Chapter 29 #2
And believe you’re right even though I can’t say it.
We say goodbye, and outside, the cold hits me, a welcome cooling after burning up in there.
As we walk down their path, Anton takes my hand. “Were you okay in there?”
“Yeah, it was just some weird cramping or something.”
“Do you think it was Braxton-Hicks?” he asks, concern etched on his features.
I raise an eyebrow. “They’ve gotten to that part in the audiobook, have they?”
“I’ve listened all the way through diapers now.”
We arrive at his truck, and he opens the door for me. “I think that was it. I’m fine now.”
He walks around the other side and gets into the truck with me, the air inside suddenly so still. He doesn’t start the engine while both of our minds reel with the new information.
I break the silence. “I assume you read the case file front to back?”
“Mmm…” He’s deep in thought. “None of that was in there.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
What this means is deeply unsettling. Ingram didn’t just lie about the bodycam timestamp. He omitted the Marshalls’ statements, Mace…and he falsified the entire case.
“Is it time to loop in Chief?” I ask.
“That’s one option,” he answers. “But there’s a lot to think through before you do.”
My jaw tightens. “Like what? I couldn’t use GhostEye’s findings, but this?” I point to the house behind us. “They gave Ingram all of that. And none of it made it into the report.”
“I know,” he says evenly. “That’s exactly why I’m worried about telling Callum.”
“Wait. You don’t trust Callum?”
He shakes his head. “I do…did…”
It doesn’t seem as if it’s easy for Anton to say the next words. But I recall how he acted in the GhostEye offices before we left, and I shouldn’t expect Anton to trust anyone but the Mendez brothers and me until this is all over.
“We know Ingram wrote the report,” he says. “We know those omissions weren’t accidental, but we also know Callum signed off on leaving the case dormant, based on what was in there.” His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “What we don’t know is whether Ingram was acting alone—or whether he felt protected.”
A chill slides under my ribs. He’s suggesting someone else is crooked, too? “But Callum was the one who told me it was okay to keep the case open.”
“Echo Valley is a small department,” Anton insists. “If Ingram was comfortable falsifying evidence, that tells me one of three things. Either he’s covering for himself or someone else…or he wasn’t worried about who might look too closely.”
I swallow. “You think there could be someone else?”
He’s almost apologetic saying it. “The moment you take this to Callum, you lose control of it. Access tightens. Anyone who is compromised gets a warning. And they know what you know…”
I’m the one who holds the clues.
“What do you think?” he asks.
My gut says Chief isn’t in on it. “I’m not worried about Callum.”
Even if he did have his hands dirty in this somehow, and even if he didn’t think I was smart enough to find the plot holes, he knows GhostEye, Anton… I’m pretty sure he’s worked with them before and knows what they’re capable of if they get close to loose ends.
“But I do see what you mean about how easily everyone would know.” When Ingram is arrested for obstructing justice, it won’t be just another day in Echo Valley.
And if Ingram was helping someone else out, they’d have time to make a move.
I’m decided. “We’ll keep it quiet for another day or two. See what else we can find. We have new information, so we might as well clear that first.”
He nods in agreement. “And it should convince Ingram you’re still chasing Andy.”
I sigh, then look at him, the weight of it pressing in. “This case is heating up.”
“I know.” Anton tries to comfort me. “And I want it closed as badly as you do. But until we know how far this goes, I’m not comfortable involving anyone but GhostEye and us.”
I nod. He’s right.
Anton turns on the engine.
Suddenly, I’m brought back to the lottery question. “Why did you ask if the Marshalls knew how much she won or how?”
“I wanted to know if the money was clean. The money could be motive.”
That’s smart. “Do you think maybe Mace and the money are related?”
“Could be.”
I reach over and grab his hand. “You’re really good at this.”
He lifts my hand and kisses it. “Can you be good at getting a subpoena?” He stares at me with those intense blue eyes. “Once we figure more out with GhostEye, we’ll need one of those fast.”
“They can find a lot legally, though, right?”
This is all crossing into gray territory. Instinctively, I know we need to trace cell records, bank accounts… There’s no way GhostEye has contracts they can leverage.
“They can,” Anton says, “up to a point.”
He pulls away from the curb, the Marshalls’ house slipping out of view as the street stretches quiet and ordinary ahead of us. I stare out the window, my reflection faint in the glass.
My thoughts slide somewhere uncomfortable. To what I might have to sit on. To what I might have to pretend I don’t know. To the line I can already see forming ahead of me, thin and blurry, between wrong and right.
Is it still the right thing if you have to bend the rules to get there? No…I can’t do that. I took an oath.
“We need to make sure everything is done by the book,” I say, still staring out the window.
I can see that’s not what he’d want to do by the way stress creeps into his features.
Anton reaches over and squeezes my hand, as if he knows exactly where my head has gone without me saying a word.
Whatever we’ve just stepped into, there’s no clean way out of it anymore.