Page 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They both took a few minutes to spread out their lunch on the table, her facing the glass wall so she could keep an eye on Collier and any eavesdropping or lipreading he might want to do, and Aidan sitting across from her.

Once Collier was diving into his food and surfing the web as an apparent lunchtime diversion, Grace quickly swallowed down the bite she’d just taken and took a sip from her water bottle before setting it aside.

“How are you holding up, Aidan?” She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t carry through the glass.

He smiled. “I figured this wasn’t about a reinterview. Don’t worry about me. I’ve been through far worse.”

“Well, of course I worry about you. You’ve been through so much hardship. It’s not right that some nut has his sights set on making life even more difficult for you. My boss is threatening to pull me off this case if I can’t prove a link to the Crossbow Killer soon. But that’s not going to stop me from working on this investigation. I’ll do it on my own time. I’m going to prove you had nothing to do with this, or anything else.”

He stared at her in silence, his brows drawn down in a frown. Then he slowly shook his head, his expression a mix between confusion and something else. Anger? Fear? What?

“Malone—”

“You’ve had your tongue down my throat and vice versa. You can call me Grace.”

He laughed, but quickly sobered. “Fair enough. I can understand why I’m attracted to you. You’re smart, funny and beautiful for starters. But I can’t even begin to understand why a special agent with the FBI would not only be attracted to me, but also seems to trust me. Why are you so determined to look into my case? Why do you insist on trying to prove that I didn’t commit a crime to which I confessed and spent ten years in prison? I didn’t appeal or try to have my sentence reduced. If I’m not trying to prove I’m innocent, why are you?”

“Well, first, thanks for saying I’m smart, funny and beautiful. You left out sexy, by the way, but I’ll forgive you.”

He choked on another laugh and shook his head.

“Second, the reason I’m so convinced you’re innocent of any crime is precisely because I’m an FBI agent and a former cop. I’m experienced in reading people and facts. Your actions speak to your character. You’ve done nothing but help people from the moment we met, even the police who haven’t exactly been nice to you since you came here. But it’s what I’ve found and haven’t found when looking into your past as part of trying to figure out who is trying to frame you for the crimes here in Mystic Lake that raise so many questions as to make it seem ludicrous that you could have killed your wife.”

After another long silence, he crossed his arms. “All right. I’ll bite. What makes it seem impossible to you that I’m actually guilty of murder?”

Excited that he was finally at least willing to listen to her about his case, and hopeful that she could get him to discuss it, she thumbed through a stack of manila folders and then pulled out the thinnest one from the middle. She slid it across the table toward him.

He picked it up, but hesitated without opening it. “What is this?”

“A printout of Nashville PD’s complete investigation into the death of Elly O’Brien.”

He dropped the folder onto the table as if it had burned his hand. “I don’t need to read that. I know what happened.”

“Care to share that knowledge with me?”

“Didn’t we already have this conversation at my cabin, the day you were at my workshop admiring the table I was building? I told you about what happened the day…the day Elly passed.”

“You told me what you told the police years ago. But I’m not convinced that’s the truth, or at least not the whole truth.” She picked up the folder and flipped it open. “There are a total of twenty-five pages in here. And that includes the eight-page autopsy report.”

He winced, then cleared his throat. “Your point?”

“The police didn’t even try to corroborate your so-called confession. I’ve never, not once, seen a file this incomplete for an investigation of any kind, let alone an alleged murder. Which led me to wonder whether you were threatened by the police and framed—”

“No to both.”

“Okay. I’ll accept that answer for now. Then the question becomes why would the police be so quick to take your confession and not look deeper, and of course the other glaring question of why would you confess to something you didn’t do?”

“Grace—”

“The answer to the first is obvious once you look really closely at the file. There’s an obscure handwritten note that I didn’t notice right away because it’s on a printout of a copy to begin with. It’s not very clear and part of it was chopped off in the margin.” She flipped through the file and pulled out a single page and pointed to the right edge. “See that?”

He eyed the page as if it were a snake. “Not really, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

Sighing, she pointed to some grainy handwriting. “I actually had to borrow a magnifying glass from Fletcher to read it myself. It says, ‘Parents of deceased request speedy end to case so family can move on and heal. Prosecutor agrees.’”

He shrugged.

“Come on, Aidan. You know where I’m going with this. The odds of a DA agreeing to halt an investigation without corroborating your confession are about zero. They must have had pressure from both the parents and the defense . Your attorney had to have been consulted about this. If not, he could have argued to the court that the investigation was rushed and insufficient and requested that your case be dismissed. Heck, he could have easily argued that if you really did unplug your wife’s ventilator that you weren’t in your right mind, that you did it to show her mercy. Without a criminal record and this being your first offense, he could have brought forth witnesses to talk about your relationship with Elly and how madly in love you were. But he didn’t, even though everyone I’ve called and spoken to says exactly that, how close you were. Your attorney could have said you were in despair seeing her in pain, paralyzed, unable to breathe on her own, and that it clouded your judgment. Even I could have probably gotten you a reduced sentence and I’m not an attorney. Yours didn’t call one single witness at your sentencing, which happened just a few days after that report was written up with that note in the margin.”

She waited, but when he didn’t say anything, she continued. “As you pointed out earlier, you never submitted any appeals even though you had a strong case for one based on insufficient evidence. That all leads me to believe that you probably colluded with your wife’s parents to bring the case to an end prematurely.”

He crossed his arms on top of the table. “So what if I did? Dragging it out would only hurt them even more. Bringing the case to a quick close was the least I could do.”

“And nothing a little bribery from a wealthy man couldn’t handle, is that it?”

His jaw tightened.

“Right. No comment. Let’s skip to the second part of my earlier question, the part about why you would confess to a crime you didn’t do. That one has had me stumped, but I’m working it out. For one thing, I tried to get a transcript from your parole hearing to find out what was said and who spoke at the hearing.”

His eyes widened and for the first time since coming into the conference room, he looked worried.

“In spite of repeated attempts by both me and an admin, we haven’t gotten the transcripts. They’ve been sealed. That’s pretty dang convenient for you if you’re trying to hide the truth that may have come out during the hearing.”

His brow smoothed out and he seemed to visibly relax after she’d said she couldn’t get the transcript. Time to go for the jugular.

“The admin did, however, manage to get the prison’s visitor log for the date of your appearance before the parole board.”

His eyes widened.

“It’s not a surprise that your wife’s parents were at the hearing, until you consider one thing. Typically, if the family of a convicted murderer is at the first parole hearing and argues against parole, the board goes along with their wishes. But they didn’t come to speak against you, did they? They spoke on your behalf—whether you wanted them to or not. That’s why you were paroled. Which tells me that Elly’s parents don’t believe you killed their daughter any more than I do. Something changed their mind during the ten years that you were in prison. They found out the truth about what really happened, didn’t they?”

His face paled. “Grace. Don’t.”

She swore. “I knew it. Your reaction just confirmed it. What’s more, you lied to me about her parents when you said they hated you. They may have, at first, but definitely not toward the end of your incarceration. That’s based not only on you being paroled and my conclusions around that, but hard facts I dug up about them. I didn’t find one single thing that makes me believe they’re the type of people who’d try to frame you as the Crossbow Killer, or even hire someone else to do it. So where does that leave us?”

“Grace—”

“Fact. Elly’s parents used to think you were the killer. Fact. They now are certain you’re innocent. If that wasn’t true, they wouldn’t have testified for your early release before the parole board. Fact. Everything I’ve read about them confirms they loved and doted on their daughter, so there’s no question they’d want her killer to face justice. But they haven’t gone to the police to request that the investigation be reopened to find her real killer. Why not?”

He let out a shuddering breath but remained silent.

“The only logical conclusion in light of all those facts is that Elly’s parents know the identity of her killer and don’t want him punished.” She held up her hands. “Why in the world wouldn’t they want him brought to justice? Why wouldn’t you?”

He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain.

She reached across the table and put her hand on his arm, no longer caring whether Collier noticed. When Aidan’s eyes flew open, the anguish in them was almost enough to make her stop. Almost. But she couldn’t, not when she was so close to finding out the truth.

“Aidan. Who are you and your dead wife’s parents covering for? And why?”

He stared at her hand on his arm, his throat working. Finally, he looked up, his eyes clouded with despair. “I’m begging you. Let it go. The truth won’t make anyone feel any better. It will only cause more pain. Please. Stop.”

Her throat tightened with the urge to weep. But she held fast. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But this isn’t just about you, or even justice for your wife at this point. Someone is trying to destroy you. And I’m betting it’s the same person you’re trying to protect. It’s the only thing that makes sense when you look at everything that’s happened.”

“You don’t know that,” he whispered, his voice ragged and raw. “There’s no proof.”

“Do you expect me to believe that you’ve been protecting a killer all these years, and now that you’re out of prison he’s not the same killer who’s trying to send you back? You see what he’s doing, right? He’s worried you’re going to try to clear your name by finally telling the police what you’ve known all along. He tried to frame you first by almost killing two men in a boat. Then he shot at me, twice. When he burned down your house last night, do you think he went inside first to make sure you weren’t there? Hell, no. He hoped you were there and would be trapped and killed. Why would you want to protect someone like that?”

She searched his gaze, then delivered her last volley. “He already killed your wife. Who does he have to kill for you to finally do something about him?”

He made a strangled sound in his throat and pulled his hand free. “You think you have it figured out, Grace. But you don’t. He didn’t… He was too… Elly’s death isn’t his fault.”

She stared at him in shock, his words bouncing around inside her brain like a Ping-Pong ball as things started to mesh together in her mind. She’d made one of the worst mistakes a law enforcement officer could make. Tunnel vision. She’d come up with a theory and had used the evidence to support her theory. Instead, she should have examined the evidence and let it reveal a theory.

Aidan stared at her, his handsome face drawn in lines of worry, frustration and a soul-deep sadness as he waited for the inevitability of her fitting all of the pieces together. She laid the evidence out in her mind’s eye. In the end, it was so simple, so obvious, she was embarrassed that she hadn’t realized it on day one of looking into Aidan’s past. It was the fact that he’d confessed that had thrown her off. But even that should have been a glaring clue to the truth. So. Ridiculously. Obvious.

Aidan didn’t kill Elly.

There was no evidence of an intruder.

Elly was paralyzed and couldn’t have done anything.

Someone else pulled the plug on her ventilator.

The nurse had gone home for the day, leaving Elly’s care to Aidan.

But Aidan wasn’t the only person in the house after she left.

Aidan’s words, just moments ago, flitted through her mind.

“He didn’t… He was too… Elly’s death isn’t his fault.”

She filled in the missing words that he hadn’t said.

He didn’t understand what he was doing . He was too young . Elly’s death isn’t his fault.

She stared at him, the last of it becoming clear. “The hate mail,” she whispered. “Elly’s parents found out about it, read the letters. And then they knew the truth. That’s why they wanted to help you, but didn’t want the police to reinvestigate.”

He squeezed his hands into fists on top of the table and bowed his head.

“Niall,” she said. “Your son. He pulled the plug. He killed Elly and now he wants to kill you to keep the truth from coming out.”

He jerked his head up, frowning. “He was five years old, Grace. He doesn’t even remember doing it. He remembers bits and pieces, just enough from that day to have made Elly’s parents suspicious that something was off because what he said didn’t match what I said. That’s why they visited me years later, trying to understand what really happened.”

“And that’s why they supported your parole.”

He nodded.

“Why not just tell the truth from the beginning? No one’s going to prosecute a five-year-old child for pulling a cord out of a wall. He didn’t realize what he was doing.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Then explain it to me. If your son isn’t here to keep you from telling the truth, then he must be here for payback, revenge for killing his mom, right? After you were paroled, he must have gone on a hunt or maybe even hired a private investigator to find out where you were. Then he came after you. If that’s the case, then why protect him?”

“Because he’s my son.” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat.

She stared at him as the truth came out, more shaken than she cared to admit. After a few calming breaths, she continued, determined to get the whole story, finally.

“Okay. I get that. I really do. I get that you want to protect him now, here as the copycat, to keep him from going to prison. I don’t agree with it. But I understand it. What still confuses me is why you confessed to your wife’s murder when it would have been so simple to tell the truth that your five-year-old son accidentally pulled the plug on her machine.”

“Like I said,” his voice was raw, strained. “It’s more complicated than that. For one thing, I didn’t want Niall to grow up knowing he’d helped to kill his own mother. It could have destroyed his life.”

“Wait. Helped? I don’t… Are you saying that you—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, Grace. You’ve been right all along about that. I never would have done anything to hurt Elly. I didn’t go to prison just to protect my son. I went to prison because—”

The door to the conference room burst open, startling both of them. Fletcher entered the room, holding a piece of paper.

Grace swore. “Fletcher, we’re in the middle of something here—”

“I know. Collier told me. My lunch date canceled and I came back to work on that list we talked about. You didn’t even notice I was in the squad room because of whatever you two are talking so intently about in here.” She gave Aidan the kind of look that someone would give a bug crawling across the floor right before they squashed it. Or a police officer would give to a man they believed had committed murder.

Fletcher pitched the piece of paper onto the table in front of him. “That’s a summary of visitor log entries from your time in prison, all ten years. Malone reviewed them, trying to figure out who has it out for you. But she didn’t realize something that you and I know—that one of the people on that list visited you several times in the early years of your incarceration, and again the day of your parole hearing. Malone didn’t realize the significance because she didn’t recognize the name, probably hadn’t had time to research it yet. But you and I know that your visitor got married after moving to Mystic Lake. So tell me, why did Stella Simmons, married name Stella Holman, visit you in prison?”

His eyes narrowed at her, his jaw tight.

Grace flattened her palms on top of the table. “Wait, Stella and Aidan were friends before he went to prison?”

Fletcher’s brows shot up. “Since when did you start calling him by his first name?”

Grace’s face heated. “You’ve heard of building rapport with someone you’re interviewing, right?”

Fletcher’s eye roll told Grace she didn’t buy that excuse. “Whatever. I don’t have all the answers yet, but something stinks to high heaven here. Stella and O’Brien have never mentioned to anyone in Mystic Lake that I’m aware of that they used to know each other, long before he moved here. So I put two and two together. Stella was a nurse, in Nashville, before she came to this town. Guess what type of nurse? The kind who works in people’s homes to help them care for homebound patients.”

Grace stared at Aidan. “Like Elly?”

He gave her a sharp look. “She was one of Elly’s nurses. What’s that got to do with anything?”

Fletcher snorted. “Your wife died because something happened to her life support machine, or whatever. Stella was one of her nurses. Then you just happen to move to Mystic Lake after you get out of prison, the same place where Stella moved. If I was a betting woman, I’d bet a year’s salary you two are covering up something.”

“And what would that be?” he demanded, his tone sarcastic. “I already went to prison for murder. There’s nothing worse than that.”

“Aidan?” Grace was barely able to force the next words out. “Is Stella the one who pulled the plug on the ventilator? Is that the complicated part you spoke about?”

His eyes darkened with anger. “No.”

Fletcher held up her hands. “Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I thought we were trying to figure out who has a grudge against O’Brien. What are you doing, Malone? Trying to exonerate him or something?”

Aidan stood, towering over Fletcher. She immediately took several steps back, her hand going to her holster.

He gave her a disgusted look. “We’re done here.” He brushed past her and yanked open the door.

Grace jumped to her feet. “Aidan, wait. Please.”

But he was already gone.