Collateral Damage

C H A P T E R 21

C H A P T E R 21

SOLVING THE CASE

Puppet

S he's stormed out the door like a little girl but I'm so repent to find amusement in this right now. I'm just as angry as she is. She's angry because she knows I'm right. I refuse to be left in the dark any longer. I refuse to talk to a wall. I will get to the bottom of this whether she likes it or not because staying in the unknown is eating me alive.

She didn’t lock the garage door. Giving me access to the office once more and by the temper that shook the house she isn't going to be back for a while. Good. It gives me time to access everything I need to.

Play - ‘Panic Room - Au/Ra’

I waste no time legging for the vault of secrets and as I walk in everything is on. The computer is open, sitting on a court case document. Something I don't recognise but it's once again, a domestic abuse case that got dropped. I'm trembling through my fingers as I surf through folders upon folders of files and images. A folder sits pretty with my father’s name on it. Jackpot . I open it and find it hard to swallow. Hundreds of images plaster the screen including old pictures I've never even seen before. Pictures of him with another woman? That isn't my mom? Maybe that's my biological Mother? Is Hays part of my family? What the hell is going on?I scroll a little further and a group photo sits with my father, the same woman, another man and a child. It's her . It's the same girl I saw in the living room. Why is she in a photo with my dad?

Endless photos later, I put a few pieces together but still things don't make much sense. They were in the detective scene together? But if so, why have I never heard of this woman before? Maybe he mentioned her but I was too young to remember? I rack my brains trying to remember her name but I'm left blank. These pages are full of writing but they are all blank. Is she Hays Mother? Is that how she knows my father? But that still doesn't explain why she killed him! I'm losing my MIND . I stand to face the board on the wall surfing for what feels like centuries and the name Lillie seems to pop up quite a few times next to cases my father was working on. I search the computer for a folder potentially holding her name and I eventually find one.All her documents, case files, birth certificate and contract for the Chicago police department are staring me in the face. Chicago ? Am I back home? If so I'm further away than I thought. That’s almost four hours away from Indiana.

Her full name and all her personal information jump out the screen from a document from 1998.

Lillie Moore. Mother of one. Hayley Moore and wife to Richard Moore who died in 1997 . I've never heard any of their names before. I want to rip my hair out, how can this be so complicated! Why is she so fixated on my family!

I search up Moore into the search bar of her files and it's just a sea of writing with dotted pictures of her in amongst the chaos. Is she Hayley?

Hayley Moore

Involuntary manslaughter

6 years

The words penetrate the screen in big bold letters, plastered on newspapers and web links.

Six years . She said she served for six years. But this still doesn't tell me why my father is involved? Who the hell did she kill if it wasn't my father? She lost her mother but he wouldn't kill anyone? Certainly not his work colleague. He's not a killer. He left the scene because it was too much for him as it is.Where does he come into this? Where does my family come into her shambles of a life?

Father comes up quite a few times. Is that it? Did my father kill her father? I sit on a dark picture, hard to see, heavy on contrast as I sit my forehead in the palm of my hands trying to rub out this impending headache settling on the surface, trying to put these broken pieces together. Hays has never mentioned her father, and he is nowhere to be found around the house. All I have is his name, and that he died in 1997. That was two years before my father walked away and now I'm understanding why, this is exhausting.

I level my head and oxygen is ripped from my lungs as her face peers back at me through the computer screen. But not through an image, her insidious mask. How long has she been standing there?! I jump out my body as I turn to face her, gripping tightly to a blade most likely meant for me but I'm too frustrated and infuriated to care right now.

“Are you ready to talk?!” I challenge her blade, buzzing with fury.

“Are you ready to listen?” The tip of her blade licks under my chin forcing me to look at her and I'm riddled with chills.

“I have been ready since the day I got here! I've demanded you tell me Hays and you've refused!” She closes her eyes and shakes her head gently; I narrow my glare trying to read her rubix cube of a brain.

“Because you're not going to like it.” What could possibly be that terrible! I'm not a child, I can handle her past!

“TELL ME, HAYLEY!” I immediately regret speaking that name when her eyes hollow, suddenly seeing innate death in physical form, flaring her nostrils as her split tongue runs her teeth, gripping my throat so tightly my vision goes fuzzy.

“Call me that again. And you'll wish I killed you that night. Do you understand me? ” She's practically spitting in my face before forcefully throwing me back into the brittle chair, walking backwards, slowly towards the door.

“Where are you going?” We aren't done here. Where the hell does she think she's going?“Hays…” She doesn’t respond, slipping out the door shutting it behind her and the lock turns, ringing like a gun shot through my heart.“No! Please! Don’t lock me in here! Hays please!” I can't do this again. “OPEN THE DOOR!” I tug on the handle, shaking it vigorously trying to escape this nightmare trying to ignore the demons towering over me. This room is drowning me with voices, I can't breathe in here.

“You wanted answers? Look harder.” Is she kidding! She doesn't even have the decency to tell me even when I'm sitting amongst the answers! What is her problem!? “When you've calmed down. We will talk.” I'm far from calm. In fact, I've never been more enraged. I'm a dog locked in a cage, surrounded by my worst nightmare. My fury takes over, paper scatters the air as I throw files off her desk, painting the floor white, scraping at the board tearing down her work. Uncontrollable tears roll down my cheeks, clawing for my sanity between the walls. Why me? Why am I being punished? What did I do to deserve this!? I heave through my chest, trying to focus on the wreckage in front of me. Scattered parts of me bleeding between the pages. I've messed everything up in a fit of rage, how the hell am I going to figure anything out now?

??

Play - ‘Hurricane - Fleurie’

I t's been hours and I've lost it. I’ve exhausted myself beyond comprehension as I sit with my back to the door crawled in on myself creating a puddle against my forearms. I've sifted through everything and still nothing makes sense. I'm at a dead end and I just want to give up. This was punishment in itself for trying to seek answers she was not ready to tell but I was getting impatient. It's been what, two months now? Two months of playing pretend, two months pondering on questions I need answers to. It's killing me. My entire life has become one big joke and I deserve to know what the hell caused this. What caused her to kill mercilessly on my own family.

I've not heard her since she locked the door and I don’t know what's more worrying, the fact that I have or the fact that I haven't but for some reason I despise this silence where only the voices in my head are keeping me company. I've gotten so used to having her around I forgot what it was like.

I sit for a few more minutes trying to pull myself together when her voice sinks into me from the other side of the door.

“Are you finished?” She's not even angry. She just sounds fed up with me. I feel her weight shift the door as she sits parallel to me on the other side. We are back-to-back through plywood and that's comforting right now. I know whatever I am about to hear is going to shy me away from embarrassing myself further.

“Yes…” I cross my legs, placing my head against the wood and close my eyes ready to reap what I sow.

“Are you ready to listen?” No . I don't think I am. But I don't have a choice.

“Hays please.” I squeeze my eyes shut, frustration lingering on my face.

“I need you to know, before I tell you everything, that you were never meant to get caught up in this. And I know I've said it before but I mean it. Whatever you think you know, it's all about to change. Are you prepared for that?” Again. No . But how are you meant to prepare to have your life turned on its axis? Luckily, I've already had my fair share of flipped tables but I wish I could say it gets easier.

“Yes…” I hear her shuffle some more, like she's getting comfortable to tell me a bedtime story and I know we may be here some time.

“I served six years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. I killed someone who was meant to protect me. I killed him because he was a threat to me and my mom.” I shake out my nerves, listening to her words carefully through the wall.

“Your father?...” I mumble, rolling my throat trying to accept that the woman behind this door killed her own blood.

“Yes. And afterwards things were great. She got her life back together for a while, she was no longer in danger, we were finally at peace . She was part of the Chicago police department and she worked alongside John for quite a few years, even when my father was alive, due to your father and my mother being case partners, he and John grew quite close. After his passing, my mom told everyone he fled, that he walked away and left a note that he wasn't coming back . To protect me. Your father was by her side through it all and that slowly turned into something more for a while, he became a father figure to me.”

“When was this? Was I born?” I begin to ponder on my younger years. Trying to pull any possible memories that can link to this part of my life I do not recall, he was a father figure to a child I had no recollection of.

“Your father was a single man at this time from what we knew of. He never mentioned he had a daughter; I assume it was to protect you.” At least she can acknowledge he was doing something good.

“He was seeing your mom?” I fiddle with my thumbs, trying to control the lump stuck inside my throat.

“Something like that… That's what we wanted to think. Until one night I woke up to him cursing from her room and instinctively I ran.”

My heart throbs for her. She instinctively ran to her mother’s aid without a second thought and it only makes me wonder what she went through.

“He was snooping to find evidence against my mom for the disappearance of my father.”

This can't be true… He would never use anyone? Would he ? What kind of man does that make him?

“He was never interested in her that way. He was using her to get her behind bars.”

I can hear the anger through her teeth, grinding them together as she speaks.

“I tried to tell him it was me. I pleaded with him to listen to me. She told me to be quiet. That she had it under control, yet he was still aiming at her heart, even after she told him she was just trying to protect me, he wouldn’t budge that fucking gun.”

I can't picture him wielding a gun to harm another and everything in me is screaming.

“He said, s tep aside. Or I will not hesitate to shoot you . And of course she refused. I told her to move, that it was ok, that punishment for my actions was ok as long as I had her to come back to. But instead she refused to let me go. She just stood there. She's my baby, John. Don't do this. Please. It was an accident. She was just keeping us safe. She just a kid John!” She recites her mother’s words calmly, painfully. And I knot with guilt not meant for me. “ He just glared straight through her. Like she wasn’t even there. He was so caught up in the case he wouldn't let it go.” I can feel her rage vibrating against me and I know what she's implying. I feel violently sick. “He never walked away, Alora . He was removed for opening fire on a member of the Chicago police department.” Her words bleed down my face, hitching my throat so hard I almost choke trying to hold in my sobs, sobs of uncontrollable culpability.

“He claimed self-defence...” My voice cracks trying to get the words out, remembering the fight we had. The words she spoke that I so desperately wanted to understand. You know what? They would probably believe you too. You're a Blackthorne after all. The name of importance.

How doesn't she resent me?

“He walked away without a scratch. Pledged that she was unstable and went for him first. But I saw it all. I watched her die in my arms. I saw the whole fucking thing. The blood was everywhere. I watched him run, leaving me to pick up his mess. Listening to her tell me she loved me as she took her final breath. I faced him in court and I got thrown behind bars because my Mother was no longer alive to plead my case. I was almost charged with intentional murder.” She was locked up for self-defence but my dad walked free? That only fuels her hatred towards the man who took her mother’s life. My Father . My Father took her life.

“Was it…. Intentional?” I hesitate, I don't even know why I'm asking and it's probably rude. She also hesitates, sitting on my question for a while and just by the silence, that tells me my question was not completely out of pocket.

“A sick part of me had always wanted to. I'd thought about it, dreamt about it. Envisioned it. And I knew when the time came, if I had to I would. But I didn't seek it out that night. His death was purely to keep me and my mother alive.” But I didn't seek it out that night . She says it so aimlessly.

That first kill started something. In the last four years she's taken fourteen heads and feels no remorse. It awoke something in her. Control . She told me it was power she could control. Her Father’s death gave her control . Freedom . And she lost it as punishment for trying to save her own life.

I'm taking in so much right now it's hard to process. It's overwhelming and I am trying my hardest to hold it together. The monster behind this door is a monster filled with bullet holes and broken armour. A shattered heart that only knows suffering. Her pain is her architect.

This could all be a lie. It could all be a lullaby to make me see something other than a monster. But she's always made it known that she is nothing but. It's taken around two months for her to be honest with me, if she was just honest with me from the start, maybe things would be different. This changes everything… But now it’s too late.