Fear No Truth

by LynDee Walker

  Nothing.

  I gave it a full minute before I knocked again. “Mr. Wooley? Open up.”

  More silence.

  I glanced at Graham. He nodded a Knock again.

  Raising my fist for a third time, I added an edge of urgency to my voice. “Texas Rangers, Ray. We need to make sure you’re all right. Please open the door if you’re able.”

  Graham winked when I turned back to him, mouthing, Nice.

  It was an old trick Archie taught me before I graduated high school. We couldn’t legally enter the apartment as part of a criminal investigation without a warrant. But a welfare check was a perfectly reasonable and above-board excuse to try the door, and Archie did say the guy was off the grid today. Now if the neighbors were home, we had established that we went in to check on the occupant. What we happened to see while we were in there that might aid an investigation . . . well, that was fair game.

  I counted to sixty. Three times. “Sir, we’re coming inside to check on you now,” I called, putting a hand on the doorknob.

  It turned. I pushed, and the door swung inward.

  The smell hit me first.

  Sweet and acrid at the same time, it was the thing about this line of work I would never get used to. Twelve years after my first body dump, the smell of rotting flesh still flipped my gut smooth inside out. I’d been a vegetarian since my second week at the sheriff’s office.

  There was no mistaking it once a person knew it, either: someone was dead in this space. Who it was and whether the killer was still there were the only things I wasn’t sure of.

  I jerked the gun back up and moved into the shoebox-sized living room. “Ray? Police. If you’re in here, please come out slowly with your hands where we can see them.”

  Graham on my heels, I moved through the apartment, my freakish brain cataloging everything along the way. The tiny kitchen held a cooktop, a microwave, and a small refrigerator with both doors hanging open. A hallway ran past it, and I could see a bathroom sink through a barely open door at the end.

  Still no Ray. Still no corpse.

  I moved toward the bathroom, my stomach folding in on itself as the warm air thickened, decay overlaid with the metallic tang of blood and the stench of loose bowels.

  Jesus.

  Nobody in the bitty bedroom off the hallway, one queen-sized mattress and an open, messy trunk filling the space end to end.

  Whatever was wrong here—and something was very wrong here—it was in that bathroom.

  I caught a deep breath and held it, moving my finger to the trigger and shoving the door with the sole of my boot. The knob crashed into the tile wall, but I didn’t hear it over the blood pounding in my ears.

  I’d found Ray.

  And the rats.

  29

  I managed to both hold on to the gun and avoid shooting at the gnawing rodents.

  I did not manage to hold on to my breakfast, leaning forward as regurgitated latte and banana spewed across the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor. Graham’s footfalls were heavy behind me, sending shockwaves through the water in the tub.

  The rats turned blood-soaked, beady-eyed faces in unison, a few of them screeching and the rest hissing in chorus.

  Graham’s arm roped around my waist and yanked me straight backward, depositing me in the hall behind him so he could grab the door and jerk it closed.

  My eyes fell shut, but I forced them open when the rats’ feast began playing on a loop on the backs of the lids.

  I leaned forward, resting my hands on bent knees as I braced against the wall, sucking air in deep gulps before I realized the putrid smell wasn’t settling my stomach.

  “What. The actual. Fuck?” Graham’s words came out on short breaths.

  I shook my head. “Christ almighty, Graham. Odds that was our porn peddler?”

  “That was definitely a man. At some point recently, anyway.” He fumbled for his phone and poked at the screen.

  “Dispatch, this is one-three-five-two requesting backup and crime scene to . . .” He put his hand over the phone. “You still have the address?”

  I nodded and dug my phone from my pocket, unlocking it so the map came up.

  Graham read the address off to the dispatcher. “We have a deceased male, indeterminate causes, in the bathroom in the back of the unit,” he said before he hung up.

  “They’re coming.” Graham stepped toward me. “You okay?”

  I straightened, nodding. “I told you there were rats. Seriously, brain bleach needs to be a thing. Somebody in the lab should get on that.”

  He smiled, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Jokes mean you’re not in shock. I think we can wait farther from the vermin, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “It’s vastly preferable, as a matter of fact.” We couldn’t do anything to help that guy, and the scene behind that door would rattle anybody. I shuffled my feet next to Graham until I was sure my watery knees would hold me up.

  We reached the living room, the hallway much shorter on the return trip, and exchanged a look. “So.” Graham took his arm back. I missed the warmth. “My days haven’t been this interesting since you left. I’ll say that.”

  “I’m not sure I’m all that happy to know I bring the disgusting and alarming to this relationship.” I took in the threadbare little room. The walls were the kind of variegated rust-on-white that meant the roof leaked, the floor covered mostly with the same linoleum I’d puked on in the bathroom, but bare all the way to the plywood subfloor in three places. There was no couch, only a loveseat worn clean through to the Styrofoam padding across most of the cockeyed right cushion and a card table next to it topped with a neat stack of envelopes and papers.

  The only thing in the room made in this century was the TV, a massive flat-screen anchored to the wall opposite the loveseat. I walked over and checked the brand. Sony. In the floor at my feet lay a sound bar, a Blu-ray player, and a PlayStation.

  “What’s missing?” I asked.

  Graham pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to flip through the mail on the table as I turned my head to the sound of sirens in the distance.

  I should duck out. Graham would get it. But I still had a few blocks’ worth of looking around before my being here would cause him a headache.

  I turned to him when I noticed he hadn’t answered me. “You okay, Hardin? What’ve you got over there?”

  I stepped closer when his only reply was a furrowed brow.

  The mail pushed to one side, Graham was using the pen to scatter thin papers across the tabletop. I leaned over his shoulder, my mouth going dry when I saw what had him so fascinated.

  Newspaper clippings. More than a dozen.

  Every one with a photo of Tenley.

  Graham shook his head. “What the hell was this girl into?”

  I couldn’t answer, pulling my phone from my back pocket and snapping photos of the table, getting two close ones of the clippings. Clicking back to the home screen, I spotted an unread text.

  Jim.

  Please, God, something. Anything. I touched the little green square.

  No sign of current or past pregnancy. BAC of point one nine, though.

  Dimitri was right: That wasn’t just a little tipsy. Tenley was wasted. I sent back a Thanks as the sirens got louder, and turned back to Graham with an apologetic half frown. “They’re only a couple blocks out. I should—”

  He nodded. “I’ll get them going and meet you down the block in twenty?”

  I kept one hand on my holster as I descended the steps, checking both sides of the lobby and the sidewalk before climbing into my truck. I rounded the southern corner of the street as the first patrol car appeared in my rearview.

  In four minutes, Ray’s apartment would be taped off, lit by spots, and full of cops and coroners doing their thing, the stench obfuscated by the VapoRub slathered on everyone’s top lip.

  I let my head fall back against the seat, the stomping we’d heard as we climbed the stairs ra
ttling around my thoughts. Clearly, whoever that guy was had been in that bathroom a while. We couldn’t have just missed the killer. But then where did the steps come from? And where the hell did they go? There wasn’t a back door, or a fire exit.

  And how in God’s name did Tenley Andre fit into this? Why would a girl like her end up the center of a porn peddler’s fantasies?

  Money? She was posing as Stella to blackmail her folks, but by the looks of those emails, her mom had cut that off.

  I wriggled my phone free and opened a text to Archie, pasting in the photos I’d taken of the table.

  Pretty sure we found Ray. Unfortunately for him, it looks like somebody else found him first. And look what was on the table in his living room. Send.

  But if Ray had something to do with Tenley’s death, why was he rat food?

  Not the first fucking clue.

  I pulled a crumpled pack and a purple Bic lighter from the glove box, plopped a cigarette on my lower lip, and lit it with shaking fingers. Smoking in the car was usually a no-go for me, but rats eating a dead guy meant normal rules didn’t apply. Inhaling, I closed my eyes and let the calm spread outward from my lungs.

  This whole thing just kept getting murkier. Every time I thought we might get somewhere, a new kind of crazy popped up.

  And Jesus, the secrets. There was a new one under every rock we turned.

  Maybe someone wanted to make sure Ray didn’t spill any. Someone who was in that video with Jessa? And what, if anything, did Tenley have to do with any of it?

  I wrapped my arms tight around myself, chilled in the stifling, sun-drenched car.

  The horror scene in that bathroom added a whole new level of disturbing to this case: Now, we had a murderer running scared. A murderer who had no issues with killing to cover his tracks.

  A murderer I might’ve inadvertently handed my cell number to an hour ago.

  Tick-tock.

  Graham slid into his seat without a word, his blank face staring straight out the windshield until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Everything squared away?” I asked.

  “Coroners are on their way.” His voice sounded hollow. “Forensics is working the bathroom now.” I put a hand on his arm. Our line of work wasn’t known for a tendency to boredom, but that scene was enough to give Dirty Harry himself nightmares. How was anyone working in that bathroom?

  “Um. The rats?”

  “Gassed. Sent to the lab in case they ate some important evidence.” Graham’s tone dripped with as much disgust as I felt. Important bits of the dead guy, that’s what he meant. Ick.

  “And the guy . . .” I couldn’t finish that one.

  “Ray Wooley, online porn king to the sick and twisted. Once the rats were dead, we got a look at his face. Well. At enough of it to ID him. Kinda poetic, in a way, given what you said on the way over about the video of the DuGray girl. The lead tech said it looked like he was castrated. Probably severed his femoral artery and he bled out.” Graham’s voice faded on the last words as I started the engine and turned on the radio.

  “Damn Skye Morrow,” I muttered. “Always the ratings above everything else.”

  “She didn’t make the guy post disgusting videos of women being assaulted, Faith,” Graham said in his best Now be fair voice.

  “No, but she put it on TV instead of calling the police. Hell, Archie said they were already looking into his site. Less than twenty-four hours after she put his name and face on the TV, he’s rat food, and because somebody cut off his—”

  Before I could finish, a tap at my window made Graham reach for his gun. I jumped such that I whacked my sore leg on the steering wheel, and my face twisted into a scowl when I saw the microphone on the other side of the glass.

  “Speak of the devil . . .”

  “And the devil appears,” Graham murmured. “That’s creepy timing even to me.”

  “Haven’t we seen enough of you for one day?” I asked as I lowered the window.

  “Ranger McClellan, Detective Hardin—fancy meeting you here. Does Ray Wooley have something to do with Tenley Andre’s death? Was she making pornographic videos?” Skye didn’t even bother to hide the glee under the curiosity in her voice.

  I would’ve had a smart-ass comeback for that on a normal day, but today was turning out to be anything but.

  Tenley. Making videos for Ray?

  Surely not.

  Skye’s eyebrows went up when I didn’t bite her head off. “Is that a yes, Officer?”

  Not a chance. I shook my head.

  “We could ask him, if he wasn’t dead,” I said. “Proud of yourself today, Skye?”

  She pursed her lips, jagged wrinkles rippling unevenly through the collagen. “I was doing my job, Ranger. Perhaps if y’all were a little better at yours, we wouldn’t have a murderer on the loose for me to warn folks about.”

  My temper bubbled. “Your job? Channel two is in the business of creating vigilantes these days? Ad revenue must be down farther than we thought.”

  “That’s a skoosh dramatic, don’t you think? Do you have proof this man’s death was in any way related to our exclusive News2 investigation?” Skye stuck the mic out again and it took everything in me not to snatch it from her hand and bop her over the head with it.

  “No comment.” I smiled straight into the yellow rose lapel pin I knew held a camera and rolled the window up. Skye shook her head and marched toward Wooley’s building. I watched in the rearview, poking Graham when she got turned away by the APD sentries in the mail foyer. “She knows she’s not just walking into a crime scene,” I said. “What is she up to?”

  We turned in the seat for a better view as Skye made a show of walking back out to the street before she doubled back and ducked into the alley between that building and the next one over.

  “Tenacious, isn’t she?” Graham asked.

  “Reckless. Stubborn,” I said.

  “Why do you hate her so much?” Graham asked. “You’ve never said in all the time we’ve known each other.”

  I shook my head. “She’s just . . . sleazy. That’s all.”

  Graham shook his head. “Sure.” He drew out the middle vowel.

  I pulled out my phone and opened another text to Archie before I put the car in gear. You at the office?

  I waited. Got a dotty bubble. Always. My icy trail on Jessa DuGray is suddenly hotter than a whole peck of ghost peppers. You coming by?

  We need to dig deeper on this Wooley guy. Can I bring Graham with me?

  Buzz. I already have a jacket on Wooley. Hoping something would lead me to the sick bastard who did this to Jessa. Nothing too serious, though, and all his known associates are small-time crooks and dealers.

  I frowned, typing again. Damn. And we’re sure it wasn’t him? On the tape?

  Buzz. I’m not sure of anything. Cyber is analyzing it. One guy swears he recognizes the voice.

  Be right there.

  I turned to Graham. “Want to see the best this state has to offer in action, maybe figure this out as a bonus?”

  “I’ll skip right past being insulted that you’re not talking about me and say for the love of God, if you know someone who can make sense of this, lead on.”

  The first half of the drive was quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “So, if this guy got off on watching sexual assaults and he’d fixated on Tenley . . .” Graham let the sentence trail.

  I nodded. “Maybe he’s our guy?”

  “Was she raped?”

  “Can’t say for sure. But Jim took swabs this morning and we have all the DNA we could ever need from Captain Porn. So we can find out as soon as someone has time to test it.”

  “I have a new friend at the lab. Let me see if I can ask a favor.” Something in the way Graham said that pulled my eyes his way.

  “Woman friend?”

  “It’s nothing serious.” He said it too quickly, and the lurch in my gut caught me off guard. I didn’t care. Much.

 
But why did I care at all? That’s the part that irked me. Graham was just Graham. So I hadn’t seen him in a while. So I hadn’t had so much as a casual hookup in more than a while.

  We had work to do.

  “No big deal if it is, you know.” I went for nonchalant, but neutral was the closest I could get.

  “I know. Just wanted to be clear.”

  “A favor would be helpful,” I said.

  He unlocked his phone. “No promises, but I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “Be extra charming.”

  “Always.”

  I focused on the road while he tapped at his screen. Maybe this was it. Ray was the big bad, and now he was dead, and the whole city could sleep a little easier. I would call Rebecca Stuart at channel four and tip her off as soon as we had it nailed down—the best way to punish Skye was to offer a scoop to someone else. She loved her exclusives more than her shoe collection.

  Like Ray. He was yesterday’s scoop.

  Except Ray was dead.

  Damn.

  I thumped the steering wheel with one fist.

  “What’s wrong?” Graham looked up from his phone.

  “It looks like Ray Wooley was obsessed with Tenley. He had that vile video of Jessa. If he killed them both, we have a nice little gift-wrapped case to deliver to the DA. But then who killed Ray?” I shook my head. “The web here just keeps spreading and tangling around itself.”

  “I’m sure we’ll have no shortage of suspects. But we’ll get him, Faith.”

  Sure we would. But we were up to three corpses and counting.

  So the trick would be to manage that before he got somebody else.

  30

  “Just when you think you’ve been on this job long enough to see every damn thing.” Archie grimaced at my rundown of the scene at Ray’s apartment. “Any idea how long till you’ll have anything concrete?”

  “Hopefully the rats didn’t eat his prints, but Graham said forensics was sure on the ID from his license photo even if they did, and there was no other name on the lease,” I said, leaning my head against the wall. We were back in the conference room, photos and reports spread across the table. “This story fits with what we’ve already got, at least on Jessa.” I pointed to the report I’d dropped off the day before. “The paint thinner on her clothes—I could buy that coming off any of the furniture in that apartment. And Graham has a friend at the lab who might be able to get us a DNA comparison on Ray and our victims sooner than the normal slow to never.” Even with the modified rapid-analysis system, a person had to study the profile and interpret the results for them to be of any use. There weren’t enough hours in the day or techs in the lab.