Tears thickened in her eyes. “But don't tell me you think my brother's guilty just because this girl says he is. It's obvious she's romantically involved with Gavin. She's trying to protect him.” She remembered Alison Chesney. “It's not the first time he's gotten girls to lie for him."
Chabot's lips arched in a sad grin, and he at last sat back, took out a Gitanes, lit it, and contemplated her through a blue stream of smoke. “As far as my case against your brother is concerned, Christine Artaud's statement will be used only as corroborative testimony. The fact is, I have strong physical evidence that places Monsieur Leo in Firminy with Odinstov on the night of the murder. Fougier has lifted some useable fingerprints from an old shovel recovered in a nearby shed. He has matched them to your brother's file prints from his previous arrest on your own country's AFIS system. The day he killed Odinstov it must have been hot. The varnish on the shovel was soft, and he left an indelible latent which has lasted all this time. There can be no doubt. Your brother buried the Russian. And if he buried the Russian, we must assume he killed him too."
Penny's heart beat fast. She gripped the edge of the desk, and her whole body felt heavy, as if at any moment she might sink into the ground. “So my brother's the guilty one."
Chabot nodded. “Since such is the case, I've had no choice but to issue an Interpol Red Notice on him. I've also been in contact with Sheriff Carl Booth, and he has made the manhunt for your brother the top priority for his Criminal Apprehension Team."
Five weeks after she returned from Europe, her brother was captured in Canada and returned to Lincoln Country for possible extradition to France.
Carl led her down to the Lincoln County lockup so she could talk to her brother. “He was in British Columbia for a while, then hid out in Saskatoon. He got picked up for running a red light in Regina, and the police up there IDed him off the Interpol Web site,” he told her.
"So he ran because he thought Gavin was going to tell you about the Russian?"
Carl nodded. “And I guess that's what he was trying to get Gavin to shut up about the night of your birthday party. But Gavin finally decided not to tell me anything. He was trying to protect Leo."
"And Leo turns around and makes that tape.... Is my brother really that mean?"
Carl's eyes narrowed as he raised his chin. “Maybe you don't know your brother as well as you think you do. He made the tape the night of your party. He dumped Gavin way out at the Garfield County line to buy time, then doubled back. He recorded the tape in partial darkness because he didn't want anybody to see the injuries on his face."
Her eyes misted up. “And now he's facing a life sentence in a French prison, all because I wouldn't let go of the idea that Gavin killed him.” She felt mortified by how badly she had treated Gavin in the last little while, and began to think that maybe Alison Chesney had had something to do with it after all.
"It's just darn ironic the way things turned out.” She wiped a tear away. “Here I was trying to put Gavin away, and I end up putting Leo away instead."
"Which is the way it's got to be anyway, Penny. You did the right thing, even though you didn't know you were doing it at the time."
"Yes, but he's my brother."
"Now, now, don't go blaming yourself. His big mistake was making that tape. No one would have been none the wiser about the Russian if he hadn't made that tape. But once he tried to frame Gavin, he more or less wrote his own arrest warrant."
* * * *
A year later, it was her birthday again.
"And he's taking you out?” asked Matt, as they finished their shift and were driving home.
"He's picking me up at seven."
"And there's no hard feelings about anything anymore?"
"It was rough at first. We had a lot to work out. We both made a lot of mistakes."
"But things are okay now?"
She paused. “We were side by side a lot while Leo was going through extradition. And I guess we got close again and saw things in each other we remembered from high school. Once they took Leo to France, we spent even more time together because we didn't have anyone else. I didn't have my brother and Gavin didn't have his best friend.” She felt a lump in her throat, and for a few seconds she couldn't go on. “He kissed me for the first time in ten years the other night. I forgot how good that felt. And you know what he finally said to me last week?"
"What?"
"That Alison Chesney was the biggest mistake he had ever made."
Matt thought for a moment. “So where's he taking you tonight?"
She made a face. “Definitely not Bluefield's."
Gavin pulled up to her house a little before seven.
She went out to his car with her pearl earrings on, in her cowboy boots and denim jacket, her step light, sure of itself, her anticipation masking her slowly fading regrets.
She saw Gavin smiling in a hopeful way behind the wheel of his pickup truck, all the scars on his face from last year gone.
And she understood that this was going to be her best birthday ever.
Copyright © 2009 Scott Mackay
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Out of Her Depth by John C. Borland
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 54, No. 11, November 2009. Published monthly except for combined January/Fe
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