She narrowed her eyes. “Like you really give a shit.”
Rat returned with a small baggie, which he gave to Freddy, who in turn extended it toward Amanda, but then drew his hand back. “Nuh-uh, money first.”
She slapped the bills into his open palm, and he gave her the pills.
He sniffed the cash. “Nice doing business with you.”
She left as fast as her legs would take her. She never should have come. Never. She sure hoped the benefits outweighed the assumed risk.
She got into her car, slammed the door, and eyed the pills in the baggie. Just one, she told herself, that’s all it will take to ease the pain. Besides, it was too late to turn back now.
She unzipped the baggie and had one capsule pinched between her fingers when someone banged on the driver’s window. She jumped and the pills flew everywhere.
Rat’s face was pressed against the glass, and he was pointing his finger down. She lowered the window a crack.
“Don’t be showing up here again. You want more, you call, and we’ll arrange a meet.” He slid a card through the opening and waited for her to take hold of it, which she did with a trembling hand.
“Just remember. We know who you are, Copper—Civic six four six.”
Her stomach tossed. That was the car model and part of her license tag.
He tapped the roof of her car and left with a smug smile on his slimy face.
She put the window back up and looked at the empty baggie still in one hand, the card in the other. A simple card that could have come off Freddy’s home printer. It just had F and a phone number. She stuffed it into her console and set about searching the floor for the pills. She collected three from around her feet, but the others must have fallen under her seat. She bent forward and reached blindly beneath her but came out empty-handed.
“Damn it all!” She got out of the car and searched using the flashlight on her phone. She found them, along with a plastic water bottle on the back floormat. She lifted it up. Empty. Just great. She’d never mastered swallowing pills dry and as she got into the driver’s seat again, she caught the time on the dash clock. Quarter past four. She really needed to get to the station. She sealed the pills in the baggie, zipped it in her coat pocket, and headed for the station.
Nine
Prince William County Police Department had about seven hundred officers and three stations, as well as seven other facilities for things such as public safety training, animal control, and licensing. Homicide, under the Violent Crimes Bureau, worked out of the Central District Station in Woodbridge. The building had opened a few years ago and was marked by a grand opening to the public. It was mostly a single-story redbrick structure with the exception of one second-story office tower, sided with formed aluminum panels and situated on a country lot surrounded by trees. It would have been a serene setting if not for the nature of the investigations that went on inside the station’s walls. In addition to Homicide, there were bureaucratic offices, including the one that belonged to the police chief.
Amanda was ravaged by guilt and paranoia as she made her way through the front doors. As if everyone in the building would know that she’d just scored illegal prescription drugs—that they were on her person, no less. She watched people she passed for any tells they were onto her, but she was aware it had to be her imagination working overtime. After all, they’d have no way of knowing what was in her pocket. She still felt eyes on her though, but that was probably because Cud had opened his big mouth and anyone working already knew about Palmer’s death. No one could claim PWCPD’s rumor mill wasn’t functioning.
The homicide detectives were set up in low-walled cubicles to encourage ease of communication. She found Trent sitting at the desk in the space next to hers. He was absorbed reading something on his computer. She sat down at her desk and said to him, “How did you make out?”
He slowly looked over at her, taking his gaze from his monitor. “I’ve uncovered a lot.”
“Hit me.” She leaned back in her chair and swiveled. Nerves. She grounded her feet and stopped the rocking.
“Where to start?”
“Webb’s murder.” By far that was what she was most curious about, followed by what Palmer’d had on his person and immediate possession at the time of his incarceration, and then next of kin. She’d take whatever he had.
“Open case.” Trent pushed back from his desk and joined her in her cubicle. “As CSI Blair told us, Webb was taken out by a gunshot, but not before he was tortured. All of his fingernails were removed, and he was burned with a cigarette on his chest and arms.”
Trent gave her a few color prints of the crime scene. She’d never been squeamish, but CSI Blair had been on the mark when she said the crime scene was a bloody mess.
“Looks like a slaughterhouse,” she said as she shuffled through the images, taking in the slashed photos and cushions—unmistakably tossed. “I’d say whoever killed Webb was definitely after something, and the knowledge of whatever that was might have gone with him to the grave. Who were the detectives on the case?”
“Bishop and some guy named Jonah Reid.”
“Bishop?” she pushed out. Cud. Unbelievable. Had he purposely not mentioned Webb’s murder at Denver’s Motel last night or not seen the connection? She popped her head up, but Bishop wasn’t at his desk. If he were, she’d be asking him why he’d failed to share that tidbit of information. “I don’t know Jonah Reid.”
“Looks like he just had a brief blip with PWCPD. He was only here for a few months and then transferred out not long after Webb’s murder.”
It must have been during the time she’d been healing and isolating, but cops came and went all the time.
“Were there any suspects in Webb’s case?” If the two did turn out to be connected, it might give them a place to start.
“No, but you’ll find this interesting. Webb’s murder is connected with another one. Ballistics matched to another cold case in Atlanta, Georgia, which took place a few days before Webb’s.”
She straightened up. “Georgia?”
“Yeah. A twenty-one-year-old stripper by the name of Casey-Anne Ritter.”
She got up and rounded her chair. “So two murders… or three?”
“Well, technically we don’t know the manner of Palmer’s death—” He stopped there under her gaze.
“Was this Casey-Anne tortured too?”
“Not exactly. Now, the medical examiner concluded that she’d hit the back of her head, likely from a push to the floor. She was found naked in her apartment bathroom.”
“Was she raped?”
“No evidence to confirm that, but she was shot point-blank to the middle of her forehead, just like Webb.”
“Huh. Both shot execution style. Not exactly matching what happened to Palmer,” she said, deep in thought. Maybe she really was reaching to see a link between the cold cases and Palmer’s death.
“Not entirely, I agree, but what about Palmer’s bag? We can’t dismiss that someone was looking for something from this Georgia woman and Webb. Maybe it was in Palmer’s duffel?”
“So does Ritter tie back to Dumfries or just to Webb?” Amanda was still intrigued by the murders.