Mariah Stewart - Last Look

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked.

“At some level, I just don’t understand why Aubrey or Natalie didn’t blow the whistle on Paula Rose. Then on another, I understand the whole self-preservation thing.”

“Everyone suffers when one member of the family turns on another. You never stop asking why,” Andrew said, “even when you know you’ll never find the answer.”

“Sometimes, there isn’t a credible answer, Andrew. Paula Rose’s excuse was that she didn’t want to deal with all the ugly truths Shannon’s return would have made public. Superficial, yeah, but that was the bottom line with her,” Dorsey told him. “Maybe in your brother’s case, it was something deeper than that. Then again, maybe even Brendan didn’t know why he did what he did.”

“But Paula Rose was here to face her crime. Here to be prosecuted, here to answer for what she did.” Andrew sat behind the wheel, his hand on the key, still in the ignition. “Brendan wasn’t around to deal with the aftermath. Wasn’t here to see how much pain he caused. Didn’t see our family crumble, didn’t see Grady just fade away.”

He turned to Dorsey. “I told you, right, that it was Brendan who set up Grady’s wife to be killed? The woman his brother loved, the woman he wanted to raise a family with, spend his life with. She was nothing more than a nuisance to Brendan, so he had her removed. And then the bastard died without having to look Grady in the eye and admit what he’d done. Or explain to the rest of us how he could sleep at night, knowing how many children’s lives he’d destroyed. The bastard died without having to answer to anyone for anything.”

“Anyone in this life, anyway.”

“True. If there’s a hell, I know he’s got a little corner all to himself.” He pulled the key from the ignition, tossed it in the air, and caught it in the palm of his hand. “That’s some consolation, however small.”

He opened his door and got out, then waited for her to meet him in front of the car.

“What time was your plane, anyway?” he asked.

“It left about an hour ago.”

“Any chance I could talk you into staying one more night? We could go out for a nice dinner, maybe get some champagne to celebrate having wrapped this up.”

“I could be persuaded. A little celebration does seem to be in order.” She smiled. “I’d just feel better if there weren’t any loose ends.”

“What loose ends?” he asked.

“Who beat up Shannon that night? And how did Shannon get out of Hatton?”

“I doubt we’ll ever know now. I was hoping her diary would tell us, but it appears Shannon never wrote in it again after she left home. Maybe the truth was too ugly for her to put in words. Maybe she just brought it with her to remind her of the good things she was leaving behind-her childhood. Her innocence.” Andrew shrugged, then added, “You know, you can’t help but think that someone in this mix had to have been the one who’d driven her to wherever she went that night.”

“Everyone connected to the case has an alibi,” she reminded him, then paused, thinking. She slapped herself on the forehead. “Not quite everyone.”

She tugged at his arm.

“Come on, back in the car. I know how Shannon got out of town that night. I think I might know what happened…”

Dorsey stood in the doorway and knocked lightly on the wall.

“Mrs. Randall? Do you have a minute?” she asked.

“Well, Agent Collins is it? Or is it Ranieri?” The old woman stared at Dorsey from the opposite end of the sunporch where she sat enjoying the afternoon. She waved Dorsey closer. “You can come in, but I don’t have much to say to you.”

“There’s really only one more thing I have to talk about, Mrs. Randall,” Dorsey said as she walked closer.

“What’s that?”

“You must have known what he’d been doing to your granddaughters. How could you have kept silent all those years? How could you have permitted such a thing to go on?”

The old woman stared at Dorsey but did not respond.

“Shannon told him to leave her alone that day, didn’t she? Said she’d tell her father what he’d done to her if he didn’t, right? So he slapped her around, gave her a black eye, made her lips bleed. And all the while, you knew. When she disappeared, did you think he killed her? Did you ask? If he denied it, did you believe him?” Dorsey leaned down to force the woman to look her in the eye. “How could you ever believe him again, knowing what he’d done to her? Or did you pretend not to know?”

Martha Randall’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Of course, he couldn’t afford to have the truth come out, you’d have known that. So even though you thought he killed your own granddaughter, you still kept your mouth shut. How long had you known the truth about what he’d done? Did he ever tell you the truth, that he drove her out of town?”

The woman would neither confirm not deny anything. Dorsey suspected she was wasting her time. She started toward the door.

“It was me,” the voice from behind her said.

“What?” Dorsey turned back.

“I did it.” Martha’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I slapped her. I don’t know how many times. I lost count. She was going to tell. I couldn’t let her do that. He was a good man. We had a good life. She was going to ruin it with her filthy lies.”

“So you beat her until she bled?”

“She fell against the side of the table in the kitchen. She was running through the basement of the church when I came in. She ran to me, she was crying, shaking, saying terrible, terrible things.” Martha sat calmly, her hands folded in her lap. “Those horrible things, ugly, ugly lies-she was going to tell, she was going to tell my son.”

“And when she disappeared and everyone thought Eric had killed her, what did you think happened?”

“Oh, I knew what happened,” she replied smugly.

It was Dorsey’s turn to stare.

“When she ran from here, well, I had to find her. I could not let her go home to Franklin. Not ever again, unless she promised never to repeat those ugly things again. But she wouldn’t.” Martha’s face went red, a trace of the anger she must have felt that night resurfacing. “She said she was telling her father and she didn’t care what I said. Well, I just couldn’t let that happen, now, could I?”

“So you drove her someplace?”

“To Calhoun. I gave her some money-”

“The cash from the carnival.” Remembering the envelope, Dorsey pulled it from her bag and held it up. “She’d saved the envelope you gave her, all those years. Her roommate found it.”

“I gave it to Shannon, all of it, plus some money I had of my own. I told her to wait for me in the kitchen while I went to the office, but when I came back, she was gone. I rode around town until I saw her getting out of that boy’s car, then I followed her as far as the woods at the corner. I made her get into the car. I gave her one last chance to repent, but she refused. So I told her to take the money, that she was going to have to leave Hatton and never come back. She was a godless little liar and she didn’t deserve the wonderful family she had. She had no right to be part of our family any longer, and I told her so. I drove her to the bus station and told her she’d never be welcome here again.”

“She was fourteen years old.” Dorsey was almost speechless. “You turned a fourteen-year-old child, your own flesh and blood, out onto the street to protect a pedophile?”

“Don’t you dare use that word! My husband was a man of God!”

“You let a young man die for a murder he didn’t commit.”

“Sacrifices must sometimes be made for the greater good. Compared to the many souls my husband brought to the lord, what was one life?” Martha sniffed self-righteously.