Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Lucky walked into the sheriff’s office and stared at the man who’d known her since she was little.
She’d been in his house a thousand times, walking in without even a knock.
She slept over countless times over the years.
She’d eaten at his table. Hugged him on his birthday and Christmas and at his wife’s funeral.
She knew him.
He knew her.
But there was a line between them. A lot known but unspoken.
They didn’t discuss the abuse her father inflicted on her. They didn’t talk about Desiree’s erratic behavior.
They kept their secrets. The silences between them spoke volumes.
He knew more than he’d ever say.
She knew he’d turned a blind eye to what had been happening to her because he loved his daughter.
He’d do anything for Desiree and let Lucky suffer.
Jealousy rose up.
Why didn’t she have that with her father?
Why did Desiree get all that love and devotion?
She stared into his gray eyes, so filled with everything unsaid and the apology he’d never offer.
Desiree was so lucky to have someone in her corner, willing to overlook the bad and always trying to find the good in her. He’d never let her fall.
Lucky had never had someone like that in her life.
Her brother might have grown up to be that person for her.
She’d never know. He didn’t get the chance to grow up at all.
Someone took him from her.
Was it at Neil’s hand? Or Desiree’s?
Did they do it together?
She didn’t know which one was worse. The lying, cheating, drug dealing boyfriend, or the best friend, who wasn’t really a friend at all?
Tears threatened but she choked them back as the stare-off continued.
She broke the unbearable silence. “Did Neil kill my family?”
Bob looked like he aged ten years in the time it took for his shoulders to sag, his face to turn weary, and his eyes to fill with resignation. He hung his head and finally answered. “I don’t know.”
She challenged him. “His prints were on the knife.”
“Yes.” That wasn’t enough to convince him, which meant there was something that didn’t add up about the case for him either.
She went at him from another direction. “I hid what was happening at home for a long time.”
His exhausted eyes met hers. “I didn’t know it was happening until you were in high school.” Shame hunched his shoulders even more. He couldn’t even look at her.
“Even then, you didn’t do anything about it. You never asked me about it. Why?”
He raked his hand over his head, the dark brown strands mixed with threads of silver now. “Because I didn’t want to have to arrest my friend, someone who got me through the worst time in my life.”
Her heart clenched just thinking about Gayle, his wife, who died in a car accident. “He helped you move past your grief.”
“He was the only one who’d talk to me about Gayle. I warned him, more than once, to stop hurting you. I told him if he did it again, I’d have to do something about it.”
“But he didn’t heed your empty threat. Did he? No. He just got more clever about how he'd hurt me.”
“You always seemed fine.”
She seethed inside. “Yes. I suppose I would seem fine with a death threat looming over my head while the bruises and cuts were hidden beneath my clothes. I suppose that made it easy for you to bury your head in the sand and leave me to face a monster every day!” She tried to catch her breath after shouting there at the end.
“I didn’t know it was that bad!” His outburst didn’t sway her.
“You’re lying! Desiree knew everything in middle school, which means you knew, because she would have asked you for help.”
His face said it all. He knew. He just didn’t do anything about it. His reputation was on the line. People would ask, how could he miss the abuse when he saw her nearly every day? He knew the signs.
“If you considered me a daughter, didn’t I deserve better?” She fisted her hands at her sides, wanting so badly to lash out, even knowing it would only get her in trouble. He had too much power. His position protected him. Insulated him.
This conversation was futile.
Still, she needed to try to get the truth out of him.
His shoulders slumped again. “You do deserve better. But there’s nothing I can do now. They’re gone. You’ve moved on.”
“Moved on? Seriously? You think I’ve moved on. I’ve been stuck in a loop, just surviving each day, wondering when the next shoe is going to drop. And all this time, you knew I was still being taunted by someone, hurt, and Neil wasn’t the one behind it. He didn’t kill my family.”
“I don’t know any of that.” His face lied for him. He did know. He just didn’t want to admit it. Because if he admitted it to himself, he’d have to look at someone else as the killer. And he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Not yet.
But she’d make him see beyond a shadow of a doubt and he wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore.
“You do know it. You’ve spent your life working here.
You’ve honed your cop instincts. But it’s more than that.
For months leading up to my family’s death, I was being bombarded by pleas to turn my father in, to make you do your fucking job before he fucking killed me!
” She tried to rein herself in. She could feel Hawk just outside the office, watching, waiting for any sign that she needed his help.
“Lucky...” Bob’s eyes pleaded with her to understand. To not go down this road.
“Don’t Lucky me, Bob. Desiree had to have asked for your help. You, who would do anything for her.”
“I told her to leave it alone. You’d graduate soon and leave for college. You just had to get to college.”
“And leave my brother with him?”
“He was different with Danny.”
She shook her head. “You are so delusional. I kept him from Danny. Most of the time, but not all of it.” And it killed her every time her father put his hands on her little brother. “You were right across the street. You had to hear the shouting, my screams. You had to see my pain. You knew!”
“I had my own pain to deal with, along with Desiree’s and reining her in from doing something stupid and self-destructive. She was out of control. You know what she was like at that time.”
“I thought I did, but I didn’t know the half of it, because you’re a good dad. You take care of her. Always. Even when she gets into trouble. You smooth it over. You make it go away. Speeding tickets. Shoplifting. Bar fights. DUI’s.” She held his gaze. “Murder.”
“No.” He shook his head emphatically and waved his finger back and forth in her face. “No.” That finger stopped and pointed straight at her. “You don’t have any proof.”
“How about drugging someone? Because I was drugged before I remember seeing Neil in the bar.”
Bob dropped his hand and swallowed hard.
Well that was telling.
“She’s the only one who had the motive and proximity to do it. Does she hate me that much?”
“Sometimes,” he conceded. “The spotlight always has to shine brightest on her.”
Lucky nodded. “It always felt like anything good that happened to me, she wanted to take away. Danny, because I spent time with him, time she wanted me to spend with her. Neil, because he loved me. She wanted to be the only one I turned to for everything. She wanted the love I so desperately needed.”
“She loves you, even when she hates you.”
Desiree treated him the same way. They’d had some epic arguments over the years.
“Right. It’s a twisted kind of love. One where she needs to be in control, where she gets everything she wants and I have nothing.”
He held his head in both hands. “I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Her mother died and she didn’t want to lose anyone else.”
Something changed on his face, so fast she almost missed it. Grief mixed with pure fury.
“Wait a second.” She held her hand up, pointing her finger at his chest. “You. She loved you so much. Such a daddy’s girl.
She’d get upset when Gayle got between you two.
She always wanted your attention. You spoiled her.
But Gayle…she was the one who doled out the rules and consequences and pushing Desiree to be kinder, to think before she speaks, to get better grades, be polite, get a job, think about her future. ”
“Like you,” he whispered.
It all made so much sense now. “Gayle compared her to me.”
“All the time. She thought you were something special. So studious and willing to help. You even worked with your mom, you had a plan for college. You wanted to be a nurse. Desiree lived so in the moment, she didn’t think about consequences or the future, just having fun and getting whatever she wanted.
You were the only one who could see through Desiree’s insecurities and shake off her meanness and just be her friend. ”
“You didn’t do anything about my father because you knew my mother would have taken me and Danny to be closer to her family.
She’d wanted to move for years, but my father wouldn’t hear of it.
He needed to keep us away from anyone who would challenge him and what he was doing to us. You needed me to be Desiree’s friend.”
His chin hit his chest. “Yes. She needs you.”
“Even though she spends half her time making herself feel better by taking little swipes at me?” She held up her scarred arm. “They don’t make me bleed like my father’s cuts, but they still hurt.”
His eyes pleaded with her to understand. “She’s gotten better.”
“She tried to kill me! She drugged me, stripped me, then dumped me down a hill and left me to die!” She raked her fingers through her hair and paced back and forth.
“No wonder you didn’t come to see me in the hospital.
” Her eyes went wide with the revelations popping into her mind.
“No. You sent Jase. I’m your daughter’s best friend, like a daughter to you, and this is how you treat me.
” She stopped pacing and glared at him. “You knew it was her.”