“I thought after Ayla,” she said, “You’d learn your lesson. But you didn’t, did you?”
“Shut up,” Mitch said, reaching around for his cuffs.
“You sent your own goddamn daughter in here? And killed your best friend over it.” She laughed, void of mirth.
I looked from Liz to Mitch and back again.
“What’s she talking about, Mitch?” I squeaked.
Liz twisted to look at me, hair falling across her eyes. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
“Shut up,” Mitch growled.
Liz raised her voice in my direction. “Chief Mitchell here shot your dad, kiddo,” she said. “Shot him in cold blood.”
The world fell out from under me. “What did you say?”
“Your father—“ Liz began but Mitch swung the weapon around and pulled the trigger. The sound ricocheted around the room. Liz’s body collapsed in a spray of red.
I screamed.
Mitch whipped around and pointed the gun at me.
Chapter 31
“What did you do?” I screamed, panic rising like bile in my throat.
I scrambled away, tripped over something and fell to the floor. “I’m—I’m calling the police,” I said, scrambling for Davis’s unconscious body so I could get my phone.
“Don’t move,” Mitch said, his voice cold.
I froze, one hand in Davi’s pocket.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Mady,” Mitch said, “But I need you to keep your hands up and get to your feet.”
I didn’t move.
“NOW!” His voice echoed through the empty house.
I wrapped my fingers around the phone and pulled it free as I got to my feet.
“Drop the phone, Mady.”
I didn’t.
“Put it down!” Mitch stepped forward and ripped the phone from my hands and threw it across the room. It smashed against the far wall and clattered to the floor. “You Graves never listen!” He blinked and seemed to regain some sort of control over himself. He reached an arm out. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t touch me!” I reeled away. “What did she mean you shot dad?”
“You shouldn’t have gone looking for Zoe,” he said, his voice charged with emotion. “I told you not to go looking for her.”
“What did she mean you shot dad, Mitch?”
Mitch’s mouth stretched into a thin line. “You’re just like your dad,” he spat. “If he’d only listened to me, none of this would’ve happened.”
Horror and revulsion threatened to overwhelm me.
“Zoe and I had it all worked out,” Mitch said. “She was only going to be a CI for a couple months. Give us what we needed to find out who had killed Ernst. But your dad—“ he scowled. “He couldn’t understand why I would send my own daughter in there.”
“But,” I said, emotion choked my voice. “Why would Zoe agree to help you? You two—“
“Zoe came to me asking for help,” Mitch said. “But I knew all she really wanted was money.”
“So you asked her to be your CI?”
“I promised to get her help if she promised to give me information on the Ernst case.”
Bile rose in my throat. “That’s horrible.”
“Spare me,” Mitch said. “You sound just like your father.”
It all crashed down then. Everything fit. It all made sense.
“He threatened to turn you in,” I said. “So you killed him.”
“I’m hardly that petty,” Mitch said. ”No. Your dad threatened to turn me in so I gave Zoe some information to pass onto Antwerp. Information that would ensure his silence.”
“What information?”
“Two birds, so to speak,” he said cryptically, looking so proud of himself. “Information that proved Zoe was on their side.”
“What information?” I repeated.
“About your father. And Mary Trelany.”
I could hardly breath. I sucked at the air, trying to get some into my lungs.
“It was his gun.” My voice came out a whisper. At my feet, Davis groaned. I prayed that he’d stay unconscious.
“I kept his secret,” Mitch said. “And I helped get rid of the gun so he could never be implicated. All these years I kept quiet, and when I saw the opportunity presented us for a little extra cash, I jumped on it. And Vince had no choice but to follow.”
“No,” I shook my head. “He would never.”
Mitch laughed. Cold and unfeeling. “How do you think he could afford all those things, Mady? How could he afford to keep your old place? Two mortgages on a cop’s salary?”
“I’m going to tell everyone what you did,” I said, “I’ll tell them everything.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Mitch said. “You saw what happened here. They attacked Zoe. I ordered them to stop and when they didn’t, I had no choice but to shoot.” His face had lost all humanity. “I’d hate to have to shoot you too. An unfortunate casualty in all the confusion.”
I swallowed, trying to untangle my thoughts, understand the enormity of what he’d just told me.
“Zoe’s role in all this will come out,” Mitch said, “I can’t help that. But she’ll be hailed a hero. We can make it look like the Ernsts killed your dad. Half the town already believes they did. It won’t be hard. You’re involved in this Mady, whether you like it or not. And I need to know if you can be trusted.”
I felt like I might throw up. Mitch was a monster.
If I went along with him, what was to stop him from hurting more people? But if I didn’t, I’d wind up dead, just like my dad. Like Tristan and Liz.
“Don’t be stupid, Mady,” Mitch said again, seeing the indecision on my face. “Everything your dad did, he did for you. Is this really how you want to repay him?”
A part of me railed against this, but another part, a larger part, understood that this, at least, was the truth. Everything dad had done, had been done for me. I had never wanted for anything. Dad had supplied an endless flow of cash until I stopped accepting his monthly checks when I moved to Reno. He’d done what he could to give me a better life. The way he’d gone about it hadn’t been right, but we’ve all made mistakes and gotten so wrapped up in them that we couldn’t see the light for the darkness.
But I also knew he’d want me to put an end to this.
I ran for my phone, slipping a little on the blood splattered over the floor. I grabbed for it just as a hand landed on my shoulder and yanked me away. I flew back, the phone skittered across the floor.
I dove for it, but Mitch slammed one heavy booted foot onto my hand. I cried out. He pressed all his weight on it and I felt a bone crunch. The cold steel of his gun pressed into my back.
“I’m giving you a chance to walk away from this,” Mitch said. “All you have to do is agree to what happened here and never say a word about your dad.”
Tears streamed down my face, my hand a mass of burning pain.
Then the front door burst open. Mitch whirled around and suddenly my hand was free.
“Drop the gun!” Chris Savine shouted, his gun pointed at Mitch.
“Savine,” Mitch said, relaxing. “Thank god you’re here. Arrest her for resisting arrest.” With effort, he stood up.
And as he did, he raised his arm.
The gun fired. Chris lurched backwards, smashing into the door and dropping to the floor.
“No!” I threw myself at Mitch before he could fire again. I hit him in the back and heard the breath whoosh from his lungs. The gun dropped from his grasp.
Mitch and I dove for it, but I was smaller. And quicker. I scrambled away and got to my feet. Holding it in my left hand, I brought my injured right hand underneath the butt and held it out before me.
Mitch lunged for it and I fired. The bullet thudded into the wall behind him.
“Don’t come any closer!” I waved the gun, blood rushing through my ears. My right hand roared in pain, my left felt clunky and unused to doing so much.
“Mady, don’t b
e stupid.”
Sirens split the air. Mitch’s eyes went wide before settling into a look of satisfied contempt. “Now you’ve done it.”
Detective Ingress came through the door, gun drawn. He took one look at the scene and said, “Mady, lower the gun.”
I hesitated a moment before tossing the gun away.
“She took my gun,” Mitch said. “Arrest her.”
But Ingress didn’t move. He raised his gun to Mitch. “John Mitchell, you’re under arrest for the murder of Vincent Graves.”
Chapter 32
It came out later that Mitch's biggest mistake had been using the same gun that had been confiscated from Mary Trelany’s car all those years ago to kill my dad. Turns out, it wasn’t dad’s gun after all, but Mitch’s. When the news of Mitch’s arrest reached Eric Schwartz, he finally confessed to the secret he’d kept all these years. Further, the bullet that killed my dad was linked to the bullets taken during the raid on the brothel.
After Mitch was booked and sent to the county jail to await trial, Adam Najiim came to visit me as I was loading up the last of dad’s boxes into a rental van. I had planned on storing some of his things in a storage unit, but now I had mom’s place.
So there I was, loading up the van, my right hand in a clunky cast, when Adam pulled into the drive. He’d been on the front lines as the story crashed over Beacon Falls—all of it, from Mitch’s first steps into corruption on the Vice Squad, all the way through to the end. I’d given him an interview about what had happened in the Antwerp house that day, a story that earned him state-wide recognition.
A dog barked. I looked up in surprise and saw a grinning Remy smudging her nose across Adam's back window. He let her out and she bounded over to me, leapt up and kissed my face, then charged to the front door, barking merrily to be let inside.
“Where’d you—?”
Adam smiled. “She was at the humane society in Lordstown. I’d been watching the websites ever since you said on Facebook that she was missing.”
I blinked back unexpected tears and hurried to let Remy inside. The dog barely waited for me to open the door before she ran straight for her dog dish and lapped up water.
“Adam,” I said, returning. “I—I don’t know what to say. Thank you.” Remy had been missing for six days, and after everything that had happened, I figured I’d never see her again.
“I know it doesn’t make up for what I wrote about your dad,” Adam said, “But I—“
I cut him off. “You’ve been more than gracious toward dad.” In the days since Mitch’s arrest, it had come out that he’d coerced dad into going along with his corruption scheme, first with the prostitutes, then taking money from the Mexican cartel in exchange for looking the other way as cocaine flowed into Beacon Falls. It didn’t change the fact that dad had benefited from it, but, in a way, it helped soften the blow to dad’s reputation. He was a flawed man who had acted recklessly and then dangerously. But he had also been the one who tried the hardest to stop Mitch when Mitch crossed the line.
And that had cost him his life.
Adam stared at the driveway under his feet.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“I just got word that Savine has been fired.”
“What?”
“Turns out, he knew about the extortion,” Adam said.
After all the revelations of the last week, this fell oddly flat. Or maybe I just didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with it.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I wanted you to hear it before it hits the internet.”
Thanks to his bulletproof vest, the bullet that had struck Chris did no more damage than a couple broken ribs. He’d come around only once to check on me since Mitch’s arrest. It had been an uncomfortable visit but I attributed it to the stress of it all. I never once thought he’d been complicit in any of it.
“How’s Zoe?” Adam asked.
Zoe had suffered a ferocious beating that resulted in several broken bones and a couple surgeries. I’d been to see her, finally able to apologize and give her back the plush giraffe.
“The doctors think she’ll be released in a few days.”
“That’s good.”
We stared at one another. Then Adam said, “Elly Williams checked herself into Spring Meadows.”
I nodded. “That’s good too.” Spring Meadows was a rehab center in Cleveland. “Where’s Derrick?”
“With his dad.”
I snapped my head up. “I thought he—“
“It’s Davis,” Adam said. “Davis is his dad.”
I pulled up to Elly’s doublewide, knocked with my left hand, and a moment later Davis Dempster, a bandage across his head, pulled open the door, a laughing Derrick on his shoulders.
“Mady!” His green eyes went wide. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to say thank you,” I said, “For saving my life.”
His face fell. “I—it was—after what your dad did for Elly, helping her with the sickness—“
“Horsey ride, daddy!” Derrick shouted, smacking Davis’s forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Derrick,” Davis admonished, then swung the child off his shoulders and set him on the floor. “Go play for a minute.”
“But daaaaad,” he wailed, his eyes filling with tears.
I smiled at the domesticity of it all. Davis Dempster, father. The thought had never once occurred to me.
“Go, Der,” he said, and the child slunk off, shoulders slumped. Davis looked back at me, his face a mix of emotions.
The staties knew Davis dealt within Antwerp’s heroin trade, but they didn’t have enough evidence to book him. And after what he did to save me, they let him go.
“You got Elly hooked,” I said without recrimination.
Sadness washed over him so profound that I took a step backwards.
“I never meant to,” he said. “I was trying to help her get over your dad. Then Derrick was born. I never thought—” His voice cracked.
“She’ll be okay,” I said, the words meaningless.
He nodded grimly. “She’s needed this for a long time now. Your dad tried to get her in, but it didn’t take. That’s when he started giving her his meds.”
Emotion lodged in my throat.
“But we’re trying,” Davis insisted. “Your dad’s death—it—it was a good thing. In a way.” He blanched, but I knew what he meant.
“Yeah,” I said. Dad would want Elly to get clean. I knew he would. "The photograph--" I started. Davis cut me off.
"That was stupid," he said. "To send that. I just thought you might like to see the old gang."
We'd hardly been an "old gang" but I let it go. “I gotta go,” I said. “Take care, Davis.”
Chapter 33
Mitch was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Liz Antwerp and Tristan Dempster, fourteen counts of felony bribery, and eight counts of extortion. His trial was set to start at the end of November. Until then, he’d been booked into the state prison, in a special unit reserved for cops.
To be kept apart from the regular prison population was too good for him, but I had no say in the matter.
Chris showed up at mom’s house the day after I finished moving things over. He’d aged in the short time since I’d last seen him. His clothes were wrinkled and hung off a frame that had the pinched, sour look of someone who’s been ill. Remy bounded up to him, but he only patted her head absently.
“I’m sorry,” Chris said, his voice strained. “I should’ve told you what I knew.”
I shook my head. “You couldn’t. Mitch would’ve killed you too.”
“Then I should’ve gone to Detective Ingress.”
“Chris.” He looked at me and I saw a world of sorrows in his eyes. “You did what you needed to do," I said, echoing his words back to him.
“You deserved to know,” he said. “It wasn’t until you said the gun wasn’t Schwartz’s that I started pu
tting two-and-two together about who killed your dad. That’s when I went to Ingress and we dug through the old records of that case. Liz Antwerp was Mary Trelany’s cousin.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“We talked to the other girls. They were scared but we promised them protection from Liz. Turns out, Mitch was in a relationship with Mary. That’s why his gun was in her car. Liz believed Mitch coerced her to hang herself. He knew if he got her out of the way, he could get Schwartz to take the fall.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed. I’d already known Mitch was a monster, but this—this was something else entirely.
“What does this have to do with now, though?”
“When Liz was released from prison and got mixed up with the Dempsters and the heroin trade, I guess she saw her chance to take revenge.”
“How’d you know we were at the house on Maple?” I asked.
“Mitch called it in. Said he was going to investigate suspicious activity. When I learned it was Antwerp’s house, I got there as soon as I could.”
I took his hand. “You saved me.”
Again, he shook his head.
“Chris, you came back.”
“I’m sorry, Mady.” His voice hitched. “I put you in danger.”
Heart in throat, I watched as the guilt and self-loathing ate away at him.
“Stop it,” I said, and when Chris met my eyes, he blanched at the intensity of my gaze. “That kind of thing is the reason my dad is dead. The reason Mitch is in prison. The reason Zoe is in the hospital and Elly is in rehab. We dwell on these stupid decisions and instead of fighting against the tidal wave of those choices, we just go along with it—like one moment can determine the rest of our lives.”
“But it can,” Chris said.
“No,” I said, “It only does because we let it. You said yourself that instead of facing what I’d done, I ran from it. And you were right. I ran away from everything I had. Everything we had because I was too scared to face it.”
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