LOVING HER SOUL MATE (13 page)

But when he looked into her eyes
just now, and felt that surge of protectiveness overtake him, he wondered for
the first time if it could really be true.
 
He wondered if somebody like Shay Turner could view somebody like him as
even a possibility.

Then he quickly decided not.
 
They were just too different.
 
She was young and ambitious and still filled
with those high hopes for life and her fellow man that he continued to lose
every time he saw another dead body in the street.
 
He was a thirty-seven year old,
commitment-phobic rake still hopping in and out of women’s beds as if he was
still some kid in heat.
 
And he didn’t
even have enough courage to sever all ties with a marriage that, for all
intents and purposes, ended years ago.
  
They were just too different.

He therefore uncrossed his legs
and leaned forward.
 
Decided
to make light of their sweet, ephemeral moment.
 
“Don’t listen to that old biddy,” he said as
he pulled a small stack of folded papers out of his back jean pocket.
 
“There’s still good men out there waiting to
snatch up a good girl like you.
 
Not
everybody’s as hopeless a catch as I am.”

“You aren’t hopeless,” Shay found
herself
blurting out and John looked at her.
 
She didn’t mean to say it, she didn’t mean
for a second to be that obvious, but she knew she couldn’t take it back.
 
John saw that war in her eyes: that
hopefulness and apprehensiveness all at once.

And it was Shay’s turn to press
ahead.
 
“What do you have there?” she
asked as she moved to the edge of her seat and looked at the papers in his
hand.
 
“Is it info on those Dodge
murders?”

John was still thrown by her
defense of him, something he wasn’t accustomed to.
 
Most people, especially women, would agree
without hesitation that he was a hopeless case.
 
But not Shay.
 

She smiled that sweet white smile
of hers that he was beginning to adore.
 
“You’re staring, Malone,” she said without looking back up at him.
 
“It’s rude to stare.”

“You don’t think I’m hopeless,
Shay?” he asked her, his heart pounding at the possibility.
 

Shay didn’t mean her comment to be
some defining moment, and she didn’t quite know how to take his response.
 
She looked at him and he could see, even with
those glasses on, how her eyes just sparkled.
 
“No, I don’t think you’re hopeless,” she admitted.

But it wouldn’t work, John
decided.
 
She deserved far better than
some jaded joker like him.
 
It couldn’t
work.
 
And he had to make her know it,
too.
 
“My ex-wife would disagree with
you,” he decided to say.

If the effect was to throw Shay,
it worked.
 
She was thrown.
 
This wife might have been his ex, but
apparently he still had feelings for her or he would not have mentioned her.
 

“I certainly wasn’t implying---,”
she began, but then decided it didn’t matter and shook it off.
 
This was business.
 
They shouldn’t have gotten personal
anyway.
 
She looked at the papers in his
hand.

“What do you have?” she asked.
  

He felt like a jackass going
there, especially since his ex-wife was really a woman he couldn’t stomach, but
he knew he was doing her a big favor in the long run.
 
He couldn’t be committed to one woman if his
life depended on it, and he knew it.
 
And
he also knew that a woman like Shay would demand that commitment.
 
He therefore took the papers and spread them
out onto her tabletop.
 

“Take a look,” he said to her.

Shay moved closer to the coffee
table’s edge and stared at the photocopies in front of her.
 
“These are crime scene photos.”

John nodded.
 
“That’s right.”

Shay began perusing each one.
 
“So there is a connection then?” she asked
absently as she stared at the photos.
 
John leaned back and stared at her.
 
Ronnie had said she was all about career, didn’t have time for any man,
and for some reason this suddenly concerned John.
 
Why wouldn’t she have a life beyond her work,
a smart, sharp, sweet girl like her?
 
Did
that Resden character burn her that badly, he
wondered.

She looked at him, as if she could
feel his stare.
 
A stare, given his comment
about his ex-
wife, that
was beginning to annoy
her.
 
“Well, Captain, is there a
connection?”
              

“Yes.”

“So you believe we have a serial
killer on the loose and all three of these women were his victims?”

“Not three, Shay,” John said.
 
“Thirteen.”

Shay’s eyes blinked, as if she
didn’t hear him correctly, and then stared at him.
 
She had that same intensity he remembered
from their first encounter.
 
“Thirteen?”
she asked, astounded.
 
“What do you mean
thirteen?”
 
When it dawned, her already
large eyes stretched even larger, and she pushed her glasses up further on her
nose.
 
“Are you saying that
there’s
been
thirteen
similar murders in the last three months?”

“Over the
past twelve months, yes.
 
The pattern started out sketchy early on, so
it was easy to miss, but now it’s clear.”

“And all the victims were black?”

“All African-American, female
prostitutes, all murdered in Dodge, all duct-taped, all strangled and then
raped.
 
Same, same,
same.”

Shay frowned.
 
“But how could that be?
 
How could thirteen people end up
killed,
and murdered the same way, with nobody making any
connections?
 
With no
alarm bells being sounded?”

John ran his hand through his
hair.
 
“You remember the press conference
this morning?”

How could she forget it?
 
She felt as if it was her against the
world.
 
“Yes.”

“Remember when you asked McNamara
if he was a racist?”

“And he responded that he was
offended by my question, yes, of course I remember.”

“You remember what else he said?”

Shay had to think about this.
 
John leaned back and watched her think.
 
She was sharp, he saw it the first time he
met her.
 
But he wondered if her way of
thinking was nuanced enough.
  
Most smart
people had great book sense, but streetwise sense was different, and required
more insightfulness.
 
He stared at her.

“He said I was playing the race
card,” she said, thinking about it, “and that I was unprepared and incompetent
and that’s why I was screaming that there was a connection and a cover-up and
racism.”
 
Then Shay looked at John, a
look of understanding beginning to pierce through the thoughtfulness in her
eyes.
 
“But I didn’t say anything about a
cover-up.”

John exhaled.
 
She got it.
 
“No, Shay, you didn’t.”

“He said cover-up when I never
mentioned anything about a cover-up.
 
But
there is one?”

John nodded.
 
“At first, no.
 
Three murders in a month in Dodge is no big
deal.
 
Not these days.
 
The fact that they were poor, no biggie
either.
 
But by month two and yet another
victim was found, and then three in a two-week span, and then another in month
four,
and things changed.
 
It was coming into the new election cycle and the mayor, Chief
McNamara’s boss, was up for reelection.
 
Admitting that they had a serial killer on their hands, which they knew
they did, would be exactly the kind of bad news the mayor’s opponent could
exploit.”

“So they hid the similarities
between the victims?”

“Yes.
 
They stopped releasing certain
information.
 
Started
fabricating the crime scene, moving victims, not reporting the stats.
 
They started claiming this murder was
drug-related, or this one was a DV.
 
And
Shay they started doing body dumps.”

“Body dumps?
 
Is that when they move bodies to change the
crime scene location?”

“Right,” John said. “They would
move the bodies to other counties so that those murders wouldn’t be reported as
a Brady murder.
 
Eventually, of course,
it may trace back to Brady, but probably not before the election.”

Shay shook her head.
 
“I never really believed in conspiracy
theories, never.
  
But . . .
”
 
She
looked at
John.
 
“But if what you’re telling me is true-”

“Then it’s a cover-up, Shay.
 
It’s a cover-up at the highest levels, and it
runs shit deep.”

Shay stared at John, back at the
crime scene photos, and then at John again.
 
“But how do you know all of this?
 
How long have you known about this?” she asked him.

“I looked into it a couple days
ago.
 
I should have done so a lot
earlier, it was obvious that something was being mishandled, but I was the
drugs guy.
 
I was working on drug smuggling
cases with the DEA and McNamara was running all murder cases.
 
But cops that were loyal to me started making
comments to me, and some of them were working those murder cases.
 
They gave me what they could, which is what
you have there.”
 

“Will those cops be willing to go
on record?”

“In a trial
or grand jury, yes.
 
To a reporter, no.”

Shay shook her head.
 
“How could they allow this
to go on, John?
 
Is it because the
murder of prostitutes were
never seen as a big deal?”

“That’s right,” John said.
 
“And don’t look at me that way. It’s a
fact.”
 
Then he leaned forward.
 
“In the back of that stack of photos
are
all of the actual information on each one of those
crimes, versus what the public was told.
 
It’ll be easy to pinpoint the problems.”

Shay looked at the back of the
photos.
 
“Why are you telling me this?”
she asked him.

“Because what
happened is a damn shame.
 
Because the families of those poor victims
deserve better than what we’ve hashed out to them.
 
Because somebody needs to sound the alarm, as
you so eloquently put it.”
 
John wanted
to add that he was telling her because for some crazy reason he trusted her and
knew she’d do the right thing.
 
But he
didn’t go there.

Shay still couldn’t believe
it.
 
“But McNamara says we’ve only had
eleven murders in total in Brady.
 
And
now you’re telling me we’ve had thirteen in Dodge alone?
 
How could McNamara fix his mouth to tell such
a lie?”

“McNamara’s full of shit,” John
said.
 
“They’re covering up the number
until after the election.
 
Then they’ll
do what they call an updated assessment.
 
Then the alarm bells will be sounded and the public will know that a
serial killer is on the loose.
 
After the election.”

“And how many more women would
have to die first?”

John closed his eyes in burdensome
culpability.
 
Opened
them again.
 
“Exactly.”

Shay stared at him.
 
“What do you want me to do?”

“Write the story and give it to Ed
Barrington.
 
Nobody
else.
 
You show him those
photos.
 
You tell the truth.
 
Before another woman dies.”