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“Did we ever have it?” I drop my hand again and settle back in my seat. “We’ve worked too many of these cases, but it was usually the girl being put in the ground. The abuser went too far. He took a life, and because of it, we got angry. We mourned the person on the medical examiner’s table.” I look across at him. “We’ve experienced too much violence inside our own homes to not feel these cases, Fletch.”
“The right thing to do would be to tell the captain. Pass on the case to someone who’ll run it properly.”
“Not gonna do that.” I can’t help the way my lips curl up. The smile that beats my willpower. I’m a homicide detective. I’m here to protect and serve, and when a dead body is assigned to me, my job is to investigate and testify against a killer, so our streets become a little bit safer. But I’ll be damned if I’m not also a killer’s son. A man whose version of black and white isn’t quite as black and white as it should be.
Worse—or better?—I’m married to a woman who has killed in the past. In self-defense. In defense of others.
But in cold blood, too.
I’m married to a vigilante who ends the lives of men much like William Alves, and both cops inside this car know the crimes Minka Mayet is guilty of.
If we can look past those, then is it entirely unreasonable to think we could look past Adrianna’s, too?
“Let’s talk to the school,” Fletch mumbles, not nearly as enthusiastic as he usually is when investigating a homicide. “We’ve heard from those closest to them, and we’ve heard from William’s colleagues. Maybe getting that third point of view, from folks Adrianna was learning with, will give us what we need.”
“Do you think she did it?” I squint over and study my partner’s profile. “I know it’s possible. I know people have already decided by what was reported on the news. But what do you think?”
“I think…” He ponders my question as we come around another corner and the school comes into view. Its ugly exterior and dated brickwork. This isn’t Copeland U, where boosters pump the place full of money and athletes roll through on a production line. This school is where the poorer people come to bust their asses and get a degree in hopes of bettering their futures. It’s where adults come, having long ago finished high school—or not—and now they have families, jobs, and lives to work around.
Cato will go to a prestigious college, where his only concerns will be whether he can wake up in time for class, and how many chicks he can have at once before he loses his balls.
Adrianna Alves, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been able to study under such conditions.
“I think I’m conflicted,” Fletch finally settles.
“Why? Talk it out. It might help.”
“Because I’d do the same. I’d pop any asshole who thought he could screw with me and my children.”
I pull across the final intersection before the school and cut into the parking lot attached, filled to the brim with beat-up cars in need of better paint and a garage’s attention. “But…?”
“But,” he sighs. “We act for our children, right? The things we do, we do to protect our kids. Adrianna going to prison for twenty-five to life is the opposite of that.”
“You think she wouldn’t kill the man who abuses her and her daughters in their own home? Would he have not started beating those girls, too, eventually?”
“Probably. But she could’ve stuffed peanuts into his dinner and made it look like an accident. There were so many other, better ways for an abused woman to deal with a threat that kept her safe and out of prison. But stabbing the dude, risking him waking up and belting her to death, losing those girls to the state…” he shakes his head. “I can’t see it.”
I pull into the closest empty parking slip and tug the key from the ignition. I place my hand on the door, but before I slide out, I look at my best friend and study his eyes. “You lean toward her innocence, purely because the kill looks too obvious? Like she was framed?”
“Weirder things have happened before.”
“A rose by any other name…”
“Is still a rose.” With a nod, he shoves his door open and climbs out, waiting for me to do the same on my side. “I know. If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.”
“Dude’s dead.” I slam my door shut and come around to the front so we can start toward the administration building together. “She was the only other adult in the home at the time. She didn’t wake up to a tussle. She had his blood under her nails and her fingerprints are gonna be all over the knife.” I drop my hands in my pockets and match Fletch’s steps. “Quack, quack.”
“Still gotta run it through to the end.” He reaches the door two steps ahead of me. Grabbing the long silver handle and tugging it wide, he waves me ahead and follows behind. “What are you gonna feel if it’s all tied up and she’s the one going to prison?”
I glance over my shoulder and slow my steps as he catches up. “I’ll feel like we did the job.”
“And the little girls? Their dad is dead, their mother was their only comfort for their whole lives. Grandma lives across the country, so even if they go with her, she’s a stranger to them.”
“E-excuse me? Hi.” A soft, unsure voice draws my gaze up and to a battered old desk, covered in flyers. Behind it, a young woman, probably not a lot older than Adrianna Alves herself, watches us as her eyes alight with curiosity. Her cheeks grow warm when her eyes stop on the badge on my hip. Then the gun strapped around my thigh. “Uh…”
“Detective Archer Malone.” I show her my badge out of habit, then I tilt my head toward Fletch and add, “Detective Charlie Fletcher. We have a couple of questions we hope you don’t mind answering.”
“Oh… okay. Um…” She’s a cautious type. Her pulse flickering visibly in her throat. “I can try. Should I get my boss?”
