Dark Justice (Croft Family Mob Series Book 1) (13 page)

“Dimitri.”

He crossed his fingers and placed them behind his back. “Okay, I’ll behave.”

Emma shook her head. “I’m going to go change. When I get back, we’ll start working this case.”

She headed toward the door. “Oh, and uncross your fingers, or I’ll uncross them. Ask Greyson. I can get mean.”

She left.

“Can she get mean?” Dimitri asked, really not buying it.

“I’m in sex-free purgatory. It doesn’t get any meaner than that. You got off easy. Count your blessings.”

He laughed.

Yeah, he’d do that.

 
                               
* * *
  G r e y s o n   C r o f t   * * *

LVPD

He wasn’t happy.

Chris felt the same way.

When Commissioner Raye arrived, he was pissed. Someone, who he wouldn’t reveal, had called him at his office, and he’d shown up. Chris had a feeling it was one of the detectives outside his office.

He wasn’t surprised.

It seemed the news of Emma’s arrival reached him pretty damn fast. If there was one thing Chris hated, it was a snitch.

In his world, snitches got stitches.

He wanted to kick cop ass over this. So much rode on keeping the commissioner off his ass.

“Did she show up here?” he asked. “Or did you call her to come in?”

Yeah, there was no way he’d do that. He had been trying to keep Emma far away from him and for a damn good reason. This was it.

“She just showed up.”

“Did she tell you anything?” he asked, taking a seat behind Chris’s desk.

That alone pissed him off. This man didn’t have the decency or integrity to sit in his desk. Then again, after what he’d done to Emma, neither did he.

“She tore me three new ones and told me to pound sand. So, yeah, she told me lots, sir.”

“Did you get it on record? Please tell me you had the fortitude to turn on the digital recorder and seal their fate!”

He hated this.

“No. I didn’t get time to record it. She’ll be back. When she comes back, and I expect her to do just that, I’ll get you what you want.”

“I need a full confession on Mace Bristol’s death, and Marianna’s. I want her to tell me that her bastard husband was in on it, and that she covered it up. I want them all in jail!”

Oh, he was aware.

“I’ll do what I can.”

“You won’t let me down, will you?” Commissioner Jeffrey Raye asked.

At that moment, Chris wanted to take the man’s tie from his neck, wrap it around his chicken neck, and hang him from a flag pole.

Only, he knew he had no choice but to play along.

It made Chris sick.

This day was getting worse and worse.

Chris wanted to hurt the man in his office for what he’d been forced to do to Emma.

Hell!

He wanted to hurt himself.

“I want to bury her and that husband of hers. I want my name in the books for taking down Greyson Croft.”

“Sir, maybe they didn’t do it.”

Commissioner Raye laughed.

“If you believe that, maybe you don’t deserve to be sitting behind this desk.”

Since Chris knew what it was like to be the commissioner, he knew the job was mostly PR with a side of crankiness. The man was now officially raining on his parade, and that pissed him off.

“I earned my rank.”

Commissioner Raye laughed. “Then prove to me that you’ve earned it because if you don’t help me take down the Crofts, you’re going to be unemployed.”

“I honestly don’t think they had anything to do with it, sir,” he offered. “Greyson and Emma would have told me. I was family.”

Yeah,
‘was’
being the key word on this one.

“I don’t really care if they did it or not, Captain Ford. I plan to make sure the world thinks they did it. I’m going to smear this all over the media, making sure their lives are hell. If I can find a way to send one, or both, of them to prison, I will. I want their heads on a silver platter.”

“Even if they’re innocent?” he asked.

The man laughed.

“That’s a matter of perspective and public opinion, and we both know it. You can sway the media and public opinion any way you want with a well-place story. Look what they did to me.”

Yeah, but Chris knew he’d been guilty.

That was the big difference.

“They thought they could screw with me. It took me weeks to clean up the mess that bitch made in the media. She’s going to pay. I’ll plant the fucking evidence myself.”

Yeah, he was aware.

Commissioner Jeffrey Raye was just as corrupt as the rest of them.

Here was the proof.

“Now, I’ll head back to my office. If she calls you, get her to talk about Mace and Marianna. I want something on the record. The new FBI Director has made it clear that they won’t stop investigating our department if we don’t help find Mace’s killer.”

Chris didn’t want to help them.

What he wanted was to walk out, never come back, and go apologize to Emma. He hated everything about this.

Everything.

When Commissioner Raye stood, he held out his hand. “Thank you for your help, Chris. I knew I could count on you. I had a feeling the rumors about how close you were with the Crofts would come in handy.”

He bit his tongue.

“Have a good day, sir.”

When the man left, Chris sat in his chair and closed his eyes. It was done.

Pulling the recorder from his lapel, tucked behind his badge, he held it in his hand.

He only hoped it was enough.

He wasn’t sure it would be, but he had to try. At this point, it was worth everything.

His plan had worked.

Emma hated him, the commissioner trusted him, and he’d found his proof that the Crofts would need to bury the man. All he could hope was that when he headed to Terrace Glen tomorrow, with the recording, they’d listen.

Oh, and not have Dimitri take him out.

Not that he wouldn’t deserve it.

But still…

 
         
* * *
  G r e y s o n   C r o f t   * * *

Emma took her time getting changed. While she’d slightly broken down in front of the men, she wanted to mourn the loss of Chris all alone.

She wept in the privacy of her room.

It was violent.

Ugly.

And heartbreaking
.

There was a part of her that couldn’t believe that he’d turn on them. She really misjudged him. She felt like such a fool.

How did she not see this coming?

As she sat on the bed, she scrolled through the pictures in her phone. Chris was in most of them.

They had taken a bunch of goofy selfies when he was there healing. She’d never forget those days.

They meant everything to her.

He’d meant everything. 

They were both smiling in the pictures, and she wanted to remember when her heart wasn’t broken. Telling him that he was dead to her was a way to protect her heart.

There was no way he was dead.

He was her brother.

In blood.

They’d fought the bad guys side by side, and when all of Vegas thought they were dirty, he was the only one who believed in them.

Chris had supported them.

He had their backs.

So why not now?

To Emma, it didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Why was he being like this? Was it because he really believed that Dimitri and Greyson were behind Mace’s death?

Maybe she’d simply misjudged him.

Either way, he was gone.

When their bedroom door opened, Greyson was standing there with a bottle of water, two aspirin, and a box of tissues.

Apparently, she was transparent.

Of course he would realize that she was hurting beyond words and would need all three of those things.

The booze she’d consumed was burning a hole in her stomach, the tears were giving her one hell of a headache, and she wanted to curl into a ball and weep even more on their bed.

“Want to talk about it?”

Emma couldn’t even speak.

The tears continued as she was sitting on the massive king size bed.

“I’m sorry he hurt you. If you’d like, I’ll go, kick his ass, and then hide the body.”

That was the last thing she wanted.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

He’d been thinking the same thing. Chris was loyal like that old Bassett hound. He wouldn’t bite the hand of the people who fed him Italian on the weekends.

He loved Emma.

It was clearly in his eyes whenever he looked at her. Now it made him feel off too.

“We’ll figure it out.”

And he would.

Before long, he’d get to the bottom of it, even if it meant hanging Chris upside down off his balcony.

“We should work,” she said.

“Why don’t you lie down a little while? We can start this without you.”

Emma wiped her eyes.

“No. I’m going to do this. We’ve lost a day already on Seth Bell’s life. If we want to get this done, before his execution, we need to move fast.”

“Sunday is the annual Midsummer’s Night Eve gala at the casino ballroom. We can cancel.”

She couldn’t do that either.

“We promised Randall we’d carry on and have it, and I’m going to keep my word. We’re going.”

At one time, he’d hosted it at the house, but Greyson wasn’t letting that happen. He wanted a secure location.

He took her hand in his.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?”

She didn’t have a choice.

There was too much riding on it.

“I am.”

Greyson backed down.

“Then let’s go save Seth Bell’s life, kitten.”

She let him lead her back down to the family room. Maybe a case would take her mind off the mess.

Maybe.

Yeah, that wouldn’t happen. This had changed everything, and not for the good.

This had broken her damn heart.

For the rest of her life.

Chapter Seven

Friday

Noon

Downstairs, Tessa and Curtis were on the big screen through video conference. They were all smiles until Emma came into the room.

The second Curtis saw her, he looked angry. “Who made Mom cry?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” Greyson stated.

“I want to hear it. No one makes Mom upset. They get their ass kicked.” Curtis could see by the way that Emma had her arm wrapped around Greyson’s waist, and when Dimitri handed her tea, it wasn’t either of those men.

Greyson gave him the abridged version.

As he told them, Tessa’s eyes went big.

“He’s turned on us? That seems off. Are we talking about the same man that follows Emma around trying to get her to feed him lasagna?”

“Yeah, the same one,” Greyson stated.

“That’s definitely not right. Was he abducted by the pod people?” Tessa asked.

They had no clue.

Unfortunately for Chris, Greyson couldn’t let this go. As Emma’s husband, he had a duty.

Before he could state his intention, Curtis spoke up.

“Later, I’ll be going to his place to knock him around,” he stated. “No one treats Mom like that. No one.”

That was sweet and incredibly amusing.

While Curtis had been a Fed, Chris was the size of a bus. If Captain Ford wanted to hurt the man, he could without much effort.

Emma appreciated his love.

“Thank you, Curtis, but later, I need to see you and Katerina. We have to have a discussion.”

It was his turn for his eyes to go big.

That sentence freaked him out.

“Uh…”

“Right after you sit down and talk to Dimitri.”

The Russian looked over at her. “Me? Why does he need to talk to me?”

Emma stared at Curtis on the screen. It was time she cleaned house and made sure the family got back on track. There was no way she was letting what was left of them fall apart.

It wasn’t happening.

“Yeah, I do need to see you when I get back to the house. Will you have time, Dimitri?”

He was pretty sure he knew what the man needed to tell him. “I’ll be available.”

“Thank you.”

Emma took a seat on the couch. “Okay, Tessa and Curtis, tell us what you have on our cop and the dead women. We need to focus on this case.”

They began rustling through the papers. It was just like being a cop. This brought back memories, as they were about to break it down.

“Our killer, Seth Bell, the former cop, had a spotless record,” Curtis said, sitting behind the glossy set up in Dimitri’s condominium. “In fact, he made Emma’s record look bad.”

“Hey!” she said. “You better not be digging in my cop file,” she stated.

He wiggled his eyebrows to make her laugh.

“Curtis!”

“Let’s just say that they’ve flagged your file. I can’t access it without setting off a million alarms. It looks like they were expecting you to try something like this.”

Greyson wasn’t surprised. “Don’t bite at that bait.”

He wouldn’t.

“Anyway, Seth had commendations, awards of merit, and a perfect attendance record. The man didn’t even take off sick days.”

They listened to him.

“Who did he work with?” Greyson asked.

“He had two partners in the six years on the force. The first one was Charlie Tillman. He was his partner for only seven months. There’s a complaint marked in the file, but not explained, so I can’t tell you why Seth requested a transfer of partners.”

“Maybe they just didn’t mesh,” Emma stated.

“Or there might be more,” Greyson offered. “Where’s there smoke, there’s often fire.”

He had a point.

They didn’t have the luxury of assuming anything at this point. Their jobs were even harder, so they had to dig into anything that popped up.

This case was even more important.

With the other few cases they had worked, no one’s life had been on the line. Seth was running out of time.

“So, we have a spotless record, a decent cop, and all of a sudden, he goes on a killing spree?”

It didn’t add up.

“It smells wrong to me,” Tessa offered.

Yeah, them too.

That’s why they’d flagged it to discuss.

As they were getting ready to continue, there was a sound from off to the side.

“Paris is here,” Curtis stated.

Perfect.

“Hey, Doctor Archer! We’ve missed you,” Emma stated. When his face popped onto the screen, she smiled. “Are you and your lovely wife available for dinner tomorrow night?”

She really loved Tessa and Paris, and she refused to let the issue with Chris make her miss out on any time with the people she still had in her life.

Before he even spoke, he kissed his wife. It was clear to everyone there that they were very much in love.

It was a beautiful thing.

Plus, it was adorable how Tessa watched him like the world revolved around the man.

Paris focused on the screen of the laptop. “Emma, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I believe we’re free.”

Greyson was glad he was there. “Care to get in on a case, Paris? We could use someone to profile our killer.”

He grinned. “And pass this fun up? Never. I’m bored with the normal crazies. I miss working with Curtis.”

“HEY! That wasn’t a compliment,” Curtis stated, trying not to laugh.

Paris simply grinned wickedly.

Emma got control of the situation before it got out of hand.

“Boys…”

They settled down.

That was Greyson’s cue. He told him about the man being executed the following week.

“Wow! Talk about taking this one to the wire.”

Yeah, they were aware.

They shared everything with him, regarding the man in prison.

“He didn’t miss any work, had a spotless record, and got awards?”

“Yes,” Curtis said.

“Normally, there’s always one part of a killer’s life that the crimes will bleed into unintentionally. If he were killing hookers, then he wouldn’t be able to keep it from affecting his job. It would have shown up there at some point. It would have consumed him, and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

That made sense.

“So it would have interrupted his daily life?” Emma asked.

“Yes, even if he was bipolar or schizophrenic. At some point, he’d progress into the disease, and it would cause chaos. Someone would have noticed.”

They trusted Paris.

The man knew his serial killers.

“Do you think Seth Bell is possible of pulling all of this off?”

He read the man’s psych evaluations on the screen. They were transmitting to Greyson and Emma at the same time.

“See right here?” he asked, pointing to something he’d picked up.

They stared at the details.

“Yeah.”

“He passed all his exams, and in six years, he’d never fired his gun.”

That spoke volumes.

In Vegas, for a cop, never to have to discharge his firearm meant a lot. It meant he was calm, collected, and didn’t act irrationally.

It also meant he’d never killed anyone in his life. If he was guilty of being a killer, he wouldn’t have had that restraint.

“What do the psych evaluations say?” Emma asked. “Do they think he was capable of violence?”

“He scored high on each and every one,” Paris said, reading the mumbo jumbo psychobabble that he was accustomed to in his new career.

“Do you think, seeing what you’ve seen, that he could snap and kill five hookers?”

Greyson added, “Oh, P.S…he was gay with a steady partner.”

Paris laughed. “Yeah, no. That’s the one person who isn’t going to kill women. When a killer hunts his prey, and there’s sexual assault, he’s generally going to go after something that turns him on. If he was raping women, he got off on that. Look at his childhood, and that will tell you everything you need to know.”

Curtis pulled it up.

His family life looked normal—well, as normal as anyone’s life. He had his sister Miranda, the twin, and Tucker Bell, a construction worker.

“He had a stable life at the time he was accused of these crimes. If I were to give this an evaluation number, on a scale of one to ten, ten being a killer, one being a preschool teacher, he’s a one or two. There are no flags in his file that would make me suspect he was a killer.”

So, they should probably proceed on.

“I feel secure in saying that we need to assume he’s innocent,” Emma said. Her gut was screaming that all of this was wrong. Then add in Paris’s assessment, and that fit far better than Seth Bell being a killer and rapist.

“Okay, so let’s start working on the dead women. We need to find a way to connect them all. Something has to tie them all together,” Greyson stated.

They all knew that serial killers hunted people that had a specific thing in common. It could be hair color, profession, or someone they knew personally.

Curtis pulled up the women.

“Tessa, what did you find?” Emma asked. Tessa was one of the best at finding information. She worked well with Curtis. Together, they were a damn strong team. If you put them together in a room and gave them a job, they got it done.

He hacked, and she used her brain to sleuth.

“The very first victim, Sallie Mae Patton, was found in the Bellagio fountain. She was raped, strangled, and there was no trace found on her according to the autopsy report.”

They made notes.

“What can you tell us about her?”

“She was a runaway from the East Coast who likely thought she was going to find her Richard Gere out here, and instead found nothing but misery.”

That was a familiar scenario with the victims in Vegas. People came here, and the city swallowed them whole—tourists, citizens, and even ladies of the night.

“She was riddled with track marks,” Curtis offered, sending a picture to the screen.

They all inspected it.

Yeah, she had a horrible life.

“Do we know who was turning her out?” Emma asked. “Is there a pimp on any of her arrest records?”

Curtis knew they weren’t going to be happy. “I can’t give you that.”

“Why not?” Greyson asked.

“Anything with Mace Bristol’s name on it is sealed away in the department by the FBI. They locked down each and every case that he had touched since he was planted at the LVPD.”

Of course they did.

They knew Greyson would try to pull it at some point.

“How did you get Seth Bell’s information?” Emma asked. “We don’t need to throw up any flags. Once it gets out that we’re digging, it’s going to be ugly enough.”

She thought about how the cops who’d once been her friends had turned on her. Yeah, they weren’t going to have a fun reception once they found out that they were digging into the LVPD and why someone didn’t figure out Seth wasn’t guilty.

“I went into the independent counsel’s information. When Seth was arrested, they gave him a lawyer from the police union. They didn’t lock down his records.”

“Smart,” Greyson offered.

“I learned from the best.”

Greyson was proud of him. Little did he know two years ago that they’d need all this training to break the law. Fate had a funny way of throwing you a curveball.

This was one hell of one.

“Okay, so we’re not going to have any arrest records,” Emma stated.

“Not unless you can get Chris Ford to slip them to you,” Paris offered.

Everyone went quiet.

He picked it up right away.

“Uh, did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“That won’t be happening. Chris has opted to leave our family,” Emma stated. She left it at that.

They all heard the hurt in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” Paris said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you by bringing it up, Emma.”

“It’s okay, Paris.”

She knew they had her back and that helped. “Let’s move on to victim two and forget about Chris.”

“Ayla Keith was the second woman killed. She was found strangled, raped, and dropped in the fountains of the Venetian.”

“Why the fountains, Paris?” Greyson asked. “It seems to be the one connecting detail from the first two cases.”

“He was either cleansing them of some perceived sin, or he might be washing away all the trace.”

“They didn’t pick him up on cameras,” Curtis offered.

“That’s because he was probably studying the locations. Vegas is always busy. He’d have to plan this out in great detail. Your killer is going to be smart, patient, and able to focus. Again, he’s not going to be impetuous so let’s take the mental issues like schizophrenia off the table,” Paris replied. “He’s a master at blending in and hiding in plain sight.”