CHERYL HAYES STOOD just outside Julia’s front door, smoking.
“You smoke? What does that do to your running?”
Hayes held the cigarette away from her and regarded its glowing tip.
“I quit smoking years ago. That’s when I started running—something to take my mind off how badly I wanted a cigarette. But guess what? No matter how fast or far I go, I’ve never outrun that craving. Figured if ever there was a time to relapse, tonight is it.”
She took a deep drag, then tilted her head back and blew a series of smoke rings that wavered and dissolved in the air above their heads. “Ah. I was afraid I’d forgotten how.”
“You knew,” Julia said. “All along, you knew.”
Hayes took another drag, so deep that a cough racked her body.
“I suspected,” she said, when she’d recovered. “I was trying to get hard evidence. But people kept ending up dead.”
“You saved my son, didn’t you? That night Mack Coates got him away from me on the playground?”
“Maybe I just happened to be running by.” Said in a way that let Julia know there was no happenstance about it.
“Thanks.” Such an inadequate word. “Why didn’t you say anything about Wayne?”
Are you really that fucking stupid? Words left unspoken, but Hayes’s look made them clear.
She blew a few more smoke rings. “You know what it’s like being the only woman in a department that runs on testosterone? All the Just kidding, don’t be so sensitive remarks I heard all day, every day?”
The end of the cigarette burned perilously close to her fingertips. She studied it, then dropped it onto the walk and toed it into near-oblivion. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any of those on you? I bummed one from a highway patrolman.”
“I never smoked. But if I did, I’d give you the whole pack.”
Hayes stared at the bits of paper and flakes of tobacco on the walk as though wishing she could reassemble them.
“I didn’t have any problem with turning all of their asses in. But God, Julia. They were killing people! I thought Billy was a one-off. I knew Ray didn’t kill him but figured I could take my time, get rock-solid evidence, and then bring it to Claudette. But then there was Miss Mae. And I started wondering about Leslie Harper. I’d been talking with her, you know.”
Julia started. “I didn’t know.”
“She wanted to meet with people in law enforcement about reforms. I was happy to volunteer. God know there’s more than enough that needs fixing. I hinted to her, without telling her outright, that there needed to be some mechanism to handle corruption within departments. You know how it works now—each agency handles its own oversight. And they wonder why nobody ever finds anything wrong.”
She snorted and paced a few steps. “I finally came right out and told her that maybe our own department could use a look-see. You knew Harper, right?”
“A little. I always liked her.”
“Then you know how sharp she was. She was all over it in a flash. And then she was gone.” Her lips twisted. “If she’d had the same security camera setup that you installed, my guess is the recording would show our own Deputy Peterson showing up on her doorstep the night she died.”
Wayne. Her friend, in the casual sense of workplace friendships. Wayne, who joked with her in the courthouse hallways, bought her the occasional coffee, and sometimes even shared juicy tidbits about his work, as long as it didn’t involve someone she was defending.
Hayes looked at her as though she were reading her thoughts. “He wasn’t a good guy, Julia. Or maybe he was, but in that humans-are-complicated way.” Offering her an out.
Julia, still trying to reconcile the joshing, helpful Wayne of old with the man who’d threatened to snap her son’s neck, took an easy mental step across a line.
“No. You’re right. He wasn’t a good guy. What happens to you now? You’ve got to go back into a department where everybody knows the part you’ve played in upending their lucrative little game. It could be worse now than it was before.”
Hayes spread her hands wide. “Could be. But I doubt it. They’ll all be scrambling for cover. That giant sucking sound you’ll hear tomorrow? It’ll be half the department trying to make out like I’m their best friend and always have been. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to find flowers and chocolates and maybe even a sheet cake waiting for me when I come in.”
Julia offered the obligatory smile. But … “Half the department?”
“Probably not that many. A handful. For sure the sheriff didn’t know. I almost went to him. He’s the one who brought me on, who mentored me. Told me he knew they’d hassle me but to just ignore it. In retrospect, it wasn’t the best advice, but to be fair, I don’t think even he could imagine how far they’d go. Anyway, I couldn’t stand the thought of him turning up dead too.”
Julia’s mind rebelled. “They’d never have gone that far.”
Hayes arched an eyebrow.
“They took out a legislator.” She paused, and then she and Julia blurted simultaneously, “Allegedly.”
“They may never be able to pin Harper on him unless he confesses, and I don’t see that in his makeup. But the recording from that intern of yours will give them more than enough to put him away for the others.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, though. A jury might go easier on him for killing homeless people. A legislator, not so much.”
Hayes sighed and jammed her hands in her pockets. “I’ve got to go. I’ve barely slept in weeks, worrying over all of this. This might be my night to finally get”—she lifted her wrist and looked at one of those oversize watches that all the runners seemed to wear—“oh, a good two or three hours before my alarm goes off.”
She started to walk away but turned back.
“Fair? Our justice system? What planet have you been living on?”