The Broken Girls(81)

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I do.” She watched him struggle with this. “You were right.”

He was going to tell her something buried, and she hadn’t thought she could handle any more buried things . . . but she owed him this. “Right about what?”

“Helen Heyer,” he said. “I pulled the file.”

Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

“They questioned Helen’s friends,” Jamie said. “The cops working the case. They interviewed her friends about whether she’d ever told them about her relationship with Tim Christopher. What they didn’t do was ask Tim’s friends.”

Fiona was quiet.

“Tim was popular,” Jamie continued. He glanced at her. “You know that, of course. He had a lot of friends. They could have interviewed them, found out who Tim was seeing. One of them would likely have known who he was dating, whether he was lying about Helen. It’s routine. But they didn’t. They interviewed Tim, with his parents in the room. And then they dropped it.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t prove that Tim tried to kill Helen. The MO still doesn’t fit. But . . .” He trailed off. Fiona knew the rest of it without words. The fact that the cops had backed off from the Christophers meant they’d left part of the investigation undone. If any of his friends had admitted that Tim was seeing Helen, Deb would be alive.

Then Jamie made her stomach drop further by saying, “Dad’s name is in the file. He did the interview.”

Tim Christopher was a good man before his life was ruined, Garrett had said. “My God, Jamie.”

“When I was a kid, he used to take me for ride-alongs,” Jamie said. “It was what made me want to be a cop. He’d take me on patrol, and not much happens in Barrons, you know? So we’d spend most of the time shooting the shit. I thought being a cop was fun, and Dad was chief, so everyone treated him like a boss. What’s not to like?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes tired, and Fiona waited.

“One night we got a domestic call,” Jamie continued. “A woman said her husband was hitting her. I was with him. I was ten. He put me in the backseat while he and his partner went inside. I don’t know what happened in the house, but after ten minutes they both came out and we drove away without a word.

“I asked Dad what had happened. He told me it didn’t matter, everything was fine, because he was good friends with the guy’s brother. Then he turned and looked at me in the backseat. Family comes first, doesn’t it, son? he said. His partner didn’t say anything. Not a word. And I was ten, and he’s my dad, so I just nodded and agreed with him. I’d thought I’d forgotten about that night until I became a cop. Then I remembered it.”

“What are you saying?” Fiona asked.

“It’s small things, you know?” Jamie said. “Or so it seems. His golf buddy’s speeding ticket gets thrown away. Another buddy’s nephew gets off with a warning when he spray-paints the school. The mayor’s son gets let go when he’s caught driving over the limit. Dad was still chief when I started, and everyone accepted it. We fought about it at first, but no one would back me up, and Dad was close to retirement. I started to think I could just wait it out, and after Dad was gone, I could help the force be different. Do things different. Like those old days were gone.”

Fiona remembered Garrett at the family dinner, how he’d known everything that was going on in the force. “Except it didn’t work out that way, did it?” she supplied.

Jamie was quiet for a long beat. “He’s so fucking powerful,” he said. “And Barrons is so small. I didn’t realize how bad it was, how deep it was, until I’d been on the force for years. No one questions the chief, or anything he does, because then you’re off the gravy train. Everyone on the force has it easy. Why rock the boat? They tell themselves it’s just a slip here and there, never anything serious. No one is getting hurt. You do a favor for someone; they do a favor for you. Just fill out the paperwork and go home. And I woke up one day and realized I’d been on the force for seven years, and I was starting to think that way, too. That toxic don’t-give-a-fuck. I realized I had to get away somehow, get out to save myself.” He looked up at her. “That was the night I met you.”

Fiona stared at him, speechless.

“I knew who you were,” he said. “That night. You were right. Of course I knew. But I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “You looked lost, like me. You’re Malcolm Sheridan’s daughter. You’ve lived life. You know this place, but you don’t quite buy it, don’t quite buy anything. You don’t buckle under. You’re beautiful. And your shirt was sliding off your shoulder.”

She dropped to her knees, put her hands on his shoulders. He was warm, tense, his muscles bunched beneath her hands. “Jamie,” she said. “Helen Heyer isn’t a thrown-away speeding ticket.”

He looked at her, right into her in that way Jamie had, as if he knew what she was thinking. “I know,” he said roughly, touching his fingertips to the line of her jaw. “I’m not going to drop it, Fee. I’m going to take it as far as it can go. I’m done.”

She leaned in and kissed him. He kissed her back, his hands tangling in her hair. This was so easy; this, they knew. She slid forward between his knees and ran her hands down the tops of his thighs through his jeans as he opened her mouth slowly, gently. It felt raw and familiar and real, and she knew how this would go. Sex with Jamie was never rushed; he liked to take his time, go slow, as if he was studying her. She realized now that it was because he was never entirely sure that she would be back. Because he never quite knew which time would be the last time. And neither did she.