I SPENT the rest of the day cleaning up my place. Scrubbing every dish, and even throwing some of them out. I took framed pictures of Lena and Jonas out of boxes and put them back up on the walls where I could see them every day.
At night Sarah came over, and we had dinner. I’d filled the fridge with real food and cooked fresh pasta. The smell of garlic and basil replaced the stench of mold.
Sarah wore a yellow sundress with tiny straps that showed off her shoulders.
I broke out a bottle of Pinot for her, but stuck to ice water myself.
She told me more about Atlanta. What had gone wrong there with her boss. A scandal that she got pulled into and couldn’t free herself from. It was a sad story. One in which Sarah had trusted someone and been burned.
I reached out to touch her hand. An hour later we still hadn’t let go.
Sarah got up to grab the pie she’d brought and serve it.
We turned on the TV, and at some point we fell asleep. Even better, when I woke up in the morning, she was still on the couch with me. And Purvis on the rug below us.
ON FRIDAY, I came into the office and filled out paperwork for some time off.
I needed to split town for a while, and the place was abuzz with energy.
Miles Dooger had made an announcement on the local news that he was retiring. The whole thing was framed around the big case being solved, and the media was applauding him.
But Miles wasn’t coming into the office to offer a formal goodbye. He’d asked to have his things boxed up and messengered to his home, and I couldn’t help thinking about my threat to put him in a cell.
I nodded as a patrolman told me the news about the chief.
Miles was my mentor. My first friend on the force. I thought of how impossible it must’ve been for him to investigate my wife’s death. And worse than that, all the while stumbling around, knowing that he was, on his best day, an average detective investigating a complicated crime.
While I was gone, Remy had taken over my office and used the far wall to tape up everything we had on the case. She’d also gone back and untied Cobb’s girlfriend from that heater pipe in her apartment.
The story began with the five men who were arrested throughout the previous night, and the four names of the kids from 1993 and now.
But Remy also had new evidence.
“I got a warrant for an apartment that Donnie Meadows was renting in town,” she said. “Abe did the same for the guesthouse Cobb had been living in.”
While Meadows had kept a neat place with no evidence, Cobb had been messier. He’d left behind a notepad with amounts that Oxley and the Order had paid him and Meadows. As well as details about Kendrick. What time Kendrick got off of school and where he lived. And some of the how and why of it. That the Order preferred a teenage boy, preferably a virgin, and someone whose family had stood for the advancement of black Americans. Another level to the tragedy.
I stared at the wall of evidence while Remy sat at my desk, typing in her iPad.
“So Cobb and Meadows followed Kendrick home from school like we thought?” I asked.
“That was when Dathel Mackey from First Baptist first saw Cobb,” Remy said.
The Bearded Man, hanging around the church the same night Kendrick went missing.
“Cobb hung back to keep an eye on the parents, while Meadows followed Kendrick to the sleepover,” Remy said. “The plan was to catch Kendrick with that cable as he rode out in the morning. But no sooner than Meadows had set the cable up, the sleepover ended and out came Kendrick.”
I shook my head, looking at other notes she’d written on Post-its and stuck to evidence.
Meadows and Cobb had taken Kendrick to the same cave where we’d found Delilah. The place was originally private land and held some spiritual value for the Order. It was once connected to the hunting compound where I’d shot Francis Oxley.
“The land was donated to the state in 1932,” Remy said. “That’s when it became a state park.”
I looked at a deed for the land, and Remy’s notes written on it. The parcel was given to the state by a niece of one of the Order’s founding families. But they’d still snuck into the cave and used it. Closed off areas that the public never even knew about.
After the cave, the two men brought in Virgil Rowe to take Kendrick to Harmony Farms and set the field afire as part of their ritual.
“So that’s where it would’ve ended,” Remy said. “Except for Brodie Sands, the crop duster, who heard the voice of his wife in the wind.”
“Sands putting out the fire with his crop duster caused the Order to get nervous.”
“Exactly,” Remy said. “So Cobb and Meadows did what any thug would do. Before Kendrick’s body was even found, they got to Rowe and silenced him. Killed the arsonist who had failed to set a proper blaze.”
“Huh,” I said, seeing it all together in one place for the first time.
“We found that photo of you.” Remy pointed. “The anonymous one turned in to the police. Of you walking out of Corinne’s house.”
“Where?” I said.
“Cobb’s phone.”
And there it was finally. The killers outside of Virgil Rowe and Corinne’s place right when I was there. Proof that I hadn’t choked Virgil Rowe to death.
“They must’ve pulled outside right after you sent Corinne packing,” Remy said. “Pretty shitty timing for you, if you’re asking my opinion.”
I looked at a photo of the money that had been recovered. “How much did Cobb and Meadows get to kill Kendrick and Delilah?”
“Thirty grand,” Remy said. “Ten of which went to Rowe.”
“The money I found in the matchbox?”
“Exactly.” Remy nodded.
I glanced at a picture of William Menasco, the old man at the lake. “So what have we decided about these people in the Order, Rem?” I asked. “If you help them facilitate murder, even unwittingly, they do you a solid?”
Remy stared at the same photo. “The truth is,” she said, “we don’t know. Abe asked one of the old-timers about the horse race in ’93, but he just shrugged. Said they knew lots of people in the business. Jockeys. Track officials. Trainers. But he couldn’t remember ever fixing a race.”
I thought about the state lottery win in Harmony.
“And what of ‘the luck’?” I asked, turning to see if Remy had an explanation. “The lotto? The farmer coming into money?”
“I guess that depends on what you believe in. Superstition? Coincidence? Or it could be legit.”
She stood up. Looked at me with—what? Concern? Pity?
“Are you waiting for me to say it out loud, P.T.?” Remy said. “That it’s something crazy out in the Southern ether? Some Civil War–era black magic, handed down from father to son?”
I thought about the wealthy families who had benefited from the murders of the kids over the years. Trading what? A country club membership for someone’s life?
“And the five men?” I asked.
“They’re all pleading out with the DA. Fifteen- to twenty-year sentences, with no parole.” Remy gave me a look. “They all had the same story, P.T. They’re sorry. It was how they were raised.”
“Did they name the guys they hired in ’93?” I asked. “The ones who did their dirty work and killed Junius and the girl?”
Remy nodded. “We picked up one guy an hour ago. Another one’s already in prison on a different charge. The crime’s twenty-five years old, P.T., so he’s no spring chicken.”
My partner sat down in my chair again and put her feet up on the desk. She wore white slacks and a pair of shiny black pumps.
“So let’s get to it, boss,” she said. “You and me—we kinda need a wheelbarrow to carry our balls around here right now. Except you know something I don’t. You wanna tell me how you got all these old guys to confess?”
I looked around the station. Remy was right. It was buzzing, and we would be hot for a while. But I kept thinking about what Miles Dooger had said to me. About how crimes got solved.
Relationships, not evidence.
Was that what I’d done with the governor? Used a pressure point, rather than a data point?
And was that what the governor had done with the five families to give up these men?
I looked over at Miles Dooger’s office, piled with white moving boxes.
“Some things are better left unsaid, partner.”
Remy followed my eyes.
“You gonna apply for the chief?” she asked.
“Nah, I don’t want that job.”
My partner turned back to her evidence. “Well, the corporations related to these men’s families,” she said. “They’re scrambling. PR issues ahead of them. We’ve had a couple calls offering to help out the Harmony and Mason Falls areas. Looking for good local causes to donate to.”
“The kids with typhoid,” I said. “It’s a good cause.”
“P.T., those kids are all on antibiotics and fine,” Remy said. “The one in a coma woke up this morning as if nothing was wrong.”
January 1. The start of the next twenty-five years. The end of the cycle.
The families had the ledger back. But I’d read enough of it, and they were scared. Or maybe enough of them were like Wade Hester. The new generation, guilty and ready to make amends.
I looked at my partner. At some point I’d considered the possibility that she’d turned on me. “Rem,” I said. “We’re good, right? You and me?”
Remy pursed her lips. “You cleaned up your act, boss,” she said. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll keep an eye on you.”
“You better.”
I got up and walked to the office that Abe and Merle shared. Abe was there by himself, bent over his writing pad.
“I owe you an apology,” I said, putting out my hand.
Abe shook it and pushed his chair back. “Heard you’re taking off for a while.”
“I never took my wife’s ashes anywhere,” I said, thinking about how I’d buried Jonas in a casket, but Lena was still in an urn in my living room. Cremated as her family had requested.
“She loved the Keys, so I thought I’d drive down there. Scatter them in the water at mile zero.”
“Nice,” Abe said. “The governor called here this morning for you.”
“I heard we’re getting lots of calls,” I said. “He leave a message?”
“Yeah,” Abe said. He found his message pad and read it aloud. “Congratulations, P.T. and team. So proud of your arrests the other night. All credit to you guys.”
I listened to Monroe’s choice of words, silently acknowledging the deal I’d made.
At some level we all trade one choice out for another.
The risk of going against twenty-five powerful families versus making a deal to get five of them? I’d seen the system succeed and I’d seen it fail. I’d take the five solid arrests seven days out of seven.
I thanked Abe and walked out of the station.