“Probably not, brother,” Wyatt sighed.
“Fuck.”
* * *
The drawer of the desk slammed shut.
Okay, maybe I slammed the drawer shut. Where was my folder with my notes from the Karrigan case? I put them in my desk drawer when I left yesterday. I know I did.
My chair flew back as I surged to my feet, determined to find the folder.
“Whoa, Wilder. You alright?” my partner, Matt Monroe, asked.
He and I were both uniformed officers, unless a case came up that required a detective, then we would work together as a team in the junior detective role for as long as it was needed. That was the thing about small police departments. We only had nine full-time uniformed officers and two lieutenants on staff, plus our captain and police chief. It was a pretty small police force, but the general lack of crime in Calla Bay didn’t require us to have any more than that.
That was why the murder of sixteen-year-old Alana Karrigan had taken everyone by surprise. Resources were scarce, but Matt and I had worked together tirelessly for weeks, gathering all the evidence we needed to put that fucker, Ryan Redmond, away for good.
I needed that folder so that I could document all of my notes electronically and get that arrest warrant signed.
“Not really. Where the fuck is my Karrigan case file?”
A mug of hot coffee was placed on the corner of my desk by a dainty, porcelain hand. I lifted my gaze and caught Scarlett’s sky-blue eyes.
“You seemed like you could use it.” She smiled softly before walking back over to her dispatch station.
“She’s not wrong. You’re a beast this morning. Come on. We’ll find the case file. It couldn’t have walked away,” Monroe said. He and I looked all over my desk, in every drawer and every paper tray. We even emptied the trash in case it had accidentally fallen off and landed there.
“Fuck. I need that file,” I grumbled.
“Let’s make a stop by Downtown Diner. Maybe with fresh eyes when we get back, it’ll pop up,” he suggested.
“I want to be back here in thirty minutes,” I told him. “I don’t have all day to fuck around.”
My bad attitude continued over breakfast. Sheila Rawlins, the diner owner and my father’s girlfriend, greeted us as soon as we walked in. The scents of sausage and maple syrup drifted through, making my stomach grumble. It pissed me off.
“What’s going on with you today?” Matt asked over the stack of pancakes he was devouring.
I debated about laying it all out there. It was eating me alive to keep this in, but I hadn’t had a chance to even talk to Juliet yet, and until I did, I didn’t want to say anything. There was still a chance this was all a misunderstanding. Maybe Reid didn’t see what he thought he saw.
“Just in a shit mood. The Karrigan case is almost closed, and I want that piece of shit off the street.”
That was true. It may not be the whole reason I was in such a shit mood, but it didn’t make it any less accurate. Ryan Redmond had trouble written all over him since he was six years old. He had some home life problems that probably contributed to that. It was widely speculated that Dennis Redmond abused his wife, but never once had the police been called to their house for a domestic violence complaint. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to assume he had probably laid hands on his kid. We’d had the school keep an eye on him, at least until last year when he graduated, but there was never any evidence of abuse that they could see.
Even with his troubled youth, graffitiing buildings, stealing from Pine Street Market, a fistfight here and there, I didn’t expect him to escalate to murder.
“I know. I know. We’ve got him though. We had a solid case against him that no lawyer is going to talk their way out of.”
I grunted my response. I hoped that was true. Alana deserved justice. Her family deserved closure.
All the talk of the Karrigan case didn’t distract me enough from what Reid had told me last night.
My wife. The woman I had made my vows to in front of everyone I loved. The woman I had given years of my life to. And some other man was putting his hands on her body.
As soon as Reid said it, I knew it was true. I think I had known for a while; I just didn’t want to believe it. Nine p.m. yoga classes? Two-hour sessions? It wasn’t just me who made those vows that day. Where the fuck were her vows now?
Matt and I made our way back to the station. Matt was needed on patrol officer duty while I was continuing in my detective capacity for the day. We couldn’t both be pulled from the case when we were so close to getting the arrest we desperately wanted.
“Stay safe,” I called to him absently. It was a mantra we said dozens of times a day. Matt pulled away in a squad car while I went back inside the station, greeting Brimley at the front visitor desk with a curt nod.
