Justice by Piper Davenport Read Free Book Online Page B

and the file back on Nita’s desk before she returned, but he hung around and waited for her.
    “I see nothing was moved,” Nita said, and slipped the file back into her drawer.
    “Thanks, babe.”
    “Figure it out, Dallas, okay?”
    He cocked his head. “You’ve read the file?”
    She nodded. “It’s not right,” she whispered. “Brock insisted on keeping a paper file of everything and between you and me, he was right. Someone changed the electronic one. And it wasn’t Brock or Jaxon to keep you out of it.”
    “What the hell?”
    “Hold up,” she said, and grabbed her notepad, slipping into the copy room and returning with three pages of handwritten notes. “These are the changes. No one knows about them yet. I was going to tell Brock, but hadn’t gotten around to it.”
    “Make another set of copies and then put the originals somewhere they can’t be found, Nita,” he said. “But definitely show Brock and Jaxon, yeah? Just don’t tell them you and I talked.”
    She nodded.
    “You’re a rock star, lady.”
    Nita smiled. “And don’t you forget it.”
    “Okay, I’ve got some work to do. Thanks again.” He headed to his desk and his phone buzzed in his pocket, so he pulled it out. “Hey, Brock.”
    “Hey. Can’t meet tonight. Gotta help Dad with something.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “Yeah, he bought a sofa off Craigslist and needs help moving it from the truck into the basement before the rain starts.”
    “No worries,” Dallas said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “Sounds good.”
    Brock hung up and Dallas walked out of the office and to his car, managing to avoid his boss. He headed back to his home and sat down to delve into the paperwork.
    * * *
    Three hours later, Dallas was working on controlling his emotions… unsuccessfully. His heart constricted with a pain he’d never experienced before while looking through the crime-scene photos. He’d seen images like this before, but never ones that involved someone he loved, and sure as hell none that involved Macey.
    He flipped over another photo. Blood. Macey's blood covered the carpet. Torn pieces of her clothes were everywhere. The photos of her beaten and bloody body were also in the pile, but after seeing one, bile rose in the back of his throat and he dropped the photo and ran for the sink . A near empty whiskey bottle sat on the counter, and he grabbed it and chucked it against the wall. He had no idea the extent of the damage through the haze of tears, but the sound of shattering glass was surprisingly satisfying. After washing the sick out of his mouth and taking a minute to breathe, he went back to his task.
    The autopsy report and photos on the perp didn’t gain him anything, as he didn’t seem to exist. He was labeled “John Doe,” and Dallas wondered how a ghost could have committed such a violent crime. He had a hard time believing that this “John Doe” hadn’t done it before, so why hadn’t his DNA gotten a hit in CODIS? Nita was right. None of this made sense.
    Dallas decided looking at the photos was too much, so he put them aside and focused on Nita’s notes. Most of the changes could easily be dismissed as typos, but two discrepancies stuck out, and Dallas realized quickly there were only a handful of people who would have had the authority to alter those details.
    “Damn it,” he whispered, and grabbed his cell phone to dial Jaxon.
    “Hey, Dal.”
    “Hey, Jax. You alone?”
    “Hold on,” Jaxon said, and Dallas heard the click of a door in the background. “I’m good now. What’s up?”
    “I need this to stay between us.”
    “Okay,” Jaxon said carefully.
    “Not over the phone.”
    “I can be at your place in fifteen minutes.”
    “That would be great,” Dallas said, and hung up.
    As promised, Jaxon arrived fifteen minutes later and Dallas let him in. “The file isn’t right.”
    “The file,” Jaxon said. “What file?”
    “Macey’s file,” Dallas said. “Not the one you and Brock