Justifiable Read online

  J. T. said nothing. He didn’t have to when doubt oozed from his pores. “I’ll see what I can find out about Sally’s history.” He pushed the mug away and waved off the bartender. “Now, tell me straight up you’re not hiding anything about that phone call this morning if you want my help with Massey.”

  “I’ve given you everything I’ve got.”

  “Can’t promise you Massey will let this go with that five minute gap of time. She may go for interfering with an investigation or she could decide to put you into protective custody and lock you up with your cell phone.”

  “Right now I only care if you believe me and if she pulls me off the street I think she’ll be jeopardizing the best chance we’ve got at getting Enrique back.”

  J. T. stood up. “I’m buying what you’ve told me for now. You have my cell number. You need to call in anything, you call me first.” His eyes turned into black stones. “Understand this, Walker. We have a common goal, but if you fuck me over, Detroit will look like a picnic.”

  Take a number.

  Chapter 26

  What was taking this sinner so long to wake up?

  He hadn’t hit him that hard.

  A blustery north wind yanked at his robe, lifting the tail of the cloth to expose his thermal underwear. He sweated from exertion.

  This body had been a chore to move. He’d loaded the unconscious man into a wheelbarrow, then rolled him to this perfect spot in the Laurel Hill Cemetery. He stepped back out of the beam from the flashlight he’d propped up on the overturned wheelbarrow so he could survey the image, assured the sinners would understand his message.

  The motionless body rested with his back against a headstone that rose six feet in the air and read: “DEATH CANCELS EVERYTHING BUT TRUTH.”

  Fitting.

  He patted the .38 in his right coat pocket. Not yet.

  The man slumped forward, flannel-shirt-covered arms stretched out to each side with his forearms secured to wooden stakes in the ground.

  “Wake up,” he ordered. Nothing happened.

  He shoved the flashlight into his left coat pocket, and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. He poured the icy liquid on the pig’s face.

  That resulted in a mouthful of gargled profanity that ended with, “What the fuck are you fucking doing?”

  “Are you truly repentant?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Guess that would be a “no.”

  The slob looked up, squinting. “What kind of fucking priest does this?”

  “The same one who does this.” He shoved a scrap of material in the guy’s mouth, then stepped back and gripped the ax standing next to his leg. He lifted it high and swung down hard. The snap of the first wrist bone echoed a duet with a guttural scream muted by the rag.

  This sinner would arrive in Purgatory without the offending appendages that had been intended for purposes other than hurting a vulnerable female.

  Chapter 27

  An irritating chime played once, twice.

  Just ten more minutes. Riley finally figured out what the noise was. He came awake, cursed at the racket and snatched up the phone. Could be Jasper calling, even though his foster dad had gotten around the house fine last weekend when Riley visited.

  Opening the phone on the way to his ear, Riley answered, “What?”

  “You have another task.”

  He snapped wide-eyed alert. When did this killer sleep? Riley pushed up on his elbows, his gaze straying to the clock. Just after three in the morning.

  “What do you need?” Riley reached over and clicked on the lamp next to his bed.

  “Go to Laurel Hill Cemetery. Hunting Park Gate.”

  “Do you have Enrique?”

  “I’ll call back.” He hung up.

  Riley swatted the pillow aside and jumped up, ready to hurt somebody. But he needed this anonymous tipster, couldn’t lose his temper now. Not with so much at stake. He wiped his eyes with one hand and scrolled through speed-dial numbers on his cell phone with the other then hit a key.

  The second ring barely sounded when J. T.’s thick voice came on the line. “Better be worth waking me up.”

  “He called me again.”

  Didn’t take a full heartbeat for J. T.’s voice to clear. “What’d he say?”

  “Told me I had another task and to go to the Hunting Park gate at Laurel Hill Cemetery. You got your call. I’ll see you there.” Riley closed the phone before J. T’s string of foul curses burned his earlobe. He considered what they might find, but the caller hadn’t said to look for a body. Riley still owed it to Biddy to help him keep his job, which meant bringing him along if there was a story to be had.

  He keyed another call and headed to the bathroom.

  “What the fuck you want?” Biddy growled into the phone after one ring.

  “Want your job back by daylight?”

  Breathing filled the pause. “I’m in.”

  Riley gave him the low down. “Meet me at the Hunting Park Gate of Laurel Hill Cemetery in fifteen minutes.”

  “You think I got fuckin’ wings?”

  “Okay, make it twenty.”

  In less than five minutes, Riley had splashed his face with water and dressed in jeans, boots and a sweatshirt. He snagged his leather flight jacket and keys on the way to the door.

  Nothing stirred along 5th Street when he pulled out of the parking garage, heading to the Vine Expressway. WNUZ had rented him a condo in the Penn’s Landing area where old mixed with new, modest apartments sprinkled among high-rise towers.

  Home for only one more week unless he nailed this story.

  If not for getting Biddy’s job back and hanging close to help his foster dad, Riley couldn’t care less about staying here or getting the story if he didn’t find this kid.

  He’d just have to make it all happen somehow, but right now he only wanted to know one thing.

  Was Enrique really still alive?

  Riley made the trip to the cemetery in fifteen minutes. When he turned on Hunting Park Drive both sides of the road were lined with six-foot high, wrought iron fence. Moonlight lit the piked tops of the support posts.

  At the stone gate columns, he turned left. Two pikes were bent in as if pointing at the rows of limestone tombstones lined up inside.

  Someone had snapped the flimsy padlock. Had a vehicle nosed the gate open?

  Riley left his truck running in park and stepped out. Headlights hit him from behind. He turned around to find a Land Cruiser, one of the original ones with rusted fenders and what was left of the finish that had been red twenty years ago.

  Biddy must have wings after all. He parked off the side of the drive and got out carrying a duffle bag he dropped in Riley’s truck bed.

  A motor rumble and another set of headlights came toward Riley from inside the cemetery.

  He stood very still and kicked himself for not putting his weapon within easy reach.

  The Ford Explorer that parked in front of him dropped his pulse back to normal. J. T. Turner drove the pea-green hand-me-down from his lieutenant. Other detectives would get the truck next year, complete with the dented fender, cracked glass and six-digit mileage.

  Seemed like the Philly P.D. guys who worked the front lines should get the new rigs then pass those down to the pencil pushers instead of the other way around, but what did Riley know?

  J. T. climbed out and stepped into the glow of light, eyes swollen from too little sleep.

  “He ain’t happy,” Biddy pointed out.

  “No one’s ever happy to see me.”

  “Just figuring that out?”

  Had Biddy actually cut a joke?

  “What are we out here for, Riley?” J. T. scanned around him, but everything was pitch black beyond the headlight beams.

  “I was told to come here. You know what I know.” Riley’s phone rang. No one spoke while he answered. “Walker.”

  “Go to Millionaire’s Row.”

  Could the killer see them right now? “Where’s
Enrique?”

  “Can’t miss him.” The click sounded too final.

  Riley’s stomach did a twisted, double somersault when he closed the phone. “Said we’d find him on Millionaire’s Row.”

  No one uttered a sound. Riley knew the other two were thinking the same thing. Would they find Enrique?

  A squad car pulled in behind Riley. Biddy climbed into the Tundra’s passenger seat. Riley got behind the wheel and waited for J. T. to swing his vehicle around to lead the way, then let the squad car go next.

  “So what’s with this character who’s calling?” Biddy asked. “What’s he like? A wacko?”

  “No. Calm and his voice sounds different each time as though he’s trying to change the timbre and inflection. Can’t tell what’s natural or fake or even his age.” Riley allowed a car length of space between him and the squad car creeping along ahead, running a handheld spotlight out his driver’s window.

  Riley didn’t want to think about what they might find. His gaze roamed over the spooky landscape then he glanced at Biddy. “I get you in a jam by coming out in the middle of the night?”

  Biddy shook his head and pushed a smirk back at him. “Nah. Wife’s usually good about things like this. I don’t give her enough credit sometimes. She’s always taking my shit in stride.” The smirk lifted into a sly grin. “I told her when you called we had a big news break and might get back to work today. She booted me right off the bed.”

  Riley smiled. Biddy’s wife sounded like a nice girl, the kind all men planned to marry, but only the lucky ones landed.

  A hundred yards inside the cemetery, J. T. made a quick left onto Millionaire’s Row decked out with mausoleums constructed of stone. Some had stained glass windows glistening in the light of the full moon. Steel doors and sturdy wrought iron gates with heavy security locks protected the dead from marauders in the last home they’d have.

  J. T. slowed at the top of the hill that boasted a view of the Schuylkill River some joked was almost worth dying for. Across the road from the mausoleums were humble family plots and headstones sans the spectacular overlook.

  “It’s like the city itself,” Riley whispered, but didn’t know why he spoke so softly. Wasn’t like he’d wake the dead. “The rich get a room with a view. Everybody else is stuck with a view of their neighbor’s tombstones.”

  Biddy sat up when Riley’s headlights lampooned a tall headstone ten feet away. “There it is.”

  The two vehicles ahead of Riley had parked just past the body slumped over with his legs stretched out in front of the tall marker. Reminded Riley of a drunk passed out in an alley.

  He was so damn glad to see an adult body and not a small child. That might seem unkind to think about someone who’d probably been murdered, but there it was.

  He parked and jumped out. The bands of anxiety cinched around his chest finally stretched and let him draw a deep breath again.

  When Riley and Biddy got within ten feet, J. T. stood up from where he’d crouched near the body. “Don’t contaminate the scene.”

  The other officer was speaking in his radio, giving someone – more officers – directions to the location.

  “We’ll stay right here on the paved section.” Riley leaned toward Biddy and whispered, “Any chance that was a camera in the bag you threw in my truck bed?”

  “Good bet. I tossed an old BVP3 Betacam into the trunk. The picture won’t be as high a resolution as the new ones, but that sucker is heavy and don’t shake. Put a spotlight on anything and we’ll get it.”

  “We better take whatever shots we want now before the rest of J. T.’s boys show up.”

  Biddy walked back to the Tundra.

  When J. T. backed up from the body, Riley got a good look and cringed.

  The guy’s arms had been tied out to stakes on each side. He had bloody stumps where his hands should be. “He’s not shot?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a bullet hole in his forehead.” J. T. turned to Riley, a grim set to his mouth. He pointed to a spot of hard-packed gravel. “Take two steps to right there.”

  Riley very carefully moved closer, making a wide step to hit the gravel mark.

  “Put the light on this,” J. T. told his officer.

  The beam moved into place as J. T. used his latex-gloved fingertips to lift a foot-long triangle of fabric.

  Riley swallowed. J. T. held the corner of a child’s Diego blanket...covered in blood.

  Chapter 28

  Riley heard J. T.’s voice from a distance. He couldn’t take his eyes off the scrap of material he knew had to be from Enrique’s blanket.

  He’d never been sick at a crime scene, but this one threatened to bring him to his knees.

  “Walker!”

  “What?” Riley shook off the wave of nausea.

  “Do you know what Enrique’s blanket looks like?”

  Biddy came up and flipped on the camera, but Riley put his hand out to stop him. “Not yet.”

  When Biddy lowered the camera and pointed the lens at the pavement, Riley answered J. T. “I’m about ninety-nine percent sure that’s the corner of a blanket identical to the one that belongs to Enrique. There’s a cartoon character called Diego on the front with a couple of monkeys and a yellow Jeep-type truck in the jungle.”

  “We’ll test the blood,” J. T. said, his voice low and intense. “The chopped off hands were holding the blanket so the blood may not belong to Enrique.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” Hope blasted through Riley at warp speed. He caught Biddy staring at him, waiting for a decision. His mind shifted into business mode for now. They didn’t have a new lead to chase and they didn’t have any reason to believe Enrique was dead or harmed. Not yet. And there was no reason not to report this cemetery death.

  This footage should be enough to use as trade for getting their jobs back now and not harm anything on the Stanton case.

  Riley called out, “J. T., you good with us filming the body, but nothing about the blanket or the kid? I’ll label the killing however you say, and nothing identifiable, so it doesn’t leak to next of kin before you reach them.”

  J. T. had returned to the scene. He stepped back to Riley, debate flickering in his gaze. But Riley had leveled with him last night and was giving him a chance to say no. “You got sixty seconds then you’re going to have to back up to your truck. I’ll have more officers here to secure the area and shove everyone behind the tape.”

  “Got it.” Riley turned to Biddy who was already filming.

  The vic was pushing close to forty, if not already there, thick neck like a man who earned his muscles with hard labor. Walmart clothes and a bad haircut. This was the only time that stiff would get to visit Millionaire’s Row. The ground was black with blood, which explained the marble-white skin where the vic had bled out. His head was dipped forward...almost bowed.

  Biddy paused from filming and cocked his chin toward the Hunting Park gate. “I hear sirens. Actually, I see blue lights. Anything else you want filmed up close before they run us out of here?”

  “Get the tombstone. I’m thinking ‘death cancels everything but truth’ meant something to the killer.”

  He and Biddy were walking back to the Tundra when two more squad cars arrived. Riley would lay in some quick sound bites before waving the video under Lehman’s nose. He had a right and obligation to report this killing.

  Then everyone would be happy for once. Lehman would have the jump on the story, Biddy would be back at work and Riley...well, he wouldn’t be content until he found Enrique – alive – but he’d be free to pursue leads, too.

  Patrol cars rumbling into the park gave life to the chilled air. Officers strung up yellow tape from tombstone to tombstone, like a scene from the old movie, Crypt.

  “Climb up in the truck bed.” Biddy produced a mega-spotlight he handed to Riley then plugged the cord into an AC accessory port in the Tundra. When Biddy jumped up in the bed with him he lifted the camera to his shoulder. “They didn’t say we couldn�
��t film from here.”

  “Detective Turner?” one of J. T.’s men called out from the far side of the victim.

  J. T. went over to see what they needed then yelled over his shoulder. “Riley, swing that light over here, would ya?” The detective motioned to his men to move aside.

  Riley shined the light up the corridor the officers provided then looked at Biddy. “He wants our tips. He wants our light. He just doesn’t want us here.”

  “You know what they say about wanting something.” Biddy grinned, still filming. “He can shit in one hand and wait for the other one to fill up.”

  A dark sedan pulled in at the end of the current line of cars with another squad car close behind. Blue lights flashed on and off over the headstones and line of police cars.

  When the lights on the sedan dimmed then disappeared, the driver’s door opened. DA Investigator Massey emerged, dressed as though she was on her way in for a City Hall meeting.

  “She ain’t happy either,” Biddy muttered, lowering his camera.

  “Yeah, I’m two for two.” Riley’s chuckle died in his throat. J. T. wouldn’t have had a chance to talk to her about not executing a warrant yet. This wasn’t the place or time for the detective to put in a word for Riley.

  Would she believe him if Riley told her he was just as surprised to be here as she was to see him here?

  Chapter 29

  “For the love of God, Walker, is that you?” Kirsten Massey’s words pulsed out on angry white clouds in the chilled air.

  Riley watched her silhouette split the patrol car headlights as she made a straight line to him, hips swaying with each sharp step, black hair flicking back and forth in angry sweeps. Direct contrast to her surroundings. She couldn’t be more noticeable if she wore clothes outlined in neon lighting.

  He checked J. T.’s men to see that they had extra spotlights in place now so he gave Biddy a nod then shifted the light to the side of Investigator Massey in a way that didn’t blind her. Biddy panned his camera vertically from the ground up, which meant he was getting Massey from her short boots and black pants, beige sweater and a knee-length wool coat just as dark as the pants all the way up to her slinky black hair.