Save Her Child: A completely gripping and suspenseful crime thriller (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  Save Her Child

  A completely gripping and suspenseful crime thriller

  CJ Lyons

  Books by CJ Lyons

  Jericho and Wright Thrillers

  The Next Widow

  The Drowned Woman

  Save Her Child

  Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers

  Farewell to Dreams

  A Raging Dawn

  The Sleepless Stars

  Lucy Guardino Thrillers

  Snake Skin

  Blood Stained

  Kill Zone

  After Shock

  Hard Fall

  Last Light

  Devil Smoke

  Open Grave

  Gone Dark

  Bitter Truth

  Angels of Mercy Medical Suspense

  Lifelines

  Catalyst

  Trauma

  Isolation

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  Jericho and Wright Thrillers

  The Next Widow (Available in the UK and the US)

  The Drowned Woman (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Hear More from CJ

  Books by CJ Lyons

  A Letter from CJ

  The Next Widow

  The Drowned Woman

  Acknowledgments

  We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

  G.K. Chesterton

  Prologue

  She woke before dawn, screaming in pain.

  No, no, no. It was too soon. The pain stole her breath until she was gasping, swallowing any air she could get, doubled over, her hands cradling her swollen belly. Not now, not here, not now; the words became a bizarre mantra.

  Then the pain released its grip.

  She was all alone, stranded in a wilderness—a log cabin, of all things. He’d thought it was so cute, romantic, even. Most of all, safe. Their enemies would never find her here. And he had a plan. All they needed to do was follow the plan and everything would be fine: the baby would be safe, they would be rich and, best of all, they wouldn’t need to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders.

  He was going to save her and the baby. He swore to it.

  But he wasn’t here.

  Another wave of pain left her writhing on the floor, fighting to find any position that eased the pressure building inside her. He’d said no calls, that it was too risky and the phone was only for emergencies, only if things went wrong, but they weren’t going to go wrong because he’d thought of everything and he had a plan…

  Drenched with sweat, her hair falling into her face, she crawled across the cabin to the phone. She didn’t care about his damn plan; all she cared about was her baby. Because something was wrong, something was very wrong.

  She reached the living area. The rustic end table shifted against her weight, so she grabbed hold of the itchy plaid couch beside it, heaving herself onto it. Panting, trying to get as much oxygen to her baby as she could, she took the cell phone from the charger. She turned the screen on, to be greeted by a red light: low battery.

  Low battery? They hadn’t even used it—it was for emergencies only. Like now!

  She glanced at the cord leading from the charger to the wall outlet and realized the plug wasn’t fully in the socket. The table must have wobbled sometime during the two weeks that she’d been trapped here.

  Another wave of pain had her cursing, gripping the phone so tight she thought she might crush it. This time when the pain eased, it left a strange sensation in its wake. She looked down and saw a trickle of blood going down her leg.

  The baby! She needed to call for help—to hell with his rules and their enemies and bloody vows of revenge—she would not allow her baby to continue to suffer, not for another moment.

  She tried to dial but realized there was no signal.

  She would have to go outside, leave the safety of the cabin.

  She stood, blinked back the wave of red-spotted dizziness that rushed over her, and shuffled toward the door, her feet numb against the rough wood floor. Her vision swam; the door seemed so close, within reach, then impossibly far away. But she gritted her teeth and kept moving, inching toward it, holding onto the phone with one hand, the other cradling her baby inside her swollen belly.

  Halfway there, just as she reached the threadbare braided rug, pain slammed into her, so fierce that she realized the first waves had been mere ripples compared to this tsunami. It threw her to her knees, then face down on the floor, convulsing through her.

  She screamed. But there was no one to hear her.

  And then, like a drowning person going under for the last time, the world faded away, beyond her grasp, the light surrendering to black.

  One

  Despite the August heat stifling the night, the corpse didn’t smell too bad. Not yet, anyway. Detective Naomi Harper knew that wouldn’t last long.

  Avoiding broken glass and puddles of undetermined origins, Harper crouched on the pavement of a narrow alley on the east side of Cambria City’s Kingston Towers. Around her came camera flashes and the chatter of the crime scene techs as they worked the perimeter of the scene, leaving the body to the coroner’s investigator and Harper. She settled her weight on her heels as she hovered over the young woman’s body.

  Maggie Chen, the death investigator, pulled back the bloody length of plastic sheeting that had been found draped over the body. Harper got her first look at the victim. Tangled cornrows, blood coating her face, bruises, swelling, and obvious broken bones combined to create a monstrous profile—Harper doubted even the girl’s own parents would be able to recognize her in her current state.

  Harper’s gaze traveled down the body, noting more bruises and damage, apparently inflicted by a brutal, prolonged beating. Mostly along one side, so probably all from a single attacker, she thought. The girl was dressed in shorts and a camisole, nothing too flashy or outrageous, but there were very few reasons why a girl her age would be in this alley at night—and they all had to do with sex.

  “Any phone or purse? ID?” Harper asked Maggie.

  “No. Nothing.”

&nb
sp; Damn. Then Harper noted a tattoo along the girl’s wrist. “Can I get a closer look?”

  Maggie stretched her gloved hand across the body, the hood of her Tyvek overalls slipping, exposing a stray strand of robin’s-egg-blue hair. She raised their victim’s wrist gingerly as if holding a diamond bracelet out for inspection. Except it wasn’t diamonds encircling the woman’s dark skin, rather an intertwined ribbon of inked calla lilies.

  “Lily.” Harper sighed. “Last name is…” She thought back to when she’d patrolled this sector. So many girls came and went here, the Towers seemingly swallowing them whole. Three generations and the young were still paying the price of Cambria City’s failed effort at affordable public housing. “I think her name is Lily Nolan. Can’t remember for sure, but she’s on file.”

  “I’ll run her prints as soon as we get to the morgue, confirm her identity.” Maggie stroked the dead girl’s hand before gently turning it over. “No obvious flesh beneath her nails.”

  “No broken nails, either.” Harper nodded to the elaborate acrylic nail art adorning the girl’s fingers. More lilies, done in a rainbow of bright colors with gold sparkles and diamond embellishments. The kind of nails she would have loved to have when she was a teenager—but as a minister’s daughter, she’d been lucky to be allowed clear coat polish over natural flesh tones. The Reverend did not believe in “unnatural adornment.”

  “How could she not have fought back?” Maggie’s tone was mournful as she placed paper evidence bags over Lily’s hands. “She just stood there and let him do this?”

  Harper didn’t say anything. She was certain that during Lily’s time on the street she had never fought back—not against the gang who’d turned her out, acting as her pimps while brainwashing her into thinking they were the only family who could care for and protect her; not against the johns who promised to pay more for violence but rarely kept their word; not against the drug dealers who took their payment in trade.

  “How old was she?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s been almost a year since last time I saw her. I was working Vice.” The only time that being one of the few Black women on the Cambria City’s police force had served in Harper’s favor, allowing her to participate in various undercover operations for the vice and drugs squad even though she was only a patrol officer. Those days were behind her now—as of four days ago. She was now finally out of uniform and off the streets, officially a full-fledged detective assigned to the Violent Crimes Unit. “I think she was seventeen.”

  Maggie said nothing, her silence an offering of sympathy and remorse at Lily’s short life lost to the streets and the violence that stalked alleys like this one. Then she began to hum, a tune that carried both sorrow and hope in its harmony.

  “What’s that song?”

  “Nothing. Just made it up.” Maggie shrugged. “Call it ‘Lily’s Song.’”

  “It’s good. You should keep it.” Maggie and her husband often performed at local open mike nights.

  “Would rather not have had the opportunity to create it in the first place.” They both pushed to their feet. “Where’s Luka?”

  Harper knew that what she was really asking was why Harper, who’d only earned her gold shield a few days ago, was here without Detective Sergeant Luka Jericho supervising her. It was a little after four a.m. on a Sunday morning, meaning the on-call team of detectives—this weekend Harper and Luka—had to travel from their homes. Luka lived across the river with his grandfather and nephew, while Harper’s apartment was only a few blocks away.

  “Luka’s coming, but I’m primary on this one.” Harper couldn’t stop the hint of pride in her voice. Her first homicide that was hers and hers alone. Glancing at Lily’s battered body, she quickly sobered, realizing the weight of the responsibility—this murder was hers to solve. For Lily. For Lily’s family. “What can you tell me?”

  “Not much,” Maggie admitted. “No obvious penetrating wounds. Lack of rigor and body temp indicate possible TOD as little as a few hours ago.”

  “So, she was beaten, and time of death was not so long ago,” Harper translated. She’d pretty much figured all of that out herself. “Did she die from the beating?”

  “Possibly,” Maggie stressed. As a death investigator, any of her findings needed to be confirmed by the medical examiner’s postmortem. “I found track marks on her left arm, but they were all old and scarred. Once I clean her up, I can look for any fresh ones and we’ll run a tox screen for drugs of abuse.”

  Harper glanced around the alley. There were two industrial-sized dumpsters, a small mountain of broken wooden pallets, trash spewing out of discarded garbage bags, along with an assortment of used condoms, syringes, cigarette butts—a wasteland overflowing with human DNA. A crime scene tech’s nightmare. The plastic sheet the killer had draped over the body bothered her as well. “Was she killed here or dumped?”

  “The blood spatter seems consistent with her broken nose and oral injuries, so my guess is that she sustained those injuries here. I haven’t found any evidence that the body was moved. However—”

  “That doesn’t mean the other injuries weren’t inflicted elsewhere, before she was brought here.”

  “Exactly. But gross appearance does suggest that all the injuries were inflicted contemporaneously, with the same blunt instrument, and very close to the time of death.”

  Harper gave Maggie an exaggerated eye-roll. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Ford Tierney.” The assistant medical examiner was noted for his punctilious way of speaking.

  Maggie grinned. “Just wanted you to look good, writing up your first report as lead detective. But, yeah, she probably was beaten and left to die here.” She followed Harper’s gaze around the alley. “Which, forensically speaking, is probably the worst place possible. Don’t envy the crime scene techs.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  “I’m done.” She gestured to her transport team, who were waiting on the street. “We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Maggie.”

  “Good luck.” Maggie rested her gloved palm on Lily’s head for a moment. “She deserved better.”

  Harper stood and surveyed her crime scene. “Don’t they all?”

  Two

  Detective Sergeant Luka Jericho watched from beyond the police barricades at the entrance to the alley. He angled himself so that he was behind one of the halogen work lights CSU had brought in; even if Harper glanced in his direction she wouldn’t see him.

  She’d done a decent job so far, first making certain the scene was clear of any potential danger, then establishing an adequate perimeter and dispatching the uniforms to start canvassing for witnesses—not that anyone from the Towers would voluntarily cooperate with the police, but you could always hope. Besides, if the case ever went to court, you never wanted to give the opposing attorney grounds to suggest that the police had missed something like an eyewitness, opening the door to reasonable doubt.

  Maggie followed the gurney with the woman’s corpse, now wrapped in a sterile sheet inside a body bag. She motioned for her team to continue as she stopped and turned to Luka.

  “How’d she do?” he asked.

  “Good,” Maggie answered, clearly uncomfortable with playing the role of proctor. “Asked all the right questions, even made a tentative identification, despite the fact that there was no purse, wallet, ID or phone on the body.”

  Luka arched an eyebrow at that. “It was someone Harper knew, then?”

  “Hard to say, her face was really brutalized, but Harper recognized a tattoo belonging to a sex-trafficking victim she’d arrested during Vice operations.” The disdain that filled Maggie’s face had nothing to do with the fact that her victim was a prostitute. Rather, Luka understood that it was aimed at the men who’d forced her onto the street and the Vice cops who insisted on treating her like a criminal, not a victim.

  “You know that bringing them in off the street is the best way to offer services a
nd a way out without their pimps interfering,” he said. They’d had this discussion too many times to count.

  “Except the police always attach a price by asking these women—mostly girls—who have already had so much taken from them, to turn on their pimps, testify against them, help you do your jobs for you. Never mind the men who buy their services—”

  “We charge the johns as well—”

  “Yeah, a summons. One that costs less than a speeding ticket,” she flared.

  “The johns can’t lead us to the traffickers, not with everything arranged online. That’s why we need the girls to help.” He wasn’t even sure why they were having this debate—again. He hadn’t worked Vice in over a decade; Luka’s job was violent crimes, which usually translated to homicide. “Look, I’m sorry this girl ended up on the street—”

  “Harper said she was seventeen, Luka.” Maggie’s face was flushed, whether by the August heat or her equally sweltering emotions, he wasn’t sure. “Seventeen. She had her whole life ahead of her.” She made a noise deep in her throat as if swallowing a sob. “Tossed out like garbage.”