Page 11 of Outlaw Ridge: Shaw (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #5)
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Shaw finished his call with Aaron Larson, the head of Dell’s legal team, and he silently groaned. He’d hoped that the lawyer would offer up some explanation for the three riddles that had been sent to Dell.
But no such luck.
From the passenger’s side of the cruiser, Shaw was pretty sure that Ava was getting her own disappointing results from her conversation with the head of the prison where Dell was an inmate.
Her jaw was tight, and she had a white-knuckle grip on her phone by the time she ended her call and turned to him.
“The three letters were logged in but not read by the prison officials since they were sent as registered mail from the lawyer,” she relayed to Shaw.
Well, hell. That meant they couldn’t prove or disprove what Dell had told them about the riddles.
“The lawyer insists the letters weren’t sent from him or anyone in his firm,” Shaw said, giving her the recap of his conversation.
She rubbed her left temple, muttering the profanity under her breath that Shaw was expressing in his own head.
Yeah. This sucked. And because he’d anticipated that neither phone conversation was going to give them results they liked, he’d stayed put in the parking lot of the prison, giving them time to make those calls.
Time to settle.
Though settling seemed like a pipe dream after their encounter with Dell. Seeing the sonofabitch had been necessary, but it had come with a sky-high price tag. He was sure Ava’s nerves were frayed to the point of breaking.
Shaw wasn’t sure how to fix that, especially since they couldn’t take time to rebalance themselves. There was a killer to catch, and Dell had given them more questions with no useable new answers.
“I’m going to ask a stupid question,” he said. “But are you okay?”
She turned to him, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a smile that wasn’t from humor or amusement. “I didn’t have a panic attack so that’s a win.”
It was. And Shaw had been worried that just the sight of Dell would send Ava into a tailspin.
“You’re strong,” he continued. “Focused. Ready to take down whatever bastard is doing this.”
She laughed, and there might have been a smidge of amusement in it. “I’m not strong. I’m damaged goods. But I am indeed ready to take down this bastard. Especially if the puppet master is Dell. Orchestrating murders would put a stop to any new appeals.”
Yep, it would. But that damaged good part bothered him. A lot.
On a huff, he turned to her. “You’re scared, and I think that makes you an even better profiler. You have up-close and personal knowledge of a sick killer’s mind. I can see that in your success rate. Ava, you’re kick ass when it comes to catching killers.”
She shook her head as if trying to dismiss that. “You know my success rate?”
Shaw mentally did some wincing. This was going to sound a little stalker-ish.
“I’ve kept up with your career,” he admitted.
“I know you’re the one that police departments all over the country go to when they need a profiler, and you’ve put some serious assholes behind bars.
” He paused. “But, yeah, I know your success rate.”
He was about to launch into an explanation of her being the one who got away. The woman he’d never been able to get out of his head. Ava spoke first though.
“I know your success rate, too,” she said, surprising him. “Both in the military and in Strike Force. You’ve saved some good people and put some serious assholes behind bars.”
Shaw was both a little embarrassed and flattered. Maybe Ava hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind either.
He wanted to kiss her again. Hell, he wanted more than a kiss.
He wanted to be with her, but the timing was as off as bad timing could get.
Besides, he could see that she had already nudged the personal stuff aside and had gone back to what they’d learned in their visit with one of those serious assholes.
Ava looked down at the notepad on her lap where she’d written down as much of the three riddles as they’d been able to remember. They felt like open, festering sores. Worse, the first two were a done deal. Nothing to be done to stop those from playing out.
And the third?
Well, it felt more like a threat than something for them to solve. Still, Reed was running it through some programs to see if there was something more about it than the obvious.
I take what’s owed, but never lend. I’m justice twisted, I’m the end. What am I?
To him, it sounded like more sick SOB shit, but if there was something useful it in, Reed would likely ferret it out.
“Dell could have fed the riddles to Valerie,” Shaw said as he started the drive back to Outlaw Ridge. “She could have then had the lawyer’s letterhead made and sent them to the prison.”
That was working theory number one, but Shaw figured if things had played out this way, then Dell was the driving force. Dell would have no trouble manipulating his pliable sister to commit a murder or two all designed to make him look as if he’d been wrongfully convicted.
“Valerie is physically strong but maybe not strong enough to put two men in a grave and a vent,” Ava said, expanding on the theory.
“We don’t know how Donovan was lured to his death, but Grant said he was tasered and shoved in a car.
It might have been hard for Valerie to do that and then carry him into that abandoned bar. ”
Yeah. Hard but not impossible. So, at the moment Valerie was a top contender, and since Owen was questioning her at this very minute, they might learn something soon. Ditto for Lorelei who was next up in interview.
And that brought Shaw to working theory number two.
“With some help from maybe someone in her support group, Lorelei could have pulled this off,” Shaw admitted just as his phone sounded with a text.
His first thought, a really bad one, was this was another riddle. A start to another round of havoc and hell. But it wasn’t an unknown number from some burner phone. It was from Lexa.
And it was a surprising one.
According to the message from Lexa on the dash screen, Grant had left the hospital.
That’d been against his doctor’s orders.
Against logic, too, as far as Shaw was concerned since the man hadn’t recovered from his injuries and was still a possible target.
Then again, Grant might have believed he wasn’t safe where he was.
Or that he wasn’t in actual danger.
That last thought had slammed right into Shaw, and he couldn’t force it aside despite the fact that Dell was responsible for having planted the seed for such doubt. He hated to consider that anything Dell said could be credible, but in this case, he had to at least check it out.
“What evidence could have possibly been doctored to ensure Dell’s conviction?” he threw out there, knowing full well that it was going to tangle up Ava’s nerves even more than they already were.
“DNA,” Ava said. While she hadn’t hesitated, letting him know she was also giving this some thought, those nerves were definitely obvious. Her voice was shaky, and her breath was way faster than it should be.
“The two biggies are that Dell’s DNA was found at the scene where you rescued me, and my DNA was in his car,” she added. “There was also the eyewitnesses who came forward after Dell was arrested.”
Yeah, those. Three different people had put Dell in or near the scenes of the abductions or murders. And while their statements had maybe been nails in the coffin of Dell’s conviction, the DNA had indeed been the biggie.
Since they already had all the case files back at Outlaw Ridge PD, they’d be able to take a hard look at those, but Shaw wanted to go one step further.
He used the voice command function to send a message to Reed to start the process to have the DNA retested.
That likely wouldn’t be quick or easy since it would essentially take a court order.
Considering Donovan’s murder though and the attack on Grant, a judge might be able to expedite it.
“So, do you buy that Dell got sloppy when he abducted you when there’d been no such sloppiness with the others?” Shaw had to ask.
This time, Ava didn’t give a quick answer. “I want to think Dell got cocky. Or that he didn’t have the time to do any cleanup because of his arrest.”
He wanted to think that, too, but the DNA could have been planted. And not just by Grant. “Lorelei could have done this, too,” he stated, knowing there were crater-sized holes in that theory.
Lorelei wasn’t a crime scene expert. Yes, she could have come by the DNA somehow, but she would have had to do a lot of research about how to plant it to make it convincing enough to lead to an arrest. And if she’d done that, why specifically target Dell?
Unless she’d lied about not knowing who’d attacked her sister and her.
That could possibly work, possibly , but it still didn’t feel right that a woman who had just lost her sister would conceal something like that from the police and go about planting evidence to frame their attacker.
“Lorelei could have been terrified that Dell would get to her again,” Ava said, voicing the idea that was starting to worm its way into his head. “She might have stayed quiet and then decided to take matters into her own hands.”
Shaw could sort of see that angle working, but that would also mean that Lorelei hadn’t trusted the cops.
Or maybe it was that she hadn’t trusted Grant because of his affair with her sister.
He needed to dig a little harder on that, to see if there was any animosity between Grant and Lorelei before her sister had been murdered.
His phone rang, and just like before, Shaw’s stomach went to knots at the thought of another riddle, another abduction. Another murder. But it was Reed, so he took the call on speaker.
“We have a problem,” Reed said right away.
Those knots stayed in place. “What happened?”
“Before I requested the retesting, I decided to check with the lab to make sure they still had Dell’s DNA samples collected from the crime scene.” Reed paused a heartbeat. “They don’t.”
“What do you mean? Were they sent to another lab?” Shaw couldn’t ask fast enough.
“No. They’re missing. The samples, the files, the results. All missing.”
“Hell,” Shaw spat out. “How did that happen?”
“Not sure, but trust me, it’s being looked into,” Reed assured him. “And there’s more. The lab tech who ran the DNA tests is dead. Someone murdered him.”
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