Page 24 of Everyone Loved Her
“What do you want, Blaze?” Garrett snapped, meeting his darkened hazel eyes.
Blaze jerked on the door handle. “Get out.”
“No,” Garrett sneered, his fists clenching. “Why’d you pull me over?”
“Suspected drunk driver,” he laughed wickedly. “So,get out.”
Garrett was tempted to stomp the gas and leave him in a cloud of black coal, but instead, he obeyed, slinging the door open so hard it rammed into Blaze’s readied hands with a thud. “Okay. What do you want me to do? Say the alphabet backwards? Walk a straight line? Blow in a tube? I think that would probably be the fastest way to clear this up.”
Blaze slammed the truck door behind Garrett. “Let’s start out with where you were last night, because see, I have a problem.”
“And that is?” He turned to face Blaze, standing at eye level with him. They were about the same height, though Garrett probably had an inch or two on him.
“The fact that your dad left your name out of the report,” he growled, shoving Garrett’s chest as soon as they were beyond the dash cam. “I don’t like the fact he’s covering for you. IknowBeth put you at the bar. I overheard it from the porch.”
“Lousy investigating, I guess.” Garrett chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. “Ormaybe you should just ask him, instead of harassing me.”
“Hmm,” Blaze narrowed his eyes. “I wonder how many calls Sarah made to you that night, or maybe how manyyoumade to her? Because I have a feeling her phone will give us plenty of answers. We’re just waiting on the phone company to release them.”
“Cool,” Garrett said. “I hope you find your answers. Are we done here?”
Blaze blocked him from walking back to his truck. “I don’t trust you, Garrett. You’re a drunk, but the day after the murder, you’re suddenly sober and come to court Beth Young? Seems wild, since according to record,sheis the last person to see Sarah.”
Garrett’s head started to throb. “Beth said if I wanted to talk to her, I had to be sober. So, I was—out of respect for her. Not that hard to comprehend. I didn’t see Sarah last night.”
“But you know what I find strange?” Blaze leaned in, his voice ice cold.
“What’s that?”
“When I was on the porch, talking with Andrea Young, she said that Beth didn’t mention seeing you last night. In fact, when her mom asked her, she told her that she hadn’t seen anyone she knew, other than Sarah. Why would she lie to her mom, Garrett?”
“I think you’re digging for something you’re not going to find.” Garrett shook his head, shoving past Blaze and heading back toward his truck. “Beth is a good person. She didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah, I know,” Blaze called after him. “But you’renot,and that’s what I’m worried about.”
Chapter 12
Blaze staredat the reports lying on his desk. There wasn’t a single mention of Garrett Myers in them, yet Beth had seen him outside the bar—the same area Sarah had been seen in. He angrily flipped through the file, stopping on the photos.
He hadn’t shown up to the bridge until the crime scene unit had already been called, and yet, somehow, the powers that be had still left the investigation in the hands of their poorly funded sheriff’s department.
Of course, it didn’t help that last minute, Sheriff Myers had slapped a homicide team label on a few of the very unqualified officers, Blaze included. It wasn’t a good look, but given the rarity of murder in the county, he figured it wouldn’t be long before the FBI or state police were called in anyway—andthenthere was a chance thatDaniel Malone, the infamous FBI agent who had beef with him, would show up.
That’ll be the day.He grimaced at the thought. It’d been nearly four years since he’d talked to Daniel, and while there was a part of him that hoped maybe the chaos was over for him,Sarah’s murder had him quaking in his boots with that familiar paranoia…
Blaze took a deep breath, raking his hands over his face.Her death doesn’t fit the MO of the Phantom,he reassured himself as he went back to the photos of Sarah Armitage, sprawled out on the ground, a gunshot wound to her lower abdomen and a second to her chest.
It was gruesome, and unfortunately, they were still waiting on the medical examiner to complete the autopsy. No one was going to rush anything for this obsolete county, and that’s why when things did occasionally happen, the investigation process took longer than it should. Nothing here was like what people saw in the movies. No one cared. It was a snail’s pace to get answers for families, if they got them at all.
“You got someone here wanting to talk to you,” the receptionist called back to Blaze, who just so happened to be the lone deputy at the office.
He made a face as he looked at his watch, seeing that it was nearly midnight. “Right now?”
The older, middle-aged lady named Brenda cocked a brow. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Seems important.”
He ignored her usual cantankerous tone, unfazed by it—no one was happy to be sitting at a desk at this hour. “Okay, well, send them back. I’ll, uh, use the interview room.”
“Okie dokie.” She nodded and then slipped away.