Sullivan's Justice Read Online Free

mean.”
    Carolyn stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “You could make this decision by yourself, you know. In reality, you probably should.”
    His eyes were red with exhaustion. “You’re my big sister. I never make a decision without you. I’m not a murderer or anything, but this is important. Don’t you care? I’m about to ask someone to marry me. Laurel will be a part of our family. All I need is for you to help me figure out how to handle the situation with Melody. What time will you be through with your interview?”
    “Before noon,” Carolyn told him. “Go home, give this more thought; then when we talk, you’ll have a better handle on everything. Once I hear the whole story, I’ll give you my opinion. The sooner you let me do my job, the sooner we can talk.”
    She waited until he walked off, then hurried off toward the entrance to the men’s jail.
    Punching open the doors, Carolyn stepped up to a glass window. Her shoulder-length dark hair was pushed behind her left ear. The other side swung forward onto her cheek when she moved. Wearing a belt that accentuated her small waistline, she wasn’t as thin as one of her brother’s models, but she was also the mother of two teenagers. Most people thought she looked younger than her thirty-eight years.
    The Ventura County government center complex was similar to a small city. The courts, district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, as well as the records division, were all housed on the left side of a large, open space. A bubbling fountain stood in the center, surrounded by concrete benches. To the right was the Correction Services Agency, the formal name for the probation department, as well as the sheriff ’s department, and the women’s and men’s jails. The general public assumed that the two structures were not connected, yet an underground tunnel was used to transport inmates back and forth to the courthouse.
    The jail was actually a pretrial detention facility, and as a result of housing over one thousand inmates with a rated capacity of 412, the fairly new facility had an infrastructure of a thirty-year-old building. Ten years ago, the county had erected another detention center, which was called the Todd Road Jail, and was located in the city of Santa Paula. Todd Road was designed to hold over 750 sentenced male inmates. Only the minor or repeat offenders served their time in jail. Serious offenders were sentenced to prison.
    On the other side of the window, a dark-haired deputy named Joe Powell looked shocked when he read the prisoner’s name on the inmate visitation request sheet. “You can’t see Raphael Moreno. He’s in solitary. Only two more days and we get rid of this piece of shit.”
    Moreno had decapitated his disabled mother and murdered his twelve-year-old sister. Leaving their bodies in the house, he’d gone on a killing spree.
    His next victims were a family of five. The father had been a thirty-one-year-old real estate agent. The mother had been a stay-at-home mom who cared for the couple’s three children. Moreno had entered through a rear window just after dark, lying in wait inside a closet in the baby’s room.
    When the mother came in to put the six-month-old boy to bed, Moreno had gunned down her and the child, then shot and killed the father and the couple’s other two children. The Ventura police had found all five bodies lined up military-style in the living room.
    The case had perplexed the authorities. Nothing was taken from the residence, and Moreno had as yet to provide them with a motive for the killings.
    “I have to see him,” Carolyn said into the microphone. “And I have to see him immediately, Joe.”
    “Listen,” he told her, “all you investigators wait until the last minute to finish your work. The captain says we don’t have to take it anymore. Besides, there’s no way you can interview Moreno in a room. He’s one of the most dangerous inmates we’ve ever had.” He