Escape. That had been his goal. She’d known it then and she knew it now.
It had worked. He’d proved a whole lot of people wrong. He’d kept up his grades, never gotten into a day’s worth of trouble. And by his senior year, most people were almost able to forget his last name.
As far as she knew, he’d left his parents’ home the day after graduation and had never gone back. He’d pulled together enough money to go to college and get a degree. And her father had hired him right afterward. Stacey had promoted him to chief deputy a year ago. She’d never regretted her choice. Now, though, she had to wonder.
Because she needed her people to be honest with her. And he hadn’t been.
“Hey, Mitch,” she said as he stepped out of his car, careful with his broken arm. His cast, which Dean suddenly had her questioning, was scrawled with a few signatures and some graffiti, probably from the other deputies, all of whom looked up to him.
He was liked. He was sociable. He was smart.
So why on earth had he gotten himself mixed up with Lisa Zimmerman and then covered it up?
“Hi, Stace.” He glanced toward the other side of the car, where Dean stood, watching in silence. “He’s back?”
She nodded as Dean walked over to join them. “I don’t think you officially met the other day,” she said, quickly introducing them.
Mitch flushed, then shook Dean’s hand, obviously embarrassed by his unprofessional behavior. “Is there news?”
“No.” Few people knew the FBI was investigating other murders in connection with Lisa’s. She intended to keep it that way. If her subordinates wondered why the FBI was involving itself in a local case, they’d just have to keep wondering.
“You still haven’t found her?”
She shook her head.
“But you’re certain she’s dead?”
Dean stepped in. “We’re certain.”
Seeing the dazed, empty look in Mitch’s eyes, Stacey reached out and put a bracing hand on his shoulder. “We need to talk about this.”
“I know.” He glanced at Dean, as if wondering if the other man had to stay, but Stacey wasn’t going to let Mitch off the hook just because he was her friend. The case was much too important for that. Realizing as much, Mitch shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“How long had you been seeing her?”
“About six months,” he admitted. “I pulled her over one night for speeding.”
Wonderful.
“She was upset. Crying. She looked a little banged-up. I thought maybe one of those rough guys she went out with had knocked her around.”
She knew what he was going to say before he said it. “I found out later it was that bastard stepfather of hers. He…” Mitch’s face turned red, and obvious rage tightened his entire body. “I really considered killing him.”
“I didn’t hear you say that,” she muttered with a frown, even though she understood the sentiment.
Vilifying Stan wouldn’t help, however. They already knew he hadn’t murdered Lisa. Maybe her spirit, yes-he had probably killed that. But hell would have to deal with him. There was nothing she could do to the man now unless Winnie stepped forward to charge him with her own abuse.
“Tell me you’re investigating him for Lisa’s murder,” Mitch said, still tense.
“He’s been ruled out.”
He pounded his fist against the hood of his car. “You’re sure?”
“He’s got a solid alibi, Mitch. He might be a twisted degenerate, but he didn’t kill her.”
His shoulders slumped, as if he’d wanted Stan to be guilty. Like Stacey, he had to want justice for the man who’d abused Lisa all those years.
“Go back to what you were saying. What happened with you and Lisa?”
“We started getting together. Not around here-we’d go up to Front Royal and grab some coffee or catch a movie. She was talking about cleaning herself up, maybe trying for her GED. Doing something with herself. I wanted to help, so we’d meet once in a while and go over some stuff.”
The reformed bad kid tutoring the lost girl. There was something inherently sweet in that. If she’d known about it, she probably would have encouraged them both, even while urging Mitch not to get his hopes up too high.
She hadn’t known, however. Mitch had kept his secrets well. “You fell for her?”
He nodded, defiant. “She wasn’t what everyone thought she was. She was pretty and funny and smart.”
“And an addict,” Stacey said, not unkindly. “I suspect you were in over your head.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, but held on to his control. “One day she said she wanted to stop seeing me. She’d hooked up with some ex-con, started using heavily again. I couldn’t get her to quit.” He frowned. “I thought for a long time she’d skipped town with him, until you mentioned that he was in jail down in Georgia at the time.”
“Let’s talk about the night she disappeared.”
“I went out to Dick’s to pick up my brother.” He cast a quick, nervous glance between Stacey and Dean. “He’s not really a bad kid.”
“Yeah, he is,” Stacey snapped. Seeing the sadness in Mitch’s expression, she grudgingly added, “But maybe there’s a chance for him.”
“You gotta understand. I was the buffer when he was little.”
A physical buffer. He’d been the wall between their father’s fists and his younger brother.
Maybe that was what had drawn Mitch to Lisa. Had he felt some deep, intrinsic need to protect her from her own abusive situation, when he’d once been too young to protect himself and felt guilt over abandoning Mike?
“Once I left, I swore I’d never set foot in that house again.” His face reddening, he muttered, “Our mom’s not interested in anything that doesn’t come out of a bottle. Mike has nobody.”
Having nobody to stand up for him hadn’t kept Mitch from breaking free. But she didn’t point it out. The guy knew it already; he just didn’t want to give up on his troubled sibling.
She got that. Wow, did she ever get that.
“I’m trying to reach out to him,” he admitted. “Trying to get him to come stay with me once in a while. The old man’s going to a NASCAR race later this week. I had been planning on picking Mike up, bringing him to the station. Letting him spend some time with some of the decent people around here…” Mitch’s voice trailed off. “I guess that’s not a good idea now, though.”
With an active murder investigation? Definitely not.
“Let’s get back to that night, Mitch.”
“When I showed up at the bar that night, Mike was about to get his butt kicked. He doesn’t like being laughed at. Mike was trying to pick a fight with a bunch of hard-drinking bikers who got a kick out of a kid thinking he could intrude on their turf.”
The teen was lucky he hadn’t gotten pulverized.
“I was hauling him out when I saw Lisa.” He swallowed visibly and leaned back against his own car, as if his legs had weakened. “She was dancing on top of the pool table. Moving like… like she was, you know, wanting to have sex with any guy there. I asked her to leave and she just laughed at me. So I pulled her down.”
“Bet that didn’t make her happy.”
“No. She scratched me, kicked me. Told me to mind my own business.” His voice lowered, thickened. “Told me she was sick of being around somebody who didn’t know how to have any fun and to leave her the hell alone.” Closing his eyes, almost whispering now, he added, “It wasn’t until after I left that I realized she was crying when she said it.”
“But you did leave.”
He nodded miserably. “Yeah. I took Mike home, then drove around for a while to try to get my thoughts together.”