Lawman With A Cause

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Egan took a laptop from one of the desks and got her moving again toward the break room, but this time it was Ian who stopped them. He gave Egan a thick file. “You said you wanted to go through that,” Ian commented. “I can do it for you. I mean, you need to get some rest.”

Jordan didn’t know what was in that file, but Egan didn’t take Ian up on his offer. He simply told the deputy to come and get him if there was any hint of a problem, and he led Jordan to the break room.

Yes, it was as bare-bones as she had remembered with a kitchenette, sofa and chair. The attached bathroom wasn’t much bigger than a storage closet. Egan put the file and laptop on a small table next to the chair.

“You can take the couch,” she said when he took several blankets and pillows from one of the lockers.

“I’m not the one who got shot tonight.” He motioned to the bag that the medic had brought and dropped the bedding on the sofa. “Take your meds and get some rest.” Egan immediately poured himself a cup of coffee, took it to the chair and opened the file.

“If you’re drinking coffee, you must not be planning on getting any sleep,” she pointed out.

He made a sound of agreement and started thumbing through the papers in the file. Since he obviously wasn’t in a chatting mood, Jordan grabbed a bottle of water so she could take the pills, but instead of heading straight to the sofa, she walked in Egan’s direction to get a look at what had captured his attention.

And her stomach went to her knees.

Because the first thing she saw was a picture of a dead woman. Even though it was impossible to tell the woman’s identity from the photo alone, the name was beneath the grisly image.

Breanna Culver.

The woman who’d gotten Shanna’s liver. Receiving that organ had saved Breanna’s life, but she certainly wasn’t alive in the photo. The shot had been taken after the horrific car wreck that had killed her.

Egan looked up at her, and while he didn’t look especially pleased about her looming over him, he didn’t close the file or tell her to move away.

“When the doctor was examining you, I texted Ian to print out everything on the other two dead women,” Egan explained.

Yes, but there seemed to be more in that file than just that. When he moved aside another page, she saw the police report on Shanna’s murder.

Jordan had read it, of course. Actually, she could probably tell him word for word everything that was in it. But she couldn’t figure out why Egan was looking at it now. Certainly, he didn’t want all those painful memories brought to the surface at a time like this. Maybe, though, the memories were always with him.

They were always with her.

“I have to look at all the angles,” he said. “What happened tonight and what happened to those other two women might be linked to Shanna. Or someone could just want it to appear as if it is.”

She thought about that a moment. “You’re talking about Christian now.”

He didn’t need to confirm that, but since they were on the subject of the possibly dirty cop, she opened up the laptop and made her way to the online files.

“I don’t like that Christian went to visit Leeroy,” Egan added a moment later.

Neither did Jordan, and she’d considered calling Christian about that. But it could wait. The numbing medication was wearing off from where she’d had her stitches, and the wound was starting to throb. Best if she had a clear head when she confronted Christian. And it would indeed be a confrontation since he had no right to go to Leeroy with any of this.

She opened the computer files where she’d had some crossover with Christian and passed the laptop to Egan. “Like I said, I do death penalty reviews. Just to make sure corners weren’t cut, etc. And those are the two cases I flagged. Both were arrests that Christian made.”

Egan immediately began to read through them. “What made you suspicious about them?”

Jordan hoped this didn’t make her sound foolish. “Gut feeling. Christian was the only officer on scene for both arrests. Both of the prisoners claimed he set them up. I know, a lot of people in prison insist that happened,” she added. “But this just felt like something I should look at a little closer.”

Egan lifted his head and made eye contact with her. “And Christian knows about these closer looks?”

She nodded. “I think he’d like for me to back off, but that, of course, only makes me want to dig deeper.”

Egan made another of those sounds of agreement and went back to reading the file. The reading, though, came to an abrupt halt, and she saw him go stiff. “Christian was supposed to be one of the officers on scene the night Shanna was murdered.”