Avenged (14 page)

BY THE NEXT MORNING
Nick wanted to pack up the dog and get out of town for a few days. Carly was on medical leave, and he had plenty of vacation hours to burn. Ginny Masters’s front-page story ran that morning with excerpts from her interviews with Karl Drake and B. K. Tucker, the two disgraced police officers Carly had helped to put behind bars. They’d accepted plea agreements months ago but refused to testify against Burke.

Hardheaded
,
know-it-all
, and
trigger-happy
were some of the phrases used to describe Carly. Not surprisingly, the two former officers didn’t have anything nice to say. She wondered why Masters hadn’t also gone to Burke for dirt.

When Nick checked in with Fernando, he learned that
a team of FBI agents had subpoenas for Carly’s personnel records. The only good news was that they were keeping a low profile, so the specifics of their investigation wouldn’t be released to the media. Carly heard that Wiley was also involved in the investigation. She figured that meant the task force was no longer in her choice column, which stung more than she expected since she wasn’t sure she really wanted the job.

Carly knew having the feds involved was good politically, that it would make the investigation completely impartial. But the cloud over her name was almost unbearable. The phone calls from news agencies were maddening. When an afternoon talk station with two loudmouthed shock jocks started piling on, even her mother called, disturbed by what she was hearing. The DJs didn’t have any of their facts straight. They said Carly shot Barton in the back and were calling for a public arrest and perp walk.

“The investigation has just started,” Kay said when she talked to Carly. “How can they say those horrible things?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I’m trying not to listen.”

Her mother had ended the call with a tearful prayer that the truth would come out soon. Carly had to blow her nose after talking to her mom, hating that the fallout from an incident she couldn’t remember was affecting everyone she cared about. She and Nick had turned the landline off and were only answering cell phone calls from numbers they recognized. It broke her heart to see all the negative press impeding her husband from doing the job he loved.

“We can’t leave now,” Carly told Nick after breakfast that
morning. “You have to find out why Barton wanted Londy shot.”

“Fernando is doing a good job directing things. I trust my team.”

Carly sat at the kitchen table, where she’d been doing a devotional and trying to beat down the anger she felt toward Ginny Masters. But the anger gushed anew, burning through her like a swath of molten lava.
I’ve been through this before,
she thought,
but I wasn’t with Nick then. Seeing how it’s affecting him is just about more than I can bear.

Why, Lord? Why?

She’d been reading in Psalm 62, how David waited quietly for the Lord, how he counted on the Lord to fight his battles and the Lord never failed him. “My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me.” Holding that thought, she closed the Bible and went to where Nick stood leaning in the doorway. She put her hands on his face and looked into his blue eyes, eyes that always calmed and grounded her.

“Hey, I have to believe that God and the truth will clear me. Until then, I refuse to hide, and you can’t either. You need to be with your guys right now.”

He gave her a half smile, took one of her hands from his face, and kissed the palm. “I guess that Christian stuff really took with you, huh?”

She laughed. “I hope it did. I married a guy who is a strong Christian, and it makes our marriage so special.”

He pulled her close and pressed his lips to her forehead.
“That guy you married still sometimes needs to be reminded of who is in control.”

“Don’t we all.” After a minute of enjoying his warmth and closeness, she moved back and pushed against his chest. “Why don’t you go to work to make sure things are going smoothly? Get home by six and we can go to church together. We haven’t gone to a midweek Bible study together in a while.”

This time he pressed his lips to hers before he agreed and left her to change for work.

•••

Nick hadn’t been gone long before Andrea pulled up. It was her day off, and she brought some DVDs to watch.

“Alex is on his way home,” she said as she sat on the sofa and opened a bag of chips. “He and his father left San Francisco an hour ago, so they should roll into town in time for Alex to go to church tonight. He really wants to talk to you and would have phoned but decided a face-to-face is better.”

“I hope he didn’t cut his trip short on account of me.” Carly reached into the bag and grabbed a handful of chips, mostly to stifle a smile. Andi had been incredibly resistant to church until she started seeing Alex. Now she talked about church as if it were as comfortable to her as a hair salon. Carly was glad to see the outward change, knowing an inward change couldn’t be that far away.

“Are you kidding? He’s been dying for an excuse to come
home. He would have flown but he can’t get his dad on a plane.”

“Is his dad going to live with him then? For good?” Carly opened a Diet Coke.

Andrea shrugged. “Alex is calling it a visit. Truth is, he doesn’t think his dad can live by himself right now.”

Carly was about to hit Play when her cell phone buzzed. “It’s Joe,” she said after checking the screen. Her partner had had his knee surgery the day before, and Carly wanted to talk to him.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

Joe’s concerned voice brought a lump to her throat and a keen awareness of how much she missed him. He’d just had his knee cut on, and he was concerned about her. She worked to stay as upbeat as possible, reminding herself over and over that God was in control. When she hung up, she saw Andrea regarding her with a bemused expression.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just . . . well, it’s good to hear you so positive and upbeat. I don’t think I would be under the same circumstances.”

Carly sipped her Coke. Maddie jumped up next to her on the couch and gave her a look that said she wanted a chip. Carly fed her one.

The gravity of her situation was bearing down on Carly every minute. Masters was accusing her of cold-blooded, premeditated murder, of violating every single thing she stood for.

“I’m angry, Andi. Furious. But what do you want me do? Charge around like the loose cannon that woman is calling me?”

“No, no. But I remember a time when you’d have been more fired up. And I wish we could hit her in the face with a pie or something.”

Carly laughed. “I’m afraid that right now I’d hit her with something harder. I just wish I could remember exactly what happened.”

Andrea pulled a pillow into her lap and leaned forward. “Do you want to go over it? Maybe talk it through? It could jog your memory.”

Before Carly could answer, there was a knock on the door. Maddie jumped down to run to the door and bark.

Carly shushed the dog and looked at Andrea. “You didn’t invite anyone else to this movie party, did you?”

Andrea shook her head. “You want me to see who it is?”

“It might be a news crew or that obnoxious radio station. They’ve been such a pain. I can’t believe they got our home number. Hate to say I wouldn’t be surprised if they got our address as well.”

Andrea stood up as the knock sounded again. “I can send them away with some legalese I learned from
Law & Order
.”

Carly held on to Maddie as Andi answered the door.

“Carly, it’s Ned and Erika!”

Carly went to the door, not certain what to expect. She didn’t see anger in their faces.

Instead, Erika smiled and held up a thermos of coffee in
one hand and a pastry box in the other. “Carly, we wanted to come and say that we hoped you were doing all right.”

“And that we’re sorry for all the trouble Dean caused you,” Ned added. “Would you accept this offering and talk with us?”

The foursome settled around the kitchen table. They’d brought Carly’s favorite French roast coffee and an assortment of pastries. Even on top of the chips and Diet Coke, the sweet stuff was welcome.

“We’ve been chasing newspeople away from the shop since yesterday,” Erika said as she plated the pastries and handed them around. “It wouldn’t be so bad if they bought something, but all they do is pester.”

“Even in Arizona, they were bothering my parents.” Ned poured coffee. “My dad just decided to take my mom out of the country to get away from them.”

“I’m so sorry,” Carly said, still surprised and unsure about the couple’s presence. “I mean, in spite of everything, he was your brother.”

Ned set the thermos down, reached across the table, and put his hand over Carly’s. “I don’t blame you for Dean’s death. I’d be lying if I said I felt nothing. I’m sad that Dean never could turn his life around. But one thing I learned in the military was how to size people up. And no matter what, I don’t for a second believe you murdered him in cold blood like that woman is saying. That’s not your style.”

Tears threatened as Carly held Ned’s gaze. Where she had feared she’d see accusation, all she saw was warmth and
friendship. Until he’d spoken, she hadn’t realized how much she’d been worried about what he thought and believed.

She swallowed. “Thanks, Ned. Thanks.” She sipped her coffee.

Andrea jumped in. “Just what did your brother have going with that reporter, anyway?”

Erika held up an index finger and glanced at Ned before answering. “That was something we wanted to tell you, Carly. We think she met him in Arizona, but her name was different then.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Ned said. “After our last talk we made some calls and my dad did some checking. Apparently there was a woman who wrote a story on Dean after he was arrested six years ago. She went by the name Virginia Masterson. She was a local gadfly in city government with some kind of agenda against police officers. My dad didn’t remember specifics. But the local paper did publish a three-part article on Dean.”

Ned sighed. “He followed my parents to Arizona when they moved, but he never got work. He was living in his car at the time he was arrested. Anyway, this Masterson was sympathetic to Dean then, and after he was arrested, my mother remembers her calling and asking questions about why my father disowned Dean. They remember it vividly because the woman insinuated my parents were heartless and cruel to leave him out in the cold and that that was the reason Dean ended up in prison.”

“Hmm.” Carly sat back to digest this. “Someone else’s fault, not because of his choices.”

“Right,” Erika said. “We don’t know how or why this woman got here and became Ginny Masters, but it’s too big a coincidence for it not to be the same woman.”

“Alex can find out,” Andi said. “But she’s been in California for at least a year because she worked at the
Times
before she came here.”

“There are probably more opportunities for reporters here than in Arizona,” Carly said. “It doesn’t surprise me that she’d come here to work for a paper like the
Times
. I just want to know what got her fixated on me.”

“Dean probably has a lot to do with that,” Ned said. “Before I kicked him out of the bakery and then found the bomb, he brought her to the shop twice. She seemed to idolize him, advocate for him.” He shook his head. “I think I told you before that he was a master manipulator. He was surely taking advantage of her.”

Carly frowned, cutting her bear claw into bite-size chunks but not putting any of it in her mouth. “Some pieces are starting to fall together. If they’ve had a long-term relationship and she considers herself an advocate for him, maybe that’s why she’s picking on me. She was blogging nasty stuff about me for a couple of weeks.” She paused, remembering the dates on Masters’s blog posts. “But it started before I ran into Dean, so there’s more than advocacy going on. Something is missing. I don’t understand why they both wanted to give me a bad time.”

Ned leaned back in his chair. “Dean always hated cops. Don’t take that personally. From what I heard, he complained about being misunderstood by police his whole life, and that
woman just took his side. We saw the blog. We didn’t believe any of it. In fact, we don’t believe what she’s saying now. She tried to drag us into a wrongful-death suit, and we told her to pound sand.”

“Don’t worry,” Erika said, leaning forward. “We came to tell you that we believe in you. And we want to help.”

“You’ve helped just by being here.”

“We’d like to do more,” Ned said. “I’ve been talking to Mickey and the ATF agents. They told me about the missing plastic explosive. I was an EOD technician before this.” He held up his stump. “I know how dangerous that stuff is. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that my brother had it squirreled away somewhere.”

“That’s great, Ned.” Carly put down her fork and held out her hands. “But I’m not involved in the investigation. I can’t be. But I bet if you can help them figure out who this mysterious Michael Carter is, that would be a big help.”

“You mentioned him before.” He looked at Erika, who shook her head. “The name is not familiar.”

“I’ll find out from Nick if he’s been identified.”

Ned sighed. “I need to help. I hate feeling useless. And since the cause of a lot of trouble seems to be my brother, I feel obligated.” A weariness in his face made him seem older than his years.

•••

Nick got home from work in time for dinner before church. Andrea planned to stay for dinner, but as they were finishing
up the preparations, Alex called to tell her he’d gotten home. She left in a hurry to help him get settled in with his father. In the time before dinner was ready, Carly filled Nick in on what Ned and Erika had told her about Ginny Masters.

“That’s interesting,” he said. “I looked at the visitor logs. There was a Virginia Masterson listed several times. The prison noted she was press, so I didn’t think anything more about it. You don’t think she’s involved in the killings and the gun theft, do you?”

“No.” Carly blew out a breath. “But she could be a useful idiot, doing things for Barton and the two mysterious partners, thinking everything is on the up-and-up . . .”