“Truly,” she said, clearing her throat, “you’ve made a mistake. I did speed up and was probably over the limit. I admit it. Give me a ticket, but I’ve done nothing else wrong.”
He could think of only one word in reply. “Nothing?”
His tone must have had some effect because she sat back, twisting a bit as the handcuffs restricted movement, and stared at him. Boy, she had fake confusion nailed.
What had she been thinking by coming back to Sarasota Falls? He had a million other questions to ask, but not before every word could be recorded. No chance would he mess up this case, because of his close connection to it. He longed to knock on Max’s widow’s door and say, “Sylvia, we got her. And, I’ll make sure she leads me to Jeremy Salinas. Justice will be served.”
In the back, Rachel settled and stared out the window. She was pale, and her teeth worrying her bottom lip. She had aged a bit. There were a few lines by her eyes. He’d have called them laugh lines on anyone else.
Not her.
Nothing to laugh about.
And today he was going to do something he should have done more than ten years ago—see that she was put away for a long, long time.
If he’d done that when she was fifteen, she might not have met Jeremy Salinas, wouldn’t have participated in a convenience store robbery and wouldn’t have helped lure a police officer to his death.
Chief Tom Riley could only blame himself that she’d been free to roam the streets ever since.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
FOR THE FIRST time since he’d joined the force, paperwork was a blessing. Tom stared at the computer screen and coughed wryly as Heather Graves’s picture revealed a background check so squeaky clean it had to be fake.
Until recently, Heather had been working in Phoenix, Arizona, as a dental hygienist in a small practice, just as she’d said. Before that, she’d been at the state university.
Now the same woman sat in a Sarasota Falls jail cell, a prime suspect involved in a homicide.
His fist clenched and he suppressed the urge to hit the table hard. He didn’t need for his team to see how angry he was.
It made sense that Rachel would change her name, but he’d never have guessed she’d have the ability to create a false history that gave her a college degree and also enabled her to immediately find work. Had she really done all this?
With a quick phone call he learned that the dentist in Phoenix would hire her back in a heartbeat and that as far as the dentist knew, family matters had inspired the move. She’d been a model employee, left her personal business at home and gave two weeks’ notice before quitting. And, no, the dentist hadn’t met a boyfriend.
Maybe she’d been smart enough to shed Jeremy Salinas a while ago.
Tom hadn’t been able to shed the memory of what the man had done. He opened a file on his computer, staring at the likeness of Rachel Ramsey.
There had to be a flaw in the cover she’d created for herself, and he’d find it.
He took the time to study her academic history at Arizona State University. A few taps on the computer keys had her photo. Student IDs weren’t supposed to be all that good. Rachel’s, make that Heather’s, was. This photo was from her senior year. He found the first three years’ of student ID photos online, too.
Every one of them showed a smiling coed. Blond hair, so shiny and glossy it seemed to glow. Heart-shaped face. Lips red even without lipstick.
It was Rachel’s face all right, but it didn’t make sense. The timing of it didn’t work. No way could Rachel be here, in high school, dating Jeremy Salinas and living under an alternate name and actually graduating with honors.
It defied logic. Still, Tom’s years in law enforcement showed him time and time again that improbability was a condition best investigated.
Still, a tiny thread of doubt pulled at his consciousness. Could he have made a mistake? Could Rachel have a doppelgänger? Or, could this Heather, who looked so very much like Rachel, be a relative? He’d called her Rachel, and she hadn’t even flinched. He’d marveled at her control.
More than a decade on the force. He was seldom wrong, and he especially didn’t want to be this time.
He enlarged Heather’s student ID photo, looking at the area on her face, just above the left lip, where there was a red birthmark. Then, he brought up his photo of Rachel, taken a half dozen years ago, and enlarged it.
Same red birthmark, same size and shape.
What were the odds? He searched for statistics of family members having the same marks and found it was rare but possible.
So, right now, he could have Rachel Ramsey in a cell or he could have a complete innocent.
He pushed back his chair, stood and looked across the busy room. His officers were on the phone, writing reports, scanning the computers.
There was something else, though. A tension in the air as well as a few furtive glances in the direction of his office.
They knew the story, knew how close he’d been to his partner, and worried about him.
Maybe this nightmare was about to come to an end, maybe Tom would finally go to bed at night knowing he’d done his job.
Caught the accomplice of Max’s killer.
“Looks like her,” Lieutenant Lucas Stilwater said. “Only older.” Lucas—near retirement age—was one of a few officers left who’d worked with Tom’s previous partner. The rest were new, hired within the last three to five years. Good cops, every one of them. Sometimes, listening to their banter, he wanted...
Wanted to go back in time.
For the first few months after Max’s death, when Tom had looked across the busy room, by habit he’d still been looking for Max. The room hadn’t pulsed with activity then. Instead, it was like someone had turned down the volume, changed the scene to slow motion. For a long time, Tom felt as if he didn’t belong, that he was role-playing. Then, when the chief retired, Tom had been approached by the mayor, Rick Goodman.
The pluses: Tom was a captain, Tom had a master’s in criminal justice and the people of Sarasota Falls knew and trusted him.
The minuses: Tom’s whole life was his job, so much so that his wife had left him.
In the end, Tom hadn’t turned his back on his job, nor had it turned its back on him. He’d found that being chief gave him a renewed sense of purpose—just not in his late partner’s case.
Until today.
There were still things to do, he reminded himself. Unless Tom missed his guess, Heather Graves was either a crime stamped “solved” or a new door opening
