Payback, page 9
She picked up the bottle of beer Justin had set in front of her and took a long sip. It was ice cold and tasted great. Last night had been a long one, followed by a day with even longer hours spent on her feet. She had to admit that it felt good to simply sit in silence and enjoy a cold beer. She indulged in another sip, slowly savoring the brew for a moment before setting the bottle down with a faint thump. “Okay. What’s up with Cap?”
Justin studied her face for a moment. “Let’s talk about the case first.”
Since she needed to hear about both topics, Gin shrugged. “Fine. Is there anything to report from the autopsy this morning?”
“Not a whole lot. The ME was certain the two men died from the burns instead of smoke inhalation. Something to do with the type of damage to the airways, and something called heat hematomas.” Justin heaved out a breath and took a long pull from his beer bottle. “None of it was pretty, but Americk is sure that the carbon dioxide test on the blood, along with some other toxicology stuff with long, complicated names, will verify what the ME concluded during the autopsy. She also thinks the burn patterns support what he said, and she’s positive that they were doused in the accelerant and the fire burned out their lungs before either one could have died from smoke inhalation.”
When he fell silent, Gin grimaced in sympathy. She’d attended the autopsy of a burn victim once before. It wasn’t an experience any sane person would want to repeat.
Justin took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself. “Stephen said he told you about Echo being over the age of consent, and I got the same text you did about the car. I made it to two of the names on The Oasis’ staff list that you sent me. They’re both cocktail waitresses who were working the floor last night. The first woman I talked to said she worked an early shift and clocked out at seven, and that she didn’t see the boss at all last night. The second one I dropped in on, a Wendy Farning, had more questions that I did.” He stopped and took another drink then shook his head. “I managed to duck most of them and get out of her that she worked the later shift with two other women, who she identified, and that Worthy was at the bar with some guy. She couldn’t really describe him and didn’t notice anything special about the man. She said Worthy had waved her and the other servers off, so none of them spent any time around the boss and his buddy. But she was standing at the end of the bar and garnishing some drinks for a large table of customers and heard them mention something about a tax.”
Gin stacked her hands on the table. “A tax? What kind of tax?”
“That was about it,” Justin replied. “The one word, and she isn’t sure about that.” He leaned against the cushioned seatback. “Anyway, she and the other two women left together, right at two, when the last customer walked out the door. She knew Brandon, who I gathered was the bartender, was still there counting out the till, and she thought Worthy and his friend might have been at the bar, but she wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah,” Gin said with a nod. “We talked to Brandon. He left about 2:15, and he stated that Worthy and his buddy, Yahoo Number Two, were there when he left. So were Dina and Sophia, the two women on the night cleaning crew. The third member of the crew had called in sick.”
“Convenient.” Under the table, Justin stretched out his long legs, giving Gin an apologetic smile when his boots brushed against hers.
“Maybe,” Gin agreed. “Or she could have just been lucky. Either way, I want you to put her on your interview list for tomorrow. Is there anything else about the case we’re working?”
“Just that I got hold of Cody, a.k.a. Thunder’s, father. He sounded like a pretty normal guy who’s about had it with his son camping out in a pool house and not doing much else. Aside from that, all he knew about Mark Worthy was that he bought the property in the warehouse district. He’s never personally met the man. He sounded up front to me, so I’d put any connection of him to the fire at the bottom of the list. That’s about it. So, do you want to fill me in on what you and Robard uncovered?”
“Tomorrow, first thing in the morning at the team meeting. Right now, I’d like to hear about Cap.”
Chapter Eight
Justin nodded, but when he picked up his beer and took another long sip, Gin tapped her forefinger impatiently against the table. “Whatever it is, no amount of stalling is going to change it. Just spit it out, Cameron.”
“Fine.” With a resigned look in his eyes, Justin drew in an audible breath. “Cap has disappeared.”
Gin blinked. She’d half-expected to hear that Cap had shut the door in his face. Her self-appointed protector had not liked one of the Bureau’s bad boys scampering off on a long undercover assignment in the middle of his relationship heating up with Gin, an action the former police chief had considered desertion. Ever since then, Cap hadn’t thought much of Justin and had made sure she had known it.
When Justin had announced he was going to go see him about the journals Gin had found in boxes belonging to her dead mother, she was sure Cap would simply give Justin a piece of his mind and then toss him out. So she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what Justin was saying. “Disappeared? You mean he wasn’t home when you knocked on the door?”
“No, he wasn’t home when I knocked on his door,” Justin repeated in a flat tone. “And since the door wasn’t locked, I went in to check for myself. The place was torn apart and Cap was nowhere to be found.”
“Torn apart?” A strand of fear wiggled its way up Gin’s spine. “Someone had tossed Cap’s place?”
“More than tossed,” Justin stated. “Cushions were ripped up, drawers upended on the floor, cupboards emptied. There were even some floorboards ripped up in every room that wasn’t built over the basement. Someone was looking for something, and they did a thorough job.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And we both know what that someone was looking for.”
Gin sucked in a quick breath. “The journals? You think whoever tossed Cap’s place was looking for the journals?” She closed her eyes, then slowly shook her head. “How would anyone know about them, much less think that Cap had them?” The journals had belonged to her father, and he’d written at least the last few entries in them. The rest were clearly not his handwriting. They were also signed by people she’d never heard of, with dates that went back over two hundred and fifty years.
She’d barely read any of those entries, and Cap had only read some before returning the one journal she’d left with him to her. He’d want to concentrate only on the ones written by Bryon Reilly, and especially the list in the back of his final entry.
“The list,” she said barely above a whisper. “Cap made a copy of the list.”
“Yeah. That list. With over fifty names of his victims,” Justin spit the words out. “And the name of one future victim. You.”
When Justin had worked on her last case, he’d come across the journals she’d kept stowed away in her backpack. Curious, he’d read enough to demand to become a part of their little group that was determined to verify all the victims of the Black Cross Killer. Fifty victims far exceeded the sixteen names her father had given as part of his plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Names he had sworn at the time was a complete listing of all the people he had killed.
“I might have been on the list, but I got to him before he got to me. The bottom line is that he’s in prison and will never get out. Not while I’m alive and breathing. End of story.” As certain as she was of that, there was still a sick dread in the pit of her stomach. Something wasn’t right, and she’d known it the minute Justin had said Cap was missing. But there was still another explanation, and she grasped at it. “Cap was going to check out the names on the list. He’s probably traveling around, doing that.”
Justin’s left eyebrow quirked upward. “Would that be someplace with no cell phone coverage? Because don’t tell me you didn’t give him a call.”
“Of course I did.”
When she fell silent, Justin stared back at her. “Great. What did he say?”
“Nothing.” Gin shifted restlessly in her seat. “I called him a couple of hours ago. He didn’t pick up, but I left him a voicemail. He hasn’t had a chance to call back, that’s all.”
Justin snorted in disbelief. “A couple of hours ago? When has Cap ever waited that long to call you back?”
Never, Gin admitted to herself, but remained stubbornly silent. When Justin stayed quiet, waiting her out, she finally gave in with a shrug. “It doesn’t mean there can’t be a first time. He was pretty focused on chasing down the names on the list that we didn’t know about.” She cut off the last word, her gaze narrowing on Justin’s face. He was good at keeping his cards close to his chest, but not so good that she didn’t know a guilty look when she saw one. “Okay. What is it you aren’t telling me?”
“I never was good at hiding much from you.” He ran an exasperated hand through his thick, dark hair. “The guy still has a landline and there was a message on his machine. It was from Lynn. I know that’s the name of his ex-wife, and from the message, she sounded like a pissed-off one.” He ran his index finger down the side of his beer bottle, then sighed. “I mean she sounded angry about him not coming by when he said he would, so that made two of us Cap had stood up. When I called him to let him know I intended to stop by, he said he was leaving in the morning for a meeting he had to keep but that he’d be back home in a couple of days because he’d promised Lynn he’d be by to do some handyman stuff around their former house.” He glanced at Gin. “I got the impression she was still living in it. Anyway, he said I could come by after that.”
“She got the house in the divorce,” Gin confirmed. “And they have an arrangement. Cap goes over whenever she needs him to. He thought he owed her that much for putting up with him for twenty-two years.”
“Yeah, well, from the message she left, she wasn’t happy that he hadn’t shown up when he said he would. Since that made two of us he’d stood up, I thought I’d call and get the timeline down.” His mouth curved into a smile. “I can tell you that the woman is not a fan of yours.”
Gin winced. No, Lynn Wilkins didn’t like her much and never hesitated to say so. Frank’s wife had always blamed her for the breakup of the marriage, claiming Frank had spent more time keeping Gin under his protective wing than he had spent with his own wife. But she doubted the marriage had been on solid ground by the time she’d pointed the finger at her father and all but handed the notorious serial killer over to Frank. The amount of time he’d spent on the case, not to mention protecting her from the press, had helped drive the existing wedge between husband and wife even deeper. “You’re right. Lynn would gladly kick me into the nearest ditch, but that’s old news. What did she have to say about Cap?”
“He was supposed to have been at her place two days before he told me to come by. I’d called him two days prior to when he was supposed to be at Lynn’s, and he said he was heading out of town the following morning. So wherever he went, he must have thought he’d be back in time to meet up with Lynn. Unless he’s in the habit of standing up his ex-wife.”
“No, he’s not.” Gin’s fingers drummed against the top of the table as she followed his timeline. “So whatever meeting he was going to was a single-day kind of thing.” She met Justin’s gaze. “Then he either drove somewhere far enough away that he would need to spend the night, or he flew somewhere in the same time frame.”
“He flew,” Justin stated to a startled Gin. “That’s the only way he could have gotten to Florence the next day.”
“Florence?” Gin’s whole face froze in surprise. “Florence, Colorado?”
“That’s the one.” Justin lifted his beer bottle in a quick salute. “Known as the antique capital of Colorado, and the home of the only federal supermax prison in the country. Built to house the worst criminals in the system.”
Gin’s arms and legs had gone ice-cold. “My father is there.” She turned huge green eyes on Justin but was having trouble bringing him into focus. When her lips moved, no sound came out. She clenched her teeth and tried again. “How do you know?” It sounded like a croak, but at least the words were understandable. “How do you know Cap went there?”
Justin reached across the table and covered one of her hands with his. “I took a guess. You told me he wanted to track down those names, especially the ones you couldn’t find anywhere in the system. I figured if he wanted more information, the quickest way to get it was to go straight to the source.” When she continued to stare at him in shock, he gave her hand a light squeeze. “That’s what I would have done. I know the warden there. He’s a good guy. He told me Byron Reilly had had his first visitor in over a year just a few days before the captain who had made the original arrest had contacted him and said he needed to speak to Reilly about some possible additional victims. So he approved the visit. The warden told me Cap came in the day after I spoke with him, stayed about an hour, and then left.”
“And went where?” Gin asked automatically.
“I don’t know. I contacted all the hotels near the airport in Florence, but without a warrant, none of them would give out any information. So somewhere between the prison and the airport, or maybe a hotel and the airport, he disappeared into thin air.” He ran a frustrated hand over the top of his head. “Hell. He might have even disappeared between the airport in Iowa and his house for all we know.”
Gin began to rock slowly back and forth, her eyes glazed as Justin’s words echoed over and over in her mind. Cap had disappeared into thin air. Just like all the other victims of the Black Cross Killer. He couldn’t have gotten to Cap, she thought. He couldn’t have. The man was in a cell in the supermax prison.
She blinked, then frowned at the sharp tug on her hand.
“Gin?” Justin was leaning so far over the table, his face was only inches from hers. “Gin, are you listening to me?”
She bit her lower lip hard enough to feel the pain and taste the blood from the small cut she’d opened inside her mouth. It snapped her out of her thoughts as she drew in a sharp breath. “What? What did you say?”
Justin stared at her for a long moment, then nodded before sitting back in his seat. “I said the Warden told me their whole meeting was recorded, and he’d let us take a look at the tape if we wanted to, but we’d have to go to Florence to see it.”
Gin felt the first bubble of anger creep up from her gut, chasing off the cold permeating her body. “I definitely want to see that tape. As soon as we can manage it.”
“Agreed. Florence is a two-hour drive from here,” Justin said. “Give the word on when we can break away, and I’ll call the warden to make the arrangements.”
Breaking away for the two hour drive to Florence, and another two back, plus the time to view the recording, was easier said than done. They had an active case in front of them that her gut told her was about to heat up.
She was still thinking over the options when Justin’s gaze cut to the front door of the bar, then back to Gin. “A guy who looks very much like a cop just walked in, and he’s coming our way.”
Acknowledging the warning with a barely perceptible nod, Gin casually lifted her bottle of beer and took a quick sip. When a shadow fell over the table, she looked up, not too surprised to find herself staring into Detective Stroberg’s signature scowl. She tilted her head to the side and conjured up a smile. “Detective. Did we accidentally stumble into the department’s favorite after-shift watering hole?”
“Nope. Just Officer Deerman’s.” Stroberg jerked a thumb toward the man sitting at the far end of the bar, then motioned for Gin to move over. Once she’d made a space, he sat down beside her with a heavy thump. “It’s been a long day, and I’m glad to get off my feet.” He gave Justin a hard stare. “Wouldn’t mind a beer.”
Grinning at the blatant hint to make himself scarce, Justin obliged by scooting off the bench seat and getting to his feet. “Bottle or tap?”
“What you two are drinking is fine,” Stroberg said, then dismissed him by turning his head and looking at Gin. “We found Worthy’s car in a long-term lot over near the airport.”
Gin nodded as she covertly watched Justin head directly for the off-duty cop sitting at the end of the bar. “Yeah, I got your text. Thanks. The car was going to be taken to your impound lot?”
“It was, and the print guys were all over it. They didn’t find any on the car, but they found one of those disposable lighters on the floor of the front passenger seat. Since it didn’t look like the kind of thing a guy like Worthy would carry around, they dusted it and lifted a couple of fresh ones before your forensic team arrived. I just got the news about the same time Deerman called and said you and some other FBI-looking type were here at the Black Diamond. So I ran the prints through that IAFIS database of yours, but came up empty. Nothing on file. I got the same result when I ran them through our state fingerprint system. Two distinct sets of prints and no information on either of them. And someone had a grudge about that car, too. There were key marks down both sides, and the front windshield and back window took several hits from something like a hammer. The good news is that the fancy interior wasn’t touched.” He shook his head. “It’s a crying shame. Anyway, since I was going off shift, I thought I’d come down and have a beer while I delivered the bad news in person.” He lifted a hand to cover a yawn. “Two birds with one stone before I headed to my place and hit the rack for some sleep. The latest update to you, and a cold beer for me.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d send me the prints and turn that lighter over to Dr. Hedron and her team,” Gin said.
“Will do. And I appreciated the call from Agent Robards giving me an update on the case. He says you might have a lead on the guy who was handcuffed to Worthy.”
Gin let out a quick laugh. “We’re developing a real mutual admiration society here, Detective, and yeah, we might have a lead. The business manager said that Worthy was meeting someone at the club last night. Some guy he’s known for a long time and makes regular payments to.”
