Truth & Lies: A Queen City Justice Novel (18 page)

“Where’s the scene?” she asked.

“Already taken care of. I don’t want you anywhere near this. If he’s casing the scene afterward, I don’t want him to see you.”

Methodically, she scrubbed at the plate. Her teeth were clenched. Her eyes were as hard as glass.

“So I should just continue to sit here with my thumb up my ass?” she asked.

“Dana—”

“Never mind. Get back to me as soon as you can. I need to be doing
something
.”

“I’ll give you a call and let you know what we find out.”

“Fine.”

Clearly it was anything but.

Sherwood cut the line, and Deck hit the button to disconnect.

“You okay?” he asked.

She didn’t move—not even the twitch of a single muscle. She stood motionless for what seemed like days.

And then she exploded.

“Goddammit!” She whirled around to hurl the washrag from the sink across the room. It slammed into the wall before falling to the floor with a splat.

Deck started across the room as she turned her back on him and tucked her chin into her chest, the heels of her hands digging into her eyes. She must have heard him coming, because she held one palm out to him behind her, her elbow locked. “Just leave me,” she said in hoarse tones.

Deck paid her no attention. He said her name as he reached her. She tried to step away, but he grabbed her and dragged her into his arms, her back to his front, her arms trapped under his.

She struggled for a moment or two, and then her tears got the better of her and she sagged in his embrace. Deck tightened his arms and leaned back against the counter to avoid them both dropping to the floor.

She turned in his arms and pressed her face against his chest. She didn’t let herself sob, but he could tell from her breathing she was crying. So much contained, raw agony from her crushed something deep inside of his chest.

“Shh,” he whispered against her temple. “It’s going to be okay.”

“How can it be?” she hiccupped against him. “Some woman—a mom—is dead. She was just going about her life, and this monster—this monster that I can’t seem to catch—targeted her, sliced her up, and killed her.”

He didn’t know how to respond. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he’d seen all manner of evil that one man could do to another. Not that it had gotten any easier with repeated exposure. Yes. It was awful. But there were horrible people doing horrible things to one another all over the world.

He suspected pointing that out wouldn’t win him any points in her favor. Not that he was trying to win points with her anymore.

He just held her and let her cry it out and tried to ignore how the smell of her hair reminded him of the best night of sleep—and worst morning—of his life.

She ran out of steam fairly quickly. Her sniffles subsided, and she pulled out of his embrace, wiping her face. “I’m—uh. I’m sorry. I generally don’t, uh, share gross displays of emotion.” She grabbed a clean dishcloth out of the cabinet above the sink and cranked the cold water. She wet the cloth and held it on her face for a long moment.

“That was hardly a gross display. Don’t worry about it,” Deck reassured her, feeling the ever-growing distance between them like it was the gulf over a canyon. There was no way to cross it.

She folded the cloth and dropped it on the edge of the sink. “I’m—” She cleared her throat. “I’m going take the dog for a walk before we get back to that data. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Want company?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I kinda want to be alone.”

He suspected she wanted a long, punishing run and was too polite to rub his face in the fact that he wouldn’t be able to keep up.

It was a long, long time before she returned, and when she did, she was practically dragging Hvala. It appeared that they’d both run until they’d dropped.

It didn’t, however, appear like she felt any better, but he respected her wishes for him to stay back.

Probably better for his own sanity, anyway.

Chapter Thirteen

Monday, December 8—12:30 p.m.

Cincinnati FBI Field Office, Kenwood Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

“We finally got a good picture of the guy who keeps showing up at DCT,” Kier MacQuaid said, plunking down a full-page printout of a photo on the conference table. They had about a million and five images of the back of his head and the top of his ball cap. They guy was pretty good at evasion.

“Jack and Rey? You on the line?” Andrew asked, wondering if this case would ever end.

“We’re here,” Jack said over the speakerphone on the table.

“Dana,” Kier said. “You get the image?”

“Yeah. That’s the guy who picked me up at the airport and who has shown up at Deck’s place to see if ‘everything is going okay.’ Whatever that means. He pegs my suspect-o-meter.”

“Do we know who he is yet?” Andrew asked.

“He didn’t identify himself by name.”

“Any ideas on how to figure out who he is?” Andrew asked.

“He definitely called DCT on the day that I came into town. You should be able to do a reverse lookup from there. We’ve got their phone logs, right?” Then she paused and sighed. “But it was a flip phone. So probably a burner.”

Andrew looked to Emilie. “What can you get us?”

Her fingers flew over the keys as she blew her spiky bangs out of her face. “Dana, you remember about what time the call was made?”

“Almost exactly four p.m.”

Emilie’s eyes narrowed as she concentrated on the screen in front of her. “Got it. Good memory. Let me run a reverse lookup…” She trailed off while her computer did the magic that it was known to do under her fingertips. “Yeah. Your hunch was right. Burner.”

Her fingers continued to fly over the keys. “Hold up. The facial recognition just brought something up.” She paused. “Very interesting…”

“Okay. John Raymond Giordano. Age thirty-eight. Arrested once in Cleveland on suspicion of a mob hit. The US Attorney couldn’t make the case, and he was let go. There was a big article about it in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Get this… Arturo Turlucci’s attorney represented him.”

Over the speakerphone, there was scrabbling as if the phone had been dropped and a loud explosion of swearing in Jack’s voice.

“What’s going on?”

“Did you say Arturo Turlucci?”

“Yeah.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jack whispered.

“Uh-oh,” both Kier and Andrew said almost at the same time. It was believed that Turlucci’s people were responsible for shooting Jack’s brother and killing him years before.

Andrew took a deep breath. “Ideally, since you guys are in Toledo, I’d like you to pay Turlucci a visit. But Jack, if you can’t handle it—”

“I can handle it.”

“We can get the Cleveland Field Office to do it.”

“No. I got it, boss.” Jack sighed. “Who knows? Maybe he can tell us where frickin’ Michael Milton and his ever-roaming credit card are hanging out. I’m damned tired of crawling all over the Midwest looking for his ass.”

“Dana, where are you and Deck on the football parents?”

“We’ve got two left to talk to,” Dana said. “No one saw anything, of course. Someone vaguely remembered a beige sedan parked back by the concession stand, but not the make or model, not even whether it was a two or four door. Certainly not a license plate.”

“Keep after it. Let us know if you turn anything else up.”

“Will do, boss.”

When were they going to get a lead that would actually pan out? Andrew rubbed his temples and sent the rest of the team on their way.



Monday, December 8—6:00 p.m.

Norwood Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

“Your incompetence ruined this whole weekend for me.”

When he punctuated his statement by shattering his highball glass filled with scotch on the opposite wall, the other man jumped. At least he finally had his attention.

He did not like having to find his own playmates. Even Anka had been disappointed, and thus disappointing. He wasn’t even certain how he felt about her anymore. Their liaison the past weekend hadn’t been nearly as satisfying as in the past.

She’d been defiant. Perhaps playing hard to get? He didn’t know. All he knew was that next month wouldn’t be like this.

“Who do you have available?”

“The FBI has been crawling all over Dream Come True. What you want is very risky.”

“Which is why I rely on your discretion. Let me see the pictures,” he said, pointing fiercely at the folders on the desk.

The other man handed him two folders, leaving a third lying on the desk.

He opened the first folder and immediately scoffed. “Too old and too fat.” He flicked the folder back to the desk, Frisbee style, not caring if the contents spilled. If this weekend had taught him nothing else, he knew he needed a woman who was toned, who had firm, tight skin. He shuddered at the memory of the soft, saggy flesh of the other woman.

He opened the second folder. “You’ve got to be kidding me. She looks like a horse.” Her long face featured square white teeth, eyes that were set too far apart, and a long, long nose. The second folder went the way of the first, but his associate caught it before the papers inside spilled.

“Give me the third folder.”

The other man shook his head. “She’s got a groom, and he’s a cop. She’s not available.”

“You’re good at making them available,” he said, taking the folder from the desk. He opened it. That was more like it. Fresh-faced, young, and beautiful, with freckles and dimples.

“I’ve been working on it.”

“There’s one way for you to guarantee she’ll stay single,” he said.

The other man swallowed. “Let me find you someone else.”

“No. I want
this
one. And you need to get her for me. Soon. I don’t want another weekend like this last one.”

“What do you expect me to do? Kill him?”

“I don’t care about the particulars. You will get her for me. I don’t have to remind you what happens to the people you love when you try to defy me, do I?”

He felt a lot of satisfaction as the other man bowed his head and swallowed in defeat.

It was good to know, as a businessman, what it took to get ahead. He looked back to the picture and then the profile and breathed her name. “Draghana.” He liked the way it felt in his mouth. He suspected he’d like the way
she
felt in his mouth.

“Look, I can’t kill a cop.”

That was unfortunate. Both that his associate was turning into such a spineless twit and also that she was that close to law enforcement. All the better reason to get her away from him.

He pulled the papers out of the folder, noting her address.

Perhaps the old adage was true. If you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. His associate had just about run the course of his usefulness.

However, he couldn’t do anything now. It was time for him to get back home before he was missed.



Tuesday, December 9—10:00 p.m.

Lakewood, Ohio

“You ready to do this?” Rey asked Jack as they pulled in front of Turlucci’s house in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood.

The house, an imposing modern structure of glass and stone, was set back on a long and winding lane lined by white pine trees, which stood on either side of the paved driveway like sentries protecting the property from view. A semicircular drive in front of the house looped through a Japanese water garden to swing under a portcullis. God forbid that Turlucci ever get his head wet during the rain. The house was flanked on the left by a five-car garage and on the right, a deck that wrapped around the back of the house and looked out over the Lake Erie shoreline.

It was ostentatious in the extreme.

“Looks like organized crime still pays as well as it ever did,” Jack said after a long exhale.

“I can do this alone if you can’t handle it.”

“Shut the fuck up. I can handle it. You’re not going in there without backup.”

“We’re here about the current case, not your brother.”

Rey heard a squeak as Jack ground his teeth together. “I said I can handle it. I know what’s at stake. Are we going to have a problem?”

Rey shook his head slowly. “I sure as hell hope not.”

They stepped up to the house, and Rey hit the doorbell.

A maid dressed in a gray, knee-length dress with a white apron and black crepe-soled shoes answered. Hispanic, in her late fifties, she wore her dark hair in a precise bun on the back of her head.

“Is Arturo Turlucci at home?”

She shook her head. “Signore Turlucci is at his office downtown.” That she pronounced “Signore” in Italian rather than her clearly native Spanish “Señor” made Rey want to roll his eyes. The guy was fifth or sixth generation American. It might be time to drop the ties to Italy.

Rey heard Jack sigh and slump a bit.

“I can leave a message for him if you like?” the housekeeper offered, her interest pegged.

Rey flipped open his notebook. “He’s at his office on Ninth Street?”

“
Si.
”

“
Gracias,
” Rey said, even as they backed away from the closing door.

“What’re the odds that she’s on the phone with Turlucci right now, letting him know that two guys who look like Feds are on their way?” Jack asked.

“I’d say eighty-twenty.”

“We’d better hurry, then.”

An accident on I-490 complicated their drive downtown, and it was nearly eleven thirty when they arrived.

They parked in the parking garage under the thirty-story granite-and-glass building. The elevator took them directly to the executive floor of Turlucci Enterprises. As a cover corp, it was pretty good. No one would ever guess by looking at the plush décor and the high-quality artwork that the place was run by a long-time crime syndicate. A blonde twenty-something receptionist greeted them as they left the elevator.

Rey stepped out of the way and let Jack do his thing. He wasn’t certain how Jack managed to charm any woman between the ages of six months and one-hundred-and-two into giving him precisely what he wanted. Pheromones? Jedi mind control? He didn’t know, but it was always impressive to watch.