Daddy's Adorable Assassin (Daddy's Little Deviants)

HUNTER

“That’sallIknow. I swear.”

I assessed the woman sitting on the couch, sniffling into her handkerchief, and for a brief second, the piece of cloth distracted me. I shook it off. From my wallet, I produced a card and passed it to her.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Jones. If you can think of anything else, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

She dabbed at her eyes. With the thick mascara she’d been wearing, she now looked like a raccoon or a badly face-painted Joker. “Can I ask you a question, Detective Neely?”

“Sure.”

“Is it true what they’re saying? That serial killer killed my husband?”

“We’re still processing evidence, Ms. Jones. We’re working hard to find those responsible for killing your husband and his partner.”

She started sobbing again, so I encouraged her to stay put and let myself out of the house. Barney was standing on the last step of the porch, frowning.

“Did you get anything new out of her?” he asked. While I’d been questioning the newly widowed, he’d been going through the husband’s stuff to find clues about who he could have been meeting the night he died.

“No. She still can’t think of the reason Jones and Webb were at that old baking factory. All she knows is that Jones told her he was meeting up with Webb.”

“You believe her?”

“Hmm.”

“That’s not an answer, Hunt.”

I strode to my Tahoe parked in the yard, him hot on my heels. “Barney, it doesn’t matter what I think if I can’t prove she’s withholding information from us.”

I hopped into the SUV, and Barney got in the passenger’s side. “What about the information you’re withholding from me?” he said. “About that stuff with the FBI. We’re partners, man. Don’t tell me you’re going to listen to those motherfuckers and not say anything about the serial killer hunt.”

“You know everything they do, Barney. They’re working with our files, and there are no new developments in the case. We’ve hit a dead end.” And it frustrated me. I backed out of the driveway and stepped on the gas.

A week ago, when an unhoused man had stumbled upon the two bodies at the abandoned bakery where he’d been hoping to spend the night, we’d thought that was the break we needed. The crime scene had shown some criminal activity that had gone all wrong. All the other bodies had died of a clean shot, a single bullet through the head.

While Jones had the mark of our killer’s MO, a single shot, someone had shot Webb twice. Never before had two people been killed at a single site, so this was new, and new meant potentially messing up and leaving clues behind.

Whatever clues those were had been erased from a week of stray dogs gnawing on the dead bodies. Someone had stripped both men of their clothes as if the killer knew they risked leaving DNA behind this time. It’d taken us days just to ID the victims, since their wallets had been missing too. Their hands had also been removed, and we had yet to find the missing limbs.

If we followed the pattern, we would have to dismiss this case as a bad copycat of the others. No handkerchiefs had been left either. It was almost as if the killer had reversed their MO to their first kill. Everything in my gut said the crimes were related, though, and the spent shell casings and bullets we’d taken from the victims had proven that. They matched the ones used on our other victims.

Both men weren’t supposed to have been killed. The killer had to have been spooked and had to do collateral damage to regain control of the narrative. Which led to him changing his MO. His survival had been the only thing that mattered.

“Is there anyone else on the list we need to talk to?” Barney asked. “Webb didn’t have a wife, but he had to be fucking someone, right? Maybe someone who knew where he was going that night.”

“Webb was fucking several someones. We’ll regroup at the station and plan our next step.”

“You mean you phone your new FBI friends and fill them in on what we have? Which, by the way, is exactly nothing.”

I slapped my hand against the steering wheel. “What the fuck’s your problem, man? You’ve been coming at me more than usual lately. Does it really bother you that much that they asked me to assist with this case and you weren’t?”

“What the fuck do you think? This is our case, and I bet as soon as this shit is solved, the motherfuckers are gonna take all the glory for themselves. Nobody acknowledges the little guys, Hunt. Remember that.”

“You think I give a shit if they take the glory for themselves? I just want to get the asshole who’s been killing all these people.”

He mumbled something under his breath like a child. Normally, I’d have ignored him, but I was on edge, and for once, I wanted him to be the one walking in my shoes. To be the one to calm me down.

“What’s that, Barney?”