by Aiden Bates
"Did you know?" Doug turned eyes that he knew were red and puffy onto this alpha when he returned from the door.
"Did I know what?" Ray frowned and sat beside him again.
"Did you know that she was influenced?" Doug wrapped the blanket around his shoulders.
Ray sighed and put a hand on Doug's leg. "Her beliefs were her own, Doug. The priest said that she asked what the greater sin was and he told her. There may have been a deeper conversation. I don't know. But yeah, I know that they spoke about the event."
Doug rested his head on his mate's shoulder. He wasn't angry, exactly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Ray hesitated for a long moment before answering. "Probably because it wasn't relevant. It was hurtful, and it wasn't relevant to the case or to you defending your father. So I left it out."
"You were trying to protect me." Doug nodded. "Just like Dad."
Ray's muscles tensed. "Son of a bitch." Then he laughed. "I think I know how to get some of the proof that we need."
***
Ray went through all of the normal procedures that anyone else would have to go through to visit a prisoner at Shirley. He hated surrendering his service weapon. He felt downright naked without it, but those were the rules. While Ray knew, just as surely as he knew his own name, that the man he was visiting was not going to make a move for Ray's gun, he wasn't so arrogant as to assume that nothing bad would happen and no one else would make a play for it.
This was a maximum security facility for a reason, after all.
He waited with the other visitors for a room to open up. They weren't making him wait just for the sake of it, or just to bust his chops for being a state trooper. There were a lot of family members up here to visit today. This close to the holidays people wanted to see their loved ones. Lawyers, too, wanted to pay their respects and assure their clients that next year might be their year.
Ray watched the other visitors while he waited. There were a lot of mothers with their children. There were a few omegas waiting for visits with their alphas. There were older people, and young people. No one wanted to meet anyone else's eyes.
They called Ray's name quickly, for which he couldn't help but feel grateful. The badge had its perks, he supposed. He let himself be led into the interview room and waited for the guards to lead Larry Morrison into the room.
Larry didn't look well. Prison life didn't agree with him. He needed a shower, and he'd lost quite a bit of weight. "Detective Langer. I have to say, you're the last person I expected to see here today." He managed a thin little smile. "Am I being interviewed again?"
"We can do it that way if you want to." Ray shrugged. "I was hoping to have a conversation with my father-in-law."
Larry huffed out a little laugh. "Sorry. I keep forgetting. Big news, you guys have a baby on the way and everything."
"We do." Ray knew that Larry hadn't forgotten a thing. "We're looking forward to it. Doug tells me that he's got an amazing example before him of what a parent should be, so even though he doesn't know the first thing about babies he's confident that we'll be okay in the long run." He paused and bit his lip. "He gives you a lot of credit, Larry. He truly thinks that you hung the moon."
Larry waved a hand, as best he could. "Nah. We're close, closer than a lot of fathers and sons, but that's it. And I want him to go and be happy with you. I don't want him to be hung up on his old man up in here, you know? That judge, he thinks I did something. And maybe Doug just needs to give up the ghost."
Ray snorted and tipped his chair back, just a little. "Larry, come on. I haven't even known Doug all that long and even I know that telling him that is code for 'dig in your heels.'"
"Right?" Larry laughed. "He's never been one to let anything get him down, that's for sure. Any challenge, he'd meet it head on. They didn't want to let omegas on the swim team, you know. We made them, and then he took home more first place prizes than any two of the rest of them combined just to show them up." His eyes shone.
"Tell me about the priest." Ray did his best to keep his voice gentle. It was a strength of his, he knew. Not many alphas did gentle well.
Larry's lip curled. "Oh. The one in Lakeville you mean. We didn't have much use for each other. I wasn't devout enough for his tastes, and he was a little too… well. It doesn't really matter now, does it?"
"It does, Larry." Ray let his chair down gently and leaned forward. "Larry, you didn't kill your wife."
Larry bowed his head. "The priest was… well, he was young when we first came out to Lakeville. New to the job, new to the parish. He and Emmy got along like a house on fire. We weren't getting along so well, I guess. She was starting to feel a little bit more traditional about some things, you know? It was the eighties. It was a scary time, a lot of change happening, plus the Day-Glo clothes. Father D'Cruze offered something to cling to, I guess."
Ray swallowed. "Did he offer more than just religion?"
"Maybe. Probably. There's a very real possibility that I'm not Dougie's biological father." Larry shrugged, creating a symphony of chains. "I thought about asking for tests, but then they put that little bundle into my arms. He held onto my hand and held onto my finger so tightly that I thought I'd lose circulation. And I thought to myself, 'I don't care what's in his blood. This is my boy.' And that was that. She never admitted to anything and neither did he." He shrugged.
"That's unusually magnanimous of you." Ray bit down on the inside of his cheek. Could he have done it? Could he have raised a baby knowing it might have been another man's? He knew that Morris had done exactly that, but he'd gone into it with his eyes open. This was a different thing entirely.
"Not really. I mean when you decide to become a parent, it's about the baby from that moment on. You don't reject a kid because of something that the kid couldn't control. I decided to become a father. It doesn't matter to me if the kid came from my body or not. I'm the one who chose to be a father, the other guy didn't." He sighed. "At least that's how I saw it then. And still do. I don't know if Doug will."
Ray had some idea of how Doug would respond, but it wasn't his place to say. "So why didn't you leave when your marriage didn't improve?"
"I wanted it to work out. I did. And then when she rejected Doug, I was biding my time. When she started…"
Ray waved a hand. "I know what happened."
Larry looked up at him. "If you know what happened, why are you here?"
"I want you to help me prove it." Ray folded his hands on the table.
"How?" Larry spread his hands as wide as he could. "There's no way to prove it. I chopped her up! I didn't save anything to go and visit later like that creep Gagne! I just wanted her gone and far away from my son!"
Ray sighed and shook his head. "Do you remember where you left the axe?"
"It's buried under the shed in my backyard." Larry didn't have to think about it. He knew exactly where it was. He'd probably spent a lot of time thinking about it, all this time locked up.
"That will be easy enough to prove, then. We'll put the priest up on the stand. He's already made some pretty damning statements to me, and we've got an eyewitness of course."
Larry paled. "He doesn't remember."
Ray put a hand over his father-in-law's. "He does. He was desperate, Larry, to save you. He knew that he must remember something from that night, something that could be corroborated. So he went through a therapy session in an attempt to get at those memories."
"Damn it." Huge tears spilled down Larry's cheeks. "I would give anything for him not to have done that."
Ray stood up. "I don't understand, Larry. You were convicted of twenty-four murders that you didn't commit. And all that it would have taken for that not to happen would have been for you to stand up at the time and say, 'Look, it was an accident, my wife was trying to kill my son and I had to fight her off.' The forensic evidence even then would have backed you up and you know it."
Larry's face twisted. "Wait until that child of yours is born. Then come back
and tell me that you don't understand."
Ray stepped closer to his father-in-law. "Larry, help me to understand. That son of yours, who loves you more than life itself, is fighting for your release and wondering why you won't lift a finger in your own defense. Come on, Larry. Help me to make some sense of it."
Larry glowered at him. "His mother had already rejected him. We went to the doctor to get his test results and when Dr. Young said, 'Omega,' Emmy just turned to me like Dougie wasn't even there. 'Well, we'll drop him off at social services on the way home.' And then she dusted her hands off, like it was a job she'd just taken off of her plate.
"You didn't see that boy then, Langer. I did. I held him close, and I promised him that no one was going to drop him off anywhere. He was our family forever and ever." Larry closed his eyes. "I don't think that he believed me quite yet. But when Emmy fought with me about it, right there in the doctor's office, you'd better believe that he believed me before we left."
Ray cringed. "She said it just like that, right in front of him?" He made a note to follow up with Dr. Young and her staff.
"She did. And it was horrible. I know that sort of thing happens every day. I don't… I can't understand it, personally. And there was no discussion, because I would have told her no long before it got to the point of having a public fight in the doctor's office. I wouldn't have had the fight in front of Dougie, either."
"No, I can't imagine you would have." Ray tried to imagine what that must have been like for Larry, or for Doug. "How did it go from there?"
"One day she packed up all of Doug's things and put them out on the street. Fortunately, one of the neighbors called before the garbage trucks got there. That fight got very ugly. The police were called, because we were arguing on the front lawn of the house. She was throwing things, too. The cops brought the damn priest, who was sitting there egging her on."
Ray recoiled. "Why didn't they bring her in?"
"Oh, they did. The priest bailed her out on account of her being driven by her 'religious passions.' They didn't want to be accused of infringing on her religious freedom, so they told her that she wasn't allowed to put her kid's stuff in the trash and she couldn't throw things at me in public." He huffed out a laugh. It went on like that for about… oh, four months before Dougie started getting sick.
"I found the pill bottles in the trash. I pulled them out, thinking that I would use them as evidence against her, but what would that have accomplished? She'd have accused me of being the one doing the drugging. I needed to keep my boy safe, and I couldn't do that from a prison cell.
"So, I moved into his room." Larry rolled his shoulders and smiled fondly. "It took some of the edge off the drugs, because she couldn't give them to him that often. Then I caught her with the pillow and you know the rest."
Larry's jovial mood evaporated. "He was already groggy from the drugs and the choking. I told him that it was just a bad dream and to go back to sleep. Then I got rid of the body. I didn't think that police would believe that it had been an accident, and to be honest I didn't want them to.
"If Dougie had looked like that when his mother had rejected him, how much more devastated would he be when he realized that his mother had tried to kill him? I mean how do you look your little son in the eye, your little son with so much promise and so much potential, and say, 'Son, your mother hates you so much that she tried to take your life three times?'"
Ray sighed. "I have no idea." He rubbed at his face. "I mean I know a guy who specializes in that kind of thing, we could ask him. Maybe, when we get you out, we will. But don't you regret it?"
Larry tilted his head to the side. "I regret not taking Dougie and leaving earlier. That's about it. If Massachusetts had the death penalty, I would rather risk the chair than have to look my son in the eye and have him know that about his mother. About himself."
Ray bit his tongue. "Doug wouldn't be able to live with that, Larry. And fortunately, we won't have to. The cat's out of the bag. And we will get justice. We'll get it for you, and we'll get it for him."
Larry shook his head. "What justice is there for that?"
Ray smiled, broad and wide. This was a question that he could answer without hesitation or reservation. "You've already provided a lot of it, Larry. You taught Doug how to read, how to fight. You taught him not to back down, and to stand up for himself. And—this is important—you taught him how to love, and how to be part of a family. Emiliana tried to steal that from him, but you made sure that he would be safe on all possible levels."
"I don't know. I worry for him." Larry hung his head.
"You're his dad. It's your job to worry for him. I'm his alpha. It's my job to worry for him too. But you know what? He made partner a few weeks ago."
Larry brightened. "Really? Already? He's so young!"
"He's the best. Oh. And we took in the child of one of Gagne's victims. His idea, because you taught him compassion." Ray met his father-in-law's eyes. "You built this. You did. And all you have to do to enjoy it is to cooperate and testify to the truth of what happened."
Larry's jaw dropped, but he recovered after a moment. "I'll do my best."
Chapter Fifteen
Doug stood up in front of the courtroom. Judge Murphy's scowl was a physical thing, something that tried to crush everything in its path. Doug didn't care. He had his father by his side. He had his alpha behind him in the gallery. He had his child unseen in his belly. The armor of family protected him from anything that the bastard could possibly throw at him.
The facts, and logic—those were his weapons. Murphy had been impervious to them up until now, but Doug and his team were trying a new tactic. He was confident of success this time.
"You clowns have a lot of nerve showing up on my calendar again." Murphy fanned through the pages of the case file. "Especially after Mr. Morrison decided to petition to have me removed from the case due to 'bias.' That takes a lot of nerve. You'd think someone with a full ride to Yale would be smarter than that."
"Your Honor, today's hearing comes at my request." Chris picked his head up and met Murphy's scowl with a steely glare. "We've met with the Medical Examiner and believe that the charges should be downgraded to abuse of a corpse. You should be able to see the summary of the arguments in the recent additions to the case file."
"I'll be honest. I didn't bother to read the new additions. You already know I'm not letting Morrison out of prison." He shrugged. "Since you're already clogging up time that I could be using to shop for my grandchildren, why don't you go ahead and enlighten me?"
Doug bristled at Murphy's attitude. What gave him the right to decide? He kept his mouth shut, however. This was all part of the plan.
Chris called witnesses. This was unusual in a hearing like this, but Chris had come prepared to fight and to win. The first witness was Dr. Young, who had been Doug's pediatrician when he was a kid. She was still practicing, still in the same place, and she remembered the fight between Larry and Emiliana perfectly. "I'd seen parents who went on to abandon their children," she said, after describing the fight. "I'd seen parents who were upset by the test results. I'd never seen a parent have so little trouble casting a child off like that. There was no pain to it, no grief. She spoke of it like she was dropping a bag off at Goodwill."
"Had she ever seemed so uninterested in the child's welfare before?" Chris pressed.
"I wouldn't say that we had many interactions. Doug's father usually brought him in."
Doug didn't show any reaction. He couldn't show any reaction in court, and he'd hardened himself to the facts long before he showed up here. His father flinched, though, and that might cause trouble.
Oliver, from the crime lab, got up and explained the forensic evidence. There wasn't much of it. In essence, the story was plausible. Doug's symptoms at the time were consistent with barbiturate poisoning. The pill bottles buried with the axe contained barbiturates, and mostly had Emiliana's fingerprints on them.
Dr. Leung got up and expla
ined how he'd helped Doug to recover his memories. Doug spoke about the scene that he remembered. He found that he disliked being on the witness stand, but he got through his testimony quickly and returned to his father's side.
The priest was next to testify. Chris warned that the priest would be treated as a hostile witness, and D'Cruze didn't disappoint. He showed himself to be initially calm and collected, but when Chris brought up the possibility of his having had an affair with Emiliana he became angry and defensive. Then he admitted to the affair, but not in a way that admitted to any sin or shame. "I was young, these things happen." He shrugged. "It didn't mean anything, of course. We both knew that."
"Did she?" Chris raised an eyebrow. "The way she devoted herself to you tells you that she knew that she meant nothing to you? Or the way that she washed her hands of the son she'd carried under her heart for nine months on your say-so, that confirms your belief that your affair meant nothing to you?"