Page 12 of Sinful Reality

“Free time.” He flips to the next page and scans the contents. “January eleven, every single year. Then a few years off, and now he’s back, again, on January eleven. That date has to mean something.”

“Yep.” Blindly, I point to the board where I’ve already written it down. “No one in the files yet has a significant January eleventh. School teachers, swimming instructor, school teacher’s husband, grocery store clerk, bank teller, newspaper delivery boy. And more. None of them have a birthday on January eleven. No wedding anniversaries. No ‘this is the date we bought a house’ or ‘this is the date I lost my job.’ No one lost a kid or a spouse or a parent on January eleven. Detective Lowe ran every motherfucker he could think of and put it in his notes.”

“And Lowe himself?”

I breathe out a soft chuckle and point next at a file Soph put together specifically for me. “Clean as a whistle. Not the squeaky-clean one might consider fake. But the clean that comes substantiated with good work, solid arrests, a few medals for bravery, and absolutely no weird bank transactions. He also doesn’t have a birthday, death day, anniversary, kid’s birth, or any other event on January eleven, except, of course, the seventeen cases that popped up year after year throughout his career. I’m not convinced he’s involved in any way except professionally, and by the looks of the notes, I’d say he did his damned best to find these babies. Even when the cases got cold, and even when the brass told him to back away and focus on something else, he kept working them in his spare time. He had, and still has, a wife and three kids. His oldest is a girl who was also five when the first was taken.”

“Maybe that’s why he kept at it,” he mumbles. “Hit a bit close to home, and the guy knew how it would destroy him if it was his daughter who was missing. Didn’t break the marriage?”

“Not as far as I can see. Same wife this whole time and had two more kids over the years. He’s made himself available to the current detectives and did so on January twelfth.”

“The day after Janiesa went missing?”

“Must’ve seen it on the news and saw the similarities. Went down to his old precinct first thing the next morning and got back to work. He’s retired these days, which means no badge, no gun, and no collar. But he wants in, and they’ve welcomed him.”

“And the lead detective now running it?”

Intuition niggles somewhere in the depths of my stomach, tickling and demanding a little more attention. But I turn the pages and shrug. “Would have been eight when the first girl went missing. Probably not too young to remember all the news coverage.”

Minka remembers, and she was five.

“Probably old enough to imprint on his mind and lead him toward becoming a cop. Soph sent over a file on him, too. Seems clean, no janky arrests, no needlessly fumbled cases, no connections to organized crime.”

Fletch chokes on his spit and shakes his head when I glance across. “You mean, like,yourfamily?”

“Or someone my family knew.” I ignore his jab and go back to reading. “He’s been on the force about as long as we have, worked his way up. Had a partner, who went on to retire. Works mostly alone now, but nowhere in the dossier does it hint at ‘can’t work on a team’.”

“Kinda like if one of us were off the job. We’d work alone, rather than take on someone new. Doesn’t mean we can’t get along with other fuckers. Just that we choose not to.”

“Basically.” I come to the last page and close the file, exhaling a tired sigh and switching it for a new folder. “Those girls were just babies, Fletch. They must’ve been terrified.”

“Do you ever wonder what people say about us when they’re pulling our files?” He peeks up in my peripherals and waits for my eyes. “You, especially. We sit here and question the detectives on this case: financials, family ties, case load, close rates. All that shit. We wanna rule them out, first and foremost, right? Make sure the dude we’re meant to trust is trustworthy. But someone readingyourfile would see exactly who you’re related to: incriminating as fuck. They’d see your bank balance: suspicious as fuck. They’d see your solve rate is pretty damn good, above average, at least, all the way up to the Vigilante, and then suddenly you fumble: that looks suss. Evenmyfile: drug-addicted baby momma, broke, except when I’m not, and the times I’m not, the money comes directly from a mafia kid’s bank account. Best friends withyou, and daily charges on my card that tie back to a bar owned by the mafia heir.”

“I wouldn’t trust you.”

He chuckles. “Now we’re asking these hypothetical people to trust us. But the paperwork doesn’t support it.”

“I’m not asking anyone for anything.” I set my file back on the pile and slide my hands into my hair, scratching my scalp to work through the frustration sizzling in my blood. “I already have a partner who knows everything about me, one who will walk through every door I do and will take a bullet for me.”

“I mean, I don’twantto,” he clarifies playfully. “I would if Ihadto, but I’d prefer not to. That shit hurts like hell.”

“I have a captain who has my back. Sort of. He’d toss me to the sharks if the waters got a little bloody.” I scoff, almost as though to imply my words are a joke.They’re not. “But until then, he knows me and where I come from, and he gave me a badge and a gun anyway. My lieutenant goes to bat for me, though it could harm his own career. And I have a wife whose job sits pretty fuckin’ high on the totem pole of Copeland City. Everyone else can suck their own dick because I have nothing to prove to them.”

“Sure. But say another cop is working a case, and that case overlaps with us somehow. They run your name and find your seedier connections. You think they’ll shrug their shoulders and think,well, he seems like a nice guy?”

I drop my hands and chuckle. “Nope. But that’s athemproblem. And none of my business. If you’re worried my sullied past is infringing on your career advancement, feel free to put in for a transfer.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He closes his file with a heavy slap of paper. “Don’t get your panties in a twist because I’m asking hypotheticals. I knew who you were back at the academy. Didn’t like you then, don’t like you now. But I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. That’s enough for me.”

My phone rings in my pocket, vibrating against my thigh, so I snatch it out and turn it right-side up to read the screen. “Copeland Correctional.” Accepting the call, I set the phone on speaker and place it on the table. “This is Detective Malone.”

Curious, Fletch leans on his elbows and turns his ear toward the phone to hear better.

“Malone,” a man’s older, gruffer voice rumbles through the line. “This is Warden Conroy. Thanks for getting back to me after my email.”

“Thanks for sending it. The inmate available to talk today?”

“Sure is. He was in the infirmary after the, uh…” Conroy clears his throat. “Incident. But docs have cleared him to go back into circulation. If you’re ready to drive out, we can be ready to provide you a space to talk to him.”

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