“Do you realize what the hell you’re doing?”
“Yeah, trying to solve this case.”
“No. You’re putting yourself in danger,” he shouted. “You’re willfully accusing deputies of being incompetent at best and criminal at worst. Law enforcement doesn’t respond well to those kinds of threats.”
“I didn’t make any threats.”
“They don’t see it that way. I’ve worked in law enforcement, remember? I know these people. There is a way to go about things.”
“And how is that?” I folded my arms across my chest.
“By letting me handle the sticky shit.”
I was shaking my head by the time the sentence was out of his mouth.
“You can’t go rogue. You’ve put a massive target on you. Even if the deputy you spoke with isn’t in on this cover up, someone who was in there could be. Then what?”
“Let them come after me then. I don’t care. I know they’re lying. If someone in this department killed my grandfather, I want their head on a damn plate,” I insisted, getting in Micah’s face as much as he was in mine.
“And I’m not about to lose you behind this bullshit. I’ll tear this entire fucking building down, brick by brick,” he growled.
My back against his truck was the only thing keeping me from falling backward from the force of his statement. He glared at me directly in the eye, lips rigid with anger.
“This isn’t a game, Jodi. I told you I’d get to the bottom of this shit. You have to trust I know what I’m doing without putting yourself in harm’s way.”
I swallowed and turned my head away from him, looking at something over his shoulder. I warred with myself on whether or not to trust Micah. I knew that was a losing battle. The truth was I already believed in him. I was living in his house. Sexing him regularly. And falling in … nope. I wouldn’t go that damn far.
“They’re lying. I don’t know who, but somebody in there is lying,” I finally said.
The warring in his eyes took time to recede. Finally, he pulled back to stare down at me. “What’d you find out?”
“A note. The file says they found a suicide note in his pocket when he died. They never told us that.”
Micah nodded. “What did it say?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter what it said. The point is he would’veneverleft a suicide note.”
His eyebrows dipped.
“He couldn’t read,” I pushed out. “My grandaddy was illiterate. That’s why as soon as I saw the newspaper articles in that tin, I knew something was strange. He didn’t read the newspaper.”
“Because he couldn’t.”
“Right.”
I sighed, feeling guilty about revealing my grandfather’s truth. It was a family secret I found out about as a child. On one of our camping trips, he’d been given a note from the ranger about the rules of the park. He passed it to me to read. When I asked why he always did that, he looked at me with sadness in his eyes and told me the truth.
“He was never good at school, and finally, by junior high, he decided to drop out and go straight to work. That’s how he got into construction. He was great with his hands, and he had an amazing memory. He memorized so much, most people never picked up on the fact that he couldn’t read. But a suicide note?” I shook my head.
Micah nodded. “I get it. Was it written or typed?”
“Typed.”
“Then we can’t do handwriting analysis. Whoever typed the note up didn’t realize your grandfather’s secret. Get in your truck and follow me back to the office.”
He stepped back, giving me space to make my way over to my truck and climb in.
Chapter Twenty-Three
