Charli’s posture retained its military perfection as she practically sprinted up a set of stairs to the second floor. Her office was small and contained two desks, one of which Ellie assumed was her partner’s. Lucinda sat at the one with nary a paperclip out of place.
“Damn. Remind me to clean my desk before you ever come to visit, okay?” On any given day, Ellie’s workstation back in the Charleston precinct could be counted on to showcase an array of empty takeout coffee cups, Skittles, and Milky Way wrappers from midafternoon vending machine snack runs, and endless piles of papers and files teetering in precarious stacks near the edge.
The petite detective shrugged. “I like my things tidy. I don’t care if yours aren’t.”
Two uniformed male cops sauntered by, whispering and shooting Charli sideways glances as they passed. She ignored them, so Ellie followed her cue. Another time, she might snoop a little more and attempt to unravel one of the other detective’s many layers of mystery, but not today, when she was on a mission.
Not when Bethany’s life was on the line.
Ellie’s chest tightened. Deep in her soul, she sensed time was running short. They had to find the little girl and fast. Before Kingsley had a chance to inflict irreparable damage.
Or worse.
Images of Kingsley’s other victims flashed like phantoms behind Ellie’s eyes, and for a moment, her vision blurred. Val. Gabe. The poor, nameless woman Kingsley had murdered because Ellie had told him to.
She clenched her jaw and gave herself a mental shake. The memories disappeared, but the sense of urgency lingered.
Charli stood over her laptop and tapped at the keyboard. Ellie winced. If she worked in that position, her back would rebel almost immediately, but the Savannah detective was a good eight inches shorter in height. Charli finished typing, and a nearby printer buzzed to life.
Ellie cocked her head as Charli strode over and gathered the pages the printer spat out. “Don’t you have tablets here?”
“We do, but I prefer hard copies.”
Report printed, Charli dragged an empty chair behind her desk for Ellie before plopping into her own. She handed Ellie a stack of pages before burying her nose into an equally thick pile.
Side by side, they thumbed through Letitia Wiggins’s case file. Several other officers and a detective passed by Charli’s office door while they read, but no one stopped to share details on cases or even smile or say a quick hi. The one time Ellie glanced up, two officers averted their eyes and kept walking.
Charli never gave the slightest impression that she noticed or cared one way or another, but Ellie wasn’t so sure. Cops could be real assholes sometimes, and the vibe reminded Ellie a little too much of her early days in the Charleston precinct. Back when she’d first started on the job, all the other officers were convinced that her family’s money had bought her that place in the department and stolen a spot from a more deserving candidate.
Despite being surrounded by a room full of coworkers, those first few months as a patrol officer were some of the loneliest in Ellie’s life. The old saying about how you often felt the most alone when you were in a crowd had proven true, at least in Ellie’s case. Sucked if Charli was experiencing a version of the same thing.
“Must be nice, working without many interruptions.”
Ellie offered the overture up as a joke. Either Charli would accept the invitation to talk about her tense workplace, or she wouldn’t.
Charli raised her head from the file, her gaze resting on the two officers who’d just walked past without an acknowledgment. “My presence makes people uncomfortable.” She shrugged, like their comfort or rudeness was of no significance to her.
Sympathy stirred in Ellie’s chest. “I can relate. I dealt with something similar in Charleston when I first started working there.”
Charli’s spine stiffened almost imperceptibly. “Actually, I doubt very much that you did.”
Ellie blinked at the abrupt shutdown. Oh boy, she’d put her foot in her mouth now. Charli did a good job of hiding it, but the standoffish treatment of her peers was obviously a sore point.
She opened her mouth to apologize, but Charli cut her off. “Here, take a look at these.”
Paper rustled as the detective set new pages on top of the file. Ellie leaned in to get a closer look. “Transcripts?”
“From the Letitia Wiggins trial. If you turn to page ten, you’ll see testimony from a psychologist called as an expert witness for the defense.”
Ellie flipped to the page in question and scanned the excerpt. Partway through, she began reading out loud. “After spending time with the defendant, my clinical observations have led me to conclude that Mrs. Wiggins exhibits symptoms consistent with battered woman syndrome.”
She glanced up from the transcript. “I wonder when they changed the name to Intimate Partner Violence?”
Ellie had intended the question to be rhetorical, but she should have known better. In the very brief time Ellie had known the detective, she’d learned that Charli could pluck that information off the top of her head. “The WHO mass distributed a pamphlet in 2002 that utilized the term, and IPV became more commonplace after that. Intimate Partner Violence works better because even though men are more likely to kill their partners, women are also common perpetrators of partner abuse.”
Charli’s attention never wavered from the finger that moved down the page as she read, so she missed Ellie’s wide-eyed appraisal. Was there anything law-related that this pixie-ish dynamo didn’t have tucked away in that giant brain of hers? If so, Ellie would require proof to believe it.
The detective’s finger halted partway down the page. She wrinkled her pert nose. “This next part basically claims that due to fears for her own safety, Letitia Wiggins had no choice but to take part in the abuse. Especially near the end, when she discovered she was pregnant.”
Bitterness burned Ellie’s gut. “That psychologist and defense attorney really
