“You look great, David.”

“Thanks.” He grinned. “Have to say that freedom agrees with me. You look beautiful, Billie.”

“I look sweaty and I smell like beer, but if that’s your kind of gal…”

“You’re my kind of girl.”

I blushed.

Suddenly, C.C. screamed.

I looked up at the bar’s television. The anchor said, “And in a shocking twist to the release of inmate David Falco, a woman was murdered tonight in Jersey City. Sources tell CNN that the crime included a playing card left on the body. The suicide king…”

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for purchasing the first book of my new Billie Quinn series. I wanted to write this book to show a little of the real life of CSIs—unsung heroes who gather the evidence and analyze it in the lab. As in all my books, the heroine is surrounded by an eccentric “family”—a motley crew of misfits and unusual people who comprise her circle of friends. In this book, you’ll meet Lewis LeBarge, head of the crime lab, who has a penchant for collecting brains and photos of blood spatter; Sister C.C., a nun with a passion for prison ministry; Mikey, Billie’s brother and a ne’er-do-well—but a sweetheart anyway; and the rest of the colorful characters, such as Tommy Two Trees, an FBI agent and, like Lewis, a denizen of New Orleans.

Billie herself is brainy but street smart. Her brother and father are both involved in the mob, but she has chosen to play it mostly straight in her life. She’s haunted by her mother’s murder, which has only drawn her closer to the people she loves.

I hope you enjoy Billie and her friends as they fight to clear a man in prison for murder utilizing new DNA technology. Prepare for suspense and action…and enjoy!

Erica Orloff

Trace of Innocence
Erica Orloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ERICA ORLOFF

is a native New Yorker who relocated to sunny south Florida after vowing to never again dig her car out of the snow. She loves playing poker—a Bombshell trait—and likes her martinis dry. Visit her Web site at www.ericaorloff.com.

To my sister, Stacey, for always reading my books and being one of my biggest supporters.

Contents

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 1

Blood spatter was artfully arranged.

Photographs of crime-scene blood spatter, in stark black and white, were matted and framed, lining a long hallway with hardwood floors that squeaked as I walked.

I had stopped thinking of the photos as gruesome or even odd two years ago when I started working for Lewis LeBarge, my boss at New Jersey’s State Crime Laboratory and collector of all things macabre. He told me once that it came with the territory. “Spend enough time around the dead,” he had said to me, his New Orleans accent giving him a certain Southern charm, “and eventually you come up with ways to mock the Grim Reaper—just to let him know he hasn’t won…yet.” Lewis regularly talked to The Reaper like an old friend, asking him just how or why a dead body met its maker.

“Lewis?” I called out from the hallway. I had let myself in the front door of his old duplex in Weehawken.

“Up here,” he called out. “The office.”

I climbed the stairs. There were just two small bedrooms on the second story. One was the master bedroom, and the other he used as a home office, complete with Internet links to our database in the lab.

I poked my head in. “Ready?”

“For you, darlin’, always.” He winked at me, his prematurely gray hair giving him a distinguished look, making him seem older than his forty years.

I spied a new photo on the wall. The blood puddle next to the gunshot victim looked like black syrup. “Has anyone ever suggested to you that perhaps the reason you never make it past the first date with a woman is your taste in art?”

“Now, Billie, I’m just waitin’ for you to realize we’re the ones meant to be together. And until then—” he mock-sighed “—I remain alone and desperately lonely in this cold Northern city.”

“Don’t give me that…your New Orleans gentleman charm is a magnet for women. I’ve seen them clustered around you like bees buzzing around a flower.”

“I never hurt for first dates, but, as you so kindly pointed out, it’s getting to date number two that’s difficult.”

I looked over at the aquarium tank on the shelf, which housed an enormous tarantula he had named “Ripper,” after the serial killer he once wrote a thesis on. I’m not squeamish—you can’t be, working in a forensics lab—but spiders give me the creeps. Especially hairy ones.

“Maybe you should try telling them you do something sane. Boring, even. Ever try saying you’re an accountant? Working with numbers all day is certainly an improvement over saying you spent the day examining brain matter.”

“Eventually, I’d be found out. And with the exception of you, there aren’t many women who enjoy discussin’ blowflies on dead bodies and the rate of maggot infestation over a lovely supper of jambalaya.”

“Really? I would have thought some women would love to hear all about it. Especially while eating.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got you figured out. You, dear Lewis, love to scare them off.”

“Perhaps I do.” He winked at me. “How’s that cop you’ve been dating?”

“Good…when he’s on the wagon.”

“And when he’s not?”

“Come on, Lewis, neither of us has a stellar track record in the love department.”

“We’re both married to the job.”

“I suppose we are. You ready?”

“Darlin’, I wouldn’t miss this chance to mingle with the underworld of New Jersey for anything. Your family is like an anthropological field study.”

“Shut up,” I snapped, but grinned at him as he stood up, ducking his head slightly to avoid hitting the overhead lamp. Lewis stood a lanky six foot two inches in his custom cowboy boots. He wore his standard-issue black Levi’s and white oxford cloth shirt, well-worn at the elbows, with a pair of black onyx cuff links I swear he put on every shirt he wore. He turned off the lamp and the two of us made our way downstairs and out the door. My big maroon Cadillac was parked on the street.

“Still driving the Sherman land tank, I see.”

“I can’t part with it—despite how much gas this thing guzzles. My uncle Sean left it to me when he went inside.”

“‘Inside,’” Lewis mused, as he climbed in the car Uncle Sean gave me when he drew thirty years for aggravated assault and murder—he’d not only killed his victim, but taken a hacksaw to him. “I do love how the Quinn family has such special euphemisms—like this party we’re going to.”

“What? It’s a Welcome Home party for my father. What’s wrong with that?”

“You mean a Welcome Home from Rahway Prison party. But no doubt your aunt Helen will make one of her wonderful cheesecakes for the occasion. I’m fond of the strawberry one. Very moist.”

“Lewis, it’s still a coming-home party, no matter where he was prior to actually coming home. Besides, this time was really stupid. A parole violation…busted at an illegal card game. I mean, come off it. You sometimes sit in with them, too.”

I started the car and pulled away from the curb, biting my lip in irritation for a minute. There was nothing I hated more than cops going after bullshit crimes when murderers and child molesters were a plague.

Lewis leaned back against the plush velour seats. “Well, all I can say is family parties with y’all is like stepping into a Scorsese film. I love bein’ around your relatives. They are quite entertainin’.”

I drove from Lewis’s place to JFK Boulevard and eventually steered my way toward Hoboken, coping with heavy traffic.

“But you know, Billie, I’ve still never understood how it is you managed to turn out…honest and law-abiding, if a little unusual around the edges.”

I shrugged, staring ahead at the highway. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, I know you’ve thought about it. You must have some explanation.”

I had thought about it. Endlessly. Until my head hurt, sometimes. My mother had disappeared when I was nine. The cops had bungled the case, more interested in focusing on my father—head of an Irish crime family—than in uncovering the truth. When her body turned up six months later—nothing left but bones and the shreds of her dress—they arrested the wrong man, eventually freeing him without the case going to trial when his alibi was airtight. He’d been sitting in county lockup the night of her murder, on a DUI charge.

“I don’t know, Lewis, I just wanted to solve murders. And if I became a cop, my family would have disowned me. So working for you is about as close as I can get to fighting the bad guys legally. Why did you go into forensics?”

“You know. An obsession with blood and guts. Liked to drive my mama mad with bring-in’ home dead animals.”

Of course, I knew Lewis’s reasons ran as deep as my own. He’d been at Tufts, bent on an academic career as a scientist and college professor when the bayous of Louisiana began giving up their dead. One by one, floaters came to the surface, women tortured and murdered by a serial killer. One of the dead was his childhood sweetheart. His path changed, and he never looked back.

The two of us drove through the streets of Hoboken to Quinn’s Pub, owned by my father’s brother, Tony. If “pub” conjures up images of darts and leather booths, that’s not Quinn’s. It’s a rough bar you don’t go to unless you know Tony—or can hold your own among the tough guys who hang there after long shifts driving cement mixers, or otherwise breaking their backs earning a living. It’s one of the last neighborhood places around. I parked the car around the corner on the street and the two of us made our way to the entrance. The sidewalks were already teeming with relatives and pals of my dad.

“Billie!” Tony threw his rock-hard, tattooed arms around me as we maneuvered our way inside, squeezing past the crowds. “Your dad’s at the tables. How you doin’, Lewis?”

“Fine, just fine,” Lewis said, smiling and taking a bottle of beer offered to him by Pammie, a waitress in skin-tight black jeans and a Quinn’s Pub T-shirt—black with a green shamrock embroidered on the chest. I saw her eye him flirtatiously.

I took Lewis’s other hand so I wouldn’t lose him as we snaked our way through the bar. We reached the back room, with its four pool tables. Dad was about to sink his last ball into the corner pocket. He let out a whoop when it went in, the ball spinning fast, and collected his forty bucks from his opponent. Then he spotted me and came over and planted a kiss on the top of my head.

“Billie.” He smiled and looked at me, then grabbed me in a hug. With Dad and me, we don’t have to say much. We know how we feel.

Dad stands about six feet tall—a good four inches taller than I am. We both have black hair, though his is now flecked with gray at the temples. We both have greenish-blue eyes. He has an olive complexion, though, and mine is pale with a smattering of freckles on my cheeks and nose. My nose turns up just a bit—and I look like a tomboy, with two deep dimples. Even though I’m twenty-nine, I still get carded when I buy beer at the grocery store.

“Good to see you, Daddy. Sorry I didn’t get you from prison today—I was knee-deep in analyzing a shipment of drugs found in someone’s trunk. Heroin. Street value near a million dollars. Uncle Tony said it wasn’t a problem to go get you.”

“Nah, not at all.” Dad shook his head in disgust. “Besides, it’s good to get that crap off the streets.” The Quinn family had its hand in bookmaking, a little loan-sharking and trafficking in stolen property—mostly pirated DVDs. Occasionally, a Quinn family member will fight violence with violence. But my father won’t tolerate drugs. Not just in my brother and me growing up, but in anyone who’s going to have anything to do with the Quinn family.

“Want to play a game, Lewis? A friendly wager?”

Lewis looked at me and grinned. My father had to serve a four-month sentence for parole violation. The entire time, Lewis had been practicing his pool game. He was hoping to actually beat my father, something he hadn’t been able to do since the day they met.

“As you so eloquently say, rack ’em up.”

The two of them bet twenty bucks each, which I held in my right front pocket to make it official, and soon they were playing hot and heavy.

Despite Lewis’s near-daily practice, he was still down two when we heard a commotion out front. Shouts rose above the usual din of the crowded pub, and I turned my head to see the crowd actually morphing, moving as it accommodated a growing brawl. A crowd in a bar fight seems to become a living thing.

“Christ, it’s Murphy’s boys,” my father said.

Lewis looked at me quizzically.

“Hand me that,” I said, gesturing to his pool cue. He did and I stood waiting. So did my father.

Within two minutes, the brawl had pushed its way into the pool room. I recognized three of my cousins and all five Murphy brothers going at it. One cousin connected with a solid left hook on the square chin of Pat Murphy, and let loose with a stream of expletives, ending with, “…that’s what you get for beating up a woman.”

That was enough for my father and me. I hoisted the pool cue and brought it down on the shoulder of Jimmy “Tank” Murphy. He turned to take a swing at me, but I held the cue like a bat and gave him a solid swing right in the ribs. He fell back against a pool table, grabbed a glass and threw it at my face. It missed and shattered to the floor. Next thing I knew, a striped pool ball barely missed my forehead. Chairs were overturned, more glasses broke, and I decided I’d had enough.

I looked around at the escalating fight and knew Tank was the key to it. Whenever the biggest, burliest, nastiest Murphy went down, the other brothers usually fell in line. Blood poured from Tank’s nose, but still he charged like a bull. I took the pool cue as he came at me and instead of swinging at his ribs, I lowered the cue and brought it up, with all my might, between his legs. He immediately collapsed as I connected with my intended pair of targets.

Slowly, surely, the brawl died down from there. The Murphy brothers were bounced out the door by Tony’s three sons—one a muscle-bound bodybuilder the width of my Cadillac. The pub was a mess, but it was no showplace to begin with.

Lewis surveyed the wreckage. “Do y’all know how to throw a party without it ending up like the O.K. Corral?”

“It’s an old feud.”

“Feud? I’d say it’s World War III.”

“Come on.” I kissed my father goodbye and gingerly climbed over the broken glass and chairs, making my way with Lewis outside. When we got out on the sidewalk and started walking to our car, I said, “My brother, Mikey, fell in love with the youngest Murphy sister. They’ve been living together for a year now.”

“Isn’t your brother in prison at the moment?”

“Yeah. He gets out next month. But Marybeth and my brother are still sickeningly in love. Anyway, there’s bad blood with the Murphys. Always has been. My father and old man Murphy used to fight it out over bookmaking territory. And the brothers are really not nice guys. I take it one of them hit a girl tonight. But really, it’s old stuff—mostly having to do with Dad.”

“Your father was involved in illegal activity?” Lewis asked with mock horror.

I punched him in the arm. “Go back to the South, you ass.”

“So these Murphys, they just show up and start brawls?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re quite handy with that pool cue.”

“Practice. My father and brother have been hustling pool my whole life. Sometimes people don’t take too kindly to losing.”

“I was so close to beating him tonight.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“But I was!”

“Lewis, you’ve improved, but Minnesota Fats doesn’t have to worry.”

We turned a corner, and I immediately stopped in my tracks and put my arm out to halt Lewis, too.

“Wish I’d brought that pool cue,” I muttered. Because there, sitting on the hood of my land tank, was the biggest, most hulking man I’d ever seen in my life. And he was clearly waiting for us.

Chapter 2

“Can I help you?” I asked warily.

The man slid off my hood and stood on the sidewalk, thrusting out his hand, which was the size of a baseball mitt. “Joe Franklin,” he said, smiling.

I didn’t take his hand. “What do you want?”

“A minute of both of your time.”

I turned to look at Lewis, but he had broken out in a huge grin. “Joe Franklin! My God, but I once made a thousand bucks off of you.” He walked to the man and shook his hand.

“You two know each other?” I asked.

“No,” said Lewis. “Never met. But this is Joe Franklin from the New Orleans Saints. Center. Retired. Blew his knee out, home game against Tampa Bay Bucs.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. I was completely confused, but then again, this was Lewis we were talking about. He invites confusion with the wily way he talks sometimes.

Joe Franklin smiled. He had the slightest of gaps between his two front teeth, which gleamed like a toothpaste-commercial smile. “We had a few losing seasons when I was with the Saints. You must have bet against the home team.”

“Naw, not me. I bet the over-under. I would never bet against the Saints. And you were the greatest center in the NFL at the time.”

“Thanks. Nice to be remembered. Well, listen, Mr. LeBarge—”

“Lewis.”

“Well, Lewis…Ms. Quinn—”

“How do you know my name?” I asked suspiciously.

“I’m the founder, with my partner, C.C., of the Justice Foundation.”

Now it all made sense to me. The Justice Foundation was a nonprofit group dedicated to freeing innocent prisoners through the use of DNA evidence.

“I’d like,” he said, “to buy you both a drink and see if maybe you might see it in your hearts to help us.”

I rolled my eyes. Where I come from, we know that if you’re in prison, even if the charge is made-up, chances are you belong there anyway. The guy they originally thought killed my mother was freed when he came up with an alibi. But he was arrested not six months after his release for strangling his stepdaughter.

“I don’t know.” I hesitated.

“Well, I could always use a drink,” Lewis said. “If you promise to regale me with the story of the time y’all beat the Bucs with that Hail Mary pass, I could at least listen to what you have to say.”

“Deal,” said Joe, flashing his megawatt smile. “Margaritas sound okay?”

Lewis nodded. “Man after my own heart. I like a nice tequila myself. Also like a smooth bourbon.”

“He hasn’t met a liquor he doesn’t like,” I muttered. Then I shrugged and sighed, but fell into step with Lewis and Joe. As we walked, I noticed that the massive man next to me was wearing loafers that had easily set him back a grand, and his pants had the crisp cut of an Italian designer. His leather jacket—which had to have been custom-made, given his ex-NFL build—looked butter soft.

“You went to law school after the NFL, right?” Lewis asked.

Joe nodded. “Blew my knee out, but they still had to honor the rest of my contract. I had invested wisely over the five years I played. Owned my place outright, owned my car. Didn’t buy into the flash—except maybe for my clothes.” He grinned, running his hands down the lapel of his jacket. “I drove a nice Mercedes sedan, not a souped-up sports car. I was set for life, as far as I was concerned. Invested in real estate, some solid stocks. My mama taught me very well. ‘Don’t be a flash in the pan, son,’ she used to say. I was restless in retirement. She’d always instilled in me a love of reading and education so I decided to go to law school. After a couple of years with a blue-chip firm, I started my own private practice. I represent a lot of my old NFL buddies. Making almost as much as when I was with the league. But I started the Foundation because I felt that there were too many young African-American men in prison and that DNA might help get some of the innocent ones out. Since then, we’ve freed men of all colors and backgrounds.”

I pulled my jacket tighter around me as a brisk wind whipped down between the tall apartment buildings. The sign for Coyote Canyon was lit in neon, with a giant green cactus sign jutting out over the door. The place used to be a hole-in-the-wall, before Hoboken became a trendy place to live back two decades or so ago. Yuppies started renting anything and everything they could find, hence Coyote Canyon became popular with the suit-and-tie crowd fresh off the commuter trains that hurtled beneath the river to Manhattan.

When we walked in, the hostess recognized Joe and pointed to a table where a woman sat waiting for us. We maneuvered around the women in Manhattan stylish clothes and the men with real Rolex watches on their wrists and sat down. Joe leaned over to give the woman a peck on the cheek first.

“Lewis LeBarge, Billie Quinn, this is Sister Catherine Christine. She goes by C.C.”

The woman stood and smiled and shook each of our hands. She was stunning—and not dressed in a nun’s habit. She wore a simple black turtleneck and black pants over black riding boots. She had a plain gold band on her left hand, and a simple gold cross around her neck with a diamond chip in the center of it. Her hair was long—and she had lots of it, in tight, strawberry-blond curls.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us,” she said, smiling.

I looked over at Lewis, who was clearly captivated by her. He drawled, “May I ask how a nun and a football player ended up as partners?” He smiled as we sat down.

C.C. looked at Joe, who nodded.

“Well,” she said in a soft, gentle voice. “I was in prison ministry…. I know it seems an odd choice, but I always felt like prisoners are the modern-day lepers. Forgotten, tossed away…And I met a young man by the name of Thomas Garson. He’d been railroaded into taking a plea bargain for murder two, but he was innocent.”

“How did you know?” Lewis asked.

“Intuition. Prayer. Divine guidance. And I’ve been doing this long enough to smell the guilt on a man.”

I tried to avoid laughing out loud. Lewis and I were creatures of science—and intuition and prayer weren’t high on our agenda. Lewis was an atheist. I hadn’t darkened a Catholic church in years. I understood what was under a microscope or in my test tube. I trusted traces of blood and sperm, or intricate patterns of crystallized drugs. Like most criminalists, I was a chemistry major in college, and I had my masters in molecular biology.

“Thomas was a fan of Joe’s. His family had moved to New Jersey from Louisiana when he was a boy, but like a lot of people, he still rooted for that hometown team. Me? I could move to Alaska and still root for the Giants.”

“A nun who follows football?” Lewis cocked an eyebrow.

She laughed and continued. “I promised to try to get him an autograph or a letter of encouragement. I’m sure Joe thought I was crazy, but I tracked him down. I hadn’t realized he had gone into law. I told him about Thomas, and one thing led to another and Joe took his case pro bono and won an appeal. Thomas is now the file clerk for Joe’s firm. Has a new baby daughter and a pretty young wife who’s a paralegal.”

“A happy ending,” I said dryly. C.C. nodded. “But for every happy ending, there’s an innocent man languishing. More like ten innocent men. If they’re of color or they’re Hispanic or foreign-born, the number rises.”

A waitress came over and Joe ordered a pitcher of margaritas and a basket of chips with salsa.

“No offense, Sister,” I began. “But we just process the evidence. It’s not for us to determine if some guy is guilty or innocent.”

“Please call me C.C.” she said. I wanted to dislike her because she gave off an aura of such kindness my instinct was to think she was a fake, but I couldn’t make myself. She just seemed that nice.

The waitress returned with a pitcher, four glasses and a basket filled with freshly warmed tortilla chips.

“Look,” Joe said, leaning on the table with both elbows. “Walter Leighton used to advise us. But now that he’s a super celebrity, he’s forgotten us. We need you two to help us look at cases to see if there’s even the possibility that new evidence might reverse a conviction or win a new trial.”

“I always knew that Walter’s swelled head would get the best of him,” Lewis said.

Walter Leighton had written the forensic bible. When he consulted on a couple of really huge cases, his face time on Court TV, Dateline, Primetime Live and the Today Show increased until he was pretty much a household name and a celebrity. Then he had a ghostwriter pen two novels about a forensics investigative team and a police detective, sold about a million copies of each, and now he was famous and rich. Lewis hated the sight of Walter. I used to think it was professional jealousy. After I got to know Lewis better, I realized he saw the arrogance in Walter. It would be just like that guy to abandon the Justice Foundation. If Walter had walked away from C.C. and Joe, I knew just what Lewis was going to say before he even said it.

“We’ll be happy to offer our professional opinions where we can,” he said.

We. I’d gotten used to that, too. It was as if he thought of us as one person in that lab.

C.C. took out a folder from her briefcase. Her eyes were moist when she looked at us. “You have no idea how grateful we are.” She absentmindedly patted Joe’s forearm. “This work…it’s our lives.”

She slid the folder across the table.

Staring up at me from the mug shot was a man who made me blink slowly several times. He was beautiful. But beyond that, his eyes were soulful. Large and dark. He had a small scar on his left cheek, right near the corner of his eye, which brought my gaze to rest right at his pupils. His eyelashes were dark and made his eyes appear almost angelic. His hair was black and thick, with curl at the ends. He held up his processing number, and he looked stunned.

“What’s pretty boy’s story?” Lewis asked.

“David Falco is serving life for a rape-murder. The suicide king case,” C.C. replied.

“I don’t remember that one,” I said.

“About ten years ago. A woman murdered in her apartment. She was an acquaintance of his. She was splayed out, and the suicide king from a deck of playing cards—you know, the one with the knife through the head—was left by her side. A knife had been plunged into her temple.”

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “Now I remember.” I had learned not to shudder anymore. Too many depraved cases.

“Evidence tying him to the murder?” I asked. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I had a knot in my belly, as if I wanted to believe that the man whose face was so innocent-looking had to be, in fact, innocent.

“Not much. He admitted he had been in her apartment, so his fingerprints were there, but no fingerprint on the knife or the playing card. He was seen leaving her apartment in the window of time when she was likely murdered—but so was another man who was never found or questioned. David said the three of them had been hanging out together.”

“So who was the other man?”

“He doesn’t know. Said it was a friend of hers. But he never got the guy’s name.”

“Sounds fishy,” Lewis said.

“I know,” said C.C., “but there was possibly semen on her panties—panties lost by the police. The case was botched from the word go. And I don’t know…he just doesn’t give off a dangerous vibe.”

“None of them do,” Lewis said, pouring himself another margarita.

“That’s not so. Even men who are innocent, after a time in prison, they start to smell of violence. They give off that feeling. But not him.”

“So where do we come in?” I asked, still fascinated by the picture.

“Well, the panties surfaced after the trial in a paper bag in another evidence file. They were well preserved and I figure we have one shot at testing what may or may not be semen. I mean, we think it is. And we just need a break on this one.”

I sipped my margarita and stared down at the picture. I wondered what the years in prison had done to that innocent-looking face.

Chapter 3

I drove a drunken Lewis home. He was a goner, and I don’t mean just drunk—though he was that, too.

“Isn’t she amazing?”

“Who?”

“Don’t give me that—C.C.” He pressed the electric button to move his seat way back in the car so he could stretch his legs.

I tried to avoid swerving off the road. “You can’t be serious.”

“What? You don’t think she’s beautiful?”

“Yes, I think she’s stunning. She’s also an N-U-N. Lewis…she’s not available.”

“I know.” He smacked his forehead with his hand. “My luck I finally meet a woman besides you that I’m interested in and she’s a nun. A beautiful nun, not one with a hairy mole on her chin.”

“I’m not even going to ask why that would be your impression of nuns, because I’m sure there’s some demented Lewis LeBarge story having to do with a decrepit old nun and I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s a good story.”

“Save it,” I snapped. “Lewis, be straight with me. Is the reason we’re doing this consulting work revenge against Walter Leighton or is it because you’ve got a crush on a nun?”

“A combination.”

“But it really has nothing to do with wanting to see justice served.”

“Not really, no.”

“You drive me nuts.”

“I know. Listen, do you recall whether the lid was closed on Ripper’s tank?”

About once a week, Lewis lost his tarantula.

“I think it was closed.”

I eased my car into a space on the street.

“You want to crash here tonight?” Lewis asked, looking at me.

“As long as Ripper is in his tank, yeah.”

We climbed out of the car and went into Lewis’s house. I was tired, but I was still thinking about the whole crazy night. Lewis gave me a drunken hug, which for him also usually means planting a very loud kiss on my cheek—an exaggerated form of affection.

“There’s pork rinds and Slim Jims if you’re hungry, and your usual in the fridge.”

“I’ll pass on the snacks, but I think I’ll have a Dr. Brown’s.”

I had long ago developed an addiction for Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda—not always easy to find. The addiction was nurtured by my father, who used to take me and my brother to every diner between Rahway Correctional, where we visited my uncles, and home in Montclair, New Jersey, as well as every town we ever visited that had a diner, for that matter. Lewis always kept a supply of black cherry soda on hand, along with his sickening snack choices.

I heard Lewis climb up his stairs, and then I heard first one boot, then the other hit the floor as he pulled them off. I wandered into the kitchen and pulled a Dr. Brown’s out of the refrigerator. I walked back into the living room. A soft chenille blanket was draped over the back of the very comfortable leather couch. I settled a pillow on the arm of the couch and took the remote and clicked on to Comedy Central. Part of me wanted to laugh. I popped the top on my soda and started drinking. It hit the spot, but then, like the soda often did, it made me start thinking about my father, my brother, my mother and me. It was entwined with my memories of childhood. And then, inevitably, I thought of the night she disappeared.

The lights of a cop cruiser reflected through the window and onto the walls of my bedroom. Red pulsated and filled my room. I rubbed my eyes and sat up as a police officer entered my room, the beam from his flashlight hitting my face. The cop lowered the flashlight immediately.

“Hey, sweetie,” he soothed. “You okay?”

I nodded sleepily.

“Okay, then. You go back to sleep, honey.”

“Is Mommy okay?”

“Why?”

“I heard them arguing.”

“Who?”

I shrugged.

The cop came closer to me. “Think, honey. Can you remember what they said?”

I shook my head. “Where’s Mikey?”

“Your brother?”

I nodded.

“He’s downstairs with Officer Martin. You want to come down there?”

I nodded, and my teeth started chattering. Something was wrong, and I had no idea what. The cop came to my bed, and I saw the shadow of pity cross his face, a shadow I have learned to recognize many times since then. He scooped me into his arms and carried me down in my nightgown to the kitchen where my brother, Mikey, sat eating cookies with Officer Martin. They were dunking Keebler chocolate chip cookies into milk, and Mikey was talking a mile a minute.

I looked around the kitchen, teeth still chattering, and was handed a glass of Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda in a highball glass with ice cubes. The officers asked me questions that I no longer remember. All I do remember is the look on my father’s face when he got home that night.

She would never have left them alone, he screamed. He shouted what I already knew. In the instant I saw the red lights reflecting on my bedroom walls, in the moments of sipping Dr. Brown’s, the bubbles tingling my nose, I knew. Whereas Mikey always had about him the belief that the world was a safe place, I knew differently.

Like Ripper on the prowl, even as a little kid I knew that sometimes bad things escaped from their hiding places.

Chapter 4

I spent that Monday at work testing a shipment of heroin to determine its purity level. Lewis called me into his office at around four.

“Here’s the file on the suicide king case. We’re supposed to look for something, anything, missed, in terms of DNA evidence.”

“You looked at the file?”

He nodded.

“And?”

“And there was a tiny bit of what could be sperm on the panties. Too small to have been tested that many years ago.”

“Anything else?”

“Well,” he drawled. “I’m no lawyer.”

I howled with laughter. Lewis’s IQ hovered near 170, which I only found out one night over many shots of tequila and a poker game with my father, brother, uncle and Lewis. As I recall, I lost a bundle—and Lewis lost more. When Lewis lost even his watch that night, he bemoaned a man of his IQ being at the mercy of Lady Luck—and the Quinns. And he accidentally cited his IQ score. Like most geniuses, he could be prickly. And like most geniuses, he knew better than anyone else. And that included attorneys.

“And?”

“And the man had completely incompetent counsel, Billie. Guess who his court-appointed lawyer was?”

“Don’t tell me….”

Lewis nodded. “Cop-a-plea.”

Lewis and I may have been scientists residing in a world of DNA. However, we got to know the different cops and attorneys and prosecutors on the basis of their reputations. Cop-a-plea Fred? He had the worst rep of all. He had a serious comb-over, wore sweat-stained polyester suits, and bottles rattled around inside his briefcase.

“If Cop-a-plea was his court-appointed attorney, he didn’t stand a chance in hell. Fred doesn’t care about guilt or innocence, just avoiding actually showing up for a trial.”

Lewis nodded. “This case is a textbook example of how to send an innocent man to prison for the rest of his life.”

“So now what?”

“Now we test the tiniest of specks, evidence that was unable to be tested before. With the newer tests, I’m pretty sure if it’s not too degraded, we can get results. Most of this guy’s chances are pinned on that…we have to hope it’s not so degraded as to be useless.”

“Lewis?”

“Hmm?”

“You read the file, do you think he’s innocent? Or are you still just doing this because you have a crush on the ultimate unattainable woman?”

Lewis didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he swept a hand at his “wall art.” His office also had crime-scene pictures, as well as some scientific prints of cells and blood under microscopes. “You know, it would be real easy, as a man of science, to remain forever detached from what it is we’re actually doing. Over here—” his hand gestured to a crime scene with a body lying under a sheet “—we have the worst of what man can do. And over here—” he swept his hand to a cell photo that had been taken with an infrared camera “—we have cells, DNA and what they tell us. And never the twain shall meet. I mean, that’s how it can be. We just remain in this world—the lab. We can be lab rats. But sometimes, maybe, we have to emerge and go into the other world…. Yes, it’s very possible he’s innocent, Billie. And maybe it bothers me. And if I can do something about that, then I suppose I should.”

“Dear God, does this mean you’re getting a conscience?”

“Don’t let it get out.”

I knew, of course, that when the bayous of Louisiana released a floater who was once his childhood love he had had a determination to do right, using science. But I also knew he and I were both guilty of keeping our universe microscopic and not seeing the bigger picture. Maybe life was easier that way.

“Billie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think, if we do this, we’ll be doing God’s work?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I don’t, but I thought…I don’t know. Do you think we’d be doing God’s work?”

“God and I are distant friends, Lewis. But yeah, maybe.” I took the case file and turned to leave his office, and over my shoulder, I said, “She really got to you, didn’t she?”

He didn’t say anything, but Lewis LeBarge, the most rascally man I knew, definitely was doing some thinking.

My desk was piled three inches high with papers and files, and I sighed and looked at my watch. I’d be leaving after dark. The end of daylight saving time the previous weekend guaranteed that. I opened the Justice Foundation’s case file and began poring over every detail. Police reports, evidence analysis, witness interviews. My heart raced a bit. I had to admit, like Lewis, that there was definitely something about piecing together a puzzle that was exciting.

Cammie Whitaker was the suicide king’s victim—his only victim.

I took out a pad and pen and started writing questions as they came to me.

Why the suicide king playing card?

Suicide?

King = Power?

Cammie Whitaker was a beautiful redhead, a former college cheerleader for St. John’s with blue eyes and pale, freckled skin. In her college yearbook photo there was an aloofness, something unknowable to her as she stared at the camera. In the crime-scene photos, her blue eyes stared upward, and a knife was plunged into her temple. Her body was perfectly arranged, and there were thumb-prints and finger marks in mottled red-purple around her neck. She had been strangled, as well. Everything else about her, though, was serene. Her nightgown was beautifully splayed out just so, as if, when the detectives walked in, she had simply been sleeping.

Her apartment was in Ft. Lee, a town that faced Manhattan and was an easy commute from Jersey. Rents weren’t cheap—and her apartment reflected that. The place was stunning. The furniture was all French country, tasteful. If they weren’t actual antiques, they looked like pretty good reproductions. She was twenty-three. Pretty expensive stuff for someone that young.

Old money?

I looked through the file folder. Occupation…bartender. That place would need a hell of a lot of tips, but then again, I tended bar at Quinn’s Pub every once in a while when they were short a bartender on a shift, or to cover for my cousins when they took vacation. I never ceased to be amazed at how much cash I took home.

I read interview after interview, some of them new ones done by Joe Franklin or C.C., about David Falco. Each one focused on how gentle he was, how he always took care of his neighbors—the kind of guy who, when it snowed, shoveled the walkways of the elderly woman next door as well as his own, throwing down rock salt and making sure there was no remaining ice that could cause her to fall. It was hard to reconcile that image with the one of Cammie, knife plunged in her head. Then again, my uncle Sean could regale a roomful of nieces and nephews with stories and amateur magic tricks, help us catch fireflies and give me a quarter for every A on my report card—and then go out and shoot a man in the head. I knew about men who could compartmentalize their family lives with their mob lives, keeping them separate.

I looked at photo after photo of David Falco, from his trial, his mug shot, family photos of him as a boy, as a teen. He was sent away when he was twenty-two. He had worked as a stonemason, and on the side he did restoration projects. He was apparently a very talented painter. Rough childhood, from the wrong side of the tracks, but he had made something of himself. Until he met Cammie Whitaker.

Lewis dropped by my desk. “Want to get a bite?”

“Nah,” I said. “I want to go home and put on my pj’s. I’m really beat. What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Ugh. Yet another twelve-hour day. How is it that you manage to work me like this?”

“You’re in love with me.” He winked at me.

“Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s it…. Go on home, Lewis. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you, Billie.”

After Lewis left, I shoved the Falco file into my briefcase and grabbed the keys to my monstrosity of a souped-up Cadillac. I headed to the parking garage. My heels echoed on the cement. A few pipes overhead dripped dirty water.

My Cadillac was easy to spot. It even had a little orange pom-pom attached to the antenna that I kept forgetting to take off. I walked to it and inserted my key into the lock when I heard the unmistakable sound of a clip being inserted into a gun. I froze, my back to whoever had the gun.

“Turn around real slow, Billie Quinn.”

Ordinarily, it really pisses me off when someone tells me what to do. However, a gun changes things in direct proportion to how likely it is I think the person might use it.

I turned around very slowly, my arms in the air. Whoever it was knew my name, so it wasn’t a random mugging. When I finished turning around, I recognized the twin brother of Cammie Whitaker. I couldn’t remember his first name. He had sat front and center at the trial and was in photo after photo. And he was the last person I wanted to see with a gun.

I nodded. “Hello,” I said softly, cautiously.

His eyes were bloodshot, and I thought I smelled scotch. “You’re a whore. You know that? You’re a fucking whore.”

I inhaled and tried to exude calm. “I’m sorry…” I struggled to recall his name. Harry. That was it. “I’m sorry, Harry.”

“You’re not.” He started to cry, and the gun shook in his hand. “You’re not sorry. You’re working to free that freak from prison.”

“How would you know that?”

“Those Justice Foundation people have been snooping around. I followed them. And now they’ve got you and that LeBarge guy on the case. Well, I’m telling you to drop it.”

“Look, Harry… I can understand your pain—”

“You can’t understand anything about that!” he snarled at me. He was a good-looking guy, but I could see the toll grief had taken on him. Whereas Cammie was forever twenty-three in death, Harry had grown older, and living without his murdered sister, coupled with, I guessed, alcohol, left wrinkles crisscrossing his face. His cheeks were mottled. His eyes empty.

“I can. My mother was murdered. And putting the wrong guy away for it isn’t the way to peace, Harry.”

“He’s the right guy. The jury found him guilty in under three hours.”

In my mind, I thought that was more a testament to his incompetent counsel than guilt or innocence, but I didn’t say that to Harry.

“He may very well be the right guy—and science doesn’t lie, Harry. People do. So if he’s the right guy, the tests I run will tell us that.”

Part of me understood Harry’s reaction. Cammie’s family, poor Harry here, had to live with the fact that if the cops had caught and maybe sent away the wrong man, then the real guy was out there—somewhere. If that proved true, who did they have to hate, to be angry with? If Falco was innocent, then they needed someone new to despise. That left the Justice Foundation. And now, thanks to Lewis’s ego and his fascination with C.C., that left me.

“Harry…I don’t know who did it. I just know that I want the truth.”

“You see him?” His eyes were deranged. “You see him on TV? He never said anything. So quiet. Maybe a friend of his did it, and he stood around and watched. I get the feeling he’d like that.”

Harry, his hair prematurely gray from the stress of his loss, his eyes sunken, started sobbing. I moved a step closer to him, and he cocked the gun and steadied it at me.

“No…no, you’re a bitch. You don’t care that my sister was murdered. That someone raped her. You don’t give a shit about anything but proving your case. Being famous. You and those Justice Foundation friends of yours. You’re all going to rot in hell.”

“Look, Harry…put the gun down. You want to murder me? Will that bring back Cammie? Will imprisoning the wrong guy bring her back? Leaving him there won’t bring you peace, Harry. It won’t take away that gnawing panic inside.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit, Harry. I know better than anyone that peace is elusive. And revenge isn’t as sweet as people say it is.”

Harry, his face ruddy from crying, rubbed at his nose. “Just leave the case alone.”

Harry shook his head and then took his free hand—the one not holding the gun—and covered his eyes. And that’s when I knew I had to move. I just didn’t like the idea of my life being held in the balance by a man who was probably three sheets to the wind and grief stricken. So while Harry was distracted, I swiftly took my right hand and grabbed his, the one holding the gun. I took the palm of my other hand and smashed it against his neck, and then twisted his gun hand and forced him to drop the gun with a clatter to the cement floor of the garage.

Harry started to bend over to retrieve his weapon, and I kicked it under my car and then elbowed him with all my might in his ribs. My dad, when I became a teenager, insisted that I take a self-defense course. It was always there, unspoken between us, that what had happened to her could happen to me. I actually had a carry-and-conceal permit and could fire nearly as well as anyone I’d ever met at the firing range. The self-defense course, well…you can never replicate what happens when you really confront an assailant. But according to my instructor, Mr. Ichita, my elbow-to-rib move could snap a rib. Harry doubled over with a gasp. Perhaps Mr. Ichita had been right. Harry was trying to inhale, and I guessed the little popping sound I’d heard was bone breaking. I brought my fist down on top of his head and then backed up three paces and took a running dive under my car, retrieved the gun and commando-crawled to the other side of the car, rolled out from under it and trained the gun on poor, bereaved—and fucked-up—Harry.

“I’m going to pretend none of this ever happened, Harry.”

He had thrown up on the cement of the garage floor, and slowly regained his breath. With much grimacing he returned to standing position and looked me in the eye.

“Shoot me. Go ahead. Without Cammie, none of it matters.”

“Don’t tempt me, Harry.” The gun in my hand was steady.

“You going to call the police?”

I shook my head.

“How come?” He looked shocked.

“Because, Harry…in the still of the night, I know what it’s like to wonder who murdered someone I loved. My mother was murdered, Harry. And her killer was never caught. So I get what you feel. I get that the last thought before you fall asleep, the first thought when you wake, is, ‘What happened to Cammie?’ To the point where you can’t remember what she was like alive. She’s a body in the morgue to you. She’s someone screaming in the night for help. But I can tell you, Harry…putting away the wrong man isn’t going to raise her from the dead. So your gun is staying here with me. Go get in your car. And if I ever see you around here again, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”

Harry’s eyes widened.

“Do you know who Frank Quinn is?”

I waited while the name registered.

“The mob boss. Frank Quinn. He’s my father. You ever hear of him?”

He nodded. In fact, very few people in New York and New Jersey didn’t know who my father was. One of the last of the old-time mobsters.

“Yeah…Billie Quinn. That Quinn. Just means that me calling the cops over this incident would be the absolute least of your problems.”

His bottom lip quivered, and he backed away. His eyes moved toward the gun, as if he wanted to take it back somehow.

“Leave it,” I ordered. He nodded, then turned on his heel and ran, his footsteps echoing in the garage. It was dark out, the moon just a tiny sliver.

When he was out of sight, I opened my car finally, and slid into the front seat, the smooth dark velour soothing to my touch. It was only then, as I took the keys and started to put them in the ignition, that I began trembling. My teeth chattered, and my hands shook so badly I couldn’t steady them enough to hold the keys. I leaned my head forward and felt tears drop from my face onto the steering wheel. What had Lewis gotten us into?

Chapter 5

“Collect call for Billie Quinn. To accept the charges, say yes at the tone,” a mechanized female voice spoke. I waited for the tone and said yes.

“Hey, little sis.”

“Hey, Michael. How’s the inside treating you?”

“Two months and three days to go on my sentence. But who the fuck is counting, right?”

I laughed, hearing the cacophony of male voices in the background. “How’s your roommate?”

“You always make it sound like I’m off at college…or camp. My cell-mate? He’s got two years to go, but he’s a mean gin rummy player. I’m into him for two cartons of cigarettes. But I’ll earn it back.”

“Even on the inside, you’re always working the angle, Mikey.”

“Always, baby. Always…God…” He paused. “It’s good to hear your voice. How’s Pop?”

“Daddy…you know, he’s good. He’s eating his way through the state of New Jersey—everything he missed while he was inside. Italian subs from Vito’s, Aunt Helen’s cheesecakes, the pub’s burgers with fries and onion rings.”

“You’re making me hungry. I think we had Salisbury steak for dinner, but I can’t be positive. The gravy had the consistency of Alpo.”

My stomach churned at the thought.

“How was his homecoming party?”

“Awesome. Ended in a bar fight.”

“As only the Quinns’ parties can. That’s the sign it was really good.”

“It was the Murphy brothers.”

“Shit.” He sighed. “Poor Marybeth. Would you check on her for me?”

“Sure thing.”

“You hear from Uncle Sean?”

“Yeah. I visited him a couple of weeks ago. Brought him a picture of his Caddy. He misses the car more than me, I think.”

“The fucking maroon land tank?”

“Yeah. He’s okay. I promised him I’d drive up to visit him next month, too.”

“Courtesy of the Quinn men, Billie, you’ve seen the inside of every prison from southern New Jersey to Dannemora.”

“Dannemora is the worst. I feel like I’m going back to some medieval torture castle when I drive there.” The Dannemora prison rose like a fortress in the mist in upstate New York.

“I’m sorry, Billie.”

“For what, Mikey?”

“Everything. We should be protecting you, watching out for you. And we’re all always on the inside, and you’re alone. Spending your weekends driving to visiting hours and walking through metal detectors to make sure you ain’t bringing us a file so we can escape.”

“I’m a big girl. What else am I going to do with my weekends?”

“I have one word for you, Billie. A rather radical idea—it’s called dating.”

“Well, I am sort of seeing Jack again. Though he’s pretty well sick of the fact that I spend my weekends visiting prisons, and I’m knee-deep in PCR tests and lab procedures. Then again, he’s a cop with a ton of baggage, so maybe we’re a good match.”

“You deserve a life, Billie. And this time, when I get out, I promise to keep my nose clean.”

I looked at the picture on my coffee table of me, my long black hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing faded Levi’s and a white T-shirt, no makeup, summer freckles on my suntanned face; Mikey, in jeans and a denim jacket, his black curly hair in need of a trim, his dimples cut deep into the hollows of his cheeks, his arm wrapped around my shoulder, head cocked to one side, lopsided grin as if he knew a funny story he was just dying to tell you; and Dad in his regulation orange prison jumpsuit, his hair cut prison short, graying at the temples, his face still unlined despite the life he lived.

“Mike,” I sighed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

He was silent. “You mad at me?”

“For what? Being who you are…? No, Mikey. I’ve never been mad at you for that. I’m not mad at Daddy. I’m not mad at Uncle Sean. I just worry. I don’t want you to ever go back in, Mike. I miss you.” I swallowed hard and wiped at a stray tear in the corner of my eye.

“Listen, the line for the phone is long. Let me go. Love ya.”

“Love you, too,” I said, then hung up. I looked around my apartment. A small one-bedroom, it boasted fourteen-foot ceilings with crown molding and wood floors. Were I a yuppie, I am sure the place would have looked fantastic with trendy furniture. Instead, it’s an eclectic mix and match—homey and comfortable, but without any definitive style. My coffee table belonged to my uncle Mack—he’s serving nine years in Sing Sing for racketeering. I had a really beautiful dining room table, too big for the space, which was where I ate and where I worked at night sometimes. Desk and table all in one. It was a beautiful cherrywood, from my cousin Joey, who had to leave town in a hurry. “I’ll buy new when I come back,” he’d said.

I had a nice television. I wasn’t sure if it was bought legally or not. My dad gave it to me, and I’ve found it’s much easier on my stress level to just not ask where his gifts come from. There’s usually no taking them back—no receipts.

A few chewed cat toys were strewn on the Oriental rug that once belonged to Uncle Sean. My cat, a Siamese named Raphael, came over to me and slid against my leg, purring.

“Hey, baby,” I whispered and bent down to pick him up. I stood and walked over to the wall unit. It was cluttered with Quinn family memories. Every available spot of shelf space boasted a picture frame—photo after photo of my family—extended cousins and uncles included.

I went to one picture that was always front and center. My mother smiled out from the middle of the photo, Mikey on one side of her, me on the other. Her smile was openmouthed, as if my father, the photographer, had caught her midlaugh. She had on rose-colored lipstick, her hair long and framing her face. High cheekbones, blue eyes slightly upturned at the corners. My father never got over her death. I suppose none of us has.

My mother disappeared when I was nine. At first, the police wouldn’t even investigate it because there was no proof she’d been abducted. They thought she had simply tired of being the wife of a mobster and had walked away. Eventually, they decided perhaps she had met with foul play, but by then the case was cold. And it wasn’t until six months later that her body was found. A chain was around her body’s neck—a neck that by that time was only bone. The case was never solved.

How would I feel, I wondered, if we found her killer after all these years, only to watch the system release him? In that moment, I knew. Lewis was my best friend, and I was all for freeing an innocent man—if he was innocent. But I was going to have to meet David Falco myself. Face-to-face. I was going to have to look him in the eye before I stirred up the ghost of a murdered woman.

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