Parting Shot

Sixty-five Cal

Once Galen Broadhurst had been put into the back of a Promise Falls cruiser, Duckworth came over to me and said, “Well done. Now we just have to pick up Bob Butler.”

“Broadhurst and Butler sacrificed that poor kid to save their own asses and line their pockets.” I shook my head. “The bastards.”

Duckworth gave me a look that said he’d seen enough things in life not to be surprised any more.

“I’m going to pick up Jeremy,” I said, “then head out to Madeline Plimpton’s house. He wants to talk to his mother, let her know he’s okay.”

“We should go together.”

I looked at my watch. “Thirty minutes?”

He nodded. As he turned to leave, I said, “What was it you wanted to ask me? On the phone last night.”

Barry poked his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “You know what? Don’t worry about it. Whatever I was going to ask, I think I’ve changed my mind.”

I pointed my Honda back in the direction of my sister and brother-in-law’s house. I found Jeremy sitting on the front step talking to Celeste. He was on his feet when he saw my car, and ran to the street to meet me.

“What’s going on?” he asked as I powered down the window.

I gave Celeste a wave. “Thanks!”

“Nice kid!” she shouted, getting up and going back into the house.

Jeremy craned his neck around to respond, a slightly stunned look on his face. “Thank you,” he said.

I was willing to bet it was the nicest thing anyone had said to him in months.

He got in the car next to me. “Well?”

“Taking you home,” I said.

“What happened?”

I was going to tell him on the way, but thought better of it. This was something I had to tell him eye to eye. I shifted in my seat to look at him.

“You didn’t do it. You didn’t drive the car. You didn’t run down Sian.”

His chin began to tremble. “What...”

“Galen Broadhurst was driving the car.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

Now his hands were shaking. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“There’s more,” I said gently. “Bob Butler helped him.”

I gave him the details, briefly and slowly, including the news that it had been Bob’s idea to have us killed. I couldn’t imagine how much it was to take in. Elation matched by betrayal.

He burst into tears. He started sobbing. I reached out with both arms and pulled him close to me, patted his back.

“The nightmare’s over,” I said, although I knew it was going to take a while for all of this to sink in. And there was going to be fallout. A lot of it.

The boy could not stop shaking. “Bob — he paid my legal bills.”

“Yeah, well, I guess he was feeling pretty guilty. It was the least he could do. Getting you off, so long as the blame didn’t shift elsewhere, was a pretty safe game for him to play.”

“My mom,” he said. “I have to tell my mom. I have to tell her what a bastard he is.”

“We’re gonna do that,” I assured him. “We’re gonna go over there now.”

Jeremy struggled to pull himself together. I found tissues in the glove box and dug out a handful for him.

“Thank you so much,” he said.

“They’re just tissues.”

“I mean, for everything. For figuring out that this whole thing was fucked up. For giving me my life back.”

I gave him a moment to get settled back into his seat, facing forward, before I keyed the ignition. “Let’s go,” I said.

I’d told Duckworth thirty minutes, but only twenty-five had passed when we pulled into the driveway of Madeline Plimpton’s house. Tires crunching on gravel was not enough to bring anyone running outside to greet us, but I could hear movement in the house when I rang the bell.

“Can’t we just walk in?” Jeremy asked.

“Not our house,” I said. “Manners.”

The door opened. Ms. Plimpton’s dour expression turned into one of joy when she saw us there.

“I tried all night to reach you!” she said, throwing her arms around the boy. “You had us worried sick.”

A second later, Gloria emerged from the kitchen area and shrieked. She had to pry Ms. Plimpton off Jeremy so she could hug him herself.

“I’m so glad you’re home!” she said. “It was a huge mistake, sending you away!” He tried to move her away as she planted kisses on his cheeks, then gave up and let her continue.

I said to Ms. Plimpton, “Where’s Bob?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” she said, and as she turned herself in that direction, Bob appeared.

Briefly.

It took him half a second to see who’d arrived, and another half a second to realize he was in deep shit.

He turned and ran.

I bolted after him.

Ms. Plimpton said, “What on earth?”

“He did it!” I heard Jeremy say. “He sent that guy to kill us!”

“What?” Gloria said.

Bob was on the far side of the kitchen, attempting to open the sliding glass door. But a wooden stick down in the track, designed to keep out burglars, had thwarted him. I caught up, grabbed him by the back of his jacket, and flung him across the room. He stumbled over two kitchen chairs, scattering them, and landed on his side. There was the look of a trapped animal in his eyes.

“Don’t get up,” I told him. “If you try, I’ll fucking kill you.”

He seemed convinced.

“You look as surprised to see me as Galen did. They just arrested him. They’re coming for you next.”

Jeremy, Gloria and Ms. Plimpton had joined us in the kitchen. The two women were open-mouthed at the scene.

“Is it true?” Gloria asked Bob. “You sent someone to kill them?”

“It’s bullshit!” Bob said. “Whatever they’re saying, it’s bullshit.”

“You haven’t heard half of what he did!” Jeremy shouted. He was trembling again. I was feeling immensely worried for him. He was totally on the edge.

Pointing at Bob, he said, “He helped that shitbag Broadhurst! The two of them put me in the car!”

Ms. Plimpton looked like she’d just seen a pig fly through the kitchen. “What?”

Jeremy said, “They framed me! They made me think I’d done it! They made the world think I’d done it!”

Ms. Plimpton glared at Bob. “My God, is this true?”

What struck me, at that moment, was that Gloria didn’t ask that question, or anything close to it. My eyes were darting back and forth between her aunt and Bob. Maybe she was just in shock.

“I told you, don’t listen to them,” Bob said. “This is crazy.”

“No, it’s not crazy,” I said. “I got it all from Galen. We know what happened.”

Jeremy turned to his mother. “You hear what I’m saying? You hear what this son of a bitch did?”

Gloria, her voice softer than I was used to, said, “I’m sure there’s some explanation.”

“What’s that mean?” Jeremy asked. “Don’t you believe us?”

I said, “I think she does, Jeremy.”

Gloria turned my way.

“You don’t look like this part is new to you,” I said to her.

“Gloria?” Ms. Plimpton said. “What’s he talking about?”

“The part about Bob sending a hit man after us, you looked surprised at that,” I said. “But not the other part.”

The room suddenly fell very silent, all eyes, even Bob’s, on Gloria.

“Mom?” Jeremy said. He was full-out shaking now.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know... at first.”

“When did you know?” I asked.

She looked at her son, reached a hand up and touched his cheek. Jeremy was too stunned to pull back.

“I heard them talking,” she said. “Bob and Galen. Soon after the accident. I... I confronted them. I... I was going to do something, but... everything was too far along.”

Jeremy whispered, “How... how could...”

“I think I know how,” I said. “What did they tell you, Gloria? That if you came forward at that point, they’d go to jail. Galen and Bob. That deal worth millions would die. You’d be worthless. They told you they had a strategy to get Jeremy off, or at least make it so he served very little time in prison. Was it something like that?”

Tears were running down her cheeks. There was a nod. “If it hadn’t worked,” she said weakly, “I told them, that if they sent Jeremy to jail, then I’d have to say... I’d have to say something...”

“You let them do this to me,” Jeremy said.

“But I let them humiliate me,” she told him. “I let them make a laughing stock of me, because I love you. I was willing to do anything to save you. I didn’t care. I did it for you. ”

“You were willing to do anything but tell the truth,” he said, his voice weak, crumbling.

“Jeremy,” I said. “We should get you out of here.”

“Bob was your ticket,” Jeremy whispered. “A ticket to a better life. More money, all the things you wanted.”

“I... I just need to explain it to you better,” Gloria said. “I told you, things were so far along. It was... it was a case of the lesser evil.”

We seemed to have an abundant supply of that at the moment.

A shout from the front of the house. “Weaver!”

It was Duckworth.

“Back here!” I called.

He was in the kitchen in three seconds, one uniformed officer trailing him. He saw Bob on the floor and looked angrily at me. “You were supposed to wait.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Duckworth pushed me aside, straddled Bob and told him to lie face down and put his hands behind his back. “I’m placing you under arrest, Mr. Butler,” he said. He cinched some plastic cuffs onto the man’s wrists and told him to get up. Awkwardly, Bob got to his knees first, then stood.

He allowed himself to be walked out of the kitchen. He kept his head bowed, avoiding eye contact with any of us on the way out.

The kitchen was very silent again.

“You have to understand,” Gloria said pleadingly. She reached out to touch Jeremy’s arm, and he recoiled as though she were a poisonous snake.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, more to himself than any of us.

“Oh Gloria,” Ms. Plimpton said. “How could you?”

From the front door, Duckworth shouted my name again.

I approached Jeremy. “I’ll be back in a minute, okay? We’re going to work this out. You can stay with me. We’ll get you out of this house.”

He seemed close to catatonic.

“Just give me a minute,” I repeated.

I walked briskly out of the kitchen. Ms. Plimpton followed me.

“Tell me this isn’t true,” she said.

Duckworth was standing just outside the door, pointing a finger at me as the officer put Bob into the back seat of what looked like the same cruiser that had taken Galen Broadhurst away.

“You screwed this up,” he said. “You should have waited.”

“Things happened quickly,” I said. It was a weak defense, I knew. “But we’ve got them. We’ve got the lot of them.”

“Someone please tell me exactly what’s going on,” Ms. Plimpton said.

Duckworth was shaking his head angrily.

That was when I remembered something Jeremy had told me the day before. About what was in one of the kitchen drawers.

I said to Duckworth, “I don’t want to leave Jeremy. He needs to see somebody. The kid’s falling—”

And then we heard the shot.

Ms. Plimpton screamed.

Duckworth bolted into the house. We both started heading for the kitchen, but stopped short of it. We didn’t know what we would be running into.

“Ms. Pilford!” Duckworth shouted. “Are you okay?”

“Jeremy!” I said. “What’s happened?”

There was nothing for several seconds. Then Jeremy’s voice.

“I’m going to come out,” he said. “I’ve put the gun down.”

Duckworth and I exchanged fearful looks.

Jeremy walked calmly out of the kitchen, stopped, looked at me, and managed to make his quivering lips smile ever so slightly.

“I did it,” he said. “I take full responsibility.” He paused. “I own this.”

I took him into my arms, while Duckworth ran into the kitchen to see how bad it was.

On the morning she will never forget, suburban teenager Cynthia Archer awakes with a nasty hangover and a feeling she is going to have an even nastier confrontation with her mom and dad. But when she leaves her bedroom, she discovers the house is empty, with no sign of her parents or younger brother Todd. In the blink of an eye, without any explanation, her family has simply disappeared.

Twenty-five years later Cynthia is still haunted by unanswered questions. Were her family murdered? And if they’re alive, why did they abandon her in such a cruel way? Now married with a daughter of her own, Cynthia fears that her new family will be taken from her just as her first one was. Then a letter arrives which makes no sense and yet chills Cynthia to the core. And soon she begins to realise that stirring up the past could be the worst mistake she has ever made...