Free 03 - Organized Grime by Christy Barritt

wasn’t Sierra, then who?”
    “Whoever is behind all of these crimes.” It seemed a reasonable deduction. “Maybe they want to find Sierra. Maybe she has something they want. Maybe that’s why she snuck back into the apartment yesterday.”
    Riley shook his head, his jaw jutting out to show his disapproval of the situation. “This is getting crazier by the moment, Gabby. I don’t like it.”
    Another thought hit me—a horrible thought, but one I needed to address. “Riley, we need to make sure Sierra’s not here. Sharon saw Sierra come in. She didn’t say she saw her come out.”
    Riley’s eyes registered my thought process, moving from disapproval to concern. He put his hand on my shoulder. “You stay here. I’ll go check everything out.”
    I didn’t argue. I stepped backward into the clacking beads and held my breath. He stepped over some books, dodged a broken bowl and slid around the overturned dining room table. He knew enough to not disturb anything. Evidence could be all around us. Fingerprints, footprints, fibers. If Sierra were hurt, the police would collect all of that in order to find out the person behind the crime.
    I held my breath. Please, Lord, help her to be okay.
    Riley disappeared into the hallway, back toward the bedroom. I waited, the minutes painfully stretching onward. What did Riley see? Was my friend okay?
    “Gabby, you’re going to want to come see this.”
    I swallowed, my throat burning. What had he found? I tiptoed along the same path as Riley did earlier and found him in the bathroom.
    Raw ground beef—along with its juices—was strung across the sink, creating a terrible stench in the small space.
    Then on the mirror were the words “Meat is Murder.”
     

 
     
    Chapter Nine
    I stared at Parker who, even with his Brad Pitt good looks, couldn’t make a scrunched up nose look attractive. He stared at the mangled, raw ground beef in Sierra’s bathroom. As quickly as he lost his Fed composure, the aloof detachment returned
    My hands went to my hips as I grew impatient with him trying to process the scene. “What do you think this means?”
    He shrugged, still staring at the very visible—and effective—threat left by the person behind this chaos. “I’m not sure. Someone’s definitely trying to make a statement, though.”
    “A statement that they want Sierra dead.” I bit my lip, not wanting my thoughts to go there.
    Parker shook his head. “Not necessarily.”
    My eyebrow twitched in curiosity. “What do you mean? What else could this message possibly mean?”
    He turned from his examination of the bathroom and stared me straight in the eye. “You said your friend saw Sierra sneaking in here yesterday, correct?”
    I stepped back, indignation flashing through me. “You think Sierra did this? No way. Why would she do that?”
    He shrugged in such a casual manner that I wanted to sock him. “To take the suspicion off of herself.”
    “She wouldn’t do that.”
    “She’s smart enough to devise a plan like that.”
    I swung my head back and forth, anger boiling through me. “No, she’s smart enough to turn herself in if she’s guilty. And she’d never touch raw meat. Never.”
    “I think she broke in here, picked up any evidence that might point to her, something she might have missed, and then tore the place up.”
    My finger went in the air. “You’re off base. You’re way off base. You’re wasting valuable time looking in the wrong direction.”
    Parker didn’t back off. He stepped toward me, arrogance saturating his gaze. “Okay, Miss Know-It-All, what do you think is going on here?”
    “I think my friend was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think she’s being set up. And I think she’s running for her life because whoever is behind these crimes knows that she knows.”
    “Nice theory. Not likely though.”
    Riley grabbed my finger, which ever since I’d raised it had been swinging wildly through the air with each word I spoke.