Reluctant Suspicion Read online

  Only now, as an adult looking back, could he appreciate what it had taught him. The Carson family business had been right in the heart of the city, so a weekend never went by without some kind of altercation. Blake had learned to fight in the alleys behind that bar, because he had to. Even before he was old enough to pour drinks, he was throwing out the lowlifes who threatened or scared his mother.

  It was never a life he wanted for himself. He saw how his parents scraped pennies together to cover overheads and watched his father repairing tables and stools every week after the latest fight. Blake had sworn that as soon as he was old enough he was getting out of there, and that was exactly what he had done. Yet, from almost the moment he had gone, he missed it.

  Nowadays, his parents ran a quiet country inn in upstate New York. It was much more respectable than the place he’d grown up in, which didn’t exactly make it Blake’s cup of tea. In his adult life, his chosen profession left him dealing with the same lowlifes that he’d met in those back alleyways of his adolescence. Sometimes he coveted the old days, when rules weren’t such a prominent feature in his life.

  The days of his childhood weren’t as bad as he’d thought at the time. Days he loathed then, he appreciated now. Things like the musty smell of beer and sweat, similar to the scent that had permeated his parents’ tavern, and humid rooms filled with smoke and laughter, made him nostalgic. Every day of his childhood was met with music that either blared from the jukebox or from a local band. Dirty jokes and drunken fumbles existed in every corner of what was his home. It was a simpler life, certainly much easier than his current one.

  When he took position and began to wipe down the bar, he scanned Ashton’s to see that only the three women near the jukebox, and Joel propped up on his stool, were left here. The latest murder victim had worked behind this very bar, and Blake tried to put himself in the mind of the casualty. Where was he in his life? What were his dreams? How could he find himself at the mercy of a predator such as Choker?

  Choker was the name they were using at the station for the killer. She was preying on men from this area, and following the same modus operandi. The men were single, all the same age, and lived within a five mile radius of the park that Ashton’s faced onto.

  Many of the facts were still unclear. They were working on the assumption that Choker had targeted these specific men, because from their investigation they hadn’t found evidence that the victims were picked up in bars or public places. How the victim and murderer actually connected was still unknown, and they’d failed to ascertain if the victims knew Choker beforehand.

  Unfortunately, Choker was the only one who knew the details and they just couldn’t get a handle on her. This town was so small that the local precinct consisted of only ten men, so he and his partner had been loaned from the city station to solve the case.

  The men were killed in their own homes, tied to their beds with silk scarves, similar to those that were then stuffed into their throats. Their faces were covered with a pillow when they were found. Alone. Whoever she was, she had never left a shred of evidence.

  Until now, none of the fingerprints recovered had been of any use. Either they matched people who could prove that they were in the victim’s home for a legitimate reason, or they matched no one on the database. But a partial print recovered from the hallway outside Patrick Carmichael’s apartment that they’d originally discounted as background noise matched a print found inside Steven North’s place. It had been the first duplicate print found, and it belonged to Molly Ashton.

  Molly’s fingerprint was in their system because of a robbery that had taken place in Ashton’s many years ago. All of the family fingerprints had been taken, to eliminate them from investigations. At the time her father still ran the bar, and Molly hadn’t been present when it was held up, but her fingerprints were taken and recorded all the same.

  Although this break was the first they’d had while investigating Choker, it was flimsy and hardly conclusive. Still, Molly Ashton’s fingerprints were found at two of the three victims’ homes.

  They could have brought her in for questioning, but other than the print there was nothing else linking her to the crime. If she was indeed Choker, then the last thing they wanted was for her to become more careful. Her meticulous planning meant she had thus far eluded them, and finding out that she was a person of interest wouldn’t make Choker become sloppy.

  Finding out why Molly had personal contact with two of the three victims was crucial. After Joel’s comment to him Blake doubted she was sleeping with them. Of course, it wasn’t unheard of that killers lived their secret lives right under the noses of those who knew them best.

  Working in the bar gave Blake the perfect opportunity to get to know this woman. He could also keep an eye on those who frequented the area. Any likely candidates for being in the region late at night would probably visit this bar. According to the CCTV footage, none of the victims had been in the bar on the night they died. But when news of Steven’s murder compelled the other Ashton’s bartenders to abandon their posts, it gave the police an opportunity, an opportunity to find out if this landlady really could be Choker.

  Blake’s assignment was simple. Get close to Molly. He had to find out her opinion on the murders, get her talking about them. He had to know why she had been in the victims’ homes. He also had to know if, given the opportunity, would she try and kill him. Unfortunately for him, that would probably require him to seduce her.

  He and his partner Jason Keane had been working the Choker case since the beginning, and they’d hit nothing but brick walls. Two victims had died on consecutive nights. But then the initial worry that this would become a daily occurrence quickly dissipated when Choker went silent for six weeks, and then Steven North was found dead. Whoever Choker was, she wasn’t gone yet.

  Spending time in local haunts had brought them up short. They couldn’t establish how the victim and killer hooked up. Both he and his partner had gone on dates with local residents and business women to see how affairs would play out, but so far they had come up empty.

  A local officer on the Choker task force had come in to question Molly after Steven’s murder. They’d made a decision that the local guys would do the public work, giving Blake and Jason cover to work in the background. The detective had been dismissed without much assistance from Ashton, which piqued his and Keane’s interest. Molly was another lead in a line that was starting to stretch. But she was the most promising of prospects they’d had in the last few days. She knew at least two of the victims, and her fingerprints were in their homes.

  From the shift patterns they’d established after talking to the ex-barmen about Steven’s death, Molly had not been scheduled to work on the nights that the murders occurred, meaning she had no alibi. Since losing the barmen and having to work every night, there had been no more murders.

  On starting this undercover assignment, as he did with all the others, Blake had gone through his usual procedure of reading his mark’s file cover to cover, so Blake felt that he knew this woman inside out. One thing he hadn’t expected was to see her eyes sparkle when there was even the slightest hint of a smile on her face. He hadn’t expected her hair to bounce and sway in such a sensual way with every move of her head. In the dozens of pictures he’d seen of her, he hadn’t noticed the flush of pink that coloured her translucent cheeks. Molly was a beautiful woman, made all the more beautiful by the fact that she was completely aware, and yet indifferent, to her own beauty.

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ Joel said.

  Blake lifted his attention to the patron. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Banter,’ Joel said. ‘Tonight aside, Molly’s usually a hoot. It’s why we come in here.’

  ‘We?’ Blake said.

  ‘Yes.’

  All three women had abandoned their table and were now propping themselves at the bar.

  ‘Belinda,’ the blonde said, and thrust her hand at Blake.

  �
��Blake,’ he said, shaking her hand.

  ‘You’re working for Mol now?’ she asked. Blake nodded. ‘Damn, and she offered me a job. Maybe I should take her up on the offer now and we could work side by side.’

  ‘You’re not scared?’ the quieter one in the pink top asked. Blake knew this was Melissa; she had the look of her sister, yet carried a vulnerability about her.

  ‘Of?’ Blake asked, retrieving a bottle of wine from the bottom of the fridge.

  ‘Dying,’ Belinda said. ‘You know, like those guys who were so evilly garrotted.’

  ‘They weren’t garrotted,’ Joel said.

  ‘Sure they were,’ Belinda said. ‘The papers said suffocated right? Suffocated in the throes of pleasure… what a way to go.’ She drew her fluttering gaze over her glass at Blake.

  ‘What a time to take a guy out,’ Joel said. ‘I hope she at least let them finish.’

  Blake poured out the wine for the ladies and took a bill from the redhead.

  ‘Shona,’ she said in introduction, as he took the dough.

  ‘Blake,’ he said again, getting tired of introducing himself. A name tag would be appropriate, or maybe he should just hook his badge onto his belt, cover be damned.

  ‘Honestly,’ Joel said. ‘That is below the belt.’

  ‘You think no man has ever killed a woman while he was doing her? Look at Ted Bundy,’ Belinda said.

  ‘I would be scared,’ Melissa said. ‘I am scared and women aren’t being targeted.’

  ‘It’s unsettling to know there is someone so unhinged in our community,’ Blake said.

  ‘So you are scared?’ Joel asked.

  ‘No,’ Blake said. ‘I don’t pick women up with psychotic tendencies… even if I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let them tie me up on a first date.’

  ‘Men have this false sense of security,’ Belinda said, swaying her glass back and forth. ‘They believe that they are safe, especially from women.’

  ‘Poor Steven,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Joel said.

  ‘The saddest thing is he could have got it from any woman he wanted,’ Belinda said. ‘Why did he have to pick the psycho?’

  ‘She’s obviously beautiful,’ Melissa said.

  ‘And smart,’ Shona chimed in.

  ‘Well charming more than smart,’ Belinda said. ‘She must be one hell of a seductress.’

  Blake’s thoughts ran to Molly. Men would fall over themselves for her. Especially with a flash of leg or cleavage, a sly smile or a confident wink. Not a lot of men would turn her down.

  ‘They must have trusted her,’ Melissa said. ‘They wouldn’t have gone off with a stranger and put themselves in such a vulnerable position.’

  ‘You think she was a friend? Someone they knew?’ Belinda asked.

  ‘It makes sense,’ Shona said.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Joel asked. ‘Men will take it from whoever offers. She wants to tie you up? Sure thing, Babydoll, anything that gets me off.’

  ‘You’re a pig,’ Belinda said. ‘Not all men are horndogs.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that, Sweetheart.’

  Joel took his smile to his glass, and there was a moment of silence as they all thought about the situation.

  ‘Either the victim knew the killer, or…’ Shona started. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’ the women pushed.

  Blake tossed his towel over his shoulder and put his hands to the bar to lean closer as Joel shifted down a stool toward them.

  ‘Well…’ Shona said. ‘Every man likes to play the knight in shining armour… especially for a beautiful woman.’

  ‘So she plays the damsel in distress,’ Belinda said. ‘That makes sense… But it couldn’t be something boring like her car breaking down.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t get her into their house,’ Joel said.

  ‘She would have to be devastated. It could be a fake break up, crying, alone, you know the way,’ Belinda said.

  ‘Or physical,’ Shona said. ‘Maybe she plays innocent, says she ran out the house because her boyfriend beat her… or says she was attacked in the park.’

  ‘Knight in shining armour takes her back to his place to comfort her, and persuade her to call the police, and boom…’ Belinda said.

  ‘She seduces him,’ Shona said. ‘It’s plausible.’

  ‘I had no idea how terrifying you were,’ Joel said to the women. ‘You just sat there and played out the crime.’

  ‘We’re speculating,’ Belinda said. ‘You know it is also possible that she is not working alone.’

  ‘It would play better if the victim saw the attack,’ Shona said. ‘She could have an accomplice.’

  ‘This is fascinating stuff,’ Joel said. ‘But could we change the subject now?’

  ‘Why?’ Belinda asked.

  ‘Because now if I go out there and see a woman being raped I’m going to run as fast and as far as I can in the opposite direction.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Melissa said.

  ‘She just said the victim was going to kill me!’ Joel said, pointing at Shona.

  ‘I think if you were on the murderess’ list of potential victims, you’d be dead by now,’ Belinda said. ‘You’re wandering the streets every night on your way home.’

  ‘Only on nights I’m in here,’ Joel said.

  ‘Which is every night,’ Belinda said.

  ‘Tell us about yourself, Blake,’ Melissa said, switching all focus to him.

  Blake was still pondering the women’s scenario, but hid his lingering interest in it. ‘Nothing to tell,’ Blake said. Joel shook his empty glass at Blake, who went about filling it.

  ‘Are you married? Do you have kids?’ Belinda asked.

  ‘You’re horny,’ Shona said.

  ‘It’s just a question,’ Belinda said. ‘I wouldn’t say no though.’

  ‘You never do,’ Melissa said from behind her wine glass.

  Belinda growled at her sister. ‘I couldn’t, though. Vanessa would never forgive me.’

  Everyone at the bar enjoyed this comment with a laugh, and Blake noted their amusement. ‘This Vanessa woman’s reputation certainly precedes her,’ Blake said.

  Vanessa Wilson was in Molly’s file, so he knew exactly who she was. From the attached picture, Blake knew that Vanessa was a pretty girl, but by comparison, her beauty was nothing to Molly’s, or indeed to Belinda’s or Melissa’s. To find out what it was that attracted men to her so easily he’d have to meet Vanessa face to face.

  ‘You’re in for a ride with her,’ Belinda said. ‘Vanessa likes first go of every man that comes through that door. She can have you this week. I might come back for a go next week.’

  ‘Should I be printing tickets?’ Blake said, putting Joel’s glass down in front of him.

  ‘Might not be a bad idea,’ Belinda said. ‘Men around here are growing scarce, they don’t want to leave their homes. It’s creating a bit of a supply and demand issue.’

  ‘Yes, it makes it difficult for those of us who are sane,’ Shona said. ‘Maybe we should start knocking on doors.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have to go far for a good one,’ Belinda said. ‘Mason lives next door.’ Belinda and Melissa sighed simultaneously.

  ‘Mason?’ Shona asked.

  ‘Oh, he is a gorgeous specimen,’ Belinda said, swirling the wine in her glass now. ‘He’s so sweet, and gorgeous, and funny, and did I mention gorgeous?’

  ‘He is the sweetest guy in the world,’ Melissa said. ‘Molly’s water tank burst, and he was over here at four AM mopping up with her. When the gas canister down the stairs broke, he sourced her a new one and paid to have it installed within twenty-four hours so that Ashton’s wouldn’t have to close its doors. He knows how important this place is to her.’

  ‘Remember when the kitchen caught on fire last year?’ Belinda said to Melissa. ‘He put Molly up in his apartment for a week. The damage was minimal, but he didn’t want her to live with the damp charcoal sme
ll.’

  ‘Sounds like a great guy,’ Blake said.

  ‘He wants in her pants,’ Joel said, and slurped his beer. ‘Molly… He’s crazy in love with her.’

  ‘He is not,’ Belinda said. ‘He is just a nice guy.’

  ‘They don’t make guys that nice,’ Joel said. ‘He’s the only one to never give in to Vanessa’s advances, and she really persisted on that one for a while.’

  ‘Molly feel the same way?’ Blake asked the patrons.

  ‘She cares about him,’ Melissa said. ‘They’ve had a few… close calls.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she just do him then?’ Blake asked.

  ‘Molly thinks that sex ruins everything,’ Belinda said. ‘She says that sex is only so much fun because it causes so much heartache and humiliation.’

  ‘That’s only because of Harry,’ Melissa said.

  ‘Harry?’ Blake asked.

  ‘He was her last serious relationship… it ended what? Two years ago? She really thought he was the one,’ Belinda said. ‘Bastard screwed her best friend and announced it in the bar while it was full to overflowing.’

  ‘He announced it?’ Blake said.

  ‘Molly went upstairs and found them together,’ she said. ‘She knew they were up there, but she thought they were just chatting, watching TV, whatever, hanging out. She trusted them to be upstairs alone while she worked down here. It was her best friend and her boyfriend for crissakes, it didn’t occur to her to be suspicious of anything. Then she ran up to tell Harry something and found them naked in her bed.’

  ‘It’s why she doesn’t let anyone up the stairs anymore,’ Melissa said. ‘No one. Even when the bar is closed.’

  ‘Anyway, she told them to get out and came downstairs to get back to work. Harry came down in his boxers and they had this huge blow out in front of everyone. Since then she doesn’t trust any man,’ Belinda said.

  ‘Interesting,’ Blake said.

  ‘What did you get for your birthday, Missy?’ Joel asked.