Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) (16 page)

When Mitch didn’t answer, Bishop continued.

“So, I thought to myself, what could make my number one detective get sloppy as hell in a week? I hope she’s worth it.”

Mitch poured water in the top of the coffee maker and slid the carafe under the dripper. He hadn’t been a rookie for nearly six years, but that never seemed to stop Bishop from taking a stab at him.

He tossed a glance back to the bedroom door, still cracked open just enough to make him lower his voice. “My sex life isn’t up for discussion right now. What did you find out about Wray?”

“I ran the evidence from the two Rebel Rapids murders you are
not
investigating through the national registry, looking for similarities with unsolved murders in the area. Same blue ropes. Same brand plastic tarps wrapped around their bodies. Same everything down to the forensics and corner reports.”

“But you felt the need to call, so…”

“Modus operandi.” Bishop’s voice made a harsh, high-pitched sound. “The first girl from Rebel killed two months ago has a head injury, blunt force trauma, but that’s not what killed her.”

“So she fell trying to escape?”

“That’s what I thought, too, but here’s the kicker. Her finger nails were clean.”

“Scrubbed?” Mitch cradled the phone between his shoulder and his cheek and spooned grounds into the coffee maker. “What kind of solvent?”

“Bleach.” Bishop’s voice lowered. “Wray used a straight sodium hypochlorite concoction.”

Mitch crossed the kitchen and stepped into the sunken den. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more?”

“I found a deleted report from the month before your cousin’s murder. The MOs match up. The report had been wiped by a Lieutenant Helms from the Rebel Rapids PD and approved by none other than your bass-ackwards Chief Andrews.”

Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. Officer Helms never mentioned his father served for the PD. Come to think of it, he’d never mentioned his father. “Reports get started and scrubbed all the time. What’s the point of this one?”
Besides the relationship with Helms?

“I taught you better, Kilpatrick. Has that one-night stand already clouded your brain? Wray didn’t kill in Rebel Rapids until Sadie. The closest he’d come was Chattanooga, seventy-five miles in the wrong direction from his established pattern. At the time of the failed report, the chief had no reason to suspect Wray would come anywhere near him, so why would anyone from Rebel mistakenly file a report? It’s not like you’d accidently type the name Richard Wray into a computer and start a report. And a month before your cousin’s murder in the same town? Something smells in Rebel and it starts with that chief friend of yours.”

Mitch’s stomach hollowed and sunk. He grabbed the edge of the couch until his fingers turned white and pulled against it, stretching his arm muscles until his skin burned from the pressure. “Unless Sadie wasn’t his first victim in Rebel. Goddamnit! That bastard had kidnapped another girl before Sadie and someone covered it up.”

All he had to do was bait Lacy into spilling what she knew about her father’s role in that cover-up, and he could be into the biggest lead in the Wray case since it turned cold ten years ago. Nashville couldn’t ignore it when Chief Andrews went on trial for obstructing justice.

“That or someone’s working real hard to keep one of his kidnappings hidden. Three guesses who. But why? And it gets better. The lieutenant who originated the scrubbed report left the force three weeks after Sadie’s death.”

“Left or forced to resign? Any details on his current whereabouts?”

Bishop barked a laugh. “Sure. He should be easy enough find.”

Mitch grabbed an unopened envelope and a pen from a nearby desk. “Shoot.”

“8100 Denmark Road. Next to the First Baptist Church. He’s been dead for nine years. Apparent suicide.”

Mitch released the pen and pounded his fist into the small desk. Sadie wasn’t the first from Rebel. Another girl had been taken, and chances were, if someone went to such lengths to cover up the case, someone in Rebel knew enough to put Wray away for good. But who would protect a killer? Who had something to gain from Wray’s freedom? Who would cover up the abduction of a young girl unless they had someone to protect?

Possibly the same person who’d clued Stetson into his past in Rebel. “Can you run a report on a kid for me?” Mitch fisted his phone and emailed the picture of Stetson to the detective’s personal email.

“Sure. What’s the name?”

“Bret Adams. Just sent the picture.”

The bedroom door squeaked open. Lacy, swallowed by one of his white undershirts, stood against the doorframe. Her tanned legs crossed at the ankles, and she held the frame like a life preserver. She rested her head on the wood.

God, in white she really did look just like his angel.

His.
He caught himself thinking in time to catch the unguarded look in her eyes. The softness of her. The trust.

Shit. She’d dropped her walls for him. Trusted him to protect her. To not do whatever the hell the last officer in her life did, and now he was about to dive into her family’s past to expose a killer. What the hell kind of asshole did that?

“Thanks, Bishop. Gotta go.” He bit the inside of his cheek, stifling a curse.

“Pretty thang must be awake. Listen, Mitch. Don’t be stupid. Let our boys do their job, and keep your name out of this. Your job is on the line if this gets screwed. Let them bring Wray in the right way.”

Mitch lowered his head and dropped his voice enough to keep Lacy out of earshot. “If that’s what you really wanted, you wouldn’t have called.”

“Good to know your head’s clearing up.” Bishop hung up.

Mitch clicked the phone off and took a deep breath before stepping back into the kitchen. He needed her to trust him now more than ever.

He turned his back to her, shielded his expression, stalled just long enough to shove what Bishop said down deep enough she wouldn’t be able to read it on his face.

“Mitch?” He felt Lacy stalk toward him. “Everything all right?”

No. And it wouldn’t be until he found out what this whole damn town was trying to hide and what part she held in it. “Sit.” He wheeled around on her, two cups of coffee in hand. He set one on the kitchen table and pulled out a chair for her then sank into another.

“Bad news from Nashville?” Lacy cradled the offered mug in her hands and sat, pulling her feet to the chair and her knees to her chest. She stretched the shirt over her knees. It wasn’t until she took a sip that he noticed her hands shaking.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” Though the flaming anger burning a hole in his belly begged to differ.

“Something to do with the files in the bedroom?” Her voice cracked. The shaking hands he could contribute to the chill in the room, but not the weary look in her eyes. That came from somewhere else. Some deep-rooted fear that made her hide in bathrooms and shake in his presence. He hated it.

He sat back in his chair and examined her body language. Reading her. The tucked legs. The death grip on the coffee mug. The way she glanced at her knees every time he leveled a share in her direction.

What the fuck had happened to her?

“Yes,” he answered slowly, weighing her reaction carefully. Testing her. “The call was about the man in the file.”

She had the mug to her lips when she spoke, and he didn’t miss the small choke on coffee she tried to hide under a cough. Her eyes didn’t leave his. She knew something was up, and by her reaction last night, she knew it had to do with Wray.

“What do you know about Richard Wray?”

Lacy balked at the harsh tone in Mitch’s question. The coffee she’s swallowed down the wrong way burned like hell, but she didn’t dare flinch. He knew the truth. Or at least a version he thought was the truth. She just needed to find out exactly what version that was without giving away her secret.

When she didn’t answer right away, the compassion drained from his features, leaving the all-business Mitch judging her with a scrutinizing stare from the opposite side of the table.

From what she’d overheard of his phone conversation, he’d come dangerously close to finding out the truth she’d kept hidden for thirteen years. The truth that would cost her father his job and tear her family apart for good. She had to play this right. Throw him off the lead and make sure her father never found out Mitch was on to them.

Lucky for her, Mitch stared only a few seconds longer before he scraped his chair over the titled floor and stalked off for the bedroom.

She welcomed the chance to clear her throat of the burning liquid with a cough and regain her breath with a gulp of air without him analyzing her every move. Shit. How was she going to pull off the biggest lie of her life?

Mitch disappeared through the bedroom door and returned, plopping a thick case file by her coffee. The mug rattled under the weight. “You locked yourself in the bathroom after knocking this file on the floor. I need to know why.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he towered over her. The heat radiating off him soaked through her thin shirt, which should have stopped her shiver, but only added to her fear. She’d never felt intimidated by him in the way she knew she should from a detective – until now.

Maybe this was her chance at redemption. Maybe she could tell Mitch everything. Finally let go of the guilt that had weighed her down for thirteen years. Let the truth finally rise to the top.

No.

How could she even let that thought sink in long enough to register? Her father had given up so much to protect her. Put his career on the line and lost his best investigator. The next thought made her physically sick. She’d never asked, and her father had never told, but she was damn sure her kidnapping and the events that followed had been the final straw to end her parents’ marriage.

She flipped the file open. Her stomach quivered at Wray’s picture, and her mouth went dry.
Play coy, Lace. See what he already knows.
“It’s not every day you pick up pictures of mutilated young girls off your boyfriend’s bedroom floor. Of course I ran for the bathroom.”

His eyes widened for a second, just long enough to prove
boyfriend
hit its intended mark, then went stoic again. “You’ve been around officers all your life. I’m sure you’re used to the gruesome details of the job.”

“Not officers who keep such graphic pictures from secured files by their bed,” she lobbed back in his direction. “Those are Rebel files anyway. How did you get them?”

His mouth twitched. “I asked.”

“And Dad just handed them over?” Not likely. The chief kept his own files locked away in his office. The real case files with the information linking Wray to her kidnapping. Files that would never see the light beyond his home office.

His face turned stony again. This was a different side of the man she thought she could trust. Hard. Mincing. Calculated. Scary as hell.

If he stared at her with those piercing eyes much longer, she’d break.

She whirled up out of the chair and pulled the hem of her borrowed shirt down to cover her ass, the sudden feeling of exposure flipped her stomach. “I’m calling Connie and getting dressed.”

She tried to pass him for the bedroom door, but he sidestepped and blocked her retreat. The cold look in his eyes, painful. “What do you know about Wray?”

Stunned, she flipped her hair back and lifted her chin, faking bravado. What did she not know about the man who’d wanted her dead? “I told you. I know what every cop in Rebel knows. Nothing more.”

Mitch leaned in. “I don’t believe you.” His voice hard. His eyes piercing. “Why have you stayed in Rebel? There’s nothing for you here.”

“What the hell?” She crossed her arms. “Where do you get off judging my decisions, and what would that have to do with Wray?”

He leaned back, giving her much needed breathing room. “Maybe nothing. But even you have to admit plans to open a bar in backwoods Rebel isn’t enough of a draw to keep you happy here. There must be something else.”

“Yeah. Family,” she tossed with enough sarcasm to make the word sting, but Mitch brushed it off.

“Not the way you look at your father and your brother. I’ve seen the contempt you have. There has to be another reason.”

“Really.” She tried to sidestep him but ended up pinned between his chest and the back wall of the kitchen. “Not everyone in this town has an agenda, Detective. Maybe I’m not so easy to figure out.”

“Maybe.” He rubbed his chin. “But keeping a secret about Wray from me could be dangerous. Wray could be dangerous.”

Like hell anyone knew that fact better than she did. From the wisps of gray hair just forming at his temples to the vacant darkness in his eyes, his touch, the feel of his hot breath on her neck, the smell of his cheap cologne, the way he’d almost convinced her she deserved to die. It all flooded back.

She shut her eyes tight against the memory and swallowed the lump chocking her throat before answering. “I live with the freaking chief of police. If anyone knows just how dangerous that man could be, I do.”

Mitch growled from deep within his throat and stepped forward until she had no choice but to crawl into the wall or fall back into her chair. “If you know everything, maybe you can explain to me why some of the information from this case file is missing?”

Shit on a stick.
She hoped she didn’t look like a guppy gasping for air.

Mitch took the chair beside her, slid it across the kitchen floor and sat so close the heat radiating off him scalded her bare legs. He rubbed a tight hand over a day’s worth of stubble and pulled his chin. “This is serious, Lacy. Someone in Rebel is doctoring files, and a serial killer might get away because of it.”

If picturing Wray wasn’t enough to send her reeling over the edge of control, hearing Mitch call her Lacy instead of Angel finished off the job. If she didn’t puke, it’d be a damn miracle. She just had to stall long enough to get out of his place without divulging too much. “I am being serious, Detective. You’re accusing my family of something horrid. How should I react?”