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The officer glanced up in surprise. “But she—”
“I don’t fucking care what she did!” I yelled. “I said let her go!”
Both the officer and Mae took a step back, and the cuff disappeared from her wrist, as did the officer’s grip. He scuttled out of the apartment and hightailed it down the hallway. Probably terrified of me. I couldn’t blame him. I was as up and down as a roller coaster. But the one thing I knew for certain was that I’d stepped over the line, and I needed to apologize to Mae.
“Sorry,” I murmured, running a hand through my hair. “I was out of line.”
Mae wasn’t as quick to forgive. Her gaze still flashed with anger. “I don’t believe Heath did this, Boston. I don’t. You need to listen to me. It looks bad, I know. I thought that, too. But now that I’ve had a minute to think about it—”
My phone binged with an incoming message, and I edged away to open it. I swallowed hard as I read the message, and then turned to Mae. “It doesn’t matter what you think. Or what I think. Heath Michaelson just admitted to murder.”
13
BOSTON
Halfway to Heath Michaelson’s place in Saint View, I found myself trailing the other cop cars and an ambulance. Four vehicles, all headed to the same destination, but none of them had skin in the game the same way that I did. So even though I was the last one to park my vehicle, I was the first one out and racing through the doors of the shabby apartment building.
The chief’s shouts splintered through the quiet morning, but I wasn’t stopping for anyone. He could try to take me off this case all he wanted, but I wasn’t listening. The man who had killed my best friend was inside this apartment. I’d be the one who spoke to him. I’d be there when he admitted what he’d done. And I’d be the one to make sure a lethal injection was put in his arm.
I stopped dead in the lobby.
Johnson and Stewart dragged a near lifeless body out between them. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and his feet trailing along the ground. His head hung limply, bloodied hair plastered to his forehead, and one eye swollen so tight it was completely closed.
Nausea rose in my gut at the sickening sight of damaged flesh and open wounds. “What the hell happened?”
The older cop gave me a hard stare. “He confessed. You can thank me later.”
I glanced over at Stewart, younger by probably twenty years and not long out of the academy. He refused to meet my gaze.
“His confession is no good if you beat the shit out of him to get it,” I snapped. “For fuck’s sake, is he even alive?” I rushed forward to pull Heath’s head back and pressed my fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse. I breathed a sigh of relief when there was a steady thump.
This wasn’t right. Jayela never would have stood for torturing someone into a confession. Instinctively I knew that even in her own murder investigation, she would have wanted everything above board. What these two cops had done to this man was so low, the board wasn’t even close.
Johnson narrowed his eyes at me. “Do you know what the scumbag did? Did you see? He’s an animal. And Jayela was one of us. We did what we had to do to restrain him.”
Anger boiled up. “If what you did isn’t legal—if you threatened, and coerced, or beat him until he said what you wanted him to say—none of it will stand up in court.”
“It’ll stand up. He’ll go down for this.”
I shook my head slowly. If they’d screwed this up because of Johnson’s fucking crush on Jayela, then there’d be a good chance of me fighting murder charges right alongside Heath. “If this man walks free because of your negligence, it’s you I’m coming for.” I pointed a finger in the older cop’s face. “You hear me? Get him to a fucking ambulance. He looks like shit.”
He scowled at me, and it was so fucking tempting to punch the old coot in the head. But Michaelson seemed to be getting worse by the minute, the color draining from his face. There was no way he was dying on my watch. He would stand trial, and then he would spend his life rotting in jail, paying for what he did. If not worse.
A heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I flinched beneath the touch.
Chief frowned at me. “You know what I’m going to say. You can’t be in on this case, son. We both know that.”
I hung my head, some of the fight going out of me. He was right. If those other two cops hadn’t beaten the shit out of Heath, I might have. That only made me as bad as them.
Chief glanced at me with pity in his gaze. “It’s over. We got the guy. There’s no need for you to be at work and involved in the details. Take some time off. See a counselor.”
I didn’t even try to argue. The adrenaline was wearing off, and shock was setting in. My head was a mass of confusion and exhaustion. It was barely nine in the morning, and yet I felt like I’d lived a thousand lives in the space of a few hours.
“Come on. Go home. That’s an order.”
He was right. With a shake in my hand I couldn’t ignore, I managed to make it back to my townhouse, though it took several tries with the keys before my hand was steady enough to get the door open.
Right there in the entryway, on the little table that I threw my keys on every night, was a photo of me and Jayela. We both grinned out from the image, our arms slung around each other as best friends do. I realized with a start it had been taken during the time she was with Heath. We’d gone out with him, Mae, Tori, and Will, to see a band that Jaye and I both loved.
