she said, still protecting Danny. She would not tell Gonzales about how Danny had barged in on her visit to the Hayes house. She would not betray the brotherhood, even if the brothers did not consider her fully one of their own. “We went out to dinner,” she explained. “I thought I might be able to get something out of him about the case.”
Gonzales looked skeptical.
“I know,” Maggie added. “It was stupid. He had nothing to give me. I’m not sure he even remembers the case. And he was plowed.”
“Did he try to put the moves on you?” Gonzales asked abruptly.
Maggie looked shocked.
“I’m asking for a reason, Gunn,” he reassured her. “I’ve had complaints about him from other women in the department.”
She shrugged it off. “It’s not anything I can’t handle.”
Gonzales shook his head, disgusted. “He’s a human train wreck and he’s not going to stop until he’s taken others down with him. But if I can him now, I lose the respect of one hundred and forty fellow officers.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“So what did he have to say about the case?” Gonzales asked. “Did he happen to explain how they ended up putting the wrong man in jail?”
Maggie suppressed a smile at his sarcasm “No, sir. Basically, he tried to put the blame all on Fahey.”
“He would,” Gonzales said. “But don’t believe it. Fahey let the bottle get the best of him his last couple of years, but inside he still had something left. Did you know that he gave me a run for my money in the academy? He could have been a great cop. He could have been sitting here where I am if things had been just a little bit different.”
I felt a jolt of adrenaline, as I always did when I heard someone mention my name. It always made me realize anew that I had once been among them, living as one of them. It seemed a thousand lifetimes ago.
Gonzales tapped the file with a fingertip. “You’ve left some things out of this. Most requests like this summarize the first investigation more . . . critically, shall we say? They usually provide more evidence of sloppiness.”
Maggie shrugged. “Just trying to save you some trouble slogging through it all, sir.”
“How bad was it?” he asked. “Just tell me.”
“They were . . .” She hesitated and I loved her for it. “They were sloppy, sir.”
“How sloppy?”
“Very sloppy.”
“Who’s fault was it? Fahey or Bonaventura?”
“Sir, you’re asking me to judge a dead man.”
“Just tell me.”
“You’re right about Fahey. He was better on his end, but maybe moved too quickly with his suspicions. Bonaventura was supposed to take the family, but by the time he got around to it, the boyfriend was already in custody and both of them stopped looking into any other alternatives at all.”
“And you really think the girl’s father has something to do with this?”
“Sir, it’s not Bobby Daniels. He’s been in prison and the murders are identical. Alan Hayes is a common link between the two girls—I checked and he lied about not knowing Vicky Meeks. She monitored a class he taught last summer. Plus he is frequently around the kind of lapidary dust we found on both victims, he knows the areas well where both bodies were found, and besides all of that, something is very wrong in the Hayes house. You know that I can’t put a hunch in the report, but if you even walked in the front door, you’d know there was something wrong in that family. I promise you. At the very least, we need to look into it.”
“Anything in his past?” Gonzales asked.
“Nothing provable yet. But girls went missing from the three colleges where he taught before coming here. At the same time he was living in each area.”
“Statistically speaking?”
“Statistically speaking, at a rate well above what you would expect in a college town. And I’m still waiting on some jurisdictions to get back to me.”
“His employers?”
“It’s hard to get anything out of them. They’re afraid of lawsuits. But he’s bounced around a lot, been denied tenure twice, and left one college before the issue even came up. That’s a bit odd. I’m hoping someone outside human resources will crack and give me something off the record. I’m still working on it. I have a contact inside one chancellor’s office. If she gives the go-ahead, I’ll hear something next week. All I can get from them so far is that it was a student complaint about unprofessional conduct that