by Debra Webb
‘On it.’
En route Jess had spoken to the janitor. He had assured her there was no one else in the building. He and his coworker had exited, leaving a side door open for the police to enter.
Jess turned to Harper and wished she had backup here now. ‘I don’t want to keep waiting. This could be over before we even get up there.’
Maybe no one would die. Maybe Penney just wanted Juliette and O’Reilly to understand what he and Lenny had felt that night. Or maybe he just wanted the truth. Whatever he wanted, three people were dead. She didn’t need him or anyone else adding to that body count.
One of the three on that rooftop was a killer.
‘Let’s do it,’ Harper suggested.
‘I can go,’ Lori offered. ‘SWAT will need you, Chief.’
‘Hold your position, Detective.’ Jess used her firmest voice. ‘We’ll need you to keep us informed of the movements on the roof until we’re in position up there.’
Lori didn’t argue, though she clearly wanted to. She took the binoculars from Harper. ‘Be careful.’
‘That’s the plan,’ Jess promised.
She followed Harper, staying close to the other buildings, hugging the brick walls and wishing she had worn jeans and sneakers today. If she was going to be a hands-on deputy chief, she needed to consider dressing the part. She thought of Gina Coleman and Sylvia Baron and decided maybe that wasn’t such a great idea. Neither one would be caught dead in sneakers and jeans on the job.
The side door the janitor had told her about was open.
Inside, they hurried to the elevator. Jess wasn’t a fan of elevators under the circumstances but they didn’t have a lot of options right now. At least they didn’t have to take it all the way to the roof.
Once they were in the car headed up, Harper gave her an update. ‘SWAT is getting into position. Wells still has a visual on Penney.’
‘At least that’s some good news.’ So far no one had flown off the roof and backup was here. If only their luck held . . .
‘Chief Burnett has arrived as well. And so’s a whole posse of reporters.’
‘An audience,’ she mused. ‘Fabulous.’
The elevator bumped to a stop on the uppermost floor. Jess and Harper moved to the side of the doors and assumed defensive positions.
Jess’s heart rate climbed higher and higher.
The doors glided open. The corridor was empty.
Jess felt the fresh burn of adrenaline rushing through her veins as they moved toward the final blockade between them and the roof. The stairs were narrower than the typical public stairwell but that didn’t slow them down. At the top, they exited into the small corridor the janitor had told them about.
Beyond the six- or seven-foot corridor was the door that led onto the roof. It was a solid door so there was no way to see outside and determine where Penney was relative to their current position. Jess couldn’t recall seeing the door . . . she’d been too busy looking at the man on the roof.
She sent Lori a text to see if she had a better visual.
Directly behind Penney’s position.
‘Good answer,’ Jess murmured. She showed the screen to Harper.
As good as that news was, there was always the chance Penney could turn around just as they opened the door. Or that there could be two doors.
Jess’s cell vibrated.
Penney and O’Reilly moving away from
your position toward the edge.
Shit! Jess relayed the new message to Harper. ‘Let’s go.’
Harper slipped into a crouch at the door while Jess moved to the side. He reached up, eased the door open, and checked out the situation.
And then he was up and moving.
‘Freeze!’ he shouted.
Jess was out the door right behind him.
Juliette Coleman, hands secured with duct tape behind her back, was seated midway across the roof while Penney and O’Reilly were maybe two feet from the roof’s edge. O’Reilly’s hands appeared to be secured behind his back as well. Penney had the business end of a handgun rammed into the back of his hostage’s skull.
Juliette started to wail as soon as she saw them. ‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘He’s going to kill us!’
Penney yanked O’Reilly in front of him as he wheeled around. ‘Tell the truth, Juliette! Who wants to kill whom?’
‘I can take him,’ Harper murmured. He had a bead on Penney, who was a head taller than O’Reilly.
‘Wait,’ Jess ordered. This was wrong. Statements and scenarios and those photos of him with Baker were swirling in her head. If Penney had wanted either of these two dead, they would be dead already. But they were alive, the same as Scott Baker had been when he’d left him. Penney wanted them to talk.
‘Who does want to kill whom?’ Jess shouted to Penney. ‘I’m a little confused here.’
No matter that it was Dog Days in Alabama; it was cooler up here, the breeze stronger.
‘Why don’t you ask the princess?’ Penney suggested. ‘She knows everything. Gets everything. Except the one thing she wanted most.’ Penney laughed as if he weren’t in the bead of both Jess’s and Harper’s weapons. ‘You could never have him, could you, Juliette.’
‘Shut up!’ Juliette screamed between sobs.
‘Chief,’ Harper murmured while Penney and Juliette ranted at each other, ‘SWAT is in position awaiting your signal to take him out. The hostage negotiator wants you to wait for him to catch up.’
Jess didn’t want this to end the way she feared it would. And waiting for the hostage negotiator to get up here was out of the question.
She wanted the truth and she didn’t want anyone else to die.
Was she going to fish or cut bait?
A cold shiver danced along her spine but she was going for it. ‘Tell the commander to hold his position,’ she whispered to Harper; then she took a breath and dove in.
‘They killed your friend,’ she said to Penney. ‘I get it. The problem is, right this very minute, SWAT is standing by waiting for me to give the signal so a sharpshooter can take you out, Todd. Do you want to die that way? Just another screwed-up head case who couldn’t deal with life? Or do you want the world to know the truth?’
Jess lowered her weapon just enough to buy a little trust – she hoped – and stepped forward. ‘Tell me the truth and I’ll make sure the right person pays.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ O’Reilly screamed. ‘He’s going to kill me!’
Next to her and one step behind, she could hear Harper arguing in a fierce whisper with someone on his cell, most likely the SWAT commander. There had been no time to set up proper communication links.
‘Bring him away from the edge,’ Jess said to Penney. ‘We’ll get the answers you want. You have my word.’ She dared to take another step toward the two men. ‘But you have to come away from the edge.’
‘You want to know what happened?’ O’Reilly attempted to pull away from his captor. ‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ he said, his tone frantic, his face flushed with fear. ‘Scott suddenly grew a conscience and decided he couldn’t live with the way we treated poor, poor Lenny. He didn’t care if his decision ruined our lives too. He always was a selfish bastard. He called Todd up and then announced to Juliette he was done with her. You can figure out the rest, Chief.’
‘You bastard,’ Juliette screamed; then she burst into sobs. ‘He’s the selfish coward who doesn’t care about anyone but himself!’
‘Tell her,’ O’Reilly demanded, ‘or I will! Tell her what you did!’
‘Ma’am,’ Harper said, barely loud enough for Jess to hear.
She leaned toward him, not daring to take her attention off the two men.
‘The negotiator is coming up the elevator now. He won’t wait unless we can get those two away from the edge.’
Dammit. ‘Todd, if you don’t bring Kevin away from the edge,’ Jess urged, ‘SWAT is going to move in. I can’t stop them.’
Penney wh
irled around, dragging O’Reilly with him, both men teetering dangerously close to the edge as he surveyed the buildings and streets around them in search of the sharpshooter. Jess’s heart swelled in her throat.
‘You have to listen to me, Todd,’ she pressed. ‘Move toward me and everything will be fine. Just a couple of steps. Please.’ That was all she needed. The opportunity to keep everyone alive while they got to the truth.
‘She killed Scott,’ O’Reilly announced. ‘She called me bawling.’ He glared at Juliette as if she were worse than pathetic. ‘She said if she couldn’t have him, then no one was going to have him. She lost it for a minute and killed him.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ Juliette wailed. ‘I was angry. I hit him. I couldn’t believe I did it . . . It happened so fast.’
‘See!’ O’Reilly ranted. ‘I told you! Then she called me to help clean up her mess!’
Jess considered Juliette’s words. ‘If you didn’t mean to do it, Juliette, why did you hit him again?’
Juliette stared up at Jess, the expression on her face one of true shock. ‘What? I didn’t hit him twice. I threw down the statue as soon as I hit . . . him . . . I ran outside and called Kevin.’
Jess turned her attention back to O’Reilly. ‘And you came to her rescue. Only your friend wasn’t dead and you had to hit him again. After all, he’d called Todd and opened this can of worms.’
‘She just told you she killed him!’ O’Reilly shook his head. ‘I’m not taking the fall for what she did. No way.’
The pieces fell fully into place for Jess. ‘Where’s your journal, Todd?’
Todd blinked as if her question had dragged him from some faraway place. ‘I gave it to Baker.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because he called me. Wanted to make amends for his part in what happened.’ Penney made a weary sound that might have been an attempt at a laugh. ‘I figured he was just trying to buy absolution from me. But it wasn’t for sale.’ Fury tightened his face. ‘I wanted him to remember just what they had done, so I gave him the journal.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Jess agreed. ‘And Scott Baker was so devastated by the anguished words he read there that he ripped out the pages that referred to how badly he had treated Lenny. He hid those damning pages before Juliette arrived. That’s why they weren’t found at the scene. But Elliott Carson and Aaron Taylor didn’t get a chance to hide anything. The person who killed them made sure the pages from your journal were in plain sight so we would find them.’
As if hearing that revelation startled him, Penney’s hold on O’Reilly loosened, and O’Reilly jerked away. He backed up the meager two steps that separated him from the very edge of the roof.
Jess stopped breathing. ‘Don’t move, Kevin. Just stay right there.’ She lowered her weapon to the ground and held her hands out to her sides in a gesture of good faith. ‘All we want to do is clear up this mystery. There’s no need for anyone to do anything he might regret.’
Thankfully Juliette had dissolved into sobs and was no longer arguing with O’Reilly. Harper had a bead on Penney even though the weapon in his hand wasn’t aimed at anyone just now.
‘Todd, why don’t you put your weapon down and kick it away? If you do, Sergeant Harper will lower his weapon as well. Then we can all talk about this calmly.’
‘You killed Scott,’ Juliette cried. ‘You let me believe I did it and it was you.’
‘What difference does it make?’ O’Reilly snarled. ‘You had murder in your heart when you hit him. Poor Juliette, her perfect image is shattered. Tsk tsk.’
Mesmerized by the exchange taking place between O’Reilly and Juliette, Penney slowly responded to Jess’s request. He placed the handgun on the ground and toed it away.
Jess looked to Harper and he lowered his weapon. Since the door from the stairwell didn’t open, she assumed the negotiator had backed off.
Air expanded in her lungs once more. ‘We’ll get this sorted out, Kevin,’ Jess promised. ‘Just come away from the edge and tell me what really happened. You have my word that I’ll protect you.’
He laughed so hard he lost his breath, had to double over in a coughing fit.
Goose bumps zipped over her skin as Jess prayed he realized just how close to the edge he was.
‘I don’t believe you,’ O’Reilly argued. ‘You think I killed them.’ He shrugged. ‘You believe I killed Scott and took the diary.’ He nodded adamantly. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t know that, Kevin. Juliette had access to Scott and the diary the same as you did. She may be the one.’
Juliette started wailing again.
‘You killed Lenny!’ Penney accused, snapping back to the conversation. ‘You and the others. You just kept badgering him. You made him jump.’
Kevin just shook his head and laughed some more, somehow finding humor in this precarious situation. ‘I didn’t kill him, you idiot.’ He pointed at Juliette. ‘She did!’
‘He’s insane,’ Juliette screamed. ‘Can’t you see that? Why don’t you do something?’
Kevin howled as if every word she said was ridiculously funny. ‘You’re right. I’m definitely insane.’ He shrugged. ‘I did it,’ he confessed. ‘I killed Scott and Elliott and Aaron. They were all assholes anyway. They always thought they were better than me. But I showed them. The journal was a stroke of genius.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘I left the journal pages to make it look as if Penney were the guilty one. I decorated that damned storage unit to look as if he’d been plotting his revenge since he came back.’ He shook his head. ‘What can I say? I didn’t want to go to prison. And Scott had fucked us all by making that goddamned phone call.’ He looked at Jess then. ‘That’s the truth. But I didn’t kill Lenny Porter. She did,’ he snarled.
‘No!’ Juliette wailed. ‘I didn’t! I swear I didn’t.’
‘Then what did you do?’ Jess demanded. Her patience with the woman had expired. ‘Tell me right now before I have to arrest you for murder.’
‘We were high.’ She turned her red, tear-stained face toward Jess. ‘We were all out of our minds on drugs. They’d been playing games with Lenny all night and he said something like “None of you would give a shit if I just jumped.” And they all started chanting at him to do it. It was a joke.’
‘Who chanted?’ Jess demanded. She had zero sympathy for the woman.
‘Scott, Elliott.’ She glared at her friend. ‘Kevin and Aaron. They all did it. “Jump, Lenny!”’ she mimicked. ‘“Jump! Jump!”’
‘But he didn’t,’ Kevin roared. ‘Not until you went over and whispered in his ear. “Do it for me, Lenny. Jump, Lenny!”’ he mocked Juliette’s whiny voice. ‘You were so stoned you bragged about it. “Look! He really did it. Oh my God!”’
‘I only did what the rest of you were doing. I’m no guiltier than you!’
‘But he loved you,’ Jess reminded her of her own words. ‘He did it for you.’
‘There you go, Chief,’ O’Reilly called out. ‘Mystery solved.’
Jess stiffened. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end at the sound of resignation in his voice. ‘You need to ensure she doesn’t get away with it,’ Jess urged. ‘I’ll need you to help me with this, Kevin. Your testimony will seal her fate.’
The laughter was gone. O’Reilly just shook his head. ‘It’s over.’
Jess didn’t dare move toward him. ‘You did the right thing, Kevin. You told the truth.’
‘I know.’ For a split second he stared at Jess; then he jumped.
For one startling moment, Jess felt frozen . . . then she swiped at her eyes and struggled to gather her composure.
Behind her, Juliette Coleman wailed hysterically.
And then there was one.
Chapter Twenty-Six
9911 Conroy Road,
Saturday, August 14, 2.20 A.M.
Lori parked in Jess’s drive.
They both just sat there for a bit.
Four people had die
d this week. All because no one had been paying attention when they were hurting others. The Five had taken bullying to the ultimate level. The true victims in this tragedy that sprawled across more than a decade were Lenny Porter and his friend Todd Penney.
Twelve years ago, Juliette Coleman and Scott Baker had been madly in love. Yet everything changed the night Lenny Porter died. Scott turned to another woman and rushed into a marriage with her in an attempt to forget. But he’d still been in love with Juliette and they began a torrid affair. For years he promised Juliette that he was leaving his wife and they would finally have the life they deserved. Then children came along and Scott never came through with his promises.
The story was as old as time.
It took more than a decade, but Scott Baker finally grew that conscience Kevin O’Reilly mentioned. He watched his own son suffer and he realized he could no longer carry the burden of guilt, so he called Todd Penney and asked for forgiveness.
Five teens who’d had the world at their feet and the stars in their eyes had effectively killed another. And this week fate had caught up with them.
Usually Jess didn’t rely on fate, but this was one of those rare instances when it worked out. Sort of.
‘You think the DA will levy charges against Penney?’
‘I don’t think so. They’ll want to keep this as quiet as possible. Juliette is another story.’
‘It’s difficult to feel sorry for her,’ Lori admitted.
‘I do feel sorry for her family.’ Jess would never forget the devastation on Gina Coleman’s face when she learned the whole truth.
‘It’s not a pretty story,’ Lori said. ‘I can’t believe Coleman is doing an exclusive on it tomorrow afternoon.’
Jess laughed. ‘I get where she’s coming from. Juliette is her sister. Gina feels it’s her responsibility to set the record straight. Besides, you don’t get to the top and stay there by letting someone else scoop the story. She has to do something to steal back some of the spotlight Stevens stole with that Corlew interview.’
‘I guess I’ll never be at the top, then. And Corlew’s an ass.’
