Free Three Dog Day by Lia Farrell Page A

they can point us to the ringleaders.”
    â€œ All right. I’ll see how much of a discount I can get on the price of Jacko’s information.”

Chapter Nine
January 9th
Detective Wayne Nichols

    A fter successfully closing the Tom Ferris murder case at the end of the previous summer, Wayne Nichols, chief detective in the Rosedale Sheriff’s Office, had asked Sheriff Ben Bradley for a leave of absence. Ben said he needed time to consider Wayne’s request. In most cases, a leave was granted only for illness or injury in the line of duty. Wayne had been grazed by a bullet during the Ferris case, but since then had made a complete recovery.
    When Ben asked why he wanted the leave, Wayne told the sheriff—and John Granger, the police chief from Mont Blanc—that he needed the leave to pursue a “fugitive from justice.” It was a partial truth; his foster mother, Jocelyn, had killed her husband Aarne, and to Wayne’s knowledge she had never turned herself in for the crime. He intended to bring her to justice, he told them. In fact, there was a lot more to the story, for he had never dealt with his remorse over leaving Jocelyn behind when he fled.
    It wasn’t going to be easy—what he knew he had to do. After decades of keeping his past deeply buried, he had finally told his girlfriend, Lucy Ingram, an ER physician, about his early life in foster care with an abusive family. He admitted to running away from the place at seventeen, afraid he might one day attack, or even kill, the foster father who violently abused his foster mother. His little brother, Kurt, had begged him not to go. Wayne had promised him that he would return one day.
    â€œ I went back there three years after I first left,” he told Lucy, seeing in his mind’s eye the dingy ranch house on the gravel road, the only childhood home he could remember. He and Lucy were in bed at her house. Lucy wore a soft T-shirt and was sitting up, her arms around her knees, her long brown hair reaching her shoulders. Wayne lay beside her, naked except for a St. Anthony’s medal on a chain around his neck. He touched the medal from time to time as he told her the story. Since recovering from the gunshot wound he received at the end of the summer, he had been working out, eating right and trying to improve his health. His hair was more salt than pepper and his body had many scars, but his belly was flat now and he felt better than he had in years.
    â€œ It was getting dark by the time I found the place. Jocelyn’s husband Aarne’s truck was parked in the yard. I opened the screen door and called my foster mother’s name. She screamed. She didn’t recognize me in the dark.”
    Emotions wracked him—the guilt he felt about leaving his foster mother with no protection from her abusive husband and the sorrow that swamped him when Jocelyn told him his little brother Kurt was dead.
    â€œ Where do you think Jocelyn could be now, Wayne?” Lucy asked him, a frown creasing her forehead.
    â€œ I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard from her again.”
    â€œ How old would she be?” Lucy asked, her voice low and gentle.
    â€œ I think she would be in her mid-seventies, if she’s even still alive,” Wayne said. His tone was bleak.
    â€œ Didn’t you ever try to find her?”
    â€œ No. For a long time, I just pushed the whole thing down deep inside. Years would pass without me ever thinking about it, but the Tom Ferris case made me realize something.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I have unfinished business with Jocelyn Outinen. Both Aarne and my little brother, Kurt, are dead. I hate to think of Kurt in an unmarked grave.”
    â€œ That’s why you asked for the leave of absence, I assume,” Lucy said.
    â€œ Yes, but the sheriff and Captain John Granger both have to approve the leave. Granger lost a detective in Mont Blanc to retirement in