Now that we were in forward motion, I took out the letter from Marcus Creighton written to his daughter the night before his death.
Dear Kirsten,
Even with what will happen in a few hours, the overriding feeling at this moment is relief that I can finally call you that, if only in this letter. I’ll give it to Laura Coleman and tell her it’s for Alison Samuels. I trust her not to read it, and smile thinking of how similar the two of you are in your passion for justice.
If you didn’t identify yourself to me, I suppose there must have been a reason.
I’ve wondered what you knew about that night, if anything. Where you were that you escaped (that’s what gave me hope that Sara and Devon might be alive), why you were convinced I was guilty. It’s a mystery to me. But I’ll keep your secret. You have such a strong sense of right and wrong, I fear that if you were truly convinced the real killer was still out there, you’d do anything to find him, even if it meant sacrificing yourself.
What I want to be very specific about, is the certainty that neither you nor I are responsible for the death of our family.
I see you have grown into the kind of person who won’t stop trying to get what you believe is justice. In your case this is too dangerous. Stay Alison Samuels. Keep doing your good work to save children. I’m proud of what you do, and I don’t want to do anything to hinder it.
I am guilty, not of murder, but of lust and greed and selfishness. Maybe this last thing, keeping your identity secret, will redeem me.
Your loving father
Respectfully
Dad
I folded up the letter and put it in my pocket.
After both of us paused, for thought, I figured, Todd said, “He tore the letter up. At the end he decided not to tell her he knew.”
“There was that line, ‘I see you’ve grown into a woman who won’t stop trying to get justice.’ I bet that’s what made him change his mind while he was writing the letter. Marcus had an inkling that if Alison was convinced the killer was still out there, she wouldn’t stop, and might reveal that she was Kirsten Creighton in order to flush him out. Speaking of bait.”
“Makes sense,” Todd said.
“I think Alison thought her father was guilty. But then she found out about the fur in the burial tarp from Aggrawal, and figured her father at least had an accomplice, because of his asthma. And you know what else? She heard Will Hench say at the interview that they were looking at evidence that one of the witnesses perjured herself. Accomplice. Perjury. Wouldn’t take a genius. She didn’t know the truth, but she thought Shayna Murry did. And Shayna Murry died rather than rat out her brother.”
“But wait. Alison Samuels got tasered.”
“Did she really?” I tried to remember our conversation the night I visited her, and wondered if that had made her nervous enough to cover her tracks. “Or was she just deflecting suspicion to Laura in case I was figuring it all out? Even Captain McClay suggested that she could have done it herself. I nixed that idea, but maybe he was onto something.” I stretched my right hand over my left shoulder and touched my midscapula. “Young limber person could take off the cartridge and reach her upper back. We didn’t ask exactly where the contact occurred. What we do know for sure is that only the person who killed Shayna Murry would know that a stun gun had been used.”
“Laura knew,” Todd said. When I didn’t answer, he went on, “Erroll Murry hasn’t been at his place since they put out the APB. Now they’ve put a dragnet around the area, all roads north and south monitored, Coast Guard watching the waterways for his boat.”
“But if you were looking, and you had a tracking dog, where would you start?”
“At his place. Pick up a scent.”
“That’s where Laura and Alison, together or separately, are headed.”
“They’re both after Murry?”
“How should I know? Maybe Laura wants to question Alison on her own. I still can’t believe Laura tasered Alison out of revenge. Oh, frankly, I don’t know who did what, or what their next step is, I only know we need to get there before the three of them connect, like the mythical Furies, only destroying each other.”
“What if you’re wrong?” he asked.
“You mean what if we go to Vero and our two gals aren’t there? I may have been totally off the mark with Laura, but I think I know this. And if that’s not enough, I can’t afford to be wrong. Look at the situation. You got Laura. You got Alison. You got Erroll Murry. You got an attack dog. It’s a perfect storm.”
“I’ve met Larry,” Todd said. “Working on a missing-child case. He’s not an attack dog.”
“Not even Larry is telling the whole truth. So you got Laura, Alison, Murry, and Larry. On top of that you got who knows what surveillance.”
“I’ll alert Delgado, my boss, and the FBI on the way.”
We’d already pulled onto I-95, and Todd was moving pretty good, not too much traffic in the early evening. I touched Todd’s arm as he reached out for his car radio.
“My point is, you call in all those people and you’ve got a bloodbath waiting to happen. Or a textbook scenario for suicide by cop. I could go on. Look, we’re on our way and it’s going to take a couple of hours to get there. And we can’t be far behind the others. We’ve got a little time to think about a strategy.”
“What we need is SWAT.”
“Less is more,” I said.
“I’ve heard that, but I never got it. As far as I’m concerned, more is more.”
“On top of what I already named? And us? No, you do that and you’ve got a mess. We need to finesse this.”
“Oh yeah, the FBI has always been good at that,” Todd said.
“It always comes down to this, doesn’t it? Your metro-cop inferiority complex on top of short-man syndrome.”
“Waco. Ruby Ridge—”
“Ancient history. You want to get Laura or Alison killed?” There was something there that wouldn’t let me lose either of them no matter what they had done.
I took a deep breath. Being a Quinn, what Mom called bull-headed, wouldn’t get us anywhere. What we needed was compromise. Todd was clipping along at eighty miles per hour in a sixty-five zone. We were already passing the Hillsboro exit, but it was agonizingly slow.
“Lights?” I suggested.
“Nah, someone gets on the radio and asks if I need help. Easier to flash a badge if we’re stopped. I’ll speed up once we’re past West Palm.”
“Watch out.”
“I see him.”
“Todd.”
“What?”
“Madeline.”
“I told her, I get any inkling of dirty business she’s going down for it. Right now I don’t think they can pin anything on her. All they would have is what Mack says she said.”
“Can you trust Delgado?”
“Do we have a choice? My boss called his boss, so Delgado knows.”
“Okay, tell me what you think of this. You call Delgado and tell him about Alison. Tell him we’re coming up. But tell him that Laura is on Alison’s tail and she should be left alone so as not to raise suspicion. That she’s got ranking jurisdiction since she’s FBI. That we’ll keep him posted of any changes.”
“That’s not altogether the truth,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” I said.
“But it could work,” he said.
Quinn after all. “Good brother. When this is all over I’ll buy you a doughnut.”
“Fuck you,” he said amiably, and kept driving. We passed the Glades exit in Boca Raton.