Page 171 of Beyond the Badge: Nox

“It was Blaze!” Finn exclaimed. “Holy shit. Get it right.”

Rez chuckled. “Do you make Mel call you Blaze when you’re role playing in the bedroom?”

“We have a loft, not an actual bedroom. Oh, and… fuck off!”

Rez laughed way too loudly for being at a crime scene. Death and destruction was not a laughing matter.

Normally.

They approached one of the two Uniontown officers guarding the scene. They all flashed their IDs and told them they’d been on a task force investigating the Demons. They also name-dropped Ken Proctor, a Uniontown officer who had also worked on the task force.

No razzle dazzle needed. The cop lifted the tape and waved them inside the crime scene. “Just don’t screw up the scene or any evidence. Keep your hands to yourself and watch where you step.”

As if they didn’t know that shit already.

Nox gave him a crisp salute and they headed in through the propped-open front door.

The place swarmed with federal, state and local crime scene investigators and staff from the county medical examiner’s office. They were all so busy, nobody gave the three of them a second glance.

Finn elbowed Nox and pointed at two men lying in pools of blood in the lobby. One body was sprawled out with a gun still in his hand. The other, peppered with gunshot wounds, looked like he’d slid down the wall, leaving a streak of blood in his path. Once he hit the floor, he’d fallen to the side.

Both still wore their Demons cuts, only they had a few extra holes in the leather.

Finn squatted down by one body and said to the nearest federal agent, “If you haven’t identified these two upstanding gentlemen yet, this one is Chubs,” he jerked his chin toward the other corpse. “And that one is Popeye. Both prospects.”

Since those two, being prospects, hadn’t even been on the indictment list, that Nox was aware of, had the Russos done the world a service with their late-night massacre?

Maybe.

But he worried that too many innocent bystanders were involved. Especially in a business like The Peach Pit. The only positive he could come up with was that the strip club hardly had any customers anymore. And, from what Nox had witnessed with watching all the footage from inside, the few they did get usually didn’t stay after midnight.

The investigator taking notes nodded. “You knew them?”

Finn showed the man his ID. “We’re part of the Tri-State Federal Drug Task Force. We were investigating the Demons, so yeah, we know who they are.”

“Do you have list of casualties?” Nox asked.

“Not yet,” the agent answered.

“Mind if we go in and look?” Nox asked next. “This is one of the businesses we were surveilling.”

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t move anything. Be careful where you step.”

Rez glanced toward the open double doors. The center of both used to have frosted glass. That glass was now shattered and scattered all over the floor. “Any of La Cosa Nostra go down inside?”

“Two. One more was taken to the hospital in critical condition. This ended up being a shootout, but the Demons were outgunned. And some of the dancers—if they couldn’t take cover—ended up being collateral damage.”

Damn, that sucked since they were someone’s daughter, mother, sister or aunt. With the quality of dancer Saint was pulling in, they could even be someone’s grandmother.

“The three of us actually did a little undercover work in this business, so we might be able to ID some of the rest, if needed.”

Nox wasn’t sure if what Finn said was true. Since Mel left, the club now had a high turnover rate. Any new dancers quickly found that no money was to be had after Saint and Cookie ran the business into the ground.

Nox wondered if either of that loving couple were on location when the Russos’ soldiers hit it.

Another thought popped into Nox’s noggin. Due to the lack of tips, he wondered once again how many of the dancers had been convinced to participate in Saint and T-Bone’s side hustle. If they had families to support, they might be lured into the promise of some extra cash. Or at least meth, if they were into that.

While Nox didn’t know that answer, he was damn sure that Saint and T-Bone, if both were still breathing, needed to be stopped from taking advantage of desperate women.

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