She closed the folder, wondering how she could bring it up to Nick when she wasn’t supposed to have seen the file. Hopefully, he’d assign her to help him on it. Although she’d never known Alyssa, she understood what it was like to have your future shaped by a tragedy. Even though she was dead, perhaps by protecting other girls from the reverend, Alyssa’s spirit would find peace.
Kate scooped up all the files into her arms and started across the room to the filing cabinet when it hit her. The complaint was dated October 1.
Almost a month before Alyssa’s murder.
Chapter Five
AFTER QUICKLY FILING the other case files, Kate searched the firm’s database for any mention of Reverend Pierce, the camp, or the church and cross-referenced all of Nick’s assigned cases to his clients, coming up empty on all fronts. It was as if the case didn’t exist. She didn’t even know how to file it in the cabinet. For safekeeping, she slipped it in her briefcase. Then she went to go find Lisa. She’d know what to do with it.
She stepped into the hallway and had started toward Lisa’s desk when a crash from inside Joseph’s office startled her. Who was in there? She’d thought the police had finished inspecting it. The door was closed, but curiosity got the best of her. She turned the knob and slowly inched open the door.
Camille Joseph was crouched in the corner of the room, staring at the shattered pieces of a crystal vase and brown withered flowers. To see the confident woman, a Michigan Supreme Court judge, as broken as the glass beneath her fingertips brought the reality of Miles Joseph’s death to light. Kate had been relieved to have it over. They’d found Alyssa’s murderer and proven Jaxon innocent while also giving closure to Mrs. Webber for her daughter. But for Joseph’s wife, the hell was just beginning.
Feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic, Kate began to shut the door to give her some privacy. At the creak, Mrs. Joseph whipped her head around and caught Kate standing behind the door.
Seeing no other choice, Kate entered the room and crossed to the widow. “Your Honor, I don’t know what to say . . . I’m sorry for your loss.”
The woman instantly regained her composure and stood, brushing her hands down her thighs as if to iron out the wrinkles. “Thank you. And I’m sorry my husband tried to kill you.”
Her blunt comment threw Kate for a loop. “You shouldn’t apologize. You didn’t know.”
“That’s true, but I can’t help feeling somewhat responsible. I’ve been with the man for forty years. We have two children and one grandchild. In all that time, how could I not know I was sleeping next to a murderer?”
In her fitted designer pantsuit, Camille Joseph looked every inch of the powerful woman she was. Unlike the night they’d met at Benediction, she wore her hair in a conservative bun and thick glasses were perched on her nose. It was hard for Kate to believe this was the same woman who’d cavalierly mentioned her husband was off with one of his sluts.
After spending time at Benediction, Kate had learned not to judge anyone for their kink and that who they were in the bedroom didn’t define them. Just because the Josephs had been swingers didn’t mean they’d loved each other any less.
“I don’t know, Your Honor.” Kate shook her head, noticing the blood dripping down the side of Judge Joseph’s hand. She pulled a tissue from the box and took the widow’s hand, inspecting it. She must have cut her thumb on a piece of glass. Carefully, she wrapped tissue around the finger, tucking the paper in to create a makeshift bandage.
Judge Joseph’s eyes widened as she focused on her finger. She must have not known she’d injured it. “Thank you. And please, call me Camille.” She wrapped her other hand around it like a fist, putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding. “In my sixty years, I’ve come to learn everyone has a part of themselves they keep hidden from the world. I never imagined my husband could be responsible for these things. That he was evil.”
“Do you think people are born evil?”
“Maybe some, but no. I think it’s shaped by the conscientious decisions we make. If I accidentally hit someone with my car and rather than stay to help I drive away, it may make me a coward but it doesn’t make me evil. It’s the lies I tell afterward—not only the ones to the auto mechanic and insurance company but to myself—those lies darken the soul just a little bit more until there’s nothing left.”
Kate couldn’t help wondering if, after her father’s death, when she’d slept with anyone with no regard to those who might get hurt . . . when she’d spent her nights hopped up on cocaine and ecstasy . . . when she’d woken up in the woods naked and bloody with no memory of how she’d gotten there . . . If Caden hadn’t pulled her from the pit of hell she’d dug for herself, would she have turned evil? Indifferent to the consequences of her actions and incapable of empathy?