Free Dead Center (The Rookie Club Book 1) by Danielle Girard

to shock her, he needed to spend a day in her job.
    He pressed his shoulders back. "If people would stop interrupting, I'd be done already."
    "You'd better get back to it before that grout dries and you've got a bigger mess."
    Frowning, he slumped his shoulders. "Yeah."
    She looked back at the floor and picked up the bag of dry grout.
    He tried to snatch it from her hands.
    "Let me show you a little trick." She grabbed a fist full of the dry powder and sprinkled it on a small section of wet grout.
    "What the hell are you doing? You're just making a bigger mess that I'm going to have to clean up." He sighed. "Come on, lady."
    Jamie found a dry rag and rubbed it across the area where she'd strewn the dry grout. The dry grout stuck to the wet stuff and acted as an abrasive to clean the grout off the tiles themselves while leaving it in the grouted areas.
    "Seriously," he whined.
    "Come look," she told him.
    The kid dropped down beside her. He stared a moment then reached out to touch the grout. "Huh."
    He sounded so shocked, Jamie actually laughed. Then she caught herself. When was the last time she'd laughed? The boy looked at her like she was mad.
    "Well?" she said, offering the bag out to him.
    He reached in and filled his fist with grout and repeated what she'd done.
    Still kneeling, Jamie handed over the rag.
    He wiped it across the grout, then leaned down to survey the area. "It works."
    She nodded.
    He scowled. "How'd you know that?"
    She shrugged. Her father had redone every room of the house they'd lived in. Helping was about the only father-daughter bonding time they'd ever had. Jamie stood up and washed her hands. As she headed for the door, the kid said, "Thanks."
    She looked back.
    He grinned at her.
    "No problem," she said, turning back for the door.
    "And, lady?"
    "Yeah?"
    "You've got grout on your pants."
    She glanced down at her navy slacks. Both knees were covered in gray mud. She swiped at it, feeling the little chunks of hard grout. She picked a few off then decided to hell with it. She didn't like these pants anyway.
    After crossing the main entrance, she walked down the hall to the lab. She stopped to write her name on the sign-in sheet. Just inside, a group hovered by the door. The senior criminalist, Sydney Blanchard, stood with three other lab techs. Two had their backs to her. Voices were low, bodies crossed and closed.
    Hailey Wyatt stood with them. She met Jamie's eyes, her gaze cool. Jamie knew they were talking about Devlin. Sydney glanced over and saw Jamie. Her red eyes widened. She'd been crying.
    Jamie scanned the other faces, her gut tight. She searched for anything appropriate to say, failed.
    "I'm here on Osbourne."
    Sydney wiped her cheeks. "It's under the second scope."
    Jamie passed them and peered down into the eyepiece. Immediately, she knew something was wrong. "Shit." It was the same something as before. A normal sperm sample showed white and red under the scope. The red denoted the nuclei of the cells. Jamie exhaled. No red in this sample. "No cells at all?"
    Sydney nodded. "Doesn't look like we got any semen."
    Jamie shook her head. "She swore he didn't use a condom. It's just like Shawna Delman. No prints, no DNA. No way to prove it was him. So the guy just walks."
    Two police officers raped and she had absolutely nothing. "Have we processed anything else from the case?" she asked.
    Sydney shook her head. "We're working Devlin full force."
    Jamie looked at Hailey, who stepped toward her.
    "Tim came forward just after you left," she said.
    Jamie didn't respond.
    "You knew, didn't you?"
    She nodded.
    "And you protected him."
    It wasn't exactly a question so Jamie didn't answer it. She didn't have a good answer for it anyway. Why would she help him? She had no allegiance to him? They weren't friends. He didn't call and check on her or keep in touch. Was it just because he seemed so pathetic, so scared? So small. No, sheer stupidity was the only thing that came to mind, but she knew