Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (13 page)

Now they had to either charge the kid or cut him loose, and charging him for anything less than murder-in-the-first was a waste of time. Forget the fact the creep had physically threatened and assaulted a female cop. The public only cared about catching this killer, and didn’t have patience for side shows or distractions. Erin Donovan appeared to be fair game in this town. He didn’t like that anymore than he liked assholes who put their hands on women.

The ring of a phone jerked him out of his trance. The lingering smell of death clung to him like smoke, but there hadn’t been time to shower or change after the morgue. He grabbed a blank legal pad and pen off a nearby desk and headed inside. Brady was slouched over the table, but sat up when Darsh came in. His eyes were bloodshot, face haggard. The smell of metabolized alcohol oozed from the guy’s pores.

None of them had gotten much sleep last night, but at least Darsh hadn’t been hammered. He grabbed the chair and sat. “Mr. Brady, I’m Agent Singh with the FBI. We met this morning.”

“I remember.” The accompanying eye-roll was worthy of a fourteen-year-old girl.

“Mind if I call you Jason?”

The guy shrugged enormous shoulders. Darsh didn’t know why Erin wasn’t intimidated by the sheer size of these guys. After his stint in the Marines, he could handle himself, but Erin was almost a foot shorter and seventy pounds lighter.

“You seem to have a problem with Detective Donovan. Is that an accurate statement?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have a problem with her.” Brady straightened from his slouch. “She put Drew in jail for something he didn’t do.”

“It was the testimony of the women who’d been raped, the physical evidence, and the jury who put Drew in prison.”

“That cunt had it out for him from the start.” Brady folded muscled arms across his chest. “There’s no way Drew would touch any of those bitches.”

“Why not?” Darsh forced himself not to react to the hateful words. To appear not to judge, but instead to empathize. No one said it was easy.

Brady rolled out a soft snort. “Did you see them? They were fucking ugly. No way would Drew go there. Cassie did whatever he wanted in the sack anyway.”

No remorse shown over Cassie’s death. Did the guy even know who the latest victims were? Darsh wasn’t sure when the names had been released, but the housemates, Tanya and Alicia, must have blabbed to friends.

“The only way Drew would have touched those cows was if he were the one being hogtied and raped,” Brady continued.

Darsh suppressed his gut reaction, which was to slap the guy in the face with his fist. Brady was either clueless or a stone-cold sociopath.

“You’d like to see Drew exonerated,” he stated slowly.

“He’s the best quarterback in college football. He’s got a fucking NFL career just waiting for him when he gets out—why would he jeopardize all that for an ugly piece of ass? They were lying.”

When he gets out?
A slip of the tongue or wishful thinking?

Power, anger, sadism were the main reasons rapists raped. Sexual attraction was not generally a factor. Proximity and opportunity were more important. But in Cassie’s case, Darsh figured the victim had been chosen because of
who
she was.

“Are you saying the women who accused him of rape were jealous of his success and resentful of his lack of attention?” he asked.

Brady nodded and leaned forward over the table. Darsh got a serious dose of fiery breath. “They couldn’t have him, so they decided to bring him down.”

“What about the polygraphs?” Darsh was curious how the guy would explain away the case against Hawke.

“Everyone knows you can fool a lie detector, you just need to figure it out.”

Controlling your heartbeat and skin temperature was a hell of an exercise in self-control. Sure, some people could do it, but two young women with seemingly nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling the world they’d been raped? He didn’t think so.

“What about the physical evidence in the case?” Darsh pushed.

“What physical evidence? A hair? A fucking hair? They could have got that from the locker room or in a frickin’ bar. Fuck, I don’t know how they got it, but I know Drew. He’s a good guy—better than me.
Way
better than me. He doesn’t deserve this shit.”

Brady clearly idolized his friend.

“He was your roommate, right? How you holding up without him?”

Brady swallowed noisily, looking vulnerable for the first time. “There’s a new guy in his spot, same as we have a new quarterback on the team. It’s not the same.” Brady shot him a glare. “It sucks.”

“You think the fact you had a few too many beers last night is the reason you crossed a line with Detective Donovan this morning?”

Brady shrugged and didn’t seem capable of holding anything back. “I hate her guts. When I see her I feel like I’m going to explode. She doesn’t give a shit that she ruined someone’s life because guys don’t matter. She hates men.”

From what Darsh knew Erin didn’t hate men. She had many male colleagues who appeared to like and respect her. But she was hiding something. Some wound or flaw or mistake from her past.

“It’s a crime—what you did to her earlier? That’s assault of a police officer. You could be convicted and lose your own chance of a place in the NFL for doing that shit.”

“I barely touched her.”

“Trust me, assault of a police officer is one contact sport you won’t win.” Darsh glared hard at the younger man.

Brady shrugged a shoulder, and his eyes glowed sullenly. “She’s a shitty cop.”

“Even though she took you down?” Okay, so Darsh wasn’t acting so sympathetic, but this guy wasn’t showing
any
remorse for his actions. Unease moved through him, unease for Erin. She’d handled Brady earlier, Darsh reminded himself. She didn’t need his protection, and protecting her wasn’t why he was here. “What time did you start drinking last night?”

Brady winced as if the memory hurt. “I dunno. I probably cracked a beer around seven, but we didn’t open the keg until after the party started.”

And if he had witnesses to verify his presence from eight to ten, this guy was in the clear for the murders.

“Has Drew Hawke been in touch with you from prison?” asked Darsh.

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean has he written to you?” The guy was stalling. Darsh already knew the kid was brighter than he was pretending to be.
Misandrist
—someone who hated men. What kind of twenty-year-old football player used that sort of word?

A smart one, that’s what.

Exactly how smart was he? Darsh wondered.

Brady stuffed his hands in his sweatshirt’s pockets and sat straighter. He cleared his throat. “He’s written a couple of times.”

“You write back?” Darsh asked.

Brady wouldn’t meet his eyes. Shook his head.

“Why not? He’s your best friend.”

The kid blinked a few times. His eyes looked suspiciously wet. “What am I going to say? Team’s working hard and still winning? Coach Raymond is on my back about being late for practice?” He checked the clock, and his nostrils flared. “And there’s me late again.” He looked back up. “I can’t tell Drew that the world is going on as normal while he’s stuck in a shit-hole until he’s fifty. Merry Christmas, buddy, and ‘fuck you’ by the way.”

“Did he write to Cassandra?”

Brady’s shoulders bobbed, but his expression closed down. “I guess.”

“You two don’t talk?”

Brady’s lips twisted. “We aren’t really friends.”

Present tense. He was either a genius or he didn’t know Cassie was dead.

“So you were at this party last night—did you leave at any time? Go for a walk maybe?”

The door crashed open, and there stood a tall thin guy in an expensive suit. Chief Strassen’s face peered over his shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing questioning my client without his attorney being present?”

“We’re just talking,” Darsh replied, unruffled.

“Anything he said is not admissible in court.”

“Court?” Brady’s brow corrugated. “She’s really going to press charges? That bi—”

“Enough!” his attorney yelled.

When Brady shut his mouth, the lawyer stared Darsh in the eye. “They aren’t worried about any trumped up charges regarding Detective Donovan, Mr. Brady. They’re looking at you for the murder of Cassandra Bressinger.”

“Cassie’s dead?” The blood drained from Brady’s face. The kid shifted suddenly. “You fuck!”

Fast reflexes saved Darsh from a punch to the jaw. He held on to the younger man’s fist and squeezed. “Keep your dress on, sweetheart. We were just talking. You’re free to go. Unless…”—Darsh smiled with all the annoyance he was feeling—“You wanna try that punch again?”

The lawyer dragged on his client’s arm, trying to get him moving before he succumbed to temper. The young man stood, but Darsh blocked the exit. “And one word of advice, Mr. Brady. Steer clear of Detective Donovan. Next time, she will press charges, and that will be the end of a very promising football career. Do you understand?”

The guy’s eyes were hot with loathing. He nodded slowly and shot a glare at the mirror. “Oh, I got it. I understand perfectly.”

T
reetops on either
side of the road lurched violently in the strong gusts of wind. The three o’clock meeting had gone long, and they were still no further forward in the investigation. The chief had sent her and most of the other officers home to get a few hours’ sleep. She lived just south of town on the edge of the Adirondacks and was so tired her eyes kept drifting shut as she drove home in the dark. Great. Wrecking her car would be all she needed. Another mile, and she’d be home. Jet-lag on top of a sleepless night meant she physically couldn’t stay awake much longer. She stretched her eyes wide and pulled a face. The highway was quiet, not many houses out this way. She wound down the window, and it was like stepping inside a blast freezer.

Watching Darsh interview Brady had been interesting. He’d gotten far more out of the guy than she would have. And Brady’s reaction when he’d been told Cassie was dead had been very convincing. Either the football player hadn’t known she was one of the victims, or he was a hell of an actor. It didn’t take him off the suspect list. Now they’d have to interview the people who’d attended the party at the frat house and make sure he’d been where he said he was. She’d seen him just after ten last night. Could he have run from Cassie’s to the frat house between the 911 call being made and her seeing him there?

Her phone rang and startled her. God. The thing hadn’t stopped all day. Her mother, her dad, public relations, the mayor. This was the last one for the day, and it better not mean she had to turn around. She clicked the button on the handsfree.

“Hi Erin, it’s Linus. I was sorry to hear about the murders.”

“Linus. Hey. How’s it going?” Linus Hall was one of Professor Huxley’s graduate students. “What can I do for you?”

“Roman wanted me to call and ask if you wanted copies of Mandy Wochikowski’s essays.”

She wasn’t sure what they’d tell her, but she still didn’t have a feel for Mandy as a person yet and hated the fact her murder seemed almost inconsequential next to Cassie’s. “Yeah, sure. Send them to my email could you?”

“Actually I don’t have digital copies. I only have printouts. You probably have access to them on her computer,” he said hesitantly. But Mandy’s computer had been sent to the FBI’s lab at Quantico. “I can drop them off at the station tonight if you want?”

“That would be great, thanks. I won’t be there, but you can leave them with the desk sergeant.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “No problem. Mandy didn’t deserve this.”

Erin’s ears sharpened. Mandy had worked for Huxley over the summer, which meant Linus might have known Mandy quite well. And there was something in his voice… “You two were friends?”

“Yeah, well all of the lab hung out over the summer. Went for coffee and stuff.”

Had they been dating? It probably wasn’t okay for a grad student to date one of the undergraduate students in his class. “Anything you can tell me about her?” she asked cautiously.

There was a long pause. “Well, she kind of reminded me of you.”

That sent a ripple of shock through her body. The fact Mandy was dead and no one seemed to care struck her as infinitely sad. She needed to keep the girl a focal point of the investigation.

“Dedicated. Always working, never really satisfied no matter how many straight-As she brought home. Never really believing in herself.”

This kid obviously saw more than she wanted him to. “She sounds like she was way smarter than me.” She laughed off her discomfort at being analyzed. “Mandy believed Drew Hawke was innocent.”

“She did.” He cleared his throat. “She actually got me thinking about how Hawke
could
have been set up.”

An unexpected sense of betrayal hit her. Linus had been vehement in his belief the quarterback was the rapist. The turn for her driveway came up on her left. Nearly home. “Pretty elaborate scheme to set up the guy.”

“Difficult, but not impossible.”

Her lack of response made him stammer.

“B-but highly unlikely. This is most likely a copycat. Someone wanting to make Hawke look innocent and you guys look bad.”