Dark Justice (Croft Family Mob Series Book 1) (14 page)

Great.

That made it so much harder.

“Can we run the two women and find something they had in common? Maybe they connect outside the case?” Emma asked. “Maybe they knew each other.”

Curtis could do that. “It’s going to take some time, Emma. I have to tread lightly. While Dimitri has some awesome equipment, I can still get caught if I go in and do a major information dump.”

Dimitri smiled. “I paid a lot for that equipment, so treat it well.”

Curtis just nodded. He couldn’t help but think about what he was going to have to do later when he met with the man. All he could hope was he could talk rationally and run if Dimitri chased. How fast could he possibly be?

“Who’s our third?” Greyson asked, moving them along.

“We have Glenda Mateo.”

Curtis got to work. “Give me one second,” he said, typing furiously to find something from the women.

Tessa watched over his shoulder.

“What did you find?” Emma asked. She recognized that look of determination on his face. It meant one thing.

Curtis was like a dog with a meaty bone.

“I have an idea. The cops and Feds might not have thought about this, and it might…just…work,” he said, punctuating the last three words with key strikes.

As the data scrolled, Tessa gave him a fist bump.

“What?” Greyson asked. The man had yet to send the information over.

“Well, we know he worked with Charlie Tillman, but his last partner, for over five years was Jesse Post. He’s still on the force. I figured the FBI and LVPD would lock up anything to do with Seth, but they might not think a hacker could get past that and head in through his partner. They’d have the same arrests, since they rode together.”

Emma smiled. “I’m buying him a present,” she stated. “Tell Mom what you want and it’s yours. Do you want a pony, Curtis?” she teased.

He snorted.

“How about one more hand to do this typing,” he stated, trying to work as quickly as possible. When it came to Emma and Greyson, they didn’t like to wait.

That trait didn’t die when they turned in their badges.

“I’m almost there.”

Kat headed into the room to stand behind her brother. She watched as the man she loved typed and did what he did best. She couldn’t help but want to cry. She felt like there was a wall between them, and it sucked.

“Hey, Kat,” Emma stated, as she noticed the woman standing there.

Curtis glanced up at the mention of her name, and then went back to work.

“Hello, Emma.”

“We were just talking about you before,” she said, setting the upcoming discussion up for her too. Since they were too chicken to face Dimitri, she was going to force their hands.

It was time.

“You were?”

“Yes, you and Curtis are going to sit down with Dimitri later.”

She looked panicked.

Dimitri touched her cheek to help alleviate the fear in her eyes. He hated that she was suffering. “Katerina, we will talk.”

Curtis finished just in time.

“Got it!” He was trying to return the focus to the case, not their personal life. Curtis really hoped that Emma knew what the hell she was doing or he was a dead man.

This had the potential to blow up.

Oh, yeah…and kill him.

He knew she was right about keeping things from Dimitri, but still there was always that possibility.

Curtis liked living.

“What did you find?” Greyson asked, sitting forward on the couch.

“I found that Glenda Mateo, our third victim, was arrested at one point by Seth and his partner, Jesse. I found her name in his arrest records.”

“Anywhere else?” she asked.

He scrolled.

“Nada, boss.”

Greyson ignored the nickname. It still made his heart skip when one of them called him that. In a way, he missed his job, but in other ways, he didn’t.

Here was the huge difference.

He didn’t have to follow the rules.

Fuck the law.

He was now running it his way.

“Tessa, let’s keep it running from that angle. Let’s find a way to connect all the women to Seth.”

Paris interrupted. “Grey?”

“Yes?”

“Curtis, can you pull up Jesse Post’s personnel file at the LVPD?” Paris asked.

“Sure, Doc.”

He did what the doctor asked as Tessa continued running the man’s arrests.

“What do you see, Paris?” Emma asked.

He swiped it up toward the screen so he could walk them through it step by step.

“He’s not even close to being as stable as his partner. Look at his psych evaluations. They aren’t bad, but he has some flags. Then let’s look at how many times he’s discharged his weapon while on duty. All were classified justified, but still…that’s a warning sign to someone in my profession.”

“How many is a few?” Greyson asked.

“Four.”

Emma whistled. She’d discharged hers more than that, but she’d done it as a detective hunting killers. This man was a beat cop on the strip. The lunatics there were mainly drunk and disorderly, and nothing else. Unless they were all related to a robbery, or some sort of armed mêlée, he shouldn’t have used his gun.

Hell!

He shouldn’t have even unholstered it.

They carried Tasers for that reason.

“I have something,” Tessa offered, scanning the data she was pulling up. “First, I’d like to say something.”

They all waited.

“Dimitri, if I wasn’t madly in love with my husband, I would marry you for this equipment. It’s awesome.”

That made him laugh.

Paris simply stared at her. “Really, Tessie?”

She laughed.

“Uh, children,” Greyson said, getting them to focus.

Tessa was grinning as she sent the information to the screen so they could read along.

“Sallie Mae Patton was arrested six years ago, right when Jesse and Seth hit the street. They brought her in.”

“I want everything you can find on that case.”

“I need time,” Curtis stated. “This equipment is good, but I can’t blow through the firewalls. It takes finesse.”

“You have it. We at least have a few suspects to interview for now. They might not have anything to do with this, but they might be able to give us something to lead us to the person behind this.”

“How long do we have until Seth Bell’s execution?” Paris asked.

“A little over a week,” Emma replied.

He whistled.

“This is going to be a close one.”

They were well aware.

“What about victim four?” Dimitri asked. He loved watching them work. He was glad they weren’t after him. He didn’t doubt they’d likely be damn hard to beat.

If they needed to get around something, they knew how to do it. To the people they were working against in Vegas, they were dangerous.

He wished he could do what they did in their heads. He was simply muscle, and he knew it.

“We have Norma Hatch,” Tessa stated. “She was killed the same way, by strangulation, and then her body was left in the Palms fountain.”

“So our killer hit up the Bellagio, Venetian, MGM, and Palms fountains?” Emma asked. “What’s next?”

“Mandalay Bay,” Tessa offered.

“Of course it is.”

Curtis found something that piqued his interest. “Victim four, Norma Hatch, lived in an apartment building right down the street from our officer.”

“Seth?” Greyson asked.

“No. Jesse Post.”

Emma leaned back. “How the hell did the police miss all of this?” she asked.

No one could answer that question.

Emma picked up her phone, and then realized what she was going to do. She had been ready to call Chris.

Yeah, that was going to be a tough habit to break.

“It’s okay, honey,” Greyson said, seeing the look of pain on her face.

  No, it really wasn’t.

Getting over Christopher Ford, that big goof, was going to be damn hard. It was instinctual to run things by him. They were a team. Not only had he been her boss, but when she’d been on the force, and she needed to bounce things off someone, he was that person.

Shit!

This sucked.

“I’m fine,” she said, refusing to break even more. They had something here, and she wanted to focus on it, not what was going on around them.

“It’s possible that the police, when they investigated this, saw Jesse Post as the one being followed around. If he was Seth’s partner, the man could easily take out women who he saw with his partner, implicating the man.”

“Yeah, but that backfired,” Emma said, saying what all of them were likely thinking, “if he is really innocent.”

“I still think he is,” Paris offered.

Well, they had no choice but to run with it.

“Then we focus on the man’s partners. Who knows more about a person than a spouse, family, or partner?” Greyson asked.

He had a point.

It looked like, they had a direction, and that was a very good thing.

“I have the information on victim five,” Curtis said, “and you’re going to blow a gasket on this one.”

They all looked over at him.

“Spill it.”

“The next body was found not far from where both men normally parked their cruiser. The victim, Daniella McPherson was found strangled, raped, and dumped in the Mandalay Bay fountain. Jesse and Seth had the beat right around the corner.”

That was enough for them to have a good, solid lead. It looked like they were going to start with Jesse Post.

“I want to dig into his life. I also want to do a search on Seth’s first partner. One has a complaint against them, and one had anger issues.”

Curtis began printing out all the information he could on both men before pulling out of the hacked server.

“Things are seldom what they seem,” Emma stated. “Look at Mace. He was betraying us.”

Curtis looked up. “He was an asshole.”

Tessa agreed.

“Well, let’s see if either of Seth’s partners were assholes too.”

They could do that.

“Curtis, get your ass back to Terrace Glen. Tessa and Paris, don’t forget our dinner date tomorrow.”

Paris grinned. “How could I? I love Italian night at Casa Croft. Tessa hides all the carbs in our house. I can’t even look at pasta without her giving me a glare.”

He looked over at his wife.

“See?”

She snorted. “You’re insane.”

“We’ll both be there,” Tessa promised. “Want me to bring something, Emma? Maybe a carb free pasta for my husband?”

Paris was shaking his head.

“I can see you in the monitor, Paris.”

He swallowed.

Emma needed that laughter. She appreciated it. “No, but you’re on salad duty, so be ready to chop. Greyson can’t have buttery garlic bread without some roughage.”

“Seriously? Do you realize I’m a forty two year old man who can choose his own food?”

“Oh, you’re right. I nearly forget that you’re a man who is grounded for not being honest with his wife. Would you like me to focus on that, or that you need to eat a salad?”

“I love salad. In fact, I’ll have one tonight, and one for breakfast too.”

She snorted. “See you then, Archers. Thank you for the help.”

“I’ll go over the hard copies,” Tessa offered.

“I’ll help. I’m finished with patients for the day,” Paris offered, patting his lap.

When Tessa took a seat, she gave him a kiss.

“Catch you later,” Curtis said, cutting off the video call.

When he was gone, Emma glanced over, and Kat had disappeared.

“Where the hell did she go?”

Dimitri laughed. “She took off somewhere between Norma Hatch and Daniella McPherson.”

Greyson was amused. He didn’t doubt that she was trying to make herself scarce.

“I can’t wait until this is out in the open,” Dimitri stated. “I’m really tired of playing
‘find the sister’
.”

Which reminded Emma of something that she needed to address. It was probably good that the woman had disappeared. This was something she and Greyson had yet to discuss.

“I have an idea, and I want to run it by both of you before I bring it up with Curtis and Katerina.”

Dimitri lifted his brow. “I already know I’m going to hate this. If we’re talking about it, it’s going to make my blood pressure go up.”

“Probably, but it’s for the family, and you’d do anything for the family, right?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“I don’t like this at all.”