by A J Rivers
There was only one thing he could do. One step he could take to open her eyes and start to guide her out of her life of danger and loss, and into her position of glory. It would be brutal, but the thought had always been in the back of his mind that it would come to this.
The time had come to sacrifice the Lamb.
Chapter Forty-Eight
It became clear pretty quickly that Sam and I were not going to be allowed to leave the area for a while. I wouldn't go so far as to say the investigators actually believe we were involved, but they also aren't leaping to our unwavering defense, either. That doesn't particularly surprise me. But it wasn't particularly pleasant after the day I just faced.
Sam and I sit in the police station, hands wrapped around Styrofoam cups of terrible coffee. Paper plates hold a few pastries neither of us have any interest in eating. We've been sitting in the same room for three hours, and no one has come to talk to us. Whether that's because of the incredible backup of people they're going to have to interview or a strategic plan, is yet to be revealed. Sam holds my hand, his thumb stroking the back of it. He doesn't need to say anything. I don't want him to say anything. There are no words either of us could offer the other one that would mean any more than just being able to sit there together.
Finally, the door opens, and two detectives walk in. One tosses a small stack of file folders onto the table before unbuttoning his jacket. I stare at the folders and lift my eyes to him.
“I'm not sure that was entirely necessary,” I comment.
He shrugs and drops down into the chair across from us. The other officer walks over and extends his hand.
“Detective James Mayfield,” he introduces himself as Sam takes his hand and shakes it.
"Sheriff Sam Johnson," he says. “Sherwood County.”
Detective Mayfield nods and turns his attention to me.
"And, of course, I know who you are, Agent Griffin. Detective James Mayfield."
"Hi, Detective," I say, shaking his hand.
I don't like the way he says ‘of course he knows who I am’. Not that it's all that out of the question. I’ve had my fair share of news features and interviews on the local news ever since my case in Feathered Nest. But he didn't address me in a professional capacity like I was an associate. Instead, there was a hint of being starstruck that makes me squirm. Especially when I look over at the other detective and see the disgust in his eyes. We have good cop, bad cop out in full force. I'm kind of interested to see how much of it is genuine and how much is contrived.
“’Course ya do,” the other detective says snidely. “Everyone knows the famous Emma Griffin.”
My eyes swing over to him again.
“And you are?”
“Detective Steven Legends,” he grunts, his heavy accent in full force. “I'll be headin’ up this investigation.”
“Best of luck with it,” I say.
Sam slides his eyes over to me. Even though I don't look at him, I can feel the disapproval.
“That s’posed to mean somethin’?” Detective Legends asks.
I mimic back the shrug he gave me when he first came in.
“Exactly what I said. Best of luck with it. It's not going to be easy,” I tell him earnestly.
“Y’know Miss Griffin, investigators tend to not appreciate when people uncover crimes and don't immediately report them,” he says.
“Agent Griffin, Detective. I'm well aware of that.”
“As I'm sure you're aware, we especially don't take kindly to mishandled situations like that when they involve the lives of hundreds of other people,” he says.
“Mishandled?” I ask. “Tell me, Detective. Were they mishandled because the decision was made to manage an unstable, dangerous situation with the best resources we had in that moment or was it mishandled because I'm the one who did it?”
“Of course not,” Detective Mayfield cuts in. “That's not what he means. Of course, we are well aware of your prestigious accomplishments in the Bureau.”
“That don’t give her the right to break the law and put people's lives at risk. The FBI does not have authority over police. Just because she works for the Bureau doesn't mean she supersedes our department.”
“I never said that I did,” I defend myself. “I'm well aware the Bureau has limitations, and in my work, I understand the importance of cooperation with local law enforcement. But unless the jurisdictions around here are enormous, that train passed through several of them during that escape room from hell. I'll also remind you I did have the full cooperation of a police officer the entire time. So if it's simply my badge that bothers you, that should help you to rest a little easier.”
“Would you have rather she called immediately and created even greater risk for every passenger on those trains? Every cop knows you advocate self-protection and the protection of others, acting in the best interest of other people around you regardless of the situation. Even if that means cooperating with a criminal to reduce danger. Hand over your wallet. Give them your PIN code. Don't taunt the man with a gun,” Sam adds. “We had credible reason to believe that our decision was the only way we could have stopped it.”
“Well, had ya called as soon as the first body was discovered, the trains coulda been diverted, and a proper investigation coulda started immediately.”
“Which would have been a delightful process, had both trains been blown to smithereens,” I bite back. I know it’s part of a ploy, but this dude is getting on my nerves.
“You have no idea if that would have actually happened,” the detective says. “A lot of people threaten things, Agent Griffin. That don’t mean they have the ability to actually make them happen.”
"I'm well aware of that. But I'm also well aware of the human capacity for evil. Likely far more than you are. Cruelty is unfortunately not a rare trait, and I'm not going to be the one to eat the poison M & M."
"’Scuse me?" he asks.
"If you had a bowl of M & M candies, and I tossed in several that were dipped in poison, would you still be comfortable eating a handful?"
Detective Legends looks up at Detective Mayfield, then back at me.
"I wouldn't," Mayfield notes.
Legends merely shrugs an agreement.
"The point is, all the threats and risks you encounter during your career aren't going to come to fruition. There are going to be failed attempts, self-important criminals talking out of their asses, and ones you managed to thwart. Sure, the vast majority of the M & M’s are going to be fine. But do you take that chance? Because the poison is there. It’s real. Someone will threaten violence and go through with it. Someone will say 'I'm going to kill you' to someone in their life and not mean it as a euphemism,” I explain.
“Ma’am, I’m well aware that threats—"
I raise a hand to cut him off.
“You might not like what happened on that train, but I don't regret how I handled it. Not for one minute. I did exactly what I needed to do when I needed to do it, and thanks to my work, almost everyone on both of those trains is still alive. There are few other people on this Earth who would understand that. Maybe none at all. Until you have stood in the place I have and gone through the same things, you will never grasp what it's like. It’s easy to sit by and think maybe you’d have done it better if I’d just followed procedure. If I’d just done it your way. But that's not the way it works. This situation was about me more than it was about anyone else. It was my responsibility to do everything in my power to bring it to as safe a conclusion as possible. You don't know what you're up against here, Detective," I tell him.
"Which is why we need your help," Detective Mayfield says. "You're going to need to give us insight as we investigate what happened and bring the perp to justice."
"There are very few things I want more than for that to happen," I tell him.
It's another two hours before they finally let Sam and me leave. They've asked us to stay close by, rather than continuing on to Feathered Nest or
going home to Sherwood. In these first few days of the investigation, having us close will be instrumental in their progress. I don't tell them they are coming in for just one battle of a war. They will learn that soon enough.
“Oh,” I mention to Sam as I finally strip out of my clothes and step under a hot shower. “You didn't tell me if you got in touch with Clancy.”
“I did,” he calls in from the front of the hotel room. “It turns out Marren isn't in town at all. She left a few days ago to visit her sister.”
“I didn't even know she had a sister,” I say.
“Apparently, not many people do. They aren't close, but since they're both getting on in years, they've been trying to reconnect. Clancy says he talked to her about it the day before she left.”
“And that was a few days ago? Like after I got the train ticket?”
“Sounds like it,” Sam says. “I thought you had already come to the conclusion she didn't send it to you though.”
“No, I did. She obviously isn't the one who sent me on that train. What I'm wondering is, why did LaRoche not mention she was leaving? He went to check on her. Wouldn't he have mentioned I said I was coming in?"
"I don't know. But that's not something for you to worry about right now. Tonight, you rest."
I go to sleep that night happy to be in Sam's arms, but feeling like I'm still on the train. Barreling forward with no idea where I'm going to stop.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Two days later, Sam and I walk out of the police station and head back toward our hotel. The last forty-eight hours have been both a blur and incredibly tedious. The hours melded together as I went over page after page of evidence, told the same story over and over again. I couldn't tell if they were waiting for me to make a mistake, or if the details were just so unbelievable, they had to hear it again. I had no difficulty repeating myself as many times as they needed me to. Those images are seared into my mind. They aren't going anywhere, and I will be able to recount those details for the rest of my life.
Little progress has been made in the case, which doesn't surprise me. But it does infuriate me. They still haven't released Mr. Jones, whose first name I learned is Mason. The evidence they have against him is shaky, to say the least. Traces of blood in his luggage. Fingerprints in places on the train where he shouldn't have been. Of course, I know why those fingerprints are there. He has been all over that train in places he shouldn't be.
At least Miranda Parsons regained consciousness today. She explained that she and Mason had already met up when she got the first call about the passenger who got off the train. When she finally noticed it ten minutes later, she hurried to meet him, and there was a man there. He said he was supposed to be on the sleeper car but wanted one more cigarette before the train took off, and in his haste, he forgot his tickets and identification.
Miranda was so embarrassed by her lapse in professionalism that she didn't question the passenger. She got his ID for him and had the redcaps put a piece of luggage in the baggage car that she thought was his because it was sitting next to him. She would find his ticket to board, she promised. It took two men to lift the bike box into the car. When he walked away because she didn’t get back to him right away, the conductor decided to get going.
As of now, we still don't know exactly the series of events. We know the blonde woman, Anna Strayer, was on the platform that morning but didn't get onto the train alive. Sometime between the original passenger getting off the train and the train starting, someone murdered a man named Andrew Price and left his body for me to find.
It's Miranda and the original passenger, Kelly Barden, that I keep bringing up when we talk about Mason Jones. Miranda was in a passenger car locked from the inside, while Kelly was strapped to a seat of a different train with a bomb in his lap. There is no way that Mason could have been on both trains at once. I think I got through to them today. I have no doubt that by tomorrow he'll be released. It will be a celebration for him, but they’ll still have questions hanging over us. Hanging over me.
It's going to be harder to chase the answers now. Within an hour getting off the train, I tried to show the police the Catch Me profile, but it had been wiped. Everything was deleted. With the word of everyone who saw it, including Bellamy and Eric, the police know it did exist and what it had on it. But we can't use it for any more digging.
The profile isn’t the only thing that disappeared in the earliest moments of the investigation. Dean Steele was nowhere to be found. Somehow, despite the officers positioned along the train, despite the barriers put up to carefully herd passengers through the phases of questions and checks and on into the station, he slipped away without anyone noticing. He hasn’t shown up for an interview. And when I looked back to where I remembered first seeing his name, listed among the comments on a few of Mary’s videos, they, too, were gone.
It’s frustrating, but I’ve overcome worse. It won’t stop me.
We get to the hotel, and as we step into the elevator, Sam turns to me.
“Emma, I have to ask you something.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It's about your birthday,” he says.
I let out a sigh and hang my head, shaking it. I don't want to have this conversation. I've had to talk about it too many times already, and I don't want to do it again. Not with him. Not with all the knowledge he has.
“You didn't tell them about the discrepancy in the date,” he says. “You left it out when telling the police about the clues.”
“I guess I did,” I admit. “It didn't really make much sense to tell them.”
“Why not?” he asks. “Isn't that part of the evidence? Shouldn't that be part of the investigation?”
“Why?” I ask. “Are they going to do a poll and see how many people say my birthday is the twenty-second as opposed to the twenty-third?”
“You know the answer to that question, Emma. You said it yourself.”
“Sam, don't.”
“You've already told me twice before that you think you saw your father following you. That he was in Sherwood walking down the sidewalk and then again near Quantico. I need you to tell me honestly if you think there is any chance this could be your father.”
I grit my teeth against the tears burning in the backs of my eyes and the pain searing down my chest.
“No,” I tell him. “I don't.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because if there is one thing my father never did, it's lie to me. He might have done a lot of things that I don't understand and has probably done a lot of things I don't know about. But that is one I can tell you without a doubt. This wasn't my father, Sam. I know that’s not much of an argument. It's not a defense. But I feel it in my bones. This couldn't have been him.”
“Then how would they know those things about you?" he asks.
"I don't know. That's part of it. Don't you see? The details were there, but they didn't make sense. Those weren't my father trying to speak to me. They were someone trying to speak for my father."
The phone in the room is ringing when we get in; Sam rushes over to pick it up.
"Sorry,” he says. “We've had our phones silenced while we were in the police station. Do you want to talk to— " his voice stops, and his eyes lift to me. "We'll be there as soon as we can."
He hangs up the phone, and I walk toward him.
“Who was that? Where are we going to be as soon as we can?” I ask.
“Emma, sit down,” he says.
I perch on the end of the bed, staring at him.
“Sam, what is it? What's going on?”
“That was Eric. He was calling from the hospital,” he says.
“The hospital? What's going on? Is it Bellamy? What happened to her?”
I try to stand up, to start packing my bags, but he takes me by the shoulders and eases me back down.
“Bellamy's fine. It's not her. It's Greg.”
I feel like I can't breathe for a few seconds. Sam take
s a step toward me, and I hold up my hand to stop him.
“Greg?” I gasp. “He came back?”
“They found him,” Sam tells me. “In the front yard of your house.”
“Is he…?”
“He's alive. But just barely. Eric didn't get into too many details. But apparently, it's pretty bad. He is in a coma right now. They want to keep him under for a while to let his body heal.”
Sam looks down at his phone and presses a few buttons, swiping across the screen as if he's looking at something.
“What's that?” I asked.
He opens his mouth as if to say something, but no sound comes out. He swallows hard and comes to sit down beside me.
“Emma, when they found him, he was wrapped in plastic, and there were papers with him. They haven't released everything yet, but there were some pictures. This is one of them.”
He turns the phone screen to me. It feels like the world has crashed in on itself. Black dots dance in front of my eyes, and my stomach surges up into my throat. I gasp for breath and Sam reaches to take the phone from me. But I clamp my hand around it, and I won’t let it go. It's excruciating to look at the picture, but I can't stop.
The image seems to be from a security or surveillance camera of some kind. Not one of the grainy black-and-white ones that take the choppy time-lapse images. But one that shows full detail. Bright color. Bright enough to see the flash of Greg's watch on his wrist and the color of my father's eyes.
“Emma, are you all right?” he asks. “I know you just told me...”
“Sam...”
The shock is wearing off, and I'm looking at the picture closer now. Something is standing out to me; it makes my hands burn, and my lungs incapable of holding air.
“I know what you're going to say, but please listen to me. This picture is real and...”
“Sam, I know it's real. But I need you to listen to me. My father has a scar on his face,” I say.
“I know. I remember. Here, you can see it,” he says, tracing his finger along the faint line curving over a strong jaw.
