Chapter Thirteen
Judson sat in the makeshift office area that Addie and he had set up in her bedroom and checked to see if an update of Jennifer’s recording had arrived on his laptop.
It hadn’t.
But he knew something like that could take time. It wasn’t just the accessing it from her phone but having the lab techs do thorough tests to make sure the recording didn’t contain a virus.
And that it was real.
With all the advancements in AI, it was getting easier for people to do realistic fakes of such things, and Jennifer had a motive to do something like that.
Well, she had motive if she wanted to cut her brother out of any inheritance from their mother, and a half a million was plenty of motive for her to want to do exactly that.
Since he didn’t yet have the recording, Judson moved on to the latest report from the CSIs while he did some multitasking.
He was keeping an eye on the twins, who were now asleep and listening for Addie in the shower.
Thankfully, Addie was taking her time in the bathroom, and he hoped it was helping to ease her knotted muscles as it’d done for Judson when he had finally been able to wash off the remnants of Yvette’s blood.
Now, listening to the water running and hearing her move around in there, he had tried not to think of Addie washing away blood.
Tried not to think of her fighting the images of a woman being gunned down in front of her.
Part of him wanted to go into the bathroom and try to soothe her. To check and see if she was all right.
But that would be playing with fire.
A naked Addie would be far too tempting, and an attempt at comfort might turn into full-blown sex. She didn’t need that now.
Probably not, anyway.
And he admitted that wasn’t a good thought to let stay in his head. He tried to shove it aside and focus on the report. Judson soon saw that it was dashcam footage not just from his cruiser but also the one Livvy had been driving when they’d come around that curve and seen Yvette.
Hell.
The camera had captured the woman dying.
Yeah, that was a way to yank his attention away from Addie and shower sex. It was the exact reminder he needed. They were in the middle of an intense murder investigation, and it needed his focus.
Judson watched the dash-cam feed frame by frame as it all played out again. Yvette running on the road toward them. The terror on her face as she begged for help. Help that hadn’t come in time, because one of the slowed images showed the impact of the shot slamming into her body.
But another of the frames showed something else.
And that’s what Judson zoomed in on now.
As that part of the road had just come into view, there was some movement in the trees to the right. Just a blur of motion, really, but judging from the location, it had almost certainly been Yvette’s killer.
According to the memo attached to the report, the lab techs were in the process of trying to enhance the blur, trying to come up with any small detail that would help them identify who it was.
Judson certainly couldn’t tell from that smeared image, but he was hoping for something of a miracle.
They needed to know who’d fired those shots so they could arrest him or her and put an end to the violence.
Judson swiveled around in his chair when he heard some movement in one of the bassinets, and he got up to check. Lily was wiggling and kicking her feet, but her eyes were still closed.
Still sleeping, well, like a baby.
It wasn’t a surprise, since it was something that Addie had said the girls would do for at least another two hours. He was hoping Addie herself would do the same soon and get some rest or at least eat some of the sandwiches that Grace had had delivered from the diner in town.
He went back to his work area, sitting and using the keys on his laptop to freeze the screen on that blur.
On the killer.
And he played around with enlarging it and trying to change the colors and pixels enough to coax out some more details.
He stopped again though when he heard Addie turn off the water in the shower.
She didn’t take long to dress because what seemed like less than a minute later, she came into the room wearing loose gray jogging pants and a black T-shirt.
Addie looked at him, their gazes connecting for a couple of heartbeats before she went to the bassinets to check on the babies. Then she turned, her attention settling on his laptop screen.
“What is that?” she asked, her eyes widening as she began to take it in. Addie headed straight toward him.
Judson sighed. Not that he could have kept this from her, but he’d hoped it could wait until the techs had managed to clean up the image. Maybe then he could have given her good news.
“It’s the feed from the dashcams in the cruisers,” he let her know and added, “You don’t want to see this.”
“Probably not,” she murmured. “But I need to.”
Hell. He debated if he could talk her out of this and decided the answer to that was no. So, Judson rewound it to the starting point of when he’d driven around the curve.
“Yvette,” she said, leaning in closer to the monitor.
He made a sound of agreement, and before they got to the part where the woman was shot, he reversed the feed again and froze it on the shooter.
Again, Addie went even closer, studying it and no doubt doing what he’d done. Trying to figure out who the heck that was.
“The techs are trying to clean this up,” he explained. “We might have something soon.”
She seemed to latch on to that, and he saw some hope creep into her eyes. But that hope apparently wasn’t going to get her to change her mind about continuing to view the footage where she would soon be seeing a woman murdered.
Judson was ready to let her take a look at all of it when his phone vibrated with a text. He’d shut off the sound so as not to wake the babies, but it still made a noise when it skittered on the surface of the desk.
“It’s from Rory,” he relayed to her. And then he saw the attachment. Not the dash-cam footage but something else that he’d been waiting for. “It’s the recording that Jennifer gave Grace.”
Judson welcomed the interruption and figured the recording wouldn’t be nearly as gruesome as the dash-cam footage. At least he hoped it wasn’t. But then, Jennifer had accused her brother of trying to murder her.
“The lab has authenticated it,” he continued, reading through the info that Rory had sent along with the attachment.
“It’s real, and they’ve confirmed it’s actually Jennifer and Shane speaking on the recording.
The techs were able to do a voice analysis using the statements they both gave during their interviews. ”
“When did Jennifer record this?” Addie asked.
Judson found that in the notes, too. “According to the time stamp, it was one week ago today.”
He adjusted the volume so it would be loud enough for them to hear but hopefully wouldn’t carry to the bassinets. When he clicked the play function, he immediately heard Shane’s voice.
“I repeat,” Shane snarled. “We have to do something to snap Mom back to her senses. She’s letting Trevor rule the roost, and if that continues, you and I are going to be flat broke.”
“It’s Mom’s money,” Jennifer replied.
“Yeah, but we’re her kids, and if we don’t do something and do it fast, Trevor will spend every last dime of it. If Mom was thinking straight, she’d want her own flesh and blood to have an inheritance.”
Jennifer huffed. “She’s got a blind spot when it comes to Trevor. She’ll never choose us over him.”
“She will if she has no choice,” Shane spat out.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked after some hesitation.
“I mean, we have to do something. If she starts using again or drinking, then we can have her declared incompetent. We can take control of her estate. It’d be easy enough to tempt her into going back to her old ways. All I need is you to back me up. Us against Trevor.”
Jennifer was silent for several seconds. “What are you saying, Shane? Are you planning on pushing Mom to use drugs or start drinking again?”
“It would only be temporary,” Shane replied, as if he were certain that something like that would be reversible and not just flat-out wrong.
Or dangerous if Yvette overdosed. “And then after we have her estate under our control, we can give Trevor the boot and get Mom into rehab. Once she’s free of Trevor, she’ll understand we did all of this for her. ”
“You’re doing it for you,” Jennifer snapped. “So you can get her money.” She groaned. “I can’t believe you’d consider drugging her.”
“I didn’t say I’d do it,” Shane fired back. “But she could be…nudged in that direction. Maybe nudged into doing some other things that would help us get her declared incompetent.”
“You are truly despicable.” Jennifer added some harsh profanity to go along with that. “I won’t help you ruin a woman so you can get her money, and if you try it, I’ll tell her what’s going on.”
Now, it was Shane who cursed, and even though Judson’s phone vibrated with another incoming text, he continued listening to the recording.
“Right, go whining to Mommy about me,” Shane taunted.
“You don’t speak to her for weeks. You shove her away when her emotions catch up with her, and now you want to protect her.
Do it,” he stated like a threat. “And you’ll be sorry.
I’ll come after you with both barrels and manage to convince Mom that you’re lying. She’ll believe me over you any day.”
“I can make her see what you are,” Jennifer said, but there wasn’t a whole lot of conviction in her voice.
“Do that, sis.” The word came out like the deadliest of venom. “Just remember, both barrels. I’m not going to let you get in the way of what I need to do to fix this mess she’s gotten herself into.”
With that, the recording ended, leaving Judson to wonder if it was truly the end of the conversation between the siblings or if Jennifer had only provided them with what she’d wanted them to hear.