The Lies You Told

by Emerald O'Brien

  “You killed them. All those women. It was you.”

  They said Tina and the other officer framed them, but Jared’s the killer. Tommy said it himself.

  “You killed Brianna all those years ago, didn’t you? You let your brother take the fall, but Tina found out, didn’t she?”

  He turned around and squinted at her. “I knew the cop wouldn’t leave well enough alone. I had to stop her before Tommy found out it was me. Just so happens he was planning his revenge against her, anyway. It was too easy, or it shoulda been. He thought she and her partner framed him. Couldn’t understand how he’d been linked to the girl in the alley. He was never the smart one. I’ve always been looking out for us, but he just looks out for himself.”

  “You didn’t mind that he was in prison all those years, did you?” Grace asked.

  Jared shrugged. “He’s always gotten everything he wants, and for once, things turned out better for me. I got what I wanted—freedom—out from Tommy’s shadow.”

  “And what did you want with those women you killed?” Grace asked.

  “I wasn’t good enough for them. Nice guys really do finish last, you know that? Just ask her.” He nodded back to Madigan. “I was nice to you, wasn’t I? Not a creep like Tommy, but you sat there with him at the bar all night. You chose him. They all do!”

  “You—you weren’t trying to protect me from him,” Madigan stammered. “You wanted me for yourself.”

  “Tommy was in prison when you killed some of those women,” Grace said, her voice wavering as her energy and blood drained away.

  I don’t have much time.

  “I was nice to them. I was always a gentleman. I bought them drinks; gave them compliments. I even looked out for some of them when a perv in the bar would try to grind all up on them, and then, at the end of the night, they always told me no. I wasn’t worth their time. I was the creep to them,” he scoffed, shaking his head.

  “So you killed them? Just like Brianna,” Grace said.

  “Not just like Brianna, but Brianna was the worst. After I bought her a drink, she and I danced, and we were having a good time. She asked me to come outside with her and when we got there, she asked me to pay for a cab. She was just using me. I told her straight up she was a user, just like all the rest. She called me a loser and told me to go back to my hick town. She said the only woman I’d ever get would be a relative. She laughed at me.” He shook his head. “I learned from my mistakes. I never let anyone see me leave with the woman like I had with Brianna. Never left any of them out to be found, either.”

  Grace’s legs shook beneath her as Jared smiled past her at Madigan.

  He’s going to try something. I can’t let him get to her.

  “Hey.” Grace nodded to the side toward Madigan, keeping her eyes on him. “Go back. Bring them here when they come.”

  No movement came from behind her.

  She’s too stubborn. Doesn’t she understand…

  As she glanced back, Tommy stood behind Madigan with his hand over her mouth and a knife to her neck.

  The knife Jared put in his back.

  Madigan stared at her with a cold resilience in her eyes, and Grace stumbled back, out from the middle of the brothers, aiming the gun at Tommy.

  “Tommy,” Jared called as he stepped toward them. “Listen to me. They’re the only ones who know the truth. We get rid of them, and you and me are free. We can go anywhere. We can be anything.”

  “You literally stabbed me in the back,” Tommy shouted. “You killed Amanda. You killed Brianna in the alley that night. You framed me.”

  “They had a witness who saw me, Tommy, but they identified you. They got confused, and it all got carried away, and—"

  Tommy pulled the knife away from Madigan’s neck and stumbled backwards, leaning against a tree. “You—you’re dead to me.” Tommy’s voice wavered as his eyes fluttered open and shut, and Madigan stepped to Grace’s side.

  “Tommy,” Jared shouted, and Grace aimed her gun back at him, pulling Madigan behind her. “I didn’t want to hurt you! You just have to listen.” Jared rolled up his sleeve, revealing his matching tattoo with their last name in cursive letters as the rain eased off into a mist.

  “That…means nothing,” Tommy huffed.

  “Brothers for life. That’s what it means. Let’s end this, and we can both be free, and I’ll spend my life making it all up to you!”

  Grace let out a breath, aimed the gun at Jared, and squeezed the trigger. The shooting pain accompanying the recoil sent her falling backward as Jared did the same.

  Madigan caught her and held her steady as the world spun around her and another man’s voice shouted from somewhere in the forest as she fought to focus on Madigan.

  “Stay with me,” Madigan whispered.

  Keep your eyes on them.

  She opened her mouth to warn Madigan, but a fuzzy darkness closed in on her vision, and she couldn’t get the first word out before it all went dark.

  Chapter Nineteen

  All of Grace’s weight dropped in Madigan’s arms. “Grace,” she hissed, easing her to the ground.

  “You bastard!” Matt shouted, emerging from the brush and running at Tommy. He grabbed his shirt and yanked him away from the tree, sending him stumbling to the ground by his brother, howling in pain. “Where’s Tina?”

  Matt jumped on Tommy, knocking his back against the ground, repeating, “Where’s Tina?”

  Madigan turned back to Grace and found her gun lying beside her. She knelt down and shook Grace until she gasped for air and opened her eyes.

  “Stay with me,” Madigan whispered and grabbed the gun. She scrambled to her feet as Matt sat on Tommy, punching his face over and over as Jared reached out toward them on his side.

  Madigan aimed the gun in their direction, resting her finger on the trigger. “Enough!” she shouted. “Nobody move! Get off him!”

  Matt punched him again, and his head rocked with the motion, his eyes fully closed.

  We won’t find Tina… We’ll never know…

  “Matt, stop!” Madigan screamed.

  Jared reached out to Tommy, and Matt brought his fist down against Jared’s stomach wound. Jared gasped, lying flat on his back again. Matt panted as he rose to his feet, staring down at the damage he caused. Jared lay just out of arm’s reach from Tommy, both still. Matt marveled at the blood on his hands, muttering something she couldn’t make out, and she turned back to Grace, helping her to her feet again.

  “How will we find her?” He frowned, the revelation hitting him hard. “How can we know where—”

  “Matt,” Grace said in a calm tone, “I need you to go to the road to meet the officers and then lead them back here to start a search.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, his mouth slightly agape as he stumbled back through the woods.

  “How?” Madigan sputtered. “How can he just—he just—we don’t have a chance at finding her…”

  The wind whistled around them, the mist gone, but the dampness remained.

  “We’ll find her.” Grace nodded once before Madigan linked arms with her and led her back the way they came in. Barking and howling echoed in the far distance.

  They’re here. Help is here for Grace.

  Madigan held her steady, keeping her eyes on the ground ahead as several boot print puddles diverged into a different direction.

  “Look,” Madigan said, but Grace had already noticed.

  “Come on.” Grace pulled in the other direction.

  How does she have the strength? She’s in shock.

  “No, we have to get you help.”

  “We came here to find her,” Grace said in a faint voice. “We have to…”

  They followed the prints for several yards until a hunting blind came into sight.

  “Tina!” Madigan shouted. “Tina, are you there?”

  “Go.” Grace nodded ahead, leaning against a tree.

  Madigan ran for the deer blind, climbed the steps, and opened the l
atch to the door. Tina lay in the corner, hog-tied, bloody, and still.

  “She’s here!” Madigan screamed, crawling along the floor to her.

  She reached her hand out for her, touching her cold arm as howls echoed ever closer.

  “Tina,” she whispered, holding her face with both hands. “Please, Tina. Tina?”

  “She’s over here!” Grace shouted from below, and loud voices called back. “Up there!”

  “Get another paramedic!” a man shouted.

  “Madigan!” Grace shouted from below. “Is she alive?”

  Madigan pressed her fingers against the cold skin of her neck, but nothing moved beneath them.

  We’re too late.

  “Tina,” she cried, wrapping her up in her arms.

  A paramedic joined them in the tiny blind. “Move away,” he said, and Madigan let her go, leaning back against the wall as the paramedic moved in.

  Her hands shook as tears fell, clouding her vision of the beaten and bruised body before her. Her stomach lurched, and she pressed her hands against her mouth.

  Oh, Shawna. Tina. I’m so sorry…

  “I need a stretcher!” the medic shouted, turning to Madigan. “Out of the way.”

  Madigan crawled to the door, exchanging places with another medic, filling the space.

  “We have a faint pulse,” the first medic said to the other.

  She’s alive!

  Madigan stumbled past another medic with a stretcher and ran toward Grace as two medics eased her onto one. “She’s alive!”

  Tears slid from Grace’s closed eyes down her temples.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Madigan asked as they began carrying her through the forest.

  “It’ll be okay.” Grace took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “We’ll always be okay.”

  Madigan followed along behind the medics, passing Shelling at the tree line. His eyes opened wide as he stared down at Grace and then at Madigan.

  “Tina’s alive,” Madigan said before turning back to catch up with Grace.

  “I’ll see you at the hospital!” Shelling called.

  Madigan followed Grace to the ambulance, and as they loaded her in, an officer cuffed Matt Morelli and guided him into the back of their car.

  “Madigan! There! She’ll tell you it was self-defence! I was protecting you, wasn’t I?”

  You were punishing him, not defending us.

  The medics brought Tina’s stretcher past the cabin to another ambulance.

  “I love you!” Matt shouted. “I love you, Tina!”

  The officer closed the door on him.

  “Hey!” He knocked on the window. “Tell them! Tell them what happened—"

  A medic wrapped a blanket over her shoulders, and she stepped into the ambulance, resting her hand on Grace’s leg. “I’m here. Hold on.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Madigan handed Grace a green tea from the hospital coffee shop, and they sipped at their drinks as a nurse wheeled Tina back into the room on her bed after another test. Grace nodded to Tina, and she nodded back.

  The harsh, fluorescent lighting highlighted the bruises and cuts on Tina’s skin and the dark circles under Shawna’s red eyes as she entered the room following her mom, walking straight to Grace’s bed.

  “I really don’t know what to say…Thank you both so much for what you did to save my mom.”

  “How are you holding up?” Grace asked.

  Shawna clutched the amethyst on her necklace and shook her head. “I feel stupid. I trusted my dad again, and he was lying. He took advantage of me while I was vulnerable. He read my notes I made in the book you gave me.”

  Grace turned to Madigan and frowned as a short, sharp pain bit at her arm.

  “He used it to frame Rhett. He used all my thoughts and feelings to make up this lie that my mom wanted to be back together with him, and how afraid she was of Rhett, and I believed him. Detective Shelling told me he was the one forcing himself on my mom.”

  “You were in a tough position,” Madigan said. “You were taken advantage of, and I’m so sorry he did that to you.”

  “He’s worse than before he went to prison, or I’m finally realizing who my dad really is. He really thought he’d rescue my mom, and we’d all just be a family again. He’s a snake.”

  “You have your mom, now,” Grace said, “and you’ll get through it together.”

  “You guys were my rocks. I’ve been telling Mom. She only woke up once, and she was in a panic, so they’ve sedated her, but she doesn’t remember everything. It scares her.”

  “The only thing that scared me,” Tina said from across the room behind the curtain, “was not getting to see you again.”

  Shawna opened Grace’s curtain all the way to the other side. “Mom, I love you.”

  “Love you,” Tina said in a raspy voice, her rosary beads hanging from her fist.

  “Where’d you find it?” Madigan asked, nodding to them.

  “Under the bed.” Shawna sighed. “I fell asleep holding them one night, and I must have dropped it. My mom wanted a moment alone with you both.”

  The nurse walked past them to the door. “They both need rest. Make it quick.”

  Shawna followed the nurse out of the room.

  “I was gone for five days,” Tina said, staring across the room at them. “I—I went to get in my car after the gym. Jared hit me in the back of my head with something. He kept me in that deer blind, tied up. No food. No water. He beat me over and over, trying to make me tell him what I knew about him murdering Brianna. Who else knew… If you hadn’t come when you did…”

  She cleared her throat and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Tina,” Madigan said, “you watched over us. You think we wouldn’t do the same for you and Shawna?”

  “You did more than that.” She looked back over at them. “Jared Leman came every night and sometimes during the day. He beat me. Tortured me.” Her lips quivered. “He drugged me when he was finished, and I’d pass out and wake up in so much pain, but it paled in comparison to the fear I wouldn’t see Shawna again.”

  “I’m so sorry for what you went through. How long you had to wait.” Grace turned to Madigan. “She’s the one who pushed through everything. Every obstacle between us and you.”

  “You’ve both grown into such strong, beautiful women.” She sniffled and reached for her cup of water, wincing before taking a sip.

  “Thank you,” Madigan said. “I never got the chance to tell you that. I never thought I’d see you again, but I’ve thought about you—about that day. I’m grateful for what you did for us, even if it didn’t seem like it back then.”

  “You were a tough cookie,” Tina said with a rasp in her voice. “Both are, I see. We need to finish this—together. We are three parts of a full story. Could you tell Detective Shelling I’m ready to tell mine?”

  Madigan nodded.

  “They need to know everything. Why this happened. If it weren’t for that parole hearing, I’d have never known the truth. Jared would have just kept getting away with murder.”

  “How did you find out?” Madigan asked.

  “When I heard about the hearing, I knew I couldn’t let Tommy back out. I looked into the case files again. I just wanted to find something—anything to make them see how dangerous he was.” She licked her lips and took another sip of water. “I’m looking through the files, and there’s nothing, so the night before the hearing, I go online, and I’m looking on social media, and I see a picture of Tommy, but it’s not Tommy. It’s Jared. I got them confused, and it made me think about the witness who saw Tommy at the bar that night. If he could have confused them, too. I couldn’t get to them before the hearing.”

  “At the hearing, Tommy admitted to killing Brianna for the first time, and that was strange. You have to admit guilt and then show you’re not the same person, that you know better, that you’ll be an upstanding member who contributes to society if you get to return to it. It could have been wh
y Tommy finally admitted to it—that he just wanted to get out—but I was already wary of him. When Jared spoke on his behalf, he vouched for him and said he didn’t want to believe what his brother had done. How he’d visited him, and over time, his brother had become a different person. He said prison had made him a better man. I knew he was lying. The whole thing wasn’t enough to tell someone about, but I had a gut instinct, and I started looking into the case again and following Jared.”

  That’s where she was when Rhett thought she was out with another man.

  “I finally got in contact with that witness who said they saw Brianna leaving with Tommy the night she died. When I showed them pictures of Tommy and Jared from the time of the murder, and Tommy’s head wasn’t shaved yet. I showed them side by side, and he couldn’t tell the difference between who he saw that night. It had been too long. I took it to Sergeant Colette, but he wouldn’t hear me out. He told me to focus on my work and leave the cases to the detectives. I knew I needed more evidence anyway, so I kept following Jared…and then Tommy when he got out.”

  Sergeant Colette tried to control her too. Does he need to feel in control of women, or just everyone?

  She took a deep breath.

  “The night before he took me,” Tina said, “this woman approached me at the gym. She grabbed my wrist and told me to back off. I yanked it away and was about to restrain her, but she looked at me like she didn’t know what just happened. Then she said she had the wrong person. She thought I was someone else—but she was like my doppelganger. Younger, but it was so strange. The next morning, I realized my credit card was missing. I figured she’d distracted me to steal it. I didn’t put it together that she was warning me to stay away from the Leman brothers. I know now because that’s part of the reason Jared told me he killed her. She was supposed to just follow me—not steal from me. He bragged that the detective had questioned him about Tommy and told him about the credit card use. That’s when he knew she’d been lying to him.”

  “So he took you to make sure he wouldn’t get caught,” Madigan said.

  “He wanted to get everyone out of the way so he could keep on killing.”