Assassin P.I. (12 page)

Chapter 12

“
Mornin’, boss.” Angie greeted Jack at the office door, a steaming cup of joe in hand.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her.

It was the same routine as the past several days. She’d insist on calling him
boss
and then proceed to spend the morning getting underfoot until he finally was forced out of the office, too frustrated—or too horny—to concentrate. Dressed in her signature black pencil skirt and high heels, a pink button-down sweater clung to her every curve. A sheer scarf tied at the neck completed the outfit.

Things had been different between them ever since the weekend. Jack had been careful to keep his distance, giving Angie a wide berth of space.

“I am not your boss,” he said, averting his eyes before she caught him ogling her breasts. He took the coffee she offered.

“Of course you are. I’m here, aren’t I?” She swiveled on her toe and walked away, her stilettos clicking softly on the linoleum flooring. Her ass swung deliciously from side to side with each step.

Still watching her backside, Jack took a sip and set the mug down on the desk. “I’ll make it simple for you. You’re fired.”

But there was no bite to his words, no edge to his tone. Nothing that would say he meant business. For whatever reason, Angie likened herself to his Gal Friday, but after the lousy night he’d had, he was in no mood for her pert attitude and witty comebacks.

She poured herself a cup of coffee. “You can’t fire me.”

He could, and he had, several times. But she refused to leave.

“I don’t need a secretary getting underfoot all the time.” Digging through a pile neatly stacked on his desk, he searched for the file Deluca had given him. Where was that damn file? It had to be around somewhere.

“I beg to differ. Have you seen your bank accounts recently? There’s no easy way to say this.” She reached out and took Jack’s hands in hers and peered into his eyes.

The zing of electricity when she touched him went all the way down to his toes and back again. Couldn’t she feel that?

He tugged his hands free and picked up his mug to hide the slight tremor in his right hand.

“You’re broke. Broke, broke. Like so broke you can’t even afford top ramen. That’s how broke you are. When was the last time you had a case?”

“You mean other than your case?”

She harrumphed, one eyebrow rising as she gave him a withering stare.

Stalling, he took a sip of the coffee. He could tell her about the job Deluca wanted him to take. Or about the fifty thousand he kept hidden beneath a loose floorboard for a rainy day situation or his offshore bank account. If he really wanted to, he could even tell her about his last case, the one that left him feeling dead inside, so totally disillusioned with humanity that he was ready to pack it all up, close shop, and live the life of a recluse.

He could. But he wouldn’t. Not after she’d lied to him.

Running away from her every day wasn’t the answer either. With nothing to do, and no Jack to boss her around, Angie had been left to her own devices. After she’d cleaned until the place passed the white glove test, she’d set about reorganizing files and familiarizing herself with Jack’s financials. She’d been hounding him ever since.

Nothing was the same with her around. Even Shamus was on his best behavior, which Jack hated. He missed hearing his chatty parrot blurt inappropriate comments like a dirty old man without a filter.

Enough was enough.

He couldn’t sit all day, listening to her yammering on about the ins and outs of his business. It was
his
business after all, not hers. He was the boss. And right now, he would do anything to shut her up.

He strode across the room and hauled Angie up out of her seat and into his arms. She yelped in surprise, her mouth forming a small seductive ‘O’. Jack lowered his lips to her mouth, cutting off any protest she might have. After a couple of seconds, his hand snaked into her hair. The tension in her body dissipated and her body pressed against his, deepening the kiss.

He broke the connection before he lost all control and dragged her to the ground to have his way with her. Angie’s eyes fluttered open, dark and mysterious. She bit her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth, and Jack nearly groaned with the effort it took to not kiss her again. He should fire her, once and for all. As much for his sake as for hers.

But one look at those golden brown eyes and he knew he wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

He whispered against her lips, “I’m the boss around here. Remember that.”

It took every ounce of willpower he had to walk out of the office door and drive away.

Throughout the night, Nick toss
ed and turned, wrestling with his morals. Accusing a man of murder wasn’t something he took lightly. Had Jack truly killed Marco? For that matter, had he killed Trevor? Where did Angie’s loyalty lie? With Trevor, or Jack? By the time morning broke, he’d finally decided to turn his evidence over to Chief Deluca, let him decide what to do with it.

After breakfast, rather than head to work like he’d told Sara he was doing, he turned his car toward Ellington Bay. The traffic was blissfully light for being a Monday morning. Once his feet hit the precinct, he headed straight for the chief’s secretary. A flicker of recognition crossed her face.

“Special Agent Shaw, nice to see you again.” She smiled in a way that said it really wasn’t. “Chief Deluca’s not here right now, but I can tell him you stopped by.”

Nick debated. He could leave a message, knowing the chief would simply ignore it, or he could try to throw some weight around. “I’m afraid this can’t wait. I must speak with the chief immediately. It’s of the utmost importance.”

The secretary studied his face. She seemed to be weighing her options. Which one of them did she dislike more? The federal agent butting his nose into their small-town business, or the condescending boss whom she barely tolerated. Her decision apparently made, she leaned forward and whispered, “You didn’t hear this from me, but he just headed out for a crime scene down at the pier. A pretty grisly murder, too, from what the dispatchers said.”

He broke into a grin. “Thank you,” he mouthed and then headed back the way he’d come. By the time Nick rolled up on the scene, the Chief of Police was already making his way down to the active crime scene. An unusual sight, but perhaps old habits die hard for the former detective.

The low ocean tide lapped at the bloated body, rocking it gently on the rocky shore. The car door shutting only warranted a brief glance in his direction before the coroner and the assisting officers dismissed his presence and returned to inspecting the dead body at their feet. He stayed back, trying to blend into the crowd that had gathered behind the police tape. He was already person non-grata around the chief. Butting his way into a homicide investigation wouldn’t change that one bit. Besides, his stomach wasn’t accustomed to the sight of a days old rotting body, even from a distance.

It was now or never. “Chief,” Nick called out. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”

Deluca turned and peered up at him. He paused a beat, then waved Nick over. “Let him through.”

That was not the response the officer stationed at the top of the scene had expected. “But Chief, what about preserving the crime scene?”

“I’m sure a federal agent such as Agent Shaw here can handle himself in court if he gets called to the witness stand. Isn’t that right, son?” The chief threw Nick a look that said he’d better not fuck anything up. Quickly, before the invitation was rescinded, Nick signed the log and entered the scene.

The chief had already moved down toward the body. “Whada we got?” Deluca called out in his usual manner, a gruff demand that bordered on something more akin to an order being barked rather than a question being asked.

“A D.B. washed up in the drink.”

“ID?”

“Negative, Sir.”

Nick gingerly picked his way through the rocks, careful to not go sliding down the steep slope.

“Nothing found on the body and good luck trying to get any fingerprints off this.” The crime scene tech leaned back on his haunches and snapped a few more pictures of one of the dead man’s waterlogged hands. Sea creatures had nibbled the extremities down to nubs.

“Dental records it is, then. Cause of death?”

Nick shifted his position, moving along the fringe until he could get a better line of sight.

“Take your pick.” The coroner turned the head to reveal the ligature marks on the neck. “The obvious choice is drowning. Might be strangulation, but my money’s on the GSW, courtesy of the bullet lodged in the back of his brain.”

Nick rolled the possibilities over in his head. Suicide was out. No one went to that much trouble to try to off themselves three different times in three different manners. No. This was definitely homicide.

Chief Deluca shook his head. “Seems like overkill.”

Nick took a step forward. “Seems personal.” The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Heads turned, suddenly acutely aware of his presence. “Sir, I need to speak with you in private.”

“After you solve my crime for me. If you want to do my job, be my guest.” The chief bowed, and Nick thought he detected a faint smirk cross his face. “My dead body is yours.”

From a distance Nick hadn’t been able to fully appreciate the true extent of the damage done to the body. He turned his face away as he fought with his gag reflexes. The officers snickered at his discomfort.

Chief Deluca let out a hearty guffaw and slapped Nick’s back. “Come on, boy. Enlighten us, please. I could use a good laugh today.”

Nick straightened, fighting to keep his stomach from violently lurching again. Drawing in a few deep breaths, he forced himself to call upon his training. When he spoke, he was impassioned, his words matter-of-fact, unemotional. “The bullet to the back of the head says mob hit. Professional. Impersonal. But strangulation is intimate. You have to get up close and personal to do it. Killer probably used a rope and had to be at least six feet tall in order to inflict a wound like this. He had to either know the victim or take him by surprise. I don’t see any defensive wounds so it’s unlikely the vic fought back. Maybe was drugged. I’d run a full tox screen to be sure.”

“Sir, we need to talk.” Nick dropped his voice low so only the chief could hear him. “I believe the man we spoke about last week murdered a man.”

Chief Deluca abruptly started clapping, completely ignoring the bombshell Nick had dropped. “Looky here, boys. The Fed’s got it all figured out. Might as well bag the body and go on home. Our job is done.”

Flustered, Nick blurted out, “Any one of these methods would have been an effective way to kill a man, but all three? Somebody wanted to be damn sure this man died a horrific death.”

No one spoke for a moment. Either he’d said something so profoundly smart that everyone was mulling over the possibilities in their head, or so profoundly stupid that they were stunned into silence. Either way, the crowd simply gawked at him.

Finally a voice called out, “Either that, or the perp was a lousy killer and it took three times before he finally managed to do the deed. But I suspect you might be right. He seriously pissed off the wrong person.”

The voice had come from the crowd above. Nick searched the bystanders and found himself staring into the face of none other than the elusive Jack Gaines. Cloaked in a trench coat and fedora, Jack’s attire screamed 1940’s gumshoe, mysterious and brilliant.

“We need to talk.” Jack tugged his hat lower over his eyes and jerked his head to the side, motioning for Nick to follow him. He turned and melted back into the crowd of looky-loos that had formed.

Nick turned to follow Jack until the chief clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “He meant me. Why don’t you go tell your theory to the officers at the station? I bet they’d appreciate a good chuckle.”

With a flick of his hand, the chief dismissed him as easily as he’d rejected his theory. Annoyed and frustrated by the constant belittling he’d endured ever since he’d become a federal agent, he pushed his way through the crowd and headed for his car. As he turned the situation over in his head, reliving every humiliating word, a strange thought occurred to him.

Nick stopped, his hand on the door handle but his gaze trained on Jack and Chief Deluca, who were at the moment huddled together holding a private conversation. They were too far away to hear what was being said, but their body language spoke volumes.

For a person who’d burned every bridge he had with the local police, one would think Jack would shy away from anyone wearing a uniform. But quite the opposite was proving to be true. Why else would Jack show up at a crime scene unless he had information about the murder? Had he seen something? Did he know the victim?

Even more telling was the way Chief Deluca had treated Jack. He didn’t kick him out of his crime scene, the way Nick might have expected him to. Instead, he left in the middle of an investigation to hear what Jack had to say. Jack and the chief weren’t just former co-workers. They were friends.

Jack cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder as Deluca ushere
d him away from the crime scene. The man Deluca had been ridiculing only moments before still stood amid a crowd but watched them intently, head tilted to the side. Deluca had never been accused of tact, and if the face of his latest victim was any indication, he’d been particularly harsh on the newbie.

“Who’s the new guy?” 

Deluca steered him toward the pier and away from prying ears. “Someone you should be avoiding. He’s a Fed, a real thorn in my side.”

“FBI in Ellington Bay? What on earth for?” The morning fog was beginning to dissipate under the sunlight, though the air still had a bite to it.