"We may have a problem.”
Bruno wasn’t happy. “What sort of problem?”
“We found Ella earlier this afternoon.”
“And?”
“This may be a little difficult to just dismiss. You got a little messy, and missed something.”
Bruno laughed. “I never miss anything. Granted she was harder to squash than Mighty Mouse, but I finally managed it. She didn’t know anything, I’m certain of it.”
“Maybe, maybe not, anyway she’s dead.”
“And unidentifiable. I made sure of it. No one’s going to worry about another dead hooker.”
“Then why suddenly is everyone interested in the case?”
“What?” Balouche sat up.
“All I know for sure is, the captain walked in the office ordering Mitchell and I to turn over all evidence and then in no uncertain terms to back off.”
“For a dead Jane Doe?”
“You missed something Bruno…now this whole thing may just implode.”
“I forgot nothing!” He slammed his hand down on his desk, then looked around to make sure it didn’t attract anyone’s attention.
“Ella left a message.”
“No she didn’t…wait a minute. Her purse, I never went back and looked for the purse.”
“Not it. My guess is it’s in river or some bag lady’s shopping cart. She scrawled a message on the wall she was leaning up against.”
“I admit I thought she was gone, so I left for a few minutes and came back. I saw her smearing her blood on the cement, but she leaned against the wall. I’d have smeared it unreadable myself, but her own head managed to do that for me.”
“She was wearing a linen blouse, you asshole. It wasn’t totally readable but her blood was fresh enough to soak right in and she had enough life left in her to pull away from the wall before her own brain washed away all traces.”
“She fingered us?” Bruno was nervous.
“No, but the one readable word was enough to warrant someone else handling the case. I think they’re connecting Blue and Ella together.”
“Why?”
“Hutton, you idiot. The first word she scrawled was Hutton…”
“They’ll never identify her. She was too clean. They won’t be able to match fingerprints, I made sure that was the only way they could identify her.”
“Let’s hope so.” He took a deep breath. “We’ve covered our tracks too well, the only connection they can make is the name Hutton, they can’t connect anything else unless they make an identification.”
Bruno thought a moment and smiled. “You’re probably right.”
“I think we should back off for awhile.”
That was exactly what Bruno wanted to hear. “You’re right. Just in case, let’s do a little clean up. Call me when you think we can get together and close down the apartment.”
“Yeah, that’s best. No need to take chances. I’ll keep my eyes out here, make sure they don’t make anymore connections.”
“We’ll ditch everything from the apartment and then when the dust has settled, we’ll hit hard and fast one more time.”
“Once we get that apartment cleared out, maybe there’s a way we can use it to implicate Justyn in all this after all. He was meant to be the fall guy for the paycheck scam, I’m sure I can figure out a way for him to take the fall for everything else.”
“I have every confidence in you. You’ve been the brains so far.”
“It was your idea. I just figured out how to do it. Give me 48 hours and then we’ll meet up at the apartment.”
“You got it.” Bruno smiled as he closed his cell phone. He couldn’t help but laugh. P.T. Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.
He checked to make sure no one could over hear his conversation and then made another call. “Clare? I think you’re right, dear. Go ahead and do what you think is best. You let me know when it’s time and I’ll carry it through, just like you planned.”
Bruno rolled his eyes while she chatted awhile. He finally got her off the phone, convinced she had made the plan and that was calling all the shots.
He tossed his cell phone down on his desk and propped his feet up. As he slipped his hands behind his head he sighed in happiness. “Clare, Clare, Clare…you are even dumber than Peyton Balouche.”
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