Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Ben cleared a space on his bed, carefully setting aside the half-finished to-do list that now seemed trivial compared to the worn manila folder Kelly had just handed him.
Her eyes had been bright with a mixture of hope and vulnerability when she'd returned from her apartment, clutching the file to her chest like it contained her most precious possession.
He spread the contents across his bed, the crime scene photos and police reports forming a macabre jigsaw puzzle of a life violently interrupted.
The first thing that struck him was how disorganized the file was.
It wasn’t Kelly’s fault. She'd clearly tried to impose some order on the chaos with color-coded tabs and sticky notes, but the original investigation materials were a mess.
Police reports were incomplete, some pages missing entirely.
Witness statements weren't properly dated or signed.
Even the crime scene photos seemed haphazardly taken, without proper markers or consistent angles.
"What the hell kind of investigation was this?" he muttered to himself, picking up a crime scene photo that showed the area where Lori's body had been found.
Even to his untrained eye, it was obvious that the scene had been compromised.
Footprints everywhere, no clear perimeter established.
One photo showed what appeared to be a deputy smoking a cigarette in the background, within feet of where evidence was being collected.
Ben's jaw tightened as he examined image after image of what could only be described as contamination.
His father would have had a conniption fit if his deputies had handled a scene like this. Seth Reilly ran a tight ship, even in their small town. Evidence was sacred. Chain of custody was inviolable. Witnesses were never, ever interviewed together.
But in the Bergen police's handling of Lori Powell's murder, witnesses had clearly been allowed to mingle. Ben frowned as he read through statement after statement, noting the identical phrasings that suggested people had time to coordinate their stories.
"She was a good girl."
"Never caused trouble."
"Must have been someone passing through town."
The same vague descriptions. The same lack of specificity. The same reluctance to point fingers within their own community.
What struck him hardest was the timeline.
According to Kelly's neatly organized notes, Lori had been missing for almost forty-eight hours before the police launched a serious search.
The initial reports dismissed her disappearance as a teenage girl "blowing off steam" or "running away with a boyfriend. "
It wasn't until her maternal grandparents had pushed law enforcement that police were finally mobilized. Lori’s own parents hadn’t had much of a sense of urgency, but at least the grandparents had stepped in.
By then, crucial time had been lost. And even then, they hadn't called in the state police for assistance until after Lori's body was found.
"Amateur hour," Ben growled, his fingers pressing so hard against the pages that they crinkled at the edges.
He picked up the witness statements from Lori's friends, including a much younger Kelly. Her statement was brief, barely a paragraph. There was no follow-up, no detailed questioning about Lori's final days, her relationships, her habits.
There was no attempt to recreate her last days, which was a fairly well-known investigative tactic called forensic victimology. Kelly was the last known person to have spoken by phone with Lori, yet her statement was treated as an afterthought.
If I checked the statistics in this little town, I bet I’d find that this might be a singular murder in decades.
The police officers simply hadn’t a clue how to handle the investigation, probably because they’d never had to before.
The suspect list was even more troubling.
According to Kelly’s notes, Mr. Caldwell, a high school teacher, had shown inappropriate interest in Lori.
His name appeared exactly twice in the file.
Once, when another student mentioned it, and again in a brief interview, he immediately asked for a lawyer.
After that, nothing. He'd been dropped as a suspect without any apparent investigation.
By contrast, Lori's boyfriend, Callum Henderson, merited only cursory attention despite what should have been intense scrutiny. Star quarterback, son of the high school principal, with an alibi provided by his teammates that was never verified independently.
The investigators had accepted his story without question: he'd been at football practice, then gone straight home to study. No one had checked the practice attendance, spoken to his teachers about any assignments due, or even asked to see his study materials.
Protected. Obviously, blatantly protected.
What the hell is wrong with these people? Did they not care?
Instead, the police had fixated on a "drifter theory”. That some nameless, faceless outsider who happened into Bergen murdered a teenage girl and vanished without a trace. It was convenient. It was clean. It absolved the community of harboring a killer.
It was also completely unsupported by evidence.
Ben paused over a newspaper clipping Kelly had included. A photo of Robert Powell, Lori's father, speaking at a press conference. The caption identified him as "local business leader and nephew of former State Senator James Powell."
Another clipping mentioned Elizabeth Powell, Lori's mother, chairing a charity gala for the local children's hospital, "continuing her commitment to community service despite her family's recent tragedy."
From what Ben could see, the Powells weren't just any family in Bergen. They were Bergen royalty.
And their daughter's murder investigation had been a whitewash from start to finish.
Ben understood small towns. He'd grown up in one. He knew how they could close ranks, how they protected their own, how they manufactured narratives that preserved their self-image as safe, wholesome communities where bad things only happened when outsiders brought trouble.
Harper wasn't so different from Bergen in that respect. The difference was that Harper had had Seth Reilly as its sheriff, a man who believed justice mattered more than comfort, more than politics, more than preserving pretty illusions. He’d been all about the truth and didn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone’s comfort or community standards.
At times, it hadn’t made him popular.
Ben couldn’t suppress a smile as he remembered the times his dad would ruffle feathers in their town, and the town council would clutch their pearls, whining how Seth should just leave it alone.
His dad hadn’t budged.
Lori Powell had deserved that kind of justice. Instead, she'd gotten performative investigative theater, a show of activity that deliberately led nowhere.
What were they afraid to find? Were there some skeletons in the Powell family closet, perhaps?
Taking a few deep breaths, Ben had to rein in his rising fury as he finished reading the last statement in the file. The anger he felt wasn't just righteous indignation at shoddy police work. It was personal, visceral. The rage of seeing a young life discounted, diminished, forgotten.
No wonder Kelly had turned to investigating cold cases. She'd witnessed firsthand how easily the system could fail the dead when the living found the truth inconvenient.
He gathered the papers together, carefully reorganizing them into the folder. Kelly had been carrying this burden alone for years, fighting against not just a murderer but an entire community's determination to forget.
Well, she wasn't alone anymore. He wanted to help her, to bring some sort of justice to a teenage girl he’d never even met. For the first time in a long time, he had a goal.
Maybe there was more Seth Reilly in him than he’d realized.
Ben had barely slept.
All the images from the file had bounced around in his head, along with about a million ideas and theories. Of course, there was the anger, too. The investigation into the murder of Lori Powell had been botched from day one.
Tired of pretending to sleep, he’d crawled out of bed and headed straight into the kitchen to fix his first cup of coffee for the day. He had a feeling there would be many more, but the first cup always tasted the best.
He needed to talk to someone about the file, about what he’d seen, but he didn’t know many people who were up before the sun and the chickens, and were okay with discussing murder before breakfast.
Except for…
Picking up his phone, Ben's thumb hovered over Chase's contact information. Of all the people in the world, Chase would be awake. Hell, he’d probably already been up for an hour or two. The original early-bird, Ben’s brother, liked to get to the coffee shop before any other employees for some coffee and quiet time, usually around three in the morning, though it could be as early as two if there was a lot going on.
Before he could overthink it, Ben pressed "Call" and held the phone to his ear. Three rings later, a chipper, wide-awake voice answered.
"Ben? What's wrong? Is everyone okay?" Chase's voice sounded panicky, and Ben winced at what his brother must be thinking about this unplanned, early-morning call.
"Everyone's fine," Ben replied quickly, suddenly feeling foolish. Of course, Chase would assume an emergency. Ben never called before ten or eleven. "No one is dead or injured. No bail money needed. I should have sent a text first. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Ben knew he hadn’t, but it was polite to ask.
“I wasn't asleep. I’m at the coffee shop, but I can talk." There was a rustling sound, as if Chase were moving around. "What's up? You don’t usually call this early in the morning. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Ben stood and paced to his window, looking out at the city lights. The sun would be up soon.
"It's all fine. I was just..."