Caught
“He did nothing wrong, Maggie.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? But people will look at him differently. He’ll be defined by it. If we just keep it quiet, not let anybody know . . .”
Maggie flashed him the smile. For the first time, it made him cringe.
Ed sat up and made himself another Scotch and soda. He flipped on ESPN and watched SportsCenter. He closed his eyes and thought about the blood. He thought about the pain and horror that he’d inflicted in the name of justice. He believed everything that he said to that reporter Wendy Tynes: Justice needed to be done. If not by the courts, well, then it fell to men like him. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a personal price paid by those who delivered it.
You often hear that freedom isn’t free. Neither is justice.
He was alone, but he could still hear Maggie’s horrified whisper when he got home:
“What have you done?”
And rather than make a long defense, he kept it short and simple:
“It’s over.”
He might as well have been talking about them, Ed and Maggie Grayson, and then you start to look back and you wonder whether it was ever really love. It was easy to blame what happened to E. J. for their demise—but was that accurate? Did tragedy cause fissures, open them wider—or did tragedy merely turn on the light so you could see the fissure that had always been there? Maybe we live in darkness, blinded by the smile and façade of goodness. Maybe tragedy just takes away the blinders.
Ed heard his doorbell ring. Late. The sound was immediately followed by an impatient fist pounding on the door. Reacting more than thinking, Ed jumped up and grabbed his gun from the night-stand. Another doorbell ring, more fist pounding.
“Mr. Grayson? Police, open up.”
Ed looked out the window. Two Sussex County cops in brown uniforms—neither was that big black sheriff, Walker. That was fast, Grayson thought. He was mildly surprised rather than shocked. He put the gun away, came downstairs, and opened the door.
The two cops looked about twelve years old.
“Mr. Grayson?
“It’s Federal Marshal Grayson, son.”
“Sir, you’re under arrest for the murder of Daniel J. Mercer. Please put your hands behind your back while I read you your rights.”
CHAPTER 17
IN SOMETHING OF A DAZE, Wendy finished her phone call with her old (and current again?) boss Vic Garrett and hung up the phone.
Haley McWaid’s iPhone had been found under Dan Mercer’s bed.
She tried to process this, sort through her emotions. Her first thought was also the most obvious: She was sick to her stomach for the McWaid family. She hoped like hell that it all somehow turned out okay for them. Okay, go deeper. Wendy was shocked, yes. That was what this was. Too shocked maybe. Shouldn’t there be some kind of dark relief here? Wasn’t this vindication, that she had been right about Dan all along? Justice of some sort had been served. She had not been a cog in some plot to take down an innocent man trying to do good.
But there, on the screen right in front of her, was the Facebook page for Dan’s graduating class at Princeton. She closed her eyes and leaned back. She saw Dan’s face on the day they first met, that first interview at the shelter, the enthusiasm for the kids he rescued from the streets, the way those kids looked at him with such awe, the way she’d been drawn to him. She flashed to yesterday at the damn trailer park, the horrible bruises on that same face, the dimming in those eyes, the way she wanted, despite all she knew, to reach out.
Do you just dismiss all that intuition?
The counter, of course, is that evil comes in all guises. She’d heard a dozen times the example of famed serial killer Ted Bundy. But the truth was, she had never found Bundy remotely handsome. Maybe it was hindsight, knowing what he was, but you could see the vacancy in the eyes. She would have, she was sure, found him oily, slimy, charm hiding villainy. You can feel evil. You just can. Or so she thought.
Either way, she hadn’t seen or felt that with Dan. She had felt, even on the day he died, kindness and warmth. And it was more than intuition now. There was Phil Turnball. There was Farley Parks. There was something more going on here, something darker and more insidious at work.
She opened her eyes and leaned forward. Okay, Facebook. She had signed on, found the Princeton class page, but how could she join? There had to be a way.
Ask the resident Facebook expert, she supposed.
“Charlie!”
From downstairs: “What?”
“Can you come up here?”
“Can’t hear you.”
“Come up here!”
“What?” Then: “What for?”
“Just come up please.”
“Can’t you just yell down what you want?”
She grabbed her mobile and sent a text telling him she needed emergency computer help and if he didn’t hurry, she would cancel all his online accounts, even though she didn’t really know how to do that. A moment later, she heard a deep sigh and the sound of heavy footsteps as he ascended the stairs. Charlie poked his head in the door.
“What?”
She pointed to the computer screen. “I need to join this group.”
Charlie squinted at the page. “You didn’t go to Princeton.”
“Thanks for that in-depth analysis. I had no idea.”
Charlie smiled. “I love when you go all sarcastic on me.”
“Like mother, like son.” God, she loved this kid. Wendy had one of those waves, the ones that sneak up on parents and crush them and make them just want to wrap their arms around their kid and never let him go.
“What?” Charlie said.
She shook it off. “So how do I join this group if I didn’t actually go to Princeton?”
Charlie made a face. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“Hard to say, what with your sarcasm and all.”
“I’m not kidding or being sarcastic. How do I get in?”
Charlie sighed, bent over, and pointed to the right side of the page. “You see that link that says ‘Join Group’?”
“Yes.”
“You click it.”
He stood upright.
“And then?”
“That’s it,” her son said. “You’re in.”
Now Wendy made a face. “But, as you so wisely pointed out, I didn’t go to Princeton.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s an open group. Closed groups say ‘Request To Join.’ This one is open to anyone. Click and you’re in.”