Free Burning Proof by Janice Cantore

their ten-year-old daughter,” Joiner had muttered while Abby tried to stop the bleeding and they waited for paramedics.
    “She’s outside?” Abby asked, wanting to shake the flashbacks away.
    “Yep.” He handed Abby a field information card with the woman’s name and information.
    “The gun?” Bill asked. “What was it and where is it now?”
    “It’s been made safe and placed in an evidence bag. It’s a 9mm. She emptied a fifteen-round clip.”
    “I’ll go talk to her,” Abby said to Bill, gripping the card tight, willing all of her concentration to the present, not on what happened a week ago.
    “I’ll take you to her,” the sergeant said and he showed her to the yard. Welcome warm air hit as soon as she stepped out through the sliding door.
    A petite blonde woman sat at a patio table staring at the fence. She wore what looked to Abby to be an expensive gray wool suit, immaculately creased pants, a pale-orange blouse. A matching gray jacket was thrown over another chair. Carla Boston was mostly neat and clean, but for the reddish-brown spots here and there on her nice clothes. Hands cuffed behind her were like the answer to a “one of these things doesn’t belong” riddle. Her legs were crossed and on her feet were a pair of highheels. Considering how many times she’d fired the gun at the two people in the bedroom, she was lucky that was all the blood that got on her. Abby was more concerned with her emotional state.
    “Mrs. Boston?”
    The woman turned.
    “I’m Detective Hart. I’ll be investigating this . . . situation.”
    Boston looked at her and nodded. The patrol sergeant was right. She’d shed no tears over this, at least not recently.
    Clayton Joiner looked as though he’d cried every day of the last two months.
    “Interesting thing to call it   —a situation. But then it was an interesting scene to come home to.” There was the hint of an accent in the woman’s voice. Abby couldn’t place it other than to guess it was from somewhere back east.
    She sat down at the table and turned on her own digital recorder and advised the woman of her rights.
    “Yes, yes, I’ll talk.” Impatience, resignation, frustration all bled through her tone. “I don’t care anymore. I thought he was cheating; I just didn’t know with who. Or is it whom ?” She couldn’t raise her hand, so she kind of hiked a shoulder and wiggled her head.
    “I came home and caught him with her, of all people. My best friend! He always told me he thought she was frumpy.” She spit the last word out. “I snapped. That was his gun I used. I emptied the thing. At least I think I did.”
    She glared at Abby, her eyes a cauldron of anger and hate, but her voice cold and empty.
    “They deserved it. They were cheaters and I killed them. It’s my revenge and it’s as sweet as a bowl of honey.” She stompedone of her high-heeled shoes on the ground, making a sharp click. “I don’t regret it.”
    Abby had arrested gang members, a serial killer, a wife killer, and murderous thieves, but in all her career she’d never seen such vicious, naked hatred. It slapped at her, made her recoil.
    Clayton Joiner was consumed by grief.
    It took all of Abby’s strength not to get up and run from the backyard, but to stay and complete the statement for Boston. She couldn’t concentrate.
    Abby knew at that moment she needed to get away from work, from murder, until she could sort out the death of Clayton Joiner.
    She could miss something critical and let a guilty killer go free.
    There was too much of that going around already. She didn’t want to be responsible for more.

    “Dr. Collins called me.” Lieutenant Jacoby stood and looked Abby in the eye. “This is because of the shooting?”
    Abby bit her lip, wondering if answering truthfully would label her crazy and eventually get her shuttled to some boring job she’d hate.
    No matter what, even with the turmoil swirling inside, she had to be truthful. “I, uh, I think