Dillon
“SAME GUY?” MARCUS ASKS, LOOKING down at the dead guy with a two-inch gash in his throat. We’re back at Rebel’s Reds where we got the call about a homicide in the early hours of the morning. I’m still pissed this place reopened so soon. Apparently, Mr. Law didn’t own the building. He just managed the club, and his trafficking dealings weren’t run through the business accounts. So, legally, we couldn’t prevent the owner from moving a new manager in and keeping the place as is.
Un-fucking-believable.
It’s now seven a.m. and we’re left with a crime scene that, according to the estimated time of death, is around ten hours stale. “Coincidence?” Marcus adds.
I don’t believe in coincidences in our line of work. This place was going to be my first stop today to question Scarlet, the eyewitness who placed Harris here on the day of Law’s murder. I didn’t expect to be here for another homicide. This one is different. One cut, quick kill, no other injuries. There are boot prints in the pool of blood around his head, which is either the person who found him or the killer.
If it is the killer, there is no way it’s the same guy who committed Law’s murder. He wouldn’t have been so careful at one scene only to be so reckless at another.
“I already know what you’re thinking, but maybe this guy was an accident. Maybe he was here for someone else, or works here and this guy found out or threatened him?” Marcus spouts out theories.
“I want the trash combed through in case the killer dumped the murder weapon,” I bark my orders. “I want everything there is to know about the vic, and no one leaves until we have all statements from employees. I want a list of all employees working last night.”
My eyes never leave the body as I search and analyze every inch of him and the scene around him. Getting a first look is so important. Crime scenes are so easily disrupted, and something small overlooked in the start of the investigation can be a game changer when it comes to finding the clues leading us to the suspect. Just to the right of the victim is a small pooling of blood with some drips around it. The drips don’t lead up to where the victim fell. “Marcus,” I call, distracting him from talking to one of the employees.
I point to the separated blood. His steely grey eyes scan the small puddle of blood and the pattern of the spray.
“Second vic?” he murmurs, speaking my thoughts aloud as a startled screech sounds out from behind us. The lid from one of the dumpsters slams shut and a pale looking Josey holds a hand over her mouth, shaking her head. She’s a family friend of Marcus’s and is in training to be a detective. Marcus insisted she come with us, but warned her not to touch anything. Like she would listen. This is the third time she’s come out with us, and the fucking last, if I have anything to do with it.
She continues to shake her head, pointing at the dumpster.
It’s clear she’s not going to be able to speak, so with a huff, Marcus moves to the dumpster and flips the lid.
“Shit,” he grumbles, stepping away. He leans his nose into the crook of his arm as if to block out a smell. My partner wears suits like he’s a character on Mad Men or some shit, but right now, he doesn’t look so put together as he all but scrambles from the dumpster.
Taking the few steps and a deep breath, I prepare myself for what could be in there. Flies hover and hum, and mixed between the trash bags and leftover food people have chucked in there is a red-haired female.
Scarlet.
Fuck.
Twenty-three years old. Her tongue cut out of her head, and taken as…what? A souvenir? These were personal killings, connected by the club, which points to business rivalry or inside hostility.
Why take her tongue?
She spoke to us and gave us Cassian.
Was this him seeking revenge?
Shutting up witnesses?
How would he know she spoke to us?
A steaming cup is placed in front of me, and it’s only then I remember the precinct is full and I’ve been lost in thought at my desk. Josey smiles at me from where she’s taken a seat on the other side of my desk.
“So, any leads?” she asks, and my brow furrows.
Like I’d share that information with her.
She’s feisty, but young and naïve. That doesn’t always bode well for a female detective. “I brought you coffee,” she says, eyeballing the cup I watched her place there moments before.
“What? Do you want a tip?” I retort, reaching for a nickel from the pot I keep on my desk and flicking it to her.
“Don’t throw money at me,” she snaps. “I’m not a stripper.” She tries to sound affronted, but there’s a challenge in her tone.
“Are you saying you’d only get nickels tossed at you if you were?” I snort, and her face blanches, turning eight shades of humiliated. She needs a tougher skin to work in a mostly male-dominated career. Before Jade, before MJ, I would have just let her suck it up and learn. Just because she’s female doesn’t make her exempt from the same shit we give every other newbie around here.
The slight tremor in her jaw as she tries to keep her composure has me feeling like an asshole, though. If Jade were here, I know for a fact she would have punched me straight in the junk for not going easy on her.
“Josey, I’m just yanking your chain. Thank you for the coffee, but I can’t divulge any information to you. Now, if you want to be helpful, you can type some of this shit up for me.”
I hand her some paperwork, and a small smile creeps over her face.
Perfect. Now she’s going to hang around me like a bad smell.
Newbies always have too much enthusiasm for me. I like my colleagues broken in, quiet, and there for a non-vocal drink and conversation after a tough day if I ever need it.
The humming of the overhead air conditioner is driving me crazy, and my stomach is grumbling, begging me to feed it. I get up and round my desk, but my feet halt when my very pregnant wife walks through the doors. She’s dressed in a pantsuit, and if you didn’t know to look for it, you wouldn’t notice the bump hidden beneath her jacket. Her skin is glowing, and she’s gained the perfect amount of weight that makes her ass bounce as she walks. Fuck, she makes me hard every damn time I see her, even if it’s only been hours since I saw her last. People greet her with affection and respect. She’s been missed around here. There was a time when she wouldn’t leave this place, and I used to ridicule her for practically living here.
“Pregnancy suits her,” Josey says breathlessly from behind me.
Why the fuck has she left her chair just to gawk at my wife?
I look over my shoulder at her to see her watching longingly as Jade talks to Detective Roberts about MJ starting a creative movement class for toddlers next week. It’ll be good for when they’re ready to start martial arts, as Jade insists. I think she’s a little too young, but Jade doesn’t, and I don’t argue with the mama bear. I tried once and suffered through blue balls for a week because she sex-starved me. It was torture.
“She looks like Gal Gadot,” Josey pipes up again.
“Who?” I mutter.
Josey slaps me on the arm, forcing me to look down at her. Her mouth’s agape and she’s squinting. What the fuck?
“Wonder Woman? God, what year you living in old man?” she grumbles.
“It’s not the year I’m living in, wiseass, it’s reality. The only superheroes who matter are the ones working their asses off here catching bad guys.”
Rolling her eyes, she snorts at me.
“Hey, babe.” Jade grins as she approaches. I open my arms and drag her into them.
“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” I growl into her ear, nibbling just below it, making her body soften and curl further into me. She pulls away and slaps me playfully, her eyes flicking to Josey still standing next to me, invading our space like a fucking creeper.
“Hey.” Jade smiles at her, and Josey almost melts into a puddle at her feet.
What the actual hell? Josey has a hard-on for my wife?
“You remember Marcus’s Josey?” I grunt.
Josey steps forward and hugs an unsuspecting Jade, whose arms go up, then back down awkwardly.
“Of course,” she mutters, giving me a wide eyed “Who?” look over Josey’s shoulder.
“I’m not Marcus’s Josey, by the way. I’m just Josey. Single,” Josey flusters.
Giving her a narrowed glare, I hook Jade’s arm and march her to an office, calling over my shoulder. “Well, she’s Dillon’s Jade. Married.”
I close the office door and glare through the glass once more at Josey, who smirks at me and goes back to doing my paperwork.
“I came in for a reason,” Jade tells me, rummaging through a purse I’m still not used to seeing her carry. Before having MJ, she hated having purses, but being a mom, she’s always filling them with baby wipes, pacifiers, and snacks—even when she doesn’t have MJ with her.
“This,” she sighs, worrying her lip with her top teeth.
I unfold the piece of paper and frown. It’s the web address Elise gave me a while back, but I haven’t had time to look into it.
“I knew something was off with her, Dillon.”
My brows furrow. “What is it?” I’m not sure I want to actually find out.
“It’s a fetish site.”
Oh God. The last thing I need to see is a girl I still remember in pigtails and braces showing flesh or what the fuck ever on a kink site.
“It’s worse than you’re thinking.” Jade’s eyes lower to the floor.
I fucking doubt it.
“Go on,” I urge, irritation making my tone gritty. “Just tell me because I sure as fuck am not going to look.”
Sighing, Jade pulls out a chair and sits in it. Her hands dust off imaginary lint on her pant legs.
“Jade, for fuck’s sake, woman.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and terror flickers in them. “Dolls, Dillon.”
The word dolls causes my blood to chill. My hands tighten into fists.
“What?”
She bites on her lip as she frowns. “She dresses up as a doll.”
Motherfucker.
Fuck.
Jesus Christ.
Goddammit.
“She doesn’t do sexual acts. Just acts out being a doll.” Her voice quivers. “It’s creepy and so like—”
“Don’t say his name,” I bark.
She fidgets in the chair.
“I’ll have a word with her,” I assure her as I rub the tension from my neck. “I’ll see where this shit is coming from.”
She places her hand over mine. “There’s someone who comments on there. Dollkeeper is the user name.”
“And?”
“He mentions her ‘brother’ like he knows who she is, and, more importantly, who her brother is. He glamorizes the crimes, Ben—”
“Don’t say his name,” I interrupt, my tone warning. “It doesn’t deserve to ever grace your lips, baby.”
She wraps her free arm over her stomach. “I worry that if he has found out who she is, then he could find out where she lives and things could escalate. I printed off all his comments. It’s bordering on obsession the way he comments on all her pictures and stuff.”
I stroke my hand down her cheek, pushing her hair behind her ear. “I’ll go over what you’ve shown me.”
“Even from the grave, that bastard still lingers,” she exhales, a mix of fury and fear in her voice.
No matter how much we move on, he will always linger. Like a motherfucking virus waiting until your immune system is down to strike.
Jade left to go take MJ to see my niece, Jasmine, over an hour ago, and took my appetite with her. I still can’t bring myself to log on to the website, so I skip that step and go directly to the source.
“D,” Marcus shouts, making me slosh my cold cup of coffee down my shirt. Perfect. He strides toward me, a look of determination on his hard face. The scruff is growing out on his face, making him a little more rugged than usual. I want to give him shit because he’s normally a pretty boy, but I know he’s going through hell right now. I bite my tongue just this once. “So, I had an idea.”
“Congratulations,” I grumble, swiping at some tissues and dabbing the brown stain spreading like wildfire over the material of my white shirt.
Rolling his eyes, he hands me the statement taken from Scarlet, aka Jinan Anderson.
“She said the owner of The Vault was the one who interviewed her for the job, which, after meeting him, seemed well out of the ordinary. That stuff is usually done by a bar manager.”
“Agreed. What’s your point?”
He hands me another piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“It’s an application form,” he says with a grin.
I raise a brow, waiting for him to elaborate.
“It’s for The Vault. I say we send someone in. An unknown to get the low down.”
He casts his eyes over to Josey, who’s picking dirt out of her nails with a safety pin.
“Fuck no.”
“Come on. It’s a perfect plan.”
“No.”
“D.” He attempts his heartbreaker puppy dog eyes that work on chicks, but he should know me better than that. I don’t fall for his stupid-ass tactics.
“She’s not even a detective,” I bark.
“Exactly. It’s perfect.”
My desk phone rings, and Marcus leans over to pick up the receiver. “Okay. Yep. No. Wait for us,” he tells the caller, then hangs up the line. His attention turns to me. “A body downtown. A kid either fell, jumped, or was pushed from a second story window.”
“And?”
“And Mills said you’ll want to be there.”
What the fuck does that mean?
“Fine, but you’re staying put with Josey. I don’t need her poking around another crime scene. And, Marcus,” I bark, “don’t you two be getting any more non-bright ideas until I’m back.”