32. Luke
Luke
My feet felt like they were floating above the ground. I still couldn’t believe that I was going to be a father.
A dad.
A kick to my ribs jolted a breath from my lungs.
Even listening to Newgate chatter away to anyone who would listen couldn’t put a damper on my mood.
“Hey, man. Did you enjoy your days off?” Monroe stopped by my desk.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” I could feel the goofy smile spread across my face that I had to rein in. “Thanks for covering my shift yesterday.”
“It was no problem.” He stood by my desk awkwardly for a moment, “Alright, well.”
“We’re good, Matt,” I told him with a quick head nod.
He returned my gesture before walking back to his own space.
We were still making progress on what the dynamic between us looked like.
It was never going to be not shitty, what he and Jules did, but it was in the past. And I was happier than I’d ever been, thanks to their indiscretion, so there was no use holding on to any animosity.
I was working my way up the unread emails from oldest to newest. The Massachusetts State Forensic Lab had sent a report. I quickly double-clicked to open it. It wasn’t about the Karrigan case like I had hoped, but it was a hit on an open investigation.
“Monroe. Come here,” I called from across the room. “Did you see this?” I asked as he looked over my shoulder to read the report. Written clear as day, Tyler Cress’s DNA was a match to the evidence found at Geller’s Pharmacy.
“No. They must have sent it to you since you submitted the evidence.” I gave him a minute to read through it. “Fuck yeah. A fucking break, finally.”
“I knew that dude was trouble,” I said. He may have gotten away with the assault on Daisy—for now—but he wasn’t getting out of this. “The second person in the video has to be Owen Hayden. Those two are inseparable.”
“In the earlier break-ins, there were three of them.”
Instantly, I knew. What a fucking idiot I was.
“And who ran with that crowd up until about four months ago?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
“Ryan fucking Redmond.”
“Let’s pay him a visit.” I grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair, not waiting for Monroe to catch up. He followed me outside a second later, getting into the passenger seat of the department’s SUV.
Despite the fact that some of our evidence wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up, and Redmond’s lawyer had been made aware of that, Ryan was still being held without bail in the county jail.
Monroe and I signed in and were chatting with the warden while we waited to see if Redmond would talk to us. I had no issue with waiting for his attorney, but I hoped it was sooner rather than later. Now that I had something to go off, I wanted to keep the momentum going.
One of the guards popped his head into the office a few minutes later. “Redmond is willing to talk. He’s in room 3C. He said he doesn’t need his lawyer.”
“Thanks,” I told him, turning back to the warden. “Appreciate your time, Warden Shea. We’ll let the guard know when we’re all done in there.”
Monroe followed me to the interview room, where a guard was standing by the door.
The small room was furnished with a table and four chairs. The overly bright fluorescent lights lit up the space. Redmond was sitting at a table, his hands in cuffs, while another guard waited inside the room with him.
“We’ve got it. Thank you,” Monroe told him, effectively dismissing him.
“Ryan. Thanks for agreeing to meet with us. Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer present for this conversation?” I asked him.
“My lawyer’s trash. It wouldn’t make a fucking difference if he was here or not.”
Okay. I honestly couldn’t blame him. His lawyer had been notified about the suspicious evidence over two weeks ago, and he still hadn’t filed a motion to dismiss based on that alone.
It may not be successful—we had other evidence linking Ryan to Alana—but any decent lawyer would at least shoot his shot.
“Listen. We’re not here to talk about Alana…” I started.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said .
Monroe pulled out a chair across from him and sat down at the table. “That’s not what we’re here about today.”
From the case file, I laid out page after page of police reports documenting each break-in.
“I know you were involved in the break-ins around town before your arrest. Tyler Cress and Owen Hayden have kept up with them in your absence, and truthfully, it’s pissing me off.
I want those jackasses off the street,” I said.
Specifically, Tyler, but I didn’t want to tip my hand just yet.
The last thing I needed was for Ryan to find a way to tip Tyler off. “Talk to us, Ryan.”
He took a minute, scanning the documents laid out in front of him without saying a word. When his eyes met mine, I could see the resignation, the need to talk warring within him.
“I’m no saint. I never claimed to be. I’ve fucked up.
Made some bad choices. But I was going to turn it all around.
” His fingers pushed at the edges of the pages, his downcast eyes deep in thought.
“Alana was so fucking good, man. You don’t even understand.
How a girl like her could fall for a fuckup like me, but she did.
I loved Alana, and she loved me. I told Tyler that I was done.
I wanted to be the man she deserved, you know?
” He glanced up, his eyes holding a grave sadness as he blinked back the pools of tears that were welling up.
“I was done being reckless and stupid, done being high all the time. And then everything went to shit. Alana died. I got locked up for her murder.”
“Tyler knew you wanted to clean up your act? He knew that Alana was the reason?” I asked.
“Yeah. It wasn’t a secret—well, it was because of our ages—but Tyler and Owen knew. He fucked with me all the time because of it. I wasn’t into running around with them causing havoc anymore.”
“Who was calling the shots, Ryan?” Monroe asked. “It wasn’t you. They didn’t even slow down once you were out of commission. Who’s in charge?”
“Owen Hayden is a fucking patsy. He doesn’t have the brains or the balls to pull off anything. Tyler’s the one with the plans,” he said.
I went through everything Ryan had told us in my head. I kept coming back to the same theory. My gut was telling me there was more to this. It wasn’t just the break-ins around town, or harassing Scarlett and making vague threats, or the assault on Daisy. It was all of it.
“You drive,” I said to Matt as we made our way back to the parking lot. “I have to make a call.”
I pulled up the Massachusetts State Forensic Lab’s contact info and made the call. After getting bounced around and being put on hold, I finally got the forensic scientist on the line who had submitted the results for the burglary case.
“Good afternoon, this is Officer Luke Wilder at the Calla Bay Police Department. I have an urgent request that I was hoping you could move up to the top of your priority list. It should only take a minute.” I explained to them what I was looking for: a second analysis of the cigarette found by Alana’s body, but this time matched against the sample from Tyler Cress’s arrest.
I put the call on speaker, listening to the clickety-clack of her keyboard through the phone. “Officer Wilder, can you confirm your badge number, along with the case identification number?”
I gave her the information and was put back on hold.
“Sir, I cannot provide the results over the phone due to security measures, but the preliminary report has been sent over to the email address on file. A detailed report will follow shortly.” I opened my mouth to thank her for her quick response, but before I could get a word out, she continued.
“I suggest you check it out right away.”
Adrenaline pumped through my veins. My eyes locked with Matt’s.
He threw the flashing lights on and hit the gas.
I pulled out the department-issued laptop and logged in with my credentials.
The report was sitting at the top of my email.
Preliminary results indicated a 99.998% match between Tyler Cress and the cigarette used on Alana’s body and left at the scene of the crime.
“Fuck. We’ve got him, Monroe. It wasn’t Redmond. It was Cress who killed Alana Karrigan. You get us to his house, I’ll work on the arrest warrant,” I told him.
I called Chief Williams to ask him to call in a favor, the call going straight to voicemail.
I left a message for him and disconnected.
This wasn’t something we could sit on though.
Now that I knew that a murderer was still out there, walking the streets of my usually sleepy town, I felt too wired to wait it out.
I dialed Captain Langston next. He didn’t hold the same pull as the chief, but he had his own connections.
We just needed one judge to issue a warrant.
We had the guy dead to rights on both the burglary case and the murder case.
Pick one, it didn’t matter to me, as long as we got him locked up and off the streets.
“Captain, I’ve got good news, but I’m going to need a favor,” I told him when he answered the call.
I filled him in on the breakthrough evidence, the connection between Tyler and Alana, the results of the preliminary report.
“We need an arrest warrant, ASAP, Captain. Can you pull some strings and make that happen?”
“That is quite the breakthrough.” His voice was strained, and I wondered if I’d caught him at a bad time. “Good job, Detectives. Leave it with me. I’ll ring you back as soon as it’s all set.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
Even without an arrest warrant, we had enough to bring him in for questioning. Matt pulled up in front of Owen Hayden’s place, where Tyler was last known to be staying.
We didn’t even have to knock on the door when it opened in front of us, Owen standing in the doorway.