The Deception Read online

  “Anything else? What about a john in the area who liked to knock girls around?”

  “We’ve banged some doors, talked to a few people in the neighborhood, working girls, couple of pimps. Came up with squat. If they knew her, they aren’t saying.”

  “She had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. Maybe the girl was being trafficked. You find anything that points in that direction?”

  “Look, Kathryn Gallagher might not want to face it, but her sister was a whore. She wasn’t tied up in some basement somewhere.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “If there was a trafficking ring in the area, we would have heard something by now, seen some kind of evidence. The girl was working the streets and one of her johns killed her, which means we’ve got one less hooker to worry about. Maybe we’ll come up with something that’ll lead us to the guy who offed her, maybe not. Either way, the only one who cares is Kathryn Gallagher.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Benson. You know that, right?”

  The detective just smiled. “I’ll let you know if we get a break in the case.”

  “You do that.” Jase walked out of the bull pen. He liked Roger Benson even less now than he had before he walked in, but he wasn’t surprised at the detective’s lack of interest. The homicide division had a shit ton of cases to solve. A prostitute’s death wasn’t a high priority.

  If Kate wanted answers, she had made the right decision in coming to The Max. An even better decision when she had hired him for the job.

  Now all he had to do was stay focused, think with his big head instead of his little one. At least until he had solved Chrissy Gallagher’s murder.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The intercom buzzed in Kate’s apartment at eight o’clock that evening. After the stress of the day, she was beyond bone-tired. For an instant she wondered if Maddox would show up without calling. Surely not.

  She hit the button and heard the voice of the security guard in the lobby. “Good evening, Ms. Gallagher. Mr. Bradley is here to see you.” The guard knew Andrew Bradley. Kate had dated him for nearly a year.

  Her stomach knotted. She and Andrew had “taken a break from each other” six months ago. They needed a little time apart, he had said. Kate had taken the breakup badly. He had dumped her, no matter what he called it.

  At the time, Kate had been hurt and upset. But two weeks after the breakup, she’d been amazed to discover the emotion she was mostly feeling was relief. She hadn’t realized how controlling Andrew had been, how restricted her life had become.

  The only parties they attended were those Andrew deemed important to their careers. He carefully chose which couples they spent time with, who was invited over for dinner, which charity benefits they attended. Kate had to be careful, he said, to protect her business image. It was understood she was not to drink more than a glass or two of wine when they went out, and they had never gone dancing.

  After Andrew left, she felt as if she’d been let out of a cage, that her life was once more filled with unlimited possibilities. She felt free as she hadn’t since before she had met him.

  When her two best friends, Cece Jacobs and Lani Renton, asked her to go to the Sagebrush Saloon, she agreed. She had always loved country-western music, but according to Andrew, it wasn’t good for her to be seen in those kinds of places. The first time she joined them, she drank tequila and danced till midnight. It was the best time she’d had in years.

  The three of them began to meet regularly on Friday nights. Kate had even gone to the bar by herself a couple of times—as she had at the end of the worst day of her life. The night she’d met Jason Maddox.

  Her body flushed with heat just thinking about him and what they had done.

  “Ms. Gallagher?” the guard repeated over the intercom, jerking her back to the present.

  Kate took a deep breath. She had said goodbye to Andrew six months ago. She had no interest in seeing him again. But Andrew Bradley was CFO of Capital Management, a company that sent her a good deal of business.

  “Send him up,” Kate said.

  Her nerves stretched taut as she awaited his arrival. When his knock sounded, she took a deep breath, pasted on a smile and pulled the door open. “Hello, Andrew.”

  “Kate, it’s so good to see you.” He leaned over and brushed a kiss on her cheek, closed the door behind him. “I’ve missed you.” He was six foot two—tall, she’d thought, until she’d met Jason.

  “Have you?”

  “Of course I have.” With his black hair and brown eyes, he was handsome, with a trim, athletic build, a smart man, and always perfectly groomed. “You look even more beautiful than the last time I saw you.”

  In a pair of stretch jeans and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt? Hardly. Andrew always expected her to be as well groomed as he was. “If there was something you needed, Andrew, you could have called.”

  “Actually, I called your office this afternoon. Your assistant said you were taking some time off. She said your sister had passed away. I wanted to be sure you were okay.”

  There was something more. She could see it in his calculating dark eyes. “That was kind of you, Andrew.”

  “I know you and your sister were never close, but losing a family member is always painful.”

  “Yes, it is. I appreciate your stopping by.” She didn’t move away from the door. She had no intention of spending the evening with him.

  “I could use a drink. Considering the circumstances, you could probably use one, too.”

  He wanted to stay. And Kate had a feeling she knew why. She didn’t budge from the entry. “I’m sorry. I’m not really in the mood for conversation.”

  He reached out and took hold of her hand. “I came for another reason, Kate. I was hoping—now that we’ve had some time apart—you’ve realized what a good thing we had. I know I have. As I said, I’ve missed you. I came here hoping I could convince you that we should start seeing each other again.”

  Kate almost laughed. “That isn’t going to happen, Andrew. We’re over. I’ve moved on. I thought you had, too.”

  He looked surprised. “So you’re seeing someone else?”

  Before she had time to answer, the intercom buzzed again.

  “Busy night,” Andrew said grimly, clearly unhappy with his plans being interrupted.

  Kate hit the intercom button. “Yes, Gordy?”

  “Ms. Gallagher, there’s a Jason Maddox here to see you. He isn’t on your approved visitor list, but he says you’re expecting him. Is it all right to send him up?”

  She looked at Andrew and caught his irritated expression. He’d been so sure she would take him back. He’d been certain she’d been pining for him for the last six months. He probably needed a bedmate, at least until he found someone new.

  She thought of Maddox and the look on Andrew’s face when Jason walked into the apartment.

  “Send him up,” she said.

  * * *

  Jase stepped out of the elevator on the tenth floor of the condo building nicknamed the Glass Menagerie because it was mostly glass. He reached up to knock on Kate’s door, but it swung open before he had the chance.

  “Jason! Come on in.”

  He was surprised at the friendly greeting. He hadn’t called first because he thought she might not want to see him again so soon. She didn’t want to get involved on a personal level. Jase didn’t blame her. They’d probably both be better off if she stayed the hell away from him.

  Kate smiled at him a little too warmly, and he noticed there was someone else in the room. He caught the look on her face as she turned to the black-haired man in the expensive pin-striped suit, and Jase had a feeling he understood.

  “Jason, this is Andrew Bradley. He’s an old...friend.” Once, maybe, Jase thought, not anymore. “We haven’t seen each other for a while. He dropped by to pay his r
espects on the death of my sister.” When Kate took Jase’s arm and led him farther into the living room, he knew he had read the situation correctly.

  “Andrew, this is Jason Maddox.” She didn’t move away or drop her hold on his arm. “We’re working together to find my sister’s killer.”

  The guy’s black eyebrows shot up. “Killer? Your sister was murdered?”

  “That’s right,” Kate said. “Jason is helping me find out who did it.”

  Andrew turned to Jase and drilled him with a glare. “What are you? Some kind of private detective?”

  Jase just smiled. “Close enough. Mostly I’m a bounty hunter. Kate wants to find her sister’s killer. Finding people is what I do.”

  Andrew looked like he was going to choke on his own saliva. “You can’t be serious, Kate. If your sister was murdered, you need to let the police handle it, not some muscled-up cowboy who hunts people down and drags them out of their houses in the middle of the night.”

  Jase glanced down at his cowboy boots, and Kate’s eyebrows went up. He wondered if she thought he was going to go for good ol’ Andrew’s throat.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he drawled, letting his gaze drift intimately over Kate just to irritate the guy a little more. “Since Kate and I were already...acquainted, it was only logical she come to me for help.”

  Andrew’s face turned beet red. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Believe it,” Jase said, moving even closer to Kate.

  “We need to talk, Kate,” Andrew said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Kate made no reply, just walked over and opened the door. “Thanks for stopping by, Andrew.”

  He stepped out into the hall, and Kate closed the door behind him. As she returned to Jase, the corners of her mouth tipped up. “Thank you for that.”

  “Old boyfriend, I take it.”

  “We broke up six months ago. He wants us to start seeing each other again.”

  Jase didn’t like the sound of that. He had no hold on Kate, and yet he felt strangely possessive. “That what you want?”

  She shook her head. “Not a chance.”

  He relaxed. “Good choice. Somehow I can’t see this guy with the girl I danced with at the Sagebrush Saloon.”

  “You’re right. We don’t fit. It took me a while to figure that out.”

  “He’s a good-looking guy. Probably successful. I can see why he’d appeal to a woman.”

  “We’re both business people. That’s what kept us together. But he wasn’t interested in the person I really am.”

  But I am, Jase thought. He didn’t say it. They had a murder to solve first. “I talked to Detective Benson and the medical examiner, Dr. Maxwell. I thought you’d want to know what I found out.”

  She nodded. “You want a beer or something?”

  “A beer sounds good.”

  While Kate went into the kitchen, Jase checked out her Uptown, loft-style apartment. Hardwood floors, high ceilings, walls of glass that looked out over the city. The views were spectacular.

  “Nice place,” he said as she handed him a Lone Star. But a little too exposed for him. He didn’t like people looking in his windows, even if they were ten stories above the ground. Too many years in the marines, too many guys dead from snipers bullets.

  She led him into the living room, and they sat down on a cream sofa trimmed in black in front of a glass-topped coffee table. The place was modern, and it looked expensive, though he knew the building was older, not as high rent as Kate had managed to make the apartment appear.

  “You talked to Benson and Dr. Maxwell,” she said, picking up the conversation where they left off. “What did they tell you?”

  “You sure you’re ready to hear this, Kate? Because the facts in this case are going to be brutal.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I’ve thought about it. Whatever the facts, they can’t be worse than what I’m imagining. I need to know what happened. I need to know the truth.”

  Jase tipped up his beer and took a long swallow, set the bottle down on a black granite coaster. “When I was going over the info, a couple of things stood out to me. First, the body was found in an alley behind a bar called Mean Jack’s. It’s in Old East Dallas. But Benson said she was killed somewhere else.”

  “Do they know where?”

  “Not yet.” He filled her in on what the police had done so far, which wasn’t all that much. “Second, she was badly beaten, but the actual cause of death was blunt force trauma from a blow to the head. Doc says the weapon could have been a bat or a club of some kind, something like that. That doesn’t sound like a john to me, even one who likes his sex rough. They get their jollies out of beating a woman, but they aren’t usually trying to kill her.”

  “So you think there was a different motive? Not just a john who got violent?”

  “I think it’s possible. Although it could be the john was a regular. Maybe he got jealous, didn’t like her turning tricks with other men. That kind of thing.” It could have been a lot of things, but he didn’t want to overwhelm her.

  “We need to know more about your sister,” he said. “To do that, we need to dig up as much info as we can, then talk to people she might have known or worked with.”

  “Other prostitutes, you mean.”

  “That’s right. And anyone else who might have known her. But there are things we might be able to learn about her on the internet. Benson mentioned Chrissy had a webpage for Tina Galen. I didn’t press him about it. I figured we could find it ourselves. You got a computer?”

  “Of course. It’s in my home office.” She got up from the sofa and led him down the hall. As they passed the master bedroom, Jase glanced inside to see a room filled with pink. Pink draperies, a pink ruffled bedspread piled with pink throw pillows. The dresser was covered with pink knickknacks. There were even a couple of pink stuffed animals on one of the shelves.

  “There you are,” he said with a grin. “The Kate I danced with at the saloon. That’s your bedroom, right?”

  Kate looked back at him, her face turning a shade that matched the drapes. “So I like pink. So sue me.”

  He smiled. “I like it, too, honey. It suits you.”

  She looked at him as if he couldn’t have said anything that would please her more. “Andrew hated pink. I redid the bedroom after we broke up.”

  Nothing turned him on more than a smart, feminine woman. “That when you got the Camaro?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is. I was sick to death of the Prius.”

  Jase bit back a laugh. He could imagine Kathryn driving a Prius but not Kate. As she continued down the hall, he took in her perfect round ass in the tight-fitting jeans and ignored a rush of heat that went straight to his groin.

  Her office décor mirrored the sleek ivory and black of the living room. She sat down and booted up her computer, brought up Google, and they went to work.

  “Let’s start with Christina,” Jase suggested. “She was in high school before she ran away. Her social media might still be on the web.”

  “It is,” Kate said. “I checked periodically to see if she’d posted something that might give me a clue where to find her.”

  “That was smart.”

  “She never posted anything after the day she left home.”

  “She didn’t want to be found.”

  “No. She hated living in Rockdale. She wanted to be a city girl.”

  “I guess she got her wish.”

  Kate glanced away. Exhaling deeply, she turned back to the computer and pulled up her sister’s Facebook page. The photo of Chrissy looked exactly as Kate had described her. A young, fresh-faced blonde with big blue eyes and a wide, innocent smile.

  They checked her Twitter account, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, everything teenagers liked to use. The postings
on those accounts all stopped two years earlier, when Chrissy had run away.

  “You got a good firewall on this thing?”

  “Exceptional,” she said. “I’ve seen what can happen to a business that doesn’t keep up with the changing times.”

  “Let’s look up Tina Galen.”

  Kate started typing. Tina Galen wasn’t hard to find. She had a webpage with a photo of her nearly naked, nothing but a little red swatch of lace that barely covered her.

  “Oh, God.” Kate looked up at him and her eyes filled. “I can’t believe that’s her.”

  “We can stop right here, Kate. You don’t have to do this. You can let the police handle it.”

  She wiped away the tears. “You really think the cops will find the killer?”

  “They might get lucky.”

  “That’s it? They might stumble onto something?”

  “I won’t lie to you. The death of a drug addict and prostitute isn’t a high priority. So, yeah, that’s about it.”

  Kate released a shuddering breath and sat up a little straighter. “Then we keep going.”

  “Check out her contact information,” Jase said, hoping for something new, but the phone number listed on her page was the same one Benson had given him. They kept searching, went back to Facebook. Tina Galen had a page there, too. In her profile picture she was wearing a skintight sequined red dress that just covered her ass and plunged so low only her nipples were covered.

  Kate reached out and touched the picture on the screen. “Chrissy was always so pretty. She looked like the girl next door, you know? Like the cheerleader she was in her freshman year. Here she looks ten years older.”

  “Drugs will do that.” And the brutal work done by a prostitute. But he didn’t mention that. “Your sister had a tattoo on the side of her neck, just behind her left ear. It was red, like the lipstick mark from a kiss.”

  “I didn’t notice it that day at the morgue. I’m sure it wasn’t there the last time I saw her, a couple of weeks before she ran away. My mother would have gone ballistic.”

  “I’ve got a friend who does ink. Tomorrow I’ll go talk to him, see if there’s anything he can tell me about it.”