Home Before Midnight by Virginia Kantra Page B

tell him anything Nguyen hadn’t already divulged.
     
    But he stayed, driven less by his detective’s need to know than by an impulse to be there for the plucked and pampered woman on the table in a way he’d failed to be there for Teresa, to accompany her into death. He stayed out of pity and respect, the way other cops attended the funerals of other crime victims.
     
    Because Helen Ellis’s death was a crime. He was sure of that now.
     
    But to prove it, he needed to find the weapon. A motive.
     
    The murderer.
     
     
     
     
    BAILEY thrust her hand to the back of her parents’ mailbox, ignoring the barking of her neighbor’s dog and the rumble of traffic behind her.
     
    Although classifying the single car cruising down this one-and-a-half lane rural road as “traffic” just proved she’d already been home too long.
     
    The engine idled to a stop behind her. Bailey braced. All she needed to make her day complete was a verbal assault from a redneck in a truck.
     
    “Come here often?” a man drawled.
     
    Her heart raced. She knew that flat, deep voice. Clutching her parents’ mail, she withdrew her arm and turned.
     
    Lieutenant Steve Burke leaned across the bench seat of a black Ford pickup, his windows rolled down and his eyes amused.
     
    She felt a jolt of . . . surely that was dislike?
     
    “Not if I can help it,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
     
    “I came to tell you the body’s been released. You can have your funeral.”
     
    She refused to feel grateful. “Shouldn’t you tell Paul?”
     
    Steve raised his eyebrows. “I did. He said you were making the arrangements.”
     
    His voice was neutral, no accusation at all, but she rushed to Paul’s defense anyway. “He’s very upset.”
     
    The detective unfolded from his seat, reminding her all over again how big he was—the kind of ex-jock who’d hung over her sister’s locker in high school. He probably tried to use his size to intimidate people, Bailey thought scornfully as she watched him round the hood of his truck toward her.
     
    She bet it worked, too.
     
    “Upset enough to call a press conference?” he asked.
     
    “What?”
     
    “That’s what he told my chief. Told me to wrap up the investigation, or he was talking to reporters.”
     
    Oh, dear. No wonder Steve’s voice sounded flat. He was probably ready to murder somebody himself.
     
    Not that anybody had been murdered, she told herself. It was purely a figure of speech.
     
    Burke leaned against the door of his truck. “So tell me about this new book he’s writing,” he invited.
     
    She eyed him warily. “Why?”
     
    “Maybe I’m curious.”
     
    Maybe. And maybe he was looking for a way to defend his department by discrediting Paul.
     
    She cleared her throat. “Well . . . It’s about the Dawler murders. Are you familiar with them?”
     
    “Mother was a prostitute. Grandma and probably sis, too. Kid gets drunk, decides he can’t live with the shame anymore and, instead of offing himself, kills his entire family with a kitchen knife.”
     
    “That’s an oversimplification of the story, but yes.”
     
    “Yeah, I heard your boss thinks the police case left things out.”
     
    “I think Paul wants to tell the whole story,” Bailey said carefully.
     
    “So he’s going to sell a bunch of books by glorifying a killer and exploiting the deaths of two women and a fifteen-year-old girl.”
     
    “You don’t understand the genre,” she said. “Paul is very talented. This book is his way of doing justice to the memory of the victims.”
     
    “You do justice to the victims by putting their killer in jail. Not by making a living off their tragedy.”
     
    She crossed her arms. “Lawyers make a living off of tragedy. Police, too.”
     
    Acknowledgment lit his dark eyes. “Guess you could look at it that way. So, what’s your role in all this?”
     
    “I’m a former editorial assistant. I do research, correspondence, filing,