“Yeah, it is. Ruling that bastard out means the odds of your having a brother are pretty good, Jessie.” Seth came onto the line and told her what he’d found out. “You’d asked me to look for names and pictures of any boys Millstone might have abducted or killed. Well, I didn’t find any. There were names like Cameron and Jamie that I had to chase down, but those were girls.”
“Guess that’s another good thing,” Jessie said. “It means that my brother didn’t end up with that scumbag.”
“Yeah. I thought that was good news, too, but after I went over my dad’s file for the third time, it got me thinking that the copy I had was something Dad had made when he left the force. Whatever I had wasn’t what Sam would have if anything got updated after Max retired.”
“Oh, my God. I never thought of that, Seth. I just figured after Millstone was killed, the case was done.”
“And that would’ve been possible if the case had been a single homicide, Jessie.” This time, it was Sam’s voice that broke in. “But with the Millstone case being high-profile, other investigators contributed to the evidence after Seth’s father quit the force. And, of course, the news media chased down leads on who Millstone was.”
“So the two of you decided to compare notes and look through the updated evidence Sam had? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
“Gosh, I love you guys.” Jessie couldn’t help it. Even with all the runaround she’d gotten in La Pointe, it was nice to know she had real friends watching her back. “So talk to me. What’d you find out? I’m assuming you didn’t call just to say hello.”
When she only heard silence on the phone, Jessie couldn’t sit anymore. She got off the mattress and paced the floor again. If they were both stalling, she figured it was for good reason.
“Spill it, guys. You’re making me nervous.”
“Someone had done a more thorough background check on Millstone after he’d been killed. I got this from other detectives who were around back then, working the case. They told me that folks came forward after the news broke. A lot of the calls were phony leads CPD had to chase. It took time to wade through it all, but in the evidence downtown at headquarters, we found a reference to Millstone that we thought you should know. You ready to hear it?”
Jessie didn’t answer at first. She took in a deep breath and felt a wave of nausea. She had blocked out so much of that time period from her mind. As a kid, all she wanted to do was be left alone. And for her own sake, the foster-care folks had purposefully kept her isolated from the headline news during that time.
And after she’d gotten older, she had deliberately avoided anything having to do with Millstone, as if it had never happened. She still felt that way, but now she had to know how all this connected to any link she might still have to family.
“Go ahead. I’m ready. Tell me what you found out.”
An hour later
After the lengthy call from Sam and Harper, Jessie had a hard time controlling her anger. She tossed her dinner without eating it. And her mind wrestled with the idea of what her next move should be, but all she had on her mind was confronting Chief Cook once and for all.
How much of what Sam and Seth had told her did Cook already know? And why had he made contact with her, only to stonewall her once she got to La Pointe? She knew he’d deliberately lied about there being two DNA samples tested by his state crime lab. Sam had discovered that. Had he also lied about the Tanner interview? She still had missing pieces to the puzzle, but she had one last shot at finding out the truth.
Jessie grabbed her rental-car keys, checked her Colt Python, and put it back in the holster she carried at her waist under her windbreaker. By the time she got outside, the sun had just drifted below the horizon. It would be dark soon.
When she pulled out of the motel parking lot, she might’ve missed the headlights coming on as she turned toward the police station, but with her hinky radar switched to hyperdrive, she hadn’t missed those headlights at all. She’d picked up a tail again. Someone had been following her since she got to the island, and that old hinky vibe had jump-started a whole new surge of adrenaline. With all that was going on, she’d had enough.
As she drove the speed limit, careful not to spook the sneaky bastard, she made a call on her cell.
“This is Jessie Beckett,” she said as she looked in her rearview mirror. It was too dark to see a face, but a man was driving the truck that followed her.
“Where are you, Chief Cook?”
“None of your business. You still in town, Ms. Beckett?”
“I thought you’d know that . . . since this is your town, Tobias.” Before he found a new way to insult her, she didn’t give him a chance. “I have a pretty good idea who killed Angela DeSalvo. And if you have any curiosity at all, you’ll meet me in thirty minutes.”
She eyed the mirror one more time as she made a turn, with the truck still with her and not far behind.
“Where?”
When she told him, the chief schooled her in how to cuss, but he didn’t say no.
“I’ll be there in thirty. And you better be on the level, or I’m locking you up and throwing away the key.”
With a smile on her face, Jessie ended the call without saying anything more. And when she shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror, the truck was still with her.
If she was going to meet the chief in thirty minutes, she had to move quick.
Thirty minutes later
Right on time, Chief Cook pulled his squad car into Sophia Tanner’s driveway. Jessie had parked on the road, not wanting to frighten the woman. Living alone on the island couldn’t be easy for a woman. When the chief saw Jessie, he shut his patrol-car door and walked over to where she stood.
“Thought you’d be inside, scaring that poor woman. Are you blowing smoke . . . or do you really know who killed Angela DeSalvo?”
“I have a pretty good idea, but before we go inside, I’ve got a question for you.”
The chief didn’t bother to give her the go-ahead. He crossed his arms and cocked his head, waiting for the bullshit to flow, like he was expecting it to. And Jessie sure hoped she wouldn’t disappoint him.
She stepped back toward her sedan, twirling her car keys on her finger. “Why did you have someone following me ever since I got to the island? What was that about?”
“Following you? What are you talking about?”
When Jessie popped her trunk, she and Chief Cook stared down at a man, tied up hands and feet in Flexicuffs with a gag in his mouth. He was bawling like a baby and was red-faced as a beet. And he didn’t have a stitch of clothes on, except for some seriously neon red plaid boxers.
“Now you see, I would’ve figured this guy for briefs. He one of yours?”
“Jesus, Tyrell, what the hell are you doin’ in there?” Chief Cook glared at the man once his initial shock wore off.
“Yeah, that’s his name. Tyrell Hinman. You see? I knew you could help me with this.” Jessie fished the man’s ID out of her windbreaker pocket. “He’s one of your deputies, isn’t he? I saw him the day I was at your station. He got me coffee, the sneaky, arrogant, son of a bitch.”
“Is that so, Tyrell? Were you following her?” Cook leaned into the trunk and asked the man directly. When the guy only shrugged and had a hard time staring him in the eye, the chief turned to her. “I swear, Jessie. I have no idea why Tyrell would do such a thing, but I’m getting to the bottom of this, so help me God.”
Jessie wanted to believe him, but there was still so much more he needed to explain.
“Until you find out what’s going on, Tobias, I think I’d leave God out of this.”