Page 87 of Necessary Evil

“Innocent until proven guilty, remember?” Lucy couldn’t believe he was judging Evan just because he rode a motorcycle and ran a bar.

“Don’t be naive. We’re talking about an ex-cop who solved some of his cases with his fists.”

Lucy stiffened. “You don’t know that.”

“Everyone knows that,” he said. “Ask Travis when you see him, if you don’t believe me.”

“I need to leave.” Lucy pushed herself to her feet. She was not going to sit there and let him rip apart a good man.

“Think about what I said.” Albert stood up as well. “You’re a valuable asset to this office and I’d hate to lose you.”

Lucy was fuming by the time she drove over to Travis’s office. Albert had no right, no authority, to say anything about the men she dated. It was ridiculous. He was her boss, not her father, not her ex-husband. And yes, he had a point that Sentinel had disrupted their workplace. But it wasn’t going to happen again. Evil certainly didn’t throw his weight around, and she hadn’t given Albert any reason to question her professionalism. And then to hint that he was a dirty cop? It was ridiculous.

“Whoa, slow down, killer,” Travis said when she stormed into his office. “I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but I’m afraid you’d throw it at me.”

Sagging into the chair across his desk, she let out a long sigh. “No, I’d love a coffee.”

Travis had his secretary bring in two cups. After she closed the door behind her, Lucy said, “You seriously couldn’t get off your ass and get it yourself?”

“This job has so few perks. Let me enjoy one of them.”

Lucy had had just about enough of dominating male assholes for one day. “Okay, I’m here. Let me see what you’ve got.”

Travis blinked at her no-nonsense attitude, but he took it in stride. Standing up, he paced around the room while he talked. “Over the past two years there have been more than twenty deaths on Long Island that have a common element: all of the victims were either drug dealers, rapists, or gangbangers who had been found innocent at their trial by a jury of their peers, despite evidence that they were most likely guilty as sin.” He tossed her a stack of files.

“Were any of the victims my clients?” Lucy asked.

“As you told your friend at the picnic a few weeks ago, not every scumbag crosses your desk. And so far none of the victims were your clients. Why? Do you think that’s relevant?”

Lucy shrugged, not wanting to give Travis any more fodder against Evan. “I just wanted to know. I don’t follow up on my clients after their trials, and unless they come to see me, I generally never know what happens to them.” She took a sip of her coffee. She had to hand it to Travis’s secretary—it was delicious. “Were the victims all murdered the same way?”

Travis leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Most of the time, the vics were killed either with their own weapon or with an untraceable one. The majority of the murders took place at the victims’ houses or in their cars. No witnesses either. In some cases, the bodies weren’t found until days after the murder.”

“Were they connected in any other way?”

“They were the dregs of the earth. Real mean bastards.”

“All men?” Lucy said. “No women?”

“No, there were a few women too.” He tapped a few keys on his computer. “About a third of them were women. Equally as reprehensible as their male counterparts. Child abusers, that type of shit. As you can imagine, no one cried too hard or went out of their way to solve these crimes once they went cold, the attitude being that the trash took itself out for once.”

“But they were innocent,” Lucy protested.

“I misspoke. They weren’t innocent. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict. And someone, or someones, decided not to wait until these douchebags committed another crime, so they took the law into their own hands.”

“How did this end up on your desk, in Internal Affairs?” she asked. “Do you think a cop did this?”

Travis nodded. “While these cases were spread across Long Island and were investigated by different detectives, in all of them the crime scenes produced no viable evidence. No one cleans up after themselves with that level of commitment except someone who knows how we process a crime scene. But that’s not why it’s a priority of mine. Truthfully, the twenty or so folders you’ve got there don’t keep me up at night. Was a crime committed? Yes. Am I going to lose sleep that those scumbags aren’t alive anymore? Not even remotely.”

“Then why the witch hunt on Evan Villiers and his friends?”

“Last month, it all escalated. Jerry Kramer.” He tossed another folder at her. “Pedophile. Neck snapped, house ransacked.”

She remembered that case. It had come up at the picnic—it was the one Finn had thought was hers. Lucy touched a hand to her throat. Ryder wasn’t shy about grabbing people like that.

“Pete Carter.” Travis added to her pile. “Rapist. Suffocated to death in his car. He was found with a plastic bag over his head, zip-tied shut.”

Another one who couldn’t breathe when he died.