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CHAPTER 5
Detective Cole Thomas was pissed.
Pissed, pissed, pissed.
No way that murdering bastard Jonas McIntyre should be out of prison. No friggin’ way. McIntyre was the single worst murderer to have ever set foot in Hatfield County, and he should have been locked up for the rest of his natural life. But no. Once again the system had failed.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as he glared at the computer screen mounted on his desk and swore a blue streak just as he heard footsteps, the sound of his partner as she approached.
“Good day?” she asked, sliding her arms through the thick sleeves of a ski jacket as she paused at his office. The department was slowing down for the night, only a few day-shift cops still hanging out while the night crew was taking over.
From somewhere near the break room he heard a ripple of laughter and farther off the sound of a heavy door banging shut.
“Yeah, right. The best,” he growled, setting the coffee back on his desk. “Just fuckin’ awesome.”
Aramis Johnson sent him a wry grin and shook her head, black hair scraped into some kind of bun gleaming under the harsh overhead lights. Tall and slim, her features sharp, her mocha-colored skin flawless, she could have been a runway model, he thought, not for the first time. Instead, Johnson was a cop. And, he had to admit grudgingly, a good one. Those gorgeous near-black eyes didn’t miss much. He didn’t know why she’d joined the force, but he suspected it might have something to do with her special needs child who didn’t seem to have a father, at least not one he knew about. “Let me guess: You’re not happy with Jonas McIntyre being released.”
“You must be a detective.”
“Lighten up.” She flashed him a quick smile as two uniforms passed by his open door, their conversation low and intense, the taller scratching his crown before squaring his cap on a head of short cropped hair.
“Lighten up? Really? Even though a family annihilator is now walking free—no wait”—he held up a finger—“make that aconvictedfamily annihilator.” Thomas’s desk phone rang. He recognized the number. Didn’t answer. Within seconds his cell phone buzzed. Same number. He ignored it.
“You under the radar?” Johnson asked, leaning a hip against his desk. “Not picking up?”
“Reporter.”
“On your cell, too?”
“Yeah. Somehow she’s got my private number.”
“Somehow?” Johnson repeated, arching a suspicious eyebrow. “She?”
“Yeah.” Of course he knew how. Didn’t go there. Sheila Keegan could stand in line and talk to the PIO with the rest of the TV and newspaper people. That’s why the department had a public information officer, wasn’t it? To deal with the press.
Far better than for detectives who’d crossed that invisible professional line and gotten involved with a reporter. He closed his mind to that way of thinking. Turned his thoughts back to Jonas McIntyre, who, in Thomas’s opinion, was a merciless killer who had murdered his entire family. He flipped open the file, the folders and pages within yellowed with age and smelling of years gone by.
“This is all on computer, you know,” Aramis pointed out.
“Yeah, pulled it up.” He hitched his chin toward the screen, where Jonas McIntyre’s mug shot was visible: a gaunt kid of eighteen with sunken eyes as dark as night, mussed hair and pale skin. Traces of acne were barely evident in his thin beard shadow. More apparent was the attitude, visible in the tight, challenging set of his jaw and the compacted lips. Cruel thin lips.
“What motivates a kid like that?” she said, eyeing the monitor.
“Don’t know. Whatever he told to his psychiatrist, it’s privileged. Same with his lawyer, so we’re left to guess.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“You tell me.” He glanced up at her from his desk chair. “A teenager who murders nearly everyone in his entire family? You think he’s gotten better after spending half his life in the big house with convicts?”
She lifted a shoulder. “He found God.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Oooh,” Johnson said. “Bitter, my man.”
“Am I? I wonder why? This guy.” Thomas tapped the image on the screen with an index finger. “Hacked up his whole damned family with a sword. His father, his stepmother, his brother, and his stepbrother.”
“Not his whole family.”