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“Yes,” he insisted. “It’s the only way I can be saved from a murder charge for a crime I didn’t commit. You know how Metro is. Closing a high-profile cold case would be a big deal for any detective.”
Whether it was true or not, his answer was the one Finley had wanted to hear.
“Who’s the detective on the case?” She had made more than her share of enemies at Metro. The detective in charge of the case could make her job far more difficult.
“Eric Houser,” Johnson said. “You know him?”
Relief washed through Finley. She knew Houser well. More importantly, she could trust him. Like her, finding the truth was more important to him than merely finding a way to close the case. He was one of the few at Metro who still liked her.
“Houser and I are on good terms,” she said. “He’s an excellent detective, and he’s thorough. If you have nothing to hide related to the Lucy Cagle murder, you have nothing to worry about with Houser.”
Johnson grunted a “yeah right” sound. “If he’s so good, maybe he can find my brother.”
Finley frowned, in part because Johnson skipped right over her assurance about Houser but mainly because she had no idea what he meant by the comment. “Your brother?”
“Ian,” Jack explained. “Ray’s younger brother disappeared around that same time, only a few days after the murder, in fact.”
Interesting and most assuredly not in a good way in relation to their client’s situation.
“Was there ever any suspicion that his disappearance was connected to Lucy’s murder?” Finley asked Johnson.
“The cops talked to the old man, but to my knowledge, no actual connection was ever found.” Johnson made a face and turned his hands up. “Ian was just lazy and wanted out, I think. When he vanished, I told the old man he should just let him go. The little shit wasn’t worth the trouble of looking for him.”
Sounded like there had been no love lost between the brothers.
“I’ll need everything you have on the search for your brother,” Finley told him. “Any PIs you’ve hired to search for him. A completestatement on when exactly and why—if you know—he disappeared. The names of his closest friends. I’m assuming, since the police learned of his disappearance, that your father filed a missing person report.”
“Monday, October ninth, is the last time anyone saw Ian,” Johnson said. “And yeah, the old man filed a report. Since Ian was twenty-three at the time, I don’t think the cops did much about it other than to look into whether he knew the Cagle girl or not.” Johnson lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted gesture. “We hired a PI, too, but we got nothing from him either.”
“Still, I’ll need his name.”
The missing brother was a good potential lead, no matter that a connection to Lucy Cagle had not been established thirteen years ago.
Maybe Houser was looking at the wrong brother.
3
O’Sullivan Residence
Shelby Avenue, Nashville, 6:00 p.m.
Finley sat in her Subaru for a while after parking in her driveway. The house was one of the bungalows built in the middle of the last century. Small. Practical. When her late husband purchased the house, it had been pretty much a wreck. Still was to some degree. Jack and Matt had helped her paint the interior and redo the bathroom, which had needed an update badly. Then, over the summer, Finley’s dad and Jack had painted the exterior a crisp, clean white. Even with the aging greenish-gray roof, it looked considerably improved. Thanks to the newly added foundation support, the small front porch no longer leaned to one side. Really, it hardly looked like the same place.
In late October she and Matt had decided to take their relationship to the next level, and he’d moved in with her. Determined to help out with renovations, he had insisted on launching a landscape overhaul. After all, he’d said, autumn was the perfect time for planting new shrubs. Finley had let him. Who was she to come between a man and his shovel and lawn mower. The landscape looked better than ever before. A nice row of shrubs marched along the fence line around the property. More shrubs hugged the foundation. Matt had pointed out all the ones that would bloom next year and provided the expected colors.Finley had no issue with all the new stuff as long as she wasn’t expected to water it or care for it in any way. Experience had proved that she would kill a fake plant.
Derrick would have approved of the upgrades. Like Matt, her late husband had been keen on home improvement. Finley only cared that the roof no longer leaked and all the plumbing and electrical functioned properly.
Judge Ruth O’Sullivan, Finley’s mother, still thought it was ridiculous that Finley wanted to stay here after all that had happened. This was where her husband had been murdered. Where she had sustained horrifying injuries. TheMurder House, the media had dubbed it at the time. Not that the media bothered to honor all crime scenes with special names, but Finley had been a high-profile ADA who was married to the victim and whose mother happened to be a prestigious judge, which added up to higher ratings.
But this wasn’t the murder house anymore. It was home, at least for now. Finley had learned over the past year that though this part of the neighborhood was sort of a low-end one, it was up and coming and, more importantly, the neighbors were priceless. She glanced in her rearview mirror at the house directly across the street. The lady who lived in that house had probably saved Finley’s life back in September by taking out a would-be killer with her gardening shovel. This same neighbor had likely saved her the year before as well. Helen Roberts had called 911 the night Derrick was murdered. The speedy response no doubt contributed to Finley’s survival.
Why would she be in a rush to move?
Finley climbed out of the Subaru. As she closed the door, she glanced across the street. Roberts was usually milling about in her yard or walking her little dog at this hour of the evening. Not tonight. Maybe she had already done both in deference to the earlier sunsets this time of year. Decembers in Nashville weren’t usually terribly cold, but the days were far shorter for sure.
Mulling over the array of delivery options for dinner in the area, she headed toward her porch. Last time it had been Chinese. Maybe Mexican tonight. Or pizza. She should text Matt and see what he was in the mood for, since he wasn’t home yet. Like her, work sometimes kept him late into the evening. His new position in the governor’s office had proved a bit less of a time suck than his previous work as liaison between the mayor, the chief of police, and the DA’s office. The real measure of his new job was that Matt was happy. He loved his work. Each day seemed to bring some new kind of excitement to his role in the state political arena.
His happiness was all that mattered to Finley. She smiled as she dug in her bag for her keys. Truth was, she, too, was happier than she had expected to ever be again. A lot had come together over the past few months.
