Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1)

by Tina Wainscott

  Her mother’s mouth twitched with a rebuttal as she took in Mia comforting Rose. Then she spun around and stalked out.

  Her father sent her a disgusted look before turning back to Mia. “Call if you need us.” Then he followed his wife out, resignation clear in his shoulders.

  She felt a new love and respect for him. Especially when he gave her a reassuring smile before closing the door.

  Mia turned to Rose. “I need you to calm down. I don’t know much right now, but I’m heading out to see an attorney who’s going to help us. Stay here, okay? I’ll be back in a bit. Hopefully, with Raleigh.”

  She grabbed her purse and headed to her car. Twenty minutes later, she was opening the carved wooden door leading into the Parnell Law Firm. No one sat at the mahogany desk, but a female voice called out “Ms. Wentworth?” from the hallway.

  “Yes.”

  The woman who came out was tall, full-figured, and probably in her thirties. She gave Mia a firm handshake. “I’m Grace. Please, come back.”

  “Call me Mia, please.”

  She was much prettier than Mia had imagined, but everything about her screamed competent, all-business, classy, and tenacious. Grace’s linen pants swished as she walked unerringly down the hall in five-inch heels. Her long brown hair fell in shiny waves halfway down her back.

  They sat at a richly appointed wood table in a conference room. Grace already had a folder with Raleigh’s name on it. “Raleigh is being booked now. I’m pressing the right to a ‘speedy trial,’ and the prosecutor promises to decide on charges within a couple of hours. Then he’ll be arraigned, and hopefully given bail. He’s not a flight risk, nor is he a danger to himself or others.” She flipped her wrist to check a gold-and-diamond watch. “I should be able to meet with him in twenty minutes, then I’ll be present during interrogation.”

  “Interrogation,” Mia repeated. “I imagine a light glaring into his face, hours of grueling questioning.”

  “It won’t be like that, not with me there.” She pushed a sheaf of papers at Mia. “My retainer is twenty thousand.” She went down the list of hourly rates and typical court costs as Mia caught her breath. “Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes.” Mia pulled out a checkbook and wrote the check. “I’m going to see about starting a legal fund.”

  “That’s a great idea. Now, tell me how you’re involved in this.”

  Mia gave her a synopsis of their earlier relationship, including Raleigh’s racing conviction.

  Grace frowned as she jotted that down. “That’s not good. On the upside, it has nothing to do with the kind of violent charge he’s facing now.” She sat back in her chair. “Go on.”

  Mia finished with their present-day situation, leaving out the more intimate details.

  “Aw, that’s damned sweet,” Grace said, making one last note. “Sad, but sweet. You two have some pretty shitty luck.” Now fully engaged, she seemed to let her southern, er, slang slip into her voice.

  “Shitty luck about sums it up.” Mia was beginning to feel a bone-deep weariness at fate kicking her in the ribs.

  “Let me tell you what we’re up against. Sullivan has a propensity to home in on a target and stick like a tick. Given his personal history with Raleigh, I’m going to push the state attorney for a change of venue. But don’t count on that happening, since it doesn’t sound like there’s any proof of this supposed affair between the sheriff’s wife and Raleigh’s father. Right now they have two connections between suspect and victim. It’s enough to charge him, but it may not be enough to push it to trial.”

  “If it does go that far, is that enough to convict him?”

  “Depends on the jury. And, as you probably know if you watch the news, juries are unpredictable beasts. Locals may remember the crash. They may judge him because of his background.”

  The churning in Mia’s gut reminded her of when she was battling cancer. The what-ifs. The possible outcomes and the effort it would take to achieve a good one.

  Grace pushed to her feet. “I’m heading over. You work on the fund. I’ll call you later.” She led Mia to the front door but paused. “There’s one aspect of this case that’s real ugly. If you’re going to stand by your man, you’d better know what it is. Because once it gets out people are either going to side with Raleigh or think he’s a monster.”

  Chapter 14

  Grace Parnell apparently had some sway in moving the proceedings along quickly. Raleigh only knew her as a customer at the garage. She had one of the last T-Bird model years, a light blue convertible she called Birdie. Whenever she picked it up, she always asked him what he’d done, musing that if she ever had time she was going to learn to service her own car. “Nothing personal,” she’d say. “It’s a control thing.”

  Imagining the classy lady in a skirt suit digging around in the engine seemed odd, but apparently she’d been pretty wild in her day. At least, from what Raleigh had heard. She’d graduated long before him and gone off to college, so he hadn’t really known her.

  “Your lawyer is here,” Cassidy said, unlocking the cell he’d gleefully placed Raleigh in after the humiliation of being photographed for his mug shot and fingerprinted…again. Even more gleefully, he dangled the cuffs. “Remember that she lost her last case, the guy who was convicted of murdering his wife with a baseball bat. So don’t go getting cocky and thinking a fine piece of ass is going to save yours.”

  “Don’t talk about a lady like that.”

  Cassidy tapped his chin. “Gonna make me stop?”

  “When are you going to stop being a dick? You’ve spent your whole life trying to prove yourself, but all you’ve ever confirmed is that you’re a dick. Now you think you’re even better, stronger, smarter because you wear a uniform. But you’re still that same pitiful skinny boy bullying everybody else to make himself feel bigger.”

  His face turned scarlet. “Shut up.”

  “Like insulting the woman you caused to be scarred. That was low and despicable, and if you ever say something like that to her when you’re not in your uniform I will break your nose.”

  “Try it.”

  Raleigh chuckled. “You’re tough now because your uniform protects you in here. Let’s discuss it on your free time and see how tough and bad you are.”

  Cassidy moved his mouth as his pea brain tried to come up with a retort.

  Raleigh continued before he could. “Just because you don’t have a record doesn’t mean your soul is clean. Your arrogance caused a major crash. Severely injured me and another woman. Destroyed our cars. Our lives. You might have gotten that struck from your record on account of you being six months from eighteen, but you don’t get it cleared from your conscience. That stays for life until you make it right.” Raleigh spotted one of the jail’s officers watching the scene a few feet away, but he didn’t give away the man’s presence. “Pointing out the scars on a woman you caused to be burned, well, that isn’t going in the right direction, now, is it?”

  Cassidy’s face contorted with rage. “Why don’t you put your fist where your mouth is, you scumbag trailer trash—”

  “Because the truth hurts a lot more than my fists would.” He patted Cassidy’s chest. “Doesn’t it?”

  Shit, Cassidy was about to blow a gasket. His eyes bulged, fingers flexing. He lunged forward, fist driving toward Raleigh’s face. The moment before it would connect, Cassidy fell back. Helped, Raleigh saw, by the officer who’d jerked him backward.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” he demanded of Cassidy, an inch from his face.

  “The prisoner was harassing me. Threatening me.”

  “I keep telling Sullivan that you’re going to cause us trouble someday with your jacked-up attitude.” He nodded his chin toward the surveillance camera mounted on the wall. “I think he feels sorry for you. But I will be showing him this little scene, and I will ask him to fire you. Because I will not have a lawsuit against my jail.” He gave Cassidy a shove out of the way and looked at Raleigh. “I’ll b
e happy to escort you to meet your attorney.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The man, who was older than Sullivan, didn’t cuff Raleigh, simply gesturing for him to precede him. Raleigh glimpsed the word “Captain” on his nametag. Cassidy’s face was even redder now, and he spun around and pounded on the orange bars, then pulled back with a hiss.

  “You’re gonna fry, West,” he muttered between clenched teeth, rubbing his knuckles.

  “And Grace Parnell didn’t lose that case,” Raleigh said as they walked away. “She got him to take a plea deal.”

  The captain chuckled under his breath. “Instigator.”

  “I know, but the guy’s a bonehead.”

  “That he is.”

  He led Raleigh from the jail into the main building and to a small room with a table and three chairs. Grace Parnell was typing on her cellphone when the door opened. She stuffed the phone into her jacket pocket and shook Raleigh’s hand. “I’d say good to see you, and you’d say the same, but that isn’t true in these circumstances. No need to bullshit each other, right?”

  Yeah, she was going to be a good attorney. “Right.”

  Her grip was firm and confident, something she’d no doubt had to perfect dealing with the good-ol’-boy mentality here in Chambliss. Her height—around five-ten—probably helped.

  “Thanks for accepting my case.”

  “You’ve taken good care of my Birdie. And, frankly, this stinks like a pile of dog shit.”

  He smiled despite himself. “That it does,” he said, mirroring the captain’s sly agreement.

  Grace looked demure, but she had the mouth of the girl who’d grown up in this smallish town. He wondered if she would bring up the time he and Pax ran into her at the Love Shack in Panama City Beach. They had seen a whole other side of her…or maybe it was an old side. Sitting on the bar shooting back tequila with some beefy guy, in tight black jeans and a low-cut shirt that made her a wet dream. Until they went up and said hey. She’d shut right down, clearly uncomfortable with seeing someone she knew. Within fifteen minutes, she’d left.

  He and Pax figured she was trolling the out-of-town bar scene for the same reason they were—to let loose where no one knew them. Where many of the bar patrons were just visiting. Fun times, no ties. But Grace had a reputation to consider.

  Now she was the picture of competence and professionalism. She gestured toward the table and, as soon as they were seated across from each other, said, “Tell me everything about the last few months before your deadbeat dad went missing.”

  He told her almost everything. Not the potentially incriminating part that would reveal painful secrets. One of those secrets wasn’t his to reveal anyway.

  Grace took notes, her glossy peach fingertips flying over her tablet. “Ready to talk to the sheriff?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it?”

  She eyed him. “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “I have a good feel for telling who’s innocent.”

  “What about the guy who beat his wife to death with a baseball bat? Did you think he was innocent at first?”

  “I knew better. I told him so, said I couldn’t represent him. But I could negotiate a plea deal if he confessed. Life in prison instead of the chair. He took it.”

  “You ever been wrong?”

  A shadow passed over her expression as her gaze drifted to the right of him. “Once. Early on in my career, when I let my prejudices blind me.” She focused a hard gaze on him. “Never again.”

  The officer led them to the interrogation room, where Sheriff Sullivan waited like a shark. “Ms. Parnell.”

  “Sullivan.”

  “Is your client ready to answer some questions now that he has his guard dog?”

  She arched her eyebrow. “Woof.”

  Raleigh had to keep himself from laughing. Yes, she was the perfect attorney for him.

  Sullivan blinked in surprise at her response. “What did you say to me?”

  She gave him a guileless smile. “I cleared my throat. Got a problem with that?”

  He jerked the chair out and plopped down onto it. Grace indicated that Raleigh should take the chair next to hers. They sat down and faced Sullivan and another deputy who was standing off to the side.

  Sullivan pinned Raleigh with cold, hard eyes. “Did you kill your father?”

  “No, sir. I haven’t seen him in over a year, and he was very much alive the last time I did.”

  “When was that?”

  “About two months before he left town…or disappeared, as it turned out. He needed to borrow my car. He returned it that evening, handed me a six-pack in thanks, even though he knows I don’t drink, and left. Rose picked him up.”

  “Yeah, we’re tracking her down, too. Being Hank’s ex-wife, I bet she has plenty to say about him. Apparently, she has a lawn-care business, puts her all over the place. Saw her kid at Scott Brady’s working on a fence, but he didn’t know where his mama was.”

  Hell, he hadn’t even thought about them questioning her. Suspecting her. “She couldn’t have done it. She weighs barely a hundred pounds. No way could she overpower someone the size of my father. She and my dad hadn’t lived together, or been involved, for three years before he left. Or was killed.” Raleigh rubbed his forehead. “That’s hard to process. He was always taking off, saying he had some job in another town or state. We just figured he’d stayed there, or kept moving on.”

  “Made it convenient for you—”

  “As convenient as it is for you to pin this on my client,” Grace growled.

  “Made it convenient for the killer to cover his tracks, let time pass. No one was even looking for Hank West.”

  Raleigh shrugged. “No one would probably be looking for him anyway. He had no steady job or romantic relationship, as far as I know.”

  Sullivan’s mouth tightened. “You didn’t take after him in that regard,” he seemed to admit begrudgingly. “Or with the womanizing, hitting the bars.”

  “I’m nothing like my dad.” Raleigh hoped he hadn’t said that too forcefully.

  “Do you know of anyone who might want to kill your father? Anyone he owed money? A girl he stole, wife he nailed?”

  “Other than yours?”

  “What did you say?” the man nearly barked.

  Raleigh drummed his fingers on the table. “I suspected there was something between them, years ago. Before you told Pax not to bring me around anymore.”

  “There was nothing going on. I just didn’t want your bad influence around my kid, and I sure as hell didn’t want your good-for-nothing, thieving dad on my property. But that was a long time ago. I’m asking about recent affairs.”

  “I made it a point to stay out of his business.”

  “So you didn’t get along?”

  Yeah, Sullivan was definitely homing in on him. “We were what you’d call estranged. We had very little interaction. But if you’re asking if I’m angry at him, or had some beef with him, no.”

  That was a lie, but Raleigh’s beef had faded into the past. “Rose didn’t either. He didn’t live up to his financial obligations as far as their son was concerned, but killing him wouldn’t help much in that regard.”

  “Rose isn’t a suspect, so you can stop trying to cover for her. We’re merely looking for her to gather information.”

  To gather something incriminating against Raleigh.

  Sullivan opened a folder and pulled out several pictures, laying them out on the table. Pictures of the truck under the murky water as it had been found. A skeleton wearing the remnants of clothing, a small fish swimming inside the rib cage. Close-up shots showed gashes in the old bones.

  Raleigh’s stomach churned. So that was how his dad’s life had ended.

  Sullivan had been studying his reaction to the pictures, probably hoping to see guilt. Well, he didn’t get what he wanted.

  “We’re dredging the lake for the weapon. If it’s out there, we’ll find it. Maybe wit
h fingerprints. People tend to think water erases evidence.” He grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth. “They’re wrong.”

  “I hope you find it, because my fingerprints aren’t on the handle.”

  Sullivan pointed to the close-up pictures. “See all those kerf marks on the skeleton’s bones? His ribs, face, hands, which are indicative of defense wounds. Someone stabbed him over and over with a large knife. That’s a lot of rage. Rage equals personal.”

  Grace pointed to the pictures. “You have nothing here to charge my client with. I want the charges dropped.”

  “The truck was found within a quarter mile of your client’s abode. Your client had a hostile relationship with the deceased.”

  “Estranged,” Raleigh clarified.

  “We have a witness who claims he saw you arguing with your father in the month prior to his death.”

  Raleigh searched his memory. When his dad had tried to hit him up for a “loan” at the diner. “He asked me for money, and I told him to bite me. I was done giving him so-called loans. He called me ungrateful and a lot of other nasty names and stomped out. No argument.”

  Sullivan wrote that down. “Sounds like an argument to me.”

  “You know that won’t fly in court,” Grace said, her eyes narrowed at the sheriff. “You’re trying to build a case based on your own personal bias of the suspect.”

  “Hell, I don’t much like the victim, either, but I’m doing my job. Are you accusing me of prejudice?”

  “Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I know you, Sheriff. I’ve seen you tie the most tenuous evidence together to run down someone.” She ticked several names off her fingers, some Raleigh had heard.

  “And some of them were convicted by a jury of their peers,” Sullivan said, mirroring her earlier pose. “Based on the evidence, witness statements.”

  “Statements I understand you coerced. Something you’re good at.” Anger burned in her brown eyes. “One day that’s going to catch up to you. And when it does, don’t come to me for representation.”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair, signifying that he wasn’t taking her threat seriously. “Doubtful, Ms. Parnell.”