Page 55 of Rawhide and Ransom

A sound of horror escaped Annalee. She clapped a hand over her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “If this is true, then there was no adult present when Edward got injured.”

“No witnesses. No case,” Hawk growled. At least, that was how it should’ve been. “How did you get your paws on the original incident report?”

“It started off with a stakeout.” Tucker glanced toward the door, lowering his voice. “I know my methods are never gonna win me any awards, but I’m a firm believer in going after the weakest link. You separate ‘em from the herd and act like you’re about to devour ‘em, and they squeal every time.”

“You met with Priscilla?” Annalee squeaked.

“I did. And lucky for us, she’s since had a falling out with Rosamund.”

At this point, Hawk almost didn’t care how he’d gotten the information. “Just tell us this. Will the handwritten report be admissible in court?”

“I don’t see why not.” Tucker shrugged. “Whether the testimony of an alcoholic will be seen as credible is another matter. One thing is for sure, though. Priscilla didn’t write the official report that was ultimately filed on her behalf by the preschool. She told me they initially made her sign a copy of the false report, but it looks like someone removed it from the version that was presented in court, probably after learning of her DUI. If I was an attorney retrying the case, that’s where I would start my argument.”

“Which still begs the question.” Hawk wasn’t near ready to let it go. “Who wrote the false report?”

“Eh, take your pick.” Tucker spread his hands. “Rosamund was employed as a paralegal at the time. She was also married to Judge Hardy back then. Either of them could’ve done it.”

Annalee drew a deep breath. “Please assure me that Judge Hardy wasn’t the one who presided over my sister’s hearing.”

“Nope, but he may as well have.” Tucker’s voice was dry. “It was one of his golf buddies.”

He produced yet another photo from more than thirty years ago. In the picture, Judge Hardy had his arms looped around the shoulders of his winning teammates in a golf tournament. “The judge who ended up presiding over Mirabelle’s hearing is the one brandishing the trophy.” Tucker sounded mad enough to spit. “The case against the Gilbert family gives new meaning to the termconflict of interest. Everyone involved in Mirabelle’s confinement and her parents’ subsequent arrest was conflicted out the wazoo!”

Annalee looked close to collapsing. “That explains a lot.”

Hawk shoved the electronic tablet back in Tucker’s hands and pulled out a chair for her. “Sit,” he commanded quietly.

He jogged across the room to yank a chilled bottle of water from his mini fridge and returned with it in hand. Uncapping it, he held it out to her.

“I, um—” She accepted the bottle of water and took a sip, choked on it, and promptly set the bottle on the table in front of her. “The first time I met Rosamund was at a restaurant. She and Chayton’s dad had agreed to join us there for dinner to celebrate our engagement. The whole six months we’d been dating, Rosamund had been undergoing cosmetic procedures and recovering from them.” She shook her head. “Needless to say, our meeting didn’t go well.”

Hawk squatted down in front of her and reached for her hands, massaging her fingers. “She’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy person.”

“Oh, it was far worse than that!” Annalee declared. “She looked like she’d seen a ghost. Her first words were really strange at the time.” She struck a pose and mimicked Rosamund as best she could.“You! You…”She pulled one of her hands away from him and gestured frenziedly.

Then she dropped her hand. “After her initial outburst, it was like a mask settled over her face. She stopped pointing, stopped gasping, and became the cold, waspish creature I’ve known her to be ever since.”

Hawk reached for her hand again, caressing her fingers. “She thought you were Mirabelle when you first met, didn’t she?”

Annalee nodded slowly. “In hindsight, that’s exactly what I think. At the time, I just thought she was weird and unfriendly.”

“She’s all the above,” he growled, “and then some.”

She gripped his hands, leaning his way. “Can you imagine what it must have felt like for her to come face to face with the woman she’d gone to such an effort to have wrongfully committed to a mental ward?”

“A normal person would’ve experienced profound guilt.” However, Rosamund didn’t strike him as normal.

“Even after she established the fact that Iwasn’tMirabelle,” Annalee’s voice grew thready, “it must have really scorched her turnips to realize her new husband’s heir would be marrying Mirabelle’s twin. My face would be a constant reminder of her evil past.”

“And a constant reminder of the little girl she’d falsely blamed for her son’s paralysis,” Hawk added. “I think we’ve already established the fact that she’s an unstable person. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine her redirecting her twisted hatred toward you.”

“Keep swiping.” Tucker’s voice grew grimmer as he handed the electronic tablet back to Hawk.

Hawk continued reading and discovered it wasn’t the one isolated incident involving Edward that had ultimately landed Mirabelle in a state mental hospital. It was a series of incidents documented by what appeared to be carefully crafted reports designed to establish a pattern of violence on Mirabelle’s part. Of note, each person who’d taken part in documenting this so-called “pattern of violence” was connected in some form or another to Rosamund Dakota.

The Family Services counselor who’d been sent to investigate the sisters’ home and parents was a high school classmate of Rosamund’s. They’d been members of the same cheerleading squad for four straight years. The policeman who’d later arrested the Gilberts was pictured alongside Rosamund in her high school yearbook with a caption beneath it denoting them as the “cutest couple.”

Hawk scanned the last few documents on Tucker’s tablet. “The case should’ve never gone to court.” From start to finish, it had been a tragic miscarriage of justice.

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