Page 61 of A Forgotten Mistake

Liam is quiet for a moment as he seems to think about the proper answer to this. “I don’t know why it stood out, but it justhit me when I was looking at her. I’ll tell you in detail later. Tonight?”

“Okay,” I say, one hundred percent confident he’s planning on running off to the crime scene the second I leave this room. I take the stairs down and head into Jesse’s office, where I pass him both notes as I finish off my donut.

“Uh… probably rude not to offer you any,” I realize.

“You act like I wanted the last bite of your donut. Are we that close? I’m not even sure I’m that close with my own mother,” he says. “But don’t worry, Matthew got me one.”

I laugh at Jesse’s expression as he opens the first paper and looks at the atrocious drawing.

“Did a two-year-old do this? Because if so, they really need to learn to hold a pen better,” he comments.

“Liam did. He said this is a tattoo that he swears Abby used to have. I… guess he’s wondering if anyone else has come in with it? He explained it all in the note.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice the note,” Jesse says as he unfolds it and then flips it to me. “He drew a dick. A very happy dick.”

I look at the drawing of a dick with a happy face on it and sigh.

“Maybe it’s like… symbolism?”

“You think this happy dick with a speech bubble that says, ‘I’m better than you, Jesse’ is symbolism?” he asks.

“Yes?”

He tapes the dick to his wall like it’s now a work of art and goes back to the drawing of the tattoo. “I can’t have a picture of the real tattoo?”

“It’s not there. There’s a coverup tattoo now.”

“What’s the significance of it, then?”

I stare at Jesse. “You honestly think I know a quarter of what’s going through Liam’s mind?”

“You chose to date him, so I thought it was a possibility.”

He taps his pen a moment before pointing to the middle. “This supposed to be a flower?”

“That or a shit emoji. I couldn’t quite tell either.”

That makes Jesse laugh. “You know… something about this does look familiar, but I can’t place my finger on it. Let me think about it.”

“Thank you. Let me know as soon as you find something.”

I walk out the door and cock my head when I see something moving around in Matthew’s car while Matthew is in the lobby waving to a woman I don’t know the name of. Hurrying over to Matthew, I catch him before he leaves.

“Can I ride with you? Michaels said that Liam can’t go, but he said nothing about me not going.”

“Sure,” he says as he heads out the door. I follow him over to his car and get in the passenger seat. “Is Michaels going to prohibit Liam from doing everything? Like… I get the whole unbiased bit, but I feel like we’re putting our top racehorse out to pasture.” Matthew pulls out onto the street before glancing over at me.

“Liam’s going to do whatever he wants to do. But Michaels also has to do things the right way, even if Liam won’t listen to anything anyone else says.”

“True. Oh shit, I was going to tell him about this guy. So my brother is an officer over in Wester and they had a guy get away with killing this seventeen-year-old girl’s mom and dad. Caleb Hill is in his early thirties and was posing as a teenager when he was chatting to this kid, Leanne Peters, online. When she refused to meet him in person, she said he started to become violent while saying it was because her parents wouldn’t let her leave. But they couldn’t pin enough on him. She recognized him because he’d met her once late at night when she thought she was sneaking out to meet another seventeen-year-old. However, he’s claiming that he’s never met her and has no idea who she is,so they can’t prove he did it. I think we should loan them Liam. Not just because it’d be peaceful to have breaks without Liam… but to solve things… although… mostly for the peace.”

I grin. “We could definitely get money out of loaning him out.”

“Sure would,” he says.

The coat and boxes Liam covered himself with fall off as he sits up.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had the hots for me, Matthew,” Liam says as he hovers behind Matthew who jumped the moment Liam started moving. “Sorry. I’m spoken for. Gabriel, were you jealous?”