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“You’re the first person I’ve visited,” he said.
“Will you keep looking?” she asked.
“I might,” he admitted. “Do you mind?”
He wasn’t asking for her permission. Not exactly. But now that they’d met, he found that he liked Linda Maynard, that he didn’t want to cause her trouble or make her lose sleep over a case her deceased husband had worked twelve years earlier.
“Cases are meant to be solved.” She smiled. “That’s what Gary always said.”
“He sounds like a smart man.” Nick set his cup down on the coffee table. “Thank you for talking to me. You’ve been very kind.”
“It’s been nice to have the company,” she said, standing with him. “You’re welcome back anytime.”
She walked him to the door and waited while he shrugged on his coat.
He shook her hand. “Thanks again.”
She opened the door and he was hit with a blast of cold air. He was at the top of the porch steps when she spoke again.
“Mr. Murphy?” He turned to look at her. “My husband did say something… unusual right before he passed.”
“About the case?”
“He didn’t say so,” she said. “But I always thought that’s what he was talking about.”
“What did he say?”
She met his gaze. “When he was at his sickest… at the end, he said ‘It’s okay. I deserve this.’”
“I deserve this?” Nick repeated.
She nodded and licked her lips. “He didn’t fight the cancer like I thought he would. It felt like he just… gave up. Then when he said…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wondered if he didn’t fight it because he felt guilty. If he felt like his disease was punishment for something.”
Nick drew in a breath of the icy air. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Good luck, Mr. Murphy.”
He was still standing there when she disappeared into the house and shut the door.
10
Alexa mentally ran through her work calendar for the upcoming week as she headed out for her Saturday jog. At the top of her list was a case involving alleged corporate fraud at Orion Development, one of the city’s largest real estate development firms.
A grand jury was convening on Tuesday, after which they would either recommend charges against the company’s three executive officers or they wouldn’t. Alexa had been working the case for nearly a year, slowly compiling the evidence she needed to seat a grand jury.
It was never an easy task. Imani had notoriously high standards for making a run at a case. Despite a hard drive full of evidence and boxes and boxes filled with the paper trail Alexa needed to support the charges she would file, Imani had turned her down twice. Alexa had almost given up by the time she submitted her request in December.
Looking back, she had to admit her boss had been right. If Alexa had tried to seat a grand jury prior to the last bits of evidence she’d collected, she would have come up short. The grand jury wouldn’t have recommended charges and Alexa wouldn’t have gotten another chance to prosecute Orion. Now she was fairly certain the jury would recommend an indictment.
It was one of the things Alexa loved about working for Imani: she was a hard-ass, but she was a smart hard-ass. Alexa had learned more in the two years she’d been working for Imani than she’d learned in all the years prior, and her number one lesson had been not to second-guess her, even when it was frustrating to go back to the drawing board.
She reviewed her case notes and list of action items related to the case as she made her way through the city, picking up her pace as her limbs and joints warmed up. She felt good, like she could run forever, and she was glad it hadn’t snowed since the weekend before. The pavement was clear of ice and she flew past parents walking with babies bundled in strollers and people loaded down with grocery bags and other joggers making their way through the city.
She’d been sore for a couple of days after her fall the weekend before, but the cut on her leg had scabbed over and she’d worked her sore muscles at the gym and had even treated herself to a massage Friday night. If it wasn’t for Nick Murphy knocking around in her brain, it would almost be like it had never happened.
But Nick had been knocking around her brain. In fact, she’d hardly stopped thinking about him since they’d parted ways outside The Friendly Toast.
His face drifted through her mind as she was falling asleep, his voice, deep and full of humor that never quite reached his eyes, sounded in her dreams. She’d spent too many hours reviewing the MIS case file at work, wondering whether she was hoping for more cause to interview him again or whether she was looking for proof that he wasn’t a criminal.
