Mitch rolled his bottom lip in and bit down. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but after seeing the area they’d found the body, not twenty feet from a well-worn path through the woods, it didn’t measure up to Wray’s work. Wray took his victims to secluded places. He liked privacy.
“Just asking questions.”
“My turn then.” Helm’s voice deepened. He turned to face Mitch. His eyes hot with some emotion Mitch wrote off as curiosity. “What happened with the ropes? The hunters said they were bloodstained.”
No. It was more than idle curiosity he saw flicker in the man’s eyes. He made a mental note to pick up coffee and doughnuts for the Rebel secretary in return for a peek at the officer’s file. “Just discards from thoughtless hunters. Deer blood.”
Helms took a deep breath and turned back to the party in time to catch Lacy walk out the side door of the house.
She tossed a look back at Mitch that could melt steel.
“You and Lace? Damn you really do have a death wish.”
Mitch took a healthy slug of the cold liquid. It did little to dissipate the heat touching Lacy had fanned inside him. He watched her saunter over to her father and rise to her tiptoes to peck his bearded cheek before turning back to catch Mitch staring.
She had the man wrapped so tight around her pinky the string has cut off circulation to his brain. By the way the chief gave her a onceover before following her line of sight to Mitch said the old man knew more about his daughter’s extracurricular activities than he let on. Something dark and protective flashed in her father’s eyes before he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a one sided hug, giving Mitch the fuck-off stare.
She wasn’t the kind of edgy girl men like Mitch gravitated toward. Hell, at twenty-three she still lived with her father, a man she detested but not enough to say no to his money, and worked in a goddamn country and western bar.
Lacy had an independent streak a mile wide and a river deep, yet she clung to her father. Why? The question had plagued him since the first night he’d put two and two together in the bar.
Despite her down home, country girl persona, something about her unwillingly implored him to take control. The challenge of making her see that fact for herself proved too appealing a venture to abandon.
He clinched his jaw and groaned in answer to Helms’ question. “She scares me a hell of a lot more than the chief.”
“I get it,” Helms started over the rim of his bottle. “Unattainable conquests always make the sweetest rewards. We all need a little of that every now and again.”
It wasn’t so much what the officer said, but the way in which he said it that made Mitch take notice. “Unattainable or unwilling? There’s a difference.”
Helms nodded his head. “Please. Look at her. She’s fucked you with her eyes for the last ten minutes, and you’re telling me you wouldn’t take that behind the potting shed and pound it just to teach her a lesson? Where the hell do they get off leading us on then shifting to sweet-and-innocent gear once they rev our engine?”
Mitch tossed back another swallow, hoping the jilting cold would alleviate his sudden need to break Helms’s nose with a solid punch. As a cop, he liked the guy too much to knock him on his ass in the middle of a family soirée, but he wasn’t above sending the message when Lacy was concerned.
“Sounds like you’ve entertained the idea of the chief’s daughter once or twice yourself.” If the kid had any brains in his head, he’d deny it even if he had.
Helms opened his mouth, but he dropped his comment when Lacy walked past them for the door. An arrogant nod of her head was the only sign she acknowledged either of them.
Mitch eyed the starburst wrinkle his fist had ironed into the front of her dress and felt the familiar throb along the inseam of his dress pants.
He watched as Helms’ head turned, watching, too. He was ready to deck the guy when realization sank deep in his gut. What made him any different from Helms? He’d practically stalked her in Charlie’s. Watched her every move, picked up on her work hours, and he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he’d staked the place out knowing she’d be there.
A girl like that could make a man forget he wasn’t capable of an emotion deeper than desire. She could make him feel, something Mitch had successfully avoided his entire adult life.
Lacy smoothed the front of her dress, tossed a sharp glance over her shoulder to him before disappearing back into the house.
“As I said.” He gave Helms a generous slap on the back. “Unattainable and unwilling are two different things, but to you, they both mean no.”
Helms took a gulp and centered his gaze on Andrews. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I can deal with overprotective daddy issues.” Mitch’s gaze slid over the landscape of the party and landed back on Helms.
“Your deep perceptions into the criminal mind may have catapulted you up the rank ladder, but you don’t know shit about fucked up family dramas. There’s a hell of a lot more going on under the surface than fucked up daddy issues. She’s bound to him in ways you can’t begin to imagine.” Helms tossed back the rest of his beer as if he needed to cork his mouth before he dropped a secret. “Don’t mistake controlling for overprotective.”
Mitch glanced over to the Andrews family. Lacy had returned with a tray of mushrooms and was dwarfed between Andrews and a tall man Mitch inferred to be her brother.
“They make the perfect family, don’t they? They should. One step out of line and daddy lets them know. Makes you wonder why he’s scared to let them out of his sight.”
“How’d you become an expert on their home life?”
“Small towns hold no secrets.” Helms popped a square of cheese in his mouth from a passing waitress and wheeled around to a group of uniformed officers hovering around the food table.
Mitch’s stomach soured at the thought of anyone harming Lacy. He eyed Andrews, whose arm encircled his daughter’s waist like a snared rabbit.
He noted the chief’s avoidance game around the sprawling back yard. He admired the man for not broaching a confrontation and didn’t fault his ever-present hand on his daughter.
He’d consumed enough cheese cubes and cocktail weenies to count for dinner and engaged in enough small talk to know no one was divulging town secrets to the stranger when Deluna approached from the circle of officers hovering around their leader. The young man’s face was a confliction of stern lines and apologetic softness. “Chief wants to see you in his office.”
“See me about what?”
Deluna paused a second longer than necessary before answering. “He didn’t say. Just to meet him in his office, the door beyond the kitchen. He’ll be there in a few.”
“Okay.” Mitch drew out each syllable, his gaze shifting to the group of officers across the yard, Helms now among them and staring back to him and Deluna.
Mitch took a quick sweep of the yard but couldn’t find Lacy. He’d seen her about ten minutes ago escorted into the house by her brother, but she hadn’t returned. Then it hit him. Struck him in the gut like a perfectly aimed sucker punch. An ambush. From Deluna’s mention of the party to Helms’ questions over a beer, to shuffling Lacy away from the fallout.
He’d let his guard down. Let the drag of small town life lull him into false security.
He turned for the door and felt Deluna fall in step behind him. “Guess he didn’t like my dropping in on his party.”
Deluna shut the door behind them. “Oh, I’d say he planned on it.”
Mitch crested the back door leading into the kitchen. “How’d you get picked to be the lucky one to grab me?”
Deluna stopped short. The expression on his face deep. “I asked.”
“You asked?” From day one, something about Deluna stood out among the Rebel officers. He’d mistaken it for inexperience at first, written if off to being a rook, but the kid had balls. He’d make one hell of a detective one day.
The younger officer motioned toward t
he door on the other side of the kitchen. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about messing with Chief.”
Mitch nodded. “Duly noted.” He grabbed the door handle and entered before turning to Deluna only to find him halfway across the kitchen and headed back outside.
Balls, and smart enough to know when to get the hell out of dodge. He liked this kid, even if Deluna had led him into the lion’s den.
The office was dark except for a small desk lamp. The blinds shut against the twinkling of party lights outside. Someone laughed beyond the closed window that looked out over the party grounds.
Mitch paced a circle around the room, taking in family pictures scattered on ornate tables, a bookcase packed to the brim with crime novels, a desk – too neat to belong to a chief with an open murder case in his department – and an expensive, quilted leather recliner.
Above the desk hung a portrait of a happy family. The Detective Andrews he remembered from that distant night in the department lobby smiled back with his arms around a pudgy blond boy with Alfalfa-spiked hair and rosy cheeks and a girl with brown curls and soft skin with a pink, lacy dress draped around her.
Lacy sat cross-legged on the floor with what appeared to be a hand on her knee coming from someone out of the shot. He’d bet if he took the picture from the frame, he’d find a woman who shared Lacy’s pale skin and piercing eyes folded back behind her family. Hidden from view but not from their memories.
He’d just put up his feet and cracked the spine of one of Andrews’ crime classics when the door swung open hard enough to hit the wall behind it. Two uniformed officers entered with the chief’s stout body strutting in behind.
The thinner of the two officers, a redhead about Deluna’s age, reached for the cuffs behind his back while the broader man, a veteran by his hard stance and set jaw, stopped at Mitch’s elevated feet and squared off his sizeable frame.
Stretch pulled a set of cuffs off his utility belt and spoke first. “Detective Mitch Kilpatrick?”
Mitch nodded but stayed put in the chair. If they wanted to arrest him, they were going to have to work for it.
Stretch swallowed. “You’re under arrest for the tampering of evidence at a crime scene currently under investigation by the Rebel Rapids police department. You have the right to—”
“I know my damn rights.” God, this would take all damn night if they insisted on following protocol. Mitch swung one loafered foot off the ottoman before Stretch reached for Mitch’s arms and twisted it behind his back. Stretch brought Mitch’s other arm back to meet the first and closed the cuffs tight around his wrists.
Brut stepped forward and patted him down, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and tossed it open to his badge on the chief’s desk.
Mitch had never put much thought into clinking cuffs on the bad guys before, but damn did the things pinch like hell. After this, he made a mental note to order an extra large pair from the police supply store.
Once cuffed and searched, Chief Andrews approached. “I’ll take things from here, fellas.” He waved off the two officers who shut the door on their way out, but by the shadows under the floor, they hadn’t gone far.
Andrews barely rose to Mitch’s chin, and he had to crane his neck to look down to the chief, a position made even more uncomfortable by Mitch’s arms being pulled behind his back. “Quite a show you put on for your guests.”
Andrews paced a circle around him. “If I wanted to put on a show, I wouldn’t have waited to get you alone.”
He had a point. But he wanted something? His arrest was a bargaining chip for something bigger. But what?
Mitch shook his arms behind his back. “Is this really necessary?”
“I thought I told you to steer clear of my daughter, Detective.”
“Haven’t touched her since we talked.” He smirked.
“But you’ve thought about it.” Spittle formed in the corner of Andrews’ mouth, like a rabid dog.
“You’re arresting me for thinking about your daughter? Not sure you have a prayer in hell of making those charges stick or how you’d prove them.”
“No.” Andrews backed up and ran a finger along the slick top of his clean desk. “But crime scene contamination? Even you Nashville hotheads take that seriously. Especially when the offender is a rogue cop out of jurisdiction.”
Mitch rolled his shoulders and fought to loosen his arms.
Being bombarded and cuffed pissed him the hell off, but he couldn’t let on without giving Andrews the upper hand. “Are you referring to the crime scene your boys cleared before collecting all the evidence? Yeah, I guess Nashville wouldn’t be too keen on that idea.” Mitch tilted his head to get a better read on the chief’s thoughtful expression. “Unless they never know. That could happen. Intel goes missing all the time between small town departments and the big wigs in the DAs office.”
Andrews’ face turned hard. “I know how to clean up my own messes, kid. I’ve been doing this since before you were in dippers.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the crime scene. You have a leak in your department, and you’re trying to pin it on me?”
Andrews smiled from the corner of his mouth. He hitched a hip up to his desk. “You couldn’t have made it more simple.”
“More simple for what?” He shifted, his arms heavy. He clinked the cuffs.
“Rogue cop shows up, tampers with decades old evidence, ruins chance to link recent murder to serial killer from the past.”
“What?” He struggled and stepped forward until his face was bearing down on the chief’s.
“We have a thief among us, Detective. I haven’t been able to smoke the bastard out, but I will. In the meantime, Nashville brass wants a name. A rouge cop with a fetish for fisting department evidence and tampering with investigations. Until I know the truth, I’m not putting one of my guy’s heads on a platter. And you happen to be in my way.”
The floorboards beyond the closed door creaked followed by the energetic sound of a woman’s voice. Lacy’s. Both men directed their attention to the door. If she walked in, she’d really see how wrong her bad boy was, a chance Mitch didn’t want to take.
Neither man moved until the deep baritone of one officer directed her outside to find her father.
“Sounds to me like you’re trying to make a deal.” Mitch redirected his gaze on the Chief. He didn’t miss the sweat droplets on his forehead or the redness in his cheeks.
“I don’t bargain, son.”
“You do or you wouldn’t have sent your dogs outside. You would have made a show of arresting me. Sent a message to the town about crossing the law. If you were really going to arrest me, I’d be cuffed in the back of a squad car by now, not your home office. And you’d have witnesses to appease Nashville. They’d want to know how this arrangement went down, and you’d want someone with a keen eye for detail to tell them everything was by the book. Not those two henchmen you call officers. So, what’s the deal? Stay away from your daughter and keep my badge?”
“If that’s what you like.”
Mitch was thoughtful for a minute. He wanted Andrews to really buy into him thinking it over before he dropped a bomb on his little extortion deal. “How about I compose a deal for you.”
The chief leaned forward.
“You get your dogs in here to uncuff me and I walk out the front door unfollowed, or I let the Nashville brass in on the fact your officers left a live crime scene open to the public.”
“That won’t save your badge.”
“No.” He turned his back to Andrews and pushed his cuffed hands in his direction. “But letting me go might save yours.”
He waited a few seconds in silence before Andrews’ weight left the desk and something jingled behind him. He groaned and unlatched the cuffs.
Free, Mitch turned back to face the chief. He rubbed his wrists and waited for the man to recognize him. Some hint of the boy he’d spent hours comforting.
Nothing sparked.
�
�This is a warning, Detective. Fuck with my investigations or my daughter again and I will have your badge. They can throw mine in with it, but I will see you fall.”
Mitch said nothing. He dodged around the man and opened the door to brooding, solider boy’s chest. They squared off for a second before Andrews’ voice carried out the door. “Let him go, O’Brian. And find my daughter. I’m ready to see her now.”
From the bay window in the kitchen, Mitch caught the group of officers still throwing back bottles and watching the house. Deluna caught his gaze and smiled. The rest gave him stone stares. He gave them all his best shit-eating grin and made for the front door just in time to catch Lacy bounding down the stairs in a skinny tank top with Charlie’s scrolled across the front in large black letters, a pair of cutoff jeans that accented her backside and long legs, and cowboy boots.
An image of her, wrapped around his waist holding on with nothing but those brown leather boots made him stiffen.
“Party’s over,” he called to her back. “Kind of late to be heading out, don’t you think?”
Lacy turned with a sharp exhale and surprised expression. She seemed to catch her breath and regroup before answering. “If the party’s over that means the bar will be full.” She glanced at his wrists. “What happened to you?”
He stopped rubbing them and dropped his hands to his sides. “Nothing. Just a chat with your dad.”
She shot a look over his shoulder and narrowed her eyes, searching.
“Don’t worry. He’ll be in his office making calls about me for a while. He won’t see you sneak out.”
“Then why are you still here?”
He jingled his keys in his hand. “On my way out now. Seems I wasn’t as welcome as I thought.”
“Good.” She glanced behind him then opened the front door. Her expression cooled. “You don’t belong here, Detective. Maybe now you see that.” She turned and took the front steps two at a time.
Mitch shoved his hands in his suit pockets and followed. “Maybe I belong here more than anyone thinks. Does anyone in this town ever stop to think what if the chief is wrong? What if Richard Wray has nothing to do with those two dead girls?”
Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) Page 8
