“He’s dead.”
She was quiet, not responding to the obvious. I turned to look at her and saw in her face the same pain and grief that I still saw in my own face whenever I looked in a mirror—which wasn’t often. She stepped back slightly, shivering in the cold November wind.
“I know that.”
“So why keep fighting for him?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why did you show up to each and every one of his court appearances? Why did you come to the hearings during the appeals process? Why were you there every time his name was so much as mentioned in a legal setting?”
“To make sure he paid for what he did to my family.”
“I want the same thing.” She pressed a hand between her full breasts. “I want the person who did this horrible thing to pay for what they did. It’s an awful crime, things that a child, a mother, should never have had to experience. But I know my brother didn’t do it.”
I shook my head and started to turn.
“I want to know the truth, Mr. McKay. And I know you do, too.”
“I know the truth,” I said, my voice low with the deep control necessary to keep my temper under wraps. “I’ve read your brother’s confession and seen the tape of him offering it. He knew things that no one but the killer himself could have known.”
“I realize that.”
“How could he have known those things if he didn’t do this?”
“Someone told him.”
I shook my head. It was a new theory, one she’d just begun to push a few months ago when the judge made it pretty clear that her brother was running out of options. She’d found some bank account…I don’t know. She was desperate. She was reaching for straws.
She thought someone paid her brother to confess.
“It’s a ridiculous idea, Harley. Why would he confess to something he hadn’t done? Why go to prison with a life sentence? Hell, he might have gotten the death penalty if he hadn’t confessed and made a deal with prosecutors!”
“He was going to jail on the robbery charge anyway.”
“But that wouldn’t have been life.”
“It would have been long enough.”
I shook my head again. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I have more.”
She turned to go to her car, shivering again in the cold weather. I hadn’t noticed before, but she wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a light sweater and a pair of jeans. I watched her move. I watched her hips shift under those jeans, watching as she turned, a thick accordion file between her hands, just below the clear reaction of her nipples to the cold wind. I forced myself to look away, humiliated at the idea of being attracted to this woman who was fighting so hard to free my wife’s killer. What an insult, having such thoughts about this woman after what’d happened to Jesse. I’d thought…there would never be another woman for me. Never. But someone had forgotten to inform my still functioning libido.
She lifted the accordion file.
“Look through it. You’ll see.”
I don’t know what it was. Curiosity? An instinctive need to help? The need to get into the house, outside of the biting wind that was beginning to infiltrate my fur-lined jacket? I don’t know, but I walked over to the gate controls and dialed in the code.
“Come up to the house. I want to show the DNA test results to a lawyer friend.”
“It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, you’re aware of that fact.” My eyebrows rose slightly. “Why aren’t you at home having turkey like everyone else in America?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I was before you so rudely interrupted.”
She seemed surprised, her eyes jumping to the house that was only partial visible through the trees that lined the circle drive. I just shook my head, gesturing for her to get into her car.
***
Tierney glanced through the paperwork, her eyes moving slowly over this part, just barely glancing at that. I couldn’t read her face.
I sat on the couch in the second-floor sitting area, my eyes moving between the floor, Tierney, and Harley, pacing on the other side of the room. Alexander was there, too, standing against the far wall by the stairs, trying not to interfere, but his watchful gaze on his love. I knew he was annoyed that I’d called her away tonight of all nights, but, to his credit, he hadn’t argued. Hadn’t even asked what it was all about. But he hadn’t left us to our own devices either.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Tierney finally looked up, curiosity on her face as she regarded Harley for a moment, and then something closer to grief in her eyes when she looked at me. “I’m sorry, Kipling,” she said softly, reaching to take my hand.
I sat back, slipping my hands into my armpits. The last thing I wanted was sympathy, especially with Harley Connors watching.
“What do you think?” I demanded.
She studied me a moment longer. “Well,” she said, drawing out the syllable, “the confession aside, I think there is ample evidence here to suggest that this man wasn’t guilty of the crime he confessed to.”
I expected Harley to laugh or say she told me so or some other sort of immature reaction, but she didn’t utter a single sound. She just stood there, her eyes on the floor, tension making her shoulders stand straighter than they normally did.
“Why?”
Tierney picked through the papers, studying one and then another before she sat back and studied me.
“There was DNA taken from both bodies, DNA taken from various items around the house, including the rope used to tie both victims up. The previous tests had come back inconclusive and the prosecutor didn’t pursue it because he had a confession. But DNA testing continues to evolve with each passing year. What was inconclusive now shows that Mr. Connors couldn’t have donated the DNA that was present on the bodies and in the home.”
“But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.”
“No,” Tierney agreed. “It means he didn’t leave the samples that were tested.”
I glanced at Harley, but she hadn’t moved, not even to take a breath it seemed.
“On its own, the DNA evidence is powerful. However, I do note that the prosecutor always contended that there was likely another person present and he tried to get Mr. Connors to turn on his partner, but Mr. Connors swore there was no one else.”
“That’s the way I understood it, too.”
Tierney looked at me again, this expression of pity on her face. “But,” she said softly, “there were also other things here that seem to suggest Mr. Connors was not present the night of the murders. For example, alibi witnesses put him twenty miles away that night. All night. The fact that there was no sign of a break-in, suggesting it was not a robbery gone wrong as Mr. Connors claimed.” Tierney picked up a piece of paper among the dozens and dozens that she’d taken from the accordion file. “But, as a criminal attorney, this is the golden egg in my opinion.”
She handed the paper over to me. I didn’t want to look at it because, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to even consider the idea that Connors was innocent. All these years I’d focused all my anger, all my pain, and all my grief on him. I’d plotted his murder a dozen times over, planned every second of it, and lived it out inside my head—over and over—for years. Ten years. And now some piece of paper was going to tell me I’d been focused on the wrong guy? No.
It wasn’t just a piece of paper. It was a photograph.
The picture showed Mickey Connors standing outside a bar I recognized without having to read the label attached to the bottom. Connors had been forty miles from my house at two o’clock in the morning on the night of the murders. Two o’clock. That was within the time period in which the coroner believed Grace was killed.
Between one and two in the morning. The words from the autopsy report were burned into my memory. I didn’t have to look at the next paper Tierney handed to me to recall it.
He couldn’t have killed Grace. And if he didn’t kill Grace, if he wasn�
�t there to tie them up and torture them, then he wasn’t there when Jesse was killed four hours later.
I dropped the picture on the coffee table and stood up, my hands pushed deep into the front pockets of my jeans.
“We were going to present that to the judge in a week.”
I shook my head, the movement automatic and almost comforting. If I kept denying this, it couldn’t be true.
“He didn’t do it, Mr. McKay,” Harley continued.
“Then why confess?”
“I told you about the bank account. He was paid off.”
“But why? What kind of money would be worth confessing to something this dark?”
When Harley didn’t answer right away, I turned and wished I hadn’t. She was crying, big crocodile tears rushing down her pretty cheeks.
“For me,” she said, her voice changed by emotion. “He knew I wanted to be a doctor, and he knew I didn’t want to depend on our mother for the money to pay for it. He wanted to be able to give me the money, to be the one to help me be independent. He wanted to take care of me.”
“But you told me you found the account by accident.”
She reached up and brushed the tears almost angrily from her cheeks. “I lied.”
“He told you about it? How long did you know?”
She shrugged. “Not long. A year or two.”
I stared at her, my head slightly tilted. “But you’re done with school.”
“He was afraid to tell me. He was afraid it would only push me to fight harder for his freedom. He never expected me to fight for him like I did. He thought he’d go to jail and everything would be simple and quiet on the outside. He didn’t think Mom would care enough to fight for him, and he was right. But he underestimated what I would do.”
“Did he tell you who put him up to confessing?”
“No. He didn’t even admit that he hadn’t done it. He just…he told me it was bigger than I could ever understand, and if I didn’t back off, I would find trouble I couldn’t handle.”
“That’s what I don’t understand about you. You’ve fought so hard for someone who doesn’t deserve your devotion. Why is that?”
Her head came up sharply, her eyes narrowing slightly.
“He was my brother!” She stared me down. “I know he confessed. And I know he was not a good person. I know he had a drug problem. I know that he broke into homes and took things that didn’t belong to him. I know that he did things he was not always proud of and hurt people. But he never would have hurt a child. Never.”
“He confessed to it.”
She wiped at her face again, wiping away tears that were no longer there.
“He loved me. He was there for me when my mom wasn’t. She was…our mother is a very ambitious woman, and she rarely had time for us. And my dad was weak. He would rather disappear into the wallpaper than stand up to her. So it was just Mickey and me. It was always just Mickey and me. He was the best brother a girl could ever hope for, the kind of brother who would do anything for me even though I was ten years younger than him, a nuisance during a time when he should have been enjoying the freedom of adulthood.” She shook her head. “He never would have hurt a child.”
“Just because he was a good brother, doesn’t mean he was a good person.”
“I never said he was a good person,” she said.
She glared at me as though that simple look would get through my thick skull that the man was innocent. But even with all this evidence…a part of me couldn’t let go of my hatred for Mickey Connors, my conviction that he was involved in the murders of my wife and child. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t here when Grace was killed. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have been there earlier. Or later. It didn’t mean he wasn’t involved in the horrible things that happened to Jesse while our daughter lay dead across the hall.
It was making me sick, the memory of the things the cops—and later the prosecutor—had outlined for me. The things done to my family. I should have been there. Another two or three weeks and I would have been.
I turned and walked to the windows that looked down on the property behind the main house. I could imagine Pepper and Nolan—despite the fact that they hadn’t returned from his father’s home—sitting on the front porch of Nolan’s little cottage, drinking beer and talking as I’d seen them a few times before. Jesse and I did that sometimes, only it was usually wine instead of beer. Jesse couldn’t stand the taste of beer.
“I want to know the truth,” Harley said. “And I know you do, too.”
Did I?
I thought from the beginning I would get the most amazing satisfaction from finding my wife and daughter’s killer, of wrapping my hands around his throat and watching the life leave his eyes the same way he’d watched the life leave my daughter’s eyes, my wife’s eyes. Now I knew satisfaction wasn’t the right word for it. I wouldn’t get satisfaction. There would never be any form of peace, either. But that didn’t take away this driving need, this deep-seated sense of need that drove my every thought and every action for the last ten years.
“Mr. McKay,” Harley said, something like pleading in her voice, “you’re the only one I could turn to. I need to prove that Mickey didn’t do this. And I know you need to know who really did do it.”
“What about your team of lawyers? What about the prosecutor’s office?”
“The prosecutor feels that he got his man and the case is closed,” she said, spitting the words out as if they tasted foul. “And the lawyers left when Mickey died, deciding it wouldn’t make the great headlines now that he’s dead. They want a Making a Murderer moment, not a postscript on a gravestone.”
“What about your parents?”
“My dad’s dead. And my mom—she wants as much distance between this and her as possible.”
“Maybe you should follow her lead.”
That spurred Harley into motion. She stormed across the room, steam seeming to really come out of her ears, blowing around her like clouds in a thunderstorm. She began gathering her paperwork, snatching things right off of Tierney’s lap. Alexander pushed away from the wall, clearly concerned that his ladylove was about to be hurt. I reached Harley before he ever could have, grabbed her wrist and pulled her back from Tierney.
“Answer one question for me,” I demanded.
She met my eyes, glaring up at me as if I was her worst enemy. And, at this moment, maybe I was. Maybe I always had been. Maybe if I hadn’t always been there, always reminding the world of what Mickey Connors had confessed to, maybe things would have been different for him. Maybe things would have been different for her.
“I just want to know who’s behind this. I want to know who did this to my brother.”
“He did this to himself.”
She tried to pull away, tears burning in her eyes again, but not flowing this time.
“Someone murdered him because of me.” A sob escaped her lips with those words. “They killed him in prison because I kept pushing the appeals. He begged me to stop. He told me it was dangerous for us both, but I kept pushing anyway. And now he’s dead because I kept pushing, kept trying to right what I saw as this huge wrong perpetrated against my brother. He’s dead because I didn’t trust him enough to back off.”
I recognized her pain. I knew it better than I knew the back of my hand because it was the same pain that radiated through my body every moment of every day. Jesse hadn’t wanted me to go back to Afghanistan. “Retire,” she’d said. “Retire and work with my dad at the insurance office.” That was what he chose to do after his own retirement from the Army. But selling insurance to stuffy executives just didn’t seem like my idea of a rewarding career. Standing beside my brothers and fighting for peace and independence was much more rewarding. But Jesse didn’t see it that way. She should have. The daughter of a career Army man? She should have.
Harley tugged at my grip again, trying to pull away. “I know who might have paid him off. I just…I need help proving it.”
“You
didn’t say that before.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly seem interested in helping me before.”
I stared down into her face, into those perfect green eyes. They were filled with emotion, so much emotion, some that I understood—I could actually relate to some of it—and some that I couldn’t quite pin down. But I could see determination, and I knew that if I didn’t help her, she’d do this on her own. And that could be the stupidest thing she’d done yet.
“Who is it, then?”
“His drug dealer. He was this lowlife asshole who ran drugs all through Houston for this Russian mob. He’s the only person Mickey knew who might be able to come up with the kind of money that’s in that bank account.”
“Okay.” I twisted her around and pushed her toward the stairs. “Give me a minute to pack.”
“Just like that?”
“Is there anything more I need to know?”
“No, I…” She seemed confused. But then she seemed to get control. “No. That’s all you need to know.”
“Then wait for me. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
I strode off, bursting through the door of the guest room where I’d been living since coming to Gray Wolf Security 2 in July. I grabbed a duffle out of the closet and began throwing clothes into it, trying to tell myself I wasn’t about to rush off on a wild goose chase.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?”
I glanced at the door and found Tierney watching me.
“No, I don’t. But she’s so convinced she’s on to something, and if I send her away, she’s going to follow up on it on her own because that’s what Harley does. She’s been working on this case since the beginning, working it like a dog with a bone. I can’t be responsible for her getting hurt.”
“Then let someone else go. Send one of the operatives. Work it like a case.”
I shook my head. “I can’t put my personal business on Gray Wolf or David like that. Especially not now, not with Ricki having so much trouble with her pregnancy.”
“David would want to help.”
“I know that. That’s why I can’t tell him.”
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