Murder Girl

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “Kane buries my bodies,” I dare to say, joining him on the smoky-gray couch and setting my field bag down on the floor.

  “Right,” he says as I set the glasses down and he opens the bottle. “How could I forget Kane? The bastard who won’t let you go on a date with me.” He fills our glasses.

  “You’re my cousin.”

  “Are we doing this again?” he asks, screwing the lid back on the bottle. “By marriage.”

  “Yes, well, people date, fuck, and hate each other. We get to love each other forever.” I hand him his glass and pick up mine, offering him a toast. “To love and cousins.”

  “To fucking, hating, and making up,” he says, clinking my glass. “Unfortunately, with other people. I officially give up, cousin.”

  “Finally,” I say, and we both drink and savor the warmth of the woodsy flavor. I down mine.

  “Tell me you didn’t just down forty-year scotch,” he says. “You’re supposed to savor it.”

  “I savored a swallow.” I sink back on the couch and grab a pillow. “And I slept about two hours. I needed to de-bitch myself.” I laugh, the heat of the drink warming my limbs. “Un-bitch? Stop the bitch? Whatever you want to call it.”

  “You’re always a bitch,” he says, sinking back and lounging next to me, his glass in his hand. “But it’s oddly endearing.”

  “Ahhhh, cousin. You’re so sweet.”

  He takes a drink. “This is a damn good scotch. How’d you get your hands on it?”

  “I took it from my father.”

  He laughs. “Like I said. Oddly endearing.” He hands me his glass, and I sip before giving it back to him.

  “I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot the last two days,” I admit.

  “What about her? Aside from the obvious that you miss the fuck out of her.”

  “I’ve always thought it was odd that your father and my mother were in that plane when it crashed. Alone.” I flash back to my brother’s claim of an affair. “Do you think—?”

  “Yes. It’s true.”

  “What’s true? Be clear.”

  “They were having an affair.”

  I sit up and rotate to face him. “You’re sure?”

  “You aren’t?” He sips his whiskey but doesn’t sit up.

  “No. I don’t want to believe it.”

  “I hear ya. Parents banging other parents blows the whole fairy-tale, happy-family shit to hell and back. But it’s true. I heard them talking, and it was one of those kinky, hot, burn-my-ears-because-it’s-my-father-and-your-mother kind of talks.”

  “Fuck. How long was this going on and my cousin didn’t tell me?”

  “A year that I knew of, but I’m pretty certain longer.”

  “Did my father know?”

  “I have no idea,” he says.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I demand.

  “You were in law school miles away. And what were you going to do? They’re adults. They were adults. Fuck. I still speak like they’re alive.”

  But they’re not alive, I think. And I’m a law enforcement officer who now suspects murder. And I know all too well that you look close to home, to the spouse first, especially when an affair is identified. In this case, that means my father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I stand up and walk to the windows overlooking the pool but without really seeing it. My father did not kill my mother. I refuse to believe that is possible. I won’t believe that, but the comment Pocher made about me being more like my mother than he knew comes back to me. It didn’t hit me wrong then, but now, it hits me ten ways of wrong. Did he kill my mother and Lucas’s father? Was she in the way? Was the affair the scandal that kept my father from the limelight?

  Lucas steps beside me. “You okay?”

  I glance over at him. “Most of the time. Not all the time. You?”

  “The same. You know how close I was to my father.”

  “Yeah. We were both lucky to have those relationships.” I glance back out the window. “I knew she wasn’t happy with my father. I should have convinced her to leave.”

  “Don’t do that. ‘Should have, could have’ does no good for anyone. It solves nothing.”

  I fold my arms in front of me, and we turn to face each other. “For me, that’s not true. It often does solve cases.”

  “This isn’t a case,” he says, having no idea that, indeed, this may very well tie into the murders I’m trying to solve. “And people, family included, get angry when you get in the middle of their personal shit. It’s just how it is.”

  “My father is running for governor.”

  “No shit? So the rumors are true.”

  “Yes. And I think my father’s banging his young housekeeper.”

  “He better watch that shit if he’s running for governor.” He glances over at me. “And just so we can get past why you’re really here. Love forever and all that stuff, cuz, but I’m not hacking for you.”

  “You have to. It’s life or death, literally.”

  He holds up a hand. “No. I’m not doing it.” He walks back to the couch and refills his glass. “You’re the one who shut me down and saved my ass. I could have gone to jail.”

  I walk to the opposite side of the table and stand above him. “And I could go to jail for what I did to keep you out of jail.”

  “It’s a drug to me, Lilah, an adrenaline rush. I took the hacking jobs for that high. Even then, before I inherited my father’s money, I didn’t need the money. But I needed that rush, and I can’t do it again or I will keep needing it.”

  I squat down in front of the table and him. “No, you won’t,” I assure him. “I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll grab you and hold on. I promise. There are dirty cops involved. There’s a body count that might be closer to a dozen after I finish connecting the dots.”

  “And you think your people are dirty so you want to make me dirty again, too?”

  “I think my father’s dirty. I think he’s involved.”

  His eyes go wide. “Are you serious?” He sets his glass down. “Your father? In a dozen murders?”

  “In a cover-up of at least half of them. Maybe it goes deeper. I don’t know. I need you to help me find out.”

  “Damn. Yeah. I’m in.” He stands up and I follow. “Follow me.”

  I grab my field bag from the couch, follow him up the stucco-encased stairwell to our right, and pause at the top as he unlocks a door. He turns to look at me. “Welcome to the addiction.” He shoves open the door and steps back, allowing me to walk inside. I walk through the doorway and find myself in a giant room that is walled off by floor-to-ceiling windows, the beach crashing against the shore beyond the glass. The only solid wall is lined with blacked-out monitors, the center of the room filled with random tables and tech equipment.

  I face him. “This is insanity.”

  “I had money that became even more money with my addiction.”

  He backs up and punches a button, and the room churns and flickers to life. Monitors power up, buttons and machines lighting. He points to a horseshoe-shaped workspace with, of course, a white tiled top. “Let’s sit there.”

  I follow him, and we claim spots in rolling chairs behind the countertop. A few minutes later, my computer is fired up, phone by my side, along with my note cards and a notepad. Lucas has a heavy-duty gaming-style notebook computer in front of him. He rubs his hands together. “What am I after?”

  I decide to start with the part I want to supervise. The rest he can do on his own. Not to mention he might lose his mind right now if I say “assassin” and infer any connection between Ying Entertainment and my mother, which means his father. I slide a piece of paper toward him with a list of all the murder victims, including Laney and her brother. “I need complete case notes, inclusive of all personnel who came anywhere near the cases or crime scenes, down to the janitors. I wrote the location and investigating agency next to each name.”

  He shoves back from the counter and roll
s around to face me. I do the same with him. “You want me to hack law enforcement? Are you fucking nuts?”

  “That’s one way of putting it, but that’s to the point. It’s the only way to do this. And if you get busted, I’ll say I bribed you with some family secret.”

  “I’m not going to let you do that.” He shoves fingers through his hair. “Damn it, Lilah.”

  “If you’re not good enough—”

  He points at me. “Don’t do that. Don’t play me. You know I’m good enough. I hacked some of the most secure systems in the world before you reeled me in. If I do this, I do it for you, but you better really need this.”

  “I really need this.”

  He presses fingers to his temple. “Okay. Fine. I’ll do it.” He turns to his computer.

  I start to do the same and change my mind. “Actually. One thing I really need right away.”

  “If you want me to write a personnel review for you while I’m in the system, I’ll do it, but you won’t like it.”

  “My attitude doesn’t suit you, Lucas,” I snap, getting back to business. “There’s a Barnes & Noble in Westbury, Long Island. Can you find out if they have cameras in the stores? If they do, can you download the feed for the cash registers for the past twenty-four hours for me?”

  “That’s a piece of cake if they have cameras online. What are you looking for? Does the killer turn books into a deadly weapon?”

  “Ha ha,” I say, ready to shake his attitude and him with it. “Not really funny.” I turn away.

  “It was funny,” he says, giving his attention to his keyboard. “I’m ordering us lunch online from my favorite spot up the road. Then I’ll start with Barnes & Noble.”

  I pull a cord from my case and connect it to my phone, downloading the photos that I took at my father’s office. I start tabbing through them when my phone rings. I note my brother’s number and hit Decline. I return my attention to the photos that look to be city business receipts and nothing out of the ordinary. My phone buzzes with a text. I glance down to find my brother again.

  Did you hear that Kane filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and the NYC bureau? he asks.

  I sigh and call him. “Yes,” I say, replying to his text message. “I heard, and I wasn’t surprised. I told you. You don’t embarrass a powerful man like him and not expect the same lashing you gave him and his reputation. The good news in this is that those idiots are out of the picture. I was given the authority to claim jurisdiction of the local murders or walk away.”

  “And?” he prods.

  “And we’ll talk, but not on the phone and not now. I have important shit I’m doing.”

  “Now, Lilah.”

  “Not going to happen, big brother, but I love you. Call you in a few hours.” I hang up.

  “I love you?” Lucas asks incredulously.

  “He expected ‘fuck you’ so every time I say ‘I love you,’ he gets all flustered.”

  “You’re evil.”

  “Yeah, but I do love him.”

  My phone buzzes with a text, and I read it with a laugh before rereading it to Lucas: Fuck you, Lilah, and I love you, too, but you are not escaping this today. I will hunt you down and lock you in a cell until this is done if I have to. I glance at Lucas. “See. He loves me, too.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Love. Overflowing.” He changes the subject. “Check your personal e-mail. I just sent you a list of every book bought in Barnes & Noble in the past forty-eight hours. I know you said twenty-four, but I’m an overachiever.”

  “You rock,” I say, pulling up my e-mail. A few minutes later I’ve imported the list into a spreadsheet and sorted alphabetically. And there it is: my mother’s biography, purchased yesterday afternoon. As if the killer expected me and was just waiting for my arrival.

  I roll my chair to face Lucas. “Did the bookstore have active security cameras?”

  He hands me a flash drive, and I slip it into my Mac. I tab to the time stamp I need, and a man in sunglasses and a baseball cap catches my attention. He walks to the register and checks out, but it’s impossible to tell what he’s purchasing from this camera angle, but I check the time. That transaction is exactly when my mother’s biography was purchased. It’s not absolute confirmation that this is Suthers’s killer. However, outside of who bought the book and killed Suthers, the timing of the book purchase tells me that my move had been anticipated and he was being killed.

  That sends my mind to my call to the DMV, and damn it, I hate the idea that after all I did to protect Suthers, I may well have triggered some kind of alarm. But the book was purchased before that call. Suthers was already marked to die. “Don’t let it fuck with your head, Lilah,” I murmur, repeating Kane’s words.

  “What?” Lucas asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I talk to myself. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. Thus far until now, when you’re with me, you talk to me, not yourself. But don’t talk to me or you right now. I’m focusing.” He turns back to his work.

  I screenshot the photo and text it to Kane: Have you ever seen him before?

  No, he replies. Who is he?

  I reply with: Someone I picked up on a security feed at Barnes & Noble by Suthers’s house. He may be no one. He may be the killer. I’ll explain later.

  Because you’re with Lucas, he says, and I can almost hear the disapproval in his voice through that typed message.

  I purse my lips and type: Who’s a hacking genius.

  So genius you had to save his ass from jail.

  I could remind him that Lucas was set up by a rival hacker, but I’m not sure that helps his case in Kane’s eyes, or really in mine either. And since I don’t like to fight battles I’ll lose, I just don’t reply. I return my gaze to the security footage and expand the image, and freeze-frame the man’s face, a large scar now visible down his cheek. This is the killer, and as I hunt him he taunts me, only now the taunts are turning bloody. My gaze jerks to Lucas with a bad thought. What happens when the taunts get bloody and personal, too? And that leads me to follow that question with another: Is hanging out here with him putting him on the radar of the wrong people?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I dial Kane. “I need something.”

  “I’m available. When and where?”

  “Stop.”

  “It sounds like you just told me to start.”

  “I need you to put a man on Lucas and make sure he stays safe.”

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to protect a man who I dislike and who wants to fuck you?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain later.”

  “At my house.”

  “Kane, damn it—”

  “I’ll do it and you owe me, Lilah Love.”

  I hang up on the asshole and his “owe me” shit.

  “Lunch is served,” Lucas declares from the doorway, walking toward me with a paper bag in his hand, the smell of food traveling with him, but nothing my nose can identify, which must mean it’s not pizza, Cheetos, or chocolate. I doubt that I’m going to approve. “Lunch is served,” he says again, reclaiming his seat and handing me a bottle of water, followed by a Styrofoam box.

  I set the water down and move my MacBook over to open the box and glance inside. “Grilled fish and vegetables? Really?”

  “Really,” he says, opening his lid, too. “You eat like shit. This is brain food.”

  “Chocolate and coffee is brain food.”

  “Eat it anyway.”

  I grimace but take a bite of the fish, which is edible and hopefully forgettable. I pull back up the security footage, and by the time I’m done eating, I’ve decided the dude with the scar is my man. I glance over at Lucas. “Do you have the ability to access facial recognition software?”

  He glances over at me. “You’re out of luck on that one.” He returns to his work.

  “How is it going?”

  “Better if you weren’t talking.”

  I return to my computer screen and decide this
man could be the assassin. I have to find out who he is before he kills again. I log into the FBI message system, where I direct a message to Tic Tac: Hello?

  He replies right away: Hello.

  I load the photo into a message and type: I need you to run facial recognition on this photo.

  Give me fifteen minutes, he replies.

  I downsize the screen and reload the photos I took at my father’s house, looking at personal investment statements, various town documents that amount to nothing but lawn care and a Christmas parade. Page after page, I dig for anything out of the ordinary, but this was a long shot anyway. My father is too smart to keep anything compromising in a place that might be searched. It hits me that he hasn’t called me to bitch me out for taking his booze, but it’s coming. Of course it’s coming. My messages buzz, and I pull up the direct-message box to read: No hit. His face is not visible enough.

  “Damn it,” I murmur, downsizing the screen and glancing at a text message from Rich:

  Just got to LaGuardia airport in NYC but won’t be back until late.

  I need to reply, but with Rich it’s a delicate balance of leading him on, being civil, and being a bitch. I settle on keeping it simple: Let me know when you land in LA.

  He replies with: Will do and be careful, Lilah.

  “Jackpot over here,” Lucas say, drawing my attention. “I’m in the Suffolk County database and pulling the Rick Suthers file now.” He glances over at me. “Two of these cases are from Los Angeles. You can’t get those files on your own?”

  “I don’t know who is dirty or what data they might keep from me. So no. I can’t get it on my own.” I scoot close to him to watch him work. He stops keying and looks over his shoulder. “Go away.”

  “Okay. Fine. I will be right over here.” I scoot back to the spot in front of my computer. “Right here.” He ignores me. I tab through more of my father’s documents and stop on a few random scribbled numbers on a piece of paper. I dial the first one. “Pizza Jacks.”

  “Fuck me! Oh.” I hang up and ignore Lucas’s glare.

  I dial the next number and it’s a female. “Hello.”