Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Carol Ericson (bill gates best books TXT) 📕

at the scene as Del Howe.” Remi slid an older photo of the man they believed to be the New Castle Killer across the table toward the sergeant. “Have you heard that name before or seen the victim prior to responding to the 9-1-1 call yesterday morning?”

Nguyen placed his hand over the photo and brought it in for a closer look. In less time than it’d taken him to blink, he pushed it back toward Remi. “No.”

“Are you familiar with the New Castle Killer case?” she asked.

Visible tension bled into the sergeant’s neck and arms. He shook his head but refused to meet anyone’s gaze as he tried to force a casualness into his body. “No.”

“Daniel.” The captain kept his voice far more gentle than Dylan would have in his position. “According to your birth records, you’re related to one of the New Castle Killer’s victims. Tony Rasmussen. You’re his uncle, his mother’s brother.”

Sergeant Nguyen closed his eyes, pressing his mouth into a tight line. His callused fingers arced over the table between him and his interrogators, the whites of his knuckles proof he was straining to keep up the façade. He stroked one hand down his face as he realized he’d been caught in a lie. “What happened to Tony doesn’t have anything to do with the Howe investigation.”

“We believe Del Howe was the New Castle Killer. We believe he was the one who killed your nephew.” Dylan watched for the faintest hint of surprise or of being caught off guard, but Sergeant Nguyen kept his control in place. Interesting. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Nguyen’s head shot up, panic creasing the lines around the edges of his eyes. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone. I bring murderers to justice, not take the law into my own hands because she couldn’t find the man who butchered my nephew.” The sergeant motioned to Remi, and an explosion of anger spread behind Dylan’s sternum.

He peeled away from the wall. “You have no idea how far she went to recover your nephew, Sergeant—”

“You admit you know who Del Howe really was then?” Remi said. “That he was the man who killed your nephew.”

“I knew.” Defeat took the fight out of the sergeant’s expression, and he collapsed into the back of his chair, hands below the table where Dylan couldn’t see them. “Do you know what that son of a bitch did to my family? He didn’t just kill my nephew. My sister hasn’t said a word since she received the news her only kid won’t be coming home. She couldn’t handle it. Her husband couldn’t, either. He left her. He didn’t know how to deal with her grief, and my sister had to be institutionalized. She stopped taking care of herself, stopped eating. Her body is alive, but my sister died that day your detectives told her Tony was dead.”

“Is that why you killed Del Howe?” Dylan straightened. “The sheriff’s department didn’t get to him fast enough, so you took matters into your own hands? Did you think killing the bastard responsible for taking away her son would help her recover?”

Nguyen set his hands back onto the table and picked at the cuticles at the base of his nails. “That was my plan.”

“Damn it, Daniel, what the hell did you get yourself into?” Captain Paulson scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I didn’t kill him.” The sergeant’s square jaw worked overtime as he leaned forward over the table. “Believe me, I wanted to. I had the detectives assigned to Tony’s case update me on any new information, but once they stopped responding to my requests, I couldn’t sit there and watch my sister waste away. I had to do something. I called in every favor I had to get copies of the files on all three victims and dove into the case myself. The first few months, I had nothing. There were no new leads, the killer seemed to have gone dormant, you were fired from the sheriff’s department and the police had all but given up on finding Tony’s killer.”

“How did you uncover the killer’s identity?” Remi asked.

The sergeant’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “I paid the New Castle County medical examiner for the toxicology report after the second victim’s—Brett Smith—autopsy. From there, I was able to trace the sedative found in the remains to a website selling it on the black market. I threatened the administrator, and he gave me the credit card information of all the buyers who purchased the drug three months before the Tony went missing.”

“Del Howe was on that list?” Dylan asked. “Where is the report now?”

“I destroyed it.” Daniel Nguyen’s head dropped as the reality of that decision hit him. Setting one hand on the edge of the table, he enunciated every other word with a tap of his fingers. “I didn’t want anything leading back to me after I’d finished with what I wanted to do to him. Only, I never got the chance. Someone beat me to it yesterday morning. You have to believe me—I didn’t kill him.”

“So your alibi for the murder is that you couldn’t have killed Del Howe because you were in the middle of planning how to kill Del Howe.” That was a new one. Only problem was, with the destruction of a key piece of evidence, Daniel Nguyen couldn’t prove he hadn’t had anything to do with Del Howe’s death.

“There’s already evidence leading back to you, Sergeant. Every officer involved in your nephew’s case has been systematically hunted down and killed over the past two years.” Remi took the file folder from Captain Paulson and opened it flat onto the table. She skimmed through the first few pages inside then slipped one sheet across the table.

It was a printout of the registration information Dylan had collected from the conference organizers early this morning. “We have proof you registered for law enforcement conferences in these cities within these dates I’ve written along the tops of