“You what?” I asked, uncertain what I’d heard.
“Upon an interview from you declaring what happened in the incident, Internal Affairs has decided, since no lethal harm came to the two girls, there’s no reason that you should be suspended. Which I told them in the fucking first place, but since they don’t listen to me, I can’t dictate how they run their investigations.”
I pulled the phone away from my face, made sure it was actually Captain Mickey’s cell phone that I was connected to, and placed it back to my ear.
“I thought, since my dash cam wasn’t working, and since my body cam wasn’t on, that you would take longer than this, I guess,” I murmured.
“You wanted it to take more than ten days?” he asked. “This all happened the day you set sail, and continued to fuck up my life until yesterday evening. If they can’t get their ducks in a row in ten fucking days, then they don’t deserve to have their fucking jobs. Which I told them. You’re back on shift tomorrow, but I want you to know that Fugler, Bussey and Johansen are all out. You’ll be one of four tomorrow, covering about twice the distance that you usually do.”
I winced.
“Why are they out?” I asked.
“The fuckin’ flu,” he rumbled in annoyance. “Half the goddamn office is out with it. You missed the flu plague of twenty-seventeen.”
Thank God for small favors.
“When do you want me in the office to talk to IA?” I asked.
He paused for a moment, and I heard him tapping his fingers in the background while he thought.
“Come in today around ten-forty-five. That way I can be there for the interview in case they try to trap you.”
I didn’t doubt that for a second.
If their investigation drew up nothing of consequence, then they’d try to get some confession out of me next.
***
Two hours later, I was sitting in an office that wasn’t Captain Mickey’s.
“You’ve beaten someone to death before. How are we supposed to know that this isn’t just your normal thing?”
I looked at the woman, Officer Antoinette Bakersfield, and tilted my head.
I would not let my anger get the best of me here.
“I didn’t beat those women up,” I said. “I dropped them off with nary a scratch on their knuckles from where they tried to punch out the glass to get out of the car. I would not, and have never, hit a woman. Not ever.”
“But a man is okay?” she snapped.
My eyes bored holes into her forehead.
If I was a lesser man, I’d fucking let her have it with both barrels. I’d tell her that she was a woman in a man’s world, and she didn’t have to be a hard ass to prove that she belonged here. She only needed to be confident in her abilities to prove right from wrong.
But since she was an asshole, and yes, women could be assholes, she tried to go a different route that didn’t involve her asking nice questions to get the same results. No, she just came off as a bitch because she was bringing up old memories that had nothing to do with the current case that she was supposed to be investigating.
“I only beat men to death when I walk in on them raping my little sister, thank you,” I told her bluntly.
Her face blanched, and I realized that she hadn’t known why I’d killed that man.
My records were hidden.
Since I’d been a minor at the time the records had been sealed. If one looked up my record, they’d only see an arrest.
The charges against me had been dismissed, and I’d been acquitted of everything, including the murder of Jay Shaw.
Though, everyone in the town that I lived in at the time likely knew me and everything about me and my entire family.
Hence the reason for moving two states away.
Though, I didn’t think that Jay’s parents would’ve followed me.
But they did.
And so had one of my brothers and Amy.
Now the Shaws were here in Mooresville doing their level best to ruin my life and dishing out the same treatment to my brothers, Finley and Reed.
Reed didn’t actually live here, though. Since he was in the Army working as a doctor with the reserves, he bounced around a lot. Sometimes he’d stay in Alabama, and other times he’d stay in Texas.
They targeted Finley just for fun, but when Reed was here, they went after Reed out of pure hate. Although I assumed that had more to do with the fact that Jay’s sister had been dating my brother, Reed, at the time that I caught Jay raping our sister.
In the aftermath of all that happened, their youthful relationship had gone off the rails when Reed broke up with her as soon as he learned what had happened.
Krisney Shaw was a sweetheart, though, and it was unfortunate that she was painted with the same brush as her two awful parents and her rapist brother.
Not that Reed cared.
But it was obvious, even to me, that those two still had strong feelings for each other.
“I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Officer Bakersfield apologized.
I shrugged. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” I asked. “I have a lunch date with my soon to be fiancée, and I don’t want her thinking I stood her up.”
She looked at her watch.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I’m done.”
I stood up.
“Officer Hail?”
I paused on my way to the door and looked back at her.
“I’m not a bad person. I try to be fair. I try to be thorough and careful in my work,” she hesitated. “I can tell you’re one of the good ones…but there are some bad ones, and it’s not always easy to tell the good ones from the bad ones. Do you know what I’m saying?”
The sad thing was that I did.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I do.” I stopped. “But there are other ways of going about doing your job without going straight for the jugular.”
Her lips twitched. “When you’re a woman in a man’s world, then you can lecture me on how I should do my job. Until then, I have the vagina and you have the penis. You have the advantage. Always.”
I looked at her and read the sincerity on her face.
“I wish that wasn’t true, Officer Bakersfield.”
She shrugged, and then started packing up her things.
“It is what it is; maybe one day that might change. But, for now, it is. Have a good day, Officer. Thank you for protecting us.”
Knowing a dismissal when I heard one, I left the room and didn’t look back.
***
“So they just dropped the case?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I was startled to hear that come from not Audrey, but Mina, Audrey’s sister-in-law and Ghost’s wife and old lady.
I didn’t know why she was here. I just knew that she was and that I was holding both of her kids, the infant in the crook of my arm who was sleeping and the older one sitting in my lap and talking to me a mile a minute in between the questions I was answering from the two women across the table.