AllFreeNovel
Share Us
MINKA
“Laramie Fentone.” Detective Franklin, the lead investigator running Chelsea’s case, steps into my office inside the George Stanley building and drops a heavy file on my desk.
We’re not friends; before yesterday, I’d never seen his face in my entire life. But he slumps into my visitor chair without being invited and exhales a breath that reeks of breakfast burrito.
I’m sure he’s nice. But he’s not one ofmycops. And his breakfast choices are questionable.
“Detective Franklin.” I glance up from the report on my screen and work harder than usual to mask the rage bubbling just beneath my skin. “Is there a reason you’re throwing files on my desk?”
Nodding, he reaches up to play with the tie around his throat—not a look Archer and Fletch go for. “Laramie Fentone is forty-nine years old. At fifteen, he was arrested for rape. The vic was twelve. He was sent to juvenile detention, but good behavior had him out again before his eighteenth birthday. At nineteen, he was arrested for B&E. He and a buddy stole jewelry and some cash that the cops found still in their pockets. The residents of the home: a twenty-five-year-old woman and her six-year-old daughter.”
“Oh god.” I lean forward and pick up the file. “What did he do to them?”
“According to his rap sheet? Nothing. But according to the mother’s witness statement, he forced himself on her—the mother. He raped her, beat her, and made the little girl watch. The case was bungled, and no charges were brought forward for the assault, but he went away for two years on the theft.”
“Of course,” I grit out. “The value of a few trinkets was placed above a woman’s body and her rightnotto be raped. What happened to the vics?”
He shrugs. “This was a good twenty-nine years ago. Mom drank herself to death after Fentone’s time in prison was up, and the daughter grew up to make bad choices. She works for heroin these days, and isn’t likely to get better. When he was twenty-five,” he continues soberly, “Fentone’s inability to keep his cock in his pants landed him in more hot water.” Franklin stops abruptly, a warm blush filling his cheeks. “Excuse my French, Doctor Mayet.”
“It’s fine.”
I glance across when Aubree stops by my office door. She doesn’t open it, doesn’t interrupt my meeting with Detective Franklin, but I lift my chin in invitation and say nothing as she wanders in and sets her ass on the corner of my desk. Then I look back to the cop and try not to think of the other detectives I know, who sit inside a bar right now.
“What happened when he was twenty-five?” I ask Franklin.
“Multiple independent eyewitness statements placed him at a local elementary school. Every afternoon, he’d watch them leave. Back then, bunches of the kids would migrate to a nearby park after school, so he did too. Mothers complained, children were protected as best they could be, but cops wouldn’t move him along. He was just a guy sitting in the sun, after all.”
“Mmhm. Sure he was. Did he snatch one of them?”
“He did. Virginia Tooley was seven years old. She was a latchkey kid and less protected than the others. One afternoon after school, she was grabbed up and whisked out of state. Manhunt went big. Every law enforcement agency from here to New York was looking.”
Just hearing that name—New York—brings a snarl tearing along my throat. I don’t mean to emit the sound, but the reminder has my rage bubbling hotter.
Why hasn’t Archer called to tell me everything’s okay? Why hasn’t he apologized for this mess? Why the hell isn’t he blowing up my phone like he does every day?
“Sorry.” I draw a breath when Franklin’s eyes curiously flitter between mine. “Go on,” I flick my hand in his direction. “Tell me what happened to Virginia.”
“Ten days passed before anyone saw her again. Cops knew she wasprobablywith Fentone, so they took a gamble and plastered his face on the news nationwide. Highway patrol picked them up outside of Denver, but she was too far gone.”
“She didn’t survive?”
He plays with his tie and looks down to study his boots. “No. They rushed her to the closest hospital, where doctors worked on her all night long, but her injuries were too severe. The girl had been starved, dehydrated, beaten… And then there was the internal injury—” He stops and flattens his lips. “I don’t think I have to detail those for you to know what I mean.”
“No,” I sigh. “You don’t. He was sent to prison?”
“Twenty years. Long time in some folks’ eyes, but not nearly long enough for those of us who saw the photos of Virginia’s broken body. He’s out now, and living back here in Copeland.”
“And you think he’s our prime suspect for Chelsea?”
“I’msurehe did it. We almost got him last year on another case, but the girl he hurt refused to testify, rape kits weren’t processed properly, and a flimsy alibi meant he got to walk.”
“So he’s a serial offender. The slimiest kind. He touches what he shouldn’t, and gets away with it because society still places his rights above those of his victims.”
“That’s about the gist of it, Doc.”
Pushing up to stand, he leans across my desk and opens the file to reveal Fentone’s ugly mugshot. His eyes arrow straight to my heart. Bald head, but with the regrowth coming in whisker-like strands that point all over. His face is dopey and somewhat slack on one side, almost like he’s had a minor stroke in his forty-nine years. His ears are too large, and his cheeks are ruddy with loose skin.
He’s not yet fifty, but if you asked anyone on the street, they’d swear he’s sixty or older.
