False Truth 3 (Jordan Fox Mysteries) Read online

  FALSE TRUTH 3

  A JORDAN FOX MYSTERY

  BY

  DIANE CAPRI

  WITH

  BETH DEXTER

  Presented by:

  AugustBooks

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  Praise for

  New York Times and USA Today

  Bestselling Author

  Diane Capri

  “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.

  Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her.”

  Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers

  “[A] welcome surprise… [W]orks from the first page to ‘The End’.”

  Larry King

  “Swift pacing and ongoing suspense are always present… [L]ikable protagonist who uses her political connections for a good cause… Readers should eagerly anticipate the next [book].”

  Top Pick, Romantic Times

  “…offers tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plot, and loads of Florida atmosphere. Recommended.”

  Library Journal

  “[A] fast-paced legal thriller…energetic prose…an appealing heroine…clever and capable supporting cast…[that will] keep readers waiting for the next [book].”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Expertise shines on every page.”

  Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Grand Master and Past President

  Also by DIANE CAPRI

  (Click each title to buy or download a sample)

  CLICK HERE for a complete list of Diane Capri Books on Amazon

  The Heir Hunter Series:

  Blood Trails

  The Jess Kimball Thrillers:

  Fatal Game

  Fatal Edge

  Fatal Fall

  Fatal Error

  Fatal Demand

  Fatal Distraction

  Fatal Enemy

  The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:

  Deep Cover Jack

  Jack and Joe

  Jack in the Green

  Get Back Jack

  Don’t Know Jack

  Jack in a Box

  Jack and Kill

  The Hunt for Justice Series:

  True Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Fair Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  False Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Cold Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Wasted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Secret Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Twisted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Due Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Mistaken Justice

  Raw Justice

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  False Truth 3 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Diane Capri, LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by: AugustBooks

  Visit the author websites:

  DianeCapri.com

  BethDexter.com

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  eISBN:

  978-1-940768-79-3

  Original Cover Design: Cory Clubb

  Digital Formatting: Author E.M.S.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Reviews

  Books by Diane Capri

  Copyright

  Cast of Primary Characters

  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

  Excerpt from FALSE TRUTH 4

  More from Diane Capri

  Dear Reader

  About the Authors

  CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS

  Jordan Fox

  Nelson Fox

  Brenda Fox

  Claire Stone

  Salvador Caster

  Clayton Vaughn

  Chester Flynn

  Linda Pierce

  Richard Grady

  Patricia Neil

  Theresa Parma

  FALSE TRUTH

  CHAPTER 1

  Jordan’s efforts to reach Sal and Claire over the rest of her shift and until she went to bed failed. She’d called, texted, even tried email. Nothing. On the way home, she drove past Sal’s waterfront estate where they were living most of the time now and the place was totally dark.

  Saturday morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, Jordan checked her phone the second her eyes opened. Still nothing from either of them. She didn’t know Sal very well, so his behavior might be understandable. But Claire normally responded to everything Jordan sent her immediately. Radio silence from Claire was usually a bad sign and Jordan knew it. The only thing she could think of to do was keep trying and get back to work.

  Today she’d planned to start her search of the Channel 12 archives for information about her mother, especially since her time at Channel 12 looked like it might be short. On a Saturday, fewer people were at the station to wonder why Jordan was poking around in the archives. They probably knew her history, but she didn’t feel like talking about it. And the project could keep her mind away from Salvador Caster and whatever was happening to her best friend. Maybe.

  Compartmentalize. Jordan began to think about the very cold Brenda Fox case as a journalist, objectively, focused on the facts.

  It had been nearly five years since Brenda Fox was murdered. Her only daughter was sixteen, almost seventeen. She’d come home from high school swim practice one Tuesday evening and found her mother stabbed to death on the kitchen floor. Police had searched for someone with motive to kill the middle school guidance counselor, but came up empty-handed.

  The only real conclusions were that at least two males were
involved, and Brenda had been robbed. Defensive wounds on her hands showed she fought back. Two sets of bloody boot prints led from the Foxes’ backdoor to the nearby Hillsborough River. That’s where police dogs lost the scent.

  Soon, the next case pushed the Brenda Fox investigation aside and with no new evidence in the past five years, the case wasn’t a police priority any more.

  The Brenda Fox case would never stop being a priority for Jordan. She’d vowed that years ago and her determination hadn’t wavered.

  Today, she’d have enough time to confirm that Channel 12’s archives contained the videotaped reports on the case, and they were not corrupted or damaged, but still viewable.

  At the station, she went straight to the back corridors of the second floor. A maze of dark hallways housed an endless number of shelves holding too many miniature videotapes to count. She couldn’t even see them all on the dimly lit shelves.

  Jordan patted down the walls until her fingers grazed plastic. She held her phone up to illuminate a panel of eight light switches. She flipped the first one on, then quickly off when nothing happened. On the fourth switch she tried, the shelves lit up. Now she’d be able to make some progress.

  It took her too long to figure out the convoluted coding system, but she eventually confirmed that the tapes were arranged chronologically. Jordan scanned the codes on the tape box spines until she found the one she wanted to start. The 11 p.m. news broadcast on the day her mother died.

  She reached to pull it off the shelf but her hand shook so much, she couldn’t grab the box. She felt a bit lightheaded. Her legs were quivering, too. She pulled her hand back quickly, as if the tape had burned her.

  Almost unconsciously, Jordan clinched and opened both fists a few times to steady her nerves while she breathed deeply, in the way her grief counselor had taught her to maintain composure all those years ago. When she’d found her mother on the kitchen floor. When she’d thought she’d never stop being scared for the rest of her life.

  For at least two full minutes, she stood looking at the tape. Breathing. Clenching. Unclenching. Until finally, she felt ready.

  She sucked in a lung full of air and held it and reached again. This time, even with her hand shaking, she was able to select the tape box and pull it off the shelf. She hugged the tape to her chest and closed her eyes and released the last big breath.

  She slapped her hand over her mouth to cover hysterical relief. Noise like laughter could attract attention she definitely didn’t need. But she felt like cheering. She’d done it. She’d started. She’d found something. Her legs were still a little wobbly or she might have jumped for victory like a delirious sports champ.

  Jordan glanced at her watch. Time was running short. But old video tapes and the machines that accepted them were notoriously unreliable. The tape could be bad or the machine might destroy it or a thousand other problems could crop up. She needed to know for sure that this one would actually play.

  She slipped into a back edit bay and turned on the dim overhead light. She pushed the tape into a machine and crossed her fingers.

  The machine accepted the tape.

  Jordan grinned and hit play.

  None of the many monitors in front of her showed a picture. She turned several monitors off and back on again. Still nothing. The grin disappeared and her eyebrows dipped down. Now what? She couldn’t risk breaking the equipment or ruining the tape. She’d learned her lesson from the Smartphone incident. She needed help.

  She perused the edit bays one hall over and found a friendly looking photographer. He happily helped her get her tape set up, no questions asked. “You have to flip this switch.” He showed her a tiny button she had to push first.

  Then he hit play, like turning on this video was no big deal. Immediately, her stomach knotted and her head throbbed. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths but her tight muscles didn’t relax. Her abdomen cramped painfully.

  If he played the tape now, she might actually vomit all over him and the equipment and everything within a five-foot radius.

  The moment he removed his finger from the play button, she reached out a trembling finger and hit pause. “Thank you. I think I’ve got it from here. Never would’ve found that button. Thanks again.”

  He gave her a strange look and then shrugged and walked away.

  Jordan’s finger hovered over the play button. She bit her lip and gazed at a blank wall, willing tears to stay back. She exhaled and dropped her arm. No. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready to watch. But the tape existed and it worked. That was enough for now.

  Jordan returned the tape and headed to a special computer in the back of the newsroom. It was loaded with software the other computers didn’t have. Like transcripts of every interview Channel 12 had ever done, as well as images of every article ever published, dating back from the time Channel 12 used to be connected to the Tampa Gazette, starting in the 1950s.

  She searched for Brenda Fox. Hundreds of results returned. Uncomfortable warmth enveloped her again and this time she recognized she’d done too much, too fast. She would access the results next time. She erased the search history and then created a few random searches to leave in place. Maybe that would be enough to keep the next person from noticing her work accidently.

  Jordan had accomplished enough for now. She’d found the archives. She knew where to look when she came back. Which would be soon. Very soon.

  She heard the elevated excitement levels from the newsroom before she walked ten feet from the back wings of the archives. She let herself be pulled into the action and away from the past.

  When she reached the assignment desk, Patricia was there, focused on work as always.

  “What’s going on?”

  “They identified the casino body.”

  Jordan clamped her teeth shut briefly so she wouldn’t look like an idiot with her jaw hanging open. “And?”

  “It’s Ted Garfield.” Patricia was working quickly at the keyboard and didn’t look away from her screen.

  “No way. It’s too easy. Of course it was him! They matched his DNA?” Jordan dropped into a computer chair and checked her email for more data. Tampa police had sent a press release. “They have cause of death now, too?” Jordan couldn’t open the attachment fast enough. She scanned the text. “Drowning? If you’re gonna cut someone’s head off anyway why not just shoot them? Seems a lot simpler, and it’s not like the killer was trying to be gentle.”

  “Ballistics,” Patricia said, preoccupied.

  Of course. She almost slapped her palm to her head. “Harder to track down the killer in a drowning case. No suspects yet?”

  “They haven’t commented on suspects,” Patricia said. “No head or hands found either, obviously, or we would have heard about it.”

  Patricia had a real knack for making Jordan feel like an idiot. She ground her teeth together and clenched her jaw tightly to avoid saying something she’d regret later.

  A passing photog stopped and leaned a hip against Jordan’s desk. “You know the head’s far out to sea by now. Killer has a water theme going on, right?”

  “I’m sure the police are looking into every aspect of Ted Garfield’s life right now,” Patricia said. “Antonio and Drew are down at Tampa P.D. now. We’re gonna see if we can get an interview with police set up for tomorrow.”

  Great. Just great. How was she supposed to compete with Drew when he got all the best assignments? And what did she have to do to get through to Patricia that this was her story? She needed a good, solid lead and she needed to find something important and she needed to do it now—before Drew had yet another victory, vicarious or not.

  Salvador Caster was her best chance.

  Specifically, why Salvador was a common thread in the top three news stories, and whether police had made that connection. She checked her phone, but still had nothing from Claire or Sal.

  She went out on assignment with Theresa, but paid little attention the rest of the night. She was burie
d in Theresa’s laptop, researching Salvador and Caster Shrimp Company. The first few items she found contained basic background information she knew already.

  But after an hour of digging, she found criminal reports.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sal’s father had done business with some guys in Mexico who were now in prison on drug-related charges. Salvador, Sr. was never arrested, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. The accounts Jordan found didn’t confirm that Sal’s father knew about the drug dealing at the time, either.

  She could ask Sal directly once he finally called her back. But at this point she worried that Sal was more dangerous than Claire believed.

  Please don’t let my best friend’s boyfriend be a drug dealer. Please don’t. Please don’t.

  Her prayer wasn’t helping to answer that question. Non-stop nervous shivers ran up Jordan’s spine and through all of her limbs at once when she finally accepted the only choice she could think of. She had to tell Claire and hope that Claire wouldn’t shoot the messenger.