Page 104 of Charmed Forces

“Are you saying I shouldn’t?” I fired back. “Hey, what are your first names?”

“What’s it to do with you?” asked Detective Crump.

“This is a waste of our time,” said Detective Hertford. He produced a card and slipped it into my hand. “If you see your brother, you know how to get hold of us. Good evening, Mrs. Graves-Solomon.”

“I’m sure it’ll improve by the time I get to the end of the block,” I said as I walked off, leaving Detective Crump frowning. Behind me I could hear Crump asking what that meant and Hertford softly explaining. I rounded the corner of the mini-mart and spotted Solomon’s SUV across the road. I hopped in and dropped the bag in the footwell. “They’re suspicious but not crazy so,” I told them as I handed Solomon the peanuts.

“There they go,” said Delgado, pointing to their car turning onto our side road and then away from us, making a left onto Century.

“Where did you put the tracker?” I asked.

“On a minivan that was getting ready to leave the Chinese restaurant next door. It’s a few cars in front of them and there’s an SUV similar to this one just ahead. They loaded up a bunch of takeout bags so they’ve got lots of places to go.”

“Should tie them up for a while,” said Solomon. “But Crump and Hertford will be back and more than pissed that we sent them on a chase like that. Now we know they’re resorting to tracers, we need to checkallour cars. They have to be getting desperate.”

“They were so close to catching Daniel,” I said. “And we know now that it was Detective Crump who picked up the coffee and knew the location of the safe house. It has to be him! I was so blinded by my suspicions about Captain Brandt after The Daily Roast burned down that I temporarily forgot Crump was there too. He had to have suspected we weren’t just there for coffee and cake. He knew he had to act quickly to destroy the evidence.” Yet, even as I said it, I struggled to picture Crump as a cold-blooded killer. A stupid one, yes. I could picture him firing wide and accidentally killing an innocent bystander before panicking about what to do. But to drug cops and shoot witnesses while they were incapacitated? That was cold-blooded planning and execution. Yet I couldn’t argue with the evidence piling up.

“You think his partner is in on it?” asked Solomon.

“They were due at the safe house together,” said Delgado. “Either they both did the killing, or Hertford witnessed it and said nothing.”

“Or he stood outside, making sure no one came in and interrupted Crump as he killed them,” I suggested. That wriggly feeling was back again; the one that told me something wasn’t right.

“Still makes both of them complicit,” said Solomon.

“We need to work up their background information,” I said. “Either one or both of them has ties to the Victor brothers. Once we have a link, we should know if they’re both in on it. Maybe check Captain Brandt too, just to rule him out.”

“Do you know if any of them have links to the US Marshals?” asked Delgado.

“No idea. Are you thinking they might be involved somehow?” I asked.

“Probably not, but this all went down pretty fast after the Denneys were transferred into MPD custody. I wonder if someone there could have tipped off the Victors.”

“Hold up, Lucas is calling. Yes?” Solomon paused to listen, then he said, “Lucas just got a facial recognition for Detective Wayne’s assassin. He got a name too. Jacinta Victor. She’s the daughter of the oldest brother. He says no hits on the dark web so maybe she operates under another name.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“Here in town.”

I stilled. “She came back? What for? Oh no, no!” There could be only one reason why she’d returned. To clean up the mess created by leaving Daniel alive. “We need to end this now!” I said. “Daniel’s the last witness. If she finds him, she’ll kill him and probably make it look like a suicide. All the blame will be pinned on him and it won’t matter how much dirt we manage to pull on anyone else.”

“We don’t have any dirt on anyone else,” pointed out Delgado. “Just a couple guys whom we suspect were following us. One of whom is connected to the coffee Daniel drank.”

“Lucas is working on tracking her down,” said Solomon. “As soon as we know where she is, we’ll deal with her.” He hung up and focused on me, his face unreadable.

“No, I mean we endthis.The whole case. Not just find her. I can’t for a moment believe a cold-blooded killer like her would confess when she’s captured. She had an exit plan in place the first time. We can be certain she has another plan now too. What we need is a sting. We know Detective Crump is almost certainly involved. We just need to get him to admit it.” I sucked in a breath, realizing there was finally an answer to what was bothering me. “What if he’s not the killer though?”

Both men turned to stare at me.

“What if Crump just laced the coffees, but didn’t kill the Denneys, or Detective Desmond or Detective Wayne? What if all he had to do was let her in, and stand guard while she completed the mission?”

“I like that hypothesis more than I like the idea of Crump as a killer,” said Solomon. “It still makes him an accomplice though.”

“So how do you plan we end this?” asked Delgado. “Sounds to me like you’ve got an idea in mind.”

“We lure Crump and Hertford into a sting. There’s only one thing they want and we have it. We offer up Daniel.” Even as I voiced the idea, I felt sick but it was exactly the kind of lure to pull in the killer. “Of course we don’tactuallyput Daniel in harm’s way. Here’s my plan.” I leaned in, telling them what I thought we should do. Solomon and Delgado threw in their ideas and between the three of us, we had a solid plan.

Chapter Twenty-Two

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