Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Cole
A week and a half later, I'm in my office trying not to freak out. I made the mistake of ignoring Felix's warning, and I visited the farmhouse.
Big mistake.
Huge.
(Am I doing this movie quoting thing right?)
It's a shell. Not even a shell, a skeleton. It's barely recognizable as a house.
Remodel? It's a total fucking rebuild.
I trust Fee, alright? I really do. There's literally no one else on the planet I'd let touch my family home. But shit, it's scary seeing it like that.
So I left in a hurry and buried myself in administrative work, which is where I've been for the last…I glance at the clock…three hours.
Ugh.
I'm finishing up for the day when Mosely barges in, excited. "We've got 'em, sir."
I blink. "Who?"
"Jared Beasley and Jeremiah Beasley."
"What?" I shoot to my feet, knocking the rolling chair backward. "How?"
He yanks his phone out of his pocket and pulls up an audio recording. He's so excited he's almost vibrating as he taps play.
"…Gotta calm the hell down, Jared," Beasley says. His voice is raspy, phlegmy. Old. "It's covered. We made sure of that—I made sure of that."
"That Asian kid is asking a lot of fuckin' questions, Dad," I hear an unfamiliar voice respond—Jared. He sounds a lot like I remember Jeremiah sounding, twenty-some years ago. "Word is, he has some bitch on record saying he saw me with Amber."
"Jesus fucking Christ, Jared," Jeremiah snaps. "Say her name louder, why don't you?"
"We gotta do something, Dad! I can't go down for that shit! Not now! Not after all this time."
"Shoulda thought'a that before you killed the bitch, son."
Bingo!
Jared groans. "It was a fucking accident!" he hisses. "She wasn't…cooperating. I pushed her because she was clawing at me, and she fell. Hit her stupid fucking head on the corner of the TV stand.”
Jeremiah cackles and then dissolves into a coughing fit. When he's recovered, he's pissed. "I was there, dumbshit, I fucking know what happened." His voice is so low you can barely hear it. Collins can work some magic and clean it up though.
I glance at Carter. "Do they talk about—"
He touches his index finger to his lips and then points at the phone. "Wait."
I brace my fists on the desk, staring down at the phone, willing old man Beasley to admit to killing my father.
"You and your dick," Jeremiah mutters. "Those couple'a inches of flesh have caused me no end of trouble my whole goddamn life."
"Couple?" Jared protests.
"Shut the fuck up, son." He sighs. "You and your dick.
The Miller girl—hadda pay her off. Debbie what's her name…
Galogly, some shit like that. She moved away on her own.
" I frown, putting pieces together—Leslie Miller was a college sophomore home for winter break back in the early aughts or late nineties—I was too young at the time to know anything about it.
She changed overnight, people said. Wouldn't talk about it with anyone, and then she vanished, moved to Florida or something.
Debbie Gallagher was a similar situation around the same time period.
Something happened that she wouldn't talk about, and then she moved away.
"You fuckin'…" Beasley continues. “You just couldn't keep it in your pants, and you couldn’t get a girl to want to fuck you. So you took it. Made me clean up your messes till you were fuckin' thirty."
Damn, that's cold.
"But this mess? Jesus wept, son. Killed the girl and then expected me to wave a magic wand.
Don't work like that, though, does it?" He's talking to himself more than to his son, now.
Reminiscing. "That upright sonofabitch, Mannix.
He knew. He knew the others were you. He fuckin' knew it.
And he knew I knew. He wasn't gonna let it go, the holy fucking bastard.
Thought his shit didn't stink. Him and his Silver fuckin' Star.” Yeah, on top of everything else, my dad is a war hero.
“Big fuckin' whoop. He knew Leslie and Debbie were you, and he knew Amber was you.
Didn't have evidence, but it was a matter of time.
I cleaned it up for you. Like I always do.
Had to drive her car out and clean it up and dump it somewhere.
Had to take the ugly bitch's fat ass out to the old quarry, dumped her fat ass at the bottom of a hundred feet of water, wrapped up in a fuckin' anchor. Like you, you dumbshit. An anchor around my neck, my whole life. You and your dick.”
“He's still nasty, horrible, mean piece of shit," I note. "Even to his own kid."
Carter just nods, points again.
"You and your dick," he repeats yet again, a phrase it seems like he's used countless times.
"And that fuckin' Mannix. Craig goddamned Mannix, who everyone fuckin' loved. He’d’ve been sheriff till he was in a wheelchair.
Had to get rid of him. And he knew. He knew it was you.
He was lookin'. And I know there were others you didn't tell me about.
I know it." The younger Beasley is silent, but I can hear him in the background, breathing, sniffing.
"Had to get rid of him. Can't just shoot someone like that, though.
Ohhhh no. Not him. Whole fuckin' town would go nuts, be nowhere to hide. Had to be an accident. Wasn’t easy.
He wasn't anybody's fool." He mutters something too quiet to make out, then mumbling something about it being time or the right time.
Then, louder. "Caught him out on patrol.
Why he insisted on patrolling those back roads, I'll never know.
But there he was, toodling along like a good little altar boy, middle'a fuckin' nowhere, no one around.
Easy. Huh? Easy. PIT him right into a tree.
One little love tap to the rear quarter panel, and there he goes.
The great Craig Mannix is dead. About pissed on his corpse, I was so happy to see the man dead, but that'd have left DNA.
Can't have that. Kept on driving. Didn't stand a chance, old Craig-y boy. Dead before he knew what happened."
Finally, the younger Beasley speaks again. "And now the other Mannix is sniffing around, Dad. We gotta take care of him."
A cough of laughter. "We?" He cackles himself into coughing again.
"Fuckin' we, this idiot says. I ain't doin' shit, Jared.
I can't do shit. Eighty years old, wearin' a goddamn diaper, can't breathe, can barely get outta this fuckin' wheelchair to take a goddamn shit.
Gotta have help wiping my ass. So if you wanna take out Cole Mannix, well, son…
be my guest. But I'll say this—you take a shot at that motherfucker, you best not miss.
You won't get a second." Another coughing laugh.
“Fact is, boy, you couldn't take out the fuckin' trash, Jared.
Let it go. There's no evidence tying you to Amber except the twenty-year-old eyewitness testimony that you were with her before she vanished.
There's no evidence that I had anything to do with Craig's death.
Those bozos can ask all the questions they want; they won't get shit.
" Another coughing fit. "Your best bet, son?
Go home. Diddle that wife of yours. Forget all this.
Stay out of Three Rivers, if you're so scared.
Can't arrest you if you ain’t here to be arrested. "
"Dad, I…shit. I just don't like it."
A nasty bark of sarcastic laughter. "You don't like it?
You think I liked cleaning up your messes?
Threatening the scared little girls you raped?
Spending my hard-earned fuckin' money so they leave town?
I'll admit killing Mannix was as much for me as to protect you, but…
" yet another coughing fit, and then heavy breathing as he sucks oxygen from a tank—Beasley was a lifelong smoker.
"You don't like it. Well, neither do I. None of it.
What I don't need is this shit. Don't like thinkin' about any of that, an' I like talkin' about it even less.
Talkin' about it is a risk. I'm too damn old and sick to deal with your shit anymore, Jared.
So shut the fuck up about Amber Brunner, stay away from Cole Mannix, stay away from whoever the fuck saw you with the girl…
just stay away. They'll stop askin' questions eventually. "
No, we won't. The conversation drifts away, then, to family matters, and Carter stops the recording.
"How the hell did you get that, Mosely?" I ask.
He grins, cocky. "Hid a recording device under the chair the old goat likes to sit in during the day."
I eye him. "You stuck your phone in the cushion, didn't you?"
He snorts. "No, sir, I did not. I used an actual device."
I grimace. "Consent laws are gonna make this tricky to get admitted.
""No, sir," Carter says, his grin widening.
"I was present in the room when the conversation happened, observing it.
Which means the Observer distinction applies.
It's one hundred percent admissible. I even accidentally bumped into Old Man Beasley and had a whole, actual conversation with him about the Lions.
" He points at the phone. "It's on there. "
I collapse heavily into my chair, staring at the phone. Eventually, I drag my gaze up to Carter's. "You solved the fucking case, Mosely."
He shrugs, but his grin is huge. "Just doing my job, Sheriff. I'd sure like to keep working with Warnicki, though. This detective stuff is the shit."
"Try getting me to transfer you away now, kid. You're stuck." I tap the phone. "I need a copy. And we need to talk to a prosecutor."
"Well, sir, Jared Beasley is still in town…for now. He’s currently eating dinner at The Cellar. Get a warrant A-S-A-P so we can arrest his ass before he skips town. I dunno about you, but I don't want to share the credit with the feds."