Deathblow (11 page)

“Off duty. On sick leave, actually.” But Joe gave them his badge number as he led them to the apartment. “I have a pretty good idea who did it. Keith Kline. Ex-boyfriend. He’s been harassing Miss Belle lately.”

Conti shot Joe an I’ll-be-the-judge-of-that look and pushed inside. “You stay out here.” He stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “Did you walk in?”

“A step or two.”

“Touch anything?”

“The doorknob, coming in.”

The two looked around, then Conti ran down for the crime-scene kit and they snapped pictures and dusted for fingerprints. Did a pretty thorough job. Joe was prepared to push if they didn’t.

They were about done by the time Wendy rushed down the hallway. Somehow she managed to stay graceful and poised even under the circumstances, still wearing the same sleek slacks and formfitting tan sweater that she’d worn to the photo shoot. Her cream-colored coat was cinched at her waist, looking fresh and crisp. Come to think of it, he’d never seen a smudge of dirt on her, not even when she was cleaning up after Justin. Must be a model thing.

But as put-together and collected as she looked on the outside, there was plenty of turbulence in her gray eyes that cut to Joe immediately. “Let me see.”

She would have sailed right in, but he caught her by the arm and held her back, instantly enveloped in the soft scent of her perfume. The electric current was still there, the awareness, the need for more. He ignored it. “You should stay out here until they’re finished.”

Her eyes flared with alarm as she stared at him.

Right. No grabbing.
He let her go, biting back a curse.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “It’s going to be okay.” Then he reached out slowly and took her hand, ran the pad of his thumb over her fingers.

A long moment passed before she nodded, but her posture didn’t relax. She peeked over his shoulder, and for a moment she looked like she could cry, but she bit her lip. “That high chair was my mom’s. My grandfather made it. It was supposed to be handed down in the family.”

Joe resisted, not for the first time, the impulse to pull her into his arms. But it wasn’t like that between them. They’d had one wild night. One wild hour and a half, really. She wasn’t his.

Officer Conti shuffled over. “Ma’am, are you the tenant?”

“Yes. Wendy Belle.”

He introduced himself and his partner. “Can you tell me when you left home, Miss Belle?”

“Yesterday morning. I’m staying at a friend’s place.”

“Does anyone else have a key to the apartment?”

“My ex-boyfriend, Keith Kline.”

The man’s gaze cut to Joe. “And Officer Kessler here?”

“I gave him my key to check on something.” She rubbed the heel of her hand over the bottom of her coat. “I received some hate mail today. A bloody wig. I thought it might be mine.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know.” Her gaze darted past the man. “Is there a short, dark wig on the peg on the back of the bathroom door?”

Conti called out the question to his partner. Officer Tuchman checked the back of the door, then the rest of the bathroom. “Not here.”

“Anything else missing?” Conti asked next.

Wendy looked around from the threshold. “I can’t tell from here.”

“The DVD player and the TV weren’t taken. A burglar would have gone after the electronics,” Joe put in. “This looks personal to me.”

Officer Conti nodded. “Do you have contact information for—” He checked his notes. “Keith Kline?”

Wendy rattled off the address and phone number.

“I’m also going to need an address and phone number where I can reach you,” the officer said, and he wrote all that down too.

Then the man turned to Joe. “Same for you. You were first on the crime scene.”

When Joe listed the same address, the officer raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t comment.

Tuchman finished cataloguing the damage and gave the all clear, and they finally let Wendy in. Joe went with her, staying two steps behind, giving her space. She walked through, her face tight as she checked the damage. She didn’t cry or throw a fit. She kept her expression schooled, although she couldn’t completely hide the fear and sadness in her eyes. But it was the resignation in the set of her shoulders that got to Joe.

He let her take her time. Maybe she needed to see the destruction, needed to see how violent Keith was, how badly he could hurt her. She needed to be pushed past denial. Hopefully this would do it.

Even Justin’s room had been trashed. She stood on the threshold, looking at the scattered toys as if unable to step inside.

She checked the bathroom last and came out with her arms wrapped around herself. “I don’t see anything missing except the wig.” She hesitated.

Tuchman stepped closer. “And?”

Wendy bit her lip, avoiding Joe’s eyes. “A pregnancy test.”

Tuchman raised her eyebrows. “Why would he take that?”

Wendy hugged herself tighter. “It was positive.”

Joe’s gaze snapped to her slim waist. The pregnancy had to be fairly early.

He acknowledged the disappointment that hit him. So she was still hooking up with Keith.
Might not be entirely by choice either.
Violent men often forced themselves on their partners. He kept the anger that thought brought under control and resolved to ask her some questions later.

“Is Keith Kline the father?” Tuchman wanted to know.

Wendy shook her head.

Okay, so she was seeing someone else. Better than Keith forcing her into something she didn’t want.

No reason why the idea of another man should bother Joe, but it did.
Oh hell.
She wasn’t his girlfriend. They’d spent an incredible hour and a half together three months ago. She’d let him know right away that there wouldn’t be more, that it meant nothing to her. She hadn’t led him on, not for a second.

Tuchman tapped his pen against his notebook. “Your ex didn’t know that you were pregnant?”

Wendy kept looking at her feet as she shook her head.

Joe had a feeling more private questions were coming, so he left them and walked down the hallway, then drummed down the stairs. He probably needed to put more money in the parking meter anyway. He did that, refusing to think about how much he hated the thought of Wendy with another man. Where the hell was this guy? Why wasn’t he protecting her from her asshole ex?

Joe had a dozen questions to ask her and no right to be asking.

He put money in the meter, then let the cold air cool him off before he went back up. The officers were almost done.

After they left, Joe followed Wendy straight home.

Pregnant.

The father wasn’t in the picture. And her ex was harassing her. She was holding up pretty damn well under the circumstances. She might have been stressed, but she didn’t let any of that touch Justin. She took care of her son; she went to work; she kept everything together.

Joe had to admit to some admiration, even if he didn’t want to like her any more than he already did.

Sophie was playing with Justin in the living room when they walked in. And then Bing came back too. Apparently, Justin had begged for a visit from Peaches, a sweetheart of a Rottweiler, so Bing had brought the dog over.

Peaches took turns greeting everybody, tongue lolling, tail wagging. He raced around for a round of ear scratches before he settled down by Justin.

“I just got off the phone with Wilmington PD. They grabbed Keith on the B&E,” the captain said. “One of the neighbors saw him go up. With some luck, his prints will match the prints lifted off the broken items. Right now, he’s in for questioning regarding destruction of private property, but we might be able to get him on stalking and harassment too, with the package he sent once the prints come back on that.”

A look of guarded optimism spread on Wendy’s face. “Are they going to keep him?”

“They can hold him for three days on suspicion. By the time that’s up, they’ll have the prints, and the DA can charge him.”

The captain motioned to Joe with his head, so he followed the man out back. They gave the dog a chance to go with them, but he chose Justin, not even tempted by the large, fenced-in yard. He had his priorities straight.

Joe closed the door behind them.

The captain cleared his throat. “I heard from Chief Gleason too. They found Lil’ Gomez’s body washed ashore outside of Philadelphia. Some jogger called it in.”

Joe filled his lungs. He’d known something like this was coming, but the confirmation hit him hard anyway.
Senseless, avoidable tragedy.
Lil’ Gomez was just an impressionable kid, dammit. If he’d seen better, he could have done better.

The tension in the captain’s stance said there was more, so Joe waited as a car alarm went off in the distance, then was shut off the next second.

“Wilmington PD identified the driver of the Hummer that pushed the cruiser into the river. Bridge cameras,” Bing said. “The guy behind the wheel was Marco Sousa, Racker’s right-hand man. He was likely after taking out Lil’ Gomez to hurt Ramos. And he had it in for the cops to start with. His uncle was recently killed in a shootout with two law enforcement officers.”

“Does Ramos know it was the Twentyniners?”

“Apparently. Either someone saw the incident, or Racker has been bragging. A gang war is imminent.” The captain rubbed the back of his neck. “Chief Gleason asked about you. He wants you back.”

Joe turned the chief’s request over in his head.

“For what? Ramos Gomez hates me.” Better to let the gang think he’d drowned.

Joe had wiggled his way into the group posing as a Jersey wise guy. He was supposedly hanging out in Philly to put some distance between himself and the Trenton cops. While in town, he offered money and the bale of weed in the trunk of his Camaro to Ramos’s gang to protect him, plus promised delivery of some serious weaponry.

Ramos ran a check on him through his dirty cop, but Chief Gleason had set it up so Joe’s organized-crime connections would be confirmed by the police database. The first few weeks went fine, buddy-buddy. Then, as Joe started asking questions, Ramos had become suspicious that maybe the Trenton boys wanted to take over his operation in Philly. Joe’d been working on allaying those fears, but then that unfortunate incident on the bridge happened.

Still, the op had been a success. The chief had his dirty cop.

“Last time Ramos saw me, he accused me of being a scout for a hostile takeover.”

“Water under the br—” the captain began, then winced. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “Anyway. Word is, he’s mourning you like a best friend. You went down with his little brother. Everything else is forgotten. He’s got a bigger enemy in Racker now. If you were to turn up….” The man gave a meaningful shrug.

“He’d be glad to see me, if for nothing else than for the guns I promised. He’ll need some serious weapons if he means to hit Racker’s crew. If I go back, I could probably get some intel on how and when he’s going to go after the Twentyniners.”

“And figure out where Officer Tropper is. He reported in after the bridge accident, but he’s been missing in action since.”

Rats were good at sensing danger.

“How long does Chief Gleason need me in Philly?”

“Day or two? Ramos isn’t going to wait long with the hit. You go in, figure out when and where, then pass on the intel. Then the chief will call in the SWAT team and have those guys waiting when the cars roll up.” The captain shrugged again. “Either you’ll get something out of Ramos or not. It’ll be all-out gang war if Chief Gleason can’t stop it.”

He watched Joe. “You have a choice here. I don’t want you to think you don’t. I thought of you for the undercover op because you’re an excellent officer. You’re going to make an excellent detective someday. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you to a skirmish in Philly. You don’t have to take this. You helped Chief Gleason already. You don’t owe him anything more. It’s up to you.”

Wendy’s laughter reached them from inside. Joe looked through the sliding glass doors, at Justin trying to ride Peaches. With Keith in custody, they were safe for now.

“Okay,” he said as he turned back to the captain. “I’ll do it. I want to do it.”

The thought of a dirty cop bothered him. And so did the thought of innocent people dying. A gang war would take out anybody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Saving someone else wasn’t going to bring Lil’ Gomez or Phil back, but he needed to try. This was why he’d become a cop in the first place.

“When do I go back in?”

“The sooner the better. Where is your undercover car?”

“Probably still parked where the cops picked me and Lil’ Gomez up.” He’d driven his reconditioned Camaro. Since most of the guys on Ramos’s crew were car fanatics, the Camaro—and a couple of midnight drag races—had given Joe some street cred with them.

The captain clapped him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you come into the station after dinner? I’ll have someone drive you in and drop you off a block or two from your car. Then you can go see Gomez.”

Joe nodded. Hopefully, Gomez wouldn’t blame his little brother’s death on him. Because if Gomez decided to hold him responsible after all, he wasn’t going to make it alive out of South Philly.

And he wanted to come back to Wendy.

* * *

Being safe, out of Keith’s reach, felt incredibly nice, even if only for a while.

Wendy glanced outside, at Jack and Bing deep in conversation on the deck, then made some raspberry fusion tea for herself and Sophie. The weather had turned a few degrees warmer finally, but the air still had enough chill in it to make a cup of hot tea pleasant.

“Now that Keith is behind bars, we can move back home,” she said as she walked the cups over to the couch, keeping an eye on Justin, who was playing hide and seek with Peaches around the furniture.

“No rush.”

“I know. You’ve been so fantastic about this. But you know how it is. Every time I reach for something, it’s at the apartment. And Justin will be more settled at home.” She sipped her tea. “How is the farm?”

A dreamy smile spread on Sophie’s face. “It’s great. The mares will be foaling soon. Maybe Justin could come out to see the foals.”