Page 58 of Jonny’s Redemption

“I don’t want a polish,” she shouted after me.

“Too bad, your elbows are looking ashy, girl.”

“They are not.”

“They are,” I yelled and opened the door.

“They’re not! Chasin would tell me.”

“No, he wouldn’t, he loves you. You could have a face full of acne and he’d swear he didn’t see a single pimple.”

“Oh. My. God. Do I have a zit?”

I shut the door behind me and walked to my car, laughing my ass off knowing Evie was right then waddling to a mirror to inspect her face. Further, I knew she’d then waddle her pregnant ass up to the studio in less than ten minutes and tell me to schedule her a facial.

Her skin was flawless but sometimes it was fun to rile her up.

Seven minutes later, she was in my office. Fifteen minutes later, I scheduled her a facial. Then I got back to work. It sucked that lunch with Jonny had been canceled. But dinner and mind-bending sex after he fed me made up for our missed lunch date.

19

“You should head out,” Jameson said from Jonny’s doorway.

Jonny glanced up from the report he’d been reading to the clock on the wall. His friend was correct; Jonny should’ve left ten minutes ago. But Jonny couldn’t stop going over the case file.

Anderson Bull.

Missing.

Instead of getting up, Jonny asked, “Did Candy Bull explain why she contracted Gemini Group to find Anderson?”

“She said she didn’t think the sheriff’s department was taking Anderson’s disappearance seriously,” Jameson answered.

Candy Bull had officially reported her husband missing after he hadn’t come home two nights in a row. However, she’d called the station the first night just after midnight after she’d exhausted all other avenues—hospitals, boss, friends, the list of people she’d called was long. Candy had then only waited three days after she made the report to call Gemini Group.

There were lots of reasons why a husband didn’t come home and ninety-nine percent of those reasons had nothing to do with foul play. Not that the deputy who took the report would’ve explained those to Candy, but any cop who’d been on the job long enough had taken at least one missing person report about a spouse not coming home only to find out the missing party wasn’t missing—instead they’d left the relationship or they were messing around doing shit they shouldn’t have been doing.

Jonny didn’t know Anderson all that well. He was also intimately aware a man could act a certain way in public and be a total douche in his home. But even knowing that, Jonny didn’t think Anderson was that kind of man.

“She doesn’t trust KCSD,” Jonny surmised. And he couldn’t blame her one bit.

“She didn’t say outright, but yeah I got that feeling. And just to say I wouldn’t have missed it even if I hadn’t read Anderson’s arrest report.”

So Jameson was picking up on that, too. Jonny made a mental note of it. “When Anderson was arrested, I was fairly new to the department. But even green, something didn’t sit right. We live in a small community, I grew up here, so even if I didn’t know Anderson personally I knew of him and what I knew was, he was straight. We went to school together, we didn’t roll in the same circle, but when you go to a school with only six hundred students—a lot of those you’ve been coming up with through the grades since kindergarten—you know pretty much everyone. So I knew him even if we weren’t close friends. He was one of the smart kids—no sports, no parties, or at least not at any I attended. He literally went to school, kept to himself, did his work, and left. But everyone liked him; he wasn’t a social outcast, he just wasn’t a jock or a partier.”

Jonny paused to gather his thoughts, hating what he needed to share with Jameson. “I couldn’t prove there was anything wrong. It was just a gut feeling. But Clifford made that traffic stop, Dick Dillinger rolled out as his back-up, and another deputy, Keagan showed up. Three units for a traffic stop.”

“Three dirty cops,” Jameson added.

“Three dirty cops,” Jonny unnecessarily confirmed.

“So you’re saying the charges were false?”

“I couldn’t prove it,” Jonny repeated. “But I’ve thought on it a lot over the years. And as I got more experience on the force, I thought on it more. And after Dillinger went down after fucking with Nix and McKenna and the department cleaned house, Jarrod Clifford, Dick, and Keagan all got fired, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how a strait-laced kid went to college, stayed clean, got good grades, graduated college, got married, held down a good job, and throughout all of that never once had a single run-in with the law. But one day Anderson just up and decides to start selling heroin? No debt, no drinking problems, no gambling, no reports of him carousing, no shitbag friends. That doesn’t jibe, not by any stretch. So, yeah, I’d say the arrest was dirty. I think Jarrod Clifford pulled Anderson over and either he planted the drugs or Dick did.”

Jameson stared at Jonny, the scrutiny of that gaze uncomfortable. It was a look of an honest man outraged by the indecency of others. The uncomfortable part of that was Jonny had been caught up in a shitstorm he couldn’t stop nor had he had any control. There was a difference between knowing something and being able to prove it. And Jonny hadn’t been able to prove Sheriff Dillinger was guilty of anything other than being an asshole. The man was a monumental prick but he was a smart one. Same for Clifford, Dick, and Keagan. All three assholes, none of them good at their jobs but not bad enough that Jonny could go over the sheriff’s head and approach county officials—which would’ve led to Jonny’s life in the department being hell but he would’ve done so if it meant their removal. And since Jonny had nothing substantial or concrete he’d been forced to weather the storm.

“Was there heroin missing from evidence?”