The day he did, that would be the day he’d quit.
A woman’s nude body lay sprawled on the bloodstained and soiled mattress. Her skimpy clothes were tossed onto the floor, nothing more than a heap of spandex and torn lace. From where he stood, her face was partially covered by a pillow. Deep gouges cut into her flesh, too many to count with all the blood, especially around her neck. And blood splatter streaked the walls and ceiling, a grisly tableau.
Dim lighting in the room had been a blessing until an evidence tech took photos. Every time the camera flashed, the harsh light assaulted the body and added another stark image to his memory.
“What do we have, Nigel?” He breathed through his mouth and pulled out his notepad and pen. “Talk to me.”
“Dead hooker. Killer used a knife, but we haven’t found the murder weapon.” His partner, Detective Nigel Walker, gave him the lowdown. “Castoff suggests there was a lot of rage involved once the killer got into it. TOD is estimated at no more than two hours ago. Around two, I’d guess.”
Tall and lanky with thinning hair, Walker had the drawn face of a human basset hound. And his slow Southern drawl came from Texas, but his eyes took in every aspect of a crime scene. The man was thorough and knew his stuff.
“Who found the body?”
“The night manager,” Walker replied. “He got a complaint about a TV playing too loud. When he didn’t get a response from his knock, he used his key. He phoned 911 after he backed out of the room…said he didn’t touch anything.”
“He didn’t come in and turn off the TV?”
“No. It was still on when I got here. I turned it off myself. Twilight Zone reruns give me nightmares.”
The man’s deadpan expression didn’t flinch. Ray might have chuckled at his dry sense of humor, but he shifted his focus back to the body. No amount of training ever prepared him for a scene like this. And no one deserved to die in such a brutal way—naked and degraded. Whoever had done this wasn’t stable—at least that’s what he preferred to believe.
“We get any bloody prints?” he asked.
Fingerprints in a motel room could be easily explained away unless they were marred in blood or confirmed as part of the murder scene.
“Mostly smudges, but we’re still workin’ it,” Walker replied, and added, “Hard to tell with all the blood, but it looks like she’d been beaten recently. New stitches and all. M.E. will tell us more. And here’s something you should see.”
His partner pointed to a series of shallow wounds to the victim’s stomach.
“These don’t appear to be very deep,” Walker said. “M.E. will have to make the final determination, but it looks like the killer jabbed and poked her.”
Ray had seen this type of wound before—and recently. Apprehension twisted his gut.
“She didn’t die fast,” his partner continued. “She was mutilated and tortured. And these shallow punctures don’t look postmortem either. You ready to have a look?”
Without answering, Ray stepped closer to the bed and leaned in as Walker lifted the pillow off the dead woman’s face. He stared into glazed dead eyes, sightless and wide with terror. Her mouth gaped open.
Despite the horror on her face that distorted her features, he recognized her. He’d seen her booking photo.
“DL says her name is…” His partner read from a driver’s license taken from a purse on the nightstand.
“I know who she is.” Ray straightened up and shook his head. “Camille Regan, aka Jade. And, Nigel, things just got more complicated.”
CHAPTER 18
Late morning
After Ray Garza’s visit to her home last night, Sam hadn’t slept much since hearing his news on Harper and the kid’s connection to Jessie’s past. She had no doubt her friend was battling old demons again—shutting her out one more time—but some battles were best waged alone. And she understood that. Her guilt over Jessie had been her lifetime obsession and had driven her to “fix” things for her childhood friend—making up for when she hadn’t helped at all.
Of course, understanding her problem and overcoming it were two different animals. It was a compulsion she had accepted as her penance long ago. And Jessie had every right to deal with her past in her own way. But Sam could help Harper, something she knew Jessie would want, too.
So her day had included a step in that direction.
From a distance, she stared at Ray Garza at his desk in the detective’s bullpen. She sipped coffee as she did, enjoying the anonymity of her spot across the busy room. She liked watching him in unguarded moments, a cop hard at work. He was on the phone and taking notes, looking especially sharp in a navy suit and tie. The man cleaned up real nice, although he looked a little tired. She’d left a message for him early, and he’d returned it, but both calls had rolled into voice mail so she’d decided to leave the next one in person.
Seeing Ray in the flesh was always a good move.
As she made her way down the aisle toward his desk, he looked up and did a noticeable double take with the phone to his ear, a gesture that had taken her by surprise, too. His all-business expression softened, and she couldn’t help but smile. And although he held up his end of the conversation, he kept his eyes on her.
It was a seductive gaze she could get used to.
Since she’d first met Ray, the connection between them had grown. And she loved every moment of their innocent cat-and-mouse game of flirtation. She knew they would eventually cross the line into something more, and she wanted that, too—one of the reasons she had instigated their bet in the first place.
But things had changed since they’d made the bet.
She pulled up a chair next to his desk and sat waiting, content with the view. When he got off the phone, he tossed his pen on the desktop and slouched back in his chair.
“Hey, Coop. We’ve been playing phone tag, but you look like a woman with something on her mind. You go first.”
“You have no idea, Raymundo.” She smiled and placed her coffee cup on a corner of his desk. “Look, I know we have a bet, but I think it’s time we compare notes on Harper’s case. If we pool our resources, we might make more headway. What do you say?”
“It sounds like you’re conceding.” Ray teased her. “I didn’t figure you for a quitter.”
Despite a grin on his face, she saw the concern in his dark eyes, a charming contradiction.
“I’m not a quitter, but I’m leaving it up to you. If I have to wave a white flag, I’ll do it.” She sighed. “This thing with Harper has gotten worse, and with him being in the wind, I think we should work together, that’s all. Our bet makes this seem like a game when it’s anything but that. He’s a cop’s son, Ray. We owe it to his old man.”
He thought about what she’d said for a moment, then began, “You don’t have to throw in the towel, Coop. I think we can keep a scorecard and give credit where it’s due.”
“Glad to hear you say that,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got something to share on Jason Burke, Mandy’s ex. That guy’s a piece of work.”
Sam kept Jessie’s activities to herself. Not because of their bet, but secondhand hearsay obtained by an outsider to the investigation would have little bearing on the case. Anything Jessie had acquired would not be admissible in court unless CPD’s investigation had uncovered the same findings legally.
“Yeah? What do you have?” Ray asked.
“I didn’t buy Burke’s I-PASS alibi, so I did some checking on my own. Jessie doesn’t even know about this. I didn’t want to get her hopes up if it turned out to be a dead end.” She had spent most of her morning chasing down her hunch.