ToServeAndProtect Read Online Free PDF

yourself together. I’m on my
way.”
    “What do you think my chances are of beating a murder
rap?”
    “You aren’t going to have to beat anything. Elliot
wasn’t murdered. Although I’ve wished him dead a few times.”
    “Don’t say that! Next thing you know the cops will be
after you too.” She sighed into the phone. “Something happened, and I think the
detective believes I’m responsible. He told me not to leave town.” Her voice
raised as the gravity of the situation became more real.
    “You weren’t planning a trip anyway.”
    McKenna chuckled. She loved Dawn’s unwavering positive
attitude, but she hadn’t endured Detective Pearce’s scrutiny. She hadn’t seen
Elliot…McKenna squeezed her eyes tight and forced the bloody picture from the
back of her eyelids. Her heart rate spiked, and the taste of bile filled her
mouth.
    “I’ll see you soon.” Flinging back the covers, she
dropped the phone, stumbled to the bathroom, and emptied her stomach.
    An hour later, McKenna related the night’s events to
Dawn. From the grizzly crime scene to waking up in the hospital, she replayed everything
she remembered. Dawn sat on the end of the hospital bed and listened without
interrupting. McKenna cried when she described the scene in her father’s
bedroom.
    Dawn strode to the window and fully opened the blinds.
“There’s a cop watching the room.” She turned and looked hard at her friend.
“Mickey, you’ve made yourself suspicious. Think about it. You’re the perfect
suspect. You don’t have a boyfriend, you’re twenty-five, and still live with
your dad. By any standard, you’re unusual. You don’t let anyone get close. You
don’t have a man in your life.
    “I know you could never hurt your father, but the two
of you live pretty strangely. Even you have to admit it’s odd for a beautiful
girl to shut herself out of life to live with someone who barely speaks to
her.”
    McKenna tried to rub her tired eyes with her bandaged
hands. “It isn’t so strange when that’s all you’ve ever known. And the way I
live isn’t the problem. Something happened to Elliot.” McKenna draped her legs
over the edge of the bed. “The detective who was here made his opinion
perfectly clear. Dawn, I will not be a suspect.” She stood holding onto the
bedrail for support. “I don’t know what happened in that room, and I don’t have
anything to hide.”
    “But you don’t have an alibi.” Dawn’s words stopped
McKenna from reaching for her stiff pants caked with drying blood. “No one
knows better than you how that little detail turns cops on.”
    McKenna tried not to think about the trail of evidence
the police were following. They found her lying in a large pool of blood,
covered with injuries that she supposed, could be interpreted as defensive. Or
perhaps the detective might think she’d received her injuries while she
brutally murdered her father.
    She could guess what churned in the detective’s mind.
Spoiled little bitches brought up without thought to those who didn’t fulfill
their every whim could easily kill without remorse. All one had to do was
remember the Menendez brothers.
    “I’m going home.” Her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Tomorrow I’ll tell the police what they want to hear. I’ve done it all before.
Cry when it’s expected, yell when they push, and in the end, hope I come out
clean.”
    Dawn took McKenna’s face between her hands. “You
listen to me.” Her voice was strong and steady. “You won’t say anything until
we figure out a plan. You need an alibi, and now you’ve got one.”
    “Lying only makes me look guilty.”
    “No, lying is your only chance. An orange jumpsuit at
the state prison will make you look guilty.” Dawn pulled her into a tight
embrace. “You find your backbone, Mickey. You hold your head up high when we
walk out of here and don’t you dare look at the fraternity of police officers
waiting outside this room.”
    “I’m on a twenty-four