Chapter 78
Dom listened as Hope laid out what she had found, starting a week after Steve Wilson had attacked her sister. No one was focusing on the direct attacks on Heather now—they needed something else. Something going back even further.
“It stood out to me because statistically, it just didn’t make sense.
Cops just don’t die as frequently as they seem to around here.
There are more cops disappearing and dying in Finley Creek alone by a factor of five compared to the US average.
And then I started looking at this list here.
It’s just numbers, yes, but…when I had a list of dead cops—I started to see the pattern.
Well, honestly, it wasn’t me who first saw it.
It was Crispin. She sees patterns in everything and she was sitting next to me while I was writing things down. She’s kind of scary.”
“So is her clone, sweetie,” Murdoch said, kissing the baby on her head. “It’s a family thing.”
Hope’s niece was sound asleep in Murdoch’s arms as if she’d been there a thousand times.
Dom looked at that baby again. For one moment he wondered what Murdoch felt right now—his own wife Zoey would have a baby in September.
They had two kids—Zoey’s younger sister and brother, no more than six and three, he thought—and Murdoch was fully responsible for those kids now. They had a family.
Miguel’s baby girl was right there, too, climbing all over Hope and Madison. Madison would want a family some day. She’d be a beautiful mother.
The thought that another man would be the father—no. Dom wasn’t okay with that.
That woman was his.
Even more so now.
He didn’t regret last night. He never would. He just didn’t know what in the hell was going to happen next. A wife and three or four kids had always terrified him before.
“So you are telling me that we are averaging seven dead cops within less than one hundred miles of Finley Creek and Wichita Falls for years—and no one has noticed?” Miguel asked. “How long? How far back does this go?”
“From what I found,” Hope started, passing him the little girl in her arms when Emilia reached for her daddy.
Those two—they acted like a long-married couple already.
Dom still didn’t think the gremlin was even aware of it.
“It started kind of slow, no more than two or three per year beginning about forty-five years ago. The first one was in Garrity. It stood out because…Garrity. And it was like a month after…Bonnie’s mom…
you know. She was sexually assaulted and murdered when Bonnie was four.
I couldn’t really find anything before that year.
And most of the cops who disappeared did so from the same county—back then.
Not now, and I could kind of see where it started to branch out. Thirty-five years ago.”
“That’s probably where what I found begins,” Madison said. “I noticed the same patterns, but I didn’t know it was in Garrity County, too. Or that far back.”
These two women—and Heather—had stumbled right into this. Dom wasn’t even fully certain what it was they had found. Yet.
“So I found deposits. Large amounts of money, like always more than twenty grand. Then I started tracking other deposits against death records, and even some of the cops who actually died, like in accidents and things. There were a bunch of car accidents and fires. And one guy was run over by a lawn mower, but he wasn’t actually autopsied or anything.
And the same four medical examiners signed off on a lot of them.
But three of them are dead now, too. One works here.
He’s the head of our M.E.’s office, so I didn’t want to say anything.
I didn’t want to start trouble or anything. ”
They would be talking to that M.E. very, very soon.
Dom looked at the printouts the gremlin had spread over the kitchen table in almost awe. There had to be more than two hundred pages of printouts right there.
“I have more stuff, too. Here. I found autopsy reports for the cops who had them. I just…” She looked up at Miguel, a hesitant expression on her beautiful face.
“Heather’s friend…Curtis. He died from cancer—he legit died from cancer.
But his wife was killed on Halloween in a car accident.
She used to work for the TSP, too. And…they haven’t caught the guy yet.
It was a hit-and-run. Joy has her little girl now.
And I…don’t think it was really an accident or anything…
what if…it wasn’t? So—Joy has her personal effects.
Crispin and I got into her computer and found…
she had some things in emails from Curtis.
On some of his old cases. And the numbers match some of my lists.
I think he was working on it before he got sick.
I gave that to Heather, right before Daniel made her go to Wyoming.
I don’t think she ever had time to do anything with it. ”
“Give me everything she found,” Miguel said. His hand covered Hope’s back as she passed Miguel’s youngest to Madison. The baby girl was going back and forth to them all. “I’ll look at it. I…hell, Curtis was one of my closest friends.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” A look passed between Hope and Miguel, one that made a man slightly uncomfortable to see. Those two—there was such a connection there. No one could miss it.
He’d heard the same thing about him and the shrew of his dreams.
Dom just looked at Madison for a moment, as she rocked that toddler in her arms.
If there was any woman on the planet he’d want to have kids with—it was her.
Talk about knocking a man sideways.
Dom just focused on the papers in front of him.
If what the gremlin had found was legit—that had just changed the entire trajectory of their investigation.
It wasn’t just a ring operating now. Or ten, fifteen, or even twenty years ago like they’d assumed after Kimball’s confession.
Forty-five, fifty, years? That was generational. It had to be.
Generational corruption within the TSP. Hell, those rumors had been circling around the TSP for years. Decades. That corruption had gotten good cops killed—including Elliot Marshall’s own father, mother, and two younger siblings.
Which fit everything else Kimball had said. Fit what they had heard before.
They were getting even closer to knowing the names of the bastards doing this now.
“We need every name even connected with homicide or missing persons cases going back forty-five years. TSP. This kind of cover-up had to have some help along the way.”
“I already have that,” Madison said. “I saw what Hope had found and her notes—and…I used the lab’s database to come up with a list.”
“You two are terrifying together, you know that?” Murdoch said, still rocking Heather’s baby as she settled back into sleep. “I shudder to imagine what the two of you will accomplish if you ever go rogue.”
Cops going rogue were exactly what they were talking about now. But Dom knew what Murdoch meant. These women were dangerous, in more ways than one.
“So we have this now,” Daniel said. “But what…does Heather know that we don’t?”
“That is a very scary question,” Jarrod said.
Well, Dom agreed with that. “But we have a real place to start now.”