Savages

28

Some things, like Kerry’s breast cancer, do work out pretty much as you want them to. Other things take a sudden bizarre twist and tie off loose ends in ways that you didn’t see coming at all.

I’d told Celeste Ogden that there was nothing she or anybody else could do to prevent Anthony Drax from getting away with the murder of her sister, or Brandon Mathias from getting away with his tacit role in the crime. But she proved me wrong. Dead wrong.

Nine days after our last meeting, she waited in the RingTech parking lot for the two men to come out together and emptied her husband’s 9 mm Beretta into their bodies-seven rounds at point-blank range. Drax died at the scene. Mathias died six hours later at a Palo Alto hospital.

She did it for Nancy, she told police calmly and matter-of-factly. She couldn’t bear the thought of them going unpunished; they were evil, pitiless men who did not deserve to live. Nancy would not be able to rest in peace as long as they were alive, and neither would she. She’d spent three sleepless nights thinking about it, summoning her courage. And then she’d destroyed them.

And destroyed herself at the same time.

And left me feeling partially responsible, an unwitting catalyst in my own right, when I heard the news.

Justice?

You tell me.