No End of Bad Guys Read online

  no end of bad guys

  A Bobby Greco novella

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  other titles by

  JEFF BUICK

  Bobby Greco series

  One is Evil—October 2019

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/one-is-evil/

  Curtis Westcott series

  A Killing Game—December 2019

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/a-killing-game/

  AJ Costa series

  Size Four—TBD

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/size-four/

  Stand-alone titles

  The Krubera Conspiracy—March 2020

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/the-krubera-conspiracy/

  Bloodline—TBD

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/bloodline/

  The Art of Deceit—TBD

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/the-art-of-deceit/

  The Reluctant—TBD

  https://www.jeffbuick.com/books/the-reluctant-truth/

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and their names are from the author’s imagination. Places, events and incidents, while often based on reality, are used fictitiously. If there is any resemblance to a real person, whether they are living or dead, it is purely coincidental.

  Please refrain from reproducing any part of this book—by electronic or mechanical means. Photocopying or recording portions without written permission of the author/publisher is not permitted.

  All text in this book is © 2019 Jeff Buick and Novel Words Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Novel Words Inc. and Jeff Buick

  www.JeffBuick.com

  Cover and interior design by Lance Buckley

  www.LanceBuckley.com

  Dedicated to

  Laura Rushford

  A kind and wonderful woman with a heart of gold

  and

  the best proof reader EVER

  Contents

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  acknowledgments & kudos

  about the author

  chapter one

  “Hey, nobody ever gets murdered in Orlando.”

  Bobby Greco threw his partner a look. “Right, poor us. Bored homicide cops.”

  Vern Foster snorted and trudged along behind Bobby, his size twelves making slapping sounds on the worn tiles. “I wish.”

  Bobby shrugged into his winter coat for a bit of protection against the December wind, banged the door open and headed for his car. “Cedric White did it,” he said to Vern, who had followed him out. “He killed her.”

  “You don’t even have a body.” Vern stopped at his car, a couple of stalls down from Bobby’s, his hand on the door handle. “You got nothing right now. Maybe he’s not the guy.”

  Bobby pushed his thick, unruly hair out of his eyes. “We’ve chased every other thread in the investigation and come up empty. He’s the guy.”

  Vern nodded. “Could be. Still, burden-of-proof, my friend.”

  “Yeah, there’s that.”

  Bobby slipped into his car, a ten-year old BMW he kept in mint condition, and sat listening to the wind whipping against the window. He was convinced Cedric White had grabbed Jocelyn Buchanan as she walked home from her barista job at Starbucks. What he had done with her after that was a total mystery. He could have had his way with her then dumped her body in one of the small lakes that litter Orlando like discarded candy wrappers. Or maybe he drove to the Everglades and threw her in the murky water, a bit of food for the crocs. Either way there was no body and, as Vern had pointed out, no real proof White had been the one who abducted her.

  Bobby shifted the car into gear and started out for his daughter’s soccer game. Overhead, the sky was dark and threatening rain. Even in Florida outdoor winter sports were risky. Watching U8 girls was a treat on a sunny day, but today’s game was promising to be more like torture. He pulled onto the motorway, his thoughts returning to the Buchanan case.

  Jocelyn was a good kid, seventeen with a steady boyfriend. She was on the honor roll at school and had a pretty face, with a quick smile, green eyes, and brown hair that fell halfway down her back. Her co-workers and schoolmates liked her and there was an outpouring of grief, and after she was missing for ten days a lot of people were beginning to think the unthinkable.

  Which brought Bobby to Cedric White, a divorced, fifty-three year old accountant who lived alone in a townhouse condo five minutes from Jocelyn’s Starbucks. He was a regular who drank dark roast and liked sitting at the deuce by the condiment bar. It was the table with the best view of the baristas as they worked behind the counter. Footage from the surveillance cameras showed him looking over top of his paperback as Jocelyn moved about, working the cappuccino machine and joking with customers. His eyes followed her and there was something creepy about it. Bobby had seen it before—a longing for an intimacy that was never going to happen. That was likely the motivation.

  “Dipshit,” Bobby muttered as he drove. Lusting after a hot young woman, then acting on it and getting shut down. It was in that heat of the moment that so many women died.

  Bobby pulled into the parking lot at the soccer field, locked the car and plodded across the turf to where Janis, his ex-wife, was talking with another mom. Sarah, his oldest daughter, was warming up with the rest of the girls and waved at him with a big smile when he looked over. He waved back, feeling better about being at the game. This was exactly where he should be.

  Mostly, the sidelines were populated by soccer moms of all shapes and sizes, the weekday games too early for many of the dads to make them. Bobby’s hours were flexible and that left him with the gaggle of women. They were pleasant enough and there were certain ones he liked talking to, others not so much.

  Molly Vaughn’s mom, Alyssa, was on the sideline and standing by herself as usual. She was always there—her husband had died shortly after their daughter was born and she was a single parent. Vaughn was an elusive one. Bobby had tried striking up a conversation with her a couple of times but she hadn’t been very receptive. Maybe it was a defense mechanism that went with being a fit, attractive woman in her late thirties. Bobby figured she likely got hit on a lot. He walked up to Janis and Alyssa Vaughn faded.

  “Hi sweetie.” Janis gave him a peck on the cheek and a quick hug.

  “You look great,” he said.

  She laughed and poked him, her hair was a windswept mess and she had on the minimum makeup necessary to go out the front door. Still, to Bobby, she was stunning.

  “Freezing out today,” Janis said, buttoning her coat up to her neck.

  “Yeah, cold front down from Canada. I wish they’d stop sharing things with us.”

  “Daddy.” A four-year-old girl came running up and Bobby dropped to his knees. She wrapped her tiny arms around his neck and gave him a giant hug.

  “Lizzie.” He held her tight against him until she was ready to break off the hug. “Here to watch your big sister play?”

  “Yup. I’m her biggest fan. She told me that.”

  “That’s a very important thing to be.”

  Lizzie ran off to play and Bobby stood up. Janis had gone back to talking with her friend and he wandered down the edge of the field by himself. Janis still loved him, he knew it—his care
er had killed a marriage that should have worked. Janis had taken all the crap that went with being a murder cop’s wife for the first few years, then it all got too much. Cracks appeared between them and widened until the gap was too great to fix. He tried to hate the job for what it had cost him, but he couldn’t. Homicide was in his blood and it wasn’t going anywhere. Anyway, the damage was done, there was no sense pulling at any of the other strings that held his life together. Like his kids.

  The game started and he caught Sarah glancing over to see if he was watching. He was, but something else had caught his attention. Alyssa Vaughn was worming her way out of a group photo. Bobby continued to stare at the game, but in his peripheral vision he could see the whole thing playing out. She was pointing to her cell phone and shaking her head. By all appearances, she had to take a call or respond to a text. To Bobby, it was something entirely different. This was the third time he had seen Alyssa talk her way out of being in a photo and he was beginning to think there was a reason.

  Normal people don’t care if they get caught up in a sideline photo at their kid’s game—a person with something to hide does. Alyssa had just moved onto Bobby’s radar. He waited until she had finished with her phone and then headed over. He sidled up to her and nodded.

  “Shite weather,” he said.

  “Terrible.” Alyssa zipped her coat a bit tighter. “One more game and we’re done for the season.”

  She was tall for a woman, about Bobby’s height at five-ten, with a slim build and a thin face. Her well-styled blonde hair was shoulder length and she had a Louis Vuitton umbrella to protect her from the rain. Not that she used it all that much, she often sat in her car and watched from a distance. Bobby glanced over and caught a quick look at her eyes, ice blue and cold. He’d noticed that the first time they spoke, and people with cold eyes got a spot on his suspicious list—people with cold eyes who refused to be in photos got top billing. Alyssa sensed she was being watched and started to turn her head. Bobby looked back to the pitch.

  “What’s up for you guys after the season is done?” Bobby asked.

  Alyssa shrugged. “Molly’s busy with sports at school so nothing until she’s out for the summer.”

  “Ahh, you’re lucky,” Bobby said. “Retired while she’s still young. You get to be there for all the good stuff.”

  “Like this?” she said, smiling. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “You want freezing, try Chicago. You must still have some of that Arizona blood in you. It never gets cold in Phoenix.”

  The smile slowly faded. “Sure it does.”

  They watched the girls move the ball down the field and score. When they were finished the ubiquitous cheer, Bobby said, “It must be tough, raising Molly by yourself.”

  “No different than for a lot of single parents. I manage.” There was no warmth to her voice.

  “She was so young when your husband died. Less than a year old and loses her dad to cancer. It’s sad.”

  Alyssa turned and faced Bobby. “He was killed in a car accident.”

  Bobby shook his head and looked down at the grass. “Right, just after you sold your business. Sorry, I should remember things like that.”

  Alyssa continued to stare, but Bobby didn’t look at her. “That surprises me, detective. I would think you’d have a good memory for details.”

  Now Bobby turned to face her. “Apparently not. I don’t remember telling you I was a cop.”

  Alyssa gave him a cold-fish smile and turned back to the field. Bobby broke it off and walked slowly along the sideline, his cop senses in overdrive. Sarah was unlacing her cleats when Bobby arrived and he made a big deal of her play on the field. She had almost assisted on a goal, and that was worth the promise of ice cream somewhere down the road.

  “You were talking to Molly’s mom,” Sarah said as she stuffed her gear in her bag.

  “I was.”

  “Molly’s nice. I like her. She’s learning French. Most kids take Spanish, so that’s cool. And…” Sarah paused, making sure she had her dad’s undivided attention. “…she’s got a swimming pool. She asked me over to play.”

  “We’ll see,” Bobby said as they hustled to the car.

  Something was off with Alyssa Vaughn, and as the sky cracked open and the rain came down in sheets Bobby decided he was going to find out what is was.

  chapter two

  Bobby usually kept a clean desk, but right now it was littered with printouts and photos from the Buchanan file. On top were the pages showing the times Cedric White had sat in Starbucks reading his book. Almost without fail, Jocelyn had been working.

  Bobby slipped a thumb drive into his computer and watched a few minutes of the CCTV footage taken from behind the counter. The images were clear and Bobby could tell when White was actually reading and when he was staring over the top of his book. Every time Jocelyn came into view his eyes shifted up. Bobby paused the recording and enlarged his face. He studied it intently for a minute then closed the file and refocused on the printouts.

  A voice rose above the din of the bullpen. “Any progress on that one?”

  Bobby didn’t need to look up to know it was Stacey Daniels, his station boss. “Not really, LT.” He glanced up, noticed her hair and added, “New cut. Got one on the hook?”

  “Hey, my love life is none of your business,” she said, running her fingers through her short, highlighted hair. The smile gave her away. Daniels was mid-thirties and attractive, and Bobby respected her. She’d come up through the ranks and could take a friendly jab from her guys. “Is that the Buchanan case?” She motioned at his messy desk.

  “Yeah, it is.” He leaned back, coffee in hand. “Cedric White. I still like him for it.”

  “Why?” She slipped into his cubicle and sat on the edge of his desk.

  Bobby reached out and tapped his pen on a stack of papers. “CCTV from every camera in the area—private residences, local retail shops and bars and restaurants. Six cameras picked up White’s SUV as he drove home but we’re missing eighteen minutes between two of the cameras.”

  “How close together were those two cameras?”

  “We drove it and it took us thirteen minutes. The night she disappeared, it took him thirty-one.”

  “That’s a lot of missing time. How did he explain it?”

  “Said he was driving around.”

  “That sounds like bullshit.”

  “Yeah, it does.” Bobby pointed at a nearby whiteboard with a hand-drawn map showing numerous intersecting streets. Times of day were written at various points. “Jocelyn’s route home, as best we know, is marked in green. White’s route, from the cameras, is in red.”

  Daniels studied the map, then walked over and poked it with her finger. “Is this the last location we have on her phone?” she asked.

  “Yup.” Bobby dug out a picture showing a section of street lined with trees and a thick hedge. “She had some apps running in the background and this is where her phone got turned off.”

  “Well, I think we’re pretty sure who did that,” she said. “At least we know where she was grabbed.”

  “We do. Every little bit helps.”

  “Any messages before it went silent?” Stacey asked.

  “One text to a friend that she had just finished her shift and would ask her mom when she got home if going out next Friday was okay.” Then Bobby added, “Smiley face, smiley face.”

  It wasn’t lost on either of them that although Jocelyn Buchanan was seventeen, she was still a kid in many ways.

  “Okay, so no one called her and set this up.” She leaned against the whiteboard, closing her eyes to concentrate. “What else have you got?”

  “His visits to Starbucks mirrored her shifts and he consistently eyed her up while he was there.”

  Stacey didn’t move, putting the pieces together in her mind.

  “Take a look at her schedule.” Bobby picked it up and handed it across. “She was on a regular rotation and the shifts were the same
each week. Easy for him to figure it out without casing the place.”

  Stacey took a minute to go over the printout. “What did we get from his phone records?”

  Bobby shook his head. “We used cell towers to track him for five days—two days prior, the day she disappeared, and then two days after. Nothing stands out on the day she was taken.”

  “Where was his phone when she was grabbed?”

  “At home.”

  Stacey chewed on a chipped nail. “Left it there on purpose?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did his routine change after she went missing? Did he stop going for coffee or show up at different times?”

  Bobby shook his head. “No, mostly he’s still consistent, but he isn’t staying at the coffee shop as long as he did prior to Buchanan going missing. He used to sit for a half hour, maybe forty minutes. Now he’s in and out in about twenty minutes. He could be smart enough to know we’d look for a break in his routine.”

  “Maybe,” Stacey said, unconvinced on that point.

  “He knows we’re watching him, LT,” Bobby said. A few moments of silence settled over the room, then he added, “There was something creepy in his look, like he was undressing her.”

  “Middle age guy wants young girl.” Stacey wasn’t asking.

  Bobby set his pen on the desk. “It’s in his eyes, LT. He did it.”

  She thought about that, then nodded slowly. Bobby relied on his gut more than most of her detectives, but he was seldom wrong. “Okay, stay on him.”

  “Will do.”

  “Maybe pay him another visit. Shake him up a bit. We’re still watching his phone, maybe he’ll make a call.” She started to leave, then turned back. “What’s with the computer search on Alyssa Vaughn?”