Vegas is Dying (A Croft & Croft Romance Adventure Book 2) Read online

  Sawyer snorted. “You can tell you’re newlyweds still. Give it a few months. He’ll be dropping his underwear and socks all over the apartment.”

  Somehow, she didn't believe that. If anything, Greyson was the neat freak. As for the romance stopping, she doubted that too. If anything, he was a gentleman to the core and old school. Emma believed that the man was born in the wrong era. Greyson was a firm believer in opening doors, holding his suit jacket over her in the rain, and never forgetting to tell her how he felt.

  Before she could comment, Detective Brynn Westmore strolled into the bullpen. “Wowza! Those are gorgeous! There has to be over three dozen there,” she said, leaning over to take a sniff. “He’s still not home, huh?” Brynn inquired, knowing that her partner missed her husband in the worst way.

  “I think he’s returning this week sometime as soon as the meetings are over.” Emma never spoke about Greyson’s work while at her job. There was a little issue between the local law and the Feds. If they knew that he was the head honcho in their city, they would be riding her ass unmercifully. Cops and the FBI were like oil and water. They didn't mix. In fact, she’d be treated like a carrier of the bubonic plague. Not that she was worried about popularity contests, but it made work easier if you weren’t hated.

  Brynn leaned in and whispered, “After sending those, I hope you’re going to thank him gratuitously,” she giggled.

  Emma grinned. “You better believe it.”

  Before they could continue, their boss barreled out of his office. Captain Chris Ford was a big burly man who ran his division with an iron fist. He didn't take anyone’s shit, and he didn't allow anyone to make excuses. It was his way or the highway. Behind his back, they called him ‘Czar of the Dead’.

  “Croft and Westmore, you caught a call and you’re up next. It’s out on Highland. Someone dumped a body, so get out there and take care of business. This isn’t a florist, it’s a police department,” he barked.

  Emma nodded to the door. “I’ll drive,” she said, happy to escape the office. She liked her boss, but sometimes he was a little too cranky. Then again, Emma remembered being in charge and being grouchy too.

  “Works for me,” replied her partner. “You have a much cooler ride.”

  The two women crossed the parking lot and hopped up into her vehicle. At one time, Emma had a jeep, but transporting it across the country had been nothing but a hassle. So, her husband took care of the situation. Now, she was sporting a big monster Navigator that was ridiculously too large for her. It wasn’t like they had a herd of kids or lived in a war zone. Again, this is what happened when Greyson Croft was given control.

  “I love when you drive,” grinned her partner. “I feel like the king of the road in this thing.”

  She snickered. “Yeah, well, Greyson’s a big man and likes his luxury.”

  Brynn genuinely adored her partner. On the day they first met, she knew they’d work together perfectly. Emma Croft was easy going, laid back, and fun. She was quick with a smile or a cheery word, despite what they both did for a living. Oh, and she was damn good at her job. Brynn wished she had half the instinct that Emma had when it came to figuring out a killer’s identity. The last few cases, she’d watched her partner carefully and was trying to mimic anything that might make her a better detective.

  The woman just had crazy, mad sleuthing skills.

  Brynn was a little jealous.

  “So, when do I get to meet the mystery man?” she asked curiously. Her partner barely spoke about her husband. If she was married, Brynn would be flaunting her man all over the place. The secrecy was making everyone crazy. They were dying to know what was behind all the hush-hush.

  On day one, all the men they worked with had begun sniffing around Emma as if she was a tasty snack. Once they found out she was taken, most of them had backed off. Still, there were still a few sniffing around who would casually check her out or hit on her. Emma deflected graciously, and then gave Brynn one warning.

  ‘Don’t sleep with people you work with!’

  Since Emma had more experience as a detective, Brynn was taking the advice. She also wanted to be the brightest and best at her job. All her life, she’d been an over achiever. She had graduated at the top of her class at the academy and had risen through the ranks to detective in six years. Now Brynn had one year under her belt working in homicide. When she found out that her new partner had been a detective in a city with a crazy murder rate, it gave her the opportunity to learn more.

  There were gold bars in her eyes. Not the ones found in Fort Knox, but the ones on the sleeve of a captain’s uniform.

  Emma was an untapped fount of knowledge that she wanted to get her hands all over. Being her partner, Brynn could learn and move even further up the ranks. Wouldn’t her family be proud when she was the youngest captain ever in Vegas? It was her ultimate career goal.

  “Greyson’s very busy,” and it was true. “When he comes home, if he’s available, I’ll have him meet us for a drink. Work has him tied up.” Yeah, there was no way in hell she was having him stroll into the bullpen. That screamed tactical error in the worst possible way.

  Testosterone would run head first into flirty detectives.

  Emma believed Greyson would walk away unscathed but why stress the man out, and why cost any innocent detectives their lives? She genuinely liked the guys she worked with daily but feared for their safety when it came to her husband.

  A laugh escaped.

  “What’s so funny?” inquired Brynn, lifting a brow over her sunglasses.

  “I was thinking about the roses and how at this very moment Sawyer is probably searching through them for the card.” Emma grinned. “He’s dying to find out anything he can about my husband.”

  Brynn understood why. “You know that not talking about him just makes a bunch of cops want to know more.”

  She shrugged. “What’s there to know? He runs an office.” That made her want to laugh even more. Yeah, an FBI megaplex…

  “I’ve seen where you live. He’s running more than just an ‘office’ Emma. Come on, you’re my partner. You can tell me all the dirty little details. You know I won’t tell a soul. Is he in the mob?”

  Now, Emma was giggling. Greyson could definitely pass as a gangster. There was a scar across his cheek and his silvery eyes made him look dangerous. Then toss in that he was old school and probably should have been born in the time of mobsters. He had that secretive brooding mystique about him. Now, her blood pressure shot up.

  “You just turned bright red,” laughed Detective Westmore. “I bet I can guess what you were thinking about.”

  Emma tried to stop picturing her husband all sexified.

  “Oh look! It appears to be a crime scene. How about we start working?” she stated, pulling the SUV to the curb.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of, you big chicken,” she teased.

  Yeah, right. On this one, her partner didn't have a clue.

  * * *

  From the window across the street, there was a perfect view of the crime scene. That was why this was the spot chosen for the first victim. Now there was a front row seat to all the action.

  It had begun. The police would now start to ruin his life by digging into the past.

  This was the perfect revenge and consequences for his horrible sins.

  Now, it was all about ‘an eye for an eye’, so to speak.

  There was a bubbling up of laughter at the irony behind that statement. Those poor girls no longer had theirs, and it was sad that they had to pay the price for his crimes, but in battles, there were innocents lost.

  A war couldn’t be fought without someone losing their life, and this was all on him.

  Closing the curtain, the punishment was set into motion. Now, it was time to head out in the world and pretend that nothing was different about the day.

  It was going to be hard to keep a straight face, when the joy was almost overwhelming.

  * * *

>   Emma crouched over the dead woman’s body, waiting for their medical examiner to arrive on the scene. It wasn’t the most gruesome of murders that she had been called to in her career, but it was creepy. Someone had removed her ears and stitched her lips closed. From the way the eyelids sat concave over the orbital sockets, she could tell that the eyes were going to be missing too.

  “That’s freaky,” muttered Detective Westmore as she stood behind Emma. “Who does shit like this?”

  She wished there was an answer for that. If Emma had a dollar for every sick and twisted crime scene she’d visited, she could pay off their mortgage. “When are the CSI’s getting here?”

  “Ask and ye shall receive,” quoted Brynn as she jerked her head towards the taped off entrance.

  As if on cue, the ME van pulled up and was followed by the crime scene investigators. They jumped out and began to mill around the area like an army of well-trained ants.

  “What do we have?” asked Doctor Steele Bentley as he suited up to start dealing with the situation.

  Emma stood, facing their ME. “It looks like our killer took parts of her. She’s fully dressed, Doctor, and it doesn’t look like she has any bruising on her body.”

  “I’ll check for you, Detective,” he said, slipping into his gloves. His investigators began snapping pictures like mad, trying to gather any photographic evidence as quickly as possible.

  “I’m going to begin the canvas,” stated Brynn. “I’ll see if anyone saw anything. You can have the body. I can’t stand looking at it,” she muttered, walking away.

  Emma shrugged as her ME began laughing.

  “Is she still green over the corpses?” he asked as he began his basic check of the body.

  “I don’t know if we should laugh, or be glad that someone on this team is still appalled by death. There are days I wish I was,” Emma stated honestly.

  Doctor Bentley agreed. “You may have a point there, Detective. Too many of us are desensitized over what we see daily.”

  Working with the ME was always an adventure. Steele Bentley was a really good doctor. You could tell just by watching him work. He was thorough and never missed anything, or at least he hadn’t the times she’d been in need of his services. When you looked into his blue eyes, you could see that he was a caring and warm person. Yeah, her partner wasn’t the only one disturbed by death. Clearly, this man was too.

  “What do you see, Detective?” he asked Emma, still a bit wary of the ‘new girl’. Yes, it was true that she had worked for Philly homicide, but what did they really know about her?

  Okay, she was going to have to play the game to fit in. “It appears that she was struck on the back of her skull. I see puddling beneath her head and there’s blood saturating her hair. If she was killed here, there’d be more blood. Head wounds are a messy kill.”

  “I agree.”

  “I’ll go with the obvious next,” Emma said, pointing at the woman’s face. “Her lips were stitched shut. I’ll need to know if you find anything shoved down her throat.”

  He nodded, impressed that her mind went there. That took a seasoned detective. So far, she was batting a thousand.

  “He took her ears, and right now, we have the patrol officers searching for them.”

  Doctor Bentley looked around in his surroundings. “This alley is a shitty location to have your body dumped,” he stated, pulling out his liver probe to get her temperature.

  Emma watched the man and agreed. “I think her eyes are gone too, Doctor.”

  Bentley laughed. “You know, I keep thinking that you’re the newbie, but half the detectives in your squad wouldn’t have noticed. Did you touch her to find out?” he inquired.

  Emma shook her head. “I worked a case in Philly once and the killer was collecting eyes. They were his windows into their souls.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Yeah, well, all of those deceased victims had the same flat appearance under their eyelids. It was a dead giveaway for me.”

  Steele Bentley lifted a lid, fully expecting her to turn her head or flinch.

  Nothing.

  “You have some brass ones, Detective,” he admitted. “Your partner would have puked on the corpse.”

  Emma wasn’t bothered by the hollowed out orbital sockets. It wasn’t one of her big freak-outs in life. Now, tongues being removed made her skin crawl.

  “So, he took some souvenirs.”

  Whistling over to the officers, she stood to give them their next directive. “We’re looking for eyes and ears now. The killer took them both from her. Let’s see if we can help her out and locate them.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a patrol officer replied, hustling off to tell the others.

  Already, there were spectators beginning to congregate at the crime scene tape.

  “Great. This is going to be on the news by noon,” muttered the ME. “I have no idea what makes people have this sick fascination with the dead.

  That made her laugh. “Ummm, you’re the death doctor. You don’t have that same desire to watch the train jump the tracks?”

  He stood and moved out of the way of his techs. “Train wrecks are far worse. I’ve seen a few. It’s like one big meat puzzle,” he answered.

  “Good to know,” she replied, laughing.

  “Did we find any ID in the alley?” Bentley inquired.

  “Nothing as of yet,” she answered. “When is the autopsy scheduled on this one?”

  “It’s going to be later, and you realize you don’t have to be there for it,” Bentley offered, knowing that very few of the detectives enjoyed watching the victims being cut into and processed for evidence.

  “If I’m available, I’ll be there. It’s the least that I can do.”

  Steele shook his head.

  “What?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t know what to think about you, that’s all.”

  He caught her off guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Emma wanted to know.

  “You’re the newbie, but you’re so seasoned that I don’t know whether to bust your ass or let you lead this investigation. I’m used to having to simplify everything for the detectives.”

  “I bet that’s draining.”

  He started laughing. “You have no idea.”

  “Well, how about this? You don’t dumb it down for me, and if I don’t get something, I’ll ask. Why waste the effort?”

  Bentley liked that. “It’s a deal, Detective.”

  Emma held out her hand. “How about you call me by my name? I’m fairly laid back. All this ‘detective’ spiel makes me feel out of the loop. Let’s face it, I’m here for the long haul, and we might as well get to be friends.”

  He grinned at the offer. “Okay, then you get to call me Doc.”

  “So again, when’s the autopsy?”

  Rolling his neck to alleviate the tension, he glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got another body in the morgue. I’m going to clear my schedule for later this afternoon. Say around four?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Then, it’s a date, Detective. Hopefully, I’ll have something for you, Emma, but honestly, don’t hold your breath. This one looks pretty straightforward. It was a hit to the skull and then facial mutilation. If we get lucky, we might pull some evidence from her body.”

  Emma was relying on it. “I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?” she asked, leaning back down and tilting the dead woman’s head for him to see what she already saw. “Look at that residue.”

  He leaned down.

  “It’s stage makeup. It’s got that oily appearance to it, unlike normal makeup that we mere blue collar women use,” she stated. “Maybe we have a performer.”

  “I don’t know if that’s going to help your investigation or be a giant pain in your ass.”

  Emma lifted a brow. “Why?”

  Steele Bentley laughed. “You’re in Vegas, Detective. Half the people in this town are performers.”

  He had a very valid point.
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br />   ~ Chapter Two ~

  Monday Early Afternoon

  It had been a long morning in the neighborhood searching for witnesses. This was the part of the job that she never liked. It was hard to tell the difference between viable information and just crazed offerings from a now paranoid block of people.

  Unfortunately, no one had heard anything related to the crime, but most of them were nervous about the murder.

  “What did you find out?” she asked her partner.

  Brynn shook her head. “You really want to talk about death as we’re about to eat?”

  Emma pulled into the parking lot of the fast food place and shrugged. “It doesn’t generally bother me to eat over work.”

  Detective Westmore found that funny. “Yeah, because I was going to eat a burger and all that you’re having is a damn salad.”

  She started laughing. “I’m sorry if you can’t eat flesh and talk death. Really, meat is bad for your health anyway. You should switch to a vegetarian diet. Your colon will thank you.”

  Brynn wasn’t having it. “We all have to go sometime. I’d rather go chubby and full than hungry and skinny.”

  Laughter filled the Navigator. Everyone always assumed it had everything to do with a diet. “I’m not doing it to stay thin.”

  “Does your husband eat meat?”

  Emma thought about it. She’d tried to convert him, but he swore he needed it to survive. “Yes, he’s very much a carnivore. I try to limit it for his cholesterol though. I worry about his health.”

  That entertained her. “What is he, ninety?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe you just gave some details without me having to beat them out of you,” Brynn retorted, busting her ass. “Maybe I’m good at this interrogation thing,” she snickered as she hopped down from the monster like vehicle.

  “Don’t bet on it. I’ve seen you in action,” she teased back.