Devil in the Deadline Read online

  I tipped my head to one side when his eyes fell shut. “I’m glad. Because I don’t want you to.”

  Joey’s breath warmed my lips, and my pulse jackhammered a staccato beat.

  Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

  I opened my eyes, and Joey turned his head. Surely my heart wasn’t beating that loud. The kitchen door clicked shut and I muttered, “What now?”

  Joey’s fingers closed over my hand.

  “Hey hot stuff, how was Agent Sexy last night?” Jenna. Her voice was playful, her flip flops slapping her feet with every step.

  Her timing sucked.

  “Even better than you expected? I’ve waited for you to dish the details all day and—” The words died on her lips when she rounded the corner, her eyes popping so wide I could see white all around the brown. “Oops.”

  I turned my head slowly back to Joey. Hurt plain in his dark eyes for a split second, he set his face to “stoic stare” as I clapped one hand over my mouth, shaking my head at them both. “No.”

  “Or maybe I was right.” Joey dropped my hand, standing and offering Jenna a polite nod before he grabbed his jacket, shot me an unreadable glance, and walked out.

  6.

  Four-one-one

  “I’m so sorry, doll.” Jenna flopped onto the chaise next to me as the front door slammed.

  I peeked at her through splayed fingers, my head cradled in my hands.

  “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Jen. Except trying to help Aaron figure out this murder. It’s kinda sad, dead people being the only thing in my life that make any sort of sense at the moment, huh?”

  She leaned one shoulder against me and giggled. “I’m not sure I’d put it that way. Mostly because it is kinda sad. And I don’t believe there’s a soul who would feel sorry for you if they got a look at that dude. Was that him?”

  I nodded.

  “Damn, girl. Talk about a rock and a hard place.”

  “I’ll pass up the suggestive pun opportunity and just agree with the sentiment.” I leaned back and closed my eyes, the dog scratching at the front door making me sigh. “Me too, Darce.”

  “What happened? I thought you said he was incommunicado.”

  “He has been. Then he was here when I got home. Claimed he was worried when he saw my story this morning.”

  “Me, too. But I’ll get there in a second,” Jenna said. “Y’all looked pretty cozy when I came in.”

  “We were getting that way.”

  “And what about the other one?”

  “I didn’t sleep with Kyle last night. No matter how hard I try, I’m just not getting a spark with him. Of anything other than friendship, anyway. Pretty sure I hurt his feelings, but he was sweet about it. And now Joey’s feelings are hurt, too. I give up. Is there a convent around here?”

  Jenna laid one hand on my knee. “Could I have worse timing? I didn’t know you had company.”

  “How could you? I haven’t heard from him in weeks. I’m kind of pissed at him, with his sexy jawline and magical smell having taken their leave so I can think straight. He just decided he wasn’t good for me and bailed without even saying goodbye, or giving me a chance to have an opinion? What kind of ass-backward, Donna Reed crap is that?”

  “Maybe he figured you’d talk him out of it?”

  “If he really didn’t want to be here, I couldn’t, could I?”

  “Doll, from what I saw just now, the question is not whether he wants to be here. It’s whether he feels like he ought to be. And like it or not, those are very different things.”

  I nodded, leaning my head on her shoulder and focusing on the long, flat box in the center of the coffee table. Inside were five-thousand laser cut pieces of a Manet that would be easier to put together than my personal life.

  Joey. Kyle.

  Kyle. Joey.

  I’d almost swear they were in cahoots, trying to drive me bonkers.

  “I have more important things to worry about.” I sat up, retrieving my notes from the floor. “You want to talk about a murder?”

  “I’m not going to be any help. I gathered it wasn’t the typical dead coed. But I got the feeling you were being vague. Though not as vague as Charlie Lewis.”

  “I was vague on purpose. She was vague because it’s all she’s got.” I grinned. “Mom’s perspective: could you see a scenario in which a parent could have someone murder their daughter?”

  “I’m not crazy, of course, but I can’t imagine being angry enough at one of mine to want them dead.” Jenna bent forward and picked Darcy up, rubbing the dog’s velvety ears. “Here’s what I would want: I’d want to be notified before I saw her picture on TV. It would suck to find out your kid was dead that way.”

  “I agree. But Aaron can’t notify the family until he finds out who she is.” I waved the notes. “And based on this, I hope he brings them in for questioning after he notifies them. Assuming there’s anyone to notify. She was on the streets, which means she felt like she couldn’t go home.”

  I opened my mouth to ask about the party just as my BlackBerry chirped a text alert. Bob.

  I held one finger up and clicked the message open. “Two seconds.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have any place to be. The kids are still at my mom’s, and Chad is running all afternoon. Marathon training.”

  “‘What the hell is this?’ in all caps and a web link from Bob are never a good combination,” I said, touching the blue words on my screen.

  “River City Four-one-one,” I read aloud.

  I scanned the blog post, words failing me. Most of them, anyway. “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Jenna pressed her cheek to mine and looked at my screen. “What is that?”

  “It appears to be a blog. Written by someone who knows way more about this case than they should.” I clicked my contacts open. “Can we have a rain check on catching up? Looks like I have something else to investigate.”

  “Sure, honey. I’ll talk to you soon.” She let herself out as I flipped my laptop open and punched in the blog address.

  “This is the very last thing I need, Darcy.” I reached for my BlackBerry. “Like I don’t have enough deadlines breathing down my back already.”

  Aaron sounded as flabbergasted as I felt, though there wasn’t much he could do about it but be pissed off. He promised to put it on the cybercrimes unit’s watch list and hung up.

  I clicked back through a dozen entries, all of them recent. All of them detailed. Too detailed. How had I missed this?

  The blogger’s profile was no help, the name listed as Girl Friday (cute, if I hadn’t been so annoyed) and current city as Richmond. The profile was set up in mid-May, the avatar a notebook and pen.

  I called Bob next.

  “Is it Shelby?” I asked when he picked up.

  He chuckled. “While I wouldn’t put it past her, she was in the newsroom until late last night. She emailed me about a feature for tomorrow at nine-fifteen. And I’d can her for leaking stories online. I’ll go with ‘probably not.’”

  “Who the hell is it, then?”

  “Not a clue. I know it’s not you. You know it’s not you. Keeping the publisher on the right side of that once Shelby catches wind of this and stirs it up? Well. I do love a challenge.”

  “What possible motivation could I have for writing a crime case blog? Like I don’t have enough work to do with the eighty-hour weeks I put in for y’all? Ask Andrews that.”

  “Noted.” Bob sighed. “I miss the days when my biggest worry was whether Channel Four could get a piece written and to the anchor before we got the afternoon edition out. Calling in copy from pay phones, drinking Scotch in the newsroom after five.”

  “Like Mad Men with ink stains?” I smiled. Bob was my hero. The history he’d had a front-row seat for in the seventies and eighties, the difference he’d made with the stories he wrote—it was everything I aspired to do.

  “Less makeup, but yeah,” he said. “No bloggers, no Twitter. I’m showing my
age, but it was a simpler time.”

  “The hashtags get tricky.” I laughed. “But I do love my BlackBerry.”

  “Ah, but I saw Elvis in concert.”

  “Now that, I’m jealous of. The Pulitzer? Eh. Elvis? You got me.”

  I could practically see his eyes crinkle at the corners when he chuckled. “Your story this morning was good, kiddo.”

  “I have more good stuff. Hopefully it won’t wind up on the Internet. Before we put it there, anyhow.”

  “Can’t wait to see it. You’ll be in for the meeting tomorrow?”

  “Unless there’s another dead body.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  I clicked off the call and put the phone down, staring at my computer screen. One of the first posts chronicled an ATF bust of a fake medical marijuana ID operation. Kyle wasn’t lead on the case, but he had to know something about it. And he might know how this blogger had gotten so much information. The post quoted a lot of “unnamed sources” and had details about the location I didn’t get. Neither did Charlie or anyone else. How?

  I clicked back to the main page. Our mystery crime writer had only eighty-seven followers, but Jasmine’s murder was the kind of case that could put the whole city on edge if more people started reading this. There wasn’t an attributed quote from the police department, but Friday out-and-out called the case a possible serial murder in her lead. I agreed, privately—but putting that kind of language online could cause a panic.

  Growling a string of swearwords, I looked around for the dog. Nowhere in sight. I set the computer on the coffee table, got up to search, and mulled over calling Kyle.

  Darcy lay by the front door. I bent to pet her and she lifted her head, gave me a moony-eyed stare, and sighed.

  “Don’t I know it, girl.” I scooped her up and hugged her. “What a mess.”

  Kyle was likely still upset.

  Because of the way I’d left things the night before.

  Left.

  Him at his apartment.

  “Oh, crap, Darcy!” I put her on her feet and dove for my BlackBerry.

  “Yeah?” Kyle’s voice tried for cheer, but I could hear the hurt. I wanted to hide under the coffee table.

  “I completely forgot about your car until just now,” I said. “I’ve been working all day. I’m sorry. You want me to come get you and take you to pick it up?”

  “One of the guys from the office took me by this morning,” he said. “But thanks.”

  I dropped my voice an octave. “I really am sorry.”

  He sighed. “I’m not mad at you, Nicey. Hurt? A little. Frustrated? You bet. But I don’t think you owe me an apology.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Being such an amazingly decent guy.”

  Kyle fell quiet for a long minute. “Anything new on your dead woman?”

  “I talked to a few people this morning. Nothing definite. Except that there’re no prints on file. And no missing person’s report, either.”

  “Huh. She had to come from somewhere.”

  “She’d been on the streets for a year. That’s not enough time to be booted from the DMV’s system, right?”

  He was quiet for a long minute. “No. I’ve read some journal cases where people disappear from colleges or prep schools and a report isn’t filed. School administration assumes they went home, family thinks they’re at school. Early twenties, you said?”

  I grabbed a pad and pen and jotted that down. I wasn’t sure I bought it, given the timeframes, but it was worth checking.

  “Speaking of odd.” I bit my lip. “Bob sent me a link this morning. There’s a blogger writing about crime in Richmond.”

  “Someone bigfooting your territory, Lois?”

  “If that was all it was I wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed. She’s got stuff on this murder no one should have. She called it a ‘possible serial’ in her freaking lead.”

  “She who? And…wow.” He whistled and I pulled the phone away from my ear.

  “The writer profile is under ‘Girl Friday.’ So I’m going with she. It doesn’t look like she has too many followers yet, but eighty-seven can become eighty-seven-hundred overnight with the right luck. And as soon as Shelby finds out about this, she’ll try to convince anyone who will listen that it’s me.”

  “How did your editor know about it?”

  “He—” I stopped. “He didn’t say, actually. I don’t know.”

  “So, what can I do for you? I’m no computer hacker.”

  “No, but there’s a post here about y’all’s marijuana ID bust,” I said, his words giving me another idea. “I was going to ask you how she knew so much about it. But now I’m wondering: do you know any computer hackers?”

  “We have a cyber unit, like everyone else these days,” he said. “I’m not tight with any of the guys over there, though. As for your other question, that wasn’t my case. I might be able to ask around a little. What does she have?”

  “I’ll send you a link.” I stopped and leaned against the archway that led into my living room. “This isn’t just about me not wanting to lose a headline. I don’t want bad information getting out. Or stuff leaked that could compromise an investigation. I’ve worked my ass off to earn the trust of every law enforcement agency I deal with, and I don’t want all the chiefs and commanders handing down ‘no talking to press’ edicts because anyone with an Internet connection can play Lois Lane.”

  More defensive than I would have liked, but Kyle’s reply was soft.

  “I know all that. I don’t want someone leaking my cases all over the Internet, either. If this person is putting sensitive ATF information on the web, I have a vested interest in checking it out,” he said. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Anytime. Call me if you find anything?”

  “I might call you even if I don’t.”

  “I’d like that.” I smiled. “You’re too good a friend to lose.”

  “Back at you. We’ll figure it out. I hope.”

  “Me, too.” I clicked off the call and wandered to the kitchen, opening a can of tomato soup and spreading butter on bread for a grilled cheese sandwich as I considered the past two days.

  What did I need first? To know who the victim was. What did I know? No prints and no dentals.

  I spooned a can of Pro Plan into Darcy’s dish and carried my lunch to the table, considering reasons for the lack of ID. Small town. Poor family. Remote location.

  I set the dishes in the sink as my BlackBerry twittered the theme from Peter Pan.

  I frowned at the unfamiliar number. “Clarke,” I said, putting the phone to my ear.

  “Chris Landers, Richmond homicide.” He sounded annoyed. And tired. “White says I need to talk with you. Can we grab coffee this afternoon?”

  Is a Louboutin sole red? “Can you be at Thompson’s in twenty minutes?” I asked, already striding out the door.

  He could.

  7.

  Sleeping beauty

  Landers strolled into my favorite coffee shop at two-twenty on the nose.

  I rose from an overstuffed armchair in the back corner and waved. He nodded and stepped to the counter to order.

  “Thanks for coming to meet me on Sunday,” he said, taking the plaid-upholstered chair opposite mine.

  “My hours often mirror y’all’s.” I sipped my white mocha and studied him over the rim of the cup. “I appreciate you calling me. What can I do for you?”

  “Aaron told me you spoke to the victim’s boyfriend this morning.” He set his cup on the table and leaned forward. “I need to know if you’re holding anything back. I’ve hit a wall at every turn so far, and I need something. Any kind of break.”

  “Aaron told you I might be hiding something?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “On the contrary, he insisted you wouldn’t. He trusts you. I don’t trust any reporter.”

  I sat back and blinked. “Thank you, Detective.”

  “No offense,” he
said. “But my dad was a reporter. The story is always first.” The bitterness in his voice belied history I didn’t want to visit.

  “Maybe for your dad,” I said gently. “But people come first for me. At least, I like to think so. Maybe that’s why Aaron trusts me.”

  The journals I’d stashed under the loose floorboard in my coat closet bopped through my thoughts. But I’d promised to return them, which I couldn’t do if they were in the evidence locker at the PD.

  He held my gaze for a long minute. “Fair enough. Which people?”

  “The victims, usually,” I said. “I try very hard not to muck up your investigations. I did talk to her boyfriend. I gave Aaron everything he said that struck me as relevant.” I smiled. “Aaron asked me to help because he knew I’d do it.”

  He nodded, his lips disappearing into a line. “I can respect that.”

  I pulled my notebook out of my bag. “If you want my honest opinion, y’all should take a look at the woman—the one you couldn’t get anything out of last night? She seems pretty lovesick over the victim’s boyfriend,” I said.

  He jotted that down. “Aaron said you told him that, too. I’m not sure a woman could have done what I saw last night.”

  Same thing Joey said. I tugged at a lock of hair. “Jasmine knew her. She would’ve let her up there.”

  He nodded.

  I smiled. “I’m happy to share information. If you want to return the favor, I might be able to help more. I have a knack for puzzles.”

  “You also have a knack for investigating.” He grinned. “I’ve done my homework. Though there’s not a badge in this city who doesn’t know your reputation for poking around in murder cases.”

  “I have a decent track record behind that reputation.” I clicked the pen in and out.

  “I suppose you do,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you don’t want to tell me will do.” I grinned.

  “Off the record until I say otherwise?” He dropped his voice. “I’m dead serious about that.”

  “Of course.” My toes tingled at his grave tone. Charlie was going to turn emerald before this was over. Not that it was terribly important. Just a nice bonus.