Angie turned her attention to Bryce. He was slumped forward, using his hand to apply pressure to the gunshot wound to his chest.
“Bryce, talk to me. How bad is it?”
Angie’s own wounds continued to throb and the loss of blood made her feel lightheaded.
Bryce grunted through the pain, but managed to get out his cell phone. “I’ll call 911.”
Angie felt the room spinning. “What can I do to help?”
“Get . . . the . . . truth. . . .” Bryce struggled through every word. A new resolve came to him. “I’m going to be okay. I can breathe. It just hurts like a bastard. But he’s not going to be here long.” Bryce pointed a bloodstained finger at Walter, whose chest rose and fell with the fast action of fireplace bellows.
“No,” Angie said. “I’ll stay with you.”
Bryce punched 911 into the phone. “I got this. You get that.”
With a nod, Angie crawled over Walter, who was still breathing hard. She put her gun to his head, but took it away when he spit out a gob of blood. Instead of the barrel of her gun, she put her hand on Walter’s face and gave his cheek a gentle caress.
“Tell me,” she whispered in his ear. “Tell me what you and my father did. Tell me the truth before you’re gone, Walter. Let it go. Give that to me, please. If you love me like you said, you’ll do that one thing for me. You owe me the truth.”
Tears pricked the corners of Angie’s eyes. Her father was involved. His last words to her had made it clear.
“I killed people,” Walter managed.
“Who?” Angie asked. “Who did you kill?”
Walter licked away some of the blood from his lips. “People—going into witness protection. . . .”
A stab of pain took away Angie’s breath. She tried not to look at her bleeding, tried to center herself and her focus on the precious moment. Help would be there soon enough.
“We replaced people who were going to disappear with different people. Then we buried the records, made it . . . made it so there were no links between the old identity . . . and the new ones.”
A horrible feeling came over Angie.
May God forgive me.
Walter’s earlier words came back to her. This isn’t the first time I killed for you.
“You killed the Conti family, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” The word seeped out of Walter’s throat in a hiss.
“So that we could take over their identities.”
“Yes.”
“And there needed to be a little girl who I could become.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t a baby when Isabella Conti died, was I?”
“You . . . and Isabella were the same . . . age. I took the picture of Isabella. . . . Your mother . . . asked me . . . for it.”
Angie’s father had lied when he told her she went into witness protection as an infant. He knew Angie would have made some connection to Isabella Conti if he had told the truth.
Walter was struggling even more. His breath sounds were completely erratic. Behind her, Angie could hear Bryce talking to a 911 operator, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She couldn’t feel her gunshot wounds anymore, either.
“My mom,” Angie said. “She knew.”
“She did,” Walter said, his voice barely a fading echo.
“Why wasn’t my father’s Ponzi scheme reported? Why wasn’t there a trial?”
“No trial,” Walter said, “because he stole money only from the Mob. Dirty money. The Mob couldn’t go to the police—but they could kill him, and all of you. I”—Walter coughed up another glob of blood—“I knew there was a hit on him because I put a lot of connected guys into the program. They . . . they were still plugged into the life . . . still had their sources. One guy told me about your dad . . . I figured your dad had a lot of money . . . and he needed to disappear.”
And that was enough. Angie understood it all. Walter Odette had approached her father with an offer. Pay him whatever amount of money it took, and instead of the Contis becoming the DeRose family as planned, it could be the Harringtons—William, Claire, and Amelia. They were the perfect match—like organ donors, only instead of tissue types, it was the number of people in the family and the relative ages that were a perfect match. Angie’s mother knew Isabella Conti would die so that her daughter might live.
And Isabella had died all right. She’d died on March 4, 1988, the day they were supposed to enter witness protection, the day Walter Odette, a person the Contis had trusted implicitly, had murdered them all.
“You hired that man to kill me and my father,” Angie said, pointing at the puddle of a man without a skull. “Why?”
But Walter’s eyes held all the life of a cataract. His chest no longer rose and fell to any rhythm, and the final breath had left his body.
CHAPTER 60
The memorial service for the man who was Gabriel DeRose, but wasn’t, would have been more crowded had press been allowed to attend. It was Angie’s wish not to turn the somber occasion into a circus. Of the several dozen or so people who came to the Silverstone Funeral Home to pay their last respects, some were friends and professional associates of Gabriel, some were friends of Kathleen, some were connected to Angie. A few introduced themselves as relatives of William Harrington.
One such relative, a cousin named Marcia Lane, approached Angie from behind. She tapped Angie’s left arm, not seeing it was still in a sling. A string of apologies soon followed.
“What can you tell me about my father?” Angie asked after apologies were accepted and introductions made.
Marcia shrugged, making it clear nothing much would be forthcoming. “I heard on the news what happened and of course when they showed a picture of William, I mean your father, or Gabe, well, it triggered all sorts of memories of my cousin and his family who vanished one day without a word.”
The two women exchanged contact information and made promises to meet.
Over time Angie would dive into genealogy, but she needed to mourn the loss of her father. His actions, his horrible crimes, and those of her mother, didn’t erase the love she felt for her parents. And while she couldn’t condone their extraordinary actions, she could give her mother one thing she’d wanted.
Forgiveness.
Angie forgave her parents while she mourned for them and for the little girl with the sad smile and misshapen ear. A girl whose fate very well could have been Angie’s were it not for the terrible choice her parents had made.
Mike Webb and Bao each gave Angie a gentle hug—she’d been shot, and they were careful. For the occasion, Mike wore a semi-wrinkled beige suit, and Bao had on a long-sleeved Oxford shirt buttoned to the top, crisp looking dark jeans, and his best Doc Martens. They each expressed their sincere condolences, but the conversation wasn’t all about matters of life and death.
“You think you can come back to work next week?” Mike asked. “I got a big rental gig to prep for and we’re really swamped. I mean, I know it’s a horrible thing what happened to you and all, but honestly Ange, the publicity has been incredible for business.”
It hurt to laugh—if the bullet in her side had gone a few millimeters to the right, she’d be dead—but Angie let go a little one anyway.
Maddy, who was nearby, said, “Hey, Mike, let the girl heal and farm out the jobs you can’t handle for now.”
“Maybe we should hire a new full-time associate.” Bao had made the suggestion on other occasions, but thought this time it might carry a bit more weight.
Angie said, “Guys, let me say good-bye to my father. Okay? We’ll talk shop later.”
Maddy gave Mike and Bao a look that said I told you so, and the three took seats in the fourth row, directly behind Carolyn, Greg, and Nadine Jessup, who had come as a family to offer their condolences.
Bryce showed up in a sharp-looking suit minutes before the service was scheduled to begin. His wounds were more severe than Angie’s, and he had spent the better part of a week recoveri
ng in the hospital. He walked slowly. Like Angie, he would carry the scars of that day around with him forever.
He made his way to the front of the room where he pulled Angie aside. “I’ve got some new news.”
She felt a jolt of excitement. A lot had happened in the two weeks since her father’s cremation, not much of it good for the U.S. Marshals. Walter Odette turned out to be a very rich man. Those long vacations he took didn’t even put a dent in all the money he’d made hiding people who could pay for his brand of witness protection. He had hid his wealth from Louise, so as to not attract attention, but in reality he lived a double life. His long fishing trips and other excursions were really lavish solo vacations—not exactly with the jet set, but skirting close.
Walt must have grown attached to his money, and for whatever reason he couldn’t stop doing what he’d started years ago when he was a young marshal handling witness protection. When it came time for him to retire, he’d transitioned his operation to another marshal named Raynor Sinclair, who worked in witness protection and had access to the files they needed to manipulate. Questions were raised about a hunting accident that might not have been an accident. Maybe Walter learned a few things about Raynor Sinclair and knew he was a good pick to take over the operation and rake in profits from murder.
It would take time and a lot of effort to figure out everyone Walter Odette and Raynor Sinclair had helped to hide by killing those the government had sought to protect. Their special clientele weren’t people turning state’s witness, but rather criminals who wanted or needed to disappear and had the means to pay. The transactions were a death sentence for those slated to go into the program. A little bit of manipulation of paperwork and files, and two sets of people disappeared—those in the program legitimately, murdered by Sinclair and Odette, and those who paid to take over the victims’ government-manufactured identities. Others had been involved, and others paid off, but Odette was the mastermind and Sinclair his pro-tégé.
Text messages between them drew a picture that clarified the last moments of Gabriel DeRose’s life. Walter, panicked that Gabe was going to tell Angie the truth, ordered Raynor to make the hit. That took place while Angie was at Walter’s, when she thought he was looking through his files. As best she could guess, Walter had come to the house planning to kill Raynor and the whole program would have gone dark. He may have heard what Raynor planned to do to Angie, and didn’t want her to suffer. But when the time came, Walter couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
“Walter faked a lot of things,” Angie had said to Bryce. “But his love for me wasn’t one of them.”
Her father had substantial assets, more than Angie realized. The money could have come from his past life, when he stole from the mob. Walter probably hadn’t taken it all, just a cut. Angie had plans for the money. All of it, every last penny, would go to the Microtia-Congenital Ear Deformity Center in Burbank, California. Dot, the center’s receptionist, would be shocked by the note that would accompany the gift.
Angie glanced toward the back of the room. The head of the funeral home was trying to take his cue from her when to begin. She held up a finger to ask him to wait a minute. He obliged with a nod.
“So what’s this big news you have to share?” Angie asked Bryce.
He leaned in close, took hold of Angie’s right hand, and put his lips to her ear. It wasn’t the first time his lips were in that spot, and it wouldn’t be the last. “They arrested Albert Tuttle.”
Angie whispered back, “That’s great. Who the heck is Albert Tuttle?”
Bryce pulled away and smiled. “Well, he was supposed to be Dante Lerardi, but Dante was murdered—and guess who took over his persona?”
Angie broke into a smile. “Ivan Stinger Markovich.”
“The one and only. Back where he belongs, in jail,” Bryce said.
“Hot damn. That is great news. I’m so excited to tell Nadine. But I’ll wait until after.”
“Speaking of after, I could use a little nursing, if you know what I mean?”
Angie kissed Bryce tenderly on the cheek. “That’ll have to be later. Nadine asked me to go out with her. She has someplace she wants to take me.”
“Where to?” Bryce asked.
Angie shrugged. “She won’t tell me. She just said she needs my help with something.”
CHAPTER 61
Why did I do it? Why did I make this my life’s mission? I guess I saw too many families like Sarah Winter’s out there, too many people left wondering if their kid was alive or dead. I didn’t want Jade to be like Sarah—a picture hanging on a wall in limbo. Somebody loved Jade, somebody missed her, and I believed somebody wanted her to come home.
I probably should have come clean with Angie from the start, just told her what I wanted her to do, but I was afraid she’d say no. I figured if I took her, and she could see Jade, it would make her think about her friend Sarah, and she’d agree to help even if I couldn’t pay.
That was my plan, anyway.
So mission accomplished. Well, in a way. The big moment happened and it was incredible and incredibly sad. You see, I don’t think there are any real winners and losers here. It’s not like everything is amazeballs now. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. It’s all just stuff—it’s all just things that have happened. I mean, yes, there are some losers for sure, and I’m happy to report those losers are all in jail where they’re going to be for a long time. But outside of that there’s me, Tasha and the other girls, Angie, my parents, Bryce (aka Angie’s super cute guy), and trust me, there aren’t any real winners and losers in that bunch. There’s just different experiences we can choose to learn from, to grow from, or choose to let define us.
Me personally? I’m choosing to live in the light. And there is a light. I believe in it wholeheartedly. I’m not saying everything happens for a reason, but there’s a reason everything happens. Does that even make sense? Ha! I mean, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think I got trafficked so I could get Angie to the Lowery Motel on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. That’s where Jade lived. That’s where Buggy and Casper dumped her when she wasn’t useful to them anymore. The Lowery is like my apartment-prison in Baltimore, only way grosser. Waaaay grosser.
On my way upstairs with Angie I kept asking myself, how did this happen? How did I end up here? I don’t think God ever said, put Nadine through hell so that she may one day do this one kind thing for someone else. I think God loves me and wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. But I don’t think God controls it all either. Like there isn’t a big book where every movement, every single thing that’s said and done by every living creature is completely spelled out. Imagine how big that book would be! On this day, Nadine shall leave her shoes in the front of a closet and it is written her mother will be half-cocked as usual and she shall trip over those shoes. No way! That’s just not realistic (IMHO).
Like I said, things don’t happen for a reason, but there’s a reason things happen. I wasn’t destined to meet Jade, I don’t think. But I met her because I ran away from home and because she was addicted to drugs and had to feed her habit any way she could. And Angie? Well, she’s in the picture because my mom wanted to find me, so she got the best person for the job. And I wanted to help Jade find her family, so I got the best person for the job, too. Like I said, there’s a reason things happen. So there I was on the third floor of this disgusting motel holding Angie’s hand.
Before we went in, I told Angie what this mission was all about. I figured she might be mad, but she wasn’t. She hugged me and told me I was a good person for even trying, and that she’d be happy to help pro bono (which means free). She also told me I could have been upfront with her from the start and she would have come because it was important to me. She’s cool like that.
But then Angie told me not to get my hopes up. She said drugs are hard and they make people do and act in ways that aren’t good for them (tell me about it!). She warned me not to expect a miracle. I told her I�
�d only expect nothing if I didn’t try for one.
I’d called the manager ahead of time so I knew Jade would be at home. The manager told me Jade didn’t leave her place until dark. That’s when she worked the streets. That was Jade’s life and it was a hard one. The old me wouldn’t understand how hard. The new me understood it more than I wished to know.
Angie knocked on the door and we waited. We heard footsteps. Then the doorknob turned. And then door opened and I froze and so did Jade. We looked at each other for the longest time. Tears came to Jade’s eyes, and then to mine. Jade kept saying, Jessica, is that you? Is it really you? I had to say, yeah but I’m really Nadine because she remembered me as someone else. Jade looked like I expected her to look. The street isn’t where you go to get your young on. I introduced her to Angie and I told her Angie would help her reconnect with her family. She was good at that.
Jade gave me the most heartbreaking look. “There’s nobody missing me,” she said. Nobody at all. No mom, no dad, no relatives. Angie still handed Jade her card, plus a bunch of numbers of support groups, and one for Narcotics Anonymous she had looked up on her phone, stuff like that. She told Jade to call anytime, that she’d be happy to help her reconnect with her family or friends or anybody she wanted help finding.
Jade wasn’t interested. There was no helping her, Jade said. Maybe in another life things would be better, but not this one. Those were her exact words. We left and I felt absolutely horrible. I had wasted Angie’s time and my own. Jade didn’t want my help, didn’t need it. My great grand purpose in life was all a bunch of BS. I had such high hopes for a happy family reunion. But instead of being a big hero, I was back to just being another sad victim of trafficking.
I cried like crazy when we got back to Angie’s car. Angie didn’t say anything for the longest time. She just hugged me and told me it was going to be all right. Then she said something that made me stop crying and think. She said, at least Jade has her card now. And I thought about when I got Angie’s card and what it had meant to me. Without that card and phone, I had no lifeline to the outside world. I had Ricardo, Buggy, and Casper and no way out. So maybe the trip to Jade’s wasn’t a total waste after all. Maybe all that effort to find her was just so I could get her Angie’s card. And maybe Jade would call Angie one day and maybe there’d be that happy family reunion after all.
Forgive Me Page 34
