Читать книгу All Fall Down - Erica Spindler, Erica Spindler - Страница 9

By three that afternoon, Melanie was running on nerves and caffeine. After throwing up, she had retrieved a Coke from the motel vending machine, rinsed her mouth with it, then gotten back to work. The CMPD forensic team had arrived, and she and Bobby had worked alongside them, logging in and bagging evidence. The medical examiner had come, followed by the body-removal service the county contracted to transport bodies to the morgue. She and Bobby had then reported to WPD headquarters to officially start their day.

Melanie poured herself another cup of coffee, ignoring both her sour stomach and dull headache. She didn’t have time for queasiness or fatigue—the shit had only just begun hitting the fan. And no wonder. With this case there was plenty of it to go around: the FBI was involved, the CMPD, Charlotte’s most powerful citizen and of course, Whistlestop’s little band of blue. The victim had been young, beautiful and rich; her death gruesome and kinky.

Front page, made to order.

“May!” Chief Greer bellowed from the doorway to his office. “Taggerty! Get in here. Now!”

Melanie looked at Bobby, who rolled his eyes. Something had definitely sent their boss into orbit. And Chief Gary Greer in orbit was a sight to behold. Six-foot-four, built like a bull and with skin the color of fine dark chocolate, he commanded both respect and fear. But despite his overwhelming physical presence—or perhaps because of it—he rarely lost his temper. When he did, everybody hopped to attention.

In fact, Melanie had seen him this angry only once before: when he had discovered that one of the officers on night patrol had been letting hookers walk in exchange for blow jobs.

Melanie grabbed her notepad and jumped to her feet. Bobby followed her. When they reached the man’s office, he ordered them to sit.

“I just got off the phone with Chief Lyons. Bastard politely suggested we bow out of this investigation. For the good of all involved, turn the entire thing over to the CMPD.”

“What!” Melanie jumped to her feet. “You didn’t agree—”

“Hell no! I told him to kiss my hairy, black butt.” He laughed. “That put old Jack in his place.”

Melanie smiled. Her chief had been a homicide investigator with the CMPD himself, and a highly decorated one at that. Four years ago he had been shot in the line of duty; the incident had nearly cost him his life. After he’d recovered, his wife gave him an ultimatum—the job or the marriage. Only forty-six and too young to be put out to pasture, he’d chosen the marriage and accepted this position. Although outwardly comfortable with his decision, Melanie suspected that he, like she, longed for real crimes to investigate.

“They’re not going to push us out,” he continued, yanking at his tie to loosen it. “The murder occurred in our community, and I have citizens to account to. Like it or not, they’re stuck with us.”

His mouth thinned. “This is a big one. All eyes are going to be on us. Pressure for a quick resolution is going to come from all quarters and it’s going to be intense. The press is going nuts already, and Andersen’s begun pulling in markers. Keep your heads and do your job. Don’t let the heat get to you.

“The truth is,” he continued, “the CMPD’s more experienced. They have more manpower, better facilities, deeper pockets. Fine, we accept their help. But that’s as far as we bend. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Melanie said. “The FBI guy, Parks. What’s his story?”

“Wondered how long it’d take you to ask.” Her chief smiled, his first of the afternoon. “A bit of an asshole, isn’t he?”

Bobby laughed. “A bit? That guy was a walking, talking pucker.”

“And no stranger to the bottle,” Melanie added.

The chief frowned, looking from one to the other of them. “He’d been drinking?”

“Drinking?” she repeated. “No, that word implies restraint. Moderation. Parks looked and smelled like he’d been on a year-long binge.”

Her chief seemed to digest that information, his expression tight. “Connor Parks is a profiler. Until a year ago he was a bigwig at Quantico, what was then called the Behavioral Science Unit. I don’t know the details, but rumor has it he publicly embarrassed the Bureau. He was censured and demoted.”

A profiler. No wonder. Melanie had attended an FBI-sponsored seminar on profiling a year or so ago. She had found the information presented fascinating. The way the agent had explained it, every killer unwittingly left a signature at the scene of his crime. It was the profiler’s job to read that signature, to put himself or herself in the head of both predator and prey and re-create the how, why and most importantly, the who of the event.

Which was exactly what Parks had been attempting to do today.

“So what’s he doing in Charlotte working on our puny case?” Bobby asked.

“Charlotte’s his demotion.” The chief looked from her to Bobby once more. “Make no mistake. The man’s good at what he does, booze or not. Use him.”

“With that personality, he’d better be good,” she muttered, jotting a note to call him, then meeting her chief’s gaze again. “What’s next?”

“I want you to question the victim’s friends, her family members and fellow students. Find out who she was seeing, where she hung out and what she was into. But first, get over to CMPD headquarters. Make sure they haven’t already sent somebody out. If they have, find out who and track them down. We have to appear a united front. Andersen will flip if it looks like we’re not. Next thing I know, the mayor’ll be crawling up my ass.”

That’d be a neat trick. To hide her smile, Melanie glanced down at her notes.

“Anything else?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” he barked. “Get moving!”

They did, jumping to their feet and hurrying out of their boss’s office. The first thing Melanie did was call her twin sister, Mia. The other woman picked up right away. “Mia, it’s Mel.”

“Melanie! My God, I was just watching channel six. That poor girl!” She lowered her voice. “Was it awful?”

“Worse,” Melanie replied grimly. “That’s why I’m calling. I need a favor.” “Shoot.”

“It’s crazy around here, and I don’t expect it to let up in time for me to pick Casey up at preschool. Would you mind?” Melanie glanced at the picture of her four-year-old son on her desk, her lips lifting in an involuntary smile. “I’d ask Stan to do it but I don’t have the time for one of his lectures about why I need to quit my job and how my being a cop is bad for Casey.”

“He’s full of crap. But, yes, I’d love to get Casey from school. And since I’ll be in the neighborhood, I suppose you’d like me to head around the corner and pick up your uniforms at that dry cleaners?”

“You’re a lifesaver. On both accounts.”

From the corners of her eyes, she saw that Bobby was ready and waiting at the door. “Look, when you pick him up this time, don’t pretend to be me. It really freaks his teachers out.”

“Lightweights.” Mia cackled, sounding absolutely wicked. “What’s the good of being an identical twin if I can’t have a little fun with it? Besides, Casey likes it. It’s our little game.”

Melanie shook her head. Actually, she and Mia were both identical twins and triplets. When Melanie told people so, they always laughed, thinking she was making a joke. But it was true. She and Mia were identical twins but they also had a fraternal triplet sister, Ashley.

What made it even more fun was Ashley’s striking resemblance to her sisters. When together, the three fair-haired, blue-eyed look-alikes drew the startled gazes of passersby. Even their friends had been known to do double takes.

“Remember how we used to trick our teachers?” Mia murmured, her tone amused.

“I’m thirty-two, not ninety-two. Of course, I remember. You were always the instigator. And I was the one who always got blamed.”

“Try reversing that, sister dear.”

Bobby cleared his throat, tapped his watch and pointed at the chief’s office. She nodded in acknowledgment. “I would if I had the time, Mia. Right now I’ve got to go solve a murder.”

Her sister’s wish of “Go for it, Sherlock” ringing in her ears, Melanie hung up the phone and hurried to meet her partner.