Stealing Justice (The Justice Team) (27 page)

“What?” She sank down on the sofa, cheeks paling. “Who?”

“One of the women at the fundraiser tonight.”

Her mouth slid into a perfect O. “It’s not Jennifer, is it?”

He dumped the folders wrapped with rubber bands out of the briefcase and onto her coffee table. Three files he and Monroe had built on the dead girls and a photo taken tonight of the latest victim. He removed the rubber bands and tapped the picture he placed in front of Syd. “Morgan Cashore, real name Kristin LaMonte. She’s been with The Smoking Gun for three years.”

Syd flinched at the gruesome picture of the strangled woman. “My God.”

She slapped a hand over her eyes and—dammit—he could have handled that better. Maybe he was accustomed to dead bodies, but not Syd. “Sorry. Should have warned you. Do you know her? She was found in the backyard of the house where tonight’s event was.”

“I don’t recognize her from anywhere but the party. But Jennifer went out the back.”

“She wouldn’t have seen the body. It was behind a bush. And if Jennifer was in a hurry, she was nowhere near there. I’ll get someone to talk to her, though.”

Grey’s legs twitched with adrenaline. He stood and paced the small living room. “That makes sense. She didn’t come through Fresh Start.” He came back to the table. “I’ve got Teeg running a full background check on her, but look at the marks on her neck.”

“Who’s Teeg?”

Flipping through the other files, he pulled out more morgue photos and—
thwack, thwack, thwack—
one by one slapped them on the table. “Do any of these marks match what you saw on Jennifer tonight?”

She didn’t look at the photos. No, she kept her eyes on him. “Grey, who is Teeg?”

“My techie guy.” He tapped the photos. “Look at these and talk to me about the red marks.”

Syd rubbed her neck and her gaze slowly moved to the photos. After a minute, she looked back at him. “They’re similar.”

“Similar or the same?”

“I don’t know.”

A burst of frustration bashed inside his head.
So goddamned close
. He pressed his thumb and middle finger against his forehead and squeezed. “Look again until you do know.”

Yes, he was being a son of a bitch, but this was important. Vital. She locked her jaw and gave him a glare that should have melted him.

“I know this sucks,” he said, “but it’s crucial. Look again and tell me if they are the same or only similar.”

She placed her hands on her head and tapped her fingers. After one long breath, she studied the photos, focusing on each one longer than the last. Sydney was learning that dead bodies, at some point, became evidence. Right now, these photos, as sickening as they were, were a tool.

Finally, she pushed the photos away. “They look the same.”

A shock of energy made his fingers twitch. Damned adrenalin.

“I knew it.” He dug into the briefcase, withdrew two evidence bags with the veils Syd had been given. “I thought these were some part of a costume he liked his victims to dress up in, but they’re more than that.”

Syd ran her fingers over the bags, touching the veils through the clear polyethylene. “These are the veils he gave me, aren’t they? They’re murder weapons?”

“I think they’re also the trophies he keeps afterward. There was no veil on or around Morgan’s body. No other weapon.”

Syd rose and shuffled past him, head down as she walked into the kitchen. He followed and watched her grab the coffee pot from the drain. With jerky movements, she slapped the faucet on, poured the water, scooped coffee grinds into the filter, and then smacked the button. She was processing, and even though he was climbing out of his skin, he respected that she needed a minute.

Or five.

He wanted to wrap his arms around her. Just to reassure himself she was all right. He tried to resist, but his restraint lasted all of thirty seconds before he caved and drew her into a bear hug.

She hugged him back, rising on tiptoes and giving him a quick kiss. Then she led him into the living room and tugged him down on the sofa next to her. “We never let Ahmed out of our sight, Grey. Except when he was with Jennifer. How can he be the killer?”

“I’m working on the timeline.” He took a sheet of paper from his briefcase and laid it on the table next to the autopsy and crime scene photos. “The medical examiner won’t release an official time of death until tomorrow, but there were actually several times when Khourey was coming and going when I didn’t have eyes on him and you probably didn’t either. Here,” he pointed at one interval. “And here, when you were hanging out with Nabil and waiting for Jennifer to text you. What if Khourey wasn’t with Jennifer the whole time? He could have slipped out or Morgan could have been in there with both of them. I never saw him come out of that room before or after Jennifer texted you. Did you?”

She rubbed her arms where chill bumps had surfaced. “I can’t believe this happened.”

Shoving off the sofa, he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and that damned pressure building inside his head. He didn’t need the coffee to keep him awake and running at full speed. “It’s my fault. I should’ve kept track of all the women, not just you, but I’m absolutely obsessed with keeping you safe. I let the others fall through the cracks and one of them ended up dead.”

“You sure love to play the blame game, don’t you?”

He met her gaze. “There’s no one else to blame. I let The Lion out of my sight and a girl’s dead now.”

“You didn’t kill her any more than I did. Enough with the guilt. How do we stop him? The man responsible for these murders.”

Some of the adrenaline left Grey’s legs. He sat next to her and shuffled the autopsy photos, studying each one as he moved them. “I need to talk to the medical examiner and show her the veils. See if she can confirm or rule out that they’re the killer’s weapon of choice.”

“Is that enough to convict Ahmed?”

“No.” He stared at the photos of the dead women and reached into his pocket for the key he’d stolen from the townhouse. “But at nine a.m., I’m going to his house for a security consultation. I’m going to find out where he’s hiding the safe that goes to this key.” He held it up for her to see. “And I’m going to find the veils he’s used to strangle these women. They’ll have his DNA as well as theirs on the material, and that
will
be enough evidence to convict.”

“And the holes in the timeline?”

“That’s where you come in. Write up your own timeline from what you remember. See if you can fill any of those holes; but if I’m right, there was at least one instance at the end when neither of us saw him.”

Determination lit her eyes. “There was at least half an hour,” she pointed at the timeline, “right here when I didn’t see him. It was right after he spoke to you.”

“Okay. That’s good. It narrows it down for us.”

“What else can I do?”

“Pump Ian for information. This murder won’t be in the papers, but you can say the other girls are talking about it, and you want to know what the hell is going on. See what he says.”

“I can try. He probably won’t tell me anything.”

Grey shrugged. “If you make it seem like the girls are getting mutinous, he might open up.”

“These women are dying and he’s leading them to the slaughter. He knows they’re in danger and he’s doing it anyway. To make money. All this time I thought he was different.”

“Maybe in the beginning he was. Somewhere along the way, things got bent.”

She leaned into him, rested her head on his shoulder. “We’re taking him down, too, right?”

Grey ran his hand down her cheek. She had to be exhausted. “You bet we are.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Nine o’clock sharp,” The Lion said as he stepped back and welcomed Grey into the brownstone through the front door. “I like a man who is punctual.”

Grey entered, the paranoid side of him wondering if this was a trap. When he’d performed his little B&E of the place twenty-four hours ago, he’d had no idea one of the outcomes would be a legitimate invitation to step into the lion’s den.

Meeting Ahmed’s gaze, he saw no subterfuge. Only the face of a man who was unnerved by the break-in and trying to hide it. “Front Range appreciates your business.”

Khourey closed the door and held up the cup in his hand. “May I offer you coffee?”

“No, thank you.” Although Grey never did in-home security proposals, he knew the standard pitch. As the man led him into the living room, once again the painting of the veiled woman on the wall drew Grey’s attention.

Have to find those veils.

He handed Khourey a brochure Front Range personnel gave all clients. “The security review will take an hour. I’ll need to do a thorough appraisal of the house, top to bottom, so I can evaluate all entry points as well as your current security system. I’ll need access to the perimeter in order to calculate how many layers of security are necessary and the best use of equipment.”

Apparently, Khourey hadn’t had time to fix his leather chair. Avoiding the chair Grey had ripped open with his KABAR, the man sank into the sofa under the painting. “Layers?”

“Front Range takes a multi-layer approach to in-home security. Basic security encompasses an alarm system, which you already have as I understand, and it wasn’t enough to deter the criminal. The next layer would be exterior lighting and a camera system that alerts you to anyone who steps on your property before they get to the doors or windows. All of this can be set up with cellular access so if you’re away from home or the landlines are down, you’ll still be notified of suspicious activity and can control the system via your cellphone.”

Setting the brochure aside, Khourey sipped his coffee. “The buildings in this block all have cameras and motion detectors on the lights. The intruder avoided both.”

That’s because the intruder was me
. “Then it sounds like you’re in need of the third layer, Front Range’s top of the line security.”

“And that would be?”

“Me.”

“A bodyguard?” Khourey chuckled. “Your services did not stop the death of the escort last night.”

Ah, a test. “Morgan Cashore left the party without my knowledge, which goes against The Smoking Gun’s rules and Front Range’s rules. Her murder was preventable.”

“Perhaps you did not realize she had left the party because you were shadowing another escort too closely.”

Not a test, a challenge. “My assignment is to be accessible to any of the escorts who feel threatened. That’s what I did.” He wasn’t going to discuss Sydney with this asshole. “Also, I’m trained to determine the women most at risk for violence and make sure they’re safe. Morgan was not one of those women.”

“Do you know any of the escorts well? The brunette you were shadowing so closely, perhaps?”

The eager tone of his voice suggested he was both jealous of Grey’s apparent interest in Sydney and was also hoping to pick Grey’s brain about her. “I never mix my personal and professional lives.”

The shuffle of footsteps sounded on the stairs. Nabil appeared in pajamas, hair sticking out on all sides. “Baba,” he mumbled, barely giving his father a nod before heading for the kitchen.

The older man narrowed his eyes at the retreating back of his son. “And for my son? Does he need a bodyguard too?”

Not a bad idea, actually. Monroe would be up for playing babysitter if it gave him access to the house. “Possibly.” Grey pointed down the short hall toward the front door. Time to get back to business. “Is this the door the intruder came through?”

Over the next hour, Grey played security specialist, scanning every room for anything that needed a key to unlock it. There was an antique chest on the third floor with the rest of the Khourey’s art collection, but the opening was too large for the key—now burning a hole in his pocket—stolen from the belly of the file cabinet.

In Khourey’s office, the man sat in his office chair and complained about the destruction that had been wrought on his laptop. He was concerned about the missing hard drive. The file cabinet had been shifted ninety degrees north of its previous spot, which was a red flag, but first Grey had to focus on the hard drive issue. Teeg was working on cracking it open and giving Grey a run-down of its contents. “I assume the computer contained sensitive information.”

“I have backups of the important information in my safe, but there was also certain correspondence from my homeland that could be misinterpreted if it fell into the wrong hands.”

A safe. “Was the safe tampered with?”

“No.”

He needed to see that safe. “Are you sure? Nothing else but your computer’s hard drive was stolen? None of your expensive artwork, none of the other electronics? The robber’s target might have been that safe. At the very least, I should include installation of an invisible camera positioned to specifically cover that area in my estimate for your new security system.”

Whatever was in that safe was more important than anything else the man owned. Khourey used the desk to push himself to his feet. “Come. I’ll show you.”

Following The Lion, Grey scanned Nabil’s room on the way by. The veil still hung in its spot on the bedpost. Did Nabil know his father had a thing for hurting women? That he used the veils to strangle them? Had the kid ever covered for his father?

Grey considered grabbing the veil to test it for DNA, but he could see even from several feet away, there was no blood on it, no wrinkles or rips in the fabric. In fact, it looked like it had never been worn. Even though Nabby’s room was a disaster, he would probably notice if the veil went missing. Grey decided to bide his time.

Downstairs in the living room, Khourey pointed to the painting of the woman. “The safe is behind here.” He swung the painting out from the wall.

A standard wall safe lay behind it. A three-number combination dial, a backup key lock, concealed hinges.

Grey’s attention zeroed in on the key lock. He fingered the key in his pocket.

Nabil shuffled in, a lit cigarette in hand, and stopped short when he saw his father in front of the safe. His gaze darted between Khourey, Grey, and back to Khourey. “Baba? What is going on?”