by Kara Lennox
Damn it. She’d tricked him. He was supposed to be the one with the logical arguments, yet he’d stumbled right into that one.
“I don’t deny it’s possible. But I don’t believe it.”
“You’re just being bullheaded.”
“What’s he like with you? I mean, do you visit him?”
“Sure. Not all that often. Every month or two. And he’s...the same guy my teenage self fell in love with all those years ago. A little sadder, maybe. He never used to be depressed like he is now. He used to be so full of plans, a man of big ideas. But he’s still kind and gentle and loving—loving in an I-still-care-about-you-even-though-we-broke-up way.”
“So the way he behaved with you is completely contrary to how he acted with the other inmates. We’re talking about two months ago, three months ago. Therefore, isn’t it possible he showed you a different side of himself even back when he committed the crime? That he showed you a kind and gentle side, and when you weren’t around, he was violent?”
“I would have seen some sign of that in him,” Bree said stubbornly. “I knew him better than anyone.”
Eric let it ride. He would never convince her that her old flame was a monster. “So where is this intersection where Jerrod picked up Philomene’s car?” Eric asked.
“You think we should go there? It’s an intersection a couple of miles out of town. No houses or businesses around, so there aren’t any potential witnesses to interview.”
“I just want to have a look around.” He didn’t know precisely what he would look for. Tire tracks? Footprints? Blood?
Hell, it was only a couple of miles. He felt as if he needed to gather as much information as possible.
Once they left the Tuckerville city limits, they found themselves in the middle of nowhere. Farmland spread out on either side of them—crop fields, grazing land, an old windmill that still turned lazily in the breeze.
They were on Highway 238, which was nothing but a rough two-lane farm-to-market road.
“Curry Road is that next stop sign,” Bree said after a couple of minutes.
Eric pulled his car over before they reached the stop sign. If there were any tire tracks or footprints, he didn’t want to obliterate them. He unfastened his seat belt and got out.
Bree followed suit. “Do you really think you’ll learn anything?”
“No.” He walked slowly toward the intersection, looking around, listening. All he heard was the wind in the tall grass, a few bird chirps, the occasional moo of a cow.
“Is the land around here all privately owned?”
“I think so.”
“Is there any water nearby?”
“Just watering tanks for the cattle.”
“No private lakes?”
“Oh, God. You think whoever left Philomene’s car here might have—” Bree shuddered “—disposed of the body here?”
“I don’t really think that,” Eric said quickly. He didn’t want to upset Bree more than necessary. She’d no doubt dealt with violent death before—car accidents and the like. But she probably hadn’t known anyone who’d been murdered. She might even be feeling guilty because she was the one who pushed Philomene to talk about her false identification of Kelly. “This scenario might also fit the theory that she fled. She could have met her ride out of town here just to be sure no one saw who she left with.”
“The only reason she would do that is if she felt threatened. Which begs the question, who threatened her?”
“Maybe no one, directly.”
“I’m sorry, but a case of cold feet wouldn’t cause her to go to such extreme measures. She could have simply told me she’d changed her mind. And if she did leave town, why give up her car? Doesn’t add up.”
Eric was beginning to agree with Bree.
They walked through the intersection to the other side, and Eric found something interesting. The ground had been wet two nights ago after a recent rain. He could see the impression of two tires, the treads clearly defined and hardened, now that the ground had dried out.
As Eric contemplated the tire tracks, which looked to be those of a passenger car, not a large truck or ATV, Bree crouched down to examine something else.
“Whatcha got?” Eric asked.
“Maybe a footprint. Like someone was standing behind the car.”
Pulling something out of the trunk? Eric refrained from speculating out loud, but he probably didn’t have to. Bree could speculate very well all on her own.
“There’s not very much detail, but we could at least determine the shoe size,” she said.
Obviously, they didn’t have any way to take a cast of the impressions left in the mud. But Eric did have his phone, which had a good camera. Now all he needed was something to indicate scale. Crime scene photographers always had some kind of ruler with them. Eric would have to improvise. He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Do you have anything that’s a standard size? Or just something we can measure later?”
“Oh, clever.” She reached into the back pocket of her jeans. “I have a packet of tissues.”
“That’ll do.”
Bree placed the tissue pack alongside the clearest of the tire impressions, and Eric snapped a few shots. They repeated the process for the footprint. Then Eric measured the distance between the two tires by walking between them toe to heel.
“What are you going to do with these pictures?” Bree asked.
“I figure we’ll tell the sheriff what we learned about Philomene’s car, then send him copies of the photos.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “He probably still won’t do anything. He’ll argue the same thing Jerrod did—she must have met a boyfriend out here and left with him. The tire prints probably came from her car. And he’ll say the text message proves she was okay. Lazy SOB,” she muttered.
As they returned to his car, Eric pondered the problem. He could show the photos to Beth at Project Justice. She ran the small but well-equipped lab at the foundation, and with Mitch’s help she could get her hands on just about any database—including tire and shoe patterns—to identify who and what had stopped by this roadside.
But he’d only been working there for a few days. It wasn’t as if he’d racked up any favors he could call in. And asking his coworkers to work on a case that wasn’t foundation business, on their own time, was a pretty big favor.
“If DeVille still won’t investigate, maybe we could talk to the Texas Rangers,” Eric suggested.
“Oh, man, the sheriff wouldn’t like that at all. He doesn’t like anyone interfering in his business.”
“Yeah, but he’s told us loud and clear that he doesn’t consider Philomene’s disappearance his business.”
“Ooh, good point. Still, I can’t imagine the Rangers would listen to me. They probably have more important stuff to do than look for someone who might not really be missing. Even if I’m sure she is.”
But Daniel had friends at the Texas Rangers. If Project Justice had taken on Kelly’s case, Eric would have been free to ask anyone for anything, and no one would have blinked. Daniel would have been on the phone to someone at the Rangers in seconds flat.
Eric didn’t voice any of these thoughts aloud. He didn’t want to give Bree any more reason to try to persuade him to change his mind about Kelly. And that was all it would take. If Eric went to Daniel and said he had second thoughts about Kelly’s guilt, Daniel would reverse his decision and put Kelly’s case in the queue.
No way. He wasn’t going to do anything that might result in that animal being let loose on society.
On him and his family.
“Let’s wait and see what DeVille says. Then you can decide whether to talk to the Rangers. Maybe there’s some other way to light a fire under the sheriff. Maybe threaten to lodge some kind of comp
laint against him. Or tell him you’ll go to the press. That’s usually a pretty effective gesture.”
“Doubt it would work with DeVille. He’s buddies with every judge in Becker County and a few on the state level, as well.”
“What about the newspaper? Or a local TV station? Get some enterprising investigative journalist interested in this, and we won’t have to investigate anything. He or she will take over, and they might be better at it than we are.”
“Actually, I think we’ve done pretty well so far. We found Philomene’s car, and we figured out who has or had her phone, and we have a suspect.”
He didn’t want to burst Bree’s bubble, but they’d probably gone about as far as they could go on their own.
Obviously sensing his ambivalence, she persisted. “Oh, come on, you don’t think we make a pretty good team?”
So tempting to agree with her. Under any other circumstances... He tried not to visibly grimace as he ruthlessly suppressed the attraction he felt toward her. Perhaps they would make a good team if they both had the same goal. He contemplated the slight pout she wore on her face—not a manipulative expression, he was sure, but a genuine reflection of her disappointment in him.
“We’ve accomplished more than I thought we would,” he finally conceded.
“Well of course we did, since you didn’t think there was anything to investigate.”
“I’m still not sure there is.” But the argument was knee-jerk at this point. He hoped Philomene would turn up. As uninterested as he was in having her dredge up Kelly Ralston’s crimes and call his guilt into question, he would feel awful if anything happened to her.
They stopped by the sheriff’s office, but DeVille wasn’t around. Nor could dispatch locate him.
“He probably forgot to turn on his phone again,” said Joan, the longtime dispatch operator, who seemed far more interested in watching the video streaming on her own phone than being of service. She probably didn’t have a lot to do in this tiny rural county, which had a distinctly Mayberry vibe. And she probably liked it that way. “You want to leave a message?”
“Yes.” Bree pulled a notebook and pen from her purse and spent a couple of minutes writing out a note for the sheriff. Eric couldn’t see exactly what she wrote, but he noticed her underlining several words and phrases, sometimes three or four times.
Joan took it from her without comment and set it on her messy desk. Eric suspected the note wouldn’t be Joan’s first priority when the sheriff returned.
Once they were outside again, Bree sighed. “Sometimes I hate living in a small town. I mean, I love knowing almost everyone, and the slower pace is nice. And the lower crime rate. And the lower cost of living.”
“It’s cleaner here, too. I was amazed how many stars I could see.”
“Yeah, I guess. But it’s backward here, too. Lots of outdated attitudes. People here are suspicious of anyone or anything that’s different. Just convincing women here that they need to get mammograms is a huge battle, and the hospital has had the machine for twenty years!”
“Small towns have no monopoly on inflexible people, trust me.” He checked his phone for the time, surprised and oddly disappointed that the day had gone by so quickly. Despite not finding Philomene, he couldn’t deny a certain degree of...stimulation spending time with Bree. He’d caught himself more than once watching her when she wasn’t looking, pondering what motivated her, what made her so determined to free her ex-boyfriend and now just as determined to locate a woman who was only an acquaintance. Most people would have washed their hands of this situation by now, but not Bree.
He wondered what she was like at work. Not that he wanted to become a patient at the E.R. to find out, but he bet it was a sight to see. She would fight like a wildcat to give her patients the best care, and she would take it hard—perhaps even personally—if they died.
“The traffic is going to get bad if you don’t head back pretty soon,” she said.
“I don’t have to rush off. If there’s anything else you think we should do—”
“Come on, I saw you checking your phone. If I don’t abuse your goodwill, maybe you’ll come back sometime.”
It surprised him how much he would like that. What was going on here? He had no business thinking about Bree on any terms except professionally. “If there’s anything I can help with, I’m willing. I started out helping you under protest, but the mystery of Philomene’s whereabouts has gotten under my skin.” He was way more invested in that than in proving Ralston’s innocence, even though the two might turn out to be connected. “Maybe this weekend?”
God, let her say no.
“I don’t want to drag you away from your little girl,” Bree said. “But you could bring her with you.”
The last time he’d brought MacKenzie to Tuckerville, he’d regretted it. The memory of interrupting Jerrod during his break-in still turned his stomach. “I don’t think I should involve her.”
“Oh, right. Of course I wouldn’t want to expose her to dangerous neighborhoods or sketchy people. But maybe...” Bree shook her head with a rueful smile. “Never mind.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. Let’s get going so you can get on the road.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
“Trying to stop making unreasonable demands on you. You’ve helped a lot, really.”
“I’m not done yet. I’ll get back to you about the tire prints and footprints.”
“Okay.”
She looked sad. Did she not have anyone else to lean on, anyone who could shoulder this burden of worry with her? “Bree, I’ve never asked this, but maybe I should have. Do you have family here? A husband, boyfriend, parents, siblings?”
“Parents. My dad’s a county judge now. They live on a little hobby farm—a few cows and chickens.”
“What do they have to say about your quest to free Kelly?”
“I don’t speak to them about it.”
So she was a lone crusader. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was significant—that she’d never enlisted anyone else to help her. No one but him, anyway.
Was the woman crazy? Was he thinking with his gonads? She seemed reasonable, but maybe he was fooled by the fact she was a doctor and so well-spoken. Educated people with good vocabularies always sounded reasonable, even when what they said was crackers.
“What time is it, anyway?” She dug through her purse for her own phone and wasn’t coming up with it.
“It’s a little after three.”
“Oh, jeez, I’m gonna be late for work. Would you mind dropping me off at the hospital on your way? I can get a ride to my car later. It’s a little out of your way—”
“It’s no problem.”
“Thanks.” Her smile was warm. Little by little, Bree Johnson had been dropping her guard around him. He hadn’t missed the fact that the harder and longer he worked toward finding Philomene, the warmer she got.
Now he had to question not only his own judgment for getting involved in this mess but his ethics, too. Was he helping her because he genuinely believed Philomene was in trouble? Or did he want something else?
The familiar guilt settled around his heart as he opened his car door for Bree, letting his gaze linger on the smooth skin above the collar of her shirt, the gentle swell of the tops of her breasts. Her shirt was by no means suggestive, but his mind didn’t need anyone else’s suggestions to conjure images of Bree’s naked body. It could do that all on its own.
He shouldn’t feel guilty for appreciating a beautiful woman. Tammy had been wildly unfaithful; he owed her no loyalty. But he still felt connected to her. At the time of her murder, he’d thought they were both in love. He’d gone into deep mourning. Though he shouldn’t cling to a memory of something that hadn’t existed, convincing his heart to let
go was easier said than done.
By the time Eric slid behind the wheel, Bree was buckled in and digging through her purse again. “I still can’t find my phone.”
“When did you last see it?” Eric was used to asking this question. MacKenzie fretted excessively when she couldn’t find one of her toys. She liked to know where all of them were at all times.
“I had it at the café when I stopped in to grab a coffee....”
“You want to swing by there first?”
“Yes. I can’t go without my phone. I’ll have to start calling you Eric’s Taxi Service. But at least I can pick up my car.”
“Will you be late for work?”
“Only a little.”
Three more minutes and they were at the café. Really, there was nowhere in town that wasn’t accessible in the time it took to put on your sunglasses.
“You can just drop me off,” Bree said when Eric pulled into a parking space.
“Thought I’d come in and get an iced tea for the road.” That was just an excuse, though, to spend another minute or two in Bree’s company. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Molly,” Bree said breathlessly to the hostess the moment she cleared the door. “Did I leave my—”
Molly was already reaching behind the cashier’s desk with a knowing look on her face. “You mean this?”
“Oh, thank God. You know how it is. My entire life is on this phone. Did I just leave it sitting on the counter?” Bree asked as she scrolled through messages.
“Yup. You’d be surprised how many people do that.”
“Well, thanks. And can you get Eric a large iced tea to go? On me.”
“That’s not—” Eric started to object, but Bree held up a hand to stop him.
“Least I could do. Consider it taxi fare.” She still was engrossed in her phone. Apparently she did have friends, or an awful lot of strangers who called and texted her.
“Eric.” Her voice was suddenly tense with excitement. “You’re not going to believe this. Philomene texted me.”
