Jack Davis Mystery - 01 - Shakedown Read Online Free PDF

who typed it. I could round them all up and make them take polygraph tests—if I lived in another country and if I wanted to waste my time.
    The lights came on in the house. Troy found me again.
    “All clear. Two more dead in the upstairs bedroom. Jalise Williams and her boy.”
    “Keyshon.”
    “They were hiding in the closet. She was shielding the boy with her body. The killer shot right through her, killed both of them.”
    I was supposed to care about all the victims equally, caring the most about catching their killer, but I couldn’t. Marcellus and the Winston brothers were garbage waiting to be thrown out. That didn’t mean they deserved to be murdered or that they didn’t count or that I would be any less determined to find out who was guilty of their murders. It meant that I wouldn’t mourn them the way I did Jalise and Keyshon.
    Jalise’s story was sadly familiar: broken home, sexually abused as a kid. She had dropped out of school and hooked up with Marcellus, her version of Rescue Me . Wendy had me to watch her back. Jalise had Marcellus to drag her down. There weren’t many retired crack dealers. I had watched the surveillance tapes enough to know she stayed out of his business. That didn’t make her innocent, but it put her in an outer circle where people had a right to expect an occasional break.
    Keyshon was different, deserved better. He hadn’t made any of his parents’ bad choices, but their decisions cost him his life. I knew what that was like. I lost my son when he was six years old. Both boys could have been saved but for the mistakes their parents made.
    Joy started drinking the day we buried Kevin. I let it go, blaming me, not her, hoping she’d come out of it, unable to ease her pain or mine. We hadn’t forgiven ourselves or reconciled, settling instead for a silently shared burden.
    Both Jalise and I had failed to save our sons. That Jalise wouldn’t suffer the way my wife and I had was no consolation. I would hear their voices, mothers and sons, long after I caught Keyshon’s killer.
    I asked Troy, “If the killer was after Marcellus, why kill the woman and the boy? The house is dark. They’re hiding in the closet. Odds are they didn’t see the killer and couldn’t identify him.”
    “Maybe she was the target,” Troy said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The shooter had to assume that Marcellus and the Winstons were armed and a threat to him. Makes sense that he put them down. But he put three rounds point-blank into a woman and child hiding in a closet who couldn’t have hurt him if they’d have tried.”
    “Jalise Williams was nineteen. She wasn’t involved in Marcellus’s business. Who’d want to kill her?”
    “Maybe she had something going on the side. Maybe the killer didn’t figure Marcellus would be home and took Jalise and the boy out to punish him for something.”
    I rolled my eyes. “That’s the best you can do?”
    Troy shrugged. “Why kill her and the kid? You got me. All I know is that’s why we get the big money—to figure out crazy shit like this.”
    The helicopter started another circle, rotors thumping, its searchlight spraying the dark. My squad and what seemed like half the Kansas City, KS, police department stood in loose clusters in the street waiting for orders.
    “Get out of that ?ak jacket and start a door-to-door canvass.”
    “Jack, it’s a quintuple murder. KCKPD will claim jurisdiction.”
    “Tell them we’ve got it because of our ongoing drug investigation. Don’t hurt their feelings, but make sure they know this is our case.”
    I waited until the crime scene investigators gave me the all clear, then walked up the steps, stood on the porch, imagining the killer standing there less than an hour earlier and wondering what went through someone’s mind in the instant before he slaughtered five people. If Marcellus had been the target and the rest merely collateral damage, I could picture a cool, methodical professional. Check his