Possession (Fallen Angels #5)(106)
Author: J.R. Ward

“Look, straight up? This production of Rent could be my big break. Yeah, Caldwell is a regional market, but I had to beat out fifty guys my age with my vocal range for this f**king part. The director is a prick—everyone knows it—but he’s also got a national reputation. If I don’t hit those notes? He’s going to throw me out and fill the part with somebody else.” He leaned. “And you actually think I wouldn’t be practicing late at night to get it right?”

“Well. You’ve got answers for everything, haven’t you.”

“I’m just telling the truth. Do with it what you will.” G.B. checked his watch. “Listen, I’m sorry to say this, but I have to go to a job in about a half hour.”

“Where you working at?”

“It’s a funeral. Maybe you know the girl? She was murdered a little while ago—Sissy Barten?”

The detective pushed a hand through his short-cropped hair. “Yeah. I know who she is.”

“You find out who did that yet?”

“Yup.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” G.B. looked down. “Her family asked me to sing. I guess they’d heard me at her graduation from high school the year before—a friend of a friend got in touch with me, and like I was going to say no? It was horrible what happened to her.”

“What happened to Jennifer Espie was pretty horrible, too.”

“How was she killed, by the way?”

“That’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. May I see your hands?”

“Sure.” G.B. stretched them out palms down, then palms up.

There was nothing on them. But then, he used that pair of workman’s gloves, the kind that were rated for handling chemicals. Thick gloves, very thick—and they’d run up his forearms.

They were in the Hudson River now.

“Do you want to take samples or something?” he asked.

“Interesting idea to bring up. You watch a lot of CSI, by any chance?”

“No,” he lied.

“Jennifer was killed in a violent way.”

Yup. He’d walked down with her and taken her all the way around to the back exit, the one that was triple-locked, had no windows anywhere near it, and was practically in the next zip code from anyplace anyone usually was. The gloves had been in his back pockets, one jammed in each side, and she hadn’t even balked at the fact that he’d had them with him. He’d turned out the light, and talked to her until she’d given in to him; then he’d pivoted her around like he was going to f**k her from behind…

And slammed her face-first into the wall. Boom! Splash! Blood everywhere. And then he’d done it again, and again, and again…

Messy, very messy.

But he’d had to get it all out. In situations like that, when he’d done things just like that before, he’d always found that the violence was a purging—and the further he went with it, the cleaner he felt afterward.

When she was no longer twitching on the floor, he’d caught his breath, and had to start thinking. Yeah, he’d remembered to bring the gloves, but kind of like a session of really good sex, he tended to be a little spacey for a while afterward.

Next move was to get the f**k out of there—and clean the f**k up. That was how he’d ended up in that workroom … where the brunette had come to him.

The sex had been awesome, actually. What he was hoping, though, was that she had headed out of town right afterward—and that Jennifer’s murder didn’t go further than the local press.

What he really didn’t need was her connecting any dots for the CPD. And finding him with no shirt on in a room full of bleach fumes the night that some chick was killed in the basement?

“Would you let me?”

“I’m sorry?” he said, refocusing.

“Take samples from under your nails?”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

The detective knocked on the table and stood up. “This won’t take long. We’ll get you out fast so you can be at that funeral.”

“Thanks—and if you need anything else, just holler.”

“Oh, I will.” At the door, the detective paused. “You’ve got quite a following here in Caldie.”

“I’m just trying to make it, like anybody else.”

The man nodded. “If you decide to go out of town, or out of state, give me a call, will you?”

G.B. forced his brows to frown. “Am I a suspect or something?”

“Just consider it a courtesy at this point, okay?”

With that, G.B. was left alone in the bald little room. As his heart rate increased, his first instinct was to jump up and pace around, but he knew better. There were cameras in the corners.

Cameras that caught everything—

“Well … what do you know,” he whispered to himself, a kind of awe coming over him.

He was going to get away with this, after all. In spite of those stairwell cameras that he hadn’t known about—and which should have been as big a problem as that brunette for him.

Fate, however, had smiled upon him, hadn’t it. When he’d been in that workroom, before the brunette had come and found him? He remembered the lights flickering—and he was willing to bet his life on the fact that there had been some data loss associated with the power surge. Because this detective with the sharp eyes would have led with any record of G.B. and Jennifer going down those stairs together.

Which they had done right before he’d killed her.

Yeah, no “courtesy” for an out-of-town trip if the cops had that kind of evidence—he’d be in f**king custody.

Something had definitely happened to that security camera in the stairwell.

And thank God.

It was without a doubt his savior in all this, he thought with a smile.

Chapter Fifty

So many people, Cait thought as she looked around the narthex of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

For the past two hours, she had stood on the periphery, watching the ceaseless tide of mourners funnel in. She hadn’t been to many of these kinds of services, fortunately—but she knew enough to recognize the shift in demographics: The younger the person in the casket, the larger and more diverse the crowd. When the elders passed on, usually there was only what older friends were left, with the few young being those of close familial relationship.

Not in Sissy Barten’s case.

There were people of all ages—children, teenagers, lot of college students, some of whom Cait recognized and hugged. There were young families and middle-aged people, and then the older spectrum as well.