Alone in the Dark

  That, and meeting Scarlett Bishop, who was still scowling at him. ‘Seeing as how you make your living digging for news, should we expect to see Tala’s murder in the headline of today’s Ledger?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Today’s printed edition has already gone to press.’

  ‘What about the online edition?’ Scarlett asked, her disapproval clear.

  It made him wish he could promise her anything she wanted, just to erase that look from her face. But he wouldn’t lie to her. ‘I guarantee someone else will run with the story as soon as Tala’s body hits the morgue. Wouldn’t you rather we publish the truth first?’

  She tilted her head slightly, her eyes gone speculative. ‘How much of the truth do you intend to tell?’

  ‘Are you asking me to hold back details, Detective?’

  ‘Would you, if I asked?’

  He should be offended. Conceptually, her request went against everything a newspaperman believed in, but Marcus was no ordinary newspaperman. He’d used the Ledger to punish evil ever since he’d taken the helm five years before. His investigative team followed normal news leads, but often took on special projects – exposing the lies of abusive men and women who’d managed to evade punishment by Children’s Services or the courts. Men and women who’d hurt their families and would go on hurting them unless they were stopped.

  His team didn’t always play fair, and from time to time they’d acquired information in ways that crossed the legal lines. But they did so to protect victims. They knew they couldn’t save the world, but they could positively impact their little corner of it.

  Honoring Scarlett Bishop’s request wouldn’t be that different from his status quo. But he didn’t want her to know that, so he shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely. It would depend on what you wanted me to hold back. I want that girl’s killer found too, but I do have a responsibility to report all of the news. Not just the news you approve. What detail were you wanting to withhold?’

  ‘The location of the park where you met, the shell casing we found, and her last words.’

  It was exactly what he’d expected her to say and exactly the details he’d already planned to omit. ‘That’s three details.’

  She ignored him. ‘You may print her photo and where she was killed.’

  ‘All that?’ he drawled. ‘Am I allowed to quote myself as an eyewitness?’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ she said. ‘I thought you might want to keep your involvement on the down-low.’

  He did, but he knew it was too late for that. ‘That’ll be hard to do, given that I’ll end up in your police report. I’ll end up front-page news in my competitors’ papers.’

  ‘I can’t keep you out of the report. Sorry.’ She did look a little regretful, actually. ‘I could lock it down, but too many people saw you here.’

  ‘Then it’s already out there,’ he said mildly. ‘I’ll do no harm by including it.’

  Regret vanished, annoyance taking its place. ‘Then please make sure the photo of Tala that you use is from the portion of the video you took in the park – where she’s still alive.’

  Marcus frowned at her. Now he was offended. ‘Do you really think I’d use a photo of her dead body, Scarlett? What kind of man do you take me for?’

  ‘A man who makes his living selling newspapers,’ she said quietly.

  Touché. He glanced at Deacon. ‘Give my best to Faith, will you?’ He dipped his head in a nod to Scarlett. ‘Detective. You’ll get those files within the hour.’

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Tuesday 4 August, 4.05 A.M.

  Scarlett frowned as Marcus O’Bannion disappeared from view. ‘Do you think he’ll withhold the details?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Deacon murmured. ‘Marcus is hard to read.’

  That was an understatement, she thought. Just when she’d started to figure him out, he’d gone all newspaperman on her. ‘He has another gun somewhere.’

  Beside her, Deacon’s snow-white brows lifted in a way that told her that he’d come to the same conclusion. ‘Why do you think so?’

  ‘Because there’s no way he’d bring only a knife to a gunfight.’

  ‘He had the Sig.’

  ‘In an ankle holster that he couldn’t get to that easily. The man wore Kevlar and a spy camera, for God’s sake. He expected trouble. He would have brought a bigger gun that he could have had instant access to.’

  ‘I agree, although it’s only important if he fired it.’

  ‘No GSR on his hands,’ she murmured. ‘But like you said, he could have worn gloves.’

  ‘Either way, it’s our word against his. Do you think he fired his other gun?’

  ‘I don’t think he shot Tala. If I did, I never would have let him walk away. But he could have fired on the shooter.’ She bit at her lip. ‘I don’t like that he hid another gun from us.’

  ‘Agree again.’ Deacon tilted his head, watching her a little too carefully. ‘Why would he?’

  She glanced up at him sharply. ‘You ask me like I know him. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve talked to him and still have fingers left. You know him a hell of a lot better than I do.’

  ‘But he called you tonight. Not me. Not us.’

  That was true. I knew you would help her, he’d said. But Deacon could have helped her too. He could have called us both. But he called me. Only me. That the knowledge left her feeling warm to her toes annoyed the hell out of her. ‘Because he was meeting a seventeen-year-old girl,’ she snapped. ‘He didn’t want it to look any worse than it already did. He said he knew I’d come to help her. That’s all there is.’

  ‘All right,’ Deacon said in his soothing voice, the one that grated like nails on a chalkboard. ‘Whatever you say, partner.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Dammit, you know I hate it when you talk like that.’

  ‘I know.’ His sudden grin cut through her irritation. Deacon had a way of defusing her temper, helping her think more clearly. Initially it had annoyed her, but after nine months of working together, she’d come to appreciate his rare gift.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and meant it. It wasn’t Deacon’s fault she was out of sorts. She laid that firmly at her own feet. Being around Marcus O’Bannion never failed to leave her unsettled and . . . anxious. Scarlett hated being anxious. She drew a breath, found her center. None of this was about her anyway. This was about a seventeen-year-old girl on her way to the morgue. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well lately. It’s left me a bit tight.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Deacon’s expression said that she was fooling no one. ‘So why did he lie about his gun?’

  She replayed Marcus’s words in her mind. ‘He didn’t lie. He said, “I drew my weapon.” He never said he drew the baby gun. But if he recorded the whole thing . . .’

  ‘His gun would be caught on his cap-cam.’ Deacon shook his head. ‘Although I doubt he’d have been so free with offering us the video if it had anything incriminating on it. That he didn’t tell us about the other gun has me wondering why.’

  She reached for the ball cap that Deacon had dropped into an evidence bag, inspecting it from all angles. Clever little thing. ‘Does this store the video in the camera or does it feed to a drive somewhere else?’ she asked, all too familiar with Deacon’s penchant for gadgets.

  ‘If the camera has storage, it’s probably not big enough for more than a minute or two of video. I’d bet he sent the feed to an external drive, wirelessly.’

  ‘What’s the range?’

  ‘Depends on how much Marcus spent on the camera. With his bucks, I’m sure it’s top of the line, so maybe a few hundred feet. But he lives a couple miles away and . . .’ He let the thought trail, then rolled his eyes. ‘Sneaky sonofabitch had the hard drive in his car. He could have handed the whole thing over to us before he walked away, but he didn’t.’

  Sneaky sonofabitch indeed. Any residual warmth from Marcus’s earlier trust dissipated like mist. ‘He’ll delete the gun part before he sends over th
e video, won’t he?’

  ‘Most likely. Unless he stopped recording when the bullets started flying.’

  She lifted the cap so that it was level with her line of sight, squinting at the camera in the edge of the bill. ‘How would he have turned this thing on and off?’

  ‘Through his phone. But not the one he showed us. That was a throwaway.’

  ‘I figured that one out for myself.’ She sighed. ‘What’s your take on Marcus?’

  ‘I don’t think he shot the girl either, if that’s what you’re asking. I think we’ll find the footage from this camera supports every word of his story about Tala. But he wasn’t telling the whole truth about the enemies who’d want him dead. He was startled when I asked him if he could be the target.’

  Yes, she thought, Marcus had looked startled. And dismayed. And maybe even guilty at the notion that he’d inadvertently caused the girl’s death. ‘That was good intuition on your part.’

  Deacon shrugged. ‘Reporters tend to make a lot of enemies. I know I don’t like them.’

  Scarlett’s lips curved. Deacon had very good reasons not to like the press. His snow-white hair and the wraparound shades he wore during the daylight hours made him easy fodder for the media. The heat of the summer meant he wasn’t wearing his signature black leather overcoat, but every reporter in town had captured him on film wearing the thing during the winter, so the damage was long done. Deacon Novak was larger than life, which meant the cameras were trained on him.

  Better you than me. She’d been quoted by reporters in her role as a cop plenty of times. That was part of the job. But she’d once been personally involved in a news story and didn’t care to repeat the experience. The very memory was enough to tie her stomach into knots.

  ‘He’s listed as the paper’s publisher,’ she said. ‘The Ledger used to be second in town, after the Enquirer, but he’s built up the readership substantially since he took over five years ago, when he came back from Iraq. Yet I’ve never seen his name as a byline. He’s not one of the reporters going out and pestering people for a story.’

  Deacon tilted his head. ‘So you’ve checked him out pretty thoroughly, huh?’

  Scarlett felt her cheeks heat. ‘Yes, last year when we were looking at the O’Bannions as suspects.’ Nine months ago, when they’d been trying to catch a killer. Marcus had saved a girl’s life and Scarlett had desperately wanted to believe him to be the good guy he appeared. ‘I wanted to know what kind of man he was.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think he’s basically good, but the media do disrupt lives while they’re getting the story. And rarely do they care.’

  Deacon was watching her too closely, with that look in his eye that meant he was seeing far more than she wanted him to see. ‘That sounds like the voice of experience talking.’

  ‘It is.’ And it would be a shame Scarlett would carry for the rest of her life. ‘I had a friend back in college who died because a reporter broke a story that should have been dealt with privately. He got the big byline and my friend got a pretty angel to stand over her grave.’

  ‘You blame the reporter for her death?’

  ‘Partially, yes.’ And partially Scarlett blamed herself. ‘But ultimately I blame the sick, sadistic sonofabitch who murdered her.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you meant she’d committed suicide.’

  ‘No. She was killed by her ex-boyfriend, but she might have survived had that damned reporter kept his mouth shut.’ And you too, Scarlett. She’d trusted that damned reporter, told him things far better left unsaid. Because I was a million kinds of stupid. ‘I’ve wanted to see her killer pay for more than ten years, but I have to admit there were times I wanted to make the reporter pay too. His callous disregard for the consequences of his actions led to the death of an innocent woman.’

  ‘You don’t want to believe that Marcus is that kind of journalist.’

  No, she didn’t want to, but she wouldn’t trust so blindly. Never again. Of course the proof would be in the article he printed about Tala’s murder. He had the power to withhold the facts the police wouldn’t have told the public. She knew his paper had cooperated in the past, but she’d never interacted with Marcus directly. ‘Like I said before, Marcus isn’t credited as a reporter with his paper. He owns the paper and is listed as the publisher. That opens the field to anyone impacted by any story he allowed to be printed. He is responsible for the actions of the reporters on his staff who break stories that make people unhappy.’

  ‘So our suspect list could be anyone who blames any reporter Marcus has ever employed. That could be a big list. Luckily he keeps track of the specific threats.’

  ‘True, but I don’t think he wanted to admit that the threats to his life were credible – to us or to himself. Yet his mother made him promise to wear Kevlar, so they must have been credible to her. Which means his family – or at least his mother – knows about them too.’

  ‘I agree. So if the killer was someone Marcus pissed off through his paper, then Marcus was the target and Tala was simply collateral damage.’

  Scarlett turned, her gaze dropping to the asphalt where Tala had bled out. ‘But my gut tells me this is more about Tala than Marcus. She asked him to meet her here. She was shot first. And the killer doubled back to make sure she was dead. It’s more probable that Tala was the target and Marcus was collateral damage. Or a loose end. In which case, all we have to go on is her body, her first name, her last words, a shell casing, the general vicinity of where she lived, and the name of a poodle with a diamond-studded collar.’

  ‘And the fact that a man and his wife “owned” her,’ Deacon said grimly.

  Scarlett considered it. ‘We’ve closed cases starting with far less. If we’re dealing with human trafficking, we’ll need your Bureau contacts.’ Deacon was officially on loan from the FBI to Cincinnati PD’s Major Case Enforcement Squad, but he’d integrated into the group so completely that most days she forgot he was still a federal agent.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll check with my SAC and find out who’s trafficking people in this area.’

  ‘I’ll get a cleaned-up copy of Tala’s face and a photo of the dog from Marcus’s video files once he sends them to us. We’ll start canvassing the area around the park where she and Marcus met, see if anyone remembers seeing her.’

  ‘If she mainly walked the dog at night, that could be a problem.’

  ‘Or a blessing. She’ll be more memorable. We can also check with the area vets. A fancy dog like that will have been well cared for.’

  ‘What about eyewitnesses on this block?’

  ‘The dealers and hookers may have seen something, but they all scattered before I got here.’ Scarlett checked her watch. ‘It’ll be sunrise soon, so none of them will be back till sundown tonight. Tommy and Edna may have seen something. They knew the shooting had happened in this alley. They didn’t mention seeing anyone fleeing, but I didn’t stick around long enough to ask that question.’

  ‘Tommy and Edna?’

  ‘The homeless man and woman sitting on the stoop three blocks up. I’ve known them for years. I’ll ask them on my way out. I’ll tackle ID-ing the girl as soon as I get to the office.’

  ‘And I’ll get started with the Bureau’s trafficking team. Call me when Marcus sends you the video files and the list of threats.’

  ‘As soon as they hit my inbox. See you in the office.’

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Tuesday, August 4, 4.35 A.M.

  ‘Motherfucker,’ Marcus muttered as he eased his body into the chair behind his desk, glad that it was too early for anyone else to be in the office yet. The paper had gone to press at two A.M., which meant that Diesel and Cal were home snoring, and Gayle and the rest of the day shift wouldn’t be in till nine.

  His staff would fret, especially Gayle, his office manager. She’d been his mother’s social secretary when Marcus was born, then later she’d become his nanny – his and his brothers’ and sister’s. She’d retired fro
m her nanny position when Mikhail, the youngest, had hit middle school, coming to work for Marcus at the paper. But her retirement from nanny-hood never really took. Gayle tended to hover, more so even than his mother.

  Both women had been driving him crazy, watching him like a hawk ever since he’d been released from the hospital nine months ago. They’d do so again when the story broke. Mentally he prepared for the hovering to commence.

  He unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out the laptop he used for confidential matters. If there was anything on the Tala video – for example, the fact that he’d had another gun whose serial number had been filed off – he’d save the original on this laptop, then send a modified version to the cops.

  He hadn’t minded turning the Sig backup over to Scarlett this morning. It was so new he’d only fired it at the range, so even if they ran it through Ballistics, they’d come up with nothing. He didn’t even mind if she knew he’d had another gun. But he had no intention of handing over his PK380. He’d had the gun for too many years. Besides, though he didn’t think a ballistics check would turn up anything incriminating, he was taking no chances.

  If he had to turn over a PK380, he had several others, most of which were properly registered. He’d give her one of those.

  Marcus believed in keeping his privacy. Which was why he actually had several ‘confidential’ laptops. No one laptop held all the data on any given project, so if one happened to fall into the wrong hands, the project would be only partially compromised. And because none of his confidential laptops were listed as company assets, they couldn’t be subpoenaed should he or his staff ever draw the attention of law enforcement.

  Like he had this morning.

  It wasn’t supposed to have gone down like that. He was supposed to have handed Tala over to Scarlett Bishop and walked away, having done a good deed. Instead . . .

  His hands stilled on the keyboard. Instead, an innocent young woman was dead and he had plunked himself on the cops’ radar, front and center.