Page 7 of Hard Heart

“Well, they’re a part of it. But he was working on a project to develop clean energy, and his supervisor died right after Sykes’s trial ended. There’s talk online that Big Oil wanted the two of them out of the way. A climate action group has written a number of articles on the subject.”

“Sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theory mumbo-jumbo.”

It did, I couldn’t deny it, and if I’d only read that part, I’d have been saying the same thing. But Sykes’s application held an undeniable intrigue. He didn’t pretend to have all the answers; in fact, he had more questions. In his mind, the only certainty was that he hadn’t killed Ruby Costello.

“I guess it does.”

“We need to focus on Jones, Stevens, and Montenegro, and also look through the rest of those applications. Believe me when I say you don’t want to go down a rabbit hole of internet rumours and lose your mind.”

There was something about the way she said that… “Do you speak from experience?”

After a long pause, Raelene nodded. “Her name was Tasha Corrigan. She worked as an aide for a congressman from South Carolina, and she was convicted of murdering her baby daughter.”

“You don’t believe she did it?”

“Not with intent.” Raelene sighed. “It’s a long story—let’s get coffee.”

CHAPTER 3

SERAFINA

“It was a big drama at the time,” Raelene said once we’d waited for the coffee machine to work its magic. She took two sugars and plenty of milk, while I drank mine black. “Tasha Corrigan’s daughter died of hyperthermia. A neighbour mowing his lawn spotted her strapped into her car seat in the back of Tasha’s SUV and called the emergency services, but they couldn’t save her.”

“I’ve heard of similar cases. Don’t they call it Forgotten Baby Syndrome?”

“They do. It’s a known phenomenon, a memory lapse that has tragic consequences. But here’s the thing—Tasha always denied she left the baby in the car. She swore blind that she carried her into the house, waited until she fell asleep in her crib, and went to take a nap herself.”

“That seems…”

“Weird? Yup. If she’d admitted her mistake and shown remorse, maybe things wouldn’t have ended up as bad as they did, but she stuck to her story. Reading between the lines, the jury didn’t like that. They were looking for tears, not denial.”

“They convicted her of…what? Involuntary manslaughter?”

“Murder.”

“Murder? How did they get to murder?”

“It was no secret that Tasha struggled with being a mom. Her relationship was in trouble, and she suffered from postpartum depression. She was seeing a therapist. The prosecution alleged that the crime was premeditated, that she knew exactly what she was doing when she left Livvy in the car to die.”

“But you don’t think she did?”

“I think she was under a lot of stress. Here’s where it gets really screwy—she was a whistleblower, and she claimed she’d just handed evidence of corruption over to a journalist.”

“Did the journalist confirm that?”

“He might have, if he hadn’t died three days after she was arrested.”

A chill crept up my spine. “He died? From natural causes?”

Deep down, I feared I already knew the answer.

“That depends on your definition of ‘natural causes.’ His blood alcohol was zero point two percent when he was run over. The driver said he stumbled out from behind a parked car, and she couldn’t avoid him, but she was on the phone at the time, so…”

“So it was more of a self-inflicted accident?”

“Sure looked that way. The driver was convicted of reckless vehicular homicide.”

“A tragedy all around,” I murmured. “Do you know what the corruption was about?”