Burning Proof

by Janice Cantore

  “I think so.”

  He took her hand. “I’ve been praying the Lord would change your heart, or change mine, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.”

  “Ethan, I—”

  He waved her quiet and spoke softly, sadly. “The week I was with you after the shooting, while you were healing, I prayed that you would see the incident and aftermath as a sign—a door closing and a new opportunity arising for you to make a life change.” He paused and swallowed. “I even hoped when you saw how much good the church build did for people . . .” His voice trailed off and almost broke.

  She squeezed his hand.

  He cleared his throat. “But you love your work as much as I love the mission field—I see that now. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have been hurt so bad by the shooting. So I understand we’ve come to a crossroads. I know that we will always be friends. I just don’t see us being married. We want very different lives.”

  Abby swallowed a lump, amazed at the conflicting emotions that swirled within: pain, sadness, and realization of truth. And even a sense of relief.

  “I agree.” She gripped his hand in both of hers. “I do value your friendship. We’ve known each other so long. I don’t want to lose that.” She reached out to hug him and he returned the gesture.

  “You won’t,” he whispered. “I’ll be in touch, and pray for you often,” he said, and a few minutes later he walked out of her house.

  Abby sat on the couch with Bandit, trying to reconcile her feelings. She knew the breakup was right, and she knew they’d always be friends, but there was still a sense of loss and a very sharp pain as she contemplated the future without Ethan’s steady presence.

  She turned on the TV and flipped through the channels before she caught an announcer saying that up next was an important statement from Governor Rollins. Putting the remote down, she waited through the commercials for the statement.

  “He’s gonna quit the race, Bandit. I know it,” she said to the little dog. She’d seen the chaos swirling around the campaign. His opponent was hitting him hard with everything that happened in Tehachapi, with Kelsey, Quinn, and Gavin. In an odd way she felt sorry for Rollins even as she struggled to think of a way to get to Alyssa.

  When the commercials ended and the press conference began, Abby’s expectation changed to anger. She put Bandit down and stood, staring at the TV screen in disbelief.

  “No, no. He’s getting away with it. He’s turning the negative to a positive.”

  There was even an FBI agent confirming the ongoing investigation regarding Gilbert Barone and the hacking of a large financial institution.

  She’d heard enough. Slapping a hand to her forehead, she switched the TV off. She fell to the couch and stayed there for a long time, numb, wondering how a man whose career never should have gotten going in the first place now seemed completely bulletproof.

  CHAPTER

  -71-

  LUKE HAD A FEW MINUTES to help Maddie with her geography lesson before his date. She was studying the African continent and along with boundaries and capitals, she was learning about Christian persecution. He normally liked helping Maddie when he could, but this subject made him think of Ethan and all the work he did in dangerous countries, places where he could literally lose his life for his faith.

  He shook his head; he had feelings for Abby, but he knew he had no right to those feelings. She would marry Ethan.

  And I have to get over it.

  That’s what tonight was all about. Meeting Faye Fallon had been the high point in the midst of this turmoil. Woody had coyly declined her dinner invitation, so it was going to be just Luke and Faye. He’d rather think about her than Ethan Carver. Or Lowell Rollins.

  There was still a lot of uncertainty about life with another woman swirling around in his heart. But if things went well with Faye, Luke was willing to think about the future with a new woman in his life permanently.

  “Dad, hello.” Maddie tapped the top of his head.

  “What? Oh, sorry, Mads.” He returned his attention to her lesson.

  “Did I get the spelling right?”

  Luke bent to the task of checking the paper. “Let me see.” He looked over the paper and silently thanked God that his daughter was smart and she studied hard.

  “Yep, 100 percent.” He put his knuckles up for a fist bump.

  “Cool. Can I go play basketball now?”

  “Double-check with Grandma—”

  Just then Grace stepped into the room.

  “Luke, you have a visitor.” Grace moved aside and into the room stepped Abby Hart.

  “Oh.” He stood, heart thumping. “Abby.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, looking more than a little ill at ease.

  “You didn’t,” Maddie said brightly. “I’m done. Aced it.” She waved the paper at Grace. “Basketball now?”

  Grace smiled. “Sure. Just change your clothes first.” With that, Grace and Maddie left the room, leaving Luke and Abby alone.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  Abby shook her head. “No. But I have something to ask you. Sorry to just stop by unannounced. It looks like you were on your way out. A date?”

  “Yeah, actually. With Faye Fallon.”

  A flicker of something Luke couldn’t quite define crossed Abby’s face. “I’ll make this quick then,” she said. “We know most of what happened at the Triple Seven all those years ago, and it points squarely to one person. I’m going to use that information to find some way to take down Alyssa Rollins. Are you in?”

  EPILOGUE

  “WELCOME TO THE COLD CASE SQUAD.”

  Glad for the welcome, Luke was distracted; something that had been happening to him all too frequently lately, he thought. But could he help it if events in his life seemed to collide and explode, showering contingencies in all directions?

  He and Woody took a seat in a conference room in the federal building on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach. A few other members of the new cold case task force were also there.

  FBI Agent Todd Orson went over the squad’s mission statement. It was to review cold cases and close them, preferably with prosecution, but if prosecution was not possible, closure for families was the next-most-desirable outcome. A secondary objective was to help smaller jurisdictions with limited resources clear cold case backlogs.

  Orson had said that there would be a change in the makeup of the squad. Just before he played a brief video welcome from Senator Harriet Shore, the woman behind the formation of the cold case task force, the door to the room opened and in walked Abby. Orson nodded to her as she took a seat, and then started the video. Luke was the only one besides Orson who knew why she was there.

  On-screen, the petite redheaded senator began by saying, “I want to thank you all for stepping up to join this endeavor. I know firsthand how difficult it is to lose a loved one to violent crime. About the only thing worse than bearing up under that loss is knowing that the perpetrator of the crime still walks this world free.”

  Luke agreed wholeheartedly and turned to see Abby nodding. He tuned out the rest of the introduction as Shore outlined the process by which money was appropriated for the squad.

  When the video ended, Orson passed out some literature about information and records sources.

  “Okay, people, right now we have the money and the mission. The best way to keep the money coming is to solve cases and put bad guys in jail.” He pointed to the whiteboard behind him, where he’d written, Success opens the money stream.

  “You’ll find in the packet I gave you a little more information about how cases are chosen for investigation. Take a minute and look everything over.”

  Luke noted Abby got the same packet and suppressed a smile as he skimmed over the paperwork. Law enforcement agencies were asked to submit digital summaries of cases to an office in DC, where a team of retired FBI agents would review them and send the ones deemed workable to Orson, who would in turn parcel them out to the app
ropriate investigative team.

  “What’s the new dimension to this gig?” Luke asked, pretending ignorance and looking at Abby, who grinned. He felt an earthquake in his soul and chastised himself. He was dating Faye, and his relationship with Abby needed to stay where it was: professional.

  “Figured you’d ask that, Bullet.” Orson smiled and jabbed a thumb in Abby’s direction. “The new dimension is this: the cold case squad is now a joint task force. This means we are forming each cold case task force with an agent, which would be me, and a sworn law enforcement officer. Detective Abby Hart will be working with the cold case task force. She’s been loaned to us from LBPD for a year. You guys know Abby,” he said to Luke and Woody. He then introduced her to rest of the team.

  “Think you mugs can take orders from such an accomplished detective?”

  “You bet,” Luke said, keeping his expression neutral. He knew that this job, with the reopening of the Triple Seven case, would allow Abby more freedom to peel away the layers protecting Alyssa Rollins. And Luke was the optimist, confident that they would ferret out something new and substantial.

  But a question haunted him. If they did find everything they were looking for, and Alyssa was finally behind bars, would Abby walk out of his life forever?

  “PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME FOR THE COURT.”

  Abby Hart had to admit to feeling a bit sorry for the woman sitting before the judge today. Less than a year ago, Kelsey Cox had retired as a deputy chief after a thirty-year trailblazing law enforcement career. And here she was in a prison jumpsuit, no makeup, bad hairstyle, and looking so painfully thin, Abby winced.

  Cox cleared her throat. “Kelsey June Cox.” She stared at the microphone she spoke into, seemingly oblivious to anyone else in the judge’s private chamber. This had been one of Kelsey’s demands—along with the plea to speed up the process and have her hearing as soon as possible—that she be able to give her statement in private, with only a few people present. All in exchange for a mere fifteen-year sentence.

  Yeah, I’m getting a confession, Abby thought, but why do I feel as though in our effort to close this, we’ve dealt away justice, real justice?

  Abby was glad police reporter Walter Gunther had crashed the party and was here with her, but she really wished it were Luke Murphy. He had more skin in the game and would be a tower of support.

  “Please proceed with your statement, Ms. Cox, about what occurred on the night of June 16, 1988.”

  After a sip of water, Cox began. “On that night, I left work late, after 10 p.m., and returned to my home on Granada, in Long Beach, to hear arguing.” Her voice was thin and reedy, not the same one Abby remembered barking orders when Kelsey Cox was a supervisor in patrol.

  “At the time I shared the home with Gavin Kent. He was a fellow officer and my fiancé. I recognized his voice, but it was only when I stepped out onto the patio that I saw who the other person was. It was Buck Morgan.” She paused to take a drink of water. Her gaze flickered briefly to Abby, then back down on the mic.

  “Was Buck Morgan an acquaintance?” the judge asked.

  “Buck Morgan was known to me as one of the owners of a restaurant that had burned down, the Triple Seven. The fire had occurred two nights previous and it was assumed by everyone that Morgan had died in it.”

  “When you stepped out onto the patio, did the two men see you?”

  “No, uh . . . I mean, I think Gavin saw me, but I was behind Buck.”

  “Could you hear what the argument was about?”

  “Bits of it—it really didn’t make sense, and like I said, I thought Buck was dead, and that concerned me. What if he had faked his death? It occurred to me that he might be a killer; he might have killed his wife and set the fire . . .”

  Abby was almost up out of her seat. Beside her, DA Drew gripped her hand, and Gunther shook his head. Face hot, heart pumping, Abby slowly settled back into her chair. For the first time Cox steadily looked her way, expression blank.

  The judge cast a frown Abby’s direction and then nodded for Cox to continue.

  “I didn’t really know what to think, or what was happening, but I could see that Buck was trying to get Gavin to go somewhere with him. Fearing for Gavin, I moved in behind Morgan.”

  “Did you have a weapon?”

  “I’d left my duty weapon in the house, and I didn’t want to waste time by going back to get it. I grabbed a shovel—we were having work done in our backyard and there was one handy. I moved in behind Morgan as he was getting more agitated. I was afraid for Gavin; he’d hurt himself and was not 100 percent.”

  “How had he hurt himself?”

  “Helping with the yard remodel.”

  Abby could not hold back a snort. Gavin Kent had killed her mother, that much she knew, and been wounded by a shotgun, fired by her father, before Kent ran out of ammo and had to flee for his life. Another angry glance from the judge, and she forced herself to nod an apology.

  “What happened then?”

  “I just reacted. I saw Morgan move toward Gavin, and I swung the shovel and hit him in the head as hard as I could.”

  * * *

  Abby left the courthouse angry and frustrated. She remembered a time when she was a kid in foster care, filled with anger. She used to pound big rocks into smaller rocks and pretend she was pounding the people who had murdered her parents. It had been a long time since so much anger boiled inside—rage, really. Rage that made her want to pound something—or someone.

  “Hey, Abby, hold up.”

  She stopped and turned. She’d tried to ignore Gunther but wasn’t angry enough to make the old guy chase after her. Besides, he wasn’t the one who infuriated her.

  “Trying to give me a heart attack?” He caught up to her, breathing hard, bending over, and putting his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. “You stormed out of there and made the judge mad. Hope you don’t have to try any cases in front of him right away,” he said after he straightened up.

  “I don’t know what I expected in there. I didn’t want a trial any more than Drew did—too risky with the shaky evidence we have—but somehow what Kelsey had to say just didn’t sit right with me. She wanted my dad to be the bad guy, threatening Gavin Kent. And Kent is the man who killed my mother!”

  Gunther raised both hands. “Calm down. I’m on your side here.”

  Abby took a deep breath, glancing around the street in front of the courthouse at the people coming and going. This was the place where people came for justice, she thought bitterly. On one level she knew she had no right to be so angry. She had more answers now about the murders of her parents than she’d had a year ago. After Gavin Kent killed her mother, her father tried to take Kent to the police, but Cox killed Buck Morgan. Then she buried him under tons of concrete in her backyard, where he’d lain hidden for all these years.

  Now, at least there would be one person in jail, sentenced for part of the crime. The only person not already dead or in custody was the one person responsible for ordering all of the carnage, and Abby’s angst was in no small part aroused because of this fact.

  A part of Abby had hoped Kelsey would finally point the finger at that person: California’s first lady, Alyssa Rollins. But after hearing Cox’s self-serving confession, it stung like a thousand beestings to Abby’s heart that Alyssa seemed to slip through every crack and stay free.

  She looked at Gunther. “I know you are. This is just aggravating.”

  “Well, step into my office.” He pointed to a street hot dog vendor. “Let me buy you lunch and we’ll talk about it.”

  In spite of everything Abby laughed. “Yeah, that used to be Asa’s favorite place to take me for lunch too.” Her old partner Asa Foster had been the one to introduce her to the crusty reporter Gunther. “But he did it because he was cheap.”

  “I resemble that remark,” Gunther said with mock offense.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got some training to get back to for the cold case squad. Rain check
?”

  “Sure.” He stepped close. “I’d still like to pick your brain about the Triple Seven someday. It’s not settled in my mind, and I don’t think it’s settled in yours either.”

  Abby cocked her head and shrugged, then continued toward the parking structure.

  It’s not settled, she thought, and I doubt that it will ever be. At least not to my satisfaction.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A FORMER LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, police officer of twenty-two years, Janice Cantore worked a variety of assignments, including patrol, administration, juvenile investigations, and training. She’s always enjoyed writing and published two short articles on faith at work for Cop and Christ and Today’s Christian Woman before tackling novels. She now lives in a small town in southern Oregon, where she enjoys exploring the forests, rivers, and lakes with her two Labrador retrievers—Maggie and Abbie.

  Janice writes suspense novels designed to keep readers engrossed and leave them inspired. Burning Proof, the second title in her new Cold Case Justice series, is the sequel to Drawing Fire. Janice also authored Critical Pursuit, Visible Threat, and the Pacific Coast Justice series, which includes Accused, Abducted, and Avenged.

  Visit Janice’s website at www.janicecantore.com and connect with her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JaniceCantore.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  At the beginning of Burning Proof, Detective Abby Hart walks into a horrible life-and-death scenario. Does she make the right choice, or is there another option? As she and others rehash the situation, are her actions sufficiently justified? How does this fictional account change how you might view similar events in real life?

  Abby and her fiancé, Ethan, face some tough choices about their relationship. How important is it for spouses’ career and ministry goals to be compatible? What advice would you give them?

  Luke Murphy is trying to put the mistakes from his marriage behind him and consider a future with a new woman. Do you think he will be successful? Should he put aside his feelings for Abby too and pursue someone else? What do you think the author has in mind for the final book in this series?