Chapter 23 #2
I pick up my phone and dial Judge Woodson.
Ten minutes later, three deputies—including Mosely, obviously—and I are marching into The Cellar.
I beeline for Beasley, who looks just like his old man, so the ID is easy, even if I didn’t have a current photo.
He stands up when he sees me coming, his face ghost white, a butter knife still clenched in his fist.
"Jared Beasley, you're under arrest for the rape and murder of Amber Brunner. You have the right to remain silent…"
Twenty minutes after that, Mosely is booking the younger Beasley while I head into Peaceful Meadows Retirement Home. I flash my warrant and I’m shown to his room.
It's five in the afternoon, and he's half-asleep in a chair, watching some old game show. He sees me in his doorway, sees the warrant in my hand, and hurls the remote at the TV, turning the screen to cracked rainbows.
"Goddamn kid. That fuckin' goddamn kid." He shakes his fist at me. "I'm more dead than alive, damn you. Can’t you just let me die?"
I bite my tongue to keep the unprofessional retort on the inside as I stomp over to him. There's a crowd outside his room, watching. For once, I let them watch.
"Jeremiah Beasley, you're under arrest for the murder of Craig Mannix and tampering with a human corpse. You have the right to remain silent…"
Lacey arrives at a run, bursting through the doors of the retirement home and staring at me with her hands over her mouth, watching me…well, wheel rather than march…Jeremiah Beasley out of the home.
Later, after he's booked in the medical unit of the county jail where he'll stay until trial, Lacey finds me in my office, doing the attendant paperwork that comes with arrests like these.
I slip the blue-blockers off as she rounds the desk, but she puts them back on as she deposits herself on my lap.
"Studious Cole," she hums. "Yummy. I like the glasses."
I laugh and leave them on. "Then maybe I need glasses all the time."
She wrinkles her nose. "Nah. Keep me guessing." She frowns at me. "What will happen to him? Old Man Beasley, I mean. He's so old, and so sick."
I shrug. "He’s in a medical unit. Basically, a hospital wing in the prison, but with armed guards and stuff like that.
He'll stay there until trial, and assuming he lives that long, he'll end up in a similar unit at Holbrook.
Or, he'll die before trial. Either way, justice has been served.
" I jut my chin at the screen. "In the morning, divers are gonna go down to the bottom of the old McPherson quarry and bring up the body, and Amber Brunner's family will finally have closure. "
She looks at me. "You found your dad's killer."
I shake my head. "No, Carter Mosely did."
She wrinkles her nose. "How do you feel about that?"
I lean back in the chair with my arms around her, thinking.
"I…honestly, I don't know. Yeah, part of me wishes I'd been the one to solve Dad's murder.
But that's just an ego trip thing. And I don't think I ever would have, anyway.
I was too close. Carter said it himself—I was too close.
He had objectivity. He could see the connections.
He asked the right questions, and he got results.
" I shake my head. "He did in two weeks what I couldn't in more than a decade.
" I sigh, shrug. "But at the end of the day, the killer is in jail.
That's what counts. And honestly, ego aside, that's all I care about. "
She nods, but I can tell something else is on her mind.
"What?" I ask. “Out with it, Sweet Thing."
She grimaces. "So I did a thing."
I snort. "Uh oh."
"I messaged with Maia. She actually reached out to me, first, said she'd been thinking a lot and decided she wants to get to know me."
I sit upright. "Hey, that's awesome! When are you gonna meet her? Or are you just messaging for now?"
She searches me. "So, um. When we emailed before, I didn't mention you, because you weren't in my life then and you didn’t know about her. So I…I told her about you. And she wants to meet us both."
I swallow hard.
"Oh," I whisper. "So soon."
"I can tell them—"
I shake my head. “No. I want to meet her. I'm just scared shitless."
She nuzzles me, sniffling. "Me too. But we'll be together, okay? It's just a meet-up. We can do it somewhere public. There's no pressure. We aren't becoming her parents or anything. We're just meeting. Getting to know each other."
"Does she…what does she know?" I ask.
"Not much. Just that we weren't ready to be parents, basically. The rest we'll get into when the time is right."
I let out a sigh, nodding. "No pressure. Just a meet-up."
The meeting with the Emorys doesn’t end up happening until the end of February; we spent Christmas Eve at Felix and Ember's with the whole crew, and Christmas Day with each other; there hadn't been a chance to buy gifts, but just having each other back is the greatest gift either of us could ever ask for. The rest of the time, we got used to being together, checked in on the progress of the rebuild—slower than I’d like, but at least I know it’s being done correctly.
We just did life together, and it’s been… fantastic, to be honest.
Now, it’s a brutally cold day in February, small hard flakes of snow swirl around us, and my hands are shaking as we approach Benji's coffeeshop. Lacey squeezes my hand, pulling me to a stop just outside. Snow swirls around us. "It's okay, Cole. It's going to be fine."
I nod, forcing a smile. "I know. Just nervous." I’ve been on pins and needles for this day since we set it up, but I’m honestly glad for the time to get used to the idea that I have a daughter at all, much less prepare myself for meeting her.
Although, I don’t think there’s any way to ever be totally ready for something like this.
Lacey shows me her hand, which is trembling a little. "Me too," she whispers.
I caress her cheek, and then kiss her shaking hand, and then we enter together.
Adam, Kelly, and Maia Emory are in a booth, the girls on one side and Adam on the other.
Their eyes are on us as we enter, and I realize they must have watched our entire exchange just now.
They get up as we approach, and Adam is the first to reach out.
"Cole?" he says, shaking my hand. "I'm Adam."
"Nice to meet you, Adam." I turn to his wife. "And you're Kelly." I put an arm around Lacey. "This is Lacey."
Maia, slower to leave the booth than her parents, approaches now.
She's dressed in black leggings, Ugg clogs with socks bunched up over the leggings, and an oversized hoodie, her hair—my hair, the same shade, same texture, same natural side-part—is worn long on one side and shaved on the other, the long part loose and hanging around one shoulder.
As I noted from her IG pictures, she has Lacey's pale blue eyes and my nose.
She looks from Lacey to me and back, and her eyes fill with tears. "I look like you," she whispers.
I'm not sure if she's sad or what, but her mom slips an arm around her shoulders. "Yeah, you really do," Kelly says. "The eyes, especially."
Maia swallows hard, steps closer to us. "I've wondered my whole life if I look more like my mom or my dad." She frowns. "My mother or my father. Or…" she looks back at her mom. "I don't know how to—"
Kelly sniffs a tearful laugh. "I know, honey. There's no wrong way to do this."