CHAPTER 47 JUSTIN
JUSTIN
Justin paused outside the detention centre and took a deep breath.
The air smelled of freedom and…hamburger.
There was a fast-food restaurant opposite.
Two and a half days, he’d spent in custody, being herded between a cell and an interview room in cuffs and leg irons, and he’d discovered a newfound appreciation for the small things in life. Like shoelaces.
His lawyer had said he’d be out in two days, and the extra twelve hours felt like a year.
Maybe he would have been there for longer if another witness hadn’t come forward.
A member of the public had seen Justin leaving Norquist Construction right after Amie drove off with an unidentified passenger, although Justin couldn’t for the life of him work out why anyone would have been hanging around by the gate.
When Special Agent Rimer eventually showed up, she’d said they had a new suspect, so there was a glimmer of hope that someday, a man would pay for what he’d done to Amie.
A very faint glimmer. Justin’s lawyer also said the medical examiner had misplaced her body, and what exactly did that mean?
How could they misplace a body? It wasn’t as if she could stroll out of the morgue.
But that was a question for tomorrow. Tonight, he just wanted to get home to Jessie, assuming she hadn’t walked out on him the way Eliza did.
“Is Jessie still there?” As they turned into Greenway Park, Justin asked Brax the question he’d been avoiding. His old friend had come to give him a ride home, so at least someone still had his back.
“Yes, she’s still there.”
“But…?”
“But what?”
“It sounded like there was a ‘but’ coming.” Another squad car drove past, the third Justin had seen so far. “What’s with all the cops?” A groan escaped. “Tell me they didn’t tear my house apart again?”
“They didn’t. But there was a small incident on one of the jogging trails.”
“A small incident? Did those idiots with the cameras go out in the forest again?”
“Yes, but only after the…uh…shooting.”
Justin stiffened. “Shooting? What shooting?”
“Jessalyn’s fine, that’s the important thing. The lawyers are involved, and the police agree it was self-defence.”
“Self-defence? Are you telling me Jessie shot someone? How? She doesn’t even own a gun.”
“As best we can ascertain, a visitor let the dog out of the yard, so Jessalyn took off after him. She ran into her ex-husband, and things went downhill from there.”
“Husband, not ex-husband.” Although Justin hoped to change that as soon as possible.
“Ex-husband. He’s in the morgue.”
What? How?
And was Justin supposed to be upset about that?
“What the fuck?”
“An as-yet-unidentified man tried to abduct Jessalyn and shot Ridge Packer in the process. She managed to escape, and he’s dead too. The dog is with the veterinarian.”
Justin’s pulse pounded, his head as well. He’d been gone for less than three days. How could so much happen in less than three days?
“How bad is it? The dog?”
“Not good,” Brax admitted. “Jerry airlifted him to the veterinary hospital, so he’s still alive, but he had a collapsed lung from the gunshot wound.”
Brax pulled into Justin’s driveway, and Justin jumped out of the car before it fully stopped. He just needed to find his girl. To see that she was okay. Dawson opened the front door, but Justin didn’t stop to chat.
“Jessie!”
She walked out of the kitchen and tried to smile, but that lasted two seconds before her face crumpled. Fuck.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Isn’t that my question?”
“I… No, I’m not okay.”
Justin wrapped her up in a hug, and she sobbed against his shoulder. She wasn’t okay, and neither was he, but somehow they’d make it through this. Together.
“What can I do to make this better?” he murmured into her hair.
“Just stay with me. Don’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I love you, and I’m staying.”
She squeezed him tighter. “I love you too. More than anything.”
Midnight, and the horrifying details of the day’s events were emerging over a late dinner.
Ari and Brax had stayed, and Dawson was there with Violet.
Justin had been surprised when his old friend began dating a Hollywood actress, but now that he’d gotten to know Violet, he understood why.
Underneath the glitz, she had a good heart, and she hadn’t let fame change her.
In between movies, the two of them escaped the circus and lived like regular people.
Or as regular as they could when one of them was embroiled in a decade-old murder mystery.
And Ari was convinced of the “mystery” status.
Jerry too, apparently, although she’d disappeared into the shadows again.
Whatever happened in that house with Ruby, it was becoming clear that “man killed woman, man went to prison” had been a vast oversimplification.
An unidentified assailant had tried to kidnap Jessie as leverage, threatened to harm her unless Justin confessed to a murder he hadn’t committed. What if they’d done the same to Levi?
Justin had felt the walls closing in after two days in a cell.
Levi had been locked up for ten years.
Levi, the man they’d shared a home with, eaten meals with, built their lives with.
They thought he’d betrayed them, but what if it was the other way around?
How the fuck were they supposed to fix this?
The forest was still crawling with cops, two more people were dead, and Justin was sitting in his kitchen, eating pizza as nausea roiled in his stomach. Go home and move on, Special Agent Rimer had said. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Like hell she was.
“What do we do now?” he asked nobody in particular. “What on earth do we do?”
“We’re going to find the truth,” Ari told him. She understood exactly what he was asking.
“How? We’re already ten steps behind.”
“Maybe we are, but whoever’s responsible for this, they’re rattled. They’re making mistakes. We find every loose thread, and we tug on it, and we keep pulling until the whole damn cover-up unravels.”
“Carefully,” Dawson added.
That was the most important thing of all. It wasn’t lost on Justin how close he’d come to losing Jessie today, and he hadn’t even been there to protect her. He never wanted to let her out of his sight again.
“How do we know it’s a ‘they’? The man Jessie shot in the woods was alone.”
“Was he? We don’t know that for sure. The Wednesday Walkers would have scared off any accomplices, and don’t forget the stars. One pentagram, one Star of David.”
Right. How could Justin have forgotten that Jerry somehow stole a fucking body? No, she hadn’t owned up to it, but Brax said she had plenty of shady friends, and she’d as good as confessed by setting them all up with an alibi beforehand.
“We can’t poke the bear. I’m not risking Jessie being harmed again.”
It was Jessie herself who disagreed. “We have to. Burying our heads in the sand will never work; Ridge taught me that. I tried so freaking hard to please him, for years, and he always wanted more, more, more. I should have left earlier. Okay, I should never have married him in the first place, but I didn’t know any better back then. ”
“They hit us, so we need to punch back twice as hard,” Ari said.
Justin didn’t like it, but he understood where they were coming from. Did he want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder? Maybe they wouldn’t come for him again, but the idea of seeing Jessie with a star carved into her chest…
“Where do we start? What threads do we have?”
“We have the video from Blackstone House. There’s something we’re missing. Plus Serafina has more information, I’m sure of it. And there might be an autopsy report coming.”
“From the man in the forest? What will that tell us, other than he was shot?”
“From Amie.”
“You mean Jerry—”
“She’ll admit nothing.” Ari’s phone vibrated on the table. She checked the notifications and raised an eyebrow. “Speak of the devil.”
“Jerry?”
“Serafina. She wants to know what happened.” Ari was already typing away.
“Bad news travels fast.”
“The media arrived before the cops. I’ll tell her we haven’t identified the second dead guy yet.”
“Should we be speaking with her?”
“At this stage, yes, I think we should.”
Ari’s phone buzzed again, and this time, both her eyebrows winged up.
“What?” Justin asked.
“Serafina says, ‘Hard to be sure with most of his face missing, but the coat and hair remind me of a man I saw in the cemetery near Ruby’s grave. P.S. You’re still a bunch of arseholes.’”
“It’s all connected, isn’t it? Past and present.”
“Unfortunately.”
“What’s Serafina like? You were there for the meeting?”
“Nervous. Out of her depth. I’m fairly sure her relationship with Levi goes beyond the professional.”
Justin’s twenties had been scarred by a series of failed engagements, but Levi managed to find a girlfriend from prison? Damn.
“We should help her,” Jessie said. “I know what it’s like to have a boyfriend accused of murder and nobody listens when you say he didn’t do it.”
“We will. But this isn’t a straightforward case. Whoever’s behind these murders isn’t going to slink away quietly, and I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better.”
“What the hell did we get tangled up in?”
“The question we should be asking is ‘what the hell did Ruby get tangled up in’?”
Ruby. She’d been sweet and kind, a woman who could walk into a crowd and leave with twenty new friends. A beacon, a dreamer, a ray of light on a dark day. The idea of her being anything but an unlucky victim didn’t sit right.
But how well had Justin truly known her?
What secrets had she been hiding behind that sunny smile?
Now when he looked back, he realised she’d never truly let anyone in, and between attending college, working at the bar, and partying with friends, she’d spent more time outside of Blackstone House than in it.
One of her friends had disappeared too, Tina, and at the time, nobody thought much of it because firstly, she’d messaged Grey to say she was on her way to Florida, and secondly, Tina was a free spirit.
A wanderer. Every time she got a little money, she took off on another trip. But then she’d never come back.
None of that had mattered when they thought Levi was guilty.
But now?
Now, there were so many questions.
Justin tightened his arm around Jessie and held her close. She was the one good thing to have come out of this mess, and he’d do whatever he had to do to keep her safe.