Serve and Protect (Heroes of Evers, Texas #3)

by Lori Ryan

  He took a step forward and lowered his voice, even though the library was quiet now. The quilters were in the activity room, but they kept the door shut so they could chat while they worked without bothering the library patrons.

  “Can we talk in your office, Ashley?”

  “Sure,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. She was pretty sure it didn’t work.

  He shut the door after they walked into her office, and the small space and closeness of their bodies didn’t affect her the way it had that morning. She just felt edgy and uneasy and a little like she might throw up.

  He raised his hand, and it was then that she realized he was holding a folder. “I need to know about Bill Franks, Ashley.”

  She took two steps back, her arms wrapped around her stomach. The blow was visceral, kicking her in the gut. She tried to take a deep breath and battle the tears that pricked behind her eyes, but she was losing the battle.

  “Hey, hey.” His voice was a gentle croon, but she still shook her head at him and tried to back away farther. She couldn’t think about Bill Franks. Couldn’t talk about him. She simply couldn’t. That part of her life was over and she wouldn’t go back there. Not for anything.

  The fact that her present was colliding with that horrible past made her sick to her stomach.

  “Ashley, I need you to tell me what happened in that house. I need to know why Alice would pull this file right before she was killed.”

  His words were enough to snap Ashley back to the present, but she wasn’t able to face him as the woman she was today. As the woman she had been that morning. She felt the hardened shield she’d worn as a mantle during her teen years come down over her once more. She saw it reflected in his eyes and knew he’d seen the change.

  To his credit, he didn’t react. His eyes maintained their steady gaze.

  “Not a damn thing happened that matters now. Alice got me out. She pulled his license. That’s all that matters. He doesn’t have kids in the house.” She said that as a statement, but in her heart, it was a plea. A silent but powerful plea, because God, he could not have kids in that house.

  When Garret spoke, he did so quietly. Deliberately. “I don’t have any reason to think he has kids there, but I’ll find out for sure. I just need to know what Alice was doing. I need to know if this might be a lead in her case. You need to tell me why she would have pulled the file.”

  She shut off all emotion. Everything. She barely saw the man in front of her. “I have no idea why Alice would be looking at that file. There can’t be kids there. There are no kids there.”

  Garret questioned her a little longer, but she couldn’t tell him anything else. When he left, she gathered her things and asked the part-time assistant and the afternoon volunteer if they’d mind closing up for her. She begged off as sick, and they didn’t question it. After assuring them she didn’t need a ride home, she walked out of the library and went straight home. She was trying to outrun her ghosts, and she honestly wasn’t sure she’d be able to run fast or far enough.

  *

  Doug pulled up across from the tire and brake center where Bill Franks worked and shut off the engine of the unmarked cruiser. Garret checked his watch. It was almost six o’clock.

  “Let’s hold off on a visit to the workplace and just see where this guy goes when he gets off. I’m less concerned about what we might find when we talk to his boss than what we might find at his house,” Doug said. As usual, he and his partner were on the same page. Working with someone new when Doug retired would be a bitch.

  “Yeah.” Garret nodded. “I doubt anything he’s doing at a tire and brake shop would have drawn Alice’s attention. Ashley didn’t say much, but it’s clear this guy shouldn’t be around kids. My money says Alice spotted him with a kid somewhere, or found out he has a kid in his home. We need to figure out what she saw.”

  Doug nodded. Justice for the dead drove them. But even more so, protecting children would always be at the forefront of their work. If Alice truly believed a child was in danger, she would have acted on that belief. Garret knew Doug was wondering the same thing he was. If that need to protect was what got Alice killed. And if there was a child out there in danger.

  The men waited in their vehicle until twenty past the hour, when they spotted a man matching the DMV photo they had of Bill Franks leave the shop. He got into an older sedan and pulled out of the lot. They followed shortly in their unmarked car. Doug stayed well behind, tailing at a discreet distance. It wasn’t difficult, since it appeared Franks was headed to the address they had on file for him.

  Ten minutes later, they pulled alongside the curb outside a small house in a lower-class neighborhood. It wasn’t the worst of the worst as far as neighborhoods went. But the houses were small and many weren’t kept up the way they ought to be. Fresh paint was in short supply and cars were all older models. There were teenagers hanging out on the corners and Garret would bet they weren’t doing anything legal.

  “Car thefts?” Garret asked, receiving an answering nod from Doug.

  The two men exited the vehicle and approached Franks’ front door. They didn’t need to talk about how the following few minutes would go. They’d done this dozens of times.

  When they knocked on the door of number 1872 moments later, they heard a man yell for someone to get the damned door. A woman with long black hair opened it with a smile on her face. She was in the middle of laughing and tossing an “I’m gettin’ it, I’m gettin’ it” over her shoulder. Her voice held more humor than the man’s voice had, as if she were somehow charmed by his foul mood.

  “Hello, gentlemen.” There was a flirty nature to her tone and her body language followed suit. She leaned into the doorframe as she smiled up at them. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ma’am,” Doug said, with a nod and a flash of his badge. “We’re investigation a string of breakins in the neighborhood. Cars being rifled through. DVDs, electronics coming up missing.”

  In reality, two detectives wouldn’t be canvassing a neighborhood over missing DVDs, but no one ever seemed to catch on to that fact. Garret and Doug had used this ruse whenever they needed a peek inside a house or needed to talk to someone without raising suspicions. People fell for it every time.

  “Who’s’it?” Bill Franks asked as he came up behind the woman, turning three words into one. He grabbed her ass, seemingly without concern for the fact that anyone was witnessing his action. Or maybe it was for their benefit.

  Doug repeated the bit for Bill Franks, while Garret casually scanned the inside of the living room. Not much was visible from where they stood, but he didn’t spot any sign of a child. No toys, at least. No child-sized shoes or so much as a hoodie tossed on the couch.

  “Huh,” Franks said as he scratched his chest. “Ain’t had any trouble here. I got a big spotlight in the driveway at night. Neighbor bitches about it, but no one’s gonna mess with my shit with all that light.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone around any cars.” The woman smiled again. Damn, her jaw looked like it might break if she didn’t quit that.

  Garret began to shift back and forth on his feet, fidgeting openly.

  “What the hell, er, uh—heck—sorry, ma’am. What the heck is the matter with you?” Doug asked, turning to Garret.

  Garret did his best to look sheepish as he glanced at Franks and the woman, then back to Doug. Sheepish wasn’t an easy look for him, but he made it work when he had to. “I need to use the can. We’ve been out here a long time knockin’ on doors.” Another quick glance at the woman.

  She bought it, opening the door wide. “Come on in, officer. You can use our bathroom.”

  Franks gave her a hard look, but didn’t argue. He stepped back and let the men in. After Franks waved Garret down the hall to a small half bath, Doug began to ask questions about how Franks installed his spotlight in the driveway, chatting him up and stroking his ego. It kept Franks’ focus on Doug as Garret peeked into doors and checked out the kitchen, w
hat looked like a ground-level master bedroom, and a den.

  There wouldn’t be an easy way to get upstairs without arousing suspicion, but Garret hadn’t seen any sign of a child. They needed to withdraw and take another tack.

  “All set, Doug,” he said, coming back into the living room where the group stood. “Thank you for letting me use your bathroom. We still have to cover all the other houses on this street. You guys just saved me a pretty uncomfortable evening.”

  After an appropriate round of goodbyes, during which Doug instructed the couple to call him if they saw anything suspicious, Garret and Doug walked out to the sidewalk.

  “Anything?” Doug asked.

  “No toys or clothes. No drawings or family shots on the fridge. Nothing. I didn’t get a look upstairs, obviously, but I didn’t see anything that says there’s a kid in that house. You get the woman’s name?”

  Doug nodded. “Michelle Davis. Live-in girlfriend. Let’s check with a few of the neighbors to be sure. Can’t hurt to let them think we’re out here questioning people about car breakins. Keep up our story in case we need to come back.”

  But an hour later, they’d only turned up plenty of neighbors who apparently kept their heads in the sand and knew next to nothing about the people living around them. One woman said she thought the girlfriend was a new addition. That she’d only been around for the last month or so. She wasn’t sure if she had a child, but thought maybe she did.

  Garret rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, trying to force the strain from his head.

  “We need to find out where the wife went.” The file Alice had pulled indicated a wife lived with him back when he’d been an approved foster parent.

  “I’ll run a search on her in the morning,” Doug said. “See if she’s deceased or if they divorced. If he was up to what we suspect, it’s possible she left him. Maybe she found out and didn’t want to live with a pedophile.”

  Garret nodded. He hadn’t seen any sign of a child in the home, but his gut was screaming at him. He’d bet his signed Mickey Mantle baseball card that this case was the reason Alice was dead. He just needed to find out why.

  13

  “Tell me why I haven’t been hearing from you,” Cora said, taking Ashley’s hand in hers as the two women walked from the library to the diner. Ashley couldn’t blame her sister for asking. They usually spoke every day, but Ashley had been avoiding Cora for the last few days. She didn’t want to tell anyone what was going on. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been slipping back into the darkest days of her life. Days she thought she had left behind.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said. “The library has a new software system going in and I have to update all the computers and get the whole catalogue transitioned over. It’s a big project.”

  Cora narrowed her eyes. “Try again. That was last month and you’re almost finished.”

  Ashley rolled her eyes and feigned annoyance. “There were a few bugs. I’m working with the software company’s rep to figure them out.”

  It wasn’t entirely a lie, just an almost one. She was, in fact, almost finished with the whole transition, bugs and all. But Cora didn’t need to know that. She didn’t need to know that Ashley had been unable to sleep and wasn’t eating much. She didn’t need to know that the life Ashley never imagined she could have was now slipping away. That she was drowning in the memories of what had once almost taken her down. That this time she wasn’t sure she could tread water long enough to reach safety.

  *

  “Who is she, Mommy?” Evie lifted her head from the coloring pages her teacher had printed on the computer for her. She knew it was a risk asking her mother about the pretty lady they’d been watching, but she was tired. Making her mother angry might just get her to take them home. Evie wanted to go back to her room. She wanted to be able to eat her snack and color her pages.

  “Who is who?” Her mother’s voice was sharp, but she didn’t move her eyes from the window as she watched the two women cross the street. It wasn’t the taller woman they were watching. She’d only just arrived. It was the one with the long hair. The one who looked like the porcelain dolls Evie had once seen in a shop window when they’d lived in a big city a long time ago. Dallas, she thought it was called. She wasn’t really sure. But the sound of Dallas was nice.

  “The doll lady.” She didn’t look up from her coloring page.

  “The doll lady?” Her mother mimicked back to her. “What doll lady? I don’t see a doll.”

  “She looks like a doll,” Evie said, head ducked.

  Her mother didn’t answer. She started the car and drove away. Evie smiled to herself as she finished filling in the yellow duck on her page. She would work on the umbrella next. She wanted to color it purple. Or maybe sky blue. The colored pencils her teacher had bought for her were her most treasured possession. She was risking them by using them in front of her mother. When Michelle got angry, she sometimes lashed out by taking whatever she knew to be most prized by Evie at the time. But they had been in the car for hours that afternoon. Evie was tired and hungry, and she’d been bored until she pulled the coloring pages and pencils out. With any luck, her mother wouldn’t notice them.

  She slid the pages and pencils back in her bag and zipped it up. Letting her forehead fall to the window, she watched as they drove past the doll lady and her tall friend. The doll lady was talking to her friend and didn’t look at them as they drove past, but Evie could see her eyes for the first time. They were the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. But they were also sad eyes. She hadn’t expected the doll to be sad. Somehow, that didn’t seem right.

  14

  “Damn it!” Garret slammed the phone back into its cradle on the corner of his desk, coming close to knocking it clear off. Doug raised his brows at his partner, but remained silent.

  Garret expelled a harsh breath, trying to rein in his frustration before speaking. He took another breath before looking up at his partner. “No DNA results yet, and so far, there isn’t any blood type other than Alice’s at the scene. It’s possible she and the killer share the same type and we’ll get more detailed analysis later with the DNA, but…”

  “Yeah, and I wear Prada in my off hours,” said Doug, finishing the thought for Garret. Of course, Garret wouldn’t have said it in quite the same way, but the point was made. He was tempted to ask how Doug even knew what the hell Prada was, but his mood was too foul to bother. He continued to rattle off the report he’d just been given instead.

  “They’ve got a partial print that doesn’t match Alice’s, but it’s not enough to run. There’s nothing else. Nothing other than the file Alice asked for. Which means we’re back to squat.”

  Doug shook his head and sighed. Garret knew both the look and the sound. Something was coming that he didn’t want to hear, and he knew damn well what it was.

  “Don’t say it.”

  “I’ve gotta say it, Garret, and you know I do. We need to push Ashley. She’s not telling you everything, and there’s something there. I can feel it and I know damned well you can feel it.”

  “She said the guy couldn’t have a kid in the home. That’s enough to tell me what happened years ago. I don’t need that shit spelled out for me any more than she needs to spell it out. There wasn’t a kid there that you and I could see. Maybe Alice thought there was, but she was wrong.”

  As he said the words, they needled at him. Would Alice have contacted Ashley if she thought there was any chance she was wrong about a child? No. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t wrong. They hadn’t found any evidence of a child in the home. Maybe whatever Alice thought she’d uncovered simply wasn’t there.

  They’d run the report on Franks’ wife and she’d died years before of natural causes. Breast cancer that hadn’t been caught until it was much too late to do anything more than try to keep her comfortable.

  “Garret, I’ve backed you on this so far, but it’s time. We need to lean on Ashley. I’ll do it if you want me to. I�
��ll be as gentle as I can, but we have to do this, partner. You know we do.”

  Garret ground his teeth together and fought for some shred of an argument against the logic laid out before him. There wasn’t anything, though. He knew Doug was right. It had to be done.

  “I’ll do it,” he said, trying not to let the words come out harshly. He met his partner’s eyes. “I’ll do it.”

  *

  Garret raised his hand and rang the bell once again, glancing toward Ashley’s car in the driveway and back to the door. He’d thought initially she might have gone out for a walk or with a friend who’d picked her up. He knew the library was closed today, being a Sunday. So he had walked into town and grabbed a sandwich for lunch. He hadn’t felt much like eating since he’d had that talk with Doug the previous day, but he forced a sandwich down by force of habit.

  He had arrived back at Ashley’s a few minutes ago and begun ringing the bell, alternating with banging on the door. He didn’t know what told him she was in there. Hell, he was likely wrong. She had said she often went to her parent’s place for dinner on Sundays. Maybe she’d gone over early today?

  Damn. He walked back to his car, gut eating at him. Doug had been right. He needed to question Ashley. He should have pushed her on this long before. He pulled out the file he kept on her, the one that he’d started the minute she’d walked into the case. It didn’t go very deep, but he had her phone number and the names of her parents and siblings in it. He’d tried her number several times already. It was going straight to voicemail.

  On a whim, he looked up her sister’s name and pulled the phone number. He knew she was close to Cora. Cora would know where he could find her. He wasn’t sure if he was going to such great lengths because he thought he should question her as soon as possible, or if he was listening to the needling worry at the back of his mind.