Damage Control (Alexis Parker Book 27), page 1
Damage Control
An Alexis Parker novel
G.K. Parks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and other concepts are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, establishments, events, and locations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the author.
Copyright © 2025 G.K. Parks
A Modus Operandi imprint
All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
One
“Parker, where have you been?” my fellow private investigator, Bennett Renner, asked.
“I was closing that insurance case. I had to drop off the surveillance footage—”
Renner cut me off. “You have a client meeting.”
“No, I don’t. I just came from a client meeting.” I pushed past him and entered my office. “I submitted my report while I was at lunch. I’m sure our boss would consider that a working lunch.”
“Lucien wants you working on something else now.”
I sighed dramatically. “Why is he only a pain in my ass? How come he never makes you run around like a chicken without a head?”
Renner chuckled. “He likes you better.”
“That’s debatable.” I tucked my belongings into my desk drawer, grabbed a legal pad and pen, and turned to my colleague. “Where is this client meeting taking place?”
“Conference room C.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“You’re late.”
“Besides that.”
“Lucien said this one’s especially for you.”
“Goody.”
Entering the conference room, I found a man waiting. I’d guess late twenties. He didn’t look like a movie star or musician, and he wasn’t dressed like a business tycoon. His clothes weren’t designer. Perhaps Cross Security was taking on pro bono cases. No wonder Lucien wanted me to handle this. He only liked to sign wealthy clients.
“I’m Alexis Parker.” I pulled out a chair and sat down, eyeing the stack of folders in front of him. “How can I help you, mister?”
“Dustin Ford.” The man thrust the folders at me, his mouth moving a million miles an hour as he unloaded everything that had happened over the last six months. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her. I swear. But no one cares. I’m supposed to go to trial. If I lose, I’ll go to prison. You have to help me.”
This had to be a joke. Cross Security didn’t take on these kinds of cases. My boss would never assign me this.
“Let me get this straight. You’re being charged with murder.” I tapped my pen against the notes I’d scribbled. “Cross Security has a policy—”
“I know,” Dustin said. “Mr. Almeada said that wouldn’t be a problem. These are special circumstances.”
“Did your lawyer happen to tell my boss that?”
“You don’t want to help me.” Dustin rubbed his palm against his eye. “You don’t believe me. No one believes me. The cops sure as hell didn’t. I don’t know why I thought you’d be any different.”
“The evidence speaks for itself.”
“Ms. Parker, please hear me out and try to keep an open mind. I don’t know what else to do or where to go. The grand jury indicted me. If it wasn’t for Mr. Almeada, I’d be locked up until this thing goes to trial. I doubt I’d survive behind bars that long. I know I won’t make it if they convict me. Prison is not for me. It just isn’t.” He stared at me with bloodshot eyes. “I didn’t do it. I’d never hurt anyone. I have never hurt anyone.”
“In the event you end up behind bars, maybe don’t mention that.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No, I don’t.” I sighed. “All right. Walk me through it one more time.”
He inhaled deeply in preparation to retell the tale. “I don’t live in the city, but I had concert tickets. I was meeting a group of friends at the show. Nights like these always run late. We usually hang around until the band leaves. Then we grab a bite. Maybe hit a club. I thought the responsible thing would be to rent a room for the night.”
“According to these records, your reservation was for three nights.”
“I’m getting to that.”
I held up my hands. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
“The concert was Thursday. I figured I’d head straight to the venue after work. Late nights usually wipe me out, so I asked for Friday off to recover, and since I was already scheduled to have the weekend off, I thought I’d throw in another two nights and make this a nice little getaway. It was supposed to be a mini-vacation. A chance to unwind and blow off steam.” His nose crinkled, his chin quivering. He looked away and swallowed. “Had I known what would happen, I never would have done it. I wouldn’t have done any of it.”
“What did you do?”
He slammed his palms on the table. “I didn’t kill her. I don’t even know who she is. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”
“Thursday after you left work, what did you do?” I asked, hoping to keep him on an even keel.
“I drove to the city. The commute wasn’t bad. I made it to the concert hall in under two hours. My friends were waiting.” Dustin pointed to a section of my notes. “That’s all three of them. Joe, Mike, and Norman. They vouched for my whereabouts. The police questioned them.”
I waved my hand, dismissing that tangent. “Why didn’t you stay with one of them?”
“Norman lives with his significant other, who isn’t a fan of houseguests. Joe has a studio he shares with two other people, and Mike lives with his parents outside the city. No one had room for me.”
“Did Mike go home after the concert?”
Dustin nodded. “Mike doesn’t drink. He was fine to drive back.”
“How did your car get from wherever you parked it to your vacation rental?” I asked. “Were you drinking and driving?”
“Are you going to suggest that the prosecutor files additional charges against me?”
“So you were drinking and driving?”
“No. I let someone drive me back to the place I rented.”
“Who?”
He tilted his head to the side, shrugging one shoulder. “I’m not sure. Like I told you, we were pretty wasted. It was a concert, followed by a club. We had burgers at some point. But it was a lot of drinking.”
“What about drugs?”
“It was a concert.”
I nodded, flipping through my notes. “The police found drugs inside your rental. Ecstasy, acid, coke, what they often refer to as party drugs.”
“I don’t sell drugs.”
“But you were high.”
“We had a few gummies. That’s not illegal.”
“That was it?”
“And drinks.”
I’d conducted my fair share of interrogations as an OIO agent, and I’d sat in on several as a police consultant. People lie, but I wasn’t getting that vibe from Dustin. However, since he had months to practice his story, he may have said it enough that he believed it. All I knew was he was convinced that was the truth. I just didn’t know if it was.
“Walk me through that night,” I said. “Give me the play-by-play. Minute by minute.”
“We met at the concert. We watched the show. The band finished their encore around 11:30. We hung around until almost one, hoping to get autographs. I took a few photos of the roadies loading the tour buses with my phone.”
“The photos are timestamped?” I asked.
“I guess.”
“I’ll need copies.” I made a note at the top of the page. “What happened after that?”
“While we were waiting, we met some people who had the same idea. They had four or five in their group. Three women, two guys. We asked if they wanted to hang out with us. One of the guys took off, but everyone else was game. That’s when we got burgers, I think. I can’t keep everything straight, but we ate before going to the club. Actually, we ate twice. We got slices from a truck too.”
“A pizza truck?”
“Yeah.” He pulled his lips to one side, almost like he had a twitch. “We grabbed a slice before the club. Burgers after.”
“Do you know what truck?”
“Ms. Parker, that was months ago. I have no idea.”
“How did you pay?”
“Um…”
“Would one of your friends remember?”
“Maybe.”
I nodded, making another note. “Okay, what about the club? Do you remember which one you went to?”
“Atlantis.”
“Okay.”
“The burger place was across the street. They’re open twenty-four hours.”
“What time did you get burgers?”
“The sun wasn’t up yet. If it had been, we would have gotten breakfast instead. I dunno. It had to have been around three or four in the morning. After that, we walked back to the venue.”
“And you don’t remember who took you home.”
“It was someone I met that night.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“The dead woman?” I asked.
“No. I had never seen her before. I don’t even know how she got inside my vacation rental or how long she was there. When we got to my rental, whoever drove me had a rideshare waiting to take her home. She didn’t even come inside. I grabbed my bags from the trunk, found the door code in my text messages, let myself in, and crashed in the first bedroom I found. I didn’t look around that night. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even brush my teeth, and if you know me, you’d know that’s something I absolutely always do.”
“Except this one night.”
“I was tired. I worked all day and partied all night.”
“You weren’t the least bit curious about the place where you were staying? Most people would check for bugs or make sure they had clean towels,” I said.
“I wasn’t worried. The renter had four plus stars. I assumed everything was fine. The bed was made. The sheets smelled clean. That was good enough for me.”
“What about the next day? You didn’t check everything out when you got up?”
“I would have, but Mike called and wanted to meet. He was excited about something, so I got ready and ran out of the house. I didn’t venture any farther than the ensuite.” Dustin pulled the blueprint of the property free from the pile of papers he’d brought me. “I slept in this room.” He pointed to the bedroom nearest the front door. “That’s the attached bathroom I used. I didn’t go beyond this point until I returned later that night, which is when I found the body. She was near the kitchen.”
“And you were with Mike that whole day?”
“Yeah. He walked the police through everything we did, which wasn’t much. We met at his parents’ house. I hadn’t seen them in a while, so we caught up. His mother made us lunch, and his dad barbecued steaks and chicken breasts for dinner. I headed back after that.”
“How long does it take to get from Mike’s place to the rental?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
I checked my notes again. “According to these statements, you left Mike’s around seven. The police received reports about a disturbance at your rental a little after nine, and that’s when they showed up and found the dead woman. Did you stop anywhere on your way back?”
“No.”
“Did you get lost?”
“No.”
“What time did you get back to the rental?”
“I dunno. 7:30, eight o’clock.” Dustin looked indignant. “The so-called disturbance was me screaming when I found her dead.”
“It took you an hour to check out the place you rented?”
“I guess.”
“What did you do when you first got back?”
“I went into the bedroom and checked my bags. My phone needed to be charged, so I looked for the cord.”
“All right.” I flipped the pages again. “Is there anything else I should know?” His story felt a little out there, but none of it was beyond the realm of reason.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Besides that.”
“Ms. Parker, I promise I didn’t kill anyone. I don’t even know who that woman was. I had never seen her before. Not at the concert. Not anywhere. The only thing I can figure is she was already inside the rental when I arrived. Whoever booked the place before me must have killed her.”
The rental had exterior security cameras, which the police had reviewed, but from what they’d seen, Dustin and a woman had entered the night before. Dustin left the next day. The woman never did.
The medical examiner’s report concluded she had been strangled. Given the lack of defensive wounds, she may have been passed out when the fatal attack occurred. Since she hadn’t fought back, foreign DNA hadn’t been found underneath her nails. Yet, Dustin’s prints had been found on the necklace she wore.
I checked the photo. The vic, Sydney Breeding, wore a gold medallion with her initials. The solid flat charm had a clear thumb and forefinger print on the front and back, belonging to Dustin Ford. Given that the security footage placed him and a mystery woman inside the house the night before and no one had entered or left the rental the next day except Dustin, the detective called to the scene had an easy case to solve. One suspect, and no contradictory evidence.
“Let me see the photos from the night before.”
Dustin pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera roll. “Here. Take a look.”
I found shots from the concert and plenty of images of him and his friends. The police had already checked and catalogued everything they needed. “Why don’t you have any photos with the second group you ran into? Weren’t the eight of you hanging out?”
“I don’t know. I guess we didn’t think to take pictures with them.”
“What about names? Numbers? Social media follows?”
He shook his head. “We didn’t exchange numbers. We may have exchanged names, but I don’t remember any of theirs. My friends were there. They met them. Ask them if you don’t believe me.”
“Are these friends of yours ride or die?”
“Of course.”
“So they wouldn’t want you to spend the next twenty years in prison.”
“No.”
“Y’see, that isn’t helpful.”
“They aren’t lying. I’m not lying.”
His eyes told me that was true. The facts told me otherwise. Go with your gut, Parker. “My boss has a strict no murder policy. My hands are tied unless he okays this, so let’s see what he says. Then we’ll take it from there.”
Two
Lucien Cross wasn’t behind his desk when I went upstairs to chat. Instead, I found him and Mr. Almeada waiting for me in the executive conference room. Cross indicated the chair nearest to him. I sat in the one two away.
“Is this a joke?” I asked.
Cross cocked his head to the side. “Why would you think that, Alex?”
“For starters, your favorite pastime is harping on how we are to avoid murder investigations at all costs. Is this a test to see if I’m a team player who listens to your ridiculous rules and mandates?”
Cross tried to hide his snicker behind his hand as he rubbed his mouth. It didn’t work.
“Ms. Parker,” Almeada drew my attention away from my boss, “Mr. Ford is my client. He is in a jam, and I have requested that Cross Security look into the matter. The police have built a solid case. Given what I know about the arrest and evidence collection, I don’t have a leg to stand on. There was no improper procedure. No question as to their right to enter or jurisdictional issues. The security cam footage is damning, and I have no grounds to refute it. Combine that with the evidence found on the body, and I’m at a loss. That’s why I need you to find another suspect.”
“Do you think Dustin Ford did it?” I asked.
Almeada’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m his attorney, not his priest. I don’t take confessions.”
“Did he confess?”
“He insists he’s innocent, that he’s being framed. I did some research.” Almeada smiled. “Do you know what I found?”
“Nothing,” I said. If he had anything, he wouldn’t need Cross Security to investigate.
“I discovered a similar case. A man was found on a yacht with a dead woman who’d been suffocated. They were out to sea. No one else was on board. Yet, for some reason, the police dropped those charges. They even issued a public apology. Do you know who made them do that?” Almeada pointed at me. “If anyone is equipped to deal with this situation, it’s you.”
