Page 43 of Stay in Your Lane!

“I know, right?” Colin whispered. “But then after I left, I got a call from someone else who had access to the autopsy. They begged me not to make them give an official statement with their name attached. They were scared, too. Probably of losing their job, but… probably of more than that.”

“Like the M.E.?”

Colin considered it, but shook his head. “No. The M.E. made me think he’s hiding something. Like he’s got a guiltyconscience, you know? This person—it was more like when an informant talks to us. They want to help, but they’re terrified of the backlash from the people they might implicate. It’s… it’s a different kind of fear, you know?”

Everett and I both nodded.

I squirmed in my seat. “So what did they tell you?”

Colin took a deep breath. “They didn’t get much of a look at the report, but they told me Rick Leighton had premortem fractured ribs. Plural.”

A chill ran through me. “Howpremortem? Like, he’d broken them recently? Or they happened at the time he was killed?”

“There was no evidence that they’d started to heal, so they were very, very recent.” Colin swallowed. “And all three were directly underneath the bruise on his torso.”

“The bruise on—” Everett sat straighter. “You mean the shoeprint?”

My brother nodded grimly.

Everett whistled. “Holy shit. How hard do you have to kick someone to break ribs?”

“Hard enough to leave a distinct shoe impression on someone’s skin,” I said.

Colin exhaled. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“So then, what do we do?” Everett asked. “Can’t you make the witness talk?”

“In theory, yes. I can threaten them with obstruction, I can offer them witness protection—but the problem with cases like this is that we need a witness to convince the jury. If the witness starts backtracking and hemming and hawing on the stand, that can make them seem unreliable to the jury.” He shook his head. “There are plenty of things I can do to compel a witness to testify, but there are plenty of thingstheycan do to make the jury second guess them. And my gut tells me that whoeveris ultimately behind this—we’re going to need the most airtight case anyone has ever put in front of a jury.”

Everett’s eyes widened.

I tilted my head. “What exactly does that mean? Who do you think is behind it?”

Colin glanced around as if he thought someone was going to come busting into my living room. Then he looked right in my eyes and lowered his voice. “I think there’s cops involved.”

“Well, no shit.” Everett started ticking points off on his fingers. “They ignored obvious evidence at the scene. They immediately dismissed it as a suicide without giving it even a cursory investigation just in case things were hinky. And the guy’s baby mama is literally the Chief of Police’s daughter, and the chief apparently hates him.”

Colin blinked as if he were surprised by Everett’s insight. “Wait, she’s—the guy was with Chief Daniels’s daughter?”

“Yeah,” Everett said. “We talked to her. They’d split up for a while but then got back together, and her dad was pissed about it.”

Colin stared at him for a moment. Then he hissed a few curses as he let his face fall into his hands.

Everett and I exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“What?” I asked my brother.

He groaned, then looked up again. “This is going to be even harder to unfuck than I thought.”

“What? Why?”

Colin swept his tongue across his lips. “Because one of Leighton’s buddies was found dead last night.” He swallowed. “And it sounds like a suicide.”

“Which buddy?” Everett asked, almost whispering.

Colin pursed his lips, then took a notepad out of his pocket and started thumbing through it. “Um…”

“Was it Leon?” Everett asked.

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