Jerry
“This is shaping up to be a better day,” Brax said.
“Oh, you think?” Grey had acquired half the L.L.Bean catalogue over the past three days, and he was still whining. “It’s barely above freezing.”
“At least the sun’s out.” Jez whacked him on the back, and he lurched forward. “If you got moving, you wouldn’t be so cold.”
“This is pointless. Do you realise I left a woman in my bed to be here? I could be having breakfast with her right now. Or catching up on emails, or sleep, or sitting in a nice warm chamber, arguing with my colleagues and disappointing roughly forty-five percent of the voting public.”
“The House doesn’t sit on Sundays, dumbass.”
Another day, another patch of scrubby forest. Sin climbed out of the car, stretched the kinks out of her back, and reached for her coffee.
Most people thought she’d gotten her nickname because she paid lip service to morality, which she did, but it actually stood for Super Intel Nerd.
She had networks everywhere, she mined humint the way Echo trawled the interwebs, and she’d never met a conspiracy theory she didn’t believe contained a kernel of truth.
“Look on the bright side,” she said. “Today, you can get some fresh air and disappoint four women in one go.”
Kermit decided to join the team voluntarily for once. He jumped out of the back seat, twisting in midair to avoid a patch of mud, and after a quick check to see if anyone had snacks—they didn’t—he took off into the trees.
Sin looked at Jez. Jez looked at Sin.
“Hmm,” Sin said.
“That’s more enthusiasm than he’s shown all week.”
“We should probably follow.”
“Either he’s smelled a body, or he needs a potty break,” Spider joked. At least, Jez thought she was joking.
Sin was already disappearing into the undergrowth, heading along a narrow track, and Jez jogged after her.
Spider brought up the rear while the men lounged by the cars, bitching about the weather and some set of cookware Nolan and Grey had both bought that was supposed to be non-stick but wasn’t.
The last thing Jez heard was Ari trying to wrangle them into action. Good luck with that.
They found Kermit sitting by a pile of brush in a small clearing.
The mutt barked once, then began sniffing at Sin’s pocket, searching for a reward.
And he might actually deserve it this time because nestled between the branches and withered leaves was a fucking plant.
The plant was pretty shrivelled, but the pink pot it was sitting in still added a splash of colour to the surroundings.
Uh-oh.
“Does that look like a dead orchid to you?” Sin asked.
“Yup.”
Spider cursed. Jez nudged the brush with a foot and revealed a piece of blue plastic. Despite the chilly temperatures, the faint whiff of decomp drifted on the air, which was probably what Kermit had smelled, and at least Grey would be happy. They could all sleep in tomorrow.
Jez began pulling at the branches with gloved hands, and the others joined in. The pile had been hiding a mummy-shaped lump, wrapped in a thick blue tarp and tied with rope. The package was the right size for an adult human, and the shape suggested the body was female.
“It has to be Amie, right?” Spider said.
Sin shrugged. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Oh, please. With the orchid? Isn’t that the plant Justin claimed he put on Ruby’s grave?”
“Two words: Dobie Carter.”
Jez groaned. Spider groaned. Dobie Carter had been an informant, an asshole, and a pain in the rear.
Instead of testifying against a corrupt chemical manufacturer, he’d fled witness protection and taken refuge at his brother-in-law’s hunting cabin.
The Choir had tracked him to the Montana wilderness and tripped over a skeletonised body just yards from the driveway.
Which was weird because he’d spoken to his sister a week previously.
With further investigation, they’d realised the body was in fact female, which was how they’d accidentally solved a case that had gone cold two years previously, and the young woman’s husband was sent to prison where he belonged.
Dobie himself had been found in a ravine nearby, or rather, half of him had been found. A bear had eaten the rest. The moral of that story? Not everything was as it first appeared.
Also, don’t forget your bear spray.
“Okay, fine, I’ll check.” Jez opened her switchblade with a quiet snick. “You call the Cleaners.”
Jez was done talking. She crouched by the body and sliced into the plastic, peeling it back to reveal the bloated face of Amie Carlson. Her eyes were closed. The weather had been kind, and the plastic minimised insect activity, but her skin had turned greenish black as decomposition advanced.
“Tell me again why I do this job,” Jez muttered.
Spider obliged. “Because justice, blah blah.”
“If Levi did this, he’s a dead man. How difficult do you think it is to break into a level four prison?”
“A men’s prison? Hard to blend in without balls.”
Huh. Amie’s skull looked relatively intact. Jez had bet on a stab wound, and…what the fuck? She pulled out her phone and messaged Ari.
Jez
You owe me $8
Ari
Why?
Jez
Come see for yourself. I’ll go to $6, but no lower.
Ari appeared thirty seconds later, jogging along the track, slightly out of breath.
“What’s going— Ohmigosh, is that Amie?”
“Sure looks like what’s left of her.”
“Why did you unwrap her? What about forensics?”
“What forensics? We can’t trust anything here—the whole scene is staged.” Jez waved a hand toward the body. “Voila—exhibit A.”
Ari had avoided looking at the body closely—a tad squeamish?
—but now she focused on the dead woman. On the knife sticking out of her chest. On the star carved into her torso.
Her shirt was torn open, her skirt had been pushed up around her hips, and her underwear was missing.
Ari’s skin took on a greenish pallor not too dissimilar from Amie’s.
“Do you want to go back to the car?”
The rest of the Choir was used to death—both seeing it up close and causing it—but Ari was a freelancer. She did investigation, not assassination.
“Yes, but I’m not going to. Wait a second… Is that the Star of David?”
“Yup.”
“But I thought… Weren’t we expecting a pentagram?”
“Yup.”
“Ugh, I’ll give you six bucks.”
Ari turned and puked into a bush. Jez was strangely proud of how far she’d come over the past year. In the beginning, she would have puked first and then made the snarky comment.
“This is what happens when you your homicide and send a moron to do a professional’s job,” Jez said.
“Could have been a bad brief from the client,” Spider suggested. “Just cut a star into her chest,” she mimicked snippily. “What kind of— A fucking star, dipshit. Didn’t you learn how to draw a star in kindergarten?”
“Or maybe the client is in prison and therefore couldn’t speak freely?”
Fucking Levi.
“But playing devil’s advocate, what if Justin really is guilty of murder?” Ari asked. “We’ve made a lot of assumptions.”
“Assumptions based on facts and experience. Let’s look at the sequence of events that would have needed to take place for Justin to be responsible…
Amie exited the office building before Justin, and for some unknown reason, she decided to hang around in the parking lot for six minutes instead of leaving.
Justin then stopped, and instead of checking she was okay, he killed her, stuffed her body into his truck, and drove home. And where’s her car?”
“Okay, that does sound crazy.”
“Not as crazy as Jessalyn showing up right after he got to his house. Logic says that if he had a body stashed in his truck, he would’ve told her to get lost. And don’t forget the dog. No way would he have invited a dog inside. You saw how easily Kermit sniffed out the body.”
“Kermit’s trained to do that.”
“And why do you think Sin started training him? Because one day, somebody whose name rhymes with Rice temporarily left a body in her car, and Kermit paid a little too much attention.”
“Why would she— Actually, forget it. I don’t want to know.”
“So, Justin finally decides to dispose of the body, on his own damn land, and just in case the cops are total dumbasses, he leaves a potted fucking plant on the grave like a makeshift crime scene marker? No. Justin’s many things, but he isn’t stupid.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“And that’s just the logistics. Could I kill a person, then calmly take a shower, entertain a houseguest, and eat Chinese? No problem. Could Justin? Only if the houseguest was a psychiatrist and the egg fried rice was laced with Xanax.”
Spider pulled a face. “You couldn’t entertain a houseguest. Small talk isn’t your thing.”
“Whatever. I’m using poetic licence here. What I’m trying to say is that we’re looking for someone like me, not someone like Justin. Except they’re borderline amateur because the plant thing is ridiculous.”
“Trying way too hard,” Sin agreed.
“They panicked. Justin was supposed to be alone that night, but Jessalyn arrived, and they had to improvise.”
“So they followed him to the cemetery and stole the plant?” Ari asked. “To break his alibi?”
“He never uses his mirrors.”
“What if there’s a tracker on his truck?”
“If there was, they removed it. I checked both of his vehicles.” Jez glanced at her watch. 11:03. “We need to get her out of here.”
The Cleaners were on standby, a specialist team who didn’t just clean, they erased evidence of a crime ever happening.
Usually, the Choir worked with the West Coast team, but there were several groups dotted around the US, and it was the East Coast team who’d be helping today.
They’d transport Amie to an appropriate facility for an autopsy and forensic testing.
“And then we need to find the people behind this and make sure they can’t do it again,” Sin added.
“That’s a given.” But before Jez could make the call, they heard voices. “Ari, go head off the men. They don’t need to see another woman cut up like this.”
Especially Grey. He was ridiculously squeamish, and the smell from one pile of vomit was quite bad enough.
“Uh… Isn’t that a woman’s voice?”
Jez went from a five to an eleven on the alert scale in a heartbeat. Brax was talking loudly, too loudly, unnaturally so, and a female voice replied. Trees rustled as they came closer. The birds fell silent. Then Kermit fucking barked.
“Go,” she said to Spider and Sin.
Spider scooped up the potted plant, Sin tossed Jez a bag of dog treats, and the two of them melted into the trees right before Brax and Grey walked into the clearing alongside a woman Jez recognised as Special Agent Laura Rimer.
She’d aged two decades in the past ten years.
Back when she worked on Ruby’s case, she’d been a wet-behind-the-ears detective trailing behind her partner, and now she walked in front of a younger guy wearing a state trooper’s uniform.
He had the look of a military grunt—white-wall haircut, stiff bearing, vaguely intimidated by a congressman who influenced his paycheck.
Rimer focused on Jez, and there was a momentary hesitation before recognition dawned.
Then her gaze dropped to the body lying on the ground.
Fuck. Usually in this situation, Jez would just shoot her way out, but today, that would only make things worse.
There were too many people involved. Plus Grey got so damn judgy.
Jez’s phone buzzed, and she checked the message.
Echo
The cops got an anonymous tip—caller claims they saw Justin near Burr Hill.
Now she fucking warned them? When had the tip come in? Had someone watched them arrive and then sent the cops to catch them in the act?
Jez
When?
Echo
Last night.
Okay, so the cops were just slow off the mark. Rimer cleared her throat and folded her arms. “Ms. Knight?”
“Thank goodness you’re here, Detective. We were about to call you.”
“Sure you were.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
Rimer ignored that. “I oughta arrest you for interfering with a crime scene.”
Jez opened her mouth to respond, to point out that it had taken them over twelve hours to act on their tip-off, but Grey got in first with a not-so-subtle reminder that he’d been to law school.
“Title 18.2 in the Code of Virginia states ‘If any person without just cause knowingly obstructs any law enforcement officer.’ I’m sure Jerry had no idea what she’d stumbled across when her dog found this plastic-wrapped package.”
Such a polite “fuck you.”
“What he said.”
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
“You’ll have to explain.”
This time, she took the bait. “You’re meddling in another investigation to cover for your friend.”
“Another investigation?”
Okay, yes, Jez messed with investigations all the time, but not on Rimer’s cases. Nobody had touched Ruby’s body. Nobody had tampered with evidence. They’d all been too damn horrified.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t. But I do know that when Justin first reported Amie Carlson’s disappearance last week, the police didn’t much care. What did you expect us to do? Forget about her? Leave her out here to rot?”
“Back up and get the hell out of here. Koch, we need a cordon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The trooper stepped forward, one hand on his gun, although it was still fastened into his holster. Jez knew how to fight, but she also knew the advantages of a strategic retreat. She’d let Rimer win this battle, but the Choir would win the war—she’d make sure of that.