Chapter 52
Allison inches up close behind Sam standing at the window.
“Stop,” I yell to Greene.
Allison taps Sam’s shoulder and says something to him. Sam keeps waving at me to complete our ritual. “Oh my God.” My voice rises. “It’s her.”
Greene puts on the brakes.
Allison sees us stop, puts her coffee down, and grabs Sam by the arm. Grabs him. Sam tries to twist away, but she yanks him to her and drags him away from the window.
Out of sight.
I leap out of the car as fast as I can. I pull my gun from its holster as I run back into the house, into the kitchen, but the back door is open.
“Sam,” I yell. “Sam! Allison!”
Water is running in Jess’s bathroom. She’s showering, safe. I run into the backyard and scan. To my right, more backyards. To my left is a farmer’s field. Beyond it, a wooded forest.
Where Allison yanks Sam, his legs resisting her efforts, into the woods.
I run.
Sam twists away from her grip. He breaks free and darts off to the right into the trees. Allison halts for a moment and yells for him, then continues running straight ahead.
Greene catches me as I enter the forest. I take a second to look around to see if I can spot Allison before I go in the direction I saw Sam dash.
Allison is nowhere in sight. My fear for Sam skyrockets.
I turn this way and that, scanning the woods.
The forest is a sneaky cohort, every pine tree scheming to hide him from me, some areas thicker than others, the more open spaces profuse with prickly bushes grabbing at my ankles.
I think of what they’re doing to his little legs.
“What’s going on?” Greene says, out of breath.
“Sam got away from her. I think he went that way.” I point to the right. More pines. I look down for footprints, but the ground is too thick with brush. “I’ll go after him there. You keep straight. Find her. And, Greene, if you see Sam before I do, do not let anything happen to that little boy.”
I head to the right into a copse of dense lodgepole pines, looking for Sam’s green dinosaur pajamas.
I don’t want to call out loudly and broadcast my whereabouts to Allison, so I whisper his name. “Sam, Sam, where are you?”
I exit the dense trees and come into an opening. More bushes on my left, pines and cottonwoods in front of me and to my right. Pale light illuminates the forest. My pulse pounds like a hammer. Skinny and thick dark trunks mingle among the lighter papery ones of the cottonwoods.
If something happens to Sam? I can’t let myself go there. I have to find him. “Sam,” I call louder. Each step I take elicits a crunch from the dry fall underbrush.
I think I hear something off to my side in the tall bushes. I go toward the sound slowly, holding my gun up, my arm cocked when I hear the click of a gun’s safety unlatching behind me.
“Move and you die,” she says. “Lose the gun.”
I freeze. My heartbeat is jacked.
“Allison,” I say. “Allison, please.”
“You’re not a cop,” she says. “Stop acting like one.”
“Allison,” I say more firmly. I want to scream, What the hell? But it’s not a good time to piss her off. “What’s going on?”
“Drop your gun.”
The barrel of her weapon presses into my scalp. I do as she says, releasing it from my hands. It thuds to the ground. It’s a terrible, naked feeling.
“Now put your hands behind your head and walk.” She pushes me, forcing me deeper into the denser forest. “No games.”
I think of the others she’s killed: Loman brutally with a slit across her throat, Askens by gunshot. My head scurries to catch up with the realization. Allison? My friend? Jess’s friend? She can’t possibly be capable of so many terrible things.
But I can feel the cold metal of her gun against my own neck.
I have my vest on, but it will do nothing if she shoots above my torso.
I raise my arms and walk where she prods, stepping over fallen logs and dry shrubs, realizing she wants to get me away from Greene.
I turn my head, trying to see her out of the corner of my eye. I pray Sam is safe with Greene.
“You raised Leon? Leon was Tom?”
“This is good enough,” she says when we get into a thicker patch of pines and cottonwoods. “Turn around.”
She’s standing five feet away from me, her nine-millimeter pointing at my face. Her eyes are open so wide I can see the whites in the pale light. “He preferred Leon after he graduated.”
It hurts so much to think of him. Allison’s nephew. She raised him. I haven’t raised Sam myself, but I’ve helped extensively. I’d do anything for him, like he was my own child.
Did Allison think of him as her son? How could she not if it was just the two of them?
The air feels like it’s less concentrated, like I can’t draw enough oxygen from it.
Jesus. I want to tell her how it pains me.
At least try to apologize, but I’m trying to read the situation and what could make it better or possibly worse.
“You didn’t back him.” She winces at the memory.
“I was out of town when it happened. He waited a whole two days—suffering—before he even called me and told me what happened. He told me how Railes lied about the knife and shot Mark in cold blood. He told me how the female officer didn’t back him.
And when I got back, you were on your fucking decompression leave.
Jesus. As if you needed that. Then you quit.
Ran, like a coward. Never even checked in with me. ”
Now it’s becoming crystal clear. I did run and hide.
Sneaked in one evening when I wouldn’t have to see hardly anyone to clear my locker.
I ignored all my friends, not just her. And then, not long after I left, she strengthened her friendship with Jess.
I thought it was an innocent development, that they’d started hanging out because I’d been such a hermit. “But, Allison, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t believe you were that officer, the one who wouldn’t support him. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to confront you when I got back into town. I rushed home to him, but by the time I got back, he had already hung himself. And you . . . you were fucking gone.”
She pushes the anguish away and lifts her chin.
“You lied for the scumbag.” Her tone hardens. “You hung Leon out to dry. His word against theirs. Why? I thought you had some decency, some guts.”
“I know, Allison. I backed Railes. It hurts so much to think of Leon. Everything that happened. You’re right about it all, but I didn’t know he was your nephew.”
“It shouldn’t matter. You fucking lied for Billy Railes.” Her voice is sharp in the woods. “What the fuck, Mitchell? How could you do that?”
“You know what Coleman did to Jess, right? She’s told you?”
Allison doesn’t answer. I have no idea if Jess has told her or not.
It doesn’t matter. “What he did to Leon, too,” I say.
“I didn’t know Leon was, that he was . .
.” I stop myself from saying suicidal or unstable.
I need to watch my words. “You’re right.
It’s no excuse,” I say, my voice cracking, too.
None of it is justifiable. Mark Coleman was abusive.
And a rapist. But none of it makes what I did okay.
I feel the full density of it dead center, in my bones, not watching myself through glass.
My culpability closes in on me like a colossal wave slamming me under.
All the shame, all the anguish, all the guilt finally coming fully home to roost. My chest sears with pain.
My knees begin to shake and nearly buckle.
Tears sting my eyes. “Allison, I’ve regretted backing Railes every single minute, every single hour of every day since,” I manage to get out.
“If you had such regrets, then why didn’t you come clean after you quit?”
A second wave crashes over me. Again, I feel the same sense that something like sludge is filling my mouth.
I could have. I had already quit. All my dreams to make detective had vanished.
But Leon was already gone, and I needed to be there for Jess and Sam.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of being mired in it all over scumbag Mark Coleman when I needed to stay strong and unencumbered for her and Sam for something he caused.
But here I stand—a total scumbag myself, causing endless pain and devastation.
“Thomas cared about him,” she says about Coleman as if she’s read my mind.
“I know he did but, Allison . . .” I drop my hands and open my palms to her like a sacrifice. “I’m so sorry.”
But even I can hear how pathetic the apology sounds, a single drop of water out in the dry desert.
“Hands back up. Now.” Her breathing grows more rapid.
I put them behind my head again. Allison is good with a gun. I’m not about to tempt her. A head shot would be easy for her. And here I stand with shaking knees right before her.
“The others.” Her voice hisses, filled with wrath. “I haven’t cared about seeing their faces, but yours, yours I want to see. I thought you had courage.”
It’s so spot-on my breath catches. This woman is going to shoot me. “I’ve already confessed,” I blurt out.
“Don’t outright lie, Crosbie, again.”
“I did. There’s an article that’s going to drop in a few hours.
I didn’t want to just throw it out on social media.
I wanted to be more respectful, thorough, like Tim Mooney.
I wanted it to be complete—for you, for Jess, because I thought that’s what you, the Confession Artist, wanted. Something complete.”
I take a gulp of cold air but my lungs will barely let it in.
Shame, fear, and even exhaustion crowd my chest. And deep, deep sorrow for this entire fucked-up mission Allison has embarked on—all of it born the day Railes shot Coleman and I didn’t back Leon.
I have no idea yet how Allison is connected to all the other victims, but I do understand that I could cry for a year straight, day and night, week after week, month after month, and it wouldn’t be enough.