What most people didn’t realize was that non-conviction information showed up on background checks unless the person applied for record destruction or had the case sealed. A law student and son to a well-known lawyer should have knownthat, but for whatever reason, those details had been overlooked. Considering the date, it was possible that our system hadn’t caught up, and an application had been made in the past six to eight months that was still being processed.
Bad luck for Dear Dead Malik.
The highly acclaimed Mr. Quinn had been acquitted on charges of sexual assault of a minor one year and three months ago. Fucking acquitted. The minor’s name had been redacted to protect their identity, and it would take a judge’s signature and a prybar to have it revealed. The name didn’t matter.
Sexual assault. Again. JesseandMalik.
“I’m not wrong, and both you fuckers got away with it once, didn’t you? Thought you were untouchable.” I glanced again at the photographs I’d shoved aside. “You know what? I think you assholes got what you deserved, and I won’t lose an ounce of sleep over you. I hope your killer runs free and finds peace knowing the garbage has finally been taken out.”
The words flowed from my mouth like water, and I refused to take them back. Glancing around the bullpen, fearing I’d been overheard, I was glad to find it as empty as when I’d shown up earlier.
Sympathetic rage turned my blood hot, but that rage was directed at the four men who had died and not at whoever had killed them.
I knew what I felt was wrong and needed to be contained, but for a moment, I was ten years old again, so horribly neglected and verbally abused by the mother who was supposed to love me, that I’d screamed for help in the only way I knew how.
I acted out. I vandalized. I stole. I fought other kids at school with my fists and words. As a teen, I drank, smoked, and experimented with drugs, all as a means of escape. A high school counselor had finally recognized my anguish and sat me downto chat, but when the truth of my situation came pouring out, nothing changed.
Child services investigated and found my living situation to be exemplary and my parents charming. My stepsister told wild tales that contradicted my own and cast my parents in golden rays of sunshine.
In the end, I was deemed a troubled child. A liar. A delinquent. No one saw the truth. No one saw my pain and struggles. The police hounded me. The principal punished me. The counsellor who had gone to all the trouble of sitting me down in the first place turned an uninterested cheek.
Everything got worse.
I sat with my thoughts, unsure how to proceed. Several times during my career—over the course of my life—I’d been faced with the gray zone that lived between the extremes of right and wrong. I sought to understand the flip side of the coin because no one had bothered to look beyond the façade I’d shown the world to see the buried truth of my existence.
But murder was far different than a stolen chocolate bar or slashed tires. Murder was an indictable offense.
“But so is rape, and those men were never punished,” I muttered under my breath, grinding my teeth in frustration.
I’d become a police officer to help people like me, those who had been labeled without anyone askingwhythe behavior happened in the first place.
The issue was, when someone took the law into their own hands, it was up to me to arrest the person. Thewhywasn’t supposed to be my problem. The court evaluated the case and decided on the punishment. I was not judge or jury. I was a lowly detective sworn to follow the evidence and arrest the person we believed to be responsible.
But rape.
We tried to report them.
We still aren’t safe.
It was our word against theirs.
The law failed too many people. Men like Jesse and Ford and Malik were allowed to walk free with barely a slap on the wrist in most cases. Meanwhile, an entire campus of women feared for their safety.
And no one cared. No one helped.
“Tabarnak.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face and blew out a breath. The room was too hot. My insides jittered with a sickening combination of adrenaline and fury. This wasn’t a guy going twenty over the speed limit and running red lights as he raced to his wife’s hospital bed.
I could have all the silent opinions I wanted, but I wasn’t sure I could sit back and not do my job this time. Turn a cheek. Bury the truth. Rue would see through me if I didn’t work every angle of this case. If Golding caught wind that I was hiding evidence or not properly following leads, I would be out the door. Worse, if it was discovered that I willfully let a killer go, I would be complicit in murder.
Before I got too caught up in the whirlwind of thoughts battering my brain, I snagged the phone and dialed Rue’s number.
She answered on the fifth ring, sounding like she’d been dragged through the dirt ten times over, her voice roughened sandpaper. “Talk. I’m listening.”
“You sound like shit.”
“I feel like shit. What do you have?”
