The Abbey (34 page)

“Dr. Rea, you are to go with these gentlemen,” she said, before turning to me. “Detective Rashid, you are to sit there and shut up.”

At least Susan was direct. I waited to speak until the
FBI
agents and Karen were out of the room. I stood up. Susan cut me off as soon as I started to speak.

“I appreciate the work you’ve done on this, Ash, but we don’t have the resources to handle this case.”

“You’re kidding. Karen was confessing. What more do we need?”

Susan looked at the officers outside.

“Shut the door and turn off the camera,” she said. Someone complied, at least about the door. I sat on the edge of the table, putting Susan and me at the same height. She leaned into me despite the room’s privacy. “We seized more than eight million dollars in cash from Karen’s warehouse last night in a joint operation with the local
FBI
field office. We’re announcing that later today. What we’re not announcing is that we also found a very sophisticated lab. We’re not announcing that because I got an offer from a Deputy Director of the
FBI
. The federal government gets the case, we get the money. All we have to do is shut up about everything.”

“They found something,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“And it scared them enough to give up a multimillion dollar seizure to make it disappear,” she said.

I nodded again, mulling the situation over.

“I don’t suppose I get any of that money.”

Susan didn’t blink for about a minute and a half, but then she burst into a full–blown laugh. A simple no would have sufficed. She left the room a moment later, still chuckling intermittently. I got a ride home after that from Mike Bowers. Neither of us said anything until he pulled up to my mailbox. Hannah was on the front porch, waving at us, while Megan drew something on the front walkway with chalk.

“That’s a good–looking family,” said Bowers, nodding. “You’re a lucky man,”

I nodded and stayed in the car. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to formulate the question in my mind.

“I got an e–mail a few days ago before all this went down,” I said. “Are you a friend?”

Bowers chuckled and rubbed his chin.

“Don’t look too much into that,” he said. “Olivia Rhodes had been under investigation for months, but the Prosecutor’s Office had been dragging their heels about an indictment. We suspected she was fucking Jack Whittler.”

“So you used me to get her?”

Bowers shrugged.

“You use the tools at your disposal,” he said. “I read your file. I knew you wouldn’t quit. I didn’t expect this, but it worked out in the end.”

“Then why’d you arrest me and beat down my door?”

He shrugged again.

“I never really liked you,” he said. “And I didn’t trust you until Rea took your kids.”

I wanted to punch him, but instead I climbed out of the car and shut the door behind me. Bowers drove off as soon as I got out. Megan ran towards me, her arms outstretched.

“I drew the sun,” she said. I picked her up and examined her artwork on the sidewalk. It looked more like a soccer ball than the sun, but I wasn’t going to correct her. I put her down near her drawing where she promptly started drawing stick figures that I presumed would later be flaming astronauts due to their proximity to a star.

“The mail came, and there’s a letter for you from the law school,” said Hannah. “How was your meeting?”

“It was interesting,” I said, already walking toward the kitchen door. “I’ll tell you more in a minute.”

As Hannah said, the mail had arrived, and I did have a letter from the law school. It was about as well written as the fine print that accompanied my credit card statement, so I had to read through it three times to understand it. Since the Dean hadn’t been able to get in touch with me following my outburst in Professor Ruiz’s class, the Judiciary Board met to decide my fate without me. Apparently they knew Ruiz was a dick because they decided not to kick me out of school. Instead, they dropped me from the class and requested I avoid taking it from him that winter. That was one request I could accommodate.

I walked back outside and met Hannah on the front porch. I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to school or even if I wanted to go back to work. All I knew was that my family was safe and that’s all I cared about. I sat beside Hannah on the front porch and put my hand on her knee.

“Anything interesting?” she asked.

“Nothing life changing,” I said.

Hannah slipped her hand over mine, and we watched Megan draw for a few minutes. She had been crying in my arms twelve hours earlier, and now she was playing without a care in the world. I wished everything was so easily fixed.

“Did you call your sister yet?”

Hannah nodded.

“She and Jack are fine. A little surprised we weren’t home when they came home yesterday, but fine.”

I nodded and leaned back.

“Good,” I said. “I was thinking of taking some time off. Maybe we can go on vacation.”

Hannah squeezed my hand.

“I’d like that.”

I didn’t have a drink that night; I didn’t need to. I knew that eventually I’d have the dreams again. It might be a week or even a month, but eventually they’d come back. Probably the next time I tell someone that they’ve lost the person they hold most dear in the world. I’d see their faces and share in pain so profound and all–encompassing that there is no escape. It’s my penance for the mistakes I’ve made. But I didn’t have to face it right away. For a brief while, I had been granted a peace I couldn’t earn myself.

I hope you liked the book. Ash was a lot of fun to write, and he will be showing up again in the future. (My hope is by November 2011.) In the meantime, I’ve enabled lending for this book, so if you know someone else who would like it, please share it. And if you’re feeling industrious, please consider leaving a review. Reviews help me get the word out, which is a difficult task for a debut novelist.

At any rate, I’ve taken enough of your time. Happy reading.

–Chris Culver, March 2011.