The Killing Ground: A Foxx Files Thriller (8 page)

I can see realization dawn on her. I drive my cock deep inside her with a low growl and pound inside her angrily. This is her sacrifice, her means to forgiveness. God is using me to exact punishment for her sins and with every furious stroke, her last precious breaths ebb away, and as I pull out, her eyes roll back in her head, and she pays her debt.

I stare down at her lifeless body, and for the first time today, the voice is quiet. I cannot afford to linger any longer. I know the danger of getting caught. I slice across her belly and reach into her still warm body. I can barely watch this part. It doesn’t get better. Blindly, I fill a plastic bag and bury it in my coat. I wipe the knife against her leg, her blood smearing on what is left of her cashmere pants. I cast one more glance over my shoulder and leave the alley, an angry sneer curling my lip.

Her scent still lingers, and I wave my hand in front of my face before realizing it’s on me. I try to breathe through my mouth, but the cold hurts my teeth, and I shut it just as quickly. The street isn’t clear anymore. The cold is making my eyes water, and everything is blurry. I brush my hand over my eyes and wince at the tenderness around my eye. I touch it gingerly, feeling the first sign of swelling beneath my finger.

“Shit.” A black eye will be hard to explain, and suddenly, I’m angry again. But my fury is not directed at her. It is directed at my wife. My ex—wife.

“No, you don’t understand. I want to have children.”

I regard her helplessly. We have this same argument daily. “I can give you a baby.”

She laughs mockingly. “Can you? We’ve tried, and I’m still not pregnant. I can’t wait any longer.”

I follow her out the door. “So, now what happens? You’re just going to leave? And go where?”

She flees to the waiting car and throws the door open. She gets in without so much as a second glance in my direction. I see the driver lean forward. It’s not her mother, whom I assume she would be running away to. It’s a man, and immediately I know what she is up to. I couldn’t get her pregnant no matter how many times we tried, so she has picked a man she feels is more virile.

“Hey, buddy, watch out!”

I wake up and realize I have walked to the Loop. I see a man shove his way around me, as I have stopped in the middle of the stairs and am standing like a statue, watching his car drive away again.

Chapter 8

Jordan checked the display on her phone and grimaced. Detective Foxx was obviously still pissed about her little display at the bar, and she was about to get an earful. She sighed and pushed the Receive button. “Special Agent Gray.”

“We have another murder.” Rebecca’s voice trembled, and Jordan could tell how angry she was. Not at her as she had suspected, but at the killer she hadn’t managed to make any headway on.

“Where are you?” Jordan heard the concern in her voice, and she realized that somewhere between trying to flirt with Detective Foxx for information and almost kissing her, she had started caring about her feelings. “Shit.”

Rebecca answered without hesitation, and Jordan breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously, her cursing was for her feelings surrounding the case and not Jordan's behavior. Jordan scribbled the address down. “I’ll be there in ten.”

She hung up and called Matty. He answered drowsily, and Jordan gave him a quick recap. She could hear him moving around and knew he was trying to find something to wear. “See you in ten.”

It was a given now, Jordan and Matt would be called to the crime scene. Rebecca no longer worried about their presence there. To the casual observer, they looked like a couple of detectives. It would only be if someone started digging and put two and two together that anyone would catch on to the fact that the FBI was showing up at cases that weren’t their jurisdiction.

When Jordan skidded to a stop in front of the crime scene, the place was already crawling with Chicago’s finest. This part of the city was eerily familiar to her. Her gym was right around the corner, and she shuddered involuntarily. She didn’t wait for Matty, instead locating Detectives Foxx and Jones just inside the yellow crime tape.

She had walked past this alley many times and wasn’t prepared for the site that awaited her. The victim, a woman in her early thirties, was lying on her back, her lifeless eyes staring out vacantly. Her body was covered with a thin sheet, but Jordan could see the blood on the ground near her face and around her midriff. She covered her mouth and swallowed bile.

Detective Foxx materialized beside her. “We covered her in case reporters showed up. I can have them remove the sheet.”

Jordan nodded weakly. She watched them pull the sheet back, and the first glance made her look away. She took several shallow breaths and turned around. The woman’s stomach had been sliced open, and the blood covered her body. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot you had only seen crime scene photos of the other victims, and Ms. Keppler got lucky. I should have prepared you.”

“Shit.” Matt slid to a stop behind them and pulled back quickly.

“Special Agent Riley.” Rebecca watched him over her shoulder. She felt sorry for him. She wasn’t sure how long he had been with the FBI, but something told her, he wasn’t used to the kind of cases she saw. She gestured to the M.E. “Cover her back up.”

“Pregnant?” The question was almost a whisper and Jordan cleared her throat. “Was she pregnant?”

Rebecca nodded. “We can’t be sure until the autopsy, but it’s a pretty good guess she was.”

“And he…he took the baby?” God bless him, Matt was trying. Seeing crime scene photos was one thing. Seeing it firsthand was a perspective he wasn’t exactly comfortable with. He saw the response in Rebecca’s face and stumbled backwards.

Rick put a protective hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Listen, Riley. Why don’t we check the area outside the alley? See if he got careless and dropped something. Maybe you can find someone that saw something.” Rick knew they would find nothing, but he could tell Matt needed a distraction.

Jordan watched him walk away, thankful for a reason to get out of the alley. “Take the sheet off.”

She knelt over the body. The smell of blood repelled her. She saw the remains of her torn pants and knew without being told that this woman had been violated sexually as well. She shook her head. “Do we have an ID?”

“Yeah.” Rebecca pulled a pad out of her pocket. “Purse was on the sidewalk outside the alley. That’s how they found her. Name’s Elizabeth Hudson.”

“Does Ms. Hudson have a husband?”

Rebecca shook her head. “We’re tracking him down. The only contact number in her purse is a cell, and he’s not answering.”

“Hell of a way to find out about your wife and kid.” Jordan ran her hand over her jaw. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but I’m thinking it’s time to lay everything out on the table. Whatever issues we have, catching this guy needs to come first.”

Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job. I’m well aware of how important catching this guy is.”

“Whoa!” Jordan held up her hands defensively. She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “I realize I may have rattled you at the bar, but that’s no reason to make this investigation more difficult.”

“First off.” Rebecca held up her finger. “You did not, nor can you, ever rattle me, and second, don’t for a minute think that I would let whatever personal issues you have get in the way of an investigation. It may behoove you to remember that you came to me,
Special
Agent Gray, not the other way around. My continued allowance of your involvement is a personal favor to your boss, nothing more.”

Jordan’s mouth dropped in shock. Rebecca lived up to every stereotype about redheads and tempers. She toyed with putting the Detective in her place and decided against it. What she really wanted to do was laugh. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her like that, and truth be told, when Detective Foxx got all worked up, she was downright beautiful. “I’m going to check on Riley. Please let me know if there are any developments in the case.”

Jordan spun around and walked off in search of her partner. She had a name at least and figured that a little homework of her own might produce a lead. First thing she was going to do was a little research on the victim’s husband. It wasn’t so far—fetched to imagine that the husband had something to do with it. Some lunatic commits a string of murders to cover the one that mattered. It was a sick thought, but Jordan had met enough wackos that she would buy anything these days.

She caught up to Matt and grabbed his elbow. “Come on.”

He looked relieved. This case wasn’t sitting too well with him. He preferred the high tech cases, the ones that required chasing white—collar criminals. The ones like this almost sent him over the edge. He didn’t do blood and guts.

“So, what’s your take on this?” Jordan asked after a few moments of silence, broken only by the well—tuned hum of her 370Z.

Matt shook his head. “This guy’s a fucking nut job. I’ve never seen someone mess women up like this. You gonna ask Redmond?”

Julien Redmond was a criminal profiler and a genius at giving them something out of nothing. Asking him meant alerting someone else that she and Matt were working a case that wasn’t technically the FBIs to work. Normally, she would worry about that, especially since Assistant Director Mitchell had specifically said
under the radar.
The less she pinged on the radar, the better. “I thought about it. Detective Foxx hasn’t given me the go ahead, but something tells me we are going to have to do some investigating outside of what we share with the CDD.”

“Think that’s a good idea?” Matt asked quietly.

Jordan shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Don’t tick her off, Jordie. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s not exactly thrilled the FBI is sticking its nose in where it doesn’t belong.” Matt’s tone held a friendly warning, but buried beneath that was something else. Something Jordan couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it was something akin to admiration, maybe even like. “She’s given us more than I thought she would; now she’s even letting us into the crime scenes. That’s more than the CDD has let us do before, and I’m guessing if we fuck it up, the shit will hit the fan.”

He didn’t have to say Assistant Director Mitchell would have their heads on a silver platter. It wouldn’t matter anyway, if Jordan messed everything up, she would feel worse about it than her boss could ever make her feel. Besides, staring into those lifeless eyes tonight had triggered a primal need inside her, and she knew that whatever it took, she would catch him. She would make him pay. “You don’t have to tell me, alright? I was there. I saw her face. I know what this means to her, to Julie and now to Detective Foxx. It’s personal. Believe me, I don’t intend to mess this up.”

“Good.” She could see Matt’s appeased smile in the dashboard’s glow. “Listen, I gotta ask you about Detective Foxx. Do you think she would…well, you suppose…”

Jordan had a sneaking suspicion of what he was trying to say and rather than help him, she opted to remain silent and prolong his misery.

“Hell, after this is over, I want to ask her out. You think she would be interested in me?”

The look he gave her was so innocent and hopeful that she didn’t think she could crush his feelings now. She had only seen him interested in one other woman in the time they had been partners. That had ended badly, and if Jordan was even half way right, this one wasn’t starting out so good either.

“I don’t know, Matty. I think you would have your hands full with that one.” It was the safe answer she knew, but something told her to go with safe for now. “She’s certainly attractive, though.”

“Yeah, yeah, she is.” Matt agreed appreciatively. “Can you imagine the make-up sex a fight with her would lead to?"

Truth be told, Jordan might have already thought of that. Detective Foxx didn’t do anything half—heartedly. She could only assume that her bedroom manner mirrored her fiery personality. “Just keep this idea of yours on the DL for now. I’ve already overstepped our bounds with her, and I don’t want to give her anymore reason to shut the door on the little bit she is feeding us.”

“No, I know.” Matt shook his head up and down. “So, tomorrow we find the husband?”

Jordan smiled. She and Matt often thought alike, and tonight was no different. He had already figured out what she decided they would do anyway. “Yep, and we’ll see what Redmond thinks about this guy.”

Somehow, they drove to his place without realizing it. “Get some sleep, Matty. It’s gonna be busy tomorrow.”

“Ha, ha, I will.” He slid out of her car and poked his head back in. “I’ll bring coffee.”

“Thanks.” She threw him a mock salute and put the car in first, easing her foot off the clutch and lowering the gas pedal with skilled precision.

Here in her car, gliding through the deserted streets, was her sanctuary. At least, it should have been. Tonight, she couldn’t turn her mind off. She couldn’t make the events of the last few days stop colliding like pieces of flotsam floating around in troubled waters. She needed something to take the edge off, and when her car pulled up in front of her local bar, she knew she had no choice but to try and silence the voices with a little help.

Jordan slid on to a barstool and ordered a whiskey. She held up two fingers signaling she wanted a double. She didn’t nurse the first drink, merely leaned back and threw the contents of her glass down her throat. It stung momentarily, and when she winced, there was a second that her mind was empty. That was the peace she was looking for and had been evading her lately.

She was about to order another when a flash of red on the TV at the end of the bar caught her attention. “Hey, turn that up.”

The bartender slid a remote down the bar and nodded when Jordan held up two more fingers. When he set the drink in front of her, Jordan’s attention was already on the TV.  A local reporter was interviewing Detective Foxx, who looked none too happy to be in front of the cameras.

“Do you have any suspects in this case?”