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Before she could say anything, Charles handed her a file. “The FBI found Yara James’s body an hour ago. It was buried about twenty feet from the cabin, deep in a thicket.”
“They know it’s hers?” She opened the cover and saw the photos. Lights set up to spotlight the ground. Mud and earth dug up to reveal bones wrapped in a disintegrating cloth of some sort.
“Dr. Timmons has the medical records. Yara had knee surgery and an arm broken in two places from a skiing accident when she was younger. The doc said the injuries match the ones on the body. She’s working on time of death.”
“Was that body frozen, too?”
“I don’t know. The official verification will come later.”
She closed the file and said a little prayer for the unfathomable loss for Yara’s family. “I fear Julie is not the only other victim out there.”
“Probably, but we don’t get much of a say anymore. The taskforce is taking over. You can sit on it, prep them, but we both know we won’t be lead.”
“What?”
Charles plucked the file out of her hands. “We’re dealing with multiple murders here, probably a serial killer case. The FBI is all over this.”
“I get that, but someone still killed Aaron, and the evidence tying him to these women is not significant.”
“So far, but Doc Timmons might find more on the new body.”
“Yara James’s body.”
“No one cares about Aaron’s death right now. They’re more focused on his victims.” He said it out loud. Didn’t even try to hide it.
She couldn’t understand the pressures he shouldered, but he did have a job to do, and he was ignoring it. “We should care.”
He closed the door, shutting them inside the small space and outside of easy hearing range of anyone walking by. “The prosecutor is not going to crack down on the woman who everyone credits with stopping Aaron. Not without evidence that she’s involved in the other killings.”
“She didn’t stop him—or maybe she did. We don’t know who killed him.” When Charles stared at her, Ginny tried again. “But if she did kill her husband, she just gets away with it?”
A part of her had assumed Lila would walk away. She’d tried to convince herself she’d be okay with that, and she still thought that was true. That didn’t mean she’d sit back andwatch it happen. She had a job, and she’d do it until the end. If Lila emerged as the victor, Ginny vowed she’d move on, because she refused to let the death of Aaron Payne become her life’s obsession. But she’d exhaust every lead first.
He shrugged. “It’s not a terrible solution. The important thing is we’ve found two of the missing women and have every reason to believe we’ll find the third.”
“Abandoning Aaron’s murder now, before it’s finished, sends a message to every victim and every perpetrator.” She tried to imagine the county, filled with people already on edge, taking the law into their own hands. “We can’t condone vigilante justice.”
He winced. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Excuse me?”
“And don’t raise your voice to me.” He didn’t blink as he spoke. “We both know I gave you a chance here. Don’t test me.”
Fury raced through her, heating every inch and every cell. Denials and arguments shot up her throat, but she choked them back. She loved this job, which meant suffocating on all the things she wanted to say but couldn’t.
She swallowed a few times before speaking again. She refused to be accused of yelling or listen to the whispers about her being an angry black woman. She would not give him or anyone the ammunition to get rid of her. The idea of him and Pete being in charge chilled her from the inside out. “We don’t know if Aaron was set up, which I doubt, but he very well could have had an accomplice, and we haven’t explored that yet. We’re talking about a second killer.”
“The official line will be that there is insufficient evidence to prove Lila Ridgefield killed her husband but, while we don’t condone vigilante justice, the important thing is that a serial predator and active serial killer has been stopped and the victims’ families can now find peace.”
Political doublespeak. People were dead and he was feeding her a PR line. “Charles—”
“We’ll be turning the evidence over to the task force tomorrow. The FBI will report directly to the governor’s office from here on out.” He held the file to his chest. “Everyone is happy with our contribution, and we’re going to keep it that way.”
“But the official line about Lila is their line, not ours.” She tried for a direct hit to his ego. “You’re in charge here, not them.”
He sighed. “Go home to your husband, Ginny. You’ve earned a night off.”
He fell back on his usual condescending attitude, which ratcheted up her anger. “Talking to me like that is bullshit, and you know it.”
