Burning Proof Read online

  PRAISE FOR JANICE CANTORE

  “This is the start of a smart new series for retired police officer–turned–author Cantore. Interesting procedural details, multilayered characters, lots of action, and intertwined mysteries offer plenty of appeal.”

  BOOKLIST on Drawing Fire

  “Cantore’s well-drawn characters employ Christian values and spirituality to navigate them through tragedy, challenges, and loss. However, layered upon the underlying basis of faith is a riveting police-crime drama infused with ratcheting suspense and surprising plot twists.”

  SHELF AWARENESS on Drawing Fire

  “Drawing Fire rips into the heart of every reader. One dedicated homicide detective. One poignant cold case. One struggle for truth. . . . Or is the pursuit revenge?”

  DIANN MILLS, bestselling author of the FBI: Houston series

  “This hard-edged and chilling narrative rings with authenticity. . . . Fans of police suspense fiction will be drawn in by her accurate and dramatic portrayal.”

  LIBRARY JOURNAL on Visible Threat

  “Janice Cantore provides an accurate behind-the-scenes view of law enforcement and the challenges associated with solving cases. Through well-written dialogue and effective plot twists, the reader is quickly drawn into a story that sensitively yet realistically deals with a difficult topic.”

  CHRISTIAN LIBRARY JOURNAL on Visible Threat

  “[Cantore’s] characters resonate with an authenticity not routinely found in police dramas. Her knack with words captures Jack’s despair and bitterness and skillfully documents his spiritual journey.”

  ROMANTIC TIMES on Critical Pursuit

  “Cantore is a former cop, and her experience shows in this wonderful series debut. The characters are well drawn and believable, and the suspenseful plot is thick with tension. Fans of Lynette Eason, Dee Henderson, or DiAnn Mills and readers who like crime fiction without gratuitous violence and sex will appreciate discovering a new writer.”

  LIBRARY JOURNAL on Accused

  “Cantore provides a detailed and intimate account of a homicide investigation in an enjoyable read that’s more crime than Christian.”

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY on Accused

  “Janice Cantore’s twenty-two years as a police veteran for the Long Beach Police Department [lend] authenticity in each suspense novel she pens. If your readers like Dee Henderson, they will love Janice Cantore.”

  CHRISTIAN RETAILING on Abducted

  “[Avenged] offers plenty of procedural authenticity and suspense that will attract fans of Dee Henderson.”

  LIBRARY JOURNAL

  “Cantore . . . delivers another round of crime, intrigue, and romance in her latest title.”

  JOYCE LAMB, USA Today on Avenged

  “Set in a busy West Coast city, the story’s twists will keep readers eagerly reading and guessing. . . . I enjoyed every chapter. Accused is a brisk and action-filled book with enjoyable characters and a good dose of mystery. . . . I look forward to more books in this series.”

  MOLLY ANDERSON, Christianbookpreviews.com

  “Accused was a wonderfully paced, action-packed mystery. . . . [Carly] is clearly a competent detective, an intelligent woman, and a compassionate partner. This is definitely a series I will be revisiting.”

  MIN JUNG, freshfiction.com

  “Abducted is a riveting suspense . . . [and] the many twists and turns keep the reader puzzled. The book is a realistic look into the lives of law enforcement officers. Abducted is one book I couldn’t put down. Can’t wait to see what Carly and Nick might be up to next.”

  PAM, daysongreflections.com

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  Visit Janice Cantore’s website at www.janicecantore.com.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  Burning Proof

  Copyright © 2016 by Janice Cantore. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of businessman copyright © Hero Images/Corbis. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of close-up of man copyright © momentimages/Tetra images/Getty. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of fire copyright © Terry Poche/Dollar Photo Club. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of desert copyright © aarstudio/Dollar Photo Club. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of woman taken by Stephen Vosloo. Copyright © Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

  Edited by Erin E. Smith

  Published in association with the literary agency of D.C. Jacobson & Associates LLC, an Author Management Company. www.dcjacobson.com

  Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Psalm 19:4 in chapter 9 is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Psalm 10:17-18 in chapter 30 is taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  Burning Proof is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cantore, Janice, author.

  Burning proof / Janice Cantore.

  pages cm. -- (Cold case justice)

  Summary: After months of investigating the brutal homicide of a young girl, Detective Abby Hart finally has the evidence she needs. But when the arrest goes terribly wrong, Abby begins to doubt her future as a police officer. As she wrestles with conflicting emotions, old questions about the fire that took her parents’ lives come back to haunt her. “There is proof.” PI Luke Murphy can’t stop thinking about what Abby’s former partner, Asa Foster, mumbled just before he died. When he uncovers a clue to the murder of Abby’s parents and his uncle, he’s reluctant to tell Abby, despite his growing feelings for the beautiful detective. A decade-old abduction case brings Luke and Abby together, but will his secret tear them apart?

  ISBN 978-1-4143-9669-9 (sc)

  PS3603.A588B87 2016

  813'.6—dc23 2015032517

  ISBN 978-1-4964-1228-7 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4143-9672-9 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-1229-4 (Apple)

  Build: 2015-12-03 16:54:13

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’D LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE the help of Pastor Bill Gallagher, Detective Stephen Jones (ret.), and Commander Lisa Lopez; the encouragement of Don Jacobson, my agent; and the overall support of Kitty Bucholtz, Marcy Weydemuller, Cathleen Armstrong, Kathleen Wright, Wendy Lawton, and Lauraine Snelling, my writing friends, for always being there to listen to the ideas as they bounce around—some good, some not so good—and to always tell the truth about what is what.

  And thanks to Erin Smith, my awesome editor, and all the great people at Tyndale that I am blessed to be able to work with.

  Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.

  ISAIAH 30:18

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

 
Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Preview of the Next Cold Case Justice Novel

  About the Author

  Discussion Questions

  PROLOGUE

  “IF GEORGE SANDERS weren’t already dead, I’d kill him.”

  Kelsey Cox said nothing, knowing better than to interrupt when her boss was this angry. As if validating her silence, the tirade continued.

  “He made this mess, opening his mouth when he should have stayed quiet. Feeding Detective Hart gossip that could ruin everything. He didn’t even know what he was talking about, for pete’s sake!” The last two words were punctuated by pounding the conference table.

  Sanders had been a small-time criminal with a big-time mouth. He’d tried to implicate Governor Lowell Rollins in a twenty-seven-year-old triple murder. Any other cop would have seen the allegations as laughable. But since Abby Hart’s parents were among the victims, she’d taken every word seriously.

  Sensing an opening to calm the situation, Kelsey spoke up. “But he is dead. There’s no way to verify anything he said. Don’t you think she’ll stop?” Kelsey sat across the conference table from her employer.

  “Looking into her parents’ deaths? I doubt it. Not if she’s anything like her father.”

  “But the Triple Seven case is closed. What could she possibly accomplish? There’s no proof connecting the governor to anything. Gavin—”

  “Gavin, like Sanders, should have kept his mouth shut. If he was going to blow his brains out, he should have done it before he said anything.”

  Cox flinched. The image of Gavin Kent’s suicide outside Governor Rollins’s Long Beach residence was all too fresh in her mind’s eye. And the fact that anyone could be so callous about his death abraded her heart; she still loved him.

  “Oh, don’t get your back up.” Her boss smacked the table. “If you can’t move on, I can’t use you.”

  Embarrassed and angry that she let her guard down and was so transparent, Cox gritted her teeth. “I have moved on.”

  Standing, she turned her back to the boss and looked out the window. The beautiful blue, early fall sky did nothing to assuage her anxiety. “What do you want me to do about Hart?”

  “Keep tabs on her for now. The governor will officially declare he’s in the senate race soon. She’ll have one more chance to accept his job offer.”

  Kelsey couldn’t hide the shock, jerking back around. “You want her working here with Lowell?”

  “Of course. Keep your enemies close. But if she doesn’t take the offer . . .” A cavalier shrug. “I’ll come up with another, more permanent solution.”

  Cox put a hand behind her on the windowsill to keep from sliding sideways. In another time and place the thinly veiled threat her boss made to stop Hart would not have shaken her so. In spite of her long law enforcement career, stepping up and doing the unpleasant—even the illegal—for a greater good was a no-brainer. But the mention of it now rocketed her back to the day she’d watched the governor’s right-hand man, her lover, put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. She’d lost her balance that day, feeling as though the bullet had struck her as well, knocking her off a cliff, where she now hung by one hand, like a stuntman in the movies.

  Unlike the movies, there was no rescuer rushing to the precipice to grab her hand and pull her up.

  And every so often something would happen that made Kelsey feel like her fingers were being pulled back. Any minute now she could lose her grip completely. She hated Hart as much as her boss did—even more—but the woman was not a threat. There was nothing she could prove. Another murder was a risk, a finger being peeled back.

  “Hart can poke around until frogs grow beards. All she’ll get is frustrated.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kelsey wished she could take them back. Her boss did not take kindly to being questioned.

  “Nothing, I mean nothing—not Hart, not that irritating PI Murphy, and not you dragging your feet—is going to get in the way of Lowell being a senator. Is that clear?”

  Cox nodded, having to look away from the vicious, murderous glint in her boss’s eyes.

  “Can you do the job or do I need to find someone else?”

  “You can count on me,” she said as she was dismissed for the afternoon.

  CHAPTER

  -1-

  MONDAY MORNING Detective Abby Hart filled her coffee cup as soon as the pot finished, then settled in at her desk and turned on the computer. She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, still a little foggy without caffeine. She’d participated in a beach volleyball tournament over the weekend. It’d been hard and tested her conditioning, but she and her beach partner had triumphed and taken home the trophy.

  As she stretched and grimaced at the sore muscles that screamed, she was glad the office was quiet; she was first in and anticipating a court appearance later in the week. A reminder about her scheduled meeting with DA Drew in an hour popped up on her calendar. Homicide cases could take years to get to trial. When they did, she needed her head to be right back in the midst of the investigation as if it were fresh. She had several cases pending in various stages of the court process. The one Drew wanted to discuss was a gang shooting that occurred nearly a year ago. It was due to go to jury selection soon, so she planned to review all the pertinent details. A sharp pang of sadness sliced through her as she scanned the summary. She’d consulted on the gang shooting with her first partner in homicide, her mentor, Asa Foster. He was retired at the time, but still a great resource. His death a few months ago still stung.

  Shoving the sadness aside, she looked at the rest of her to-do list. She also wanted to review her most pressing open homicide case, spending her day after the meeting with the DA going over the Adonna Joiner homicide details. She heard footsteps but didn’t look up because it was bound to be just another office mate or her partner, Bill.

  “Abby.”

  The sharp, clear voice demanded her attention. Lieutenant Jacoby strode toward her desk. Something was in the works. The LT wasn’t usually in until later. He dropped a manila envelope in front of her. “Glad you’re here early. Just got this regarding the Joiner case.”

  Abby reached for the envelope. “I planned on pulling that file and calling the lab for an update.”

  The brutal rape and murder of a ten-year-old girl was a study in firsts: the first ca
se she and her new partner, Bill Roper, had caught on their first on-call shift. Together they’d hit it hard for forty-eight hours and gotten nowhere. Then frustration set in. For the months since, it was their priority case. Evidence had been collected from the victim’s body, but there was no hit in CODIS, the national offender database. Abby and Bill had knocked on doors and collected voluntary DNA swabs from several persons of interest, only to be stymied by a backlog at the lab. She often called Clayton and Althea Joiner, the victim’s parents, to touch base. In fact, she planned to pay them a visit tomorrow.

  She looked at the envelope and realized that it was from the forensics lab. Her head snapped back and she stared at the lieutenant. “They got a match?” She undid the clasp and pulled the contents out, tense now and wide-awake.

  “They did.” He pointed. “Halfway down. They got a match from one of the samples we took to exclude.”

  Abby read the finding and was up out of her chair. “Unbelievable. It’s Curtis. I had a feeling.”

  Javon Curtis, a single man, a loner living two doors away from the victim in a house he’d inherited from his mother, had been Abby’s number one suspect. He had no prior record and cooperated completely, even willingly providing the buccal swab that just implicated him, but her gut had told her something was off about the man.

  “As soon as Bill gets in, go pick him up and bring him in for an interview. Hopefully he’ll open up.”

  The adrenaline evaporated like smoke. “I have a meeting scheduled—”

  “DA Drew is in the loop on this. Knowing you, you’ll have a confession before noon.” Jacoby gave her a half salute and left the office.

  Abby looked at the clock. Bill should be in any minute. She couldn’t sit back down. She did a happy dance all the way to the file cabinet to pull the Joiner file.

  “Hallelujah!” she said to the empty office. “I knew it was him. I just wish we could have proved it two months ago.”

  She wanted to call the young victim’s father. He’d been waiting to hear that his daughter’s killer had been identified, and Abby knew better than anyone what that kind of wait was like. But she decided it would make more sense to have the suspect in custody first and, as the LT had hopefully implied, have a confession. The killing of Adonna Joiner had been horrific, and the close-knit neighborhood she’d lived in was volatile.