Read Online Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) by Reagan Phillips - Free Book Online
Authors: Reagan Phillips
Tags: A Blue Line Series Novel
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mystery.
A detail he’d bet his balls someone in the department had gone to great lengths to hide. But why?
He leaned back in the rickety officer chair and folded his hands behind his head. Just as he’d known she would, Lacy popped into his thoughts. She’d been asleep when he left to investigate the newest evidence in the case, and gone when he returned. Nothing left but a stack of folded cloths on the dresser and a still warm spot in his bed.
Thumping his pen on top of the stack of files, he replayed the last few hours.
Bishop, his long time mentor and current superior, called with a tip from a group of local hunters. While setting up their deer blinds in the pre-dawn hours, they’d uncovered two lengths of blue nylon rope stained in blood from near the same spot search and rescue dogs had dug up a girl’s half buried body a week before.
The description of the body, brunette, torn clothing, rope burns on her wrists and ankles, crushed skull, brought back vivid memories of Sadie.
Other than the age difference, the body came close to being the same work as the man who’d killed Sadie, but something wasn’t the same. Maybe it had been the years between killings, but why go after grown women when Wray’s MO years before had been young girls? Wray had always been meticulous in cleaning up his crime scene. Why the rush job now? It didn’t add up in his head even if Nashville and Rebel were more than happy to write off the new murder as Wray’s work. To a cop not versed in Wray’s patterns, it would be easy to mistake the few similarities as evidence, but not to the guy who’d spent his adulthood and the last years of his youth searching for his cousin’s killer.
That thought led him right to the empty side of his bed where Lacy had slept the night before and the sting of rejection finding her gone.
He’d tried to call her cell, but she didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until he’d had the dispatcher in Nashville search for Connie’s number that he found out she’d safely seen Lacy home.
Those few seconds of doubt cut years off Mitch’s life, a fact he intended on making known once he found Lacy again. He just had to find a way to make sure she knew he couldn’t be shaken as easy as a pre-dawn slip out the backdoor.
He flipped open the report file from the newest murder and searched for similarities to link the new killing with the thirteen others spanning Wray’s ten year killing spree. To the untrained eye there would be several, but he knew Wray better than he knew himself. He’d find proof Wray wasn’t the killer.
The young girl with blonde hair to her shoulders, soft green eyes, and the kind of infectious smile that put people at ease stared back from the photograph as if begging for his help. Underneath were pictures of her mutilated body. Her wrists tied, her clothing torn, blood soaked through and dried to the thin fabric of a white sundress.
The coffee in his otherwise empty stomach churned. After years of working homicides, he’d never developed the iron resolve that made his line of work bearable. Even though Bishop thought his sensitivity was an asset to the job, Mitch cursed the constant emotional connection to victims on his caseload. His personal demons got in the way of distancing himself from a case.
He slammed the folder shut and stared at twelve more just like it. All young girls approaching their teens. All taken from small towns within a small radius of Rebel in the middle of the night and found disfigured on deserted roadsides in shallow graves, rope burns on their arms and legs and crushed in heads.
He pushed his fingers through his hair. His thoughts grimly wandered to the dark place where he kept Sadie hidden, then surprisingly to Lacy.
He cursed under his breath. He’d held Lacy tight and listened to her breath until sleep took him over last night. Then Bishop’s call came through.
No note. No sign she’d ever been there except his shirt and one pair of boxers folded
A detail he’d bet his balls someone in the department had gone to great lengths to hide. But why?
He leaned back in the rickety officer chair and folded his hands behind his head. Just as he’d known she would, Lacy popped into his thoughts. She’d been asleep when he left to investigate the newest evidence in the case, and gone when he returned. Nothing left but a stack of folded cloths on the dresser and a still warm spot in his bed.
Thumping his pen on top of the stack of files, he replayed the last few hours.
Bishop, his long time mentor and current superior, called with a tip from a group of local hunters. While setting up their deer blinds in the pre-dawn hours, they’d uncovered two lengths of blue nylon rope stained in blood from near the same spot search and rescue dogs had dug up a girl’s half buried body a week before.
The description of the body, brunette, torn clothing, rope burns on her wrists and ankles, crushed skull, brought back vivid memories of Sadie.
Other than the age difference, the body came close to being the same work as the man who’d killed Sadie, but something wasn’t the same. Maybe it had been the years between killings, but why go after grown women when Wray’s MO years before had been young girls? Wray had always been meticulous in cleaning up his crime scene. Why the rush job now? It didn’t add up in his head even if Nashville and Rebel were more than happy to write off the new murder as Wray’s work. To a cop not versed in Wray’s patterns, it would be easy to mistake the few similarities as evidence, but not to the guy who’d spent his adulthood and the last years of his youth searching for his cousin’s killer.
That thought led him right to the empty side of his bed where Lacy had slept the night before and the sting of rejection finding her gone.
He’d tried to call her cell, but she didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until he’d had the dispatcher in Nashville search for Connie’s number that he found out she’d safely seen Lacy home.
Those few seconds of doubt cut years off Mitch’s life, a fact he intended on making known once he found Lacy again. He just had to find a way to make sure she knew he couldn’t be shaken as easy as a pre-dawn slip out the backdoor.
He flipped open the report file from the newest murder and searched for similarities to link the new killing with the thirteen others spanning Wray’s ten year killing spree. To the untrained eye there would be several, but he knew Wray better than he knew himself. He’d find proof Wray wasn’t the killer.
The young girl with blonde hair to her shoulders, soft green eyes, and the kind of infectious smile that put people at ease stared back from the photograph as if begging for his help. Underneath were pictures of her mutilated body. Her wrists tied, her clothing torn, blood soaked through and dried to the thin fabric of a white sundress.
The coffee in his otherwise empty stomach churned. After years of working homicides, he’d never developed the iron resolve that made his line of work bearable. Even though Bishop thought his sensitivity was an asset to the job, Mitch cursed the constant emotional connection to victims on his caseload. His personal demons got in the way of distancing himself from a case.
He slammed the folder shut and stared at twelve more just like it. All young girls approaching their teens. All taken from small towns within a small radius of Rebel in the middle of the night and found disfigured on deserted roadsides in shallow graves, rope burns on their arms and legs and crushed in heads.
He pushed his fingers through his hair. His thoughts grimly wandered to the dark place where he kept Sadie hidden, then surprisingly to Lacy.
He cursed under his breath. He’d held Lacy tight and listened to her breath until sleep took him over last night. Then Bishop’s call came through.
No note. No sign she’d ever been there except his shirt and one pair of boxers folded
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