Chapter Fifty-Five
“No, man,” Joe Henagar said, “I didn’t touch nothing.”
Braddock knew better than that shit. The guy had probably gone through the SUV looking for money or anything he might be able to pawn.
“You just happened to walk through the area and see the vehicle sitting here?”
“Yeah.” The guy nodded over and over. Had the shakes. Bad teeth. Stringy hair.
Meth addict.
“I saw it sitting here and I thought, what the hell is a slick car like that doing sitting here? I wandered over.” He shrugged. “Took a look through the window and saw the big guy with his throat slashed.” He shuddered. “I run all the way back over to my cousin’s and called y’all.”
Yeah, right. “See that uniform right there?” Braddock pointed to the cop guarding the perimeter. “You give him your statement. Don’t go anywhere until he’s taken your statement. He’ll need a statement from your cousin as well.”
“Don’t worry, man. I ain’t going nowhere till y’all say so. This is some shit. I ain’t never seen no one murdered before.”
Braddock rested his attention on the vehicle once more.
Tyrone Nash’s vehicle. A member of his unholy trinity behind the wheel with a permanent grin beneath his chin.
He and Cooper had gotten here maybe five minutes ago.
Jenkins had arrived a couple of minutes later.
Officer Larry Metcalf and his partner were watching Abbott’s house.
Metcalf was the best of the best on HPD’s beat force.
Braddock had known when he got the call with Nash’s license plate number that he was going to need both Cooper and Jenkins on the scene.
“Braddock!”
He turned to the warehouse. It was condemned. Part of the property had burned a few years ago. But that didn’t keep the homeless and kids from prowling around in it. Cooper and Jenkins had gone in to start the search inside while he’d gotten the sketchy guy’s story. “Yeah.”
“You’re gonna want to come in here,” Cooper shouted at him.
Jesus Christ. Just what they needed. Another damned body. He didn’t need a crystal ball to know who it would be.
Dammit all to hell.
He crossed the crumbling pavement. Weeds had grown up through the cracks. The city should have torn this damned thing down ages ago. Cooper waited for him at the door. He asked, “We got another body?”
She shook her head. “Three more.”
Son of a bitch.
“Is Nash one of them?”
She nodded. “Our killer got him good.”
Jenkins stood thirty feet from the entrance, his flashlight spotlighting Tyrone Nash. As Braddock neared, his eyes took in the killer’s latest work.
Nash had been secured to an old chair with duct tape.
His nose and ears had been removed. Blood had run down his chest, over his shoulders.
His fingers had been severed from his hands; same with the toes, which had been whacked off, leaving stumpy feet.
Nash’s head was tilted back, his mouth wide open.
“Check it out.” Cooper shone her flashlight into his mouth. Braddock swallowed. Leaned down to look. All those missing body parts, or at least a finger and a toe and maybe part of an ear, had been shoved into his throat.
“People always said he was full of himself,” Cooper murmured. She flicked her light toward an upper-level storage area. “The other two bodyguards are up there. Throats slashed just like the one outside.”
“No sign of the videotape?”
“Not yet, but it’s dark as hell in here. We need a generator and some lights.”
Hell. “I’ll call for support.”
Jenkins dropped his flashlight, staggered a few feet away, and started puking his guts out.
Braddock and Cooper shared a look. What the hell? Jenkins had seen bodies before without losing it.
“Try not to contaminate the crime scene,” Cooper cautioned. She made a face at the violent heaves coming from their colleague.
“What about the ME?” Braddock asked her.
“Evidence techs and the ME are on their way.”
Perfect. Just perfect. Not only did they not have any evidence in this case so far, the last official suspect had just become a victim. The chief and the mayor were going to be seriously PO’ed when they heard this.
Dammit.
Jenkins suddenly rushed out of the building.
Cooper stared after him, shaking her head. “Maybe he had something bad to eat at that party on Dubose.”
“Maybe.” Braddock caught up with the younger detective outside.
He was braced on the side of the building, struggling to regain his composure.
“You okay, Jenkins?” They all lost it at homicide scenes from time to time.
But there wasn’t a cop at HPD who, for whatever reason, hadn’t been looking forward to this one.
Jenkins shook his head, didn’t make eye contact.
The fact that he was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm struck Braddock as damned wrong. “What’s going on, Jenkins?”
Jenkins turned to Braddock. “I want immunity.”
“Come again?” He made a face. Couldn’t have heard what he thought he heard.
“I can give you the killer.” Jenkins wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I want full immunity.”
Braddock went stone cold. For more than two years he had been battling Nash. Trying to get one step ahead of him, and he could never make it happen.
Now he knew why.
“You have the right to remain silent.” Braddock grabbed Jenkins’s left arm, wheeled him around to cuff him. “Anything you say—”
“I want a lawyer,” Jenkins demanded.
Part of him felt victorious that Tyrone Nash had gotten what he’d had coming for a long time. For Kimberly. For the dozens of other victims he’d abused and murdered.
But there was something incredibly wrong here.
And it was way bigger than Tyrone Nash.