Chapter 41
Everett read the article twice, hoping the words would change.
They didn’t.
Donald Eastman had an airtight alibi for the night Bobby and Lois were killed.
Roland Bean’s latest article on the Deadly Affair Murders in the Palmchat Gazette was posted online fifteen minutes ago, packaged as a sympathetic profile of a grieving husband whose wife had been dragged into a scandal after her brutal murder.
Three executives from one of the largest pharmacy chains in the islands had gone on the record.
According to the article, the executives were devastated to realize Donald’s wife had been murdered while they interviewed him for a pharmacist job during the conference.
Everett had gone straight into the St. Basil police department files on the case that Hunter had gotten his hands on for their investigation to clear Remi.
He found the interviews. All three executives had come forward immediately after Lois’s death to give statements that they were with Donald Eastman during the timeline when police suspected she was killed.
Their descriptions were consistent and thorough.
Everything they’d discovered about Lois’s husband didn’t matter anymore.
The jealous pharmacist husband with a private boat and a lucrative insurance policy to cash in on his wife’s death had made him look guilty from every angle.
Everett had needed him to be guilty.
But Donald Eastman didn’t do it, and Detective Francois had known all along.
He pressed both hands on the edge of the desk and forced air into his lungs. The walls of the guardhouse closed in. Morning had long since turned into afternoon, and the sunlight that came through the arched windows had shifted from gold to a pale, hard brightness across the stone floor.
For the past three days, he’d been digging through case files, forensic reports, phone records, financial trails, and every scrap of digital evidence Hunter could pry loose.
Remington was with him every second, helping to look for the single thread that would unravel the police’s case against her.
The Stingray Team and Ike were working around the clock with them.
And they had absolutely nothing to show for it.
“Damn it!” Everett banged his fist on the desk. Pain burst through the side of his hand, sharp and useless. The case to prove Remington was innocent had collapsed around him.
“Everett … ” Remington’s voice cut through the storm in his head.
He didn’t want to look at her. If he did, she would see what he was thinking. She’d know instantly that he had no idea how to keep the promise he’d made her.
She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. The scent of her coconut soap flooded over him as she rested her chin on his head.
Normally, her touch could reach places in him that nothing else could. This time, his body was too tight, his thoughts too loud. He covered one of her hands with his, more apology than comfort.
She maneuvered around him, leaning against the edge of the desk, until he had no choice but to look at her.
The flame of hope in her hazel eyes flickered and dimmed as she searched his face. “How bad is it?”
His next words were going to snuff it out.
“Donald Eastman has an airtight alibi for the time Bobby and Lois were killed.” He filled her in on the details from the article and the police files, then paused and waited for her reaction. Any reaction.
She stared across the room as if looking at everything and nothing.
The disappointment he knew she was feeling folded inward.
He’d known Remington long enough to wait as she processed the information.
Give her the space to take it in and deal with it internally before she’d share everything with him.
She’d always shared everything with him, even when it was tough. He’d done the same.
She straightened her shoulders and looked back at him. “I guess we’re back to square one.”
“I hate that he didn’t work out as the one who?—”
“I don’t. The last thing I want us to do is railroad someone else for a crime they didn’t commit, like whoever this killer is, is doing to me.”
She held her palm out toward him, and he placed his hand in hers.
“We’re going to find who did it,” Everett said, despite his uncertainty.
She nodded and stared toward the chaise where she’d been lying with a laptop, combing through evidence.
“Any luck going through the evidence the cops found?” he asked, holding onto the possibility because he needed it as much as she did.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m stuck on the machete.”
“Stuck how?”
“Something feels off. I see the bloody fingerprints on the handle. I’ve gone through the reports that prove they match mine, but it’s still wrong.
I don’t know how else to explain it.” She ran a hand through her wavy locks.
He took the opportunity to do the same, letting the silky strands slide through his fingers.
“We know the killer staged the whole scene. He put Bobby’s blood on you, on your hands, to make it look like you’d stabbed Bobby.”
“That could be it.” She didn’t look convinced.
Maybe she shouldn’t be. Everett paused to let her hunch develop.
“I can’t stop focusing on it, though. There’s something that I’m missing. I uploaded all the files into the simulation program to see if reenacting the crime would help me figure out what it could be.”
“You set the program up to simulate you swinging the machete at Bobby?”
“I thought maybe we could prove I wasn’t strong enough to inflict the wounds he suffered.” Her mouth twisted. “Or prove the angle didn’t work. Something useful.”
“And?”
“The stupid program keeps putting the machete in my right hand.”
“You’re left-handed.”
“I know. That’s the point. I corrected the prompt three times.”
Everett stilled. “The program wouldn’t override that unless something in the evidence forced the model there.”
Her eyes sharpened. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Everett pulled her down onto his lap, then typed on the keyboard to access the same files she’d been looking at earlier. Several images of the machete filled the screen from different angles.
The problem hit him almost immediately.
“Well,” he said, his pulse changing. “Your instincts were right.”
“What do you see?”
“These prints are from someone holding the machete in their right hand.”
Remington moved closer. “How can you tell?”
Everett pointed to the bloody thumbprint near the upper curve of the handle. “That’s a right thumb. With a normal grip, the thumb falls here. The fingers wrap the opposite side. For your hand to make that mark, you’d have to hold the machete wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Awkward. Upside down. Turned against the way anyone would naturally grip it.” He studied the photo again, then shook his head. “Even then, the blade angle would change. It wouldn’t match the wounds they’re claiming you inflicted.”
Her breath caught.
“This is good,” she said, as if she didn’t trust the words yet. “Right?”
“It supports our theory that someone staged the weapon.” Everett enlarged another section of the handle. “The killer assumed you were right-handed like most people.”
“I don’t know if that matters anymore now that we’ve lost the better suspect. Donald having an alibi blows any chance I have of proving reasonable doubt to a jury.”
He hated that she was right.
“My freedom could come down to twelve people looking at those photos of the machete and deciding whether I’m a killer or a woman who got framed by one. I don’t like those odds.”
“I don’t either,” he admitted. “We still have another option.”
“Running away and being fugitives for the rest of our lives.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad. Hunter already has our new identities lined up with employment histories, banking, and full social media digital trails ready to push out across the internet.” Everett wrapped his arms around her. “I bought us a farm.”
“A farm?”
“It’s in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast. Lots of green acreage, rainforest, goats, chickens, and enough eucalyptus around that you’d get your koalas.”
“Australia?” Her eyes widened. “You found me goats and koalas?”
“Koalas are wild. Not on the farm, but they’d be close by,” Everett said, trying to temper her excitement. “I wanted it to feel like Black Spade, so you wouldn’t miss home too much.”
Her face softened into something that made the ache in his chest worse. Running away was the last thing she wanted, no matter how much she appreciated the chance to flee for her freedom.
“But if you want to stay and fight this, I can get you the best lawyers on the planet,” Everett said. “I’m ready to do whatever you want, Remington.”
“I need you to be real with me. How long could we hide out here, looking for proof of who killed Bobby? Could the cops find us in days or weeks?”
Everett thought back on Ike, hiding in the Cabrito Mountains for almost a year now. No one suspected he was there. With Everett’s own resources and the tactical and investigative skills of Stingray, the cops didn’t have a chance in hell of finding them.
“Years,” he said, and knew it was true.
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to be anyone but me, and for you to be you.
I love you so much for what you’re willing to do for me.
But that’s not the future I want for us,” Remington said.
“It was different when I thought I’d killed him.
There was no way out from what I’d done. But knowing the truth now …”
“It makes it harder for you to walk away from your life.”
“Almost impossible.”
“So we stay and fight?”
She nodded. “What’s our next move?”
Everett cycled through the options. “Bobby had lots of enemies, which the guys are fully investigating back at the Stingray compound. We lost Donald as our best suspect, but that doesn’t mean the murders aren’t connected to Lois.”
Remington’s expression shifted. “Lois worked at the law firm that Bobby used all the time. We don’t know what they could’ve been involved in. It’s easy to focus on their affair, but what if it was more than that? What if they were involved in something together that got them both killed?”
“That’s as good a place to start as any.
I can get Hunter working on securing access for us to the law firm’s files.
” Everett reached for the burner phone and typed a quick text.
“In the meantime, I connected to databases I still know how to reach through old DEA channels. I uploaded details on Lois to see if there are any hits on her face, past addresses, known associates. Anything that overlaps with federal or international law enforcement case files. It’s a long shot but worth a try. ”
“How long is that going to take?”
Everett glanced toward the search screen. “It’s extensive, and I’m using an unauthorized access point. Pulling the data too quickly could alert the DEA to the breach. It’ll be a few hours.”
“Three?”
“Seven or eight.”
“That’s more than a few,” Remington said. “I wonder what we could do with all that time?”
His cock twitched against the constraint of his pants, and for the first time since Donald Eastman had ruined his day, something other than rage moved through him. “I might be able to come up with a thing or two.”