Chapter Sixteen
Braddock reclined in the uncomfortable metal chair and propped his feet on the table as two uniforms delivered Banks to the interview room.
Banks, looking exactly like a man with a hellacious hangover, stared in bewilderment as the door closed. He’d still been in bed when the cops arrived.
“What the hell?” He turned around, stumbled back a step as his gaze landed on Braddock. He held up his hands. “I done told you everything I know.”
“I wish that were true,” Braddock said as he dropped his feet to the floor and stood. “But, you see, I know you’re lying.” He walked around the table and pulled out the other chair. “Have a seat.”
Banks glared at him for about ten seconds, then swaggered to the chair and plopped down in it. “What do you want?”
Braddock had waited until Banks was in the room to do this part.
He picked up the small roll of blue painter’s tape from the table, pulled the chair he’d vacated across the room, and stepped up onto it.
After tearing off a strip of tape, he plastered it across the camera lens and stepped down from the chair.
“What the hell?” Banks mumbled.
Braddock pulled his chair back to the table and took a seat.
He shoved the roll of tape back into the table’s only drawer, then reached beneath the desk to turn off the microphone.
“Now. I understand you had a few beers with my partner last night.” Cooper had called Braddock at three-thirty this morning to say she’d delivered Banks to his house since he was shit-faced.
She’d learned a couple of interesting tidbits, nothing case-breaking, but enough to give Braddock some leverage.
“Your damned partner,” Banks said, his speech still slightly slurred, “set me up. That’s called entrapment.”
Braddock turned his palms up. “Prove it.”
Banks puffed out a breath. “Screw you.”
“The problem is . . .” Braddock sat back, studied the scumbag. “You’re the one who’s screwed.”
The other man’s gaze narrowed. “How do you figure that?”
“Considering two uniforms picked you up at your house this morning and hauled you in—not to mention my partner took you home in the wee hours of the morning—I would say Nash has concluded that you’re cooperating with the police.”
Banks laughed. “I ain’t doing nothing with the police.”
“You know that,” Braddock allowed, “and I know that, but Nash doesn’t.”
Fear made its first appearance in the scumbag’s eyes.
“Detective Cooper reported that you kept talking about Nash having a plan to execute his revenge against me. Why don’t you start with telling me about that?”
“I was drunk. I don’t even remember what I said. But I don’t know nothing about what Nash does. I told you that.”
Nothing Braddock hadn’t expected. Shelley had warned him that Banks wouldn’t talk without some major motivation.
Braddock stood, sending his chair scraping across the tiled floor.
“You see, Ricky”—he leaned forward, braced his hands on the table, and put his face in the other man’s—“that’s just not acceptable to me. ”
“Ain’t shit you can do about it,” the bastard had the balls to say.
Braddock smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong.
” His smile vanished. “I will watch every move you make. Have you hauled in every single day until you wish you were anybody but Ricky Banks. I’ll put the word out on the street that you’re a snitch.
You won’t have a customer left in this county or the next who’ll do business with you.
And you’ll be so sick of seeing my face that you’ll want to take that unlicensed Glock of yours and put yourself out of your misery before someone else does it for you. ”
“You want me to help you,” Banks scoffed, “the way Shelley helped you? Yeah, right. I don’t wanna get dead like her.”
Self-disgust cramped Braddock’s insides. “I guess it all depends upon who scares you the most, Banks. Nash or me.”
The stare-off lasted long enough for sweat to break out on the other man’s forehead.
“I can help you.” Banks swallowed hard. “You just have to give me time to set things in motion. Ty is careful.” He blinked for the first time. His hands shook as he shoved the hair back from his face. “You won’t be able to connect him to any of his past activities. It’ll have to be something new.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “Seventy-two hours.” Braddock let that sink in a moment. “That’s all the time I can give you. Can you make that happen?”
Banks nodded eagerly. “I’ll make it happen.”
“You get what I need on Nash and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Can I leave now?”
Braddock dragged his chair back to the wall and removed the tape from the camera lens. “Absolutely. I’ll have someone take you to your car.”
Braddock left the room. Jenkins waited in the corridor. “Take that piece of shit to his car. It’s parked at that cantina on Drake.”
“Did he give you anything useful?” the junior detective asked, anticipation gleaming in his eyes. He wanted deeper into this case so bad it hurt. He followed Braddock around like a groupie. Told everyone he wanted to be just like him.
Braddock grinned. “He’ll get us what we need.”
Jenkins nodded as if he hadn’t expected anything less. “Of course. I don’t know why I asked. He didn’t have a chance against you.”
“Get some sleep. You’ll need it,” he told Jenkins before heading to his office.
He needed to touch base with Greg Day at the lab.
If that turned out to be Shelley’s blood .
. . It wouldn’t be enough to nail Nash legally, but it would confirm a connection between the note he had received after his niece’s murder and the message to CJ.
His cell vibrated. He checked the screen.
Cooper. She’d relieved Jenkins an hour ago.
The chief had allotted only three detectives on this case.
They would have to do the best they could with minimal manpower.
“Braddock.”
“She’s waiting outside Banks’s house,” Cooper reported.
A frown furrowed across his forehead. “Jenkins is taking Banks to his car now. Keep an eye on her until I get there.”
After last night’s break-in, he would have thought CJ would be more careful. He should have known better. She’d spent her whole life taking care of her sister. To CJ’s way of thinking, finding her killer would be necessary to finish the job.
If it didn’t get her killed first.
4:05 p.m.
Braddock watched the house on Clopton where Banks resided with his aunt. CJ sat on the steps waiting for his arrival. According to Jenkins, Banks had made a stop at the liquor store on the corner of Drake and the Parkway.
CJ couldn’t get past the idea that Banks was the one who’d killed her sister. Banks would insist when she asked that it hadn’t been him. It had been the King.
The King. Braddock’s jaw tightened with the hatred that exploded inside him each time he thought of that bastard. He was a king, all right. King of a run-down village filled with desperate people eking out the same desperate lives their parents and their grandparents before them had eked out.
It was way past time the cycle was stopped.
One way to help end it was to neutralize its core. The hub that held all the spokes together, spinning in that vicious circle.
Change wasn’t about to come to this neighborhood as long as scumbags like Nash ran things. No matter that a few folks had moved in and revitalized some of the old mill houses, it wasn’t enough. Not yet. Maybe never as long as Nash was still breathing.
Cooper didn’t see this case the way he did. Whoever had killed Shelley, Nash was responsible. He would have given the order. Just as he had two years ago when he’d murdered Braddock’s niece.
Fury whipped through him, slicing his heart into quivering pieces.
Sweet. Beautiful. And only seventeen.
Braddock had promised his brother when he left for his tour in Afghanistan that he would keep his family safe.
His wife, daughter, and son would be well taken care of until his tour was over.
Six months later, his brother had been shipped back home in a wooden box.
Barely two months after that, Kimberly had disappeared.
She had gotten into a fight with her mother.
Declared that she was going to live with her uncle.
Braddock had given her a firm talking-to when she’d showed up at his door.
He’d told her how much her mother needed her.
How much her brother needed her. Then he’d made the mistake of telling Kimberly that her mother was on her way to Huntsville to pick her up.
The next time he’d turned his back, the kid was out the door.
Braddock had gotten the message less than twenty-four hours after her disappearance. A note, handwritten in blood.
No one messes with me.
Analysis had immediately shown that the type was the same as Kimberly’s. By the time the DNA analysis came back confirming that it was his niece’s blood, her body had washed up on a Decatur riverbank.
That dull ache that lived inside Braddock roared. He’d gotten his niece killed. His determination to take Nash down for his crimes had prompted a reaction.
Nash had let him know that his interference would not be tolerated.
Braddock’s fingers tightened into fists. God, he wanted to kill that son of a bitch.
For more than a year and a half he had been working every case that could even remotely be connected to Nash. Missing sex workers. Two homicides. Numerous assaults and robberies.
Anything in the village or any other part of Nash’s territory, Braddock got involved. He worked day and night, seven days a week if necessary.
Whatever it took to legally bring that son of a bitch to his knees.
Then, eleven months ago, Shelley Patterson had stumbled into his life.
After he’d finished the investigation into the break-in at her house, Braddock had kept the friendship going with her.
He’d noted how connected she was to both Banks and Nash.
He’d seen her connections as an opportunity.
Then he’d developed protective feelings for her.
He’d wanted to help her. Not long after that he’d met CJ, and he’d been hooked on the Patterson sisters.
CJ had trusted him at first, even liked him on a personal level. The physical attraction had been off the charts. God, he’d wanted her and, he was pretty damned certain, she had wanted him too—for a lot more than a stress-relief rumble in the sheets.
Until he’d screwed it up.
But Kevin Braddock was determined when it came to the job. He hadn’t let his failure with CJ stop him from pursuing his quest to get Nash. Three months ago Shelley had come to him with a plan to end the King’s rule once and for all.
Now she was dead.
Braddock had allowed that to happen. The same way he had allowed his niece to become a target.
Maybe it was time to stop playing by the rules.
Tyrone Nash was going down.
A black Charger rolled up the street, drawing Braddock’s attention back to the present.
His pulse quickened. Banks knew he was being watched. CJ was in no danger from him as long as that was the case.
But she was making herself a major target with Nash. And that was damned dangerous.