Look the Other Way

by Leigh Jones

  Chapter 35

  The edge of the concrete bench dug into Kate’s thighs. But she refused to move. The discomfort provided the perfect accompaniment to her mood. She’d been sitting there, watching the waves rush the shore, for half an hour. The rhythm of the constant ebb and flow did nothing to soothe the anger that still roiled her gut two weeks after the DA declared the sex trafficking ring case closed. She’d watched the final machinations unfold like a slow-motion disaster she was powerless to stop. When the smoke cleared, justice lay broken and bleeding while the guilty walked away unscathed.

  For the first few days after that final press conference, she had seethed and railed, pacing her apartment long into the night trying to figure out a way to expose the people really behind all the suffering and death. Hunter Lewis had patiently listened to her pleas and plans—and gently reminded her that she had no evidence to prove Reyes, Hanes, Miles, and Hammond were involved. After her third attempt to get him to let her do a story, he’d ordered her to take some time off. Reluctantly, she’d agreed. She had no choice. Her father had been thrilled to hear she was coming home for a week.

  Her car was all packed. She just had to do one more thing before she left.

  The late morning sun radiated a welcome warmth through the brisk breeze buffeting her back. A cold front had come through overnight, the wind pushing the waves further from the seawall than Kate had ever seen them. Despite their setback, they continued to reach resolutely for their normal landing spot. When the front blew itself out, the waves would reclaim their territory. Not even Mother Nature could keep them offshore for long.

  Kate grimaced at the irony. Only man could twist and alter the natural order to suit his purposes.

  She didn’t bother turning around when the purr of an engine behind her signaled she was no longer alone. The car door slammed and a mixture of relief and trepidation tingled up her spine as the sharp rap of boots on concrete grew near. Johnson sat down at the other end of the bench, less than two feet from her, without saying a word.

  For a while, they watched the waves together in silence. Some of the turmoil that had held her captive for the last week began to recede. Kate pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Johnson was looking at the granite boulders at the base of the seawall.

  “This is the place where that… where…”

  “Miss Kitty. Yeah. I still think she was murdered. But I guess we’ll never know now.” Kate cringed at the bitterness that saturated her words. She longed to let go of her anger, but she didn’t know how.

  “I wish I could give you a definite answer on that. If she was murdered, Jose Vargas seems like the most probable killer.” Johnson met Kate’s eyes and held her gaze for several long heartbeats. “If it makes you feel any better, he got what I’m sure you would say he deserved.”

  Kate huffed. “It doesn’t make me feel any better. I would much rather have seen him sentenced to a nice, long stint in jail. Held to account. He got off too easy.”

  “He was held to account, just not where you could see. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t get off easily. I think you can rest assured he’s paying the ultimate penalty for what he did.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Kate said, the words catching in her throat.

  Her anger suddenly collapsed into the chasm of hopelessness that had yawned in front of her for years. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “How do you get up every day knowing … knowing that the people really responsible for all of this are walking away scot-free? How do you keep pretending to serve justice, knowing that?”

  Before she could dash them away, two tears spilled over her lashes and coursed down her cheeks. Johnson slid next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, fixing his eyes on the waves again.

  “It’s not easy. But I know there are things at work that I can’t see. I just have to trust that there’s a reason they’re not facing justice now.”

  “And you’re okay with that? You don’t have any problem with a God who lets evil go unpunished? Why would he do that?”

  Johnson took a long time to answer. Kate watched the shore birds hopping along the wet sand, leaving a trail of three-pronged prints in their wake.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. When I realized Esperanza wasn’t going to testify, that Eduardo Reyes was going to get away with what he’d done to her and her sister and who knows how many other girls … I struggled to reconcile that with my belief that justice always prevails.”

  “Esperanza? That was her name?” Goosebumps crawled over Kate’s arms. “That means hope.”

  “I know. At first I thought it was cruelly ironic. But now I think it’s appropriate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her survival was nothing short of miraculous. If she hadn’t lived, we’d never know what happened. She would have ended up being just another unidentified dead body. Vargas would have escaped to Mexico. But because of her, we were able to put all the pieces together and the whole operation imploded. Think of all the girls who won’t suffer the same fate.”

  “But what good is that when Reyes goes unpunished? How could she let that happen?”

  Johnson shook his head sadly. “She’d been through so much. It would have been his word against hers. He probably would have claimed she participated willingly. I just don’t think she could face that, even if it meant he would get away with what he did.”

  “And what about justice?”

  “Justice may be delayed in this case, but that doesn’t mean it’s not waiting in the wings.”

  Kate took her eyes off the shore and turned toward Johnson, searching his face for any hint that he didn’t believe what he was saying. His clear hazel eyes met her gaze unflinchingly.

  “I could never believe in a God who let evil have free rein, even for a moment.”

  Johnson cocked his head to the side. His whole face was so earnest she couldn’t look away.

  “If you could remove all the evil in the world, would you?”

  Kate opened her mouth to spit an incredulous and emphatic response. But before her lips could form the words, the image of Julian Costa laying lifeless in the alley filled her mind. Had he been evil? Had he deserved to die at the hand of his best friend? Did his children deserve to grow up without a father? She thought about Muriel Costa, who refused for months to tell the police what she knew. If she had confessed, maybe Esperanza and her sister could have been rescued. Was that evil? Did Muriel deserve to get away with that?

  Kate shut her mouth and looked back out at the water. She thought about the lies she’d told to try to get Muriel to talk. It seemed justifiable at the time. But it was still a lie. Was that evil?

  She closed her eyes and shuddered. The last image that filled her mind was all too familiar. Her mother, hanging from a rope. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. She had suffered from mental illness her entire adult life. Kate always told herself her mother just couldn’t struggle against her demons any more. But underneath all the carefully crafted, grown-up excuses huddled a little girl who never figured out why her mommy couldn’t fight harder, for her. Had giving in to a longing for death been evil? She’d left so much sorrow and brokenness behind.

  Kate brought her hands to her face and let despair wash away her last vestiges of composure. She cried quietly at first, but eventually sobs shook her whole body. She had an odd sensation of free-fall, as though the tower of self-righteousness she’d carefully built, brick by prideful brick, had collapsed under her feet. Johnson’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

  When her tears started to subside, he handed her a crisp, white handkerchief. She wiped her eyes. Johnson let his arm fall but didn’t move away. Kate clutched the damp cloth in her lap.

  “There’s no way to remove all the evil from the world,” Johnson said softly. “It’s woven into every molecule. It’s just something we have to learn to live with. I wish Reyes were sitting in a jail
cell right now. I don’t understand why he’s not. But there are a lot of things I don’t understand. I still get up every day and do what I can to curb the evil in front of me. I seek justice where I can. That’s all I can do.”

  “And that’s enough?” Kate whispered, grasping at his words for a scrap of hope she could cling to.

  “It has to be. Most days, it’s more than enough. And on the days it’s not, I remind myself I can never mete out perfect justice because I can’t see everything perfectly.”

  Johnson’s humility struck Kate like a slap in the face. She prided herself on being able to see everything clearly and judge people accurately. That hadn’t been enough this time. She’d failed. And unlike Johnson, she couldn’t fall back on the hope that a higher power would make everything right.

  But she wished she could.

  “I’m not sure it would ever be enough for me,” she finally said.

  Johnson took her hand and squeezed it. His eyes shone with hope.

  “Maybe someday it will be,” he said.

  WANT TO READ MORE?

  Learn more about Kate Bennett and Peter Johnson in two prequel short stories!

  The Jumper tells the story of Kate’s first day at the Galveston Gazette.

  He Must Pay gives you a sneak peek into Johnson’s past.

  Read them both for free when you sign up for exclusive access to the Galveston Crime Scene!

  Join now at GalvestonCrimeScene.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  

  Leigh Jones is a journalist who sharpened her reporting skills at local newspapers in Texas. She’s now an editor for the daily podcast of a national news organization.

  She fell in love with Galveston while working as a reporter for The Galveston County Daily News. She’s a Hurricane Ike survivor and co-authored a book about the island’s recovery. When not writing mystery novels, she researches and documents historic true crime on the island.

  Leigh lives in the Houston area with her husband and daughter. They visit Galveston often.