The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  “What about the Devlin case?” she asked.

  “You’ve arrested Worley, right?”

  She stood. “I can’t do both. If I take the Dennigs, then put the other guy back on the Devlin case.”

  “What other guy?”

  “Whoever you sent out to the scene that morning. There was a rookie cop there who said she saw him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marshall responded, a little short. “There were easily a dozen cops in the vicinity that morning. If you haven’t noticed, the building’s full of them.”

  Hailey felt her voice rise. “I can’t do both cases. There’s too much media. They’re going to want to know why the department isn’t focused on finding—”

  “Where are you now?”

  She glanced at Bruce. Lied. “I’m talking to one of Natasha’s neighbors, trying to get information on who else she might have been seeing.” She felt her cheeks flush.

  “Fine. Come in when you’re back. We’ll get you some support.” With that, the line went dead.

  She wished again that Hal were back at work. Hal would love to remind Marshall that they weren’t supposed to be political puppets. The Dennigs’ murders shouldn’t get special favors because they were wealthy.

  They would, though. Jim would make sure of that and without Hal to fight, Hailey had no choice but to take the case.

  Even Hal wouldn’t be able to change Marshall’s mind. The pressure from higher up would be too much.

  But at least he would try.

  If Hailey took a stance, it would only make for more waves at home. More conflict about her job. There was already enough of that.

  She pushed send as Bruce started to talk. She shook her head, pressed her finger to her lips.

  “Jim?” she said, returning to the original call.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “That was my captain. You’ve put me in an extremely awkward position. I wish you’d called me before you spoke to the mayor. Inspector Rylan Wade was working the Dennig case. He’s got a higher solve rate than I do and he’s been in the department longer.”

  “Rittenburg deserves to know what happened to his daughter. I know if it were mine, I’d push for the best too.”

  “I don’t know that you’ve gotten him the best,” Hailey said, knowing she’d lost the fight.

  “Why don’t we talk later?”

  She said goodbye, ended the call, checked twice to be sure she hadn’t left the line open. Her fingers trembled.

  She dropped the phone onto the bed. Bent over for her pants. Pulled them on.

  “I’m sorry,” Bruce said.

  She was too frustrated to respond.

  “What’d you say about the Devlin scene this morning?” he asked.

  “Some other asshole was there first. Marshall won’t tell me who. They’re all teaming up.” She looked at him. “There’s probably some club of men who screwed Natasha Devlin down at the station.”

  He didn’t respond. She knew he wasn’t used to seeing her all riled up.

  She wasn’t used to it either. “It pisses me off.”

  “I can see that.”

  She scooped her bra off the floor, snapped it on. Found her shirt in the hall, then her jacket. Went into the bathroom to wash up. When she was dressed, she came back. He was propped in the bed, naked. “Don’t you have to work?”

  He patted the sheets.

  She sat, tried to calm herself. “I can’t have both cases.”

  “Talk to Marshall. He’s reasonable.”

  “The mayor called and asked Deputy Chief Scanlan for me specifically.” Did John know? Would he approve? He would have been furious with her once, but now… It was different now.

  Hell, having her work the case might have been his idea.

  “Hey, if you close it, it’ll probably mean a raise and it would put you in line for a captain’s opening.”

  “Right.”

  He pulled her back, kissed her hard. “Same time day after tomorrow?”

  “You’d better feed me next time.”

  He grinned. “Promise.”

  With that, she slipped into her shoes, checked her rosy reflection in the hallway mirror, and headed back outside to an increasingly grim reality.

  Chapter 13

  After lunch, Jamie called Captain Jules, requesting additional surveillance hours on Marchek.

  So far, Marchek hadn’t been out of line enough to get a school kid detention and she was nowhere near being able to convict him of rape.

  She needed more time. Letting him go unwatched was pure stupidity. Her biggest fear was that they would stop watching him, and another officer would be attacked.

  It would happen if she didn’t get him.

  It was inevitable.

  Next, she called over to Homicide and asked for Hailey Wyatt. She realized she owed Hailey an apology. It wasn’t Hailey’s fault that Jamie was in the position to be considered a suspect in Natasha’s death.

  It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Jamie’s.

  Well, it was Tim’s fault.

  Tim. His bail hearing was set for an hour from now.

  “I’m confident we’ll get bail,” Goldman had told her when they spoke after he’d met Tim. But in his voice, Jamie heard a tiny catch she’d never noticed before. Insecurity? She didn’t ask. She’d know soon enough.

  “Hailey’s over at building 606,” the secretary told Jamie after she identified herself.

  “On Devlin?”

  “Nope. Dennig,” she said with the cheery voice of someone talking about today’s lunch specials.

  “Dennig? Who’s that?”

  “New one. She’ll be there awhile. You want to leave a message?”

  Jamie declined. She preferred to see Hailey in person, owed her that much.

  She and Hailey had been something like friends when Hailey joined the Rookie Club. It had been a year and a half since Jamie had gone to the monthly meals. Somehow, female bonding had lost its appeal after she’d found Natasha in bed with Tim.

  She would be fine. This was about Tim Worley, not about her. Her job was to catch Marchek. Natasha was someone else’s problem.

  Somehow, though, it felt like she was about to get sucked into the cyclone.

  She arrived at the lab. They were having a rare, cloudless November day, and as soon as she stepped from her car, she began sweating under her blazer.

  “You seen Hailey?” she asked at the lab.

  “Down in the bay.”

  Jamie walked down the corridor that led into an open warehouse the building’s occupants called the bay. Mostly, the bay housed patrol cars and the tank that the Special Ops team used for heavy mob situations.

  Voices echoed from behind a partition wall.

  The Special Ops task force often performed drills in the bay. Ran obstacle courses while carrying heavy packs like ruck courses or rolled tractor tires up and down ramps, laying the tire down every fifteen or twenty yards to do jumps and squats and pushups around it. Other times, they simply did shuttle runs from one end of the bay to the other.

  Cameron Cruz was the only female Special Ops member. Jamie had always admired her for that. Among other things. Jamie had watched her switch into Spanish to help an old woman find a courtroom and to tell off a nasty patron at a Rookie Club dinner. Plus, she was five-nine and strong.

  Jamie couldn’t imagine what it took to be in that kind of physical shape. Not to mention the mental focus to be a sharpshooter. Cameron was someone Jamie would like to get to know.

  There was no sign of Specials Ops now.

  Instead, a metallic green minivan sat on a sheet of clear plastic half the size of a basketball court.

  Hailey Wyatt backed out of the van. Her hair was pinned under a nurse’s hairnet. Over her suit, she wore a clear, plastic raincoat and yellow galoshes. As Jamie walked toward her, she saw that the soles of the yellow galoshes were wet. They slurped as Hailey tracked dark prints across the clear, plastic tarp.


  The stench confirmed the dark stuff was blood.

  Even in the getup, Hailey exuded sexuality. The curves of her tiny waist and large breasts were visible under the coat. Her wavy hair was tucked under the pale green hairnet. Rosy cheeks and a sprinkling of freckles seemed to only enhance her appeal.

  Jamie approached the minivan, nodded to a tech who was working at a folding table covered in the same plastic as the ground. He wore a lab coat stained red. He gently rocked a sand sifter, searching for evidence the way pioneers had for nuggets of gold. Beside him sat the small, red Dirt Devil vacuum he’d used to collect evidence from the car.

  Hailey turned to Jamie, gave a little wave. “Hey.” She seemed to hold no grudge.

  Jamie apologized anyway. “I’m sorry about the other day. I was an ass.”

  Hailey shrugged. No big deal.

  Jamie was grateful.

  “Come take a look at my latest,” Hailey said.

  Jamie stepped to the edge of the plastic, careful to avoid the bloody footprints. The van was a new model with sliding doors on either side. Both were open, but there was no breeze to move the air and dissipate the smell. It sat pungent, ripe, and completely unmistakable. Death.

  “Who was it?” Jamie asked.

  “Abby and Hank Dennig. It’s her car.”

  Jamie shook her head. The names meant nothing.

  “She’s a mother of three. Drops the kids at their private school at eight thirty this morning, goes home, and parks in the basement of her building off of Broadway. Never makes it out of the garage.”

  “Leads?” Jamie asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t mention? He was dead in the car too.”

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. “The husband?”

  “One and the same,” Hailey continued. “From what I’ve found so far, I’m guessing they killed each other. She was beat pretty badly, but most of the blood is his. She had a letter opener.”

  Jamie imagined a fight between a large man bearing fists and a small woman with a letter opener. The odds never seemed in the woman’s favor, but she didn’t know the Dennigs. “Letter opener is kind of a strange thing to carry in the car, isn’t it?”

  “I thought so, too,” Hailey agreed. “But it seems it wasn’t strange for her. It was engraved from Daddy, and she carried it so she could open mail when she was waiting for the kids at school or soccer practice.”

  “And to think I’ve been using my finger to open mail.”

  Hailey smiled, little lines around her eyes crinkling. “Hard on the manicure, though.”

  “She had the letter opener. Why not stab him after the first blow? He know she had it?”

  “There’s a lot we don’t know,” Hailey admitted.

  Jamie looked back at the bloody minivan, happy for the distraction from her own thoughts of Tim and Natasha Devlin. “They meet in the garage?”

  “Took the kids to school together,” Hailey responded.

  “Together?”

  Hailey followed Jamie’s gaze. “They used to get coffee together some days.”

  “So if both are dead, it’s a closed case. Why all the bother?”

  “You heard of GGUNRA?”

  Jamie paused. “Well, any acronym that ends in NRA is familiar.”

  “San Francisco’s chapter. Abby is the president’s daughter.”

  Jamie shook her head. “Too bad Daddy didn’t give her a nice little .22 instead of the letter opener. She might be alive.”

  Another tech cut cloth off the center seat with a pair of heavy scissors. He dropped the fabric square into a brown, paper bag, crumpled the top of the bag closed, and wrote on it with a black Sharpie marker.

  “Looking for signs of a third party,” Jamie said, thinking out loud.

  “Abby’s father doesn’t believe they would have done this.”

  “Be easier to blame a random, homicidal maniac,” Jamie agreed.

  “Right,” Hailey agreed. “One we can send up to the gas chamber.”

  “So, searching for a third party,” Jamie continued for her.

  “And you can imagine how many hair samples there are—we got kids, kids’ friends, and all the junk they pick up,” Hailey went on. “Plus, I think they had a couple of dogs.”

  Just then, a tech walked toward them. He held up a clear, plastic Ziploc bag.

  Jamie watched the way he stared at Hailey while he spoke—another man infatuated. “Found this wedged down in the kid’s car seat.”

  Hailey focused on a small button pin, never glancing at the tech.

  Jamie moved forward, read it over her shoulder. The pin was white with blue lettering. Around the outside it read, “Wage peace, not war.” In the middle, inside a circle, were the letters “NRA” with a fat, blue line through them.

  “Probably not a gift from Grandpa,” Jamie commented, stepping back.

  Hailey’s phone went off and she looked down at her bloody attire. “Dang it.”

  She snapped off her gloves, removed her raincoat and galoshes, leaving them on a rubber mat. Last, she removed the hairnet and pushed a dark strand of hair off her face with the back of her hand.

  The tech watched her as if it were a striptease, though she performed the action with utilitarian efficiency.

  By then, her phone had stopped ringing. She dug it out of her pocket, put her finger up to Jamie, and touched the screen. “This is Hailey Wyatt. I got a call—”

  “Perfect. I’m on my way now.” With that, she ended the call and turned to the tech, pointing at the button. “Bag that. We’ll need to run it for prints.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I’m going to the lab. Be back in ten.” To Jamie she said, “Come with.”

  She started walking and Jamie caught up.

  “Worley make bail?” Hailey asked.

  “Hearing’s probably over now. I haven’t heard.” She looked at the inspector. “What’s at the lab?”

  “Bunch of results came in earlier,” she answered. “I’m waiting on Natasha’s toxicology, but I thought you might want to hear about the others.”

  Jamie didn’t register her surprise that Hailey was sharing the case details with her. Instead, she asked the obvious next question. “Any indications she was drugged?”

  “None.”

  Jamie stopped. “Tim didn’t kill her.”

  Hailey waved her on. “I’m not convinced he did. I sent a crime scene tech to the jail earlier so they could take some pictures and a mold of his head wound. We took a swab of the wound to search for foreign material. CSU’s trying to work out what he was hit with, and we’re looking for other suspects. The evidence isn’t good for him though.” She paused to look at Jamie. “I want to be honest. Covered in blood. His prints on her. Going home to shower. And we all saw the fight.”

  Jamie thought about how angry Tim was at the awards banquet, how pleased Natasha was when she’d blown him off.

  “You know anyone who stutters?” Hailey asked.

  Jamie remembered Tim’s comment about the words he’d heard just before he was struck sounding like a stutter. “I don’t, but I’ve read that it’s not particularly uncommon among criminals.”

  “Yeah. Violent offenders. I’ve read the same stats.”

  “You have a time of death?” Jamie asked.

  “It happened between ten p.m. and two a.m. The coroner is trying to narrow it down more. It helps that she kept the temperature in her office at exactly sixty-six degrees. Means the medical examiner can work with body temperature. Tim claims he arrived about twelve-forty. She was on the ground. He was leaning over her when someone struck him.”

  “I know.”

  Hailey stared at her, waiting.

  “He came to my house afterwards. He was freaked out.”

  “Christ, Jamie. That’s aiding and abetting. On top of everything else.”

  Jamie didn’t defend her actions. She had screwed up.

  “What if he hadn’t turned himself in?” Hailey asked.

  “I’d h
ave told you before the end of the day.”

  Hailey didn’t respond.

  “I can provide an alibi for myself if you need it.”

  Hailey opened the hall door and let Jamie pass in front of her. “You were with someone?”

  “I was online for most of it.”

  The door clicked shut behind them. Their shoes ticked against the linoleum floor.

  “Doing what?” Hailey asked.

  “I belong to a group.”

  “Like a chat group?”

  “For cases—other cops,” Jamie explained.

  “What time were you online?”

  “Off and on between the time I got home and around five o’clock. I tried to go to sleep earlier, but Tim showed up around two fifteen and I couldn’t sleep after that. There will be records of the dialogue. We’re working a nasty rape/murder in Chicago. There are three or four other officers who can confirm my presence, if you need them to.”

  They turned left into the lab corridor. Jamie considered the evidence Hailey had. Would it come as a surprise?

  Hailey paused at the lab door, her hand on the knob. “You ready?”

  Jamie nodded, though she wasn’t sure she was ready.

  Inside, the senior criminalist, Sydney, walked along the edge of a huge cut of red-stained carpet. The piece, spread out on the lab floor, was maybe nine feet by twelve. Her strawberry-blond ponytail swung as she moved. She wore khakis and a white lab coat. Freckles dappled her cheeks, giving her skin a glow despite a lack of makeup. Sydney circled the rug, holding a black Sharpie. Every few steps, she’d stop, lean over, and circle a spot of red.

  “I’m here for the Devlin update,” Hailey said.

  Sydney turned, blinking hard. “Mike, will you get Tasha’s file for me?”

  Hailey met Jamie’s gaze. Neither spoke.

  Jamie knew Sydney and Natasha Devlin had been close. The few times she’d seen Natasha at Rookie Club dinners, she had always sat beside Sydney.

  Jamie felt more clearly the widening gap between herself and the other officers who had once been her comrades.

  Natasha Devlin would haunt her forever—dead or alive.

  Unless the truth shed a symphony of light on her death, people would rarely think of her murder without hearing notes of Jamie Vail somewhere in the background.

  Sydney swiped at her face with the back of one hand, focused on the rug. “I’m almost done with this.”