Читать книгу Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8 - Carla Cassidy - Страница 18
ОглавлениеThe long blond wig and heavy makeup transformed Lara. She stared in her bathroom mirror and tried to talk herself out of going, but it was no use.
She needed to go, even though she knew it was dangerous, even forbidden. “Just be careful,” she whispered to her reflection. She whirled away and left the bathroom, eager to get on with it despite any misgivings.
With a fake identification and matching credit card in her pocket and an empty briefcase in hand, she left her apartment. Jerry, the doorman, didn’t blink an eye. He knew she was an FBI agent, and he never asked questions. They did have an agreement that if anything strange happened concerning her apartment, then he was to contact her immediately.
She headed toward the nearest subway and descended the stairs, her mind carefully schooled not to think. She didn’t even want to try to talk herself out of what she was going to do.
She rode the subway until the second stop and then exited and went up to the street. From there she caught a bus, always vigilant for anyone who might be following her. She made no eye contact with anyone and had changed into a white blouse, a brown pair of slacks and a tweed coat. She looked like any other city businesswoman just trying to get ahead by working on the weekends.
It had been speaking to Tina’s parents, seeing the photos of the child they had lost that had amped Lara for this secretive trip. She had to check...she had to make sure everything was okay.
It was a drive she’d only made three times before, and nobody knew about her trips. As far as she was concerned, nobody ever had to know. She rode the bus for twenty minutes and then departed it and hailed a cab to LaGuardia Airport.
Each time she’d made this trip she always varied her mode of transportation, either coming to LaGuardia or to Kennedy airport to rent a car. She hoped to make it virtually impossible for anyone to tail her.
Once inside the airport it only took minutes for Ramona Wendall to rent a sedan and head out for the hour and a half drive to the small upstate town of Maywood, New York.
These covert trips always balled a fist of anxiety in her stomach, and this afternoon the knot was particular tight as her head continued to fill with visions of Tina and thoughts of the conversation she’d shared with Nick.
Nobody except for Victoria knew the true hell that she had gone through while undercover. The things she had seen, the things she had done, would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Even though she had done the right thing, there was a piece of her that had been sacrificed in the process.
She glanced in her rearview mirror often, but was certain that she hadn’t been followed. The farther she got from the city, the prettier the drive became. The road narrowed to two lanes, and dense stands of trees glowed red and gold and brilliant orange, their leaves dancing in a light breeze.
Under different circumstances she might have found the drive relaxing, but there were few things or places in her life where she ever found true peace.
Since the time of her mother’s murder her life had pretty much sucked. Not that she was the type to wallow in self-pity. Rather, the loss of her mother and the unsettling thoughts of wondering why she’d been murdered had created a burning anger inside Lara and had shaped the person she’d become.
She’d taken her anger and transformed it into drive and ambition, into the desire to be the kind of FBI agent people respected. Lara’s mission was to get as many murderers and other criminals as possible locked away for as long as possible.
Ultimately it had been the Moretti case that had really changed her. It had hardened her, and she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to fully trust anyone again. She was positive that the experience had made it impossible to go back to whoever she had been before going undercover.
Her thoughts turned to Nick. She’d have to stay on her toes where he was concerned. She’d already told him far more about her life and about being undercover than she’d ever intended.
He was way too easy to talk to, and he’d shared a piece of his own past tragedy with her in an obvious attempt to bond. She would only allow him to get so close, and then she’d shut it down. She had secrets that, if revealed, would not only destroy her professionally and personally, but would also endanger others. She simply couldn’t risk it.
As she saw the sign indicating that she was about to enter the small town of Maywood, her fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and a new burst of anxiety again bubbled up inside her.
With everything that had happened over the past couple of days, she just needed to assure herself that everything was still okay in Maywood.
She took a right off Main Street and then traveled several blocks and took another right that placed her on a beautiful tree-lined street where the homes were modest but well-kept. The lowering sun cast the houses in warm golden shades.
Her heart drummed a frantic rhythm as she drove down the first block and then halfway down the second. She pulled up to park across from a cheerful yellow house and expelled a pent-up shuddery sigh she hadn’t realized she was holding in. She unclenched her tightened fingers from the steering wheel and dropped them into her lap.
They were outside. Lara could see that they were okay. Relief fluttered in her heart. The three of them sat on the porch swing, apparently enjoying the last minutes of the unusually warm fall day.
David Minnow, an accountant, was dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. His wife Faye’s short bobbed blond hair sparkled in the last of the sunshine, and in front of her in a Bjorn was seven-months-old little Emily.
Faye was a stay-at-home mom who loved to make beaded jewelry and dote on both David and Emily. Together they all made a picture of the perfect family. They were the perfect family; both David and Faye were good people who loved little Emily...thank God they were all safe.
Emily wiggled and danced in her confinement, and both David and Faye were laughing. Lara hit the button to lower her passenger window just enough that she could hear their laughter.
The sweet, joyful sound welled emotions so overwhelming that Lara’s eyes momentarily misted with tears. She stabbed the button to raise the window and put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb before she might draw any unwanted attention.
Why did she put herself through this? Why did she torture herself? She swiped angrily at an errant tear that had the audacity to escape her eye. She never cried. She never allowed herself the release.
They were safe and happy, and there was no reason for her to make this drive to assure her of that fact. They were doing just fine and didn’t need her checking up on them.
You can’t come here again. Besides the fact that it’s a risk, you can’t put yourself through this anymore. The words echoed in her mind as she headed back to New York City.
This would definitely be the last trip she made to the small town of Maywood, she promised herself as she swiped yet another unwanted tear away.
* * *
At seven o’clock on Monday morning everyone was gathered around the conference table. Lara felt ragged and weary. She hadn’t gotten home from upstate until after ten, and then she hadn’t been able to sleep.
Residual emotions had raged through her until she’d finally resorted to sitting at her computer. The final autopsy report on Lara Bowman had been emailed to all of the team members by Victoria, and Lara had taken several hours reading the findings and looking at the diagrams, but finding nothing new to what they already knew from the preliminary report.
She’d spent time staring at her darkened ceiling and trying to figure out what had happened to any phone Dunst might have had. The person in the SUV had to have contacted Dunst, in order for him to come out of his room and down to the street. Unless smoke signals had been used, there had to be a burner phone somewhere, but where?
It had been in the early morning hours when she’d finally fallen asleep. Even after two cups of coffee she was cranky and frustrated at the lack of progress in moving forward. What she’d thought had been a hot case had now turned far too lukewarm.
“We spent yesterday afternoon talking to the men Lara told us about, the mid-level operatives in the Moretti organization,” Mei said. “They were surly jerks, but none of them appeared to know anything about Moretti being active again.”
“Of course, we have to keep in mind that we were interviewing convicted felons,” Ty added. “We have no idea if they were being honest with us or not.”
“Did you offer them anything in an attempt to turn them?” Xander asked. “Otherwise what reason would they have to tell the truth?”
“I got the feeling that we could have offered them a luxury hotel room complete with free room service for the rest of their lives, and they still weren’t going to talk.” Mei frowned. “I definitely think they’re all still terrified of Moretti and what might happen to them if they cross him in any way.”
“A shiv in the back by somebody Moretti still has under control or a hanging from a bedsheet in their cell orchestrated by a corrupt prison guard would do the trick,” Lara said. “The men who worked for Moretti both revered and were terrified of him. They believed his power was omnipotent. I’m really not surprised that none of them will talk.”
“But you got him,” Nick said, his gaze surprisingly warm as he looked at her. “Everyone thought Moretti was omnipotent, but you brought him down.”
“It was a team effort. We got him behind bars, but that doesn’t mean we stopped him from operating in some form or another,” she replied.
“Maybe you should go and talk to the man himself,” Xander said to Lara. “You worked with him for a year.”
“I worked with a lot of people, but I didn’t really know Moretti. Nobody knew him. He was the mystery man behind the scenes. Besides, if his goal is to get me to the prison to see him, I still think we should make him wait.”
Lara didn’t feel ready to face the monster in the cage. She knew how manipulative he could be, and he had every reason in the world to despise her above all others.
“We haven’t even confirmed for sure that this is Moretti’s work.” Cass spoke up. “It could still be a copycat thing, a local drug gang trying to pin their crimes on Moretti to keep us from investigating them. I’ve been checking into that angle, but I don’t have all the information yet. Figuring out who the power players are in this town when it comes to gang members and their activities isn’t a small task.”
“But what would Lara Bowman have to do with a gang? There’s nothing in her background to tie her to that particular lifestyle,” Ty said.
“We just don’t have enough facts,” Nick said, his deep voiced laced with frustration.
“A call came in overnight on the TIPS line about Lara Bowman’s murder,” Victoria said.
Lara sat up straighter in her chair, a welcomed shot of adrenaline rushing through her. “What kind of a tip?” Action. God, she needed some action that could move things forward and keep her out of her own head.
“A man named Sam Wilmington was near the reservoir when Lara Bowman was murdered. He said he may or may not have some information that might be helpful. NYPD is going to check it out and let us know if anything relevant comes out of the interview,” Victoria explained.
Lara leaned forward, every sense she had as a trained FBI agent on alert. “I need to take this,” she said. If it was possible that this might be a break in the case, then she wanted it firsthand.
“We...we need to take this,” Nick said with a hint of irritation in his voice.
Lara flushed warmly at the not-so-subtle reminder that she had a partner. “Nick and I should be the ones doing the follow-up. I want this, Victoria.” Lara held her boss’s gaze intently.
Victoria hesitated a moment and then nodded. “All right, I’ll let NYPD know that we’re doing the interview.” Victoria tore off a sheet of paper from a notepad and handed it to Lara. “Here’s the address.”
“We’re on it,” Lara said, already leaving her chair as Nick did the same.
“The rest of you keep digging into the backgrounds of the victims. Check out the local gang members and see if you can find a link between them and the three murders,” Victoria said.
Lara didn’t hear what she said after that for she had already left the conference room with Nick at her heels. They both pulled on their coats before leaving the building.
Overnight a blustery front had moved back in from the north, making for an overcast, windy and cold day. “Where are we headed?” Nick asked once they were in his car.
“Lower Harlem,” she replied. “He lives off 120th Street.”
Nick nodded. “I wonder why it took him so long to call in?”
“It’s only been about forty-eight hours since her body was found. But, we’ll find out why he didn’t call in immediately when we talk to him. We need something, Nick. I feel like I’m still up on that ledge with Dunst, only I’m the one thinking about jumping because I’m so damned frustrated,” she said.
Nick cast her a quick glance and then focused back on the road. “There will be no ledge jumping as long as I’m your partner.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal, but I’m definitely feeling a bit homicidal. As despicable as Dunst was as a human being, I want his killer caught. Even more importantly, I want the person who stabbed Lara Bowman to death in my gun sights, but not before I get some answers from him.”
“You know, we haven’t really considered that it might be a woman who stabbed Lara. It’s always been thought that women are more apt to stab than men.”
“It was a male perp,” Lara replied confidently. “We know from the autopsy report the knife nicked a rib to get to her heart. That takes a lot of strength.”
“Or a shitload of rage.”
“If Moretti was behind the murder and it was ordered strictly because her name was the same as mine, then there would have been no rage involved. It would have been a cold, emotionless kill for a price,” she replied. And that’s what made it all the more evil.
They fell silent until they were in Sam Wilmington’s neighborhood. Over recent years lower Harlem had become increasingly gentrified. Sam Wilmington’s apartment building was twelve stories high, and according to his address he resided in a loft on the top floor.
He greeted them at the door and introductions were made. He was a middle-aged man going bald, with eyes that appeared both troubled and exhausted.
He was an artist, specializing in metal designs, and most of the floor space was dedicated to his work. “I have living space on the other side of the loft,” he explained.
As they followed him across the room it was like walking through a junkyard with welding tools and metal sculptures of abstract items Lara couldn’t begin to recognize.
Was Sam successful as an artist? At one time the rent for one of these loft spaces had been cheap, but those days were long gone. She made a mental note to ask Cass to run a full background on the man, especially a financial workup.
God, she was definitely grasping at straws if she really believed that Moretti or some rival gang would hire a middle-aged starving artist to stamp and kill anyone. Besides, if he hadn’t called the TIPS line, nobody would have even known that he was in the park on the morning of Lara Bowman’s murder.
The living area he’d spoken of was small and sparse, consisting of a kitchenette with a table for two, a love seat and a television. There was a doorway that she assumed led to a bathroom.
He motioned them toward the love seat and then pulled up one of the table chairs to sit in front of them. He raked a hand through what was left of his sandy brown hair and released a deep sigh. “I don’t know if what I have to tell you will be of any help to you at all.”
“Why don’t you tell us what you know, and we’ll be the judge of whether it’s helpful,” Lara said.
“That morning when Lara Bowman was murdered, I was there. I mean, I didn’t see her murder, and I wasn’t on the trail, but I was close to the reservoir, and I apparently saw her just before she was killed.”
“What were you doing there?” Lara asked.
“I had just arrived when she ran past. I like to see the sunrise from the reservoir. It kick-starts my creativity for the day.”
“So, you saw Lara that morning,” Nick said.
“Yeah, I saw her. It was hard not to notice her. I mean, she was pretty.” His cheeks flushed with color. “But I didn’t stop her or speak to her or anything like that. I was just sitting down on the bench when I noticed another guy on the trail just behind her.”
“Another guy?” Once again Lara’s adrenaline spiked.
“Did you know him?” Nick asked.
Sam shook his head. “I’d never seen him before. I mean, he might not have anything to do with what happened to her.” He frowned. “That’s what kept me from calling until this morning after I saw on the news she’d been murdered. Like me, he could have just happened to be on that trail and have had nothing to do with her death. But, I finally decided I needed to tell someone about him.”
“You did the right thing,” Nick assured him.
“What did he look like?” Lara asked.
“It was still dark out, but I could see he was wearing a gray jogging suit, and he was tall and he wore a baseball hat. Even with the hat I could see that he had blond hair. I didn’t pay him enough attention to notice much of anything else.”
“Oh, come on,” Nick said with a faint hint of derision. “You’re an artist. Surely you can give us a little more detail than that. How old was he?”
Lara flashed her partner a look of annoyance. Couldn’t he see that hard-ass cop attitude wouldn’t get them what they needed? The man was distraught and needed a gentle hand. “Mr. Wilmington... Sam...this is really important. You might help us catch a murderer,” she said softly.
Sam held his hands out helplessly. “He could have been anywhere between his mid-twenties to his forties. The early morning light made it hard to tell, and like I said, I didn’t know this was going to be important when I noticed him.”
“We still don’t know if it is important. What did you do after you left the reservoir?” Lara asked.
“I met a friend for breakfast. We meet every morning about the same time. He’s an artist, too. Watercolors.” He gave them the friend’s name, address and phone number and the name of the deli where they’d had breakfast.
“I’ve got to be honest with you, if I didn’t have a solid alibi for the time around the murder, I wouldn’t have made that call this morning. The people who work at the deli know me. They’ll tell you that my friend and I eat there almost every morning around the same time.”
“You were afraid you would be a suspect?” Nick asked.
“Wouldn’t you be?” Sam retorted. His eyes squinted as if he was fighting back emotion. “I keep thinking I should have followed behind her. Maybe if I’d just struck up a conversation with her or something, then I could have stopped her from being murdered.”
“Or you could have wound up as a second victim,” Nick replied.
Sam nodded, his eyes even more troubled. “Check out my alibi. There are regular customers who eat at the deli who don’t know me. They’d have no reason to lie for me.”
“I believe him,” Lara said a few minutes later when they were back in Nick’s car. “But we’re still going to check out his alibi just to be sure.”
“And then I think we should head back to Sally of the splendid T-shirts and see if she noticed if the driver of the SUV was a blond man wearing a baseball hat.”
Lara nodded. At least they had a new lead to follow, a lead that hopefully would bring them some answers.
Fear knotted tight in her stomach, a fear she knew wouldn’t go away until she knew exactly what was going on, exactly what kind of monster might be targeting these people...potentially targeting her.
She desperately needed answers before she spiraled down into the bottom of a whiskey bottle or the fear and doubt inside her became so great she became of no use to anyone.
