Jasmine (17 page)

Chapter 16

McKee looked around the dump area.
The woman in the dumpster had been dead for less than twelve hours. What the
person had done to her would be forever burned in his memory. He looked up when
he heard his name. Captain Grant came toward him and she didn’t look happy to
see him.

“Howdy, Capt. Nice morning,
wouldn’t you say?” He stood up and towered over her. But for reasons he
couldn’t explain she still made him feel small. “I think it’s going to be a
hot—”

“Don’t even try that good ol’ boy
shit on me, McKee. What the fuck are you doing at my crime scene? You don’t
work for me last time I looked.” She glanced around the area and her men. In a
lower voice, she asked him what he knew she would. “Does this have anything to
do with your family?”

He nodded. “We put a tracker in
one of the books that Jazz signed yesterday. The guy had been on our radar for
a couple of days. And before you get all huffy, let me finish.” He smiled when
she snorted. “We had nothing on him. Not even a name until this morning. Sin
pulled some fancy moves and got the tracker on him and his prints all in one. We
even got a nice bit of his sample too. Seems his profile has been in a few
murders around the state and no one had anything to go on. Now we have a
picture to go with a bit more.”

He handed her the printout they’d
gotten this morning. McKee didn’t know who Alyssa knew in the lab, but they’d
gotten these results faster than the feds would have. He so loved being a
private dick with lots of toys to catch the bad guys. He looked around the site
again as Cait read over the report. He noticed something shiny just under the
dumpster.

He was fishing it out when Cait
came up behind him. “You found this girl because of the tracking device,
right?” He said yes. “Then tell me how that led you to the girl.”

“It was in the book, which we
found wrapped up in the plastic. And this wasn’t just a spur of the moment kind
of killing, Capt. He brought stuff to hide the evidence. Her body was covered
in bleach and laundry detergents. And from the soap residue we found around
this area I would say that he cleaned himself up here as well.”

He pulled the knife free. It might
have been from something else and not with this crime scene, but he had a
hunch. He turned on his heel to look at Cait with the knife pinched between his
finger and thumb. She immediately called for an evidence baggie. He looked at
the knife as they waited.

It was a nice one and sharpened to
a fine hone. He figured that it would cost in the neighborhood of around five
hundred bucks at one of the shops on Richardson. He looked up at Cait when she
whistled.

“I’ve seen that before. Not that
one maybe, but one like it. Its army issue. Top of the line, usually carried by
some of the darker forces they have. Might want to run it by Sin. I’m betting
she can even tell you what tour it’s from.” She handed him a Clorox wipe as she
continued. “This guy, you have a name for him yet?”

“Just a few aliases. I’m thinking
I’ll call Sin and see if she’s busy. I know she was out on an assignment this
morning and she’s probably biting at the chain they have her on right now.” McKee
grinned before he told her why. “She was…she said she fell. Thing is, I don’t
think I’ve ever seen her fall unless she was falling on top of Payton. Just
between us, he told me she was shot. Girl is a walking danger zone.”

McKee laughed out loud when Cait
started cussing. He was glad to see someone else get upset over it. Payton was
a really laid back guy except when it came to his wife and daughter. The man
nearly came unglued when the call had come through that she’d been hurt. And he
wasn’t so sure he’d be any different if it had been his wife. Lilliane was the
world to him and he was really looking forward to his child coming any day now.

“Damned girl. She needs to have
her ass beaten. I swear…” She looked up at him when he laughed again. “This is
so not like me in the line of duty. I wear a vest. She, on the other hand, is
out there in those skinny clothes making men drool then shoot at her.”

“Yeah, but she’s fucking good at
it.” He led her over to the body that they had covered up. He looked up at her.
“You ready for this? The bleach did a number on her skin and, well…I think
maybe he poured some down her throat. I’m thinking maybe she might have gone
down on him and he came in her mouth. Seems a bit of an overkill when he left
her belly full.”

“Not if she didn’t have time to
swallow.” He pulled back the tarp and Cait leaned down. “How many wounds and
what killed her, do you know?”

“Seventeen, and it looks like he
got her straight through the heart. The others, the ones on her back, look to
me like she was lying down. If they were in his vehicle then maybe she was
laying over his lap giving it to him and he tortured her while she was doing
it. She had to fucking hurt. I asked around and this hooker is only into
straight shit. Her name is…” He pulled his notepad out of his pocket. “Damsel. Thinking
that’s a fun name, I had somebody run it for me. She’s Roslyn Stafford from
Cincinnati. She was thirty-six with a few priors of prostitution and a couple
petty shoplifting. She had a small drug bust about four years ago, but nothing
major. Her pimp, get this, is our boy Donny Newton. Questioned him and he has
an air tight. Too bad, I really hate that guy.”

Newton was a small time hustler
and big time prick. He didn’t treat his girls too badly, but he did run a harem
of them. McKee had had a couple of run-ins with him in the past few months,
mostly about some fights he’d had when one of the customers had an issue. He
was sure that Cait had the same problems.

“Let’s get her loaded. Then I want
you to give me all you have on this scene. I’m not going to even ask you to
fudge your knowledge of how you found her. Let’s just put it down as you were a
concerned citizen and not a fucking dick.”

Shamus grinned. “You wound me,
Capt. I am concerned citizen. And I was just walking by the area when
this…smell came from this area and I thought I’d look around.” She snorted
again. “You know, I’ve never known you to be a skeptic.”

The body was loaded into the van
and she and McKee looked around the area again. He was glad she was there. It
made his job easier because she was one hell of a cop. They talked about the
case and the way their family was being targeted. He told her that they were
taking every precaution with the other two, including Grace, who told the
family she was not coming home.

“I don’t know Grace well. She was
always so quiet when they came around. And when she moved away when she turned
seventeen no one really blamed her,” Cait said as she walked him to his car. “There
was always something so wounded about her. Like she has this major secret that
she is terrified to tell anyone, or to let anyone get close enough to her to
help.”

McKee agreed. He had only seen
Gracie, as they all called her, a few times. Mostly, it was over a quick
weekend at one of the weddings, but she called Jazzie the most. He slipped
another file to Cait that he pulled from his car.

“Payton and I wanted you to see
this. It might not be anything, but then again…” He watched her look the file
over. “We don’t have anything solid on any of those men, but we do have enough
to know that they were known to Roscoe. I know he’s dead, but someone is
pulling the strings. What we don’t know could fill a fucking book. But that
information could lead us a bit closer to
who
. I’m thinking that as soon
as we figure out the ‘why,’ the ‘who’ might be a bit easier.”

McKee took a picture of the knife
then sent it to Sin. She said she was in the middle of something right now, but
would get back to him. He figured she was probably begging either Payton or her
commanding officer to let her go back to work and he hoped to hell neither of
them gave in. He grinned. He might just let it slip to her brother that she was
hurt. He could bring her to heel faster than anyone.

McKee decided to make another
stop. He was just going into the flower shop when his phone went off again. He
answered with a frown. He didn’t get calls from Nathan all that often and was
sure this wasn’t going to be good.

~~~

Jazzie watched the police pull up.
She wasn’t at all surprised to see Cait Grant slip out and McKee to pull up
behind the police captain. She was surprised to see her brother and Lilliane
pull in. She wondered where Sin was, but didn’t get a chance to ask when she
was suddenly being hugged to death. Cain could hug like it was his mission. She
turned and glared at Nathan again. He just couldn’t let it go.

Someone had broken in. Not only
had they broken in, but they had destroyed the place. Everything she had,
including the food in the refrigerator, had been tossed around. There was a jar
of mayo that was even spread over the couch in the living room and her bathroom
had been…she wasn’t sure what they had thrown all over in there, but if the
smell was any indication it was shit. She was more pissed than scared. The only
room that hadn’t been messed up was her office. And it wasn’t for lack of
trying.

She’d gotten into the habit of
locking her office door when she’d lived in the apartment and she hadn’t gotten
out of it. She looked again at the mess on the lawn and thought about all the
work that would have been lost if they’d gotten in there.

The door had been pried on. The
jamb around it had so many gouges that it looked like someone had used a
chainsaw on it. Jazzie was glad now that she’d put in the reinforced steel
doors and had had the windows throughout the house barred. Cait came at her
with what she’d always assumed was her take-no-prisoners look.

“You all right?” Jazzie nodded and,
before she could tell her that she was fine, Cait continued. “Have you touched
anything? Or noticed anything that’s missing?”

“No, I don’t know. It’s a mess. I’m
sure…they didn’t get into my office, but the door will need to be replaced and
I’ll have to paint again. I hate painting.” Cait looked at her funny. “I’m
nervous, so sue me. I babble when I’m nervous.”

Nathan put his arms around her and
pulled her into his embrace. She leaned back against him, but was no less
pissed about what he’d done. She’d told him to forget it, nothing was taken
that she could see and they were both all right.

“We weren’t home. When we got back
today we saw that the front door was open and called Shamus and Payton. I’m
assuming one of them called you,” Nathan said softly.

“McKee. He was with me not five
minutes before he got the call. I was just around the corner when he called me
to tell me there had been a break in.” Cait looked up when someone said her
name. “They cleared the house, so if you wouldn’t mind going through it with
one of my officers, we’ll see what they might have taken.”

Jazzie told her she’d already been
through it when Nathan told her there was no one there. “Nothing’s gone that I
can see. Whoever it was…Cait, they tore up everything, even my food.” She took
several deep breaths. She didn’t want to cry and she wouldn’t. Not now, at any
rate. She started for the door when Cait stopped her. She was looking at the
door.

“They didn’t break in. Does anyone
besides you and Nathan have a key to this place?” Jazzie shook her head, but
before she could say that the door was messed up too Cait continued. “See the
glass? It’s broken outside the house, not in. Which means that they were in the
house before they broke the glass to make it look this way. Whoever broke into
your house either had a key or they are good at picking locks.”

Jazzie knew little about crime
scenes, but she had the beginnings of a major story brewing in her mind as she
walked behind Cait and noted all the damage. The rooms took on a more surreal
look this time. She had decided to look at this from a reader’s point of view
rather than hers. It made it easier for one thing, and for another she could
see things the way she described them. Sort of like she’d opened a blank page
and was taking it all in to tell her readers about it.

“The walls had been gouged with
something sharp,” she started. “The carpet is covered in everything imaginable,
including things I’m sure that I don’t want to think about. The upholstery has
been cut on all the furniture and all the stuffing pulled out of not only the
cushions, but the back and arms too. The music collection was extensive, about
three hundred together, and every one of the cases has been broken and all the
discs are shattered. The television is broken. I think…did they throw a plant
through it? Who throws plants through televisions?” She wasn’t really looking
for an answer, just babbling again, but Nathan answered her anyway.

“Sick people. They even broke the
remote. I guess we’d have to replace the television anyway. It’s easier than
trying to reprogram one of those suckers.” He picked the plant out of the
screen and set it on the floor. “I think we can save this one.”

She smiled at him. He was trying
to be humorous and, while it didn’t work, she did appreciate it. This was too
much. She looked around again, then at Cait. She could no longer fight the
tears.

“I can’t stay here now. I have
to…why did they do this? I’ve never done anything to anyone that would warrant
this much…this much meanness.” She didn’t manage to catch the sob that spilled
from her lips. “I need to go, please. If you need anything else would you mind
asking Nathan?”

Without waiting for an answer she
bolted from the room and the house. She’d sell it now. She’d have to. She no
longer felt like she was safe there. It would be tainted, thanks to that
person. She was nearly to the car again when someone grabbed her from behind.
She started to struggle, but heard Nathan tell her it was him and she sagged
against him.