Mariah Stewart - Last Look

Dorsey had heard the story before. She knew where her father would be taking it this time around.

“John kept his head, tracked Woods down, brought him in. John was just as cool and calm as could be. And when it was over, he broke. Started drinking. Got so bad, they finally made him take a leave. Spent six months with a shrink the Bureau handpicked to work with him.” He paused for effect, the way he always did when he got to this part of the story. “And who do you think they called to take this wounded agent under his wing, huh? To find him-Christ, he was holed up in this cabin in the middle of nowhere for a while-talk to him, bring him in, bring him the hell back. Me, that’s who. I’d already retired, and they called me back to bring him around. And he can’t help me now?”

Matt was close to shouting.

“I spent six weeks with that man. And he’s going to shut me out of this? I don’t think so.”

“Pop, when I spoke with John, he said he couldn’t assign me. I understand that. And you should too.” She held up a hand to delay the protest she knew would be coming. “But he told me if I just happened to stop at Shelter Island to say hey to an old friend from the academy, he couldn’t stop me.”

“ Shelter Island?” Matt frowned and shook his head. “What old friend of yours lives on Shelter Island?”

“ Shelter Island, Georgia, is the place where the body was found. And Andrew Shields would be the old friend from the academy.”

“You weren’t at the academy with Andy.”

She shrugged. “Guess John forgot.”

“John doesn’t forget anything.” Matt sat back down in his chair. “So he’s giving you an opening…”

“Not officially, no. But he’s made it clear he’d turn the other way as long as I was not publicly involved in the investigation and as long as no one knows I’m your daughter. If that gets out, I have to duck and run.”

“So, in other words, Andy can tell you what he finds out, but you can’t investigate on your own.”

“Right, but I can shadow Andy and I’ll know if there are any loose strings.”

“If there are, I’ll expect you to pull them.”

“Of course.”

Matt thought it over, then nodded slowly. “I guess that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

“And we’re damned lucky we got that much. I half expected him to tell me I’d be arrested if I set foot in the state of Georgia.”

“All right. Do what you have to do without getting fired. In the meantime…” He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the ID of the call coming in. He looked across the room to his daughter. “I can’t keep putting these guys off indefinitely. Sooner or later, I have to talk to them.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’m no coward, Dorse. Don’t ask me to act like one. If I made a mistake…” His face went white, as the full implication of his having made a mistake sunk in.

“Just don’t talk to anyone for a while, okay?” She walked to him and knelt down. She understood what had just occurred to him, and knew he must be in terrible pain as a result. “We’re going to find out what happened, Pop, back then, and now. We’ll put it all together, I promise.”

“Jesus, Dorse, I can’t believe this is happening.” He ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed it across his chin. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Beale all but admitted that he’d killed her.”

“After how many hours of questioning, Pop?”

He shot her a look.

“Listen, the first thing I was told when I showed up in Hatton was that the cops knew who did it, that the kid had all but come right out and confessed. They told me this kid, Beale, had had the hots for Shannon Randall big time, but other than let him drive her home from school once in a while, she didn’t have any use for him. We spoke to her girlfriends, they all said the same thing. And he admitted to having picked her up late that afternoon; one of her friends said she saw the girl in his car an hour or so after he claimed to have dropped her off, and that the car was heading out of town, in the direction of the lake. He finally admitted the girl had been in his car-he couldn’t keep denying it because we found her things in his car. But he said he never left town, so we know he lied about that.”

“Because a witness saw him.”

“Right. And you know yourself, one lie leads to another. A suspect lies about one thing, chances are he’s lying about something else.”

“Did he ever confess, Pop?” she asked softly. “You were there when he was executed. Did he ever admit that he killed her?”

“No.” Matt suddenly looked like a balloon that was leaking air. His voice dropped and he could not meet her gaze. “No, even then, at the end, he didn’t admit to a damned thing. Still swore he was innocent.”

“Pop, we’re going to have to consider that he was telling the truth.”

“Jesus, Dorse, if I made a mistake,” he whispered, as if he’d not heard a word she’d spoken. “If I was wrong back then, that means…”

He looked at her through eyes dark with growing despair. “If Eric Beale did not kill Shannon Randall…dear God, I sent an innocent kid to his death. God forgive me, I watched an innocent boy die…”

Matt stood at the end of the drive and watched his daughter’s car grow smaller and smaller, then finally disappear around the first bend on Dune Road. He sighed and looked up at the sky as if hoping to see something other than what he saw every time he’d closed his eyes since Dorsey had given him the incredible news: Eric Beale’s face moments before his execution, eyes wide with fear and confusion, skin so pale as to be almost transparent, mouth moving in prayer.

His stomach wrenching, Matt went into the house and directly to the bathroom, where he dry heaved for the fourth time that day.

When he was done, he went back outside, hoping to find a place to sit and figure out what to do next, but he was uncomfortable everywhere he went. He set out on foot down Dune in the same direction Dorsey had driven. The cattails grew twelve feet tall along this side of the marsh, and he was just as glad for it. There’d be little traffic this time of day, but he had no desire to stop and chat with whoever might be driving through.

He was still working on getting past denial, to a phase where he could think. He’d lain awake all night trying to make sense of it all. How could something that had seemed so certain, so sure, have been so insanely wrong?

He walked along the sandy shoulder to where Dune met up with Hook Road, and took a right onto Hook, barely noticing what he was doing and giving no thought to where he was going. His pace quickened as he neared the inlet where the old lighthouse lay in ruins. The road narrowed to one wide dirt lane and a bit more, and the tall reeds on either side gave him little shelter from the sun overhead. Some slight breeze set the grasses dancing, their hushed rattle the only sound other than his breathing and his footfalls.

The lunch spot that had once been housed in the base of the light was gone now, pushed down in a hurricane several years ago. The roof had collapsed to one side, and swallows had come to build nests almost as soon as the rain had stopped falling and the wind had ceased to blow. They swooped around Matt as if they barely noticed his presence. He walked past the lighthouse to the sturdy pilings that still stood like fearless sentinels and looked across the inlet to the bay.

He exhaled deeply and blinked back the tears behind his dark glasses.

He walked to the end of the rickety pier with no thought that it could very well collapse under his weight and lowered himself so that he was sitting with his feet dangling just above the water. He remembered another time, a lifetime ago, when he’d sat in this very spot with Bernie. He’d been nervous as all get-out, the engagement ring in his pocket and his heart in his throat. He tried really hard, but he couldn’t see her there anymore. He remembered how she looked, her dark auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, sunglasses perched on the edge of her nose, her legs long and tan-but he just couldn’t see her there.