“I want to find Justin’s killer. That’s my sole motive.”
“Motive was the wrong word. Motivation, because you have been given a lot of leeway in pursuing cases, both on and off book, that in the back of your mind I’m pretty certain you think that you’ll get a pass no matter how long this takes.”
She was about to object, but maybe Dillon was right. “That would make me a total prima donna.”
Dillon laughed. “You’re hardly a prima donna, but you have a certain confidence. How do I explain it? You have an intuitive understanding of how the system works. That there are give-and-takes and some people are treated differently than others. While the FBI is a bureaucracy, it’s still run by human beings, and there is always a level of friendships and trust that supersedes certain situations.”
“I don’t expect Rick to swoop in and rescue my career,” Lucy said. Rick Stockton was the second-highest-ranking director in national headquarters.
“I know, but—”
“I see what you’re saying, and you might be right—except my excuse is that I will find Justin’s killer. I have to. Knowing that we’re this close—I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I walked away and another little boy died. If I lose my job over it, I can live with that.” She didn’t want to lose her job, but she’d resolved that sometimes her decisions didn’t fit into the structure of her chosen profession. She just had to take each situation as it arose.
“Are you sleeping?” Dillon asked.
“Enough.”
“I’ll call you after I reach out to Nelia. Tread lightly with Carina, but I think you’re doing the right thing. She needs to hear from you what you’re doing and why. She’s a cop at heart, but she’s also a mother.”
“Thanks, Dillon. Tell Kate I said hi.”
Lucy hung up.
She still had a hour before she needed to meet Max for dinner. She took a deep breath, considered what Dillon had said. He was right—she did have confidence about her job. Not that she could “do no wrong” per se, but that she could justify her actions.
She considered the situation—would she be willing to walk away if quitting was the only way to solve Justin’s murder?
She wanted to make a flip answer—yes—yet she loved her job. She was good at it. She’d saved people. Last September she had worked on a particularly emotional case involving black-market babies. She’d not only saved several of the women who had been used as breeders, she and her partners in the San Antonio office—in fact, FBI agents across the country—had located nearly every baby who had been sold.
She did good. She didn’t want to quit. She didn’t want to be fired. She would fight it.
Yet.
It all began with Justin.
Her dad thought that she’d given up on her dream of majoring in linguistics and international relations because she’d been kidnapped. But she’d begun to wonder if maybe, just maybe, that had been a false dream. One she told her parents to protect them over the years, because after Justin was killed, everything changed.
Her dad thought she joined the FBI as some sort of … what? Justice after what happened to her? Penance because she’d killed the man who destroyed her life? Yet she had known for a long time that righting wrongs was the only way she could find peace. Even before her rape. Because Justin’s murder had never been solved.
Patrick had an opportunity to be drafted into major league baseball, yet he’d pursued a career in law enforcement. Carina had dropped out of college to join the police academy. Dillon had given up his plan to specialize in sports medicine and turned instead to criminal psychiatry. And Lucy … maybe she knew, back when she was seven and her best friend was suddenly not there, that she had to do something to stop the pain.
She couldn’t prevent her own. But she could prevent other people from suffering as she and her family had.
Lucy sat on the balcony of her hotel room, even though it was getting chilly. The light was good and she enjoyed the fresh sea air. She couldn’t see the ocean, but she could feel it around her, and there was a sense of peace at being home … even if San Diego was no longer her home.
She had the copies that Andrew had given her of the investigation into Justin’s murder. She’d already read all the forensic, autopsy, and police reports. Notes weren’t in the file, which was another reason Katella reviewing the files again was so important. He might remember things they couldn’t know based on what wasn’t written down.
But she hadn’t read the transcript of Carina’s interview with police. Partly because she had so much information to digest and partly because she was a little nervous about it.
But Dillon was right: she needed to know what Carina had gone through. She’d been a nineteen-year-old college student. Not much older than a kid. She’d only lived in San Diego for a few years because she, like every Kincaid except Lucy, had been raised an army brat.
Her nephew had been kidnapped from his bedroom while she was babysitting. The guilt would have eaten her up—a lesser person may never have recovered. Nelia had treated Carina poorly after that, but Nelia had treated everyone that way, including herself. She’d lost her son, her marriage was over, and she felt like she’d lost everything. There were likely many psychological issues with guilt, grief, regret—things Lucy understood on one level, but she’d never lost a child. She’d lost people she cared about, people she loved, but a child was a deep part of a parent, part of the soul of the people who created it. And to be the mother—nine months of sharing space, of feeling a new life grow and move, of holding the infant you had helped create, and nurturing and protecting the young life.
Until violence walked in and everything was destroyed.
Lucy understood violence. She dreaded getting into the mind of Justin’s murderer. It would hurt, it would tear her up inside, but it wasn’t her son who’d been killed. Didn’t she owe it to Nelia—to her family—but most of all to Justin and the other boys this woman killed? Lucy could withstand the emotional pain because if she didn’t, who else would?
It was a cause that drove her, one she barely understood and tried not to think about too much. But in the end, she did what she felt she had to do.
Carina would feel the same. As Dillon said, she was a cop at heart. But what she’d endured those days after Justin’s disappearance had affected her, not only at the time, not only in who she had become, but had instilled a deep-seated angst and unresolved grief.
It became all too clear as Lucy read the transcript.
DET. KATELLA: We found Justin.
CARINA KINCAID: Thank God, thank God, is he okay? I need to see my sister.
KATELLA: Justin’s dead.
CK: No, you said you found him. He’s not dead. He’s not.
KATELLA: He was found in a shallow grave in the park on East Street. Less than a mile from his house.
CK: How? No … please, I need to see my sister. My mom … oh, God, no.
KATELLA: I have a few more questions, Carina.
CK: I just want to go home.