Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8

They were safe and happy, and there was no reason for her to make this drive to assure her of that fact. They were doing just fine and didn’t need her checking up on them.

You can’t come here again. Besides the fact that it’s a risk, you can’t put yourself through this anymore. The words echoed in her mind as she headed back to New York City.

This would definitely be the last trip she made to the small town of Maywood, she promised herself as she swiped yet another unwanted tear away.

* * *

At seven o’clock on Monday morning everyone was gathered around the conference table. Lara felt ragged and weary. She hadn’t gotten home from upstate until after ten, and then she hadn’t been able to sleep.

Residual emotions had raged through her until she’d finally resorted to sitting at her computer. The final autopsy report on Lara Bowman had been emailed to all of the team members by Victoria, and Lara had taken several hours reading the findings and looking at the diagrams, but finding nothing new to what they already knew from the preliminary report.

She’d spent time staring at her darkened ceiling and trying to figure out what had happened to any phone Dunst might have had. The person in the SUV had to have contacted Dunst, in order for him to come out of his room and down to the street. Unless smoke signals had been used, there had to be a burner phone somewhere, but where?

It had been in the early morning hours when she’d finally fallen asleep. Even after two cups of coffee she was cranky and frustrated at the lack of progress in moving forward. What she’d thought had been a hot case had now turned far too lukewarm.

“We spent yesterday afternoon talking to the men Lara told us about, the mid-level operatives in the Moretti organization,” Mei said. “They were surly jerks, but none of them appeared to know anything about Moretti being active again.”

“Of course, we have to keep in mind that we were interviewing convicted felons,” Ty added. “We have no idea if they were being honest with us or not.”

“Did you offer them anything in an attempt to turn them?” Xander asked. “Otherwise what reason would they have to tell the truth?”

“I got the feeling that we could have offered them a luxury hotel room complete with free room service for the rest of their lives, and they still weren’t going to talk.” Mei frowned. “I definitely think they’re all still terrified of Moretti and what might happen to them if they cross him in any way.”

“A shiv in the back by somebody Moretti still has under control or a hanging from a bedsheet in their cell orchestrated by a corrupt prison guard would do the trick,” Lara said. “The men who worked for Moretti both revered and were terrified of him. They believed his power was omnipotent. I’m really not surprised that none of them will talk.”

“But you got him,” Nick said, his gaze surprisingly warm as he looked at her. “Everyone thought Moretti was omnipotent, but you brought him down.”

“It was a team effort. We got him behind bars, but that doesn’t mean we stopped him from operating in some form or another,” she replied.

“Maybe you should go and talk to the man himself,” Xander said to Lara. “You worked with him for a year.”

“I worked with a lot of people, but I didn’t really know Moretti. Nobody knew him. He was the mystery man behind the scenes. Besides, if his goal is to get me to the prison to see him, I still think we should make him wait.”

Lara didn’t feel ready to face the monster in the cage. She knew how manipulative he could be, and he had every reason in the world to despise her above all others.

“We haven’t even confirmed for sure that this is Moretti’s work.” Cass spoke up. “It could still be a copycat thing, a local drug gang trying to pin their crimes on Moretti to keep us from investigating them. I’ve been checking into that angle, but I don’t have all the information yet. Figuring out who the power players are in this town when it comes to gang members and their activities isn’t a small task.”

“But what would Lara Bowman have to do with a gang? There’s nothing in her background to tie her to that particular lifestyle,” Ty said.

“We just don’t have enough facts,” Nick said, his deep voiced laced with frustration.

“A call came in overnight on the TIPS line about Lara Bowman’s murder,” Victoria said.

Lara sat up straighter in her chair, a welcomed shot of adrenaline rushing through her. “What kind of a tip?” Action. God, she needed some action that could move things forward and keep her out of her own head.

“A man named Sam Wilmington was near the reservoir when Lara Bowman was murdered. He said he may or may not have some information that might be helpful. NYPD is going to check it out and let us know if anything relevant comes out of the interview,” Victoria explained.

Lara leaned forward, every sense she had as a trained FBI agent on alert. “I need to take this,” she said. If it was possible that this might be a break in the case, then she wanted it firsthand.

“We...we need to take this,” Nick said with a hint of irritation in his voice.

Lara flushed warmly at the not-so-subtle reminder that she had a partner. “Nick and I should be the ones doing the follow-up. I want this, Victoria.” Lara held her boss’s gaze intently.

Victoria hesitated a moment and then nodded. “All right, I’ll let NYPD know that we’re doing the interview.” Victoria tore off a sheet of paper from a notepad and handed it to Lara. “Here’s the address.”

“We’re on it,” Lara said, already leaving her chair as Nick did the same.

“The rest of you keep digging into the backgrounds of the victims. Check out the local gang members and see if you can find a link between them and the three murders,” Victoria said.

Lara didn’t hear what she said after that for she had already left the conference room with Nick at her heels. They both pulled on their coats before leaving the building.

Overnight a blustery front had moved back in from the north, making for an overcast, windy and cold day. “Where are we headed?” Nick asked once they were in his car.

“Lower Harlem,” she replied. “He lives off 120th Street.”

Nick nodded. “I wonder why it took him so long to call in?”

“It’s only been about forty-eight hours since her body was found. But, we’ll find out why he didn’t call in immediately when we talk to him. We need something, Nick. I feel like I’m still up on that ledge with Dunst, only I’m the one thinking about jumping because I’m so damned frustrated,” she said.

Nick cast her a quick glance and then focused back on the road. “There will be no ledge jumping as long as I’m your partner.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal, but I’m definitely feeling a bit homicidal. As despicable as Dunst was as a human being, I want his killer caught. Even more importantly, I want the person who stabbed Lara Bowman to death in my gun sights, but not before I get some answers from him.”

“You know, we haven’t really considered that it might be a woman who stabbed Lara. It’s always been thought that women are more apt to stab than men.”

“It was a male perp,” Lara replied confidently. “We know from the autopsy report the knife nicked a rib to get to her heart. That takes a lot of strength.”

“Or a shitload of rage.”

“If Moretti was behind the murder and it was ordered strictly because her name was the same as mine, then there would have been no rage involved. It would have been a cold, emotionless kill for a price,” she replied. And that’s what made it all the more evil.

They fell silent until they were in Sam Wilmington’s neighborhood. Over recent years lower Harlem had become increasingly gentrified. Sam Wilmington’s apartment building was twelve stories high, and according to his address he resided in a loft on the top floor.

He greeted them at the door and introductions were made. He was a middle-aged man going bald, with eyes that appeared both troubled and exhausted.

He was an artist, specializing in metal designs, and most of the floor space was dedicated to his work. “I have living space on the other side of the loft,” he explained.

As they followed him across the room it was like walking through a junkyard with welding tools and metal sculptures of abstract items Lara couldn’t begin to recognize.

Was Sam successful as an artist? At one time the rent for one of these loft spaces had been cheap, but those days were long gone. She made a mental note to ask Cass to run a full background on the man, especially a financial workup.

God, she was definitely grasping at straws if she really believed that Moretti or some rival gang would hire a middle-aged starving artist to stamp and kill anyone. Besides, if he hadn’t called the TIPS line, nobody would have even known that he was in the park on the morning of Lara Bowman’s murder.

The living area he’d spoken of was small and sparse, consisting of a kitchenette with a table for two, a love seat and a television. There was a doorway that she assumed led to a bathroom.

He motioned them toward the love seat and then pulled up one of the table chairs to sit in front of them. He raked a hand through what was left of his sandy brown hair and released a deep sigh. “I don’t know if what I have to tell you will be of any help to you at all.”

“Why don’t you tell us what you know, and we’ll be the judge of whether it’s helpful,” Lara said.

“That morning when Lara Bowman was murdered, I was there. I mean, I didn’t see her murder, and I wasn’t on the trail, but I was close to the reservoir, and I apparently saw her just before she was killed.”

“What were you doing there?” Lara asked.

“I had just arrived when she ran past. I like to see the sunrise from the reservoir. It kick-starts my creativity for the day.”

“So, you saw Lara that morning,” Nick said.

“Yeah, I saw her. It was hard not to notice her. I mean, she was pretty.” His cheeks flushed with color. “But I didn’t stop her or speak to her or anything like that. I was just sitting down on the bench when I noticed another guy on the trail just behind her.”

“Another guy?” Once again Lara’s adrenaline spiked.

“Did you know him?” Nick asked.

Sam shook his head. “I’d never seen him before. I mean, he might not have anything to do with what happened to her.” He frowned. “That’s what kept me from calling until this morning after I saw on the news she’d been murdered. Like me, he could have just happened to be on that trail and have had nothing to do with her death. But, I finally decided I needed to tell someone about him.”

“You did the right thing,” Nick assured him.

“What did he look like?” Lara asked.

“It was still dark out, but I could see he was wearing a gray jogging suit, and he was tall and he wore a baseball hat. Even with the hat I could see that he had blond hair. I didn’t pay him enough attention to notice much of anything else.”

“Oh, come on,” Nick said with a faint hint of derision. “You’re an artist. Surely you can give us a little more detail than that. How old was he?”

Lara flashed her partner a look of annoyance. Couldn’t he see that hard-ass cop attitude wouldn’t get them what they needed? The man was distraught and needed a gentle hand. “Mr. Wilmington... Sam...this is really important. You might help us catch a murderer,” she said softly.

Sam held his hands out helplessly. “He could have been anywhere between his mid-twenties to his forties. The early morning light made it hard to tell, and like I said, I didn’t know this was going to be important when I noticed him.”

“We still don’t know if it is important. What did you do after you left the reservoir?” Lara asked.

“I met a friend for breakfast. We meet every morning about the same time. He’s an artist, too. Watercolors.” He gave them the friend’s name, address and phone number and the name of the deli where they’d had breakfast.

“I’ve got to be honest with you, if I didn’t have a solid alibi for the time around the murder, I wouldn’t have made that call this morning. The people who work at the deli know me. They’ll tell you that my friend and I eat there almost every morning around the same time.”

“You were afraid you would be a suspect?” Nick asked.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Sam retorted. His eyes squinted as if he was fighting back emotion. “I keep thinking I should have followed behind her. Maybe if I’d just struck up a conversation with her or something, then I could have stopped her from being murdered.”

“Or you could have wound up as a second victim,” Nick replied.

Sam nodded, his eyes even more troubled. “Check out my alibi. There are regular customers who eat at the deli who don’t know me. They’d have no reason to lie for me.”

“I believe him,” Lara said a few minutes later when they were back in Nick’s car. “But we’re still going to check out his alibi just to be sure.”

“And then I think we should head back to Sally of the splendid T-shirts and see if she noticed if the driver of the SUV was a blond man wearing a baseball hat.”

Lara nodded. At least they had a new lead to follow, a lead that hopefully would bring them some answers.

Fear knotted tight in her stomach, a fear she knew wouldn’t go away until she knew exactly what was going on, exactly what kind of monster might be targeting these people...potentially targeting her.

She desperately needed answers before she spiraled down into the bottom of a whiskey bottle or the fear and doubt inside her became so great she became of no use to anyone.

CHAPTER NINE

“If there was another person around our victim at the time of her murder and if he isn’t the perp, then why didn’t he call the TIPS line?” Lara asked.

“Maybe for the same reason Sam hesitated before calling. He was afraid he would be seen as a potential suspect.”

“If Sam’s alibi checks out, which I’m pretty sure it will, then we have a mystery man on the trail at the same time Lara Bowman was murdered.” Lara frowned thoughtfully. “And Cass has already checked the security camera located on the trail near where Lara was murdered. The one that might have shown us the actual murder taking place was broken.”

“As are half of the cameras in Central Park,” Nick replied drily.

“We should have Cass pull footage from all of the cameras around the time of the murder and see if we can get a glimpse of a blond man wearing jogging clothes and a ball cap entering or leaving the park.” Lara pulled out her cell phone and made the call.

By that time they’d arrived at Dawson’s Deli to check out Sam’s alibi. Owners Sherri and Harold confirmed that Sam and his friend, Kevin, were regulars.

“Kevin gave us the watercolor over there,” Harold said and pointed to a framed watercolor of white lilies floating on a greenish-blue pond.

“And you’re sure they ate breakfast here Saturday morning around seven o’clock or so?” Nick asked.

“Positive,” Sherri replied. “The two of them come in like clockwork every morning. They order the breakfast special and talk art.”

“How long do they usually stay?” Lara asked.

“A couple of hours or so,” Harold answered.

“Have you ever seen either of them in here with a tall blond man?” Lara asked, even though her gut told her they were on the same kind of dead end that they’d been on for the past four days.

“No, no blond man that I ever remember,” Sherri said, and Harold nodded his agreement with her.

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy, Lara thought bitterly. It seemed as if they were working with a dozen puzzle pieces from a dozen different puzzles, and the only thing they all had in common was that damned MM stamp.

By the time they reached Sally’s Shop of Souvenirs, Lara had worked up a head of steam. Impotence wasn’t a piece of clothing she wore well, and yet that’s exactly what she felt dragging heavily around her shoulders.

She didn’t like it, the weight of little Tina’s death and of Lara Bowman’s murder. At the moment a reckless anger trumped any fear she had for herself.

Sally stood in the same place in front of her store as she had the last time they’d come to ask her questions, only today she wore a long-sleeved bright yellow shirt with orange writing that read Tourists Gone Wild in NYC.

“Back again, handsome?” she asked, her gaze lingering on Nick. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and her hair looked less bright without the sunshine overhead.

“Yeah, and his very hot partner is standing here right next to him,” Lara replied.

Sally grinned at Nick. “Does she ever lighten up?”

“Only if you feed her raw meat,” Nick replied, deadpan.

“When you saw that black SUV pull up and talk to Dunst on Thursday, did you notice what color of hair the driver had?” Lara asked after a pointed glare at Nick.

“I told you the first time you asked me, I didn’t see the driver. I didn’t see his face or his hair or anything.” She flipped a strand of her own purple-tinted hair and looked appealingly at Nick.

“Look, if I could help you, I would. But I was watching Dunst wave his hands around and yell into the SUV, not who was driving it.”

“It’s okay. You can’t tell us what you didn’t see,” Nick replied. “We appreciate your time.”

“I’ll always make time for you, big boy,” Sally replied.

“She’s a piece of work,” Lara said when they were back in the car.

“I thought she showed impeccable taste.” He gifted her with one of his sexy grins.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied irritably.

“I was just trying to lighten you up a bit. You’ve been unusually on edge all morning.”

Since when did he know her well enough to know that she was unusually anything? “I am on edge. Aren’t you? Don’t you feel it, Nick? The terrible sense that something else bad is coming?”

“You don’t think Lara Bowman’s murder was the end of it?”

Laura fastened her seat belt and then turned toward him, knowing both her fear and her simmering alarm were in her eyes for him to see. “No, like I told you on the phone, I don’t think her murder was the end of things. I think it’s just the beginning, and there are more bad things to come.”

Her words hung in the air between them, as if suspended by sheer dread alone. Nick said nothing. He started the car, and they remained silent as they returned to 26 Federal Plaza.

* * *

If she’d hoped that any others on the team might have found and developed a new lead, her hope was soon dashed. As the team members began to trickle in, it took only one look at their tired, frustrated faces to know they were returning empty-handed.

Lara was seated at her cubicle, rereading for the hundredth time the files relating to Sean Dunst, Tina Cole and Lara Bowman when Cass approached her.

“There are thirty-one security cameras in Central Park,” she said. “Almost half of them aren’t working either due to technical issues or vandalism. The ones that are operational are monitored by a private security company. I’ve got a call into the company to get those files for review to see if we can catch sight of the mystery blond man.”

“How long do you think it will take you to look at the files once you get them?” Lara asked.

“A couple of days to look at all of them, but I’ll start with the cameras that were close to the murder scene, and hopefully that should only take an hour or so once I get the files.”

“Why haven’t they fixed the cameras that aren’t working?” Lara asked.

Cass shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you, but if I was to guess the answer is bureaucracy and budget cuts.” Cass didn’t wait for an answer. She returned to the tech room, and Lara focused back on the files in front of her.

“Maybe we should talk to Sheila again,” she leaned over and said to Nick. Was it possible the stripper girlfriend might know more than she had told them?

“We can talk to her again if you think it might be useful,” Nick said. “But to be honest, I think it would be a waste of time. She isn’t going to say anything to further incriminate herself, and it’s possible Dunst really didn’t share any real information with her.”

“You’re right,” Lara said with a sigh. “I just hate sitting around waiting for another shoe to drop.”

“Maybe there isn’t another shoe to drop,” Nick countered. “We’ll figure it out, Lara. Somehow, someway we’ll get the person behind everything.”

Lara turned her chair back to face her desk. Nick’s words had rung with an optimism Lara didn’t share. Experience had taught her that just when you thought it was over, it wasn’t. Just when you thought you were safe, you weren’t.

It was six o’clock when they all gathered in the conference room to get updates from everyone. “I got the files from the security company a couple of hours ago. I’ve managed to go through footage from the two cameras closest to the murder scene at around the time of the murder, and there’s no tall blond wearing a jogging suit on tape,” Cass said. “He might have managed to elude the cameras, but I’ve still got a lot of files to go through and might pick up a sign of him either entering or leaving the park.”

“I’ve gone over all of Lara Bowman’s social media, checked her outgoing and incoming phone calls and texts on her phone and spoken with friends and family and her boyfriend,” Xander said. “At this point I feel like I know her better than my old girlfriend. I can’t find any connection she had with Dunst or the Moretti syndicate. If she hadn’t had that stamp on her cheek, I would have ruled her out as just another victim of random crime in Central Park.”

As each of the members talked about their activities of the day and nobody had anything new to add, the heart that Lara rarely acknowledged she possessed sank lower and lower in her chest.

Time was their enemy. Every day, every hour that passed, witnesses forgot what they saw, and stories got muddied. It was true what was said about the first forty-eight hours, and all of the murders had already passed those crucial first hours.

It was just after seven when they all left for the day. Lara stepped outside and pulled up the collar of her jacket against the cold wind.

The clouds created a darker twilight than usual, and she hurried toward the subway station. The subway was crowded, but she managed to snag a seat. Her gaze swept the occupants of the car. Always looking for trouble. Always anticipating problems. That’s what a year undercover had done to her.

She leaned back against the seat as the lights overhead blinked and the subway began its screeching halt at a stop. Another stop and then a block walk and she’d be home. Hopefully she was exhausted enough that her sleep wouldn’t be haunted by any nightmares.

However, by the time she got off the subway near her apartment building, instead of heading inside, she went to the parking lot down the street where she kept her personal vehicle.

The exhaustion that had gripped her earlier had passed as she’d gotten a second wind. She got into her car and headed toward Rockaway Beach and her father’s house, her thoughts turning from the chaos of the cases they were working on to the chaos of her childhood.

Her mother had been a strong but loving woman. The only memory Lara had of love and gentleness from anyone had come from her mother in the first ten years of Lara’s life.

After her murder, life had become a barren desert when it came to trusting or loving anyone. Her father hadn’t been a warm and loving kind of man. All the softness in Lara’s life had been buried with her mother.

Her father had died and had been buried while she’d been in the safe house, and Lara hadn’t been back to her childhood home since then.

She knew it was time. She needed to deal with it. She had to go through the house and either pack up things she wanted to keep or throw out everything. The house was paid for, and she needed to get it ready to go on the market and be rid of it and those memories forever.

She drove slowly, dreading what she needed to do. She’d thought she was ready to go inside the house and start a list of things that needed to be done, but she wasn’t sure she was really mentally prepared for the task.