Читать книгу Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8 - Carla Cassidy - Страница 14

CHAPTER FOUR

Lara took a taxi to Central Park, knowing that parking there would be a bitch, especially with a crime scene on the popular jogging trails that surrounded the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.

The autumn-colored leaves on the trees in the area would have made a beautiful backdrop, if not for the fact that she was headed to a murder scene.

It was relatively easy for her to find the right area. A wide perimeter had been set up by more than a dozen of New York’s finest.

One of the cops was dealing with joggers who appeared on the trail, turning them away and instructing them to take another path.

Nick was already there, and he approached her before she even got a chance to flash her badge at the nearest stony-faced officer.

He motioned her ahead and then stopped and stood far enough away that she couldn’t see the victim or the actual crime scene. “What have we got?” she asked. “Victoria mentioned a murder.”

Nick nodded. No sexy grin this morning. No charisma oozing from him. His eyes were dark and flat, and he was definitely in the pissed-off yet professional zone every cop or FBI agent went to when confronted by a murder victim. He might have a charming side, but she suspected this was the true Nick Delano, with hard edges and a dangerous power that he kept tightly controlled.

“Young blonde female clad in running clothes and shoes. Another early morning jogger found her on the trail. He’s being held in the back of a patrol car for us to question,” Nick said.

“How was she killed?” Lara asked.

“The medical examiner isn’t here yet to make a final determination, but it’s obvious she was stabbed in her chest.”

Lara frowned in confusion. “Victoria said something about this potentially being tied to the Dunst case. What’s up with that?”

Nick’s well-defined jawline tensed, and as he took her by the elbow she caught the smell of minty soap and a pleasant, clean-scented cologne.

He propelled her forward. “I think it’s better for you to see the victim to answer your question about the connection with Dunst.”

Lara steeled herself as ahead on the trail she spied a prone figure in a bright pink-and-yellow jogging suit and matching shoes.

Pink and yellow...such bright and cheerful colors to die in. They got close enough to see the victim’s eyes staring straight up and the bloody mess on her chest.

“Weapon?” Lara asked curtly. Stabbed in the chest while going for a morning run. Knife? Ice pick? What had been used to steal this young woman’s life? The weapon could say a lot about the killer.

“Not found yet,” Nick replied. “Officers have been combing the area, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was taken away by the killer. Otherwise, it would have just been left in her chest.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with Dunst,” Lara said.

“Look on her right cheek,” Nick said, his voice deeper than usual.

The victim’s face was turned just enough that Lara had to walk around the body to get a look at her right cheek. When she did, a gasp of shock escaped her. Stamped onto the youthful, clear skin was the unmistakable MM insignia. It had obviously been done with the same kind of ink pad and stamp that Dunst had had in his pocket at the time of his death.

She turned a startled look at Nick. “What in the hell is going on here?” It was a rhetorical question. Nick didn’t have an answer. She didn’t expect one.

She scanned the area. There wouldn’t have been a lot of foot traffic or eyewitnesses at around six or six-thirty in the morning, but there would have been a few early birds on the trails.

Still, it should have been difficult for the killer to stab the victim and then bend over her prone body to take the time to stamp her cheek. The killer had to have looked as if he belonged on the trail, which meant he would have probably been clad in some sort of running clothes.

“Any ID found?” she asked the nearest cop.

“We were told not to touch anything until you arrived,” he replied.

Nick bent over the body and carefully plucked a slim wallet from one of her back pockets with gloved fingers. He opened it. “Laura Bowman, twenty-three years old.”

Lara winced. Twenty-three years old and her life was finished, cut short by a knife from some perp. “Call it in, and let’s see what Cass and the others can find out about her background. Meanwhile, I’m going to interview the man who found her.”

Lara headed toward the patrol car where a man sat in the backseat. She tried not to think about the ink imprint on Laura Bowman’s cheek. Right now she just needed to get information and not attempt to process any of it. There would be time for that later when they had more facts at hand.

James Carlson was a thirty-six-year-old fitness freak who loved to run in the early mornings when he didn’t have to contend with the hobby runners. He worked as a trainer at a well-known gym and was still pale and shaken as he told Lara about nearly running over the dead girl.

“I’ve been jogging along these trails for the past five years, and I’ve never seen anything like that poor woman,” he said. “I’ve seen drunks and druggies and homeless people scurrying away as the sun came up, but nothing that even comes close to this.”

“Have you noticed her on the trail when you’ve run here before?” Lara eyed Carlson from the top of his short brown hair to the tip of his light gray running shoes.

The person who found and reported a murdered body was always the first suspect, but she didn’t see a speck of blood or any sign to indicate that he’d had anything to do with the killing.

It would have been difficult to stab the victim and then lean over her to stamp her cheek without getting some blood transference. He also couldn’t fake the ashen color of his face or the utter horror that emanated from his pale gray eyes.

“No, I’ve never seen her before this morning, but I started out a little later than usual today,” he replied. “Just my luck to decide to have an extra cup of coffee and be here a half an hour later than normal.”

“Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

He shook his head. “No, it was just me...and her.” His face took on a new paleness and he looked as if he might puke. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. God, I don’t think I’ll ever get this out of my head.”

She spoke to him a few minutes longer, and then, after getting his contact information, she let him go. She didn’t believe he was the perp. Her gut told her he was just some luckless guy who had happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

By that time the medical examiner had arrived, and she joined Nick who stood several feet away to let Dr. Herman Boze do his job.

“You okay?” Nick asked her.

Lara looked at him in surprise. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“You keep rubbing your arm. Did you bump it or something?”

Lara realized she was rubbing her arm. Over and over again...obsessively...compulsively. She quickly stopped and stared at the stamp on the victim’s cheek. She could just blow Nick off, tell him she’d bumped it and leave it at that, but instead she opted for a little bit of honesty.

“When I was undercover I was tattooed with that same insignia on my arm. The actual tattooing wasn’t so bad, but getting it removed was a long, extremely painful process.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Nick said softly. There was genuine empathy in his voice and in his dark eyes.

“Yeah, well that was then and this is now,” she replied with a forced toughness in her tone. The last thing she wanted to do was reveal any weakness to anyone, especially her new partner. She didn’t want or need empathy from anyone. What she needed was answers.

It was close to noon by the time the body had been removed and the area had been thoroughly searched by the officers on scene. Dr. Boze’s initial assessment was that she had been stabbed twice in the heart, and her body temperature indicated that her time of death was around six-thirty or so that morning. He’d have more information for them after he conducted a complete autopsy.

“Did you drive here?” Lara asked Nick as everyone began to disperse from the area.

“Yeah, why?”

“I took a cab. Can I catch a ride with you back to headquarters?” Lara asked.

“Sure,” he agreed.

Minutes later they were in his car and headed back to check in on what the team had found out about the new victim. Lara was quiet, still haunted by the vision of the stamp on the young woman’s face.

* * *

When they arrived, only Mei and Ty were at their cubicles working on their computers. Victoria was probably in her office. Cass would be in her tech room where dozens of computer monitors lined the walls.

The area was set up like a pod, with the large open center area holding cubicles that were the agents’ work spaces, and Cass’s room, Victoria’s office, several conference rooms and a break room shooting out like arms from an octopus.

Xander came out of the break room, a coffee cup in his hand. “What’s up?”

“We need a meeting,” Lara said.

Nick knocked on Victoria’s door, and when she answered he requested the team get together in the conference room to discuss the morning activity and share information that everyone had dug up on the latest murder.

It didn’t take long for everyone to be seated at the conference table. Nick and Lara filled them in on what they had discovered.

“What were you able to find out about the victim?” Lara asked Cass.

“She was twenty-three, a grad student at Columbia and lived in an apartment nearby. No criminal record of any kind, and according to the social media I checked, she was a vegan and had a long-term relationship with a boyfriend named William Goldman who works as an investment banker.” Cass looked up from her laptop. “So far she’s clean as a whistle, and it’s hard to believe she’d have anything to do with that scumbag Dunst or any of his creep acquaintances.”

“Mei and I have already interviewed William Goldman,” Ty said. “We met him at his office at the Winthrop Investment Group. He told us that they had been dating for four years, and he appeared genuinely devastated by her murder, said he’d told her time and time again that she shouldn’t run alone in the park at that time of the morning. But she thought he was just being a ‘worrywart’—his phrase.”

“He told us he left his apartment building at around six-forty-five this morning to go to work. Apparently he’s hungry and driven and even works on Saturdays. The doorman at his place confirmed his time of leaving the apartment,” Mei added.

Lara frowned thoughtfully. “There’s no way he could have gone to Central Park, killed his girlfriend at six-thirty and then gotten back to his apartment, cleaned up and dressed for a day of work by six-forty-five.”

“And the doorman was on duty all evening the night before and swears William didn’t leave the building at all until he left for work this morning,” Mei replied.

“Apparently William is a creature of habit. He works six days a week, spends most of his evenings with his girlfriend in his apartment and then on the weekends they go out to dinner on Saturday nights. We went over his whereabouts for the last two weeks, and nothing unusual jumped out at us. We’ll continue to work to confirm his movements in the days and weeks before the murder, but I’d say he’s pretty well cleared off the suspect list,” Ty said.

“I not only didn’t find anything to connect her to Dunst. I also didn’t find any connection to the Moretti organization on any level,” Cass added.

“Then why was her face marked with the same stamp that was found in Dunst’s pocket?” Nick asked and looked around the table.

“And who murdered her? She has to have some sort of connection to Dunst or Moretti. Otherwise none of this makes any sense,” Ty added.

“Nothing has made sense since I went out on that ledge to talk Dunst down yesterday morning,” Lara replied. Had it only been yesterday? It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d been talking to Sean Dunst while an unusually cold September breeze blew through her to chill her bones.

Xander had been silent throughout the conversation, occasionally sipping coffee from a black-and-gold ceramic mug. He set his mug down and leaned forward.

“Why are we all wasting our time digging into the vic’s background and chasing down alibis for her boyfriend or anyone else? We all know why she was killed. It was because her name was Lara. Moretti now knows that Lara is FBI and busted him, and now he’s playing with her. He’s having some fun at her expense.” Xander leaned back in his chair and took another sip from his cup.

Lara shot a quick glance at Nick, who was sending a death glare at Xander. “Yeah, right, that’s hilarious,” Nick said, his deep voice sounding oddly strained.

“I don’t understand,” Lara said, her eyes still on Nick. “I thought her name was L-A-U-R-A.” She hadn’t seen the vic’s ID, only Nick had looked at it.

Xander shook his head. “Her name was L-A-R-A. Just like yours.”

“I didn’t want that information to cloud your mind while we did the initial investigation,” Nick replied, his gaze not quite meeting Lara’s.

Wrong answer. Lara averted her gaze from him as a fiery anger lit inside her. How could she trust a partner who kept things from her? He’d just committed his first sin against her—withholding information. If he thought she would tolerate crap like that, then he was sadly mistaken.

“But Dunst was killed before Lara’s face was splashed all over the news,” Mei exclaimed. “Dunst had to have known Lara was in New York before that.”

Xander frowned. “You’re right.”

“I’d say right now we’re still in the dark,” Ty replied.

Lara was horrified at the thought that the poor young woman on the jogging trail might have been murdered...stabbed in the heart, simply because she had the misfortune of having the same spelling of Lara’s name.

Was the knife through the heart a special message just for Lara? Was Moretti reaching out despite his prison bars to taunt her, to torment her?

“Lara, I’m sorry,” Nick said.

“Bite me,” she replied vehemently without looking at him.

Victoria spoke for the first time. “Everyone calm down and play nice.” Lara knew the words were meant specifically for her. She stared down at the table as Victoria continued. “Maybe it’s time for Mei and Ty to go to Long Island and feel out some ofMoretti’s crew incarcerated there and see if they might know something about what’s going on now.”

“If Moretti knows about what’s happened, if he’s somehow responsible for it, then he is probably expecting a visit from somebody from the FBI,” Lara said and looked up at Victoria.

“He’s probably expecting a visit from you,” Xander replied.

The thought of facing Moretti again was like a fist punch to Lara’s stomach. She’d thought she was done with all of this. She’d hoped to never have to talk to or see any of the members of the syndicate again...especially Moretti.

“If he’s hoping for a visit from Lara, do we really want to give him what he wants?” Nick asked. “Or is it better to leave him twisting in the wind and frustrated for a while?”

“I think Mei and Ty talking to his operatives is a good place to start, but if Moretti wants to talk to or see me, then I think maybe it’s better to just let him wait a bit,” Lara said.

She wasn’t sure if her decision was what was best for the team or because of her reluctance to have anything to do with the man who had done so much damage to so many people, the man who was a master manipulator and the face of evil.

“Then for now we wait on having any contact with Moretti,” Victoria replied.

“Let’s just hope there’s not another victim while you’re waiting,” Xander said to Lara.

Jerk. She glared at him.

Still, she could only hope for the same thing. If indeed this was all tied to Moretti, she definitely didn’t want anyone else getting killed or hurt if his ultimate intended victim was her.

She successfully fought against the shiver that threatened to waltz up her back at the very real possibility that Moretti was pulling strings and playing sadistic games to make sure that she was utterly and completely destroyed.