Page 29 of Butterfly Assassin
To Aaron and Harry, Sam added, “I want you available when the detective calls—which I’ve no doubt he will.”
“Yes, Alpha,” they replied in unison.
Sam smiled. “Go home and try and relax. Today has been… interesting.” Aaron managed not to scoff at that gross understatement. “And I’m sure the next few days will be more of the same.”
“Fuck, I hope not,” Aaron couldn’t help but mutter.
Harry tugged on his arm, and with a nod to Sam and Isaac, Aaron turned and walked with Harry along the pavement to the front of their building.
The morning had started out so well, full of new resolutions, but now Aaron felt like it was all about to unravel, and he was powerless to stop it.
CHAPTER SIX
Back at the office, Michael nodded in greeting at the other detectives as he passed, two coffees in hand.
“All right, Arch.” Callum Bridgford eyed the mugs. “Where’s ours then?”
“You know where the coffee machine is, you lazy bastard. Go get your own.”
Bridgford sat back in his chair. “Heard you got another body at the weekend?”
“Yeah.” Michael paused by the edge of his desk. “Throat ripped out, same as the first two.”
Bridgford let out a low whistle. “Me and Stewart.” He pointed a thumb at his partner sat beside him. “We’ve just wrapped up the case we were working on. The alpha council are dealing with it now, so we’re all yours if you need a hand with anything.”
Michael smiled. “Thanks. I might take you up on that. A fresh pair of eyes could be exactly what we need.”
Bridgford leaned forward to turn on his laptop. “Just give us a shout.”
“Will do.” With another nod, Michael headed towards his own desk, set the two coffees down, and sank into his seat.
Frank scooted closer and picked up one of the mugs. “Thanks.” He took a sip. “So that was an interesting morning.”
“Yep.” Michael swivelled to face him. “What do we know so far?” He tapped his pencil on the edge of the desk. Frank had worked with him long enough to know it was a rhetorical question. “Foster and Crossford exchanged multiple texts messages Friday night, but since both of them deleted the messages, we have no idea what they were talking about.” He pointed his pencil in Frank’s direction. “And I don’t believe Foster’s ‘We were just making plans for the weekend.’”
“Nope. He’s obviously hiding something, but we’ve got no cause to bring him in. His alibi for Crossford’s time of death is solid.” Frank sighed. “And to be fair, he seemed pretty torn up about Crossford’s death. I don’t think he was faking that.”
“No. Me neither.” Michael went back to tapping his pencil on the desk. They had the coroner’s report and forensics back for what evidence had been found at the scene, namely the bloodied tape. “No DNA’s been found at any of the crime scenes. No hairs, no blood—apart from the victim’s—nothing. And none of them had defensive wounds.” He threw his pencil onto the desk in disgust. Then tried it from a different angle. “All three victims are connected, however loosely to Smith, aka Daryl White.”
He counted them off on his fingers. “Bartender in one of his clubs, guy with a betting slip—which could be from one of Smith’s fights—and Charlie, who we know for definite was involved in a fight. How much do we have on good old Daryl?”
Frank grabbed a folder and flipped it open. “Daryl White, also known as Mr Smith.” He rolled his eyes. “Owns two nightclubs—all of these are legitimate—and a couple of cafés, etcetera. Up until three years ago, he’d been arrested for burglary twice, but never charged, and went from working in a bookies, to a pub, and finally bartender in one of the clubs he now owns. Something happened to bump him up to multi-business owner overnight, but we don’t know what.”
“Hmm.” Michael knew he was behind all this somehow, but as yet, they had no way to prove it. “We know he runs illegal fights.”
“But we can’t prove that either.”
“For fuck’s sake.” The metropolitan police had pulled a guy over for running a red light two months ago. Turned out he was almost three times over the legal limit. On the way to the station, he’d rambled about losing big at one of Smith’s fights, said the fight was rigged and moaned about Smith’s thugs threatening him to make sure he’d pay on time. Funnily enough, when he’d sobered up after a night behind bars, he’d denied ever saying anything of the sort.
And the SCTF only found out about it because one of the guys who pulled him over was Frank’s brother-in-law. Everyone knew that Smith had his finger in at least one illegal pie, but there was nothing he nor Frank could do about it. Their department dealt with shifter crimes and nothing else.
But if Daryl White was working with a shifter to commit murder, then that was something they could investigate.
Scooping up his pencil again and getting a glare from Frank in the process, Michael voiced the idea he knew they’d both been thinking about on the drive back to the office. “Aaron Harper could help us get White.”
“He could.” Frank reached out and plucked the pencil from Michael’s fingers when he started to tap it on the desk again. “Assuming there’s actually anythingtoget.”
Michael scoffed. “Come on, he’s involved somehow, I can feel it.”
