Cry For Help

by Wendy Dranfield

  Although being vindicated and having her conviction overturned is what’s driven her this far, she can’t even think about the implications yet. Not until Wyatt and Mike have been arrested and are sitting downstairs in cuffs.

  “Officer Greenburg has vanished too,” says Douglas to Owen.

  Owen gives her a quick explanation. “He’s a friend of Dad’s who works here.”

  Sullivan says, “I’ve asked the state police for backup, because this is more than we can handle on our own. They were reluctant to get involved but said they’d send some uniforms over to the McCoys’ place mid morning to help with the search. Where are you going to be?”

  She stands up. “I’m coming with you.”

  Both Sullivan and Douglas are shaking their heads.

  Chief Sullivan says, “No way, and it’s not negotiable. You’re not a cop anymore, Madison. If I let Douglas take you out there with him, the McCoys can accuse you of planting evidence. It would be foolish.”

  She wants to argue her case but he gives her that look she remembers from when she worked here. His “don’t bother, my decision is final” look. He always meant it, so she doesn’t waste her breath.

  “I think you should all stay here,” says Douglas. “It’s probably the safest place for now.” He follows Chief Sullivan out, closing the door behind them.

  Madison looks at Nate, then at Owen. She realizes she hasn’t introduced them. “This is Nate, by the way. He’s a private investigator who came all the way here from California to help me find you.”

  Nate leans in and shakes Owen’s hand. “Your mom actually didn’t give me much choice. But I guess it was worth the journey.” He takes a seat opposite Owen. “They could’ve at least offered us a drink.”

  As the two of them make small talk, Madison paces back and forth, every now and then stopping to listen to her son’s voice, to watch him laugh. It’s like watching the ghost of her ten-year-old. She glances at her cell phone to check the time and sees a new message from Shelley.

  Sorry for the delay. I got sidetracked then forgot to reply. His name is Paul Harris.

  She almost drops her phone. Paul Harris was Angie’s boyfriend in high school. He was a bully and would go around lifting girls’ skirts or pinging their bra straps. When he started seeing Angie, he was like her lap dog, doing whatever she wanted. Then Angie switched her attention to Wyatt, and he and Harris would go at it, fighting over her. Harris hated Wyatt with a passion.

  Goosebumps cover her arms as she tries to think about the implications. It doesn’t surprise her that Harris is capable of rape. Then it hits her.

  She tries to steady her breathing as she realizes Harris wouldn’t have killed someone for Wyatt. There was no friendship there, no loyalty. No. His loyalty was to Angie. What if they’ve been blaming the wrong McCoy?

  “Oh my God.”

  “You okay, Mom?” asks Owen.

  She swallows. She doesn’t want to believe it. “Do you think enough time has passed?”

  “For what?” says Nate.

  “I’m going out there. I’ll stay out of sight, but this has been about me from the beginning so I want to be there at the end. Plus, I want to make sure it’s handled properly. If Officer Greenburg is in Wyatt’s pocket, who’s to say Chief Sullivan isn’t?”

  Nate looks wary—he can probably tell she’s figured something out—but then he nods. “You’re probably right. We still don’t know for sure who is and isn’t working for the McCoys. Just make sure neither of them sees you there. Do you have your gun?”

  “Yes.” She taps her ribs where the Glock is sitting in its holster. “I’ll take the back road. It leads to the rear of the scrapyard.” She turns to Owen. “You need to stay here, okay? It’s the safest place at the moment.”

  He looks unsure.

  Nate stands up and hands her his keys. “Take my car. And take Brody with you for protection. I’ll stay here. You know I’m no good with guns.” He smiles at her.

  Madison could kiss him. What he’s really doing is offering to protect her son, and he’s probably the only person in the world she’d trust Owen with right now. “Thank you.”

  Owen gets up and hugs her. “Please be careful.” She can tell he’s nervous of something happening to her so soon after their brief reunion.

  “I promise I will.”

  64

  Angie’s panicking. She’s in Owen’s bedroom, frantically searching his things before the cops turn up. She and Wyatt are checking the whole place for anything incriminating. She’s had a tip-off from Mike that Douglas and his team are on their way, and is grateful to have had time to destroy anything she doesn’t want them to find. She just hopes she hasn’t forgotten anything.

  Wyatt walks in. He’s holding a small metal safe covered in dirt.

  “How did you do?” she asks.

  He smiles. “They won’t find anything in the house or the repair shop, and I managed to locate this.”

  She knows what’s in there: evidence from Officer Ryan Levy’s crime scene. It’s been buried in the scrapyard for seven years, but Wyatt couldn’t remember the exact location, so finding it took longer than her nerves would have liked.

  “I need to get rid of it before the cops get here.”

  “How?”

  “I have a car ready in the crusher. I’ll slip it in there. The contents won’t be recognizable once they’ve been through that machine, and let’s face it, the cops don’t even know any of it exists. Is there anything else that needs to go in?”

  “No. Everything I found has gone in the fire pit.” Her hands are shaking. “I feel violated, Wyatt.” It’s a horrible feeling. They’ve never had their property searched before and she’s worried they’ve overlooked something. She takes a deep breath to try to relax. “You know, it would have been less trouble to kill Madison all those years ago. She’s the reason all this is happening.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “We would never have got away with it.”

  She knows he’s right. “Have you spoken to Brad yet?”

  He nods. “Told him to spread the word that no one is to come into work today. The last thing we need is any of them getting arrested or making deals with the cops.”

  She agrees.

  “Message Jim Greenburg on the burner phone,” says Wyatt. “Tell him to notify Harris that he’s to go ahead with killing the boy.”

  Angie’s eyes widen. She can see he’s deadly serious. She never thought he’d kill his own son, but the impending search of their property is the final straw for him. Because it means Owen has done the unforgivable: he’s sold them out to the cops. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Jim can unlock their cell doors and let Harris deal with him. Then we’ll put a hit out on Harris once he’s transferred to prison so he can’t point the finger at us. The stupid asshole should never have killed the Garcia woman, and I’m not going to let him tell the cops it was us who hired him to scare her.”

  Angie nods. “Goddam rapist couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

  Wyatt never told Harris to kill Stephanie Garcia. Angie wanted to keep track of Madison once she heard about her early release from prison. But months passed and there was no sign of her. Sick of waiting for her to show up out of the blue, she talked Wyatt into hiring Harris and his brother to scare Stephanie into telling them where she was. She wanted to know if Madison would come back to claim Owen and start trouble. When it was clear Stephanie wouldn’t talk no matter how much pressure they put on her, Wyatt called Harris off. But he doesn’t know that Angie overruled him. He thinks Harris took it upon himself to go back one final time, but the truth is, Angie wanted the woman dead.

  She uses the burner phone to text Jim.

  Let Harris out. It’s time to get rid of the boy.

  But she hesitates before pressing send. She does have feelings for Owen; he was the son she should have had. They shared many good times. Does she really want him dead? What if he’s had time to reconsider where his loyalties lie?

/>   She hears something. Cars. More than one. She stands and looks out of the window. A black sedan followed by three police cruisers block the road outside their house. That enrages her.

  He’s picked Madison over her.

  She sends the text. Then, collecting herself, she passes the phone to Wyatt. “Put this in the crusher too. Now go. You need to get out of here.”

  Wyatt runs down the stairs and she follows him slowly, but as he heads for the back door, she hovers on the bottom step. When the knock on the door comes, hard and heavy, she stalls, giving Wyatt time to get all the way to the rear of the scrapyard, where the car crusher is. It’s only when Douglas knocks for a third time and shouts, “Police! Open up!” that she opens it wide and stares at him with her hands on her hips.

  She sees Douglas and five officers. But no Mike. Could he have been arrested? Maybe he’s fled.

  Detective Douglas leans in to spin her around, grabbing her wrists painfully and cuffing them. “Angela McCoy, I’m arresting you for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine. Other charges may follow once we’ve searched your property.”

  She shakes her head in disgust as he reads her her rights. When he’s done, she turns to face him, her hands tightly clasped behind her back. “I want to see the warrant.”

  “You can read it at the station. Where’s your husband?”

  “How should I know? I’m not his keeper. And I’m not responsible for anything he’s done either. I want to call my lawyer. When she’s done with you, you’re going to wish you never became a cop.”

  Douglas ignores her. “Officer Vickers will escort you to a squad car. You’ll be driven to the station once we have your husband.”

  He pushes past her with four officers following him into her home.

  Officer Vickers takes her arm. As she leads her across the road, Angie looks back over her shoulder, watching the cops crawling around her property like parasites.

  65

  Madison took the back road to the McCoys’ place and is waiting in the driver’s seat of Nate’s car, parked behind the boundary of their scrapyard. If Angie or Wyatt do anything unexpected, like trying to run from the cops and use this way as an escape route, she can surprise them. Brody is alert in the passenger seat, panting. He knows something’s going down. She’s tempted to let him out, but she doesn’t trust Wyatt not to shoot him. Nate would never forgive her. She opens the car’s windows so she can hear any gunshots or shouting.

  This morning has been insane. She can’t even think about her reunion with Owen yet, as she’s desperate to see if the cops find anything that proves who killed Ryan. She’d give anything to be in there with them.

  As she looks toward the scrapyard, all she can make out over the chain-link fence and overgrown shrubs and trees is a pile of burnt-out cars and the metal walkway that sits on top of the car crusher.

  A shadow covers the driver’s window, blocking out the sun. It’s Mike. He’s looking down at her with a strange expression on his face, and she wants to grab for her gun, but a quick look at his hands reassures her they’re empty. His weapon sits in its holster. Perhaps he hasn’t figured out she’s onto him yet. She decides to play it cool by smiling and casually getting out of the car, making sure he can see her hands are also empty.

  “Hey,” she says, slamming the door shut. Brody is watching them from inside and she leaves her hand on the handle in case she needs to let him out quickly. He sticks his head out of the window.

  Mike looks exhausted. Something’s clearly eating away at him. His sleeves are rolled up and he’s not wearing the tie he had on when he arrived at the station earlier. Instead, his top button is undone and she can see his white T-shirt underneath. He already has large sweat patches under his arms, despite the cool start to the day.

  “I take it Douglas is in there?” He nods in the direction of the house.

  “Yeah. Shouldn’t you be in there with him?” She wonders why he’s come the back way if he doesn’t know she and Douglas are onto him.

  He rubs his temples, then grimaces with pain.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  “It’s my head. Feels like I’ve got a tumor growing in there with the number of headaches I’m getting lately.”

  She doesn’t comment that they’re probably caused by guilt and the pressure of working for Wyatt.

  He looks at her. “You seen Owen yet?”

  She nods. “Briefly.”

  “I’m pleased for you, Madison. He should never have been taken away from you.” He runs a hand through his hair, his eyes devoid of emotion. His strange behavior is making her nervous.

  “You okay, Mike?” she asks.

  He shakes his head. “Not really. I haven’t been okay for a long time.” Taking a few steps away from her, he looks up at the sky.

  “Why not?”

  He turns to face her. “Have you ever been addicted to anything?”

  She thinks of cigarettes; she would love one right now. “Nothing serious.”

  “I was addicted to coke and pot before I joined the force. I managed to clean up my act for work. But when Viv left me and got custody of Sally, I felt the old cravings coming back. That last year you and I worked together, I started using again. I’m surprised no one noticed.”

  “Addicts are good at hiding things,” she says. “I saw a lot of that in prison.” It dawns on her that he wasn’t selling drugs for Wyatt. He was buying them.

  He nods. “I still can’t believe you ended up inside.”

  She senses he has a need to confess. It angers her, because she doesn’t want to give him any relief. “Even though it was your actions that put me in there?”

  A flash of surprise crosses his eyes. “How long have you known?”

  “I’ve had my suspicions for a while, and seeing you here the other night confirmed it for me. What happened? You owed Wyatt so much money for coke that he offered you a deal to wipe out your debt?”

  He looks pained as he nods. “Addiction is a disease. It destroys your life. Back then I didn’t know why they wanted to frame you—it was none of my business—but I knew I could never pay off my debt. They offered me a way out. But once I killed Ryan, my life became unbearable.”

  “Wait, what?” She steps forward, shocked at his words. “You killed Ryan?”

  “I thought you’d figured it out.” His voice is robotic, his face expressionless.

  “I thought it was Wyatt. I assumed you somehow gave him my gun to make it look like I did it. I had no idea you shot him!” She doesn’t want to believe it. How could he kill a friend? Ryan lost his life for such a stupid reason. Her hand moves to her waist, ready to pull out her weapon.

  Mike looks away and she finally sees a flicker of emotion. Remorse, perhaps.

  “So how did you get my gun out of the safe? Did you steal my keys and make a copy?”

  “You left your purse on your desk when you went into a morning training session,” he says. “I took your back door key and safe key and had copies made. Then I replaced them. Didn’t take longer than thirty minutes.”

  She silently curses herself. They had lockers for personal items at work. She doesn’t remember leaving her purse out.

  “When you told me you were going out with Ryan after work to celebrate your birthday, I knew it could look like you were on a date. I followed you home after and waited for you to go feed your neighbor’s cat with Owen.”

  She shakes her head. If she hadn’t told him in conversation that she had offered to feed that damn cat for a week, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get in her house that night.

  “I took your gun from the safe and locked it behind me so you wouldn’t notice it was missing. Then I got into Ryan’s house through a basement window.” He looks at her with anguish written all over his face. “He didn’t hear me walk up behind him.” His eyes are red-rimmed now. “I shot him in the back of the head. He died instantly. The noise he made when he hit the ground… It still keeps me up at night, a
ll these years later. Except I see my daughter dropping to the ground.”

  She has no sympathy for him. “And then you staged the scene?”

  He nods. “The candles and pizzas… I made it look like you and Ryan were continuing your date.” He wipes his eyes. “Wyatt never set foot in the house, but he was waiting for me afterwards. He took the copied keys, the clothes I was wearing and the latex gloves I used to ensure only your prints would be found on the gun. He said he’d hide them for me, but I knew he was keeping them as collateral, in case I ever told anyone who ordered the hit. Because they implicate me, not him. They’re here on his land somewhere. No doubt Douglas is about to find them.” He takes a deep breath. “You know, I found out later that it was Angie’s idea. She wanted you in prison.”

  “What?” And there it is. Confirmation that her sister was behind it all. That her sister started this terrible chain reaction that has resulted in three people losing their lives.

  “She hates you, Madison. I’ve never seen someone so bitter over another person. She told me that when you made detective, Wyatt confessed to sleeping with you all those years ago, and that he suspected Owen was his. She was livid, and as payback she convinced him that you were about to investigate his drug business and needed to be stopped.”

  He’s watching for her reaction, but she can’t take it all in. It’s despicable. If she had known sooner the timing of Wyatt’s confession, she could have put it all together. She shakes her head in disgust. But it means she must be right about who told Paul Harris to kill Stephanie. They’ve all been assuming Wyatt was behind everything, and although he might have been an accomplice, Angie was the ringleader. Angie was the real killer.

  “Ryan’s parents invited me to give a eulogy at his funeral. Did you know that?” Mike’s look of remorse has turned into despair. “That was the worst day of my life. I knew he was lying dead in the casket and you were rotting in a cell all because of me.”

  Madison is trembling. She’s disgusted with him. “I don’t know how you live with yourself.”