agent Watson.

  “I’ll call in the team and alert the locals that it’s an active crime scene.” His face was devoid of color as took out his phone with a shaky hand.

  If Agent Watson was who we thought he was, I was glad that he’d gotten to see what working for the enemy had done to Kevin. There was no way to prove that he’d known Kevin was going to be killed, but he certainly hadn’t gone overboard to express concern when we’d notified him.

  The fact that he was shaken up meant that he hadn’t expected for Kevin to be killed in this manner. They might not have even told him. Now he understood what might happen to him if he worked for these kinds of people.

  He hung up from notifying other officers and agents. “What do we do now?”

  “We can wait until the coroner and the crime processing team arrive, because it’s going to be hard to work impartially when it’s someone that we knew well.” Adam leaned against a post on the porch, as if he was guarding the path into the house.

  “So you think somehow they found out Kevin was undercover? Since he was at the raid on Saturday, could they have followed him?” Agent Watson asked, standing a little ways back from the house.

  “Very possible, but I’m afraid that we have a snitch inside our department. That’s why Kevin didn’t tell anyone about the raid he’d set up until it was happening.” I wanted to strangle Agent Watson, but that wouldn’t help anyone or anything right now. Although, it would probably make me feel better.

  A tall blonde woman approached us from the side of the house. “Are one of you Ryan?”

  “Yeah, I am. How can I help you?” I stood up and walked toward her.

  “I heard the address on the scanner. Can I see you around the front?” She looked at each of the others pointedly.

  “Yeah.” I glanced behind me at Adam and Leslie, who just shrugged.

  Out of hearing from the others, I stopped in the front yard. “Now, how can I help you?”

  “You knew that Kevin was working with someone from a different agency, right?” She held out her hand to introduce herself. “I’m Barbie. I’ve known Kev for years, and we’ve been hacking stuff since high school together.”

  “Thank you for helping him. I’m guessing you know that he’s dead?”

  She took in a shaky breath. “Yes. Since he told me about this whole situation, I’ve been monitoring the calls. We knew it was a possibility, which is why I’m here.

  “You were one of the few people he trusted with this kind of information. All of the work he’d been collecting was transferred to our computers days ago. He didn’t want anything in his house in case there were repercussions from the raid Saturday night.”

  “So there wasn’t anything on his hard drives? The killer took all of them with her.” I felt relieved that all the work he’d done wasn’t in the hands of the enemy.

  “He was afraid all the records and files he’d collected would disappear because of your dirty agent.” She pulled out a card with a phone number on it. “Call me in the next few days when you’re able, and I’ll meet you with more stuff that you can use to take down the entire Urban Energy Corporation and the Gold Money Exchange.”

  Shocked, I took the card from her. “He has evidence to take them down?”

  “We’re very close. With what he got on Friday before he left, I should be able to link everything together. These bastards are going down. I’m not going to let any of them escape justice for killing Kevin. I’ll call you when I’m ready, but don’t call that number unless it’s an emergency.” She started to walk away.

  “How will you call me? I didn’t give you my number!” I yelled after her.

  “I’m a hacker, Ryan. I’ve got your number, your home address, and the place where you’re staying out on the Demeter ranch. I’m on your side.” She gave me a cunning smile as she turned away.

  I stuck the card in my pocket. This was all way too much for me to handle.

  The evil people who’d run the clubs were gone on the lower levels, but the ones who were the masterminds were still out there. If they’d taken Kevin out, there might still be more retribution in the future for the rest of us that had helped to take them down. We’d thought that no one was going to do that while Homeland Security and the FBI were still looking into who was responsible for running the sex rings, yet they’d shown no fear in killing an FBI agent as punishment.

  It must have been Barbie who had slipped the folder with all the documents I needed to help Adam gather the search warrants. I thought that there hadn’t been a chance for anyone to rat us out because Adam mentioned an anonymous source. He didn’t want to lead anyone back to us that would cause any of us to get killed.

  From now on, one of us was going to have to stay with the girls until this was taken care of. Barbie might be on our side, but that just meant that the other side probably had our information and could find us just as easily.

  Protecting my family was the most important thing to me from this point on.

  I went back to join the others and simply shook my head to answer Adam and Leslie’s unspoken question.

  “Wha
t did that woman want?” Agent Watson growled as I returned.

  His levels of anger and frustration weren’t getting any better.

  “She was a friend of Kevin’s and heard the call on the scanner. He’d mentioned me as a good friend, and she was hoping I could tell her what happened.” I hoped that would satisfy his curiosity.

  “It’s better if we don’t tell people what happened yet because we don’t know exactly.” Agent Watson kicked the ground in frustration.

  “There were two choices here: either I tell her enough to keep her away, or let her worry some more and continue to look into what’s going on. Which would you have preferred?”

  “What’s done is done. Where are those people to take care of this?” He started pacing and mumbling to himself.

  “Uh, what got under his skin?” I asked with a glance over my shoulder as I took a seat on the steps again.

  “I think his conscience was trying to deal with the fact that he got a nice guy killed,” Leslie whispered.

  “Great.”

  We could hear doors slamming as the crime teams arrived.

  “Oh, FYI, there wasn’t anything on those hard drives. He’d wiped them before he left on Saturday.”

  Leslie smiled. “That’s something at least.”

  Chapter 10

  Leslie

  After we’d realized that Kevin was dead and the killer wanted to meet with us, Adam and Ryan had wanted to wait and find out more information.

  I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait for them to cross all of their t’s and dot their i’s on the paperwork.

  Ryan wanted to be involved, promising to give Barbie my number if she called. We’d sent him home to watch over Flora and Shea again.

  It was hard being put on the sidelines, as I’d learned last month, but he needed to be near for when the baby arrived. Plus, if there was anyone else trying to hurt them, he would be the only thing to protect them.

  Agent Watson had gotten more irrational as the afternoon had progressed, and had finally been sent to the doctor to get something to calm his nerves.

  His nerves weren’t the problem. He’d realized that he was working a very thin thread between his position in the FBI and what his criminal boss would do to him if he let something like that happen again.