AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Give me another minute to finish this,” Alicia said, “and you’ll have my undivided attention. Because you brought me cake.”
A minute later, Alicia hit send, then turned to Kit. “To what do I owe this fine bribe, Detective?”
“Well, first, it’s more like half bribe and half thank-you.”
Alicia raised a brow. “Really?”
“No,” Kit admitted. “More like seventy-thirty.”
“So mostly a bribe.” Alicia shrugged. “I think your offerings taste better when they’re bribes.”
Kit chuckled again. “This cake is pretty tasty on its own. One of the guys in Homicide made it.” To celebrate closing the serial murders of six women. Not five, as Colton had written in his suicide note. Six. “Normally we just buy cupcakes from a bakery for celebrations, but it was Howard Cook’s turn and he’s taking a baking class.”
“So he can meet more women?” Alicia guessed.
Kit nodded, because this was Howard’s fifth class, all for the same reason. “Sadly, yes.”
Alicia sighed. “At least we get cake out of this class.”
“True.” Howard’s last class had been painting stills of fruit. “He’s a nice guy. It’s a shame he has to take classes to meet dates.”
“Hard to meet people when you’re working all the time,” Alicia observed.
Again, true. Alicia was married and already had a kid, but Kit hadn’t had an actual date in nearly two years. She hadn’t met anyone she really wanted to spend time with.
You liked Sam Reeves, the little voice in her head said slyly.
You shut the heck up.
Alicia was studying her as she took her first bite of cake, eyes narrowing with interest. “You got something to share with the class, Kit?”
“Nope.” Kit leaned against Alicia’s desk. “I do have a favor to ask, though. Or two.”
“So now we get to the bribes. Hit me. I figure it’s got to be big if you drove all the way down here.”
“It only took fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes you could have used a number of other ways. Did you need to get out of the bullpen that badly?”
“Kind of,” Kit admitted. The air of celebration wafting through the precinct had been grating on her nerves. “First, this case.” She put a file on Alicia’s desk. “It’s from two years ago. Maria Mendoza.”
Alicia blinked in surprise. “Not the Driscoll case?”
“Yes, but this first.”
Alicia opened the file and sighed wearily once she’d read the first page. “I remember this one. The victim was beaten to death. The case went cold, didn’t it?”
Kit had looked up Rita’s mother’s file as soon as she’d sat down at her desk that morning—and Rita was right. There was reason to suspect that her mother’s wealthy boss was involved in her death. Yet the man had never been a suspect.
The detective who’d caught the case had retired the following month and no one else had picked up the investigation.
Including me.
Kit would correct that mistake if she could. “It did go cold, but I think we should look at it again.” She pulled a photograph from the very thin file. “There’s something on the victim’s skin, right here.” She pointed to a mark on the woman’s cheek. “It looks like an indentation, maybe from a ring or something. But the photo is blurry. I was wondering if you’d taken any other pictures.”
Alicia was frowning. “This wasn’t among the photos I submitted.”
Kit’s brows went up. “What do you mean?”
