Christmas Cover-Up

by Lynette Eason

She gave him a light punch on his arm. “You’re hilarious.” She pointed. “Who do we have here?”

  He turned serious, all business now. “You’re not going to believe it.”

  She lifted a brow. “Try me.”

  “It’s Norman Rhames.”

  Katie gaped for a full two seconds, then snapped her mouth shut. She rubbed her head and stared down at the body. “You’re right. I don’t believe it. I take it the lieutenant didn’t know who he was when he sent me out here?”

  “Nope. We just got confirmation on his identity about a minute before you drove up.”

  “I’ll keep my hands off the investigation since there’s a possible connection to Wray, but since I’m here, will you tell me what you know?”

  “He was shot in the back of the head. Execution style.”

  Katie narrowed her eyes. “Now that’s just shouting for an investigation. I want to know the connection between Norman Rhames and Wesley Wray.”

  Gregory pursed his lips. “You don’t think it’s a coincidence?”

  “There’s no way this is a coincidence.”

  He nodded. “I agree.”

  Katie got on her phone and called Jordan. He answered with, “Are you okay?”

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Katie almost had to smile at his instant question. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Cute.”

  “I’m also fine. Guess who our dead guy is?”

  “Who?”

  She filled him in. “You want to use your FBI contacts and see if you can find a connection between Wesley Wray and Norman Rhames sometime before Christmas?”

  Katie felt a little disloyal to her department, but the FBI had more resources than a local department. With one phone call, Jordan would probably find what she wanted to know within the hour.

  Her phone buzzed and she lifted a brow at the name that popped on the screen. “Hello, Detective Miller, what can I do for you?”

  “You working that dead body on the highway?”

  “I am.”

  “Heard it on the scanner. Thought you were on medical leave.”

  “I did, too.”

  He gave a half laugh, half snort. “Flu’s swept through this department like a tsunami.” He paused. “I got to thinking about your sister’s case.”

  She stepped to the side out of the way of the crime scene unit that had just arrived. “Why’s that?”

  Gregory shot her a curious look that she ignored. She kept her back to a tree and let her gaze probe the area. Nothing set off her alarms. No rustling leaves, no shadowy figures. Nothing. Her muscles relaxed a fraction.

  “Because you won’t leave it alone and…” He paused.

  “And?”

  “And I might not have put some things in the notes that should have been there.”

  Her stomach knotted. “Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he snapped. “I was going through a bad time that year. But that wasn’t your sister’s fault, and she deserved a better investigation than she got.” He paused and she thought she heard him swallow. “If you’ll meet me somewhere, I’ll do my best to tell you everything I remember. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I’ll tell you. And give you the notes that I made. I only have one copy and I don’t want to fax them or email them anywhere. I don’t want anyone stumbling across them.”

  The rough edge to his voice captured her attention one hundred percent. She looked around. “When and where can we meet?”

  Another pause. “This can’t get out, Katie. If it’s known I didn’t exactly do my job, my name will be mud around the department. No one will look at me the same. I don’t want anyone to know we’re meeting. This has to be completely confidential or it’s going to come back to bite me.”

  “I won’t say a word, Frank. I just want to find my sister.” She stuffed down the anger she wanted to heap on this man’s head. She couldn’t blast him. Not yet. Not when he might have more information on Lucy. She looked around. “Give me another thirty minutes. Where do you want me to meet you?”

  He gave her the address, and she memorized it. “I’ll see you shortly.”

  * * *

  Jordan pulled into the parking lot of the local pub. His buddy at Quantico had promised to get back to him within an hour with the connection between the two parolees. If he could find one. Jordan figured he would.

  Katie sounded like she was fine, and Jordan offered up a prayer for the Lord to keep her that way.

  He stepped inside the restaurant and spotted Danny Jackson at the bar nursing a drink and watching a football game on the television hanging from the wall. Jordan slipped onto the stool beside him. “Thanks for waiting for me.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t have anywhere else to be. My wife died last year after a two-year battle with cancer, and I’ve just been going through the motions until I can join her.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  Danny shrugged. “I always thought I’d be the one to go first, you know?”

  “Yeah. In our line of work, odds aren’t exactly great for us to reach retirement age.”

  Danny grunted. “You didn’t come here to chew the fat with me. What are your questions?”

  Jordan didn’t take offense at the man’s gruffness; he figured that was just part of his personality. He’d seen too much, lived through some bad stuff and watched his wife die. The man had a right to be a little rough around the edges, he supposed. But he couldn’t just let it go. “You think God’s finished with you? That you don’t have purpose anymore?”

  Danny stilled. Then took a sip of the drink. “Funny you should say that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I was just wondering that very thing last night.”

  “So you believe in God?”

  “More now than I used to. My wife was a believer.” He shook his head. “She didn’t want to leave me, but had no doubts where she was going when she took her last breath.”

  “I’m glad you can take comfort in that.”

  “I do. Not everyone can say the same for someone they’ve lost.”

  Jordan thought about Neil. While his brother had made some really rotten choices toward the end of his life, he’d given his heart to God at a middle school summer church camp. Jordan had no doubt that Neil was in heaven; he just wished he hadn’t gone quite so soon.

  He shoved thoughts of Neil away and focused on the man next to him. “But the Lord’s left you here. Guess there might be a reason for that.”

  “Might be.”

  “And that reason might have something to do with Lucy Randall.” He phrased it as a statement and waited.

  A heavy sigh escaped the man and he rubbed a callused hand over his eyes. “It might.”

  Jordan took a stab in the dark. “Why don’t you tell me what’s been bothering you for the last fourteen years?”

  Danny jerked like he’d been shot.

  Bull’s-eye.

  Danny stared at him a minute, then finished his drink. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my truck, where we can’t be overheard because the conversation we’re getting ready to have never happened. Understand?”

  “Gotcha.”

  Jordan followed Danny out to the man’s oversized pickup truck. He had a fishing rod hanging on the gun rack on the back window of the king cab. Jordan climbed in the passenger seat and shut the door.

  Danny cranked the truck and turned the heat on, but didn’t move to put it in gear. “Ask me your questions.”

  “What is it you don’t want to tell me? What are you afraid of?”

  Danny barked a harsh laugh. “I’m not afraid of anything, son. Fear isn’t keeping my mouth
shut. Haven’t you ever heard of a thing called loyalty?”

  Jordan blinked. “Loyalty? To whom?”

  * * *

  Katie glanced at her watch and headed for her car. She was running later than she’d expected, especially with Gregory harassing her about needing an escort to wherever she was going.

  She felt bad about putting him off, but she needed to talk to Frank, and Frank obviously didn’t want an audience. If she had someone with her, he might clam up and she’d never learn what he wanted to tell her. However, she could let Jordan know what was going on. She shot him a text and waited for it to send.

  Glancing around, she wondered if she was being watched, if someone planned on following her. With a shudder, she climbed into her vehicle.

  If someone followed her, she and Frank would take care of it. Thirty-eight-year-old Norman Rhames hadn’t had a chance. The medical examiner’s off-the-record deduction had been that in all likelihood Rhames died from the gunshot to the back of his head. The lack of defensive wounds on his hands said he hadn’t put up a fight. Katie wondered if he’d trusted whoever it was that had killed him.

  Possibly.

  But it wasn’t the same person who’d killed Wesley Wray, because that had happened while the man was locked up.

  She checked the area one last time. Gregory waved to her and stood watching with a frown on his face as she pulled from the gravel edge of the highway and merged with the traffic.

  Nerves danced along the top of her skin and she kept her eye on the rearview mirror.

  * * *

  Jordan sat back as the answer hit him. “Loyalty to your former partner. Frank Miller.”

  “Yeah. Frank.”

  “What was Frank’s problem?”

  Danny ran a hand over the gray stubble on his chin. “His problem was his personal life. More specifically, his wife and family.”

  Jordan nodded. “It happens.”

  “His wife was going to leave him. Gave him the whole line of grief about how he’s always working and never home, yada yada.”

  “I feel for him. He sure didn’t need that on top of the stress of the job.” Jordan shook his head. Not every officer’s wife felt that way, but too many of them did and those in law enforcement had a high rate of divorce.

  Danny seemed to relax a fraction at Jordan’s understanding words. “Well, she wasn’t a prize when he married her, but she was a looker, and I guess that’s what attracted him to her.”

  Jordan thought about Katie’s beauty. While he appreciated the outward package, it was her heart and inner beauty that drew him like a magnet. “So Frank was a bit distracted from the investigation.”

  Danny nodded. “Distracted is a kind word. It was weird, too, because he pushed for the case. It had originally been assigned to two other detectives, but Frank wanted it. The other detectives sure didn’t care. As overloaded as we all were, they gladly passed it on to us.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He said he needed all the work he could get. Said he couldn’t shut his brain off so he might as well do some good.” Danny rubbed his chin. “And he did. He worked a ton of hours, slept at his desk, solved a lot of cases.”

  “But not Lucy Randall’s.”

  “No. Not Lucy’s.” He frowned. “I’d never seen Frank so messed up. He finally told me what was going on. His wife had filed for divorce six months prior and then just four months before we got Lucy’s case, his niece drowned at summer camp. Frank loved that little girl like she was his own. His sister and her husband had let him stay with them until he could get set financially, and he and Jenny really bonded during that time.”

  Danny took a swig of his drink and sighed. “He and his wife didn’t have any kids, which turned out to be a good thing in the end. So not only was he struggling with the demise of his marriage, but his sister turned into a raving madwoman, wild with grief.”

  Jordan swallowed and pinched the bridge of his nose, his heart going out to the man. “That’s awful.”

  His phone vibrated, indicating a message. He’d check it in just a minute. He didn’t want to do anything to cause Danny to clam up.

  Danny said, “I told him to focus on the case, that if he just put all of his energy into solving Lucy’s kidnapping, he could get his mind off of his troubles for a while.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Seemed to. For a while.” Danny chewed a toothpick and stared out the window.

  “What else?”

  A heavy sigh left the man. “We questioned a witness, and she talked about a car being at the scene.”

  “A gray sedan?”

  Danny lifted a brow. “Yes. I documented it and put it in the report, then in the file. The next day it was gone. When I asked Frank about it, he just shrugged and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. I documented it again and put it back in the file. A week later it was gone again. I demanded an explanation, and Frank dodged it. Said he didn’t know and to quit bugging him about it.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I dropped it for the moment. We weren’t getting anywhere on the case, anyway. Didn’t seem like a big deal.”

  Jordan pulled out the picture Mrs. McKinney had given him, then the ones taken the day of the kidnapping. “Take a look at this.” He handed Danny Mrs. McKinney’s picture. “This was shot a few days before Lucy was taken. The lady who took this picture spent a lot of time outside while the car was parked there. On this particular day, it was her son’s birthday and they’d given him a skateboard. He was out there having a blast while his mom took pictures to put in her scrapbook.” He handed him another picture. “This was taken by the crime scene photographer the day of the kidnapping.”

  Jordan tapped the photo. “This is one of the officers’ vehicles. It’s parked in the drive, but tell me that’s not the same car in both pictures. The one on the street and the one in the drive.”

  Danny set them side by side and studied them for a full minute. “Yeah, they could be.”

  “The woman who took this picture said that the car behind the kid was parked there for hours at a time for two weeks. She even called the cops and they blew her off.”

  Danny looked at the pictures again. “It looks familiar.” He swallowed hard. “That’s a cop car.”

  “That’s what I thought. I just want to know which cop was driving it.”

  His phone buzzed and he checked the caller ID. “I gotta take this. Why don’t you see if you can pull the driver of that car from your memory.”

  Danny grimaced and Jordan turned his attention to the caller. “Seth, what do you have for me?”

  “You wanted a connection between Mr. Wray and Mr. Rhames and I’ve got one for you.”

  Excitement quickened his pulse. “What is it?”

  “The only connection I could find is that they have the same arresting officer.”

  * * *

  Katie pulled into the parking lot of the warehouse and cut the engine of her rental. Gregory pulled in behind her and she rolled her eyes.

  Katie slipped her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and walked up to Gregory. “What are you doing?”

  “I was concerned.” He crossed his arms and frowned down at her. “You wouldn’t tell me where you were going. I was concerned.”

  “Look—” She had to get rid of him. If Frank showed up, he’d be mad as fire. And she might never learn what he knew about Lucy. “I need you to disappear for a while. I’m meeting a CI and I don’t want you scaring him off.”

  “A confidential informant? For which case?”

  “Which case do you think?”

  The light went on for him. “Ah.”

  “Now go, will you?” She glanced at her watch. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  “Are you sure? Let me
stay as backup.”

  “I don’t need backup with this one.” She hesitated. “All right. But get out of sight, will you?”

  Relief crossed his features. “Okay.”

  He left and Katie leaned against her vehicle. She checked her phone. No response from Jordan. That was weird. She texted him again.

  A black sedan pulled into the parking lot. Frank pulled up beside her and climbed from his car.

  “I guess this is as private a place as any,” she said.

  Frank shook his head. “Move your car out of sight. I’m going to do the same. I don’t need someone saying they saw us meeting.”

  Katie sighed and dropped her arms. “Fine.”

  Once the vehicles were moved to Frank’s satisfaction, he said, “Let’s go inside, I’m freezing.”

  Her phone buzzed and she pulled it from her pocket. Frank looked back. She said, “It’s a text from Jordan wanting to know if I’m all right. We must have crossed texts.”

  “So tell him you’re fine. You’re a cop, Katie, and you act like you need a babysitter.”

  Katie’s head shot up. “Someone’s tried to kill me, Frank. Not once, but several times. Excuse me for appreciating friends who want to help look out for me.”

  Frank shrugged and entered the warehouse. Katie rolled her eyes and followed.

  * * *

  Jordan tucked his phone back into his pocket once he finished the call with Seth and checked for any messages from Katie.

  Meeting a CI at warehouse on Buckley. Says he has info on Lucy. Will call when I’m done.

  Satisfied she was still all right, Jordan processed what he’d just learned. Before he told Danny what Seth had just revealed, he wanted an answer from Danny. He pushed. “Whose car, Danny?”

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  “But it looks like…” He waited.

  Danny slammed a fist on the steering wheel. “Frank’s, all right? It looks like the car Frank and I used to drive.”

  Jordan pulled his phone back out and texted Katie, asking her who the CI was. Then he decided to forget the texting and dialed her number. When he got her voice mail, he said, “Frank knows more about Lucy’s kidnapping than he’s letting on. Be careful and let me know you got this message.” He looked at Danny. “I just learned that Frank was one of the many arresting officers of Wesley Wray and Norman Rhames. Both of whom are dead.”