Distortion (Moonlighters Series)

by Terri Blackstock

  Cathy started to answer, but couldn’t. At the flood of memory, she felt that tear-surge pressure in her nose, her eyes, and she didn’t want to cry in front of these people. She bit her lip and let Michael answer.

  “Leonard Miller murdered my brother.” His voice shook. “Joe was a cop in the Major Crimes Unit for the Panama City Police Department—I worked there too—and he was working on a drug-trafficking ring. They had a sting operation scheduled, and when Joe’s team went to make the bust, Leonard Miller shot him.”

  Clement nodded. “We considered taking that case, but it wasn’t clearly a case that crossed state lines, and the PCPD really wanted to take him down for murder one. Cop killer and all.”

  “Yeah, only they didn’t. He got acquitted.”

  That jogged Blue’s memory. “Oh, right. Because of the cop who lied on the stand.”

  Michael slapped his chest. “That would be me.”

  The memories sent a tremor through Cathy’s body, and she found her voice. “Michael didn’t lie. He had an affidavit by a woman who clearly had dementia, and she claimed she saw someone else shoot Joe. But all the other witnesses saw Miller do it.”

  “I just forgot about her affidavit and didn’t think to give it to the detectives working the case. She wasn’t a credible witness.”

  “Right. So they claimed you suppressed evidence,” Blue said.

  “And the bad cop narrative turned the jury. Miller got off scot-free.” Michael swallowed hard. “So you’re telling us that Miller is involved in all this?”

  It was too much. Cathy couldn’t process it. “And . . . you’re saying Bob was involved with Miller?”

  Juliet couldn’t hold her tears back. “I don’t know if he was involved with him. They were just in the same room. Bob may not have noticed him. It could be a coincidence.” She pulled out her phone and showed them the pictures she’d taken.

  As they all studied them, Juliet wiped her tears. “I feel like I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Like Bob isn’t really Bob . . . he’s some person I don’t know.” She reached out to take Cathy’s hand. “Honey, I’m so sorry to tell you this.”

  Cathy’s mind still raced to make the right connections. “Then let me get this straight,” she said, a little breathless. “Could Bob have been involved in all this as far back as Joe’s death? If he was. . .” Her voice faded off.

  Juliet stared up at her. “Maybe . . . maybe he just found out after it happened. I can’t believe he was involved in Joe’s death in any way.”

  Cathy shook her head. “But he did all this other stuff. Had a secret life, secret bank accounts, a secret family. If Bob was involved with Miller, and Joe was getting close to bringing them all down—Bob’s whole secret world was at risk.”

  Juliet sucked in a sob and wilted, covering her face. “I know. But he wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t be connected to that.”

  “At the very least, he probably knew where Miller was all that time,” Michael said in a low voice. Cathy looked at him and saw the stiffness in the set of his chin, the suppressed anger in his eyes. “He knew Miller was still tangled up in crimes that could have gotten him sent away for years. He knew I was looking for Miller, hoping to nail him for something else . . . anything that would get him put away so he’d finally face justice. If Bob knew where he was and kept it quiet, he must have been connected to Miller.”

  Michael turned to the agents. “How far back do you think Bob’s drug activities go?”

  Clement spoke now. “One of the dummy corporations Bob used for laundering money was set up three years ago.”

  Cathy felt the blood draining from her face.

  “The question is,” Blue said, “what does all this tell us about why Bob was murdered?”

  Juliet wiped her wet face and looked at them. “Amber didn’t even look that heartbroken. Maybe she turned on him.”

  “Maybe. We need to know who else is involved,” Blue said.

  Juliet straightened, new determination filling her eyes. “Tell me what to do to help find out. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Juliet felt as though high blood pressure, a pounding heart, and trembling hands were her normal state these days. When the FBI agents left and Cathy walked Juliet to her car, Juliet realized that her own pain had now bled right into her sister. Cathy’s nose was red and her eyes were pink, and she had that distant look that she’d had in those first months after Joe’s death.

  “Honey, are you all right?” Juliet asked.

  Cathy met her eyes. “You’re asking me? You’re the one going through this.”

  “You’re going through it too. I didn’t want to tell you about Bob and Leonard Miller, but in some ways, it gives us hope that we’ll be able to bring him to justice.” She opened her door, and Cathy went around and got in on the passenger side. Juliet knew she didn’t want a ride. Cathy’s car was just feet from hers. She let her sit there in silence, staring out the windshield.

  “Michael’s calling Max. He’ll be as upset as we are.”

  Juliet looked toward Michael’s office window. “Yeah, he will.”

  “It’s just so wrong,” Cathy whispered. “If Joe were still here, we would have been married for almost two years by now. We’d probably have a baby. Joe would have been a great father.”

  “Michael will be too.”

  Cathy sighed. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get that far. We both feel so much guilt about our relationship. Like we’re both cheating on Joe. We seem a little stuck.”

  “Life’s short, honey. Don’t waste time. You deserve to be happy, and Joe would want that for both of you.”

  Cathy chafed her arms as though she were cold, even though it was balmy outside. “I get jealous of Holly sometimes, you know? That she’s the one pregnant. I know it’s not rational. She’s not even married . . . it’ll be so hard for her. But I feel my biological clock ticking, and instead of thinking of Michael, I always just go back to Joe and all those feelings of what might have been. I think Michael senses that.”

  “He has the same feelings, Cathy. The what-might-have-beens. Maybe if we find Leonard Miller you two will get unstuck.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” But Cathy seemed far away.

  Juliet’s mind wandered too, images rolling like nightmare sequences through her mind. Bob with Leonard, discussing the plan that would take Joe down . . . his seeming compassion at the funeral . . . his out-loud prayers with her that justice would be done.

  She wanted to drive into a tunnel somewhere and scream until her vocal cords shredded.

  Cathy grabbed a tissue out of the box on Juliet’s console and wiped her nose.

  Juliet looked at her. “Maybe . . . maybe Bob didn’t have anything to do with Joe’s murder. Maybe it was a shock to him too. I don’t know how I could live with a man and not know he’s capable of the things he was doing.”

  “He was a good actor.”

  “But I’ve always thought I was a good judge of character. You liked Bob, didn’t you?”

  Cathy hesitated. “I would never have questioned his love for you or the kids. But he irked me sometimes.”

  “How?”

  “The way he took you for granted. He was gone so much, leaving you to do everything. Always distracted. And he seemed a little . . . full of himself.”

  Juliet’s mouth fell open. “You never said that.”

  “I knew you loved him. What was I going to say? I liked him in the early years.”

  Juliet thought that over. “I was happy. I trusted him and believed in him. I know a little now about how Jesus felt when Judas betrayed him. When Jesus said someone would betray him, none of the disciples pointed to Judas and asked if it was him. But Jesus wasn’t fooled. I shouldn’t have been either.”

  “Jesus could see into Judas’s heart, but you couldn’t see into Bob’s.”

  Juliet was surprised that Cathy hadn’t changed the subject. She usually ran from spiritual conversations. “I did get irritated some
times,” she said. “But I tried to live by the love chapter.”

  “First Corinthians 13,” Cathy said. They both managed a smile. Their father had forced them to memorize it as children—even though, as they discovered later, he hadn’t followed it himself.

  “The part that says ‘love does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered . . .’ ”

  Cathy nodded. “‘Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ That’s how you were in your marriage.”

  Juliet’s throat felt so tight she couldn’t speak. She had loved Bob, so if there were clues that he was cold and deceptive, she had deliberately chosen not to see them. She didn’t keep score and always tried to see the best in him, as she wanted him to do in her.

  Was she just a stupid fool?

  “If I could just understand . . . when did he decide to do this? What prompted it? At what point did he start to lie? What part of our lives was true?”

  “It wasn’t all a lie,” Cathy said. “I remember your wedding. He was so happy, and so in love with you. I remember watching you two dance, and I prayed I would have someone love me that way someday. Somewhere along the way . . . he just fell.”

  “But which came first? The affair or the crime ring? Sounds to me like the crime came first. That baby is only nine months old.”

  Juliet looked out the window, wishing she could go back to being oblivious. Just a normal grieving widow, remembering her husband fondly. She could have kept loving him.

  But now her love was edged with razor-sharp facts that left her bloody. Now Cathy and Michael were bloody too.

  It was too much, all these revelations. Too many blows to the head, the heart.

  Night was falling. The streetlights cast lovely circles of light on the street, and the homes in the neighborhood across the road were lit up, families busy inside. She imagined them laughing, talking, arguing . . . unaware how quickly their lives could run off a cliff.

  She wished she had enjoyed the good days more.

  CHAPTER 28

  Michael stood at his office window, watching Cathy’s car pull away into the night. The news of Bob’s possible involvement with Leonard Miller had shaken her, and he hadn’t been able to erase the deep lines of grief etched on her face.

  His own grief mirrored hers. Two years hadn’t been enough time to forget the pain of losing his brother, and now it seemed fresh, as if it had happened yesterday.

  Headlights turned into his parking lot and stopped at the defunct gas pumps, left over from when this building had been a convenience store. As the door opened and the car lit up, he recognized Max.

  Max leaned into the backseat, retrieved a box, and headed inside. Michael went back to the chair behind his desk and dropped into it, waiting.

  His brother came into the front room, then seconds later appeared at Michael’s office doorway. “Hey.”

  Michael glanced at the box. “Whatcha got?”

  Max came in and set the box on the desk. He lowered himself into the chair in front of Michael’s desk. “All the files related to Joe’s death. Everything we had on Leonard Miller, plus the files having to do with the drug-trafficking case Joe was working on. I thought we could look over them now that we have this new information about Bob and Leonard Miller.”

  Michael sat up, stunned that his brother would share this with him. Max opened the box, began unloading folders. “I know you were still at the department during the investigation. You know all this as well as I do. But it’s worth a review, right?”

  “Right.” Michael rolled closer to the desk and sorted through the folders.

  Max pulled out a bound one over a foot thick. “Here’s all of Joe’s notes about the case leading up to the drug bust, where Miller was waiting for him. If you and I spend some time going over all this, and we find out what he knew, we might be able to locate Miller through the network Joe’s investigation uncovered.”

  Michael sat back in his chair. He met his brother’s eyes. Max’s eyes had misted over, and Michael’s stung as well. Michael rubbed the corners of his trembling mouth. “Have I ever told you you’re a genius?”

  Max looked away. “No. No, you haven’t.”

  “Well, I should have.”

  Max didn’t answer. He just dove into the files, pointing out the things Joe had uncovered about the drug-trafficking operation in northern Florida—a trafficking operation that could intersect with Bob’s activities.

  “Miller wasn’t high up in the drug ring,” Max said. “He wasn’t a broker, probably just a low-level transporter. I’ve been all through this, and Miller wasn’t even on the horizon until he ambushed Joe. Someone had tipped these guys off about the bust, and Miller was probably low enough on the totem pole to be tasked with ending it.”

  “That probably earned him the trust of the higher-ups.”

  “Right. The whole network reorganized after the bust. There was heat on all of them—I think most of them left the area. That left positions to be filled. If Miller stayed, he could have gotten a higher position and a bigger cut of the pie.”

  “But we were convinced he’d left,” Michael said. “I’ve turned this town upside down looking for him. The only time I’ve seen him back was when his mother died a few months ago.”

  “But I got Juliet to send me a copy of the picture she took at Amber’s, even though I’m not on the case anymore. I studied it. That was taken at Mal’s Irish Pub here in Panama City. Miller’s hair was longer than when you saw him last. And I asked Juliet about what Bob was wearing in the picture. She bought the shirt for his birthday, about three months ago. So we can date the picture to sometime in the last three months.” Max leaned forward and locked his gaze on Michael. “Think about it. If he had the chance to stay here and fill a vacuum in this drug ring, and make a ton of cash, I think he’d do it. The guy thought he’d get away with it. He did last time.”

  Michael’s heart began to race. “We’re going to find him. And this time, we’ll send him away for a very long time.”

  “If anybody can find him, you can,” Max said.

  That was the kindest thing Max had said in two years, and Michael realized then how much he had missed his younger brother. He swallowed the knot in his throat and threw himself into reviewing the files.

  CHAPTER 29

  As Juliet drove back to Jay’s house, her grief hit her again, and she gave in to deep, ugly, wet sobs that seemed to rip out every belief she’d once held dear. God, how will I survive this? How will I protect my kids?

  Closed off in the car, she didn’t muffle her wails. No one could hear her, and in the dark, they couldn’t see her either.

  Just strike me dead, Lord. Just kill me now. I want to go Home.

  She wanted to just pull over and fall asleep right here and be done with it. But her kids . . . they needed her. They had been betrayed too. Zach already knew so much about it. Had Bob ever considered what it would do to his sons if the truth came out? Had it kept him awake nights?

  At least one of their parents had to be there for them. She had to go on. She had no choice. It wasn’t about her. It was about them.

  “Lord,” she said through her teeth, “I believe Romans 8:28 is true. But I can’t imagine how all of this is going to work for good, because all I see is tragedy and heartache, and shock after shock. We need some real miracles here.”

  Her tears left her battered, but her prayer gave her a bittersweet, soft warmth that fell over her like a hot shower, as though God wept with her. She wept until she was dry, until she had no more energy to shoulder the pain. A divine numbness set in, one that would help her to take another breath, and then another. She felt the warmth of divine arms around her. His love renewed her strength, as impossible as that was. The miracle of that startled her, then settled into her heart.

  She would learn to do this, taking steps like a baby learning the power of his legs. And she knew that God would have his hands out for her, waiting to ca
tch her when she fell.

  Bled dry emotionally by the time she got back to Jay’s, Juliet went into the TV room where Zach and Abe sat sprawled on the couch. After hugs and apologies again for being gone so long, she sank into a club chair and stared, unseeing, at the TV screen.

  Jackson, who’d been playing on the floor, looked up at her with his sweet eyes. She smiled at him, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to come play with him.

  Instead, he got up and climbed onto her lap.

  She kissed his cheek and put her arms around him, and he laid his head against her chest. No words were needed, and her heart filled to overflowing. Little Jackson, who’d lost his mother just months earlier, understood her sorrow. Only five years old, he seemed to understand that she had nothing to give. But he did.

  She held him that way for a long time, wiping her tears before they hit her cheeks and saddened her boys. She hoped the TV distracted them from their pain.

  Later, when Jay had taken Jackson upstairs to bathe him and get him ready for bed, Juliet went to the guest room and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Abe came to the doorway. “Mom, I want to go back to school tomorrow.”

  Juliet sat up and saw Zach in the hall behind him. “I’ll have to think about it. I don’t know if it’s a good idea yet.”

  “Well, the only reason I should stay home is if it makes me feel better, right? But it’s boring here. Uncle Jay wouldn’t have to work at home to watch us. So if it doesn’t make me feel better to stay home, why can’t I go back and be with my friends?”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Zach said. “I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to hear any questions. I don’t want to be stared at by people who feel sorry for me.”

  Juliet wished she could save this for another day. “Come on in here, guys.”

  They came into the room, and Abe got onto her bed. Zach sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall.

  “Your eyes are all puffy,” Abe said.

  “Yeah, I know.” She looked at her younger son. “So are yours.”