Walk a Crooked Line (Jo Larsen Book 2)

by Susan McBride

  Jo turned her chair around to face him. “Are you up for it?”

  “You got something in mind?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  She had a plan in place for taking down Trey Eldon’s Posse, and once she explained it to Hank, he was all-in. They just had to get the green light from their captain, and they’d be good to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  She picked up her laptop and led the way to Waylon Morris’s office. The door was wide open, but Jo knocked on the jamb, regardless.

  “Hey, Cap, you free to talk?” she asked, noticing that, unlike yesterday, he was tugging the knot of his tie loose. Had he come back from another meeting? She dove right in, telling him, “I just heard from Emma Slater, and she’s sending the specimens from Kelly Amster’s underwear to a private lab so we get the results ASAP.”

  “You don’t say?” Captain Morris turned around, pulling the tie over his head, like he was removing a noose. If the pinched look on his face was any indication, he wasn’t in a giving mood.

  “Morning, Cap,” Hank offered, even lifting a hand.

  “Come on in,” Morris told them, pitching his tie toward his desk. “How about you both take a seat. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Jo looked at Hank, and he shrugged.

  “Is something going on, sir?” she said, settling down with the laptop on her thighs while Cap continued to stand. He rolled up his sleeves, then crossed his arms tightly over his chest.

  “Yesterday on my way out, you started to tell me about a meeting with Trey Eldon,” he began, and Jo swallowed hard.

  “Yes, sir. I’d left my card with him, and he called my cell phone at nearly midnight. He had something to tell me about Kelly Amster.” Jo shifted in her seat, glancing sideways at Hank. “He seemed okay at first, but then he got a little physical with me.”

  “Is that right?” Cap asked, eyebrows knitting over the bridge of his nose.

  “Yes, sir. He seemed angry that I didn’t believe his denials that something happened to Kelly at his party.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “Just my pride,” she admitted, hating that it still rattled her. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “No, it shouldn’t,” Cap said, uncrossing his arms, with such a disapproving expression on his face that Jo felt scolded by it alone.

  “It’s my fault, sir,” Hank spoke up. “I was supposed to be there, too. The kid would’ve had my boot up his butt if he’d tried anything—”

  “So you didn’t see what went on?” the captain interrupted.

  “No, but I heard,” Hank said, adding in a mumble. “Well, most of it, anyway.”

  “What’s up, Cap?” Jo had expected a reprimand, a lecture, maybe. But something was off. The captain seemed unduly angry, and she could think of only one reason for it. “Don’t tell me you got a call from Robert Eldon?”

  “The chief and I were summoned to the mayor’s office first thing this morning. Mr. Eldon claims you’ve been harassing his boy and his boy’s friends. He said his son confessed that you lured him to the park in the wee hours and came on to him.”

  “Came on to him?” Jo tried to stay calm. “No, sir, that’s not true. None of it,” she insisted, staring right into his eyes. “Trey set it up—”

  “Larsen didn’t want to go alone,” Hank backed her up. “Why would she have asked me to be there if she wasn’t on the up-and-up?” He shook his head. “Robert Eldon must’ve caught wind of the meeting and got worried that the Third spilled his guts. The kid lied to his dad to save his ass.”

  “Cap, you know me better than that,” Jo said, hanging on to the laptop. “I wouldn’t jeopardize the case, much less my career. You believe me, don’t you?”

  Waylon Morris sighed and sat down on the edge of his desk. “I believe you. But you’re on notice, okay? Stay away from the Eldons.”

  Stay away?

  “Me, too, sir?” Hank asked.

  “They didn’t single you out, Phelps,” the captain said, jerking his chin at Jo. “Just Larsen here. Eldon threatened to get a restraining order against her if she comes anywhere near Trey . . . their house, the school.”

  “What?” Hank made a noise of disgust. “Jo was just doing her job.”

  “They’re scared, Cap.” Jo bristled. “We’ve got a growing pile of evidence that someone at Trey Eldon’s party assaulted Kelly Amster. We’re also starting to piece together a connection between Trey Eldon’s crew and the missing dogs.”

  “The dogs?” Cap repeated. “How’s that?”

  Jo anxiously opened the laptop, clicking open the photo from the roundup and turning it toward him. “It’s starting to look like Trey Eldon, Jason Raine, Dan Trent, and Scott Gray have put together their own billionaire boys club. They call themselves the Posse. They have a closed Facebook group where they can share their exploits. We’ve got video of them knocking down mailboxes in Celina where the Raines have country property. I think they went from that to something nastier. Stealing dogs and taking them up to the farm to . . . to . . .”

  “Beat the crap out of them,” Hank finished for her. “Jason Raine admitted to going up to the property for some pregame ritual, and we’re guessing it may be tied to some of these dog disappearances. We’ve had two dogs found near death on FM 455, right near the Raines’ property.”

  “You’re guessing? You’re guessing,” the captain said, more emphatically the second time. “So this is all supposition? You got anything concrete?”

  He hadn’t yet looked at the laptop screen, so Jo stood, holding it out to him.

  “Bridget couldn’t find a way into the Posse’s closed group on Facebook, but she did get this pic of Trey’s gang with dead dogs, and there’s an AV file of the Posse damaging the mailboxes . . . federal property.”

  Cap finally squinted at the picture. “This could be a stunt.”

  “I don’t think it is, sir.” Jo scrambled to say something more convincing. “Bridget retrieved screenshots of two e-mails that were saved on Kelly Amster’s hard drive. They’re part of a spate of encrypted e-mails that Trey Eldon sent Kelly after the party. The software is made by Robert Eldon’s company, and they’ve so far refused to help us decrypt.”

  Jo set the laptop back on her thighs, pulling up the screenshots as she talked. “The e-mails reference a sexual encounter that occurred at the Eldon house the weekend before school started. Trey clearly threatens Kelly to keep her mouth shut. We’re not just fishing, Cap. There’s something here.”

  She held out the laptop again, but he didn’t reach for it.

  “Please, sir, if you’d just take a look.”

  But, instead, the captain looked right at her. “Bridget’s working other cases, you know. She’s pretty much dumped everything else for you.”

  “She’s been great, sir,” Jo was quick to say. “She feels invested—”

  “You can’t keep using our resources on a suicide, Larsen,” he told her. “And now you’ve got the county sending evidence to a private lab and sticking us with the bill?”

  Jo felt like he’d punched her in the chest.

  “I’m sorry, Cap, but it’s the only way we’ll get results back fast enough. Otherwise, it could be weeks, and we need that DNA evidence if we’re going to—”

  “She’s dead, Detective,” he said bluntly, cutting her off. “And it wasn’t homicide. She did not die by anyone’s hand but her own.”

  Jo blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I got the preliminary report on Kelly Amster’s autopsy not five minutes before y’all walked through my door. There’s no physical evidence to suggest anything other than suicide.” Cap leveled his eyes on her, a deep divot between his brows, which let her know he was deadly earnest, as if his words weren’t enough. “At this point, do you really think it’s going to do any good to go after the sons of high-profile members of our community? Maybe it’s time to wrap up your investigation and move on.”

  Move on? Her mouth went dry. She’d bee
n about to suggest court orders for all the Posse members’ cell phones and laptops.

  Jo was used to the captain being direct, and normally, she appreciated it. But this time, it felt more like she was a child being spanked, and she couldn’t help wondering just how well Robert Eldon knew the mayor. Hell, with all his money, he could have bought and paid for City Hall.

  “You want us to drop this, even if Kelly Amster was raped?” Jo couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Even if that’s what drove her to kill herself?”

  Cap was avoiding her eyes, something he didn’t normally do. His rubbed his jaw, which looked unshaven. Also, not like him. Just how much pressure was he under to get them to stop investigating? Robert Eldon must really be turning the screws. Was Mr. Eldon that afraid his son was going to end up in jail?

  Hank blew out his cheeks, like he didn’t want to get into it.

  But Jo wasn’t about to give up.

  “What if it was Bridget?” she said, knowing she was pushing the envelope by the way the blood rushed into Cap’s cheeks. “What if she was at a party where she drank too much and was assaulted? What if those dogs in the photo were kids? Which they are, you know. Just ask Jill Burns and Amanda Pearson. If it was your niece, sir, would you want us to stop investigating then?”

  The captain looked ready to bite off her head, but instead, he pursed his lips, seeming to gather his wits before he responded.

  “Look, Larsen,” he said, gravitas, not anger, in his voice, “the problem with pursuing a rape charge now is that our victim’s not here to testify. It’s hard enough when we’ve got a victim willing to take the stand. How do you think it’d go over without one? She can’t even tell us her side.”

  “But we do know her side, sir,” she insisted, glancing at Hank for support. “The evidence we’re collecting will speak for her. We can’t let them skate. They’re the black hats. We’re the good guys.” Her chest constricted. “They’re out there breaking the law, and we’re supposed to turn a blind eye, just to make the mayor and his wealthy donor pal happy?”

  The captain had his jaw clamped so tightly, the muscles twitched.

  “Cap?” Jo tried again, because it wasn’t right, and he knew it.

  “Aw, hell.” He sighed and slid off the corner of the desk and picked up the laptop. He set it on a crowded blotter and fumbled around for his reading specs, which he plunked onto his nose. Then he leaned forward in his chair. He didn’t speak as he read the e-mails from Trey to Kelly and, from the looks of things, read them over again.

  Jo didn’t move as she waited for him to finish.

  Hank shifted in the seat beside hers, clearing his throat. “C’mon, Cap. We just need a little more time to do our jobs.”

  “All right, a little more time is all you get.” Waylon Morris removed his specs and rubbed his eyes. He looked whipped. “Do what you need to do, but do it discreetly, you hear?” He gestured toward the door. “Go on, and don’t come back until you’ve either got enough to arrest those boys, or you’re calling it quits.”

  “Thanks, Cap.” Hank gave him a quick salute, ducking out before Jo.

  She turned to the captain and swallowed hard. “We’re going to get them, sir,” she told him. Then she walked out of his office and closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The front desk officer caught Jo as she and Hank were leaving the captain’s office.

  “There’s a woman here to see you,” he told them. “She said she’s the mother of the suicide victim.”

  “Barbara Amster?” Jo said, as Hank gave her a puzzled look.

  “You want an interview room?” the officer asked.

  “No, bring her back here,” Jo said.

  The uniform nodded.

  Jo sat down at her desk, and Hank pulled up a chair. They didn’t even speculate what had brought Kelly’s mom to the station. She appeared not a moment later, with the officer pointing the way.

  Barbara was in her work clothes: the polo-collared shirt with the logo monogrammed above the breast and a pair of khaki pants. She shuffled over, sitting down in the chair Jo offered and clutching her bag in her lap.

  “Is something wrong, Mrs. Amster?” Hank spoke first. “Other than the obvious, I mean.” He had his arms on his knees, kneading his hands together.

  “How can we help?” Jo tried, but the woman seemed not to have a voice at first.

  She pursed her lips, gaze darting in every direction. “I didn’t tell you the truth,” she said. “About Kelly and the Eldons.”

  Jo’s mouth went dry. “What about the Eldons?”

  “You asked if Kelly had seen John Ross since his mama died,” Barb began, only to hesitate. “I lied when I said that she hadn’t.”

  Hank wrinkled his brow. “John Ross?” he repeated. “Who’s that?”

  John Ross.

  JR?

  Jo thought of the decrypted note, and her heart nearly stopped.

  “You can’t mean John Eldon?” she said, having never heard his middle name before. “Trey’s brother?”

  “Yes, the younger son,” Barbara said, hugging her purse. “He was here this summer, before school started up again. Kelly saw him, all right.”

  “Where?”

  Barbara Amster raised her chin, and her pale eyes met Jo’s. “The night before that party you said she went to.” She stopped, pushing out a breath. “She was getting ready for bed. She looked up and saw him standing outside her window, just like he had after Mary passed.”

  Jo remembered what Kelly’s mom had told her before about that. “He must’ve been twelve, right in the throes of puberty and without his mother to guide him . . . Kelly caught him looking in her bedroom window. He was pleasuring himself.”

  “Was he masturbating?”

  “I don’t know.” Barbara Amster flushed, visibly flustered. “I didn’t ask.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She screamed, and he ran away.”

  Hank made a noise of disgust. “You should have called us, ma’am.”

  “Why?” Barbara said, defensive. “He went back to boarding school the next day. Robert flew him out on that jet of his. He couldn’t hurt her.”

  But when Jo caught Hank’s face, she knew he was thinking just as she was: Did John Ross really go back to Virginia when Mr. Eldon claimed he did?

  What if he’d stuck around for the party?

  “There’s something else,” Barbara said, and her tired voice trembled.

  “Go on.” Jo waited, wishing the woman had been as forthright from the start.

  “Oh, God, it was me,” Barbara Amster got out in a strange, strangled cry. “I’m the one who said those nasty things to Kelly online. I’m the one who told her to go back to who she was and stop acting like a whore.”

  “You?” Jo didn’t understand.

  Tear-filled eyes met hers. “Angel,” she said. “I’m Angel.”

  Jo looked at the company logo on her shirt. At-Home Angels.

  It seemed so obvious. But why would Kelly’s own mother troll her?

  “Why?” she asked, shaking her head. “Why would you do something like that?”

  “I did it for her own good. I just wanted to rein her in,” Barbara tried to explain, wiping at her cheeks as the tears began to slide. “I thought she’d listen more to a peer than she did to me. We didn’t think we were hurting her, but I guess we were.”

  “We?” Jo asked, having picked up on the use of the plural. She thought of the anonymous comments on Instagram, wondering if that was Barbara Amster, too, or someone else. “Did you have help trying to rein in Kelly?”

  Why did Trey Eldon come to mind?

  “No, no, of course not. I meant me, that’s all,” she said, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue. She found a crumpled one and wiped at her nose.

  The more Jo thought about it, the more Barbara Amster as Kelly’s harasser made sense. Jo had asked Cassie the previous morning if she knew Angel on Facebook, and Cassie had replied, “Did Barb tel
l you about that?” When Jo had followed up, inquiring if Kelly had told her mom about the mean comments, Cassie had said, “She didn’t have to.”

  No, apparently not.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Barbara Amster sobbed. “Am I in trouble? Did I break the law?”

  Jo stared at her. Was that all she was worried about? How about “Did I break my child’s heart? Did I help to push her off the water tower, even if I didn’t touch her?”

  She opened her mouth, ready to berate the woman, to ask how she lived with herself, calling her daughter a whore and a slut. How did a parent do that to a kid and claim to love her? It was messed up. That was what it was. Messed up.

  “I let her down,” Barbara Amster went on, crying all the while. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. But I didn’t know another way. I hope she forgives me. I hope Kelly forgives me.”

  Jo listened to her blubber, and she kept mum. She couldn’t do it.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am,” Hank said, leaning forward. “Being a parent is hard, never knowing what to do from one day to the next. There’s not a playbook in the world that’s got any tricks worth spit. You live and learn.”

  “That’s what I always told Kelly,” Barbara whispered.

  Jo turned her head, wondering what he was doing. Was he absolving her of guilt?

  “What you did wasn’t right,” Hank continued softly. “Kelly didn’t need more tearing down. After what she’d been through, she needed someone to hold her up.”

  “I want another try,” Barbara said, jaw trembling. “I want to go back and do it over.”

  “You can’t,” Jo told her bluntly.

  Kelly was dead.

  “I’m sorry, baby.” Barbara started to sob, bowing her head as her shoulders shook. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Hank got up from his chair to pat the woman on the shoulder. But Jo stayed where she was. She sat there in silence, chest aching and mad as hell. Had Kelly known deep down inside who Angel was? Had she suspected? If she had, it was no wonder she’d lost all hope.

  Jo spent the better part of the afternoon poring over more of Kelly’s social media, finding more instances where Angel had put her down, more anonymous posts chiming in. She’d lost track of time when she got a phone call from the lone detective in Celina.