The Game Changer, стр. 60
“I don’t know cars,” she said. “But that’s like an Army car, right?”
“Kind of.”
She shook her head. “No, this was just like a regular car. A nice one, though. Not a junker.”
Outside, there were more sirens, and Brooks’s car raced through where the chief had just gone.
“Whoa,” Agnes said. “What do you suppose that’s about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I intend to find out.”
Joyce was glued to the scanner, actually staring at it like it was a TV. It was behind her desk, covered with papers and dust. I honestly wasn’t aware we even had one until that moment. I wondered if Mary Jean wouldn’t let it be used when she was in the office. Or if she even knew about it at all. Maybe she inherited it from the previous editor.
“You’ll never believe this,” Joyce said as soon as I walked in. “Shoot, I’m gonna have to call Mary Jean back in.”
“What’s going on?”
“Accident.” She pointed at the scanner with her long fingernail, then looked at me with shock on her face. “It was another hit-and-run.”
Chapter 22
I’d left my jacket at the library, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even feel the air as I dove into my car.
An ambulance roared past me just as I was pulling away from the office, making it much easier to navigate to the scene of the accident. I just had to roll through a few stop signs here and there while other cars had pulled to the curb to let the ambulance by. I wasn’t worried—law enforcement was already occupied.
The accident had happened in a quiet, semi-secluded, older neighborhood, the body lying a few feet away from a mailbox, a halo of spilled mail scattered around her head. A few people stood and watched, just like after the football game, as Chief Henderson knelt next to the body and Brooks tried to string up some police tape from the mailbox to a fire hydrant on the opposite side of the street. The wind kept stealing the plastic yellow tape from him, forcing him to start over.
I drove up as close as I could, pulled over, and got out, mindful to bring my notebook and pencil with me. I speed-walked toward the body, my hand itching to pick up my phone and tell Daisy, only to fall away when I remembered our last conversation. I wasn’t sure if she was still in this with me, or not.
It wasn’t until I saw the coils of red hair that it dawned on me who I was looking at.
Brooks saw me coming and abandoned the crime scene tape. The wind caught it and blew it into a tree, rolling out a tether, but Brooks didn’t notice. He was too busy rushing to meet me on the sidewalk.
“Evangeline?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Brooks said.
“So it is Evangeline?” My heart sank. I didn’t know much about Evangeline, but I knew she at least had one son. Did she have a husband? Any more children? I tried not to think about the horrible phone calls that were going to be received today. I stared at her hair, which was really all I could see from my vantage point. “But who would have a grudge against her?”
Brooks glanced over his shoulder at the chief, worry rolling off of him. “We don’t know.”
I sucked in a breath, only just now realizing what this meant for their case. “You don’t know because you thought Evangeline was Coach Farley’s killer. Your lead suspect is lying in the middle of the street right now.”
“Um, yeah, so there’s been a development in our case.”
“I should say so. She didn’t run over herself. Is she dead?”
He shushed me. “No, she’s not dead.” I felt a sense of relief. He added, “And you really should go before he hears you.”
“No, Brooks,” I said, trying to get a better look at Evangeline. Two paramedics had brought a back board and stretcher to her. They were hurrying, but not panicking. I prayed that this meant she would be okay. “I’m the press. This is exactly where I should be.”
“He won’t want you here.”
I gritted my teeth, my hands clamping tighter and more indignantly around my pencil. “Then that makes it even more important that I am here.” There was no way I would allow the chief sweep this one under the rug. Evangeline deserved better. The last thing I wanted was her mother to see her name in the paper for being dead.
I could see in Brooks’ face that he agreed with me…and that he didn’t want to. I felt bad about putting him in such an uncomfortable position. But then I remembered that it wasn’t me who was putting him in that position. It was Chief Henderson, and if Brooks didn’t like it, maybe he shouldn’t have left KCPD.
He gave in. “Just…fine, stay…but, for your own good, don’t bring up Paulie. Not now. I’ll see if I can get him to set up an interview with you so you can show us what you’ve got. It’s going to be tough for him to accept, though. It’s his son.”
The grip around my pencil loosened. “You don’t have to worry. I don’t think it was Paulie anymore,” I said.
“What?”
“I talked to Agnes Tellerman and she said it was definitely not a Jeep that hit Farley.”
Relief washed over his face. “That’s great news.”
“Or it’s horrible news, because if it wasn’t my top suspect and it wasn’t your top suspect, and it wasn’t Wickham or Kermit, who was it?”
He seemed to consider this for a long time, then shrugged. “Back to square one, I guess.”
I sighed. “Can you at least point me to a witness?”
He shook his head. “There weren’t any.”
“What? It’s the middle of the day. How is that even possible?”
“Look around.” He gestured toward the trees and tall hedges around the houses. “Nobody sees anything