DYLAN
I want to check on Casey, but I can’t get clearance to see her, and they’re not interviewing her, so I can’t look in. Instead I go check on her family. As I’m heading to the safe house, my phone rings. It’s Special Agent Griffin.
“Dylan, I wanted to let you know that we found Jim Pace’s body. It was in the trunk of Keegan’s car, in the parking lot at the Raymond airport.”
Though his death doesn’t surprise me, I can’t help thinking about his poor wife finding out about this. “Has this been released to the press yet?”
“No, not yet. We wanted to notify the family first.”
“I’d like to go with whoever notifies her. I’m a friend of the family.”
“I was about to go tell her myself. You can meet me there.”
I’m somber as I drive to the Pace house, thinking of how I loved going over there when Brent and I were kids, how the place always smelled like cookies, how it was synonymous with happiness to me.
I get there before Griffin, and I sit alone out front, remembering how high we used to climb that oak tree in the front yard. There was a tire swing his father had rigged up with a rope as thick as my arm, and we spun on it for hours until we were so dizzy we couldn’t walk straight. The swing was cut down years ago.
I feel a fierce longing for my old friend. I miss him. I never got to say goodbye.
Griffin pulls up, and I blink back the mist in my eyes and get out of the car, wiping all expression from my face. I try to sort through what Elise might know from the news. Jim’s name hasn’t been released yet, and they haven’t revealed that any of it happened on the Pace property.
Elise answers the door when I ring the bell. “Dylan, I didn’t expect to see you. I’ve been watching the news. I don’t even know what to say. Nothing is what I thought it was. Why haven’t you called me?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy with it all. I thought maybe Chief Gates was keeping you informed.”
“No. It’s like everybody’s avoiding my calls.”
I introduce her to Agent Griffin. She has company—two women—and she introduces us to her sister and her niece and takes us into the kitchen to sit at the table I’ve eaten at so many times.
As she sits down, she says, “I know you have a lot to tell us about the case, but I’m afraid Jim isn’t home. He left to go out of town the night before last, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with him to tell him about all this. I guess he’s been busy. He hasn’t answered any of my voice mails or texts.”
I swallow the knot in my throat and reach out to take her hand. “Elise, that’s why we’re here. It’s about Jim.”
She tips her head and her eyes suddenly get a defensive expression, and she draws her hand back. “Please don’t do this to me again.”
I can’t speak, and I look at Griffin. He’s opening his mouth to say it himself, but I find my voice. “Elise, I’m so sorry, but Jim is dead. He was shot last night.”
The two women are on her instantly as she crumples in her chair. “No!” she says. “He’s not. It’s a mistake.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
She covers her mouth with her hand and sobs into it, and tries to get up, but she falls back. “No . . . What . . . Tell me how this happened . . . Who did this?”
Now I let Griffin take over. “Mrs. Pace, your husband was being blackmailed by Gordon Keegan. Because of that, he was complicit in some of Keegan’s crimes.”
“No!” she shouts, cutting him off. She gets up, stumbles away. Her sister tries to bolster her, but Elise turns to me. “It’s that girl. She got to you. She’s brainwashed you somehow. This isn’t true. None of this is true!”
“Elise . . .” Her sister pulls her into her arms and holds her. “Honey, you knew something wasn’t right. He had so many secrets.”
“Not this!” she screams. “He wasn’t involved in killing our son. He loved him.”
I quickly take the reins again. “Elise, he didn’t know about Brent. He would’ve never been involved in that. I told him about Keegan’s involvement in Brent’s death myself, and I’m absolutely positive it was news to him. He confronted Keegan. That’s when they shot him.”
She stares at me for a moment, her face twisted as if none of it makes sense to her. “So you’re telling me that Jim didn’t have anything to do with killing our son, but that he was involved with those other deaths, the extortion, the money laundering? What was he being blackmailed for?”
“I don’t think we know yet,” I say, trying to soften the blow. I would give anything if I could spare her this pain, but it feels like I’m wielding the weapon that will kill her.
I watch all life drain out of her. Her face loses its color, and her lips blanch. Her legs buckle and she drops to the floor. I spring up and go to her side as her crying niece kneels on the other side of her. I check her pulse, and her heart is racing in triple time. Griffin calls an ambulance while I try to revive her. Her eyelids flutter open, but she seems disoriented, confused. She lacks the strength to sit up.
Have I given her a stroke?
I wait there with her until the ambulance arrives. Her vitals slowly come around as they load her into the back of it. Her blood pressure is rocket-high. They think it was a fainting episode and they say something about sedatives.
I watch as they drive her away, praying that God will somehow help her through this darkness.
As much of a victory as it is to have Keegan exposed, I know there will be some who still have to grieve.
Maybe I’m one of them.