Savannah rose with clenched fists and paced back and forth in front of Hez. “So let me get this straight—he wants TGU to pay for a permanent vacation so he can strut the beaches of some tropical paradise and target college girls? That’s ridiculous, Hez, and I’m not going to do it!” Both dogs cowered at her tone, and she reached down a soothing hand to rub Marley’s ears. “It’s okay, boy.”
“I agree with you, but it’ll be an ugly fight. We’ll need to hire a top family law attorney.”
She fought nausea and wrapped her arms around herself. “I watched my sister become a pawn between my father and hers, and I can’t stand by and watch that happen to Simon. He’s already been through too much. We have to fix this, Hez—we just have to!”
He rose and opened his arms for her to step into his embrace. She tried to take comfort from his closeness—but failed. If Hez couldn’t see a way out of this morass, what could they do? Her thoughts spun frantically, and no quick solution came to mind. She straightened and pulled away. “How do we protect Simon?”
His arms dropped back to his sides, and concern still lingered on his face. “It will take terminating Erik’s parental rights. That’s not easy to do.”
“He’s a criminal! Can’t we get him sent to jail?”
“When I brought up his actions, his attorney was quick to point out that you and Simon could be accused of breaking and entering.”
This situation looked worse and worse. “What kind of a lawyer would take a case with such a slimeball client? Doesn’t she care about a child at all?” She raked her hand through her hair. “Don’t answer that. She obviously has no more scruples than Erik.”
“I’ve got a few attorneys in mind, and I’ll check with Jimmy. He might have some advice for us.”
The worry in his voice sent her spirits even lower. “We have to win, Hez.”
“I know.”
Chapter 6
Hez poked his head into his new house’s observatory—and was instantly ten years old again. An enormous old-fashioned tarnished brass telescope dominated the stuffy little octagonal space. A cracked leather chair sat beside it, and faded astronomical charts covered the low walls. The floor was dusty plexiglass with some sort of design underneath. The ceiling was peaked and supposed to be retractable. Light from a single dim bulb showed a large hand crank protruding from a gearbox.
Hez tried the crank, but it only moved a fraction of an inch. Of course. He sighed and opened the toolbox he’d lugged up with him. He and Savannah had closed on the house yesterday, so it was finally theirs. He had promised to go over it from top to bottom to get it ready, and he’d decided to start at the very top.
One of his father’s rules of home maintenance was “Ninety percent of all repairs require pliers, duct tape, or WD-40,” so Hez kept all three handy. The pliers made short work of the rusty gearbox lid, and he applied WD-40 liberally to the interior. He tried the crank again. The gears squealed in protest and started to move. Hez got a good workout, but the eightsides of the roof slowly slid down into the walls, letting in the sunshine and very welcome fresh air.
He leaned against the shoulder-height wall and let the late-April breeze cool his sweaty face. Slate shingles sloped down on each side of the roof, and he had a panoramic view of the horizon. The fake medieval tower stood like a sentinel about ten yards from the house, watching over the blue waters of Mobile Bay, and he took in the expanse of water, treetops, boat docks, and the occasional roof.
The bright spring sun showed the floor clearly: The plexiglass protected a giant mechanical star map that took up almost the entire floor. Little knobs stuck out of the floor beside one wall, allowing the map to be adjusted for date and time. The floor of the observatory would be a perfectly labeled guide to the sky above. “Simon is going to love this.”
The thought of his nephew brought a pang. Would Simon even see this? The lawyer Hez talked to hadn’t held out much hope. Under Alabama law, if the father objected to an adoption, the court had no choice but to deny it. Their only hope was to terminate Erik’s parental rights, and that would not be easy. Their only real chance would be to get him convicted and imprisoned for a felony—and he hadn’t even been arrested for anything. Hez hoped to change that, and yesterday he’d put in a call to his old mentee at the DA’s office, Deputy District Attorney Hope Norcross, now one of the office’s go-to prosecutors for major crimes.
As if on cue, his phone rang and Hope’s name appeared. Hez’s pulse picked up as he took the call. “Hey, Hope. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Did you arrest Andersen?”
“No, but I’ll let you know if we do. I’m actually callingabout something else. We’ve run into a dead end in our investigation of Jess’s murder, and I was hoping you might be able to help.”
“Of course. What’s up?”
“Key evidence seems to be missing. We have what’s left of your car, but that’s about it. No testable explosive residue and very few bomb fragments. There were a lot more at the crime scene, but they vanished somewhere between there and Pelican Harbor PD’s evidence locker.”
Hez groaned. “I thought you were using state police because of the problems in the PHPD.”
“We are. But this came in as a 911 call, so it went straight to first responders, including PHPD. Plus, there was no mention of the smuggling ring, of course. No one connected the dots and alerted my team for almost two hours. And I don’t blame them under the circumstances.”
Hez winced at her defensive tone. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to blame them—or you either. It’s just... frustrating.”
“I’m frustrated too. There are a lot of good Pelican Harbor cops, and I hate having to freeze them out of a big investigation in their backyard. Hopefully we’ll find the mole soon and be able to go back to business as usual.” She sighed. “Anyway, I was wondering whether you remembered anything that might be useful from the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Did you see any forensic techs acting strangely? Do you remember which officers put evidence in their cars? Anything like that?”
Hez gazed out at the hazy horizon but didn’t really see it. He remembered sitting at his little plywood desk in the Justice Chamber, chewing over his last conversation withJess. A distant boom had rattled the windows and shaken the room. Then he had been running, dodging confused students and professors as he raced from Connor Hall to the faculty parking lot.
He’d seen Savannah kneeling in the grass near the flaming wreck of his Audi. She’d been covered in blood, rocking back and forth, her wails mingling with those of the approaching sirens. Then he’d been on his knees beside her, holding her as the scents of acrid smoke and coppery blood assaulted his nose.
Savannah had clutched Jess’s mangled corpse, whose sightless, glassy blue eyes stared at the sky—just like Ella’s had as Hez held her three and a half years ago.
He made an effort to steady himself. “Sorry, no. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything except Savannah and Jess.”
