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It wasn’t the trauma of seeing a corpse that had affected her—she hadn’t seemed fazed by the body on the floor. But her eyes kept flicking to the alley as if she expected that someone might come running in to murder the rest of them.
Had she seen more than she was letting on? Jenny clearly knew the dead man. She’d come back here to see him, hadn’t she? He’d been sitting in the stage area when Brittany had come to collect her. No one had followed Jenny from the main room.
Ronan’s thoughts shifted as his partner ducked inside the building. Five-five, with a broad, flat face, dark eyes, and brilliant red hair, he looked more like a grown-up Chucky doll than a detective.
Patrick Kearny had been Ronan’s best friend for the last eight years. Besides the chief, he was the only person that knew who Ronan really was. And though Paddy didn’t understand why anyone in their right mind would walk away from billions and a cushy desk job, he accepted Ronan’s passion for the work. And protected him more than he should.
“Detective Kearny,” Ronan said. “How kind of you to stop by. Got another pair of booties?” He gestured to the blue plastic sleeves his partner was slipping over his shoes. His partner’s name was Patrick, but Ronan had always called him Paddy at the man’s request—the Irishman had a strong brogue that vibrated your eardrums.
Paddy passed him a pair, then kneeled beside the body. “Aw, shit. Jason Mercer,” he said. “Handsome devil, isn’t he?”
Ronan blinked. “If you like tall and blond and… with a penis.”
Paddy snorted. “Nah, that’s what the chief called him the last time I brought him in—Handsome Devil. I arrested him for petty theft. Last I heard, he’d turned informant, but I can neither confirm nor deny that off the top of my head.”
Ronan drew his eyes back to the body. Six stab wounds—six. “If that’s the case, this might be payback—that many wounds is overkill. Anyone know he turned rat?”
“We’ll look into it,” Paddy said. But he didn’t sound convinced.
“Why else would an informant wind up stabbed to death in a strip joint?” That wasn’t really the question Ronan wanted an answer to. He wanted a reason to give the bartender a pass. Wanted a reason to believe that she wasn’t involved in this—any other explanation. As it was… she’d likely been kissing the man when someone had snuck up behind him and shoved a blade into his heart.
Paddy righted himself and stepped nearer to Ronan. “He was a thief first and foremost, so my guess is that he intended to rob the joint. It’s a Wednesday night, so not the highest cash day, but it’s also less crowded. Fewer witnesses.”
“The witnesses I have, the owner and the bartender, didn’t say anything about robbery—no one asked them for money. They say they heard him arguing with another man, but by the time they came out, Jason was dead, and anyone else was gone.”
“Maybe he was arguing with… a partner?” Paddy shrugged, but his dark eyes remained skeptical. “I’ll run him through the system, see who pops as a recent associate.”
“Either way, it’d be damn weird to kill him here, disagreement or not.” Ronan narrowed his eyes at the bloodstains on the floor, the tacky crimson glinting dully in the jaundiced overheads.
“I was thinking the same,” Paddy agreed. “They had to be here for something besides stabbing the shit out of each other.”
Paddy clearly hadn’t noticed the lipstick. He would—it would be in the forensic reports. But whatever had happened in this room, Ronan didn’t believe Jenny had killed Mercer in cold blood. She didn’t have enough blood on her to have done the deed herself. Same with her asshole boss—if Waylon had done it, he’d be covered head to toe in evidence.
Yet their demeanors were suspicious. Both had refused to meet his eyes—they looked guilty as hell. And there was no way things had gone down exactly as they’d said. Either those two were somehow complicit, accomplices in the murder itself, or they were protecting someone.
“You think the boss has his girls too scared to talk?” Paddy asked, reading his mind.
Ronan shrugged. “Maybe.”
Paddy didn’t know it, but Ronan was well aware that Waylon bullied his girls into holding back information from the police. That was one of the reasons Ronan had never been able to pull a search warrant—no women willing to go on record. Waylon held onto their tips each night and refused to pay any dancer who displeased him.
“It’s also possible that they really didn’t see the guy. The back door was open when I got here. Mercer didn’t put up much of a fight, so the assailant could have been in and out within a minute.”
“Maybe the bartender was blowing her boss in the office, and they don’t want anyone to know,” Paddy said, gesturing to the office door, and Ronan’s hackles rose.
No. Not her.
“Why would they hide that?” Ronan said instead. “She’s not underage. And I doubt he cares about an HR violation for getting a blow job from a bartender.”
Paddy’s eyes darkened, serious. “How did you get here so fast, anyway?” he asked, voice softer now. This time, his eyes held no hint of the joviality he usually wore like a mask, especially at horrific crime scenes. “Were you…” He glanced at the door to the main room, his meaning clear: Were you watching the women on the poles? Are you stalking someone… again?
Paddy leaned his face nearer to Ronan’s and whispered, “You know this shit gets you into trouble. You get caught up again?—”
“This isn’t like last time.”
But it was. A different club, sure, but not a dissimilar series of events. Nearly a year ago now, he’d seen a girl with sad eyes and a scar on her left arm that tattooed flowers did not completely cover. A man had grabbed her in the parking lot and pressed her against a truck. Ronan had beaten the shit out of him.
It turned out that the man was her boyfriend—the encounter had been fully consensual. Anyone might have made the same mistake, but Ronan was still considered a loose cannon. He wasn’t even sure why he still had a job. Because he was a Duffy? Maybe. Which wasn’t really fair.