The touch of murder, p.8
The Touch of Murder, page 8
“Go ahead,” Veronica said. And then she remembered that the captain had put Freddie in charge. Her partner agreed.
“All done.”
“Court, can you hold the scene until CSU finishes up?” Veronica asked.
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.”
Freddie and Veronica walked back to the road.
“I can go alone if you want,” her partner offered when they were out of earshot of the others.
Veronica sighed.
Part of her wanted to tell him, yeah, go ahead. You owe me. You owe me big time.
But that was petty.
And the truth was, if Freddie deserved to be punished, then she did, too.
“No, let’s go together—let’s go break the bad news to Cooper Mills’ next of kin.”
Chapter 18
Sheriff Steve Burns was in shock.
Of course, he recognized Jake ‘Bunky’ Thompson. How could he not?
After all, he’d met up with the man the night before.
Bunky was his supplier. This complicated things significantly, but Steve had come up with a plan that he hoped would straighten things out.
It was simple, but weren’t those always the best kinds of plans?
Steve would play the undercover card, lie to Bunky, and convince him that all the heroin he’d purchased up to this point was in evidence.
And if Bunky didn’t snitch, he’d go down.
DEA Agent Allison claimed that nobody was talking, but Steve could be persuasive.
What Steve would be able to get out Bunky was another issue entirely. Steve had never seen the snake and eye logo on any of the man’s product. Not once.
And the man’s gear wasn’t tainted with fentanyl. At least, he didn’t think so. Fucking hoped not.
That was Steve’s plan, but then everything changed when he spotted the Greenham PD cruiser. He got the fuck out of there as fast as he could. Then he’d placed a few calls.
Bunky was dead.
Murdered.
That, in and of itself, wasn’t overly surprising. After all, the man worked a dangerous profession.
The way he was killed, though? Throat slit and lungs pulled out of his body? That was not an occupational hazard.
That was something almost ritualistic.
And Steve had been there.
Two things went through his mind, both incredibly selfish considering what had happened to Bunky. But self-preservation was a powerful motivator.
The first, was that it could have been him. He could have been brutally murdered.
The second was that he had been there and while Steve always made sure to be careful, his priority was to score.
And that could make you sloppy.
His heart was racing, and even though Steve had long since made up a set of rules to follow, primarily, one shot in the morning and one at night, none during the day, his eyes drifted to the glovebox.
If he was going down, then—
Someone knocked on his window and he jumped.
“Fucking hell.”
He’d been so lost in thought that he didn’t notice Deputy McVeigh approach. Steve rolled down the window.
“Sheriff Burns?”
“Yeah?” Steve’s car was still running, and his hand instinctively went to the gearshift.
“I was thinking that maybe you’d want me to take this case. Sit this one out, you know?” The man’s words sounded deliberate, practiced.
Steve’s eyes narrowed; this was not what he’d expected. He knew Marcus McVeigh wanted his job, but he’d never been this direct before.
“What are you talking about?”
McVeigh averted his eyes, but his voice remained strong.
“Given the nature of the case, perhaps you wouldn’t mind letting me take it on.”
The sheriff’s grip tightened on the gearshift.
“What do you mean by nature of the case?” Steve dared.
McVeigh knew he’d taken the drugs from the evidence locker—nobody else could have gotten that footage. He was holding on to it, waiting for his moment.
Steve was sure of it.
But the man couldn’t possibly know about everything else. About sleeping in his car.
About using.
About meeting with people like Bunky.
Nobody knew that. And nobody ever would.
McVeigh stiffened.
“What did you mean by that comment, Marcus? If you have the balls to—”
A large figure appeared behind the deputy.
“Sheriff,” DEA Agent Troy Allison said with a nod. McVeigh stepped aside. “Back already?”
“Jake Thompson’s dead,” Steve said flatly, wanting to get this out of the way.
Marcus McVeigh’s eyes widened, his coup suddenly forgotten.
“What?”
“Yeah, murdered.”
Steve briefly explained what he’d learned from Greenham PD about Bunky’s death. With each word, McVeigh’s eyelids retracted further while Troy’s moved in the opposite direction. When he mentioned the lungs being pulled out, both men made identical faces.
“Damn it,” Troy said. “There goes our fucking link.”
“Any suspects?” McVeigh asked, more concerned about the brutal nature of the crime in Bear County than losing their tenuous connection to an expired New York cartel.
“No,” Steve answered. “Nothing yet.”
But there could be, right, Steve? There could be DNA left at the scene. A fingerprint? Didn’t you take your gloves off when you were counting the cash for Bunky? A hair? Did you run your hands through your hair?
No, of course not. I dressed in black, hood pulled over my eyes. Parked my squad car far away. If anybody spotted me, I’d go with the tried and true: undercover.
“All right, well, Sheriff,” Agent Allison said, lighting a cigarette. “Thank you anyway. Back to fucking square one.”
Troy squeezed McVeigh’s shoulder and started to walk away.
Undercover… undercover.
The word refused to leave his brain.
“Maybe not,” Steve blurted.
Troy slowly turned, his head engulfed in a gray cloud of smoke.
Oh, shit.
Steve hadn’t thought this through.
“Sheriff, maybe it’s—” McVeigh tried to intervene, but Troy didn’t strike Steve as the type of person who cared much for interruptions.
“What do you mean?”
Steve finally took his hand off the gearshift, flexed his fingers, and shut off his car.
“I’m not giving up, yet,” he said, staring directly at McVeigh as he spoke. “I know this place, I know this area, I know this County. But I don’t think the County knows me. I’m going undercover.”
Chapter 19
“I don’t know about ‘SINNER,’” Freddie said from the passenger seat of Veronica’s car, “but Cooper Mills sure as hell was no saint.”
He was on his laptop, pulling up the victim’s rap sheet. Most of the charges that Freddie read off were white-collar in nature.
There were two noticeable outliers.
“Looks like he also liked to use his wife as a punching bag.”
Veronica raised an eyebrow, encouraging her partner to continue.
“Twice, he was arrested for assault and battery, domestic. Both times the charges were dropped.”
It made Veronica sick to her stomach to hear this. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a unique tale. There was a considerable amount of confidence and courage needed to report one’s spouse for domestic assault. When this happened, it was usually following an extremely volatile and emotionally charged period. After these hormonal inputs waned, the next day, for instance, regret would slowly set in. Fear and insecurity soon followed, especially because these characteristics had been indoctrinated into them by their abuser.
They refused to press charges and thus the cycle repeated.
“So, we have two victims from two very different walks of life. Both were ‘sinners’—who isn’t—and it’s unlikely that there is a link between them. Can they be completely random?” Veronica mused.
Freddie shrugged.
“It didn’t look random in the security footage. But I’m not sure.”
Cooper and Molly Mills lived in a modern detached home in a quiet Meadowbrook neighborhood about ten minutes from his office. She passed a police car about half a block away—as per her instructions, the officer was to watch the home, but not enter—and then parked on the street.
Freddie, sensing her apprehension, offered to take the lead.
Veronica didn’t argue.
“All right, let’s get this over with. You have a picture of Jake Thompson?”
Freddie did and handed it to her. She tucked it out of sight while her partner knocked on the door.
After about a minute, a thin, dark-haired woman peered out. Veronica had her badge at the ready, but she hadn’t even fully raised it before the woman broke down.
TV—Veronica blamed TV. Watch enough cop shows and you came to believe that two stern-faced people on your porch with badges could only mean one thing.
And it was never good.
“Please,” Molly begged as if Veronica and Freddie turning around and leaving would change the facts.
“Mrs. Mills, I’m so sorry to tell you this,” Freddie said. “Your husband, Cooper, is dead.”
“No,” the woman sobbed. “Please, no.”
Molly surprised Veronica by reaching out to her.
Veronica wasn’t sure what to do. She remembered when she’d told Dahlia, Marlowe Lerman’s handler, that her boss was dead. Marlowe had treated the mousy woman like crap, but Dahlia had broken down just the same.
So did Molly Mills.
Veronica embraced the woman.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly into the woman’s hair.
After thirty seconds or so, Molly Mills’ sobs became silent tears and she pulled away from Veronica. Her face was puffy from crying, but Veronica thought she could see some bruising around her left temple that seemed unrelated to the woman’s grief.
Cooper Mills’ doing, no doubt.
Sinner.
“What happened?” Molly sniffed. “What happened to Coop?”
“He was killed,” Freddie said, frankly. “Murdered.”
“No.”
This reinvigorated Molly’s sobs. She reached out again, but this time Veronica gently guided her hands away.
“I know it’s difficult to talk right now,” Freddie continued. He nodded at Veronica, and she pulled out the photo of Jake Thompson. “But if we want to find out who did this, we’re going to need your help. Can you do that?”
Shock, ambivalence—good enough for Veronica.
“Have you seen this man before?”
To her credit, despite her condition, Molly took a good look at the photo.
“No, I don’t know him. Do you think—”
“He’s not a suspect,” Freddie said quickly. “Have you ever seen your husband with this man?”
Molly shook her head.
“Okay, can you think of anyone who would want to hurt your husband?”
“No. No,” she protested, “he was a… good… man… I don’t understand. Why—”
Veronica could feel that she was losing her.
“Mrs. Mills, I need you to tell me the truth, okay?”
“I am! I—”
Veronica grabbed the woman by the shoulders.
“Did your husband take drugs? I’m not talking about smoking the occasional joint, but pills? Cocaine? Anything stronger? We need you to be honest.”
The woman made a face.
“No.”
Veronica inhaled deeply. She smelled no lies.
“Cooper never did drugs. He didn’t smoke. He liked to drink, maybe a little too much. But not drugs.”
Molly was telling the truth. It had been a long shot—Cooper Mills, despite his faults and transgressions was a wealthy accountant. It wasn’t impossible to be a successful, functioning addict, but it was rare. And Veronica hadn’t noticed any of the telltale signs of drug abuse on the man’s corpse.
“How… how did Coop die?”
Veronica pictured Cooper lying on his bare stomach, his lungs torn from his back.
“He was killed with a knife, Mrs. Mills,” Veronica said, hoping that this was sufficient.
It wasn’t.
“But how? Was he stabbed or cut, or… I don’t understand…”
Molly broke down a third time, and this was particularly difficult for Veronica to watch. Waves of thick blue smoke started to come off the woman’s head and shoulders as her perspiration intensified.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to make sense of things,” Veronica said, her voice calm and even. “Sometimes bad shit just happens.” She sighed. “We’re going to find out who did this to your husband, Molly. And when we do, they will face justice.”
In the back of her mind, Veronica heard a small voice.
It was a voice reminding her that when Veronica Shade dealt justice, it wasn’t the same as other members of law enforcement.
Just ask Gloria Trammell.
And this voice didn’t belong to her.
It belonged to Dante Fiori.
Once a killer, always a killer.
Chapter 20
“Like I said earlier, Jake Thompson was as high as we got up the chain with this new product.” DEA Agent Troy Allison tapped the image of the snake eating the eyeball. “But, in Needle Point, this man,” now he indicated the photo of a black man with a shaved head, ratty goatee, and a small upside cross tattoo just outside and below his left eye, “usually runs the show. His name is Damien ‘Toots’ Blackwell. His top lieutenant is Kendrick ‘Trigger’ Holchester.” Troy flipped to a third photo. Like Damien, Kendrick was also black, with an afro, and deep grooves around his mouth that appeared almost gray on his dark skin.
Steve recognized Kendrick—he’d seen him while scoring from Jake about a month back.
“I don’t really understand why it has to be you,” Marcus McVeigh said. Then, realizing how he sounded, quickly followed up with, “It should be a younger officer. I mean, someone could recognize you. I know you try to keep a low profile, but you were on the news with the dollmaker and the—”
“Look,” Troy interrupted. He leaned on his elbows and stretched across the table. They were alone in the conference room, and the door and blinds were closed, but Troy felt the need to lower his voice, nonetheless. “I’m not sure if it’s Bear County or Greenham PD, but there’s some chatter about law enforcement being involved.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed.
Had someone spotted him? Did someone see him in Needle Point?
His plan was on the verge of cratering. Instead of solving his problems, maybe it was bound to add to them.
“Just chatter for now,” Troy specified. “Unconfirmed, but… it’s probably best if we keep it in-house if you know what I’m sayin’.”
“I’ll do it, then,” McVeigh offered. “Let me go undercover.”
Steve didn’t know if McVeigh was so desperate to take his spot because of how it would play out in the press if they managed to overthrow this new cartel, or if he was aware of how deeply the sheriff’s addiction ran.
If that was the case, was he trying to protect Steve?
“No.” Steve shook his head. “It should be me. If anything happened to you while I was just sitting here…”
“The sheriff’s right. To be honest, I doubt Toots or Trigger pay much attention to the news. And,” Troy looked at Steve, “no offense, but if we dirty you up a little, you could pass as a junkie.”
Closer to the truth than you can ever imagine.
“Been a rough couple weeks,” —months— “but that settles it.”
“Good.”
Steve was having a difficult time getting a read on Troy. He seemed brutally honest and rough around the edges. Based on his limited experience with the DEA, this wasn’t terribly uncommon. But there was something different about the man, too. Something the sheriff couldn’t put his finger on.
“I think we should start tonight,” Steve offered. When McVeigh looked like he was about to interject, he quickly added, “there might be someone out there hunting these guys—Jake was viciously murdered. Who knows, maybe while I’m trying to figure out where the drugs are coming from, I’ll get a lead on whoever killed Jake.”
“Right,” Troy agreed. “I think this should just stay between us, too.”
McVeigh held his hand out in protest.
“He can’t go undercover without—”
“It’s fine.”
“No, this…” McVeigh sighed and lowered his voice. “This is fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, you know what else is fucked up?” Troy asked gruffly. “Heroin laced with fentanyl that costs the same as a joint. A fucking joint. That’s fucked up.”
Troy held McVeigh’s stare for a few seconds as if willing him to argue. When it looked as if his chief deputy was going to say something, Steve rose to his feet.
“That settles it. Nothing leaves this room.” Steve paused. “How are we going to do this, Troy?”
The big man rubbed his palm across his scalp.
“Right. I mean, you’ll probably meet Trigger, first. Man’s a fiend for E. Maybe… maybe you bring him some E. Ask him to trade.”
Troy was making it seem like he was coming up with this off the top of his head, but Steve wasn’t buying it. He’d thought about this plan before. And that meant, more likely than not, they’d tried it before.
And, clearly, it hadn’t worked.
That was what was different about Troy, Steve realized. The man lacked empathy. For the DEA Agent, it was about getting the job done, no matter the cost. And while others might look at this as a positive trait, not Steve.
Because Steve knew the danger of such a Machiavellian attitude. He’d seen it as a State Trooper. It started out noble enough, no breaking any rules, no deals, no compromising—just the job. But then you realized that you could be more effective by maybe stepping a little harder on a suspect’s neck.
Before long you were banging down doors without a warrant. In months, maybe a year or two of accolade after accolade? You were on your path to becoming Wayne Jenkins in the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force.
