Free Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Page A

to get her to talk. I asked for her address, but she refused to give it to me.
    That’s okay. I had it from the Internet. I read it to her. “
Si
?”
    She hung up.
    I put a big star by her address. More fun follow-up for Monday.
    Spike Howard was next. According to the
Amarillo Globe News
articles about the shooting, he worked for an import business and was visiting Amarillo on behalf of his employer. I Googled him and found a mother lode of information. I clicked, shuddered, scrolled, grimaced, and printed screens. Mr. Howard was from Roswell, New Mexico. All I knew about Roswell was that some spaceship supposedly crashed there and was covered up by the feds. That, and it was the location for the supernatural show we in Lubbock followed with cult-like glee while I was in college, since Roswell was only about a few hours away.
    But where Spike Howard lived wasn’t the most interesting part of what I found—though maybe interesting was the wrong word for it. More like the most disturbing part. Spike boasted a criminal record with assault charges going back to his teens in Dona Ana County, which was pretty far south from Roswell. In fact, it was on the border. Those crimes were bad enough, but it got worse. He’d done time under the “sexual conduct with a minor” section of the New Mexico criminal statutes. My stomach roiled as I read an article from the
Roswell Daily Record
that said he and an accomplice—an Amarillo man named Harvey Dulles—had exposed themselves to the ten-year-old daughter of Howard’s live-in girlfriend in Roswell, then had taken turns making her touch them down
there
.
    “An Amarillo connection?” I breathed. Snowflake snorted and rolled over in her sleep. Yes, Spike’s friend Harvey was from Amarillo.
    My phone chimed, interrupting me, and I jumped a little, bouncing my chair and jarring Snowflake. She yipped and rearranged herself.
    Collin:
Sorry slow response. Traveling. I’m good. How are you?
    I smiled. It’s always nice to hear from good-looking men who like you. I couldn’t revel in it long, though. I was onto something with my research, no matter how oogie it was.
    Neither Spike nor Harvey spent more than five years inside prison, which shocked me. How could child molesters get out so fast? Wouldn’t they be the same people with the same tendencies doing the same thing, just to new victims? God, I hoped Jack didn’t represent
that
type of defendant. I wanted no part of defending child molesters.
    I starting running Harvey Dulles through all my favorite databases. After his release, he’d returned to Amarillo—according to his voter’s registration information—and he owned a house here, per the property records, which it appeared he’d inherited from his mother. Spike’s connection to Harvey was too significant to ignore. Was Spike really in Amarillo on business, or was he hanging out with his old buddy? Or both? I printed out pictures of each man and put them in my file. Neither one was going to win any beauty contests, but Harvey was especially ugly with a smashed-in nose and shaved head.
    A thought chilled me. What if Sofia had taken her daughter to work with her? What if this child molester, Spike, had exposed himself to Valentina, or worse? That would be enough to make a mother grab a gun and blow a man’s head off.
    My phone rang. Another number I didn’t recognize. I answered. “Emily speaking.”
    The male voice that answered transported me back to Oak Lawn in Dallas. “This is Wallace Gray. I’m the CPS investigator working on the case of Valentina Perez. You called about her.”
    I straightened my posture. Excellent! “Hi, Wallace. Yes, I did. I’m Emily Bernal, the legal assistant for Jack Holden. He’s representing Sofia Perez, Valentina’s mother. We met with Sofia yesterday, and she was really worried about her daughter. I was hoping you had some good news about her that you could share with me.”
    “Nooooo, I wish I did.” His voice dropped.