“That’s my wife’s car. He’s stealing my car.” The doctor stared at them, like they should care. He actually looked as if he expected them to give pursuit.
“You’ve got a dead cartel boss on your sofa. A stolen car is the least of your worries, man.”
Garrett shook his head and fought a smile as he gave Kinkaid a sideways glance.
“But I had nothing to do with that,” the doctor argued. “That man killed him, not me. He shot him in the head twice, in cold blood. You have to believe me.”
“Oh, I do. But I don’t think you’ve fully grasped the situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“That”—he pointed to the dead man on the couch—“that could’ve been you and your wife.”
The doctor looked stunned as he clung to his sobbing wife, but not half as stunned as when Garrett, Kinkaid, and Alexa turned to go.
“Wait a minute. Are you leaving? The police . . . what do I tell the police?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Doing what you do for the cartels, I’m sure you’re good at lying to cops,” Garrett said as he walked through the foyer on his way out, with Kinkaid and Alexa beside him.
“We’ve done as much as we can do here,” Garrett said.
And as they left out the back of the house, he stopped before they made their exit. He grabbed Kinkaid by his good shoulder.
“It’s over, Jackson. Perez is dead. I know it’s not the way you wanted it to end, but there’s nothing more for us to do here.”
It took Kinkaid a while to respond, but eventually he nodded, and Alexa did the same without saying another word. They had no choice. After Guerrero’s gunshots, any neighbors within earshot would have heard the noise and reported it. The police would be coming soon.
Ramon Guerrero hadn’t been their target. Like the other men who had dropped their guns and run from the hacienda—not wanting to die for Perez—Guerrero was no different. They hadn’t come for him.
Kinkaid’s vendetta was over, and he’d done what he came to Mexico to do. He’d brought down the Perez cartel, and their actions had cut off the head of the snake. They’d all have to settle for that, but Garrett could tell by the empty look on Kinkaid’s face that it hadn’t been enough.
From experience, Garrett knew that revenge didn’t always come delivered with a nice tidy bow, just as Alexa had tried to tell him. And no matter how justified, vengeance wouldn’t bring the only thing that Kinkaid would’ve wanted in return—his wife and child back. Their memory would always be tainted by the violence that had ended their lives, and Jackson would have to live with that.
Of all people, he understood Kinkaid’s pain and his sacrifice. And Garrett knew the burden of guilt. He had more than his share of ghosts who would haunt him until the day he died. He only hoped that Kinkaid would eventually find peace and learn how to live with an ache that would never go away.
Jackson Kinkaid deserved better.
Jessie had spent the rest of the morning into the late afternoon locating the few people who had actually reported seeing kids at the DeSalvo place during the week of Angela’s murder. And after she’d exhausted those leads, she hit the ones she’d found in the newspaper archives—the colorful rumormongers of the town.
While Chief Cook and Sophia Tanner had been reluctant to talk about the old murder case, the people she’d tracked down were just the opposite. They all wanted to rehash it again, and they even embellished their original stories, probably fueled by the rumors they’d helped spread after things had died down. It was human nature. Everybody wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. And it had been in her best interests to keep them talking.
The few who had officially reported seeing the children to the police were consistent in their descriptions of a dark-haired little girl and a sandy-haired younger boy, while other townspeople ranted about DeSalvo running something illegal at her place. None of what they’d said ended up in Chief Cook’s evidence box, and she could see why. It didn’t take someone living in La Pointe to realize some folks loved having an audience. And a newcomer to town was gullible enough to listen to whatever they had to say without calling them on their bull.
So what had turned out to be a promising start to her day had ended in frustration by late afternoon. With food to go from Lotta’s Lakeside Cafe on Main Street, near the ferry dock, she unlocked her motel-room door, and after she tossed stuff onto the table, she collapsed on her bed to stare at the ceiling.
She’d hit a dead end, but she still had Sophia Tanner in her sights. And the bastard who had tailed her the other day had gotten better. Earlier, she’d felt him but never actually seen him. If she was going to catch him in the act, she had to get cagey.
But just as she was figuring out how to do that, she got a call on her cell. She got up and grabbed her phone off the table and answered on the third ring.
“Hey there, Harper. What’s going on? Great timing, by the way.” She ran a hand through her dark hair and paced the room.
“Hey, Jessie. I’ve got you on speaker because I’m here with Sam,” Seth said. “Say hi, Sam.”
“Hey, Jess.”
“Sam has something you need to hear,” he said.
“Shoot, Sammie.”
Jessie chewed a hangnail on her thumb. She was so wired, waiting to hear what they had to say, that she stared down at the carpet as she paced, unable to look in any of the mirrors. She was afraid what she might see in her eyes.
“Millstone isn’t your father, Jessie. You hear me? I got my lab guys to confirm that. We had to search through evidence, but we found what we needed to make sure. It just never got digitized for the database, but that’s fixed now.”
Sam’s voice got muddled in her head. After her friend had said that the son of a bitch who had tortured her wasn’t her father, tears filled her eyes, and she had a hard time breathing. She sank onto her mattress when her legs felt wobbly.
“Oh, my God. Just give me a minute.” She sucked air into her lungs like a drowning woman. And when she could finally speak, she said, “Thank you, guys. Not knowing has been killing me. That’s good news.”
“Yeah, it is. Ruling that bastard out means the odds of your having a brother are pretty good, Jessie.” Seth came onto the line and told her what he’d found out. “You’d asked me to look for names and pictures of any boys Millstone might have abducted or killed. Well, I didn’t find any. There were names like Cameron and Jamie that I had to chase down, but those were girls.”
“Guess that’s another good thing,” Jessie said. “It means that my brother didn’t end up with that scumbag.”
“Yeah. I thought that was good news, too, but after I went over my dad’s file for the third time, it got me thinking that the copy I had was something Dad had made when he left the force. Whatever I had wasn’t what Sam would have if anything got updated after Max retired.”
“Oh, my God. I never thought of that, Seth. I just figured after Millstone was killed, the case was done.”
“And that would’ve been possible if the case had been a single homicide, Jessie.” This time, it was Sam’s voice that broke in. “But with the Millstone case being high-profile, other investigators contributed to the evidence after Seth’s father quit the force. And, of course, the news media chased down leads on who Millstone was.”
“So the two of you decided to compare notes and look through the updated evidence Sam had? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
“Gosh, I love you guys.” Jessie couldn’t help it. Even with all the runaround she’d gotten in La Pointe, it was nice to know she had real friends watching her back. “So talk to me. What’d you find out? I’m assuming you didn’t call just to say hello.”
When she only heard silence on the phone, Jessie couldn’t sit anymore. She got off the mattress and paced the floor again. If they were both stalling, she figured it was for good reason.
“Spill it, guys. You’re making me nervous.”
“Someone had done a more thorough background check on Millstone after he’d been killed. I got this from other detectives who were around back then, working the case. They told me that folks came forward after the news broke. A lot of the calls were phony leads CPD had to chase. It took time to wade through it all, but in the
