Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
Todd bucked in his chair so hard that he toppled it onto its side. The gag Finley had tied through his mouth loosened in the fall while a pain fired through Todd’s neck. “Why can’t you just let me go? There’s nothing more for us, Dean. It’s over.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over.” He was pacing like a madman, wearing a rut in the wood flooring.
Todd had seen Dean lose his temper many times over the years. Observed how his cheeks blasted bright red, his forehead bunched up into rows of wrinkles, and his eyeballs widened like a lunatic. Right now was the worst Todd had ever seen him.
“Though, maybe you’re right.” Dean stopped walking and tapped the muzzle of his gun against his jaw. “This is over, and it’s all because of you and your protégé, Birch. He came here to talk to me, or more like interrogate me. In my own home, the shit. What nerve.”
“He was just doing his job.”
“Like we weren’t? If we didn’t, then we could have been killed too.”
“Is that what you’ve told yourself all these years? You covered up a murder for the money, Dean, just like I did.” Todd’s neck was on fire, and there was nothing for him to lay his head against. “Would you just tip me back upright?”
“Why should I?”
Dean had always been a stubborn bastard. “All of what you’re doing right now is accomplishing nothing. It changes nothing! I handed over all the evidence, the original eyewitness statements, the photographs, and…”
“And what, Todd? Don’t shut your trap now. Keep talking.”
“No, never mind. Just let this end.”
“Nah, see, I’ve been thinking the same as you. There is no hope. All thanks to you.” Dean lowered down and put his gun to Todd’s temple.
“Do it. I don’t care. My conscience is clean! How’s yours?”
“Argh,” Dean roared while standing up again. He circled the chair and heaved Todd back to a sitting position. “I can’t let you do this, Todd.”
He took a deep breath, aggravated that it just wasn’t sinking in for his former sergeant.
Todd had already done it. “The truth has a way of coming out. I knew that then, and I’ve known it all these years.
It would eventually come back to bite us.
Well, that day has arrived, Dean. Just be a man and do the honorable thing. You weren’t a shit cop all your life.”
“They’ll take my pension. I’ll go to prison.”
“Probably. The same for me, but we’ll be free.”
“Free? Broke and behind bars? The target of every other inmate? We’d be lucky to last a week. You have a funny way of looking at things.”
Todd had nothing to say to that. If Dean didn’t understand how unburdening himself from that day would be freeing, he was beyond help.
And Todd was a liability unless he could convince Dean the police had nothing on him.
“All the evidence in that box points to me, Dean.” A lie.
The recorded conversation between them. “It’s my notepad, my handwriting.
I’ll be questioned why I hid away the original reports and photos from the accident scene.
They were all in a safe deposit box I took out, not you. ”
Dean met his eye. “A moment ago, when I cut you off, you said you handed over all the evidence. The photos and eyewitness statements, but what else? You said, and before shutting up. You were going to add something. What was it?”
The tape recording… “Nothing. That was all.”
“Screw you, Todd. You’ve never been a good liar. I’m honestly surprised you’ve kept quiet all these years.” Dean leveled himself in front of Todd’s face. “What else was in that box? I swear if you don’t tell me, I’ll put a bullet in your head right now, and then turn the gun on myself.”
As Todd considered his next words, he truly feared they’d be his last. But even if they were, he’d made his peace with that.