Chapter 13
She let go so he could answer his phone and wiped her eyes, grateful she wasn’t completely breaking down in tears. She had known this was a possible outcome. But had held out hope that morality and humanity were more important than the corporate mentality. But of course the corporate mind-set had won out. They wanted to make sure she couldn’t access anything else. Well, that was fine.
Sometimes you must take a stand, and she’d made hers. She turned to study the building. She couldn’t see anybody, which meant she had no chance to say goodbye to any of those she’d worked with. Although she had their contact information. She also had contacts in other companies. She could possibly get a job with any of them. But, if they looked for references, well, then she was screwed. It was a scary position to be in, but she hadn’t spent much money for the last few years, so her bank account was looking healthy. She didn’t own her apartment, so she would move as soon as she gave notice. It was such a big world out there. She’d been relatively happy in her small corner. She didn’t have a clue what she would do next, where she would go.
“Ready to leave?”
She glanced at Jace. “Where to?”
“I suggest we drive your vehicle home, park it at your place. Then you can spend the rest of the afternoon with me. At this point, I have tracked down everybody from the center who was at the river, even some who weren’t. I want to return to the accident site one more time and also stop by the police station.”
She smiled. “Sounds like the perfect way to spend my first afternoon free. With you. I haven’t had a free afternoon in a long time.”
“Will you get a severance package?”
“The same one I signed for when I joined. I get one month’s wages.” She shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry you have to suffer for it.” He walked her to the parking lot. “Let’s get your vehicle out of here. Technically it’s not allowed to be here since this is private property.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I never thought about that. You’ll follow me to my place then?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She hopped into her car, reversed out of her spot, and, with one last look at the building she had worked in for the last four years, drove onto the main road. Jace pulled in behind her. She loved that about him.
Her place wasn’t very far away, and the traffic was minimal. It was early afternoon. She kind of wanted to go inside alone but knew she’d probably get depressed or angry, and neither was a good solution. It was much better that she spend the time with Jace that they had. And honestly she would do that anyway as she assumed it might be her last opportunity. Now that she was a free agent, she had some decisions to make too.
She got out of her vehicle, walked into her apartment building. He was there already waiting for her.
“Do you need to go upstairs? Do you want to get changed?”
She sent him a saucy grin. “Are you trying to get me out of my clothes already?”
That startled a grin out of him. “Nothing I’d like better,” he said, “but I do have work to do this afternoon.”
She nodded and walked toward him, her purse in hand. “Then let’s go. I will be your assistant for the day.”
He chuckled, holding out a hand. She slipped hers in it, and together they walked to his truck parked at the curb. Then he headed toward the police department. Once at the station, with her as quiet as possible, they sat down as the detective retrieved his file.
“I don’t understand exactly what we’re looking for,” Detective Dickerson said, holding on to the file.
“To see the ends of the ropes securing the two dead men. I understood Ronnie’s lifeline had been cut, but I wanted to see how jagged they were myself. I know it’s been fixed now but wondered if you have any images of the ends when they came out of the river? Of his cousin’s rope?”
The detective sat. “We’re back to that issue Ice was talking about, right?”
Jace nodded. “I want to ensure these men died by accident, not by somebody else’s hand.”
“I don’t think I have a picture of the ropes.” He opened his file and went through it. Then he brought up the case file on the computer. “These are the crime scene photos but only of the body. Don’t forget the weather was completely shitty, blurring all the images.”
Jace asked, “Can you enlarge that one?”
The detective enlarged it is much as he could. But there was no way to tell.
“Did the coroner not bring it up?”
“The safety gear was three-quarters off as I recall.” He pulled out the notes. “The body was taken to the morgue, but the harnesses went back to the TxSAR crew. There was never a doubt from the beginning that this was a horrible accident. So no one went looking for evidence of foul play.”
“And, therefore, no reason to keep the safety lines or harnesses.” Jace studied the photos. “Why is it you don’t have many photos? Because it wasn’t a crime scene?”
“That’s partly it. But we photograph all bodies we pull from the river. But we knew the cause in this case.”
“You have any of Howard?”
The detective entered the name. “His body was recovered on the same day but not at the same time. I think it was about two or three hours afterward. He got caught up in some trees, a little bit farther up river.”
“Here were photos of the body three-quarters immersed in the river. And another one on the bank. His harness and gear were intact, but there was no rope.” The detective turned to look at Jace. “Is that what you’re looking to see?”
“Any idea who accepted the gear?”
The detective shook his head. “Let me check and see if anything’s in the notes.” He went through several pages, then reached for his phone. “Hey, Parker. On those two drownings from the TxSAR group, any idea who collected the harnesses?”
He listened and wrote down a name. “Got it.” He turned to Jace. “Troy did. I don’t have a last name.”
Jace nodded. “Okay. That confirms what Troy said. I was just checking.” At that he stood to take his leave.
The detective shook their hands. “If you need anything, please let me know.”
“Will do.” Jace looked at Emily. “You want to add anything?”
She hunched her shoulders and glanced at him. “Should I?”
“You were fired for it, so he might as well know. If it’s not important, the police will disregard it. But at least you’ve done your duty and made your firing worthwhile.”
The detective asked, his voice puzzled, “You were fired over this?”
She took a deep breath, introduced herself and the company she’d worked for. “Because of Jace and Ice, I had been looking into the life insurance policies of these men who died.”
The detective nodded. “Yes, we found those.”
“Several other men at the same TxSAR Center have life insurance, and I wanted to make sure their policies had nothing to do with why these men were dying.”
The detective sat back down and motioned for her to sit. “You found somebody else at the center with a life insurance policy?”
She nodded. “Peter.”
Jace nodded. “I asked him about that.”
Relief swept over her face. “Good. I wasn’t allowed to give you his name.” She sat back and looked at him. “Today I lost my job for nothing.”
“Not necessarily,” the detective said. “I understand you didn’t get permission to share that name.”
“No, and I wasn’t allowed to give Ice any information either. I hadn’t thought it was a big deal. Neither did Wilson. But the head office wasn’t happy. Not to mention I told Jace about the earlier hacking incident. So my job was kind of on the line from that point forward.” She groaned. “And of course Ice informed the police, things that I didn’t have the authority to share with her,” she said honestly.
The detective leaned forward. “What hacking incident?”
She glanced over at Jace again. “You’re sure?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure.”
She lunged into a tale about how the company had been hacked a few months before she started working for them.
“When we’re looking at who had life insurance and whether these people were being killed for the payouts, we had to figure out how anybody would know,” Jace said. “And that’s when she mentioned the hacking.”
“So the entire database was hacked for personal information about the policies’ beneficiaries and policy owners,” the detective recapped.
She sat back and shrugged.
“Well, that’s interesting.” He glanced at Jace. “Thank you for bringing her in.”
“It might not be related,” Jace said. “But we certainly didn’t want to take a chance. We had to know who had life insurance policies.”
“If it’s even related to the killings,” the detective added. “Sometimes I think about the perfect motive behind a murder, only to find out it was something so damn simple.”
“And that’s exactly what it might have been,” Jace said. “But the working theory I have is so simple it’s hardly worth killing over.”
“Care to share that theory?” the detective asked.
Emily leaned forward. “Yes. What is it you’re thinking about?”
“I wondered if it had something to do with the hierarchy within the TxSAR units.”
“As to who got called out, who didn’t? That type of thing?” she asked.
Jace exchanged a glance with the detective. “Possibly.” Then his phone rang. Jace pulled it out. “It’s John. I left him a message earlier.” He answered the phone and said, “Hi, John. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if we could meet.”
“Sure. Where and when? And what about?”
“I have this horribly nasty suspicion that I know what’s going on. And I’d hate for that to be the case.”
“You want to tell me now?”
“No. I’d rather do it in person. You can tell me if I’m being foolish or not. I don’t want to sound foolish over the phone.” He took a deep breath. “I feel pretty rattled.”
“Are you in any danger?”
John took another deep breath. “I could be. I really could be. Yet it seems so foolish.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at home still.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Jace said. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t let anybody else in. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Jace put away his phone and stood, grasping Emily’s hand. “John wants to see me. He’s afraid his own life is in danger. We’re about fifteen minutes out.”
“Do you want police backup?”
Jace shook his head. “But a ghost car on the block wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said. “Or a plain clothes detective absolutely. But I don’t want to put a police presence there in case the killer’s watching.”
The detective stood. “In that case I’m coming. I’ll meet you on the same block. Give me the address.”
Jace gave him the address, and the three of them walked out.
The detective said, “I’ll park back a building or two. Before you enter, we need to meet and make sure everything’s okay. I’m not having you walk into a situation that could already be ugly.”
Jace nodded. “I can do that.”
Emily leaned over and whispered to the detective, “He can do that. Jace does ugly.”
Jace shook his head, gripped her hand, and tugged her toward his truck. “We’ll be there in ten.”
*
In the truck she turned to him. “Can you tell me now?”
He shook his head. “No. Let’s hear what John has to say.”
She nodded. “Was it the right thing to tell the police?”
“Yes, it was. Particularly if it’s related. Even if not related, it’s still the right thing. The company had a responsibility to inform its clients about the fact that confidential information had been hacked. That they haven’t done so is a serious breach of ethics.”
“Yet I feel guilty,” she announced.
“Get over it.”
She laughed. “Is life that simple?”
“It so is. You made a decision. You know it was the right one. Now you have to adjust to the fallout.”
“You act like you know what you’re talking about. Was that what it was like for you when you left the military?”
He gave a clipped nod as he turned the truck to the left through an intersection. “Exactly. Just like that.”
“Did it take you a year to adjust?”
He turned his gaze her way and gave her a crooked smile. “It did. But you’re much better than I am. You can do it today.”
At that she laughed. “Like hell.”
“Okay. I see you’ll need a few days,” he said cheerfully.
She shook her head. “I don’t even know if I want to stay in the same industry.”
“Were you good at it?”
“I was very good at it,” she said seriously. “It’s also fairly depressing.”
“You were helping people. Does it not make you feel good when you close a case?”
She sat quietly and thought about it. “If it’s a clear-cut answer, yes. But, if I don’t have a clear-cut answer, no.”
“Any kind of job will have similar problems.”
“I know all jobs have issues. None are perfect,” she admitted. “When you can take a killer off the streets and put him in jail, then it’s a great feeling. When I take somebody down who defrauded the insurance company, yet thinking it doesn’t matter, I feel good to know they’ve been caught and the payment stopped. If it’s much more severe, like a murder, then of course it’s a great feeling. But so many slip through the cracks, and I know in some cases there are no right answers. I don’t have access or any way to get the answers I need. And that’s very frustrating. Sometimes I need a whole investigation and hire somebody, like Ice.”
“Well, that’s what we’re here for. Most of the time we do security details and supersecret military cases or rescue kidnapped family members of high-profile clients.”
“That’s terrible,” she said. “How did you end up with me?”
He chuckled. “I do not consider doing something to stop a killer targeting life insurance payouts as being at the bottom of the pile.”
“And we have yet to prove anything in this is criminal.”
He gave her a steely smile. “I suspect it will break itself wide open today.”
She gasped. “Really? Obviously Lyle’s death was murder. And to me that’s an entirely different story than Ronnie and Howard.”
“One of the reasons Ice wanted the records was to make sure other TxSAR members who’d died with policies hadn’t been murdered too.”
“I hear that’s where you’ve been heading mentally, but I don’t understand why. What could possibly be the motive? These people were volunteers, out there helping the public. I mean, if this is somebody who shows up at all these natural disasters, why would he single out a TxSAR individual? Unless he was upset that one of his own loved ones wasn’t saved? But even that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It never makes any sense until we get all the bits and pieces together,” he said. “Even then there’s no guarantee it will make perfect sense to you.”
He pointed up ahead. “That’s John’s building. And there’s the detective. Take a look around. See anyone around the apartment? He’s in the first apartment on the bottom floor, left corner.”
She turned her attention to the apartment. “I can’t see anyone.”
“Good.”
“Are we taking the detective in with us?”
“Not at the beginning. I don’t want anything to stop John from talking.”
“That makes sense. There is something so very imposing about having a police officer there when you’re tattling on someone.”
“It’s not tattling. You share the truth as you know it.” He turned off the truck engine. “Sit here while I talk to the detective.”