Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,66
the killer is behind bars.” He pulled out one of the chairs for her.
Nothing that matters?
She clenched her hands, ignoring the chair. “Captain Buresh, I’d prefer to wait in your office. I’m sure I’ll be safe—”
“Dr. Steele,” Buresh interrupted. “You both need to hear this. Please, sit down.”
They all sat, and Rafe turned to Buresh. “You said there was a major break in the case.”
Buresh cleared his throat, looking extremely uncomfortable. “These guys worked through the night, did some amazing detective work, the best I’ve ever seen. They—”
“Buresh,” Rafe said, his voice impatient.
The captain folded his hands together on top of the folder. “Fullerton isn’t the killer. After checking in with his parole officer that first time, he must have decided he couldn’t handle the pressure again of living on the outside. Who knows? For whatever reason, he committed suicide.”
Nausea roiled in Darby’s stomach. She clasped a hand to her throat. Under the table, Rafe took her other hand in his. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, even though she’d hurt him and he was still angry, he was trying to comfort her.
She selfishly clutched his hand like a lifeline.
“I’m sure you checked death records when you were trying to find him,” Rafe said, his voice hoarse, as if Fullerton’s death weighed as much on his conscience as it was weighing on Darby’s. “What took so long to figure out he’d killed himself?”
“There was never a death certificate. Apparently he killed himself at his cousin’s house. His loving cousin withdrew all of Fullerton’s money from the bank. Apparently he had several thousand dollars from an inheritance. The cousin buried Fullerton in his backyard and never told anyone.”
“What makes you sure the cousin didn’t kill Fullerton?” Rafe asked.
“There were other witnesses. Took a while, quite a bit of pressure, but we feel we got the whole story.”
Rafe nodded. “So we still don’t know who the killer is.”
Buresh cleared his throat again. “Actually, we do. He’s Fullerton’s half brother, Kurt Sonntag. Same mother, different fathers. He got sloppy when he took McHenry. It was caught on camera. And we were able to match his prints from McHenry’s office with a partial from an earlier scene. He wasn’t an EOD, like Fullerton, probably because the army wouldn’t take him. He didn’t pass the psych eval. But he’s knowledgeable about explosives. As a kid, he was a fireworks fanatic who graduated to making his own explosives.”
“We thought everything pointed to Fullerton earlier,” Rafe said. “What makes you sure we’re not making another mistake? Maybe Sonntag is another fall guy, working with the bomber, like the guy who took Mindy.”
Darby’s hand jerked, but Rafe’s fingers tightened around hers. His thumb traced a slow circle on her wrist, as if trying to soothe her.
“Fullerton got out of prison a year ago,” Rafe continued. “If Sonntag is the bomber, if he wants revenge for his brother’s conviction and suicide, why wait so long?”
Darby saw the regret on Buresh’s face, in the stiff lines of his body, the way he wouldn’t look Rafe in the eyes. She studied the faces of the handful of detectives sitting at the table. None of them would look at Rafe.
What were they hiding?
Buresh took a deep breath. “Sonntag is a career criminal. He got out of prison a few weeks after Fullerton’s suicide. He began his revenge a year ago. Then he fled to a neighboring county and got picked up for a petty crime, spent eleven months in lockup. When he got out, he came back here.”
Rafe stared at him, his jaw working, as if he were trying to figure everything out. “You said he began his revenge a year ago. What did you mean?”
Buresh opened the folder in front of him and pulled out a black-and-white photograph. He set it on the table, and pushed it toward Rafe. “This is Sonntag’s mug shot.” He picked up another picture and set it down beside the first. “And this is a snapshot taken from the P.I.’s office. They’re the same guy. Sonntag is our bomber.”
Rafe stared down at the pictures without moving. His thumb stilled on Darby’s wrist.
Buresh pulled a third picture from the folder. He put it over the top of the mug shot. “And this is the picture you gave me a year ago, from the security system at your house the night of the home invasion.”
Darby’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Sonntag, the bomber, was the man who’d killed Rafe’s wife.
* * *
DARBY HAD TRIED EVERYTHING she could think