Rue and I had Dylan and Trent to check out as well as Lance Green, the person who hadn’t answered his door earlier. We would bang on his door one more time today. If we didn’t have luck the second time, we’d get a unit to sit on his house to see whether he really wasn’t home or had just chosen to ignore our presence.
I handed off the files of the remaining people with police records to Bentley and Lawrence for them to interview. We’d likely exhaust those few names without learning anything promising, yet there was the chance of getting additional names from those folks. I assumed it would be a process of elimination until we’d spoken to all current and past animal abusers that we knew of. If the same name was mentioned by several people, we would focus on that person.
Even though we were Homicide, our job still involved a lot of legwork, phone calls, interviews, and luck to make sure the right person landed behind bars. We were used to it, and although it seemed we were spinning our wheels at times, we usually ended up with the perp right where he was destined to be, in either a prison cell or, sometimes, a coffin.
We headed out again after lunch, that time to interview Trent and Dylan. Lance Green was scheduled after that. For all we knew, the guy might have a legitimate job that he’d been at earlier.
We reached Dylan’s apartment just after two o’clock. It never failed to amaze me how everyday criminals could have the same conveniences that hardworking people had, yet most of them didn’t work for a living. I imagined the “jobs” they did have weren’t the type that could be reported to the IRS.
Our database showed Dylan lived on the first floor of an apartment building on the west side of Savannah. Not the best neighborhood but a good one for drug trafficking if that was something he did for a living.
I turned onto Brewer Street then parked, and we headed up the sidewalk to building number six. His apartment was on the left corner. The music coming from inside made my knocks go unheard. I pounded harder until the music stopped and someone swung open the door. Staring out at us was a twentysomething woman with dyed-blond hair with black roots. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a bird’s nest fashion. She wore the shortest shorts I’d ever seen and a white tank top. On her shoulder, a tattoo of a large spider finished off her strange look. She smacked her gum while she gave us the once-over.
“Yeah?”
“Is Dylan Marx here?”
“Who’s asking?”
Rue held out his badge. “The cops. So, is he here or not?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get your panties in a bundle. He’s in the shower.”
I jerked my chin toward the hallway. “Go get him.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away.
I shook my head. “I’ve nearly reached my daily limit of smart-ass people.” My eyes bulged when Dylan came from the hallway, still dripping wet with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What I want is for you to put on your clothes and then come back here. We’ve got questions for you.”
He snarled at us. “About?”
“About your past and current hobbies. Now go.”
It took a good five minutes before he returned to the living room. At least he was dressed that time. He looked around.
“Where’s Daisy?”
I furrowed my brows. “Is that the girl or the cat that just scurried by?”
“Real funny. It’s the girl.”
“She opened the slider and wandered off outside. So, Dylan, we need to know what you’ve been up to lately.”
“Why?”
“Because your name was mentioned in a conversation about animal-sacrifice rituals. You doing that type of thing?”
He smiled. “Of course not.”
I didn’t expect him to admit his actions, and we had no way to prove he was involved in any current illegal activity unless we shadowed his every move. I wanted to focus on the fact that we were after the person who’d killed Valerie Dawson and removed her organs. Our job wasn’t to bust a bunch of people conducting weird ceremonial rituals—not our department—yet we needed names.
“Do you know anyone who is? Is there a cult leader with a following who is working areas of Savannah?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. Go talk to Jacob Kenney.”
I played dumb. “Jacob Kenney, huh? Who the heck is he?”
“He’s the grand pooh-bah, the king of kings, the cult leader. Call him what you like, but if anyone is active and recruiting followers, it’s him.”
“So he’s a friend of yours?”
“I know him from a past life, but I don’t participate in that stuff anymore.”
Rue huffed. “Funny how everyone says the same thing.”
My gut told me we weren’t going to get anywhere with the interviews. Nobody would admit anything, and without us witnessing the act itself, our hours spent with those morons would be a waste of time. We needed the people calling the shots, the ones in charge. They were the most demented. Dylan and Jacob fit the bill, yet they’d slithered out of our questions like snakes and sent us on wild-goose chases that ended with little or no information. I knew we were being played—likely by both of them.
Rue and I returned to the precinct. We would see if Lawrence and Bentley had had better luck than we did, but I had my doubts. People threw out names to deflect the focus from them, then the new people we talked to did the same thing. For now, the only two I was interested in were Dylan Marx and Jacob Kenney. Especially since Dylan knew Jacob’s name, it seemed they were the leaders of Savannah’s cult activity—if there actually was any.
Lawrence and Bentley were back. They said they hadn’t had any success, and as long as Vice hadn’t gotten word of new animal-abuse activity and hadn’t made any arrests, we had nothing but snickers and smart remarks from the people we’d interviewed. The only one who seemed forthright was Tim, yet the names he gave us got us nowhere.
I needed to talk to Royce, and a fresh cup of coffee sounded good. The cafeteria was on my way to his office anyway.
I knocked twice, and he yelled out to come in. I peered around the door, and he was engrossed in something on his computer. He looked at me, pushed his reading glasses back up on his nose, and asked what I needed.
“A minute of your time if you have it to spare.”
With a groan, he stretched, removed his glasses, and squeezed the sides of his nose. “Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Well, we’ve had zero success with the interviews, and Lance Green still isn’t home. The people we’ve spoken with either clam up, treat our questions like jokes, don’t know anything, or point us toward somebody else who doesn’t know anything either. Better yet, those people point the finger back at the person we just interviewed.”
“Humph.”
“Vice would know if a new group of ‘sacrificial worshippers’ popped up, wouldn’t they?”
“I’d think so. They’re in charge of weeding out the real threats, whether it’s animal abuse, human abuse, or anything in between. So, do you have a different approach, or don’t you think they’re involved at all?”
I shook my head. “At this point, I don’t know a damn thing. Is it overstepping to involve the FBI now?”
“Yeah, it is. We have nothing that says a person of interest in our jurisdiction, which we don’t have said person, committed a crime that took them over county let alone state lines.”
“What about asking questions?”
“You mean if the FBI has heard of or knows of illegal organ trafficking that’s currently going on?”
“Yeah, that. We need to know which tree to bark up before we can actually work the case.”
Royce scratched the stubble on his chin. “I guess you have a point. Okay, I’ll call the nearest field office and have them make a contact. I don’t want to go over anyone’s head or step on toes. We can’t end up on their bad side since we may be working this case side by side with them a week from now.”
I stood and headed for the door. “Boss?”
“Yep.”
“We do have a few FBI friends. The ones who were here last year when we had that K2 resurgence.”
“Right. I nearly forgot. I bet they’d talk to us off the record.” Royce tapped his computer keys. “What the hell were their names?”
“Jade Monroe and Lorenzo DeLeon. I have both of their contact cards in my desk drawer.”
“Okay, call me with those numbers. I’ll let you know what I find out after I talk to them. Give me a half hour.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
After buying my coffee, I headed to our office, feeling like this case was going to be tougher to solve than I’d thought. If there was actually a criminal investigation of organ trafficking going on somewhere in the United States, I had a feeling the case would be scooped up by the FBI and added to whatever they already had, even if it wasn’t related. I’d get Rue to field a few questions and get his opinions. Was it human organ sacrifice or human organ sales? I thought it could go either way.
When I returned, our office was empty. Rue was likely going over something with Bentley and Lawrence, so I took that time to call Royce and give him the phone numbers. Now, we waited. Rue walked in minutes later with snacks. I didn’t have to ask where he’d gone.
“How did I miss you in the hallway?” I asked.
“Made a stop in the bathroom first.”
I nodded. While I waited for Royce’s call, I was digging deeper into Jacob and Dylan’s backgrounds, which gave me more information on their personalities and twisted behaviors. Both men were career criminals, regardless of whether their crimes were serious or petty. They’d never landed in the slammer for any length of time. Yet they were dangerous in the sense that they were unpredictable and willing to do nearly anything if it suited the situation or benefited them in the long run.
I rolled my neck and heard it crack. Rue frowned.
“Stiff neck?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s a sign of stress.”
I chuckled. “Really? I had no idea.”
“So, what’s bothering you?”
“Other than killing and gutting a human being? Tell me your take on this investigation, Rue. Where do you see it going?”
Devon let out a hard sigh. “You mean do I think the religious cult nutjobs are responsible?”
“Yeah, or do you think Valerie was killed by someone who wanted to profit off her organs?”
“Tapper did say her organs were removed carefully so as not to damage them.”
“He used those actual words?”
Rue swatted the air. “I’m paraphrasing, Mitch, but to me, those idiots we interviewed earlier don’t seem that smart. In my opinion, they’d tend to be the type who’d pull out organs like a hunter, without too much care or caution.”
My nod spoke for me. I had to agree with Devon’s assessment.
“I asked Royce to call the FBI for information. We do have a few friends in the bureau who might be willing to share what they know with us. If anyone would know about illegal organ sales going on now or in the last year or so, it would be Jade and Renz. Royce said he’d make the call. He also said it was too soon to get them involved since we don’t even have a suspect.”
“Makes sense. So he’s going to contact them specifically?”
“Yep, and it’ll be interesting to find out what they say.” I shook my head. “The problem with the FBI is that they’ll keep an eye on our progress and then swoop in and claim the victory.”
Rue huffed. “Unfortunately, that sounds pretty accurate.”