Murder in the City: Blue Lights (2 page)

God help Lainey when hormones really took over that girl.

A tapping on her front door alerted Lainey to Mrs. Maxey’s arrival. Lainey tiptoed down the hall, silently opened the door and gave Mrs. Maxey a hug.

Mrs. Maxey smiled and put a finger to her lips. If Julie woke up, she’d want to tag along with Lainey. That girl had been at more murder scenes than most cops would ever see in their entire careers. Lainey slipped out the door and got in her car.

Almost exactly twenty minutes after Detective Brice’s phone call, Lainey got out of her vehicle. Hot humid, night air enveloped her, instantly moistening her skin. Blue lights flickered off the trees, pulsing with a dizzying effect.

She focused on the yellow tape outlining the crime scene. Walking forward, she flashed her DA’s badge and the beat officer lifted the tape so she could slip underneath.

Brice sauntered toward her, glancing at his watch. He smiled. “My kind of girl. Up and out of the house in no time.”

“That’s how you like your women, detective? Up and out of your house quickly.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Good one, counselor.” He grinned with a slow sexiness that sent heat skimming across her skin, spiraling through her, as if his hands had caressed her body from top to bottom. If he could do that with just a look, what would it be like in bed with him? With those knowing eyes looking down at her, as he moved in as close as two people could get.

Something told her that one day she’d find out. Because every time he looked at her, it felt as if he knew what she looked like underneath her clothes. Or as if he wanted to find out, knew with certainty that one day he would investigate every inch of her body.

But the strobing blue police lights reminded her that someone was dead, and that she needed to concentrate on that.

“Where’s the body?” She scanned the scene, making mental notes of the surroundings.

Brice’s face switched to full-on-serious, cop mode.

“Back here.”

Together, they walked to the rear of a vacant, wooded lot where an abandoned cinderblock building was almost hidden, overgrown vines climbing its walls and creeping into every crevice. As if even nature wanted to eradicate the site where crime dwelled.

It was the type of shack where the poorest street prostitutes could take johns for a quick job. Twenty dollars could buy you drugs or a rented vagina.

Brice pushed at a door that was nearly off its hinges. It creaked back revealing a dirty, trash strewn room, with needles and other drug paraphernalia mixed in with the garbage.

“Somebody’s shooting gallery?” A foul odor swirled up and Lainey put her hand to her nose.

“A shooting gallery of two kinds,” Brice added. “Dope and guns.”

Yellow, numbered evidence cones marked the shell casings that covered the floor.

“Dang, they wanted to make sure they were dead.” The only time she’d seen so many bullet casings at one scene was at a gang shootout.

“Did these guys shoot back?”

“I don’t think they even saw it coming.” Brice pointed to one guy’s hand that still held a needle.

“Least they died happy,” Lainey said.

“Right kind of you to consider the criminal’s feelings, Miss Lainey.”

She shrugged. “Didn’t know drug use was a death penalty offence. Did the victims have guns?”

“If they did, the shooter stole ’em.”

Brice tilted his head and stepped closer to one of the bodies, looking at the face. “I know this guy. Goes by the street name of Skin.”

“Skin?” She stepped closer. “I’ve handled his criminal cases before.”

Brice half laughed, darkly. “You and probably every other assistant DA in your office. This guy was in and out of jail so often, they should have kept a punch card to check him back in.”

Lainey studied the dead man’s face. A quick little pulse of grief pumped through her. “Too bad. ’Cause he was really kind of a nice guy, apart from the drug use and petty crime stuff.”

Brice looked at her closely. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a bleeding heart for a drug user.”

Lainey titled her head as she studied the corpse. “There’s criminals and then there’s criminals.” She pointed at the body. “This guy hadn’t yet graduated up to what I call truly detestable. He was just breaking into cars and stealing random items for money. He even worked occasionally to support his habit. Later on, if he’d gotten worse, robbing people at gunpoint, breaking into homes to support his habit, I’d have been right there with you, not really caring who took him off the street, who kept him from one day shooting someone, accidentally, or not during the commission of a crime.” The memory of Skin’s underlying sweetness flashed across her mind.

She turned from the body, lying so permanently stilled, the man’s gentle face no longer able to smile at her as he listened to her recount his offenses for the judge. A hot moist heat threatened to obscure her vision. “I guess I had hope for him. That he could surmount his drug problem and make something of himself.”

“You and his mother,” Brice grunted.

“Only God and a mother can love someone like that?” she quoted.

Brice laughed in concession to the old saying.

“Anyway, I don’t think he deserved to be gunned down.” She pivoted to face Brice, finding him close. Way too close. He looked directly into her eyes until she glanced away, a spiral of heated awareness circling through her body.

Off in the darkness an owl hooted, its call reinforcing the loneliness of this spot where two men had inhaled their last breath.

Lainey tried to concentrate on details of the investigation and not the sadness of two lives ended in such a violent manner.

Or how every nerve cell responded to Detective Mark Brice’s presence.

“Why do you think they killed Skin? He never seemed to have much money, didn’t deal drugs.”

“Yeah, but he bought drugs,” Brice added.

“Couldn’t have been much.” He used to have to scrounge bus fare from strangers out in front of the jail when he’d get let out. She’d even given it to him once when she’d been leaving the jail from a first appearance hearing.

“I don’t know,” Brice murmured. “I know his buddy. He’s about like Skin. Maybe they just ran across someone meaner than them. Someone who killed just to see what Skin and his friend had on them. Maybe Skin and his friend had just scored their drugs and hadn’t used them up yet. People have been killed for less.”

Lainey turned back to look at the second body. She’d never seen him before. Then, she pivoted and pushed the door open and exited the closed environment full of death.

Outside, officers milled around, and the medical examiner’s van was arriving. Life went on outside of that small room.

She always hated these scenes. But that was what her job was about, getting justice for the people who died, stilled forever by another’s hand, another’s meanness and pettiness and just downright wrongness.

Her hope for Skin’s redemption had died in that dirty, cinderblock building.

Someone had to find his mother and tell her.

“Well,” she said. “He’s not the most innocent person I’ve tried to get justice for, but I’ll do my best to put away the mean son of a…,” she left the word blank, “that did this to him.”

“Yep. Me too,” Brice said. He’d come up close behind her again.

Did that man not know about personal space? Cause every time he did that, it got hard to think.

He had a body that was just this side of military in its fitness, tall, strong with big shoulders but lean enough that he looked like he could run a mile with any marine.

She moved another step away from him and his gravitational pull.

“What do we have to work with?” she said, turning toward the detective but not looking directly at him.

“Not much.” He shrugged. “We can process any bullets we find, see if there’s a match in the system. Canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw anything.”

The lightest trace of beard darkened his face, a good look for him. Otherwise, he looked much the same as every day at court during the Sean Moseman hearing. He was alert and ready to make a quick joke.

The man liked his job. And was good at it. He’d been such a help in their murder case, bringing to light every little detail.

Except the one that had set Moseman back on the street. That’d been her attention to detail that had done that.

“Well, I’m gonna go home and try to get some sleep,” she said. “Got court tomorrow.”

“Emm,” he murmured low in his throat, with a deeply masculine sound that activated her female hormones.

Damn, there was just nothing about the guy that wasn’t downright sexy, from his toned, fit body, to the sexy glimmer in his eye, to the sound of his voice.

Everything about him seemed designed for female consumption.

She turned and started back up the path to her car. “Call me with follow up.”

“I’ll call you,” he assured.

She wasn’t sure if he said it in a way that implied he might call her about a more personal message or if she’d just wanted to hear that.

Damn. Nothing about him that wasn’t sexy.

* * *

From behind the tangled overgrowth, he watched them talking. They were two of a kind.

Neither of them could get the job done. They were part of the problem.

Bottom dwelling trash corroded the structure of society, making it impossible for decent people to concentrate on living their lives and earning an honest living.

Criminals like the druggie and his friend were always breaking into cars and stealing.

Even if it was only a broken car window, that was a lot of money in this neighborhood. Fixing a car window took food out of the mouths of people’s kids.

He was fed up with watching dirt like Skin rotating in and out of jail, costing the tax payers money to house him, feed him and prosecute him.

Guys like him cluttered the system and ruined the value of life for everyone.

If there were a few less people like Skin, then maybe the prosecutors and cops could concentrate on catching the really bad guys.

That lady prosecutor strutted toward her car. She was as bad as the criminals themselves, with her pity for them, and her recommendations for light sentences. She’d sent Skin to a drug treatment program the first couple of times he’d been picked up when she should have put him away in jail for as long as possible.

If you weren’t part of the solution, you were part of the problem.

She wasn’t doing her job. And when someone wasn’t getting the job done, they needed to be removed.

He’d remove her by whatever means possible.

* * *

The news crews had arrived. Several of the overnight cameramen were already lined up at the edge of the yellow tape.

“Hey Ms. Thomas,” a cameraman called out. “Can you give us some sound?”

She’d become acquainted with this cameraman, seeing him multiple times in the middle of the night on scenes.

A reporter popped up behind him. John Canton, a regular on the crime scene, an investigative type who liked to do in depth pieces on murders, with portraits of what he called innocent victims fleshed out so the public would care whether or not the murderer got sent away for a life sentence, or had the possibility of parole.

“So, who’s dead?” the reporter asked.

“I don’t know if they’re releasing the info yet. Notifying family and all that.”

Canton looked over her shoulder with disgust. “Does someone who lives in that have a family?”

His comment grated. She didn’t like him referring to Skin in that manner. If she’d liked Skin when her job was to prosecute him, then others probably had as well.

Most people were loved by someone, even if they weren’t in regular contact with them.

“Do you know who offed him?”

This reporter was getting on her nerves. “I think you’re gonna have to talk to the cops. I’ve gotta go.”

She swiveled quickly and walked toward her car. She wasn’t wasting any more time talking to someone who could be so nonchalant about murder. Apparently, the guy only cared about
innocent
victims, sweet, young women, little old ladies, and kids.

The guy’s physical self was as polished as his TV image. Even in the middle of the night, his hair was combed, his shirt unwrinkled, and his shoes polished so that the police blue lights bounced off the shoes’ shining surface.

“Guess you ticked her off,” the photographer’s voice drifted to her as she walked away.

“Just another scumbag biting the dust at the hands of some other scumbag. Get two scumbags off the street with one stone, one’s dead and the other goes to jail. Actually three scumbags in this case, two dead guys in there,” he added.

Lainey stopped. How had he known there were two dead guys? She started to turn back to speak to him, then realized that a police officer might have told him, even though they weren’t supposed to. She continued on to her car, getting in and shutting the door, glad not to hear more of his callous comments.

They ought to push the crime tape back further, keep people out that didn’t need being so close.