Lawman With A Cause. Delores Fossen
already called Kirk,” Egan continued. “He didn’t answer, but I left a message for him to get in here for questioning.”
“He won’t like that,” she said under her breath.
No. But then Kirk didn’t care much for anything Egan did. Kirk apparently wasn’t objective enough to figure out the only person to blame for Shanna’s murder was Drew himself.
“Kirk is obviously a suspect,” Egan went on, “but I have to wonder why he’d wait nearly two years before doing something like this.”
Jordan gave a frustrated sigh. “Maybe it’s just now sinking in that his brother is going to die on death row. Or Drew could consider this a loose end he wants tied up before he gets that lethal injection. He lost his appeal.”
True. But there’d be other appeals. Ones that would take a long time. The average inmate in Texas spent over ten years on death row. It didn’t matter that there’d been eyewitnesses to what Drew had done. It didn’t matter that the man wrecked plenty of lives. He would still survive years longer than Shanna. Justice definitely wasn’t a substitute for the havoc that had played out that day.
“I also need to know if there’s someone else you’ve crossed paths with,” Egan went on. “Someone you ticked off enough to do something like this. Because what happened tonight might not even be related to the two dead recipients.”
Jordan didn’t argue with that verbally, but she did shake her head. “I’m not seeing anyone.”
He waited for her to add more. When she didn’t, Egan went with his next question. “How about the cop, Christian Abrams? He said he cared about you a lot.”
Her mouth tightened. “He thinks I’m crazy. I’m not.”
Egan was beginning to believe that. “Could something have happened between you two to make him want you dead?”
“No.” But then she huffed. “We worked together when I was still on the force. Now I do death penalty case reviews for a watchdog group called The Right Verdict. They want to make sure people haven’t been wrongly convicted, and Christian is still my main contact at SAPD. He and I have had a disagreement or two about whether or not someone incarcerated actually got a fair shake at justice. But other than that, nothing.”
That didn’t seem like much of a red flag to turn a cop into a killer. Still, it was worth checking out. Egan pushed a notepad and pen across the desk toward her. “Give me the names of the cases where you disagreed.”
The surprise flashed through her eyes. “You don’t really believe Christian could have done this?”
“I won’t know until I’ve checked him out.” He tipped his head to the notepad. “Names, dates, anything else you have.”
Jordan hesitated a moment and then wrote down a website address and password. “That will get you into my online storage account. The first file will be everything about the organ recipients. The next two will be the case files I’m working on for my job, the ones where Christian and I didn’t see eye to eye.”
Good. He put the note with the info in his pocket so he could go through that while he was setting up a safe house for Jordan. He was about to broach that subject with her, but Jordan spoke before he could say anything.
“One of the calls you made while I was being stitched up was to Alma Lawton. She’s the woman who’d had an affair with your father, Warren.”
Obviously, Jordan had been keeping tabs on him. Of course, that wouldn’t have been hard to do since his father’s affair had made the newspapers. It had come to light after Warren had been shot and nearly killed. His father had led a double life for over thirty years, and his lover, Alma, had been a suspect. Initially so had her and Warren’s son, Raleigh. Egan’s half brother. But both had since been cleared.
“Alma has an alibi for tonight,” Egan explained. “And the rangers are monitoring her bank accounts. If she’d withdrawn any money for a hired gun, we would have known about it.”
“But if you called her, you must have thought she could possibly be involved in this,” Jordan pointed out.
Egan shrugged. “Just ruling her out. That’s why I’ll check into Christian, the living recipients and the cases you’re reviewing for your job.”
She looked up and their eyes connected. For just a moment he saw the fear and pain—something she quickly tried to rein in. He saw something else, too. Jordan, the woman. She was attractive. Always had been. And she’d always had a thing for him since way back in high school.
That “thing” she had for him was apparently still there.
Egan figured that was because Jordan and he had been each other’s first lovers. That sort of thing created weird bonds between people. But the bond hadn’t kept Jordan in McCall Canyon. She’d always wanted to be a big-city cop and had left Egan behind. It had hurt at the time, but they’d both moved on. And Egan had eventually met Shanna and fallen in love with her.
During the time he’d been with Shanna, Egan hadn’t felt the old attraction for Jordan. But he darn sure felt it now. Felt it and shoved it aside as fast as he could. It wasn’t hard to do because of the voice he heard in the squad room. Apparently, it was a voice Jordan recognized, too, because she pulled back her shoulders and slowly got to her feet.
Their visitor was Leeroy Sullivan, Shanna’s father.
As Egan usually did when it came to Leeroy, he gathered his breath and got ready for battle. Leeroy would never just pay him a casual visit, and since it was well past normal duty hours, something must be wrong. Of course, often the only thing that was wrong was that Leeroy was drunk and wanted to vent. However, Egan didn’t see any signs of drunkenness tonight.
Simply put, Leeroy had not aged well. He was in his early fifties, but looked ten years older than that. And he’d let himself go, too. Once he’d been a big college football star and careful about keeping in shape. All of that had gone by the wayside, though, when he’d lost his only child. Shanna had been the center of his life.
“Egan,” Leeroy greeted. It wasn’t friendly. Never was when it came to Leeroy. He blamed Egan for Shanna’s dying. But judging from the glare he shot Jordan, she had top dibs in the blame department.
“I heard you were here,” Leeroy said to her. He spared a glance at the bruise on her head.
“How’d you hear that?” Egan asked.
“My wife was in the ER with a stomach bug, and I heard the nurses talking about Doc Madison having to come over here and stitch up Jordan. The gossip is that someone attacked her.” Leeroy didn’t sound choked up about that.
“Someone did,” Jordan said, but she had to clear her throat and repeat it to give it some sound. Obviously, she didn’t like dealing with Shanna’s father any more than Egan did. “The person shot at Egan, too.”
Definitely not choked up about that, either. Leeroy’s scowl stayed in place.
Since Egan wasn’t in the mood for getting into a scowling match with Leeroy, Egan just laid it all out there. “If you were hoping Jordan and I would be killed, you didn’t get your wish.”
Leeroy didn’t jump to deny that was indeed his wish. And it might be.
“I came to tell Jordan that I don’t want any more visits from her cop friend,” Leeroy finally said. “In fact, I don’t want anything to do with her or anyone else who considers her a friend.”
Leeroy let his scowl linger a bit on Egan, probably because he likely thought that friendship label applied to him simply because he was standing next to Jordan.
Jordan shook her head. “What cop visited you?” she asked Leeroy.
“Christian Abrams.”
Egan looked at her to see if she’d known about that,