Despair seemed to immigrate into my stomach, taking up all the space for the more joyful emotions that made life worthwhile. It pushed away hope, happiness, and joy as it shoved its way in, seemed to dig a hole beneath my chair the longer I sat there. I leaned back in my seat, shaking my head again. He was right, unfortunately. I couldn’t ask him to do that. But I could ask him to believe me.
“No, I know. It’s just that I can’t imagine my Uncle Zeke ever doing anything like this. Still, even with you finding more evidence on his computer. It just doesn’t seem like him. It’s like waking up to find out your best friend is a psycho or a serial killer. Like they’ve been hiding something from you for your entire life, and you’re only just now finding out. I just can’t believe it.”
He reached across the table for my hand. “But, the evidence–”
I yanked my hand back like he was holding them over a fire pit. “The evidence says he did it. I know. But my whole life with him is telling me the evidence is wrong, that there’s some other kind of explanation.”
He sighed, his eyes looking as hurt as I felt just then. I looked away, unable to take the pain I was causing him. Hurting him was almost the last thing I wanted to do, with the absolute last thing being admitting my Uncle Zeke was guilty of this crime.
I stood up, flattening my blouse. “I should go.”
“But the letter,” he said, rising from his chair.
“What about it?” I asked as I grabbed my purse and slung it over my shoulder. “What about the letter? Pretty soon they’re going to realize that Zeke isn’t getting out. Then I’ll be fine. They won’t have anymore beef with me, will they?”
“Rebecca,” he groaned as I turned to go to the door, “look, you need to be under protective detail until everything gets worked out. If they think you’re still a threat–”
I stopped with my hand on the door handle. “Why?” I asked, raising my voice a little. “Why would they think that? You have what the courts need to keep Uncle Zeke behind bars. One call from you and the charges stay right where they are. There’s nothing I can do about it now, except for finding something else that may exonerate him.”
“Dammit, Rebecca. Let me help, at least. I mean, maybe there is something.”
I turned around and leaned back against the still shut conference room door. I took a long look at him, at the way his shoulders were still pushed back, the confident cock of his head.
Just something about his pose seemed to telegraph that he still thought Uncle Zeke was guilty of the arson, and only rock solid evidence was going to change that belief.
I slowly shook my head. “You don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “You’re not impartial anymore. I can tell you believe me that I believe in his innocence, and that you care about me. But you think Uncle Zeke committed the crime, so he deserves to do the time.”
“But Rebecca, I–”
“And,” I said, cutting him off, “you don’t understand why I’m trying to protect him still.”
He shut his mouth, lowering his head a little.
“This isn’t about you and me,” I said. “Because, I’ll be honest, Matthew. I like you. I like you a lot. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I could really fall for you—as weird as that sounds, especially with how different we are, with you being you and me just being a high school English teacher. But I was prepared to accept all that, no matter how much it…no matter how strange and weird and different it all was. Because I like you for you. But now, I don’t know how I can forget about all this.”
He didn’t reply. He just turned away, his head hanging.
My heart sank. It was like kicking a dog that was already down. “So, now,” I said, my voice cracking a little, “I’m going to go home. Thank you for trying to get my uncle out. It didn’t work.”
I had to sniff back my tears as I fled the conference room. I could feel them coming, could feel my eyes misting as I pulled open the heavy wooden door and shoved myself out into the glass-enclosed hallway of the Frost Security building. I wiped the back of my hand across my eye, streaking mascara across my cheek.
“Ms. Stokes?” a familiar voice asked from behind me as I entered the lobby.
Lacy Richter.
I stopped in my tracks. I sniffled loudly as I began to dig in my purse for a tissue. “Yes, Lacy?” I asked without turning around. Facing her right now, in my current state of distress, was more than I could manage, and I knew it.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Stokes. I’m the one who found the instructions on your uncle’s hard drive. And I’m sorry.” She paused, coughing a little. “I just wanted you to know that.”
“It…it wasn’t you, Lacy,” I said, turning around as I inspected my tissue and saw some of the smeared makeup I’d removed from my cheek. “I know that. It was whomever put it on there.”
Arms wrapped around her chest, she shuffled her feet as she looked down at the ground. “Well, it wasn’t Matt, either. He didn’t, you know…he’s not responsible for any of this. You can’t blame him.”
I sighed, nodded. “Yeah, I understand. I’m not blaming either of you. This is just hard, that’s all.”
“Look,” Lacy said, taking a step towards me before continuing in a lowered voice, “this looks bad. But there are other things I could do to help your uncle. You’re a good person, Ms. Stokes, and his hard drive, well, something could happen to it–”
I held up a single finger, like I sometimes did when a student was talking nonsense or stepping out of line. Was she talking about doing what I thought she was talking about?
She tried to keep going, saying, “Ms. Stokes–”
“No,” I nearly hissed. “Not in a million years. If my uncle did this, he’s where he needs to be. Destroying evidence isn’t the way to go. I know that. You’ll lose your job, and no security company out there will work with someone who has a criminal history if you get caught.”
“But, if he didn’t do it, then–”
“Stop it,” I said again, taking a step towards her. “Stop it right now, Lacy Richter. You have a life ahead of you, and I don’t want you to ruin it by trying to help a man that might be guilty. I’m practically his daughter, and I have to believe in him. You’re just my ex-student who’s talking crazy.”
She looked away just like Matthew had, a hangdog expression on her face.
“Now, if you want to help him, you figure out how that got on his computer. Everything about it. But don’t damage anything. Don’t do anything that would get Matthew upset with either you or me.”
She glanced up at me, her eyes lit up like there was a spark inside her skull, like she knew a secret I’d never been privy to. She didn’t say anything, though, just nodded.
“And I’m going to go home,” I said, “and try to get some rest.”
Lacy nodded. “Okay. If I do find anything, I’ll let you know, okay?”
“Thank you,” I said, pulling her into an unexpected hug. “I really appreciate it.”
She stiffened in surprise , but quickly relaxed and hugged me back.
“Actually,” I said into her ear after a moment’s thought, “could you do me a favor?”
“Sure. What can I do?”
“I think I might need a ride home,” I said, pulling back and looking her in the eyes. “Scratch that. I know I need a ride home.”
Chapter Thirty-nine – Matthew
I sat there, phone in one hand, DA Wachowski’s business card in the other, weighing my options, gritting my teeth against the inevitable.
The longer I waited, I knew, the worse this was going to look.
But, at the same time, what if Rebecca was right? What if she did know her Uncle Zeke better than I could ever hope to? Maybe I was being too cocky with this whole thing, thinking that the evidence told the whole story. That somehow I’d be the one who was going to get everything right, and do a better job than anyone else that had already looked at the case.
My cases before had been clear. At least, they’d seemed
that way when I’d had them. You find the evidence, they point you a certain direction. You weighed whether or not someone could have the knowledge and you investigated who the other likely suspects could be. Then, when everything what put together, you made your conclusion and you moved to the next one.
This case with Zeke, though, didn’t seem to have a right answer. Because even if Zeke had committed arson on his own store, and he was looking pretty good for it right then, I still ended up being wrong in the end. I would still end up driving a wedge between me and Rebecca that we may never recover from.
I let my phone and the business card drop to the conference table and cradled my head in both hands. I sucked in a deep breath, running a hand down my face.
“Think, Matthew,” I mumbled. “Think. Who else could it be?”
Say someone was aiming to set Zeke up, just like my first assumption had been, and like the early evidence had born out. It wasn’t completely unreasonable to believe they’d find a way to plant some information on his computer, was it?
But the only question was, who would go to those lengths? Who would have access to his PC and had enough of a vendetta against Zeke Rogers to go to this kind of trouble just to frame him for an arson fire he didn’t commit?
The only problem was, no one had come up in the investigation that fit the bill, and neither Zeke nor Rebecca knew of anyone else who could manage all this.
My heart stopped for a moment. Except for Rebecca, of course.
She’d had access to his home, his computer. She’d gone to college, clearly possessed the intelligence to concoct a scheme like this to try and ruin her Uncle Zeke.
I began to breathe again as I shook my head. That was ridiculous. She, of course, had no motive or reason to do this to her uncle. Clearly, she loved him like the father she’d never really had.
I picked up the business card and looked at it again.
No, at the end of the day it still came back to Zeke being the perp. The whole Denver mafia thing had just been a wild stab on his part, meant to throw the cops off his scent. They hadn’t been stupid enough to go chasing after it, though, like I had. And now, by chasing after that lead, I’d only managed to drag Rebecca even deeper into this mess.
Now it was my job to yank her out of it. Even if she didn’t want to have anything to do with me afterward, I had to make sure those charges stuck on Zeke. That was the only way she’d be free and clear of the guys like Reggie the Gap and whoever came along to replace Trigger Thomas. And, without me probably not being around, that was even truer.
I took a deep breath and picked up my phone again before dialing DA Wachowski. This was it, I thought as I held my breath until my lungs began to burn. But, as I stared down at the ten digits plugged into my phone and ready to go, my finger hovering over the green phone icon, the screen abruptly lit up and my cell began to buzz.
Chief Beckett’s cell phone.
Shit, I realized, I was scheduled to be on call today. When I’d been in the firehouse earlier in the week, I’d been so wrapped up in the investigation that I’d forgotten to get Derrick Newhouse to cover my shift. I closed my eyes, hit answer, and pressed the phone to my ear.
“Matthew Jones. What’s up, Chief?”
“Jones,” Gilbert Beckett yelled, nearly blowing out my eardrums with that bellowing voice of his. I carried earplugs in my turnout coat specifically so I didn’t end up having to scream just to hear myself speak when I was the chief’s age.
“I’m here, Chief,” I said, my adrenaline already pumping. “Talk to me.”
“Jones! Need your ass down here at the station house yesterday! Got a fire south, and we need to catch it before it spreads!”
And, like that, all my other concerns were out of my head.
Chapter Forty – Rebecca
I climbed out of the shower and slowly began drying myself off.
Something about a good rinse after an intense confrontation always helped to cleanse me, to somehow strip away all the negative energy those incidents always left clinging to me made me feel. I didn’t need to wash my hair, or anything, just rinse. Something about it always seemed to help, even if it was just a little bit.
As I toweled off, I couldn’t help but think of Matthew, of that hurt look in his eyes when I’d left the office. Like Lacy had kept telling me on the ride home, I knew he hadn’t intended to strengthen the case against my Uncle Zeke. And I knew he hadn’t meant to hurt me, either.
Clearly, my former student knew there was some chemistry between me and Matthew Jones. Even though I knew she was trying to hide her knowledge from me, it came through just as clearly as it probably did on my end.
Mafia or no mafia, all those problems with death threats and having to hide in safe houses would disappear when the DA changed his mind about dropping the charges against Uncle Zeke. After all, my talking to the cops was a moot point. I could talk until I was blue in the face, but all the evidence clearly pointed to my uncle as having been the perpetrator. Soon enough, all my old problems would come rolling right back in like the tide. More like a tsunami, actually, taking all the good things I’d built for my life back out to sea.
What I needed was a spiritual purge.
A way to get my mind off my failure. Failure with Uncle Zeke’s case, failure with my spoiled summer vacation. And, of course, failure with Matthew Jones. Somehow, the third one almost stung the most. I knew we’d had something there. Something real. Something for the story books, where I’d get to live happily ever after.
But that had gone and gotten screwed up, too. Now when I closed my eyes and thought of him, my mind associated him with Uncle Zeke sitting in prison with some cell mate, wearing an orange jumpsuit. In my head, prison tattoos covered his arms, his face gaunt and shriveled as he slowly wasted away.
All because I couldn’t separate Matthew from the case. All because I couldn’t reconcile Matthew having to do his job no matter what the consequences were, and following the evidence and leads wherever they took him.
I brushed the quickly beading tears with the heel of my hand and sniffled a little as I tried to shove those thoughts out of my mind. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.
Spiritual purge, I reminded myself. That’s what I needed. A bottle of wine, a box of chocolates. Some binge-worthy Netflix show, like Friends or something, where I could just turn my brain off and not have to think about all this until the sun came up tomorrow morning.
But, as I tossed my towel onto its rack and pulled an old t-shirt and fresh PJs on, I sucked in a sharp breath and cocked my head to the side.
A noise, out in my living room, had caught my attention.
Someone was in the house.
I slowly creaked open the bathroom door and quietly slipped into my bedroom. I glanced around, looking for my cell phone, but remembered I’d left it out in the kitchen on the charger. For the first time, I regretted cutting the chord on my old landline.
“Becks?” called a voice. “You out of the shower yet?”
It was just Derrick.
I breathed a sigh of relief and went to the bedroom door, calling, “I’m in the bedroom. Out in just a second!”
I changed out of my PJs and slipped into some old, torn up jeans. I hadn’t exactly been expecting company when I’d sent the text message to him about the change in evidence, about how the day wasn’t saved after all with Uncle Zeke. But Derrick and I had known each other forever. He could always tell when I needed a friend around, a shoulder to cry on.
Bustling out of my bedroom, I joined him in the living room. As I passed by the kitchen, I glanced over and saw a bottle of wine and a six-pack of beer sitting side-by-side on the counter, just like brother and sister.
“Hey,” he said, getting up from the couch, his face twisted in pain as he opened his arms to me. “Sorry to hear about Zeke.”
I allowed myself to be enfolded by his warm embrace and laid my head against his shoulder. I fought back the tears immediately trying to return. “Should’ve
known it was too good to be true. Too cut and dry.”
“I know, lady, I know,” Derrick said, rubbing my shoulders. He pulled back from the hug and held me at arm’s length as he looked down at me. “It sucks. But maybe we can figure out something else to help him out?”
“Like what?”
“Off the top of my head?” he asked. “I have no fucking clue. At all.”
I chuckled and shook my head despite my tears. I collapsed onto the couch, right next to where he’d been sitting. He sat back down and I snuggled up against him like he was my long lost big brother. I laid my head on his shoulder as he put an arm around me and pulled me into him.
“What else is there?” I asked. “Frost Security was my last hope. They were so good, they found enough evidence to get him off. Unfortunately, they were too good. Found evidence of his guilt that the cops hadn’t even managed to dig up.”
“Well, maybe someone planted it on there? Like those mafia guys you were talking about?”
“Maybe. But, I mean, how far-fetched is that? They snuck into his house and fiddled around on his computer and planted the evidence, all so they could frame him for burning down his own building. I mean, that’s just crazy.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed as squeezed my shoulder, “that does sound a little out there.” He paused and licked his lips. He looked like he was about to say something, but then shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
“No, you were going to say something. What was it?”
“Well,” he said slowly, clearly searching for the right words at first. But when they didn’t come, he just took a deep breath and glanced away from me, as if he was trying to avoid my gaze. “Okay. So, this going to sound crazy, but…”
“…but?”
“Have you considered that, maybe, he really did do it?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, of course I have.” I sat up a little from his arm, and pulled my legs up to my chest and readjusted the way I was seated on the couch. “I’m human, Derrick. I have doubts. But I still believed him. Still believe him. That’s why I went and hired Matthew in the first place. I have to believe Uncle Zeke didn’t do it, you know? I have to.”
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 95
