For so long, she’d counted herself among the blessed, among those who had been granted peace for obedience, mercy for service, prosperity for generosity. God had rewarded her for serving him. But now the family curses seemed to be rearing their heads, and those blessings seemed as fragile as children’s bubbles. Maybe they weren’t blessings at all.
For Bob’s crimes, he’d faced a bullet. Now his sins were being exposed. The consequences were sure to fall on his wife and children. Once again, the man she’d believed to be godly and faithful had turned out to be a traitor.
“It’s not fair, Lord. My boys didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
With that thought, she parked next to one of the defunct gas pumps in front of Michael’s converted office. Cathy’s car was already there, and the unmarked FBI van pulled in behind her. Juliet tried to rein in her anger and grief. There was work to be done. She had to focus on facts, not emotion.
Special Agent Blue got out of the van as Juliet locked her door. “Who else is here?”
“Cathy, my attorney,” Juliet said. “And Michael Hogan. I want them both to hear this. What I learned impacts Michael too.”
Blue didn’t comment, but she didn’t look happy as she and Darren followed Juliet in.
C
athy could see that her sister was distraught, and it made her livid. They’d forced Juliet to do the unthinkable—face her husband’s mistress. Juliet was going to have a nervous breakdown if Cathy didn’t intervene. Immunity or not, enough was enough.
But Juliet seemed stronger than Cathy had expected. “As you heard,” she was saying to Special Agents Blue and Clement, “I didn’t get much out of Amber. She didn’t concede to any of the trafficking.”
“Then the trip was wasted?” Cathy bit out. “You had to suffer through that for nothing?”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Agent Clement said. “She admitted to the affair and the trip to the Bahamas. That proves she lied to us when we questioned her.”
“She took the baby to change his diaper,” Juliet said, “and when she did, I looked through a photo album on her coffee
table.” She looked at Cathy, then Michael, her eyes round with sorrow. “I saw a photo of her and Bob at a party, and another one taken at the same party. Bob wasn’t in that second one, but you won’t believe who was.”
Cathy frowned. “Who?”
Juliet swallowed hard, and her eyes welled. “Leonard Miller.”
Michael sucked in a breath, and Cathy came out of her seat. “What?”
“Yes. They weren’t together in the picture, but they were at the same party. Miller had hair covering that hideous tattoo on the back of his head, so he looked different, but I’d know that face anywhere.”
Blue looked at Clement. “Hold on here,” she said. “You all clearly know who Leonard Miller is, but you need to clue us in.”
“I remember who he is,” Darren Clement said.
Cathy started to answer, but couldn’t. At the flood of memory, she felt that tear-surge pressure in her nose, her eyes, and she didn’t want to cry in front of these people. She bit her lip and let Michael answer.
“Leonard Miller murdered my brother.” His voice shook. “Joe was a cop in the Major Crimes Unit for the Panama City Police Department—I worked there too—and he was working on a drug-trafficking ring. They had a sting operation scheduled, and when Joe’s team went to make the bust, Leonard Miller shot him.”
Clement nodded. “We considered taking that case, but it wasn’t clearly a case that crossed state lines, and the PCPD really wanted to take him down for murder one. Cop killer and all.”
“Yeah, only they didn’t. He got acquitted.”
That jogged Blue’s memory. “Oh, right. Because of the cop who lied on the stand.”
Michael slapped his chest. “That would be me.”
The memories sent a tremor through Cathy’s body, and she found her voice. “Michael didn’t lie. He had an affidavit by a woman who clearly had dementia, and she claimed she saw someone else shoot Joe. But all the other witnesses saw Miller do it.”
“I just forgot about her affidavit and didn’t think to give it to the detectives working the case. She wasn’t a credible witness.”
“Right. So they claimed you suppressed evidence,” Blue said.
“And the bad cop narrative turned the jury. Miller got off scot-free.” Michael swallowed hard. “So you’re telling us that Miller is involved in all this?”
It was too much. Cathy couldn’t process it. “And . . . you’re saying
Bob
was involved with Miller?”
Juliet couldn’t hold her tears back. “I don’t know if he was
involved
with him. They were just in the same room. Bob may not have noticed him. It could be a coincidence.” She pulled out her phone and showed them the pictures she’d taken.
As they all studied them, Juliet wiped her tears. “I feel like I’m in an episode of
The
Twilight
Zone
. Like Bob isn’t really Bob . . . he’s some person I don’t know.” She reached out to take Cathy’s hand. “Honey, I’m so sorry to tell you this.”
Cathy’s mind still raced to make the right connections. “Then let me get this straight,” she said, a little breathless. “Could Bob have been involved in all this as far back as Joe’s death? If he was. . .” Her voice faded off.
Juliet stared up at her. “Maybe . . . maybe he just found out after it happened. I can’t believe he was involved in Joe’s death in any way.”
Cathy shook her head. “But he did all this other stuff. Had a secret life, secret bank accounts, a secret family. If Bob was
involved with Miller, and Joe was getting close to bringing them all down—Bob’s whole secret world was at risk.”
Juliet sucked in a sob and wilted, covering her face. “I know. But he wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t be connected to that.”
“At the very least, he probably knew where Miller was all that time,” Michael said in a low voice. Cathy looked at him and saw the stiffness in the set of his chin, the suppressed anger in his eyes. “He knew Miller was still tangled up in crimes that could have gotten him sent away for years. He knew I was looking for Miller, hoping to nail him for something else . . .
anything
that would get him put away so he’d finally face justice. If Bob knew where he was and kept it quiet, he
must
have been connected to Miller.”
Michael turned to the agents. “How far back do you think Bob’s drug activities go?”
Clement spoke now. “One of the dummy corporations Bob used for laundering money was set up three years ago.”
Cathy felt the blood draining from her face.
“The question is,” Blue said, “what does all this tell us about why Bob was murdered?”
Juliet wiped her wet face and looked at them. “Amber didn’t even look that heartbroken. Maybe she turned on him.”
“Maybe. We need to know who else is involved,” Blue said.
Juliet straightened, new determination filling her eyes. “Tell me what to do to help find out. I’ll do whatever you say.”
J
uliet felt as though high blood pressure, a pounding heart, and trembling hands were her normal state these days. When the FBI agents left and Cathy walked Juliet to her car, Juliet realized that her own pain had now bled right into her sister. Cathy’s nose was red and her eyes were pink, and she had that distant look that she’d had in those first months after Joe’s death.
“Honey, are you all right?” Juliet asked.
Cathy met her eyes. “You’re asking me? You’re the one going through this.”
“You’re going through it too. I didn’t want to tell you about Bob and Leonard Miller, but in some ways, it gives us hope that we’ll be able to bring him to justice.” She opened her door, and Cathy went around and got in on the passenger side. Juliet knew she didn’t want a ride. Cathy’s car was just feet from hers. She let her sit there in silence, staring out the windshield.
“Michael’s calling Max. He’ll be as upset as we are.”
Juliet looked toward Michael’s office window. “Yeah, he will.”
“It’s just so wrong,” Cathy whispered. “If Joe were still here, we would have been married for almost two years by now. We’d probably have a baby. Joe would have been a great father.”
“Michael will be too.”
Cathy sighed. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get that far. We both feel so much guilt about our relationship. Like we’re both cheating on Joe. We seem a little stuck.”
“Life’s short, honey. Don’t waste time. You deserve to be happy, and Joe would want that for both of you.”
Cathy chafed her arms as though she were cold, even though it was balmy outside. “I get jealous of Holly sometimes, you know? That she’s the one pregnant. I know it’s not rational. She’s not even married . . . it’ll be so hard for her. But I feel my biological clock ticking, and instead of thinking of Michael, I always just go back to Joe and all those feelings of what might have been. I think Michael senses that.”
“He has the same feelings, Cathy. The what-might-have-beens. Maybe if we find Leonard Miller you two will get unstuck.”
“Yeah, maybe.” But Cathy seemed far away.
Juliet’s mind wandered too, images rolling like nightmare sequences through her mind. Bob with Leonard, discussing the plan that would take Joe down . . . his seeming compassion at the funeral . . . his out-loud prayers with her that justice would be done.
She wanted to drive into a tunnel somewhere and scream until her vocal cords shredded.
Cathy grabbed a tissue out of the box on Juliet’s console and wiped her nose.
Juliet looked at her. “Maybe . . . maybe Bob didn’t have anything to do with Joe’s murder. Maybe it was a shock to him too. I don’t know how I could live with a man and not know he’s capable of the things he was doing.”
“He was a good actor.”
“But I’ve always thought I was a good judge of character. You liked Bob, didn’t you?”
Cathy hesitated. “I would never have questioned his love for you or the kids. But he irked me sometimes.”
“How?”
“The way he took you for granted. He was gone so much, leaving you to do everything. Always distracted. And he seemed a little . . . full of himself.”
Juliet’s mouth fell open. “You never said that.”
“I knew you loved him. What was I going to say? I liked him in the early years.”
Juliet thought that over. “I was happy. I trusted him and believed in him. I know a little now about how Jesus felt when Judas betrayed him. When Jesus said someone would betray him, none of the disciples pointed to Judas and asked if it was him. But Jesus wasn’t fooled. I shouldn’t have been either.”
“Jesus could see into Judas’s heart, but you couldn’t see into Bob’s.”
Juliet was surprised that Cathy hadn’t changed the subject. She usually ran from spiritual conversations. “I did get irritated sometimes,” she said. “But I tried to live by the love chapter.”
“First Corinthians 13,” Cathy said. They both managed a smile. Their father had forced them to memorize it as children—even though, as they discovered later, he hadn’t followed it himself.
“The part that says ‘love does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered . . .’ ”
Cathy nodded. “‘Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ That’s how you were in your marriage.”
Juliet’s throat felt so tight she couldn’t speak. She had loved Bob, so if there were clues that he was cold and deceptive, she had deliberately chosen not to see them. She didn’t keep score and always tried to see the best in him, as she wanted him to do in her.
Was she just a stupid fool?
“If I could just understand . . . when did he decide to do this? What prompted it? At what point did he start to lie? What part of our lives was true?”
“It wasn’t all a lie,” Cathy said. “I remember your wedding. He was so happy, and so in love with you. I remember watching you two dance, and I prayed I would have someone love me that way someday. Somewhere along the way . . . he just fell.”
“But which came first? The affair or the crime ring? Sounds to me like the crime came first. That baby is only nine months old.”
Juliet looked out the window, wishing she could go back to being oblivious. Just a normal grieving widow, remembering her husband fondly. She could have kept loving him.
But now her love was edged with razor-sharp facts that left her bloody. Now Cathy and Michael were bloody too.
It was too much, all these revelations. Too many blows to the head, the heart.
Night was falling. The streetlights cast lovely circles of light on the street, and the homes in the neighborhood across
the road were lit up, families busy inside. She imagined them laughing, talking, arguing . . . unaware how quickly their lives could run off a cliff.
She wished she had enjoyed the good days more.
M
ichael stood at his office window, watching Cathy’s car pull away into the night. The news of Bob’s possible involvement with Leonard Miller had shaken her, and he hadn’t been able to erase the deep lines of grief etched on her face.
His own grief mirrored hers. Two years hadn’t been enough time to forget the pain of losing his brother, and now it seemed fresh, as if it had happened yesterday.
Headlights turned into his parking lot and stopped at the defunct gas pumps, left over from when this building had been a convenience store. As the door opened and the car lit up, he recognized Max.
Max leaned into the backseat, retrieved a box, and headed inside. Michael went back to the chair behind his desk and dropped into it, waiting.
His brother came into the front room, then seconds later appeared at Michael’s office doorway. “Hey.”
Michael glanced at the box. “Whatcha got?”
Max came in and set the box on the desk. He lowered himself into the chair in front of Michael’s desk. “All the files related to Joe’s death. Everything we had on Leonard Miller, plus the files having to do with the drug-trafficking case Joe was working on. I thought we could look over them now that we have this new information about Bob and Leonard Miller.”
Michael sat up, stunned that his brother would share this with him. Max opened the box, began unloading folders. “I know you were still at the department during the investigation. You know all this as well as I do. But it’s worth a review, right?”