“Keegan’s on it.”
I grit my teeth. I don’t tell him that Keegan will hide the evidence, that nothing he “uncovers” will ever point to the real killer.
“I do wonder if the fire at your apartment and this murder are related,” Gates says. “It did happen on the same night.”
A sudden chill shivers up my back at the thought that Rollins was being murdered while I was supposed to be burning to death. Keegan would have framed Casey again, since she’s the link between the two of us. It would have been all over the media. He’s probably planting another murder weapon as we speak.
My living threw a wrench into his plan, but it won’t stop him.
I do feel some relief that Keegan will be distracted from Casey now, but who am I kidding? This is all about Casey . . . and me too. Keegan knows exactly who threw the grenade, and he knows who killed Rollins. He may have even done it himself.
“I wanted you to know,” Gates goes on. “Just keep working on the Cox case. Keep reporting new findings to Keegan. I’ll have to assign him a new partner when things settle down, but that might take a while.”
When I get off the phone, I call Dex. “You can stop watching his house,” I say. “They found him. Dead.” I tell him what Gates told me.
Dex is astonished. “His partner is getting desperate. Dude, you need to watch your back. Can you rent a car?”
“Yeah, might be a good idea.”
“And keep using a fake name in hotels. Maybe even let me check you in so they don’t have footage of you. I’m telling you, man. That guy is gonna kill you. He knows.”
I decide to take him up on it. We meet up, and I give him the cash. He leaves to check me into a motel that’s off the beaten path. When he’s got the key card, he drives to where I wait in a Walmart parking lot.
“Leave your car here and I’ll drive you to a car rental place,” he says. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
Dex gets me a rental car with his credit card, in case Keegan is tracking mine. He gets the keys to a black Malibu. As I drive away from the place, I begin to worry about Casey. It’s unlikely that Keegan knows where she is, which is why he’s gotten desperate. She’s been smart enough to stay undetected until now. But now he knows about me.
He was tracking my phone a few days ago. He probably realized I was on to him then.
I drive over to the bar where Rollins was last night. His car is right where we left it.
I park and go in, wait to get the attention of the bartender. When he comes to me, I ask if I can see the manager. He calls to the back.
The manager comes out front and I show him my police credentials. “I’m working with the police department on a homicide case,” I say. “A man who frequents this bar was found murdered this morning. I need to look through your security video to see if he was with anyone when he left here last night, since his car was left in your parking lot.”
He frowns. “You think it was one of my patrons?”
“Maybe,” I say.
He looks worried, but leads me to his office. He’s got the footage on his computer, and he navigates to it, then gets up, letting me have the chair. I fast-forward through the footage, watching everyone who came out of the bar. I find Rollins’s car in the parking lot—and finally I see him coming out, and me helping him. I scan the other cars as I watch myself drive Rollins away. Headlights come on right after we leave, and a car pulls out a few seconds later.
Keegan’s car.
My heart racing, I copy that part of the video onto a thumb drive, as well as the part that shows Rollins staggering out and going to the wrong car, then me guiding him toward my car. I have no doubt that this will become an issue. Keegan will use it to paint me as the killer, since I took Rollins home. But my time is pretty much accounted for the whole night of my apartment fire. His obviously isn’t.
21
CASEY
Back in Memphis in a new motel, I go online to check the Shreveport Daily News, looking for any more information about the investigation into Dylan’s attack. And then I see it— Local Police Detective Found Murdered. I click on the article, and up comes a picture of Sy Rollins.
I suck in a breath. He’s dead. One of my tormentors is dead! I touch my heart, not sure how to feel. As much as I wanted him out of my life, the idea of his death doesn’t thrill me. I would much rather have watched him suffer through being exposed and embarrassed in front of the world, doing a perp walk in a jumpsuit and flip-flops into the van that transports him to the state or federal prison. I would much rather have known he was incarcerated with people he had locked up, people who might not take things so well.
But death is something I didn’t expect. I read the article about how he was found in a shallow grave, shot through the head. There’s even a quote by “his partner, Gordon Keegan.”
“Detective Rollins was a hero,” Keegan says. “I don’t know what we’re going to do without him.” The article goes on to say, “When asked if he had any leads on who might have killed the detective, Detective Keegan answered, ‘It could be any number of people who were out to get him because of the investigations he did. We’ll narrow them down one by one, and when we find this person—him or her—all the power of the Shreveport Police Department will see that they’re brought to justice.’”
I sit back in my chair, aware that he’s just implicated me. The press won’t need him to call my name. They will run with it themselves. Tears sting my eyes. If Keegan would kill his best friend and closest confidant and his partner in crime, then he’s going to kill Dylan too. He’s already tried. There is no doubt in my mind he will keep trying.
Dylan needs to get out of town. He should come where I am and stay off the grid with me. I have to get word to him and make a case he can’t ignore.
He won’t want to. Men like Dylan don’t dwell on the danger to themselves when they can save someone else. They stay in the fight until it’s resolved. But I can’t let him do that, if I have any pull with him at all.
I pack my bag, clean every surface so I leave no prints, and pull on my wig. As I drive away, I’ll call him on his burner phone from somewhere that will ping off a tower I’ll soon leave far behind. I’ll use every persuasive trick I can think of to convince him.
I step out the front door of the hotel and cross the parking lot. My car is parked at another hotel a block away. I have to hurry.
When I’m halfway across the lot, a siren blares close by. Memphis police cars fly out of nowhere and surround me. I drop my purse and lift my hands over my head as the cops jump out, shielded by their doors, their weapons trained on me.
“Don’t move!” one of them orders, his urgent tone suggesting that he’s perfectly willing to pull that trigger.
I do as he says and call out, “I’m not armed!”
“On your knees,” they yell, staying carefully back from me until I’m down. Someone comes up behind me and orders me to the ground, facedown. I smell the tar of the pavement as he tosses my purse and snaps cuffs onto my wrists behind me.
People come out of the hotel and cluster at the door, some of them filming with their phones. They watch as the police frisk me, making sure I don’t have a machine gun down my pant leg or a machete under my shirt.
It’s the moment I’ve feared, the inevitable outcome of my running.
It’s the beginning of the end.
22
CASEY
Everything has changed. I sit in an interview room that’s way too cold, and there’s a lock on the door and a guard standing watch outside it. They know I’m Casey Cox, the notorious fugitive who’s evaded the law all these months. I’m prepared to tell them the rest of my story, including Keegan’s part in it. But they put me in this room and make me wait. They’re probably contacting Keegan right now to let him know I’m here.
I drop my face into my hands and pray some more. “Even if I die,” I whisper to God, “let the truth get out. Don’t let Keegan control the story.”
&
nbsp; I don’t know if I’m talking to God in the right way, but I have learned that Jesus intercedes for me. And I know he’ll translate my prayers into what I really need. I pray for Dylan and for Hannah and little Emma, for my mom and Hannah’s husband, Jeff, and all my friends who will have to see this played out in the media. And then I pray for the media people, the ones I know and those I don’t, who will cover this story. I pray for their curiosity and their doubt, and their determination to dig to the bottom of it. I pray they’ll see the good in me, and not just accept Keegan’s story at face value. Then I pray for the police detectives who will hear my story, that it will ring true to them. My dad had gut instincts that often served him well. Maybe these detectives do too.
As my heart finds its normal rhythm, I linger in that prayer zone a little longer, dwelling on the privilege of coming to the Creator with my pleas. Finally, I whisper, “Lord Jesus, I believe in you.”
Peace washes through me. Though I’m still afraid, I know that he will not make me endure this alone. And I can pray while I’m being interrogated, while I sit in jail, and while I’m being transported to prison.
I can even pray as I’m bleeding to death.
Finally, two new detectives come in. They introduce themselves like we’re going to be great friends—Leibowitz and Briar. Leibowitz has a blond buzz cut, and Briar needs a haircut. Briar is carrying a bottle of water. He hands it to me as if it’s some sort of peace offering. “Please listen to me,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “I know you’re thrilled to catch me, but I’m telling you, if you know the real story it will change everything. It’s not the way it seems.”
The detectives exchange glances, and they pull out the chairs and look at me with nothing but patience and calm, as if they want me to believe they’re on my side, always will be. But I know better.
“I didn’t kill Brent Pace,” I say, knowing they’re videotaping me and that there are observers on the other side of the glass, watching the murderous fugitive who was finally captured thanks to their skill and hard work. “Brent was killed by two cops—Gordon Keegan and Sy Rollins and whoever works with them. They also killed my father thirteen years ago.” I talk fast, trying to get in as much as I can before they interrupt me. “They set me up to find Brent’s body, and I tracked blood all over the place because I was in such shock, and I left because I knew there was no way on this green earth that anyone was going to believe me, just like they didn’t believe me when I found my father dead—it was ruled a suicide, even though there were clear signs of a struggle.”
I stop to catch my breath. Leibowitz leans up on the table, his eyes fixed on mine. His voice is as calm as a dog trainer trying to calm a rabid dog. “So why don’t we just go back to when you found Pace’s body?”
“Can we call him Brent?” I say. “Because he was my friend. I didn’t call him Pace.”
“Tell us about that morning. What you did when you got up.”
They’re trying to find gaps and contradictions in my testimony prosecutors can use against me in court. “I got up like every other day and I took a shower, dried my hair, put on my makeup and my clothes, and went to work.”
“Did you stop anywhere? Did you talk to anyone?”
I try to remember. There’s so much about that day I have tried to forget. “I think I stopped at Starbucks and got a coffee and a muffin. I went to work and everyone there saw me. I’m sure they’ve already checked that out. They know exactly when I left.”
“Did you talk to Brent that morning?”
“Yes, and I’m sure that’s also common knowledge to everyone working on this case, including Detective Keegan himself. Brent called me that morning and told me that he had found something about my father’s case that was going to help me prove he was murdered. He told me I should come by at lunch and he would tell me. He said he was loading the evidence onto a thumb drive for me.”
“Did he say what was on it?”
“No, but he said it would help crack my father’s case and help me prove what I already knew to be true. And they must’ve been listening. They must’ve had his phone tapped. When they realized he was on to them, they came and murdered him, then left him for me to find. And they put that knife in my car. It wasn’t mine.”
My eyes burn with tears, but their expressions are blank.
“But they didn’t know Brent had put a thumb drive in the mail to me. I was able to get it a few days later. I learned from a video on the thumb drive that he had interviewed a woman named Sara Meadows, an evidence clerk at the police department. But after Keegan found that file on Brent’s computer, she was shot to death. I’m telling you, the more you look into this the more dead bodies you’ll find. Most recently, Sy Rollins himself was found dead with a gunshot to the head.”
I take a breath and watch them for some sign that they believe me, but I honestly can’t tell.
“I know some in the media have suggested that maybe I did that too,” I add, “but I wasn’t anywhere near there. I’ve been going under the name Liana Winters. I’ve been living at the motel where you found me, and I’ve been the driver for a woman who’s blind, and I’ve also been working for an attorney here. It wasn’t me. Gordon Keegan killed Rollins or had him killed, and he will keep killing because things are getting hot.”
Detective Briar stands up, slides his hands into his pockets, and jingles his keys. “So you’re telling us that the police department itself is involved in these murders?”
“I know how that sounds,” I say. “I’m not suggesting that the entire police department is involved. In fact, I know it’s not. My dad was a good cop and there are other good cops there. But I have a lot of evidence. Look in my purse and you’ll find that thumb drive. But you have to make sure that Gordon Keegan doesn’t get it, and that he doesn’t come here to pick me up. I promise you, I wouldn’t live to get back to Shreveport and stand trial. But that wouldn’t be the end of it. There are others who have this same evidence, who will release it if anything happens to me. Plug it into your computer, please. There’s enough there for you to see the truth.”
They look at each other, and hope flickers in my heart. God is working on this too. It’s not just me.
“You say that’s in your personal effects? The evidence you’re talking about?”
“Yes,” I say, hopeful. “Please go get it. I tried to tell them when they were booking me, but they took it with everything else I had on me. It has an interview with Sara Meadows, facts about other cops at the time of my father’s death who were beaten or threatened. Notes on an interview with the wife of a Shreveport dry cleaner who was murdered just days ago. Things Keegan has bought with the money he’s made . . . a whole other life he’s living.”
Detective Leibowitz leaves the room to go find the thumb drive, and I suddenly second-guess myself. Is there anything on the drive that implicates Dylan? I don’t think so, but it does include the pictures of his evidence board. What if there’s some metadata on the photo with the location where it was taken? I should have checked that before.
Briar humors me a little longer. I can tell he doesn’t know which trail to follow. The one about Brent, the one about my dad, or the one about Keegan.
“Let’s go back to the day of Brent’s death,” he says. “So after you found the body, what did you do?”
I shake my head, not wanting him to focus on Brent and forget about Keegan.
“Look,” I say, “you guys have known bad cops. I know you have. They’re a blight on the whole force. My father knew of them. I’m just asking you to consider that what I’m saying is possible. You don’t have to believe me. Just check it out. Everything I’m saying can be corroborated.”
There’s a knock on the door, and the detective looks up and someone motions to him. He slides his chair back. “I’ll be right back.”
I know it’s going to be a long wait, and I sit there and freeze silently, continuing to pray, hoping they’re looking through the files on the thumb drive now.
>
After an hour or so, a female guard comes in and puts handcuffs on me and leads me to a holding cell. Her search of me is horrifying, but I endure it as if I’m not in my body, as if I’m standing off to the side, looking away as this other person goes through the motions. I can do this, I tell myself. I’ve been beaten by a psychopathic kidnapper, roughed up by a drug addict who traded his child for a hit, survived having my car rammed, and even been shot. This is easy.
After I go through the degrading process of booking, they make me change into a jumpsuit and put me into a holding cell alone. It’s got a bench but no mattress, and the room is even colder than the interview room. But I’m grateful for a place where I can lie down and think. I don’t know what’s going on or what will happen next, but I hope Dylan gets word soon that I’m in jail. Best case scenario, he will come for me. Worst case, Keegan will.
And if he does, I’ll be dead before we hit the city limits.
23
DYLAN
The Paces are broken up about Sy Rollins’s death. “Do you think that girl had anything to do with it?” Elise asks me in a voice that seems to have a permanent quiver in it.
I shake my head. “No, I really don’t. I think I would have found her if she were back in town.”
“But she’s good at this,” Elise says. “I try to make some sense of it—how a girl like her can do the things she’s done— and I just keep coming up with mental illness. How else could anyone do what she did to Brent?”
The haunted look in her pale eyes isn’t likely to disappear anytime soon. Nothing I do is going to banish it, but at least she might be less confused when the truth finally comes out.
Jim seems lost inside himself. “If she came out of her hole and killed Rollins, or did that to your apartment, she’s more deadly than anybody even thought.”
I can’t let that stand. “It doesn’t fit any part of her profile. I think it was someone else.”
“How can you say that?” Elise asks. “She was brutal with Brent. Blowing up a building full of people to go after the men hunting her isn’t that much of a stretch.”