Chapter 56
Two and a Half Months Later
I pull my boots on and throw on my coat.
I grab my bag. It’s early November, and the air carries a raw humidity that promises snow.
I pause outside and look to the mountains, which appear as massive, hovering humps in the gathering early light.
Hunting season has arrived, and some wise elk have come down from the higher regions to the safety of areas closer to town.
It’s too dim to see them, but I can smell their strong, ungulate scent—hide mixed with dried hay. In the distance, I hear a reedy cry.
As I head to my car, my phone lights up.
It’s Jeremy, saying hello. He’s on the East Coast, well into his work morning.
I tell him I’m off to the office but was delayed admiring the elk.
He writes back: poor you, halted by all that beauty!
He tells me he misses the mountains. I tell him I miss finding that perfect Pad Thai for lunch.
The “on-and-off” nature of his relationship with the gal he was seeing in New York switched to permanently “off” when he returned.
A month later, he called me. We took to spending long hours on the phone chatting about all my and Jess’s losses growing up, about Mark Coleman and Leon, about Allison, about all my guilts.
We talked about his past, too, about how he grew up in the shadow of his older brother, who became a physician, about how his dad always thought his journalistic endeavors were never going to amount to much and how he found himself constantly wanting to prove him wrong.
We chatted and chatted until, somewhere along the line, we began touching base every day.
We almost set in motion a plan that had him coming out to visit this month, but mutually stepped back from it with some relief, agreeing that I still have a lot to process after Allison, and he has some sorting out to do after his breakup.
We’re tentatively planning on something in the late spring or summer if we’re still up for it—and I’m hoping we will be because, I have to admit, the thought of it kind of makes my heart sing.
When I get to the office, I’ll be preparing for a deposition on the Robbie Ridgeway case. Since the Confession Artist insanity spent itself, I’ve been working hard with Greene and Alderson, who are trying to help the DA’s office pin Clarissa’s death on Aaron Lasserio and Robbie Ridgeway.
We may never be able to demonstrate Ridgeway hit her over the head before she went in the water, that she didn’t hit it on a rock on the way down.
But Lasserio has already sung and maintained that he was following Ridgeway’s orders to stalk Clarissa and scare her off.
Given the other facts—that Lasserio tried to get rid of her personal items and that Ridgeway also hired Lasserio to keep an eye on me because I was looking into her death—it was sufficient evidence to get the DA to open an investigation into Clarissa’s death.
In addition to all the other evidence, that Clarissa died from a hit to the head before water entered her lungs and that Ridgeway’s truck was in the same area as Clarissa the day she was out in the field taking samples before she was murdered, we have a statement from Palmer Edmonds, Jeremy’s connection on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Edmonds wouldn’t talk to Paxton, but he did talk to me once Jeremy put in a good word, and it turns out he has a photo of the graffiti on Clarissa’s car.
Clarissa had texted it to him along with a message that she was getting scared that Ridgeway or one of his men might harm her. The DA believes, at the very least, that a case can be built on circumstantial evidence because he had the most to lose from Clarissa’s studies of the fen on his property.
Not only was one of his sketchpads from his ranch found in her backpack—proving she had some connection to his ranch—but Lasserio worked for Ridgeway, acted as his henchman, and Ridgeway owned, through inheritance, the storage shed where Lasserio kept her backpack after she died.
Greene and Alderson are certain that the DA will assemble a good case against both Ridgeway and Lasserio.
When the elk are finished chatting and begin to move out of the field toward the ridges, where they’ll go higher as the sun rises, I take one more gulp of cold mountain air and go back into my garage to hop in my car.
Jess has been making good progress in therapy, and already in the past two and a half months, I’ve watched her getting calmer and stronger. She’s returned to being energized about her work at Rotical, and she’s also back to her podcast, even doing several episodes on vigilantism.
She and I have come to an understanding that I will give her the space she needs to live her own life and she’ll respect me enough to communicate honestly with me about how she feels.
And Sam? He’s in therapy, too. He tells me all about the sandbox with the dinosaurs that he gets to play with at his therapist’s office.
I’m beyond pleased he’s remained just as talkative and inquisitive as ever.
Deputy Zane is finishing his rehab and will be back at work in the new year. I visited almost daily during his rehab and don’t plan to quit bugging him, either. I tell him he’s the baby brother I never had and that it’s my right to spoil him.
Plus, Vivian, Gus, and Lauren—all strangely linked by Allison—have come together and frequently meet.
Both Jess and I have spent time with them, too.
All three have gotten their fair share of media attention since news of Allison’s rationale for picking her victims went public.
They’ve also decided to give Jeremy an interview on their own personal involvement with Allison, whether in group therapy or simply from seeing her in town in a restaurant, as Lauren used to.
As I drive south on the highway, the clouds above the Columbia Range to my left burn a fiery red. My phone buzzes.
It’s Greene. “Mitchell,” she says. “You busy?”
“Just driving to work.”
“Oh, well, if you’d prefer to call me when you—”
“No, it’s fine. Got you on Bluetooth.”
“Okay, well, I hear you’re one lucky lady,” she says.
She’s referring to the fact that the feds informed me late yesterday that they’ve decided not to go after me.
It’s called deferred prosecution. Because I confessed, cooperated, and helped to catch the killer, and because I’m willing to testify against Railes, who they plan to nail to the wall and put away for life for murder and hate crimes, I’ve earned lenience.
In exchange for a deferred prosecution, I’ve signed a contract for a six-year probationary period in which I must be a 100 percent law-abiding citizen; must cooperate fully with law enforcement whenever they need me to; must testify truthfully against Railes; must be available for interviews, depositions, and Railes’s trial; must get individual counseling and attend anger management classes; and must volunteer community hours at my cause of choice.
If I don’t reoffend, I won’t be arrested or have anything on my record.
In the meantime, I’ve had to give up my Post certification, which means my career in organized law enforcement is officially over. Thankfully, in Montana, a Post certification is not necessary to be a PI, so I get to keep my private investigator’s license.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m very lucky. Sometimes I think I deserve it. Sometimes I don’t.” All I know is the fact that I’ve evaded jail time takes my breath away when I know how many are not as lucky. “But I’m glad to be paying some dues. It feels right.”
“I’m sure it does,” she says. “And how’s business?”
“Believe it or not, in some ways it’s picked up because of the notoriety. There are people wanting to hire me because they think I’m scrappy. I have to break the news to them that I can’t and won’t do anything that’s not by the book.”
“That’s a switch,” she says.
“It’s my newfound way, playing it straight. I have no choice in the matter since I’m on probation. But I have an inkling that even after my six years are complete, I’m going to keep it up. I guess I’ll admit, it actually feels kind of good.”
Somewhere along the line, I’ve figured out that the best way to respect myself is to walk the straight and narrow and be as honest as possible.
Not doing so invites guilt. Invites shame and disgust. And trust me, trying to love and respect yourself while mired in all that toxicity isn’t likely to happen.
“Of course,” I say, “some do walk, but some stay.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Crosbie. And I have some good news about Ridgeway for you. We finally got Lasserio to come clean.”
“What? You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m not. His attorney convinced him it was better to cooperate and give up the goods on Ridgeway to reduce his own sentence.”
“What happened?”
“He says it was an accident, that he was only supposed to rough her up on orders from Ridgeway. Ridgeway ordered him to scare her off from reporting on what she was discovering about the fen, but while he was talking to her, they began arguing and he tried to grab her. When she jerked away, she fell and hit her head on a boulder and was knocked unconscious. When Clarissa didn’t come to, he went and got Ridgeway and the two of them disposed of her body in the river. ”
“Holy shit,” I say. “He actually helped Lasserio do that?”
“That’s what Lasserio says. And you were correct, he was tasked with getting rid of her belongings, but he took them to the shed first because he contemplated having the pack as a type of insurance against Ridgeway because he knew Ridgeway’s fingerprints were on the pack and the sketchpad inside it because Ridgeway gave it to Clarissa when she first went to interview him.
That was all before Ridgeway realized she was not all sweetness and smiles and was intending to expose that part of the land he was trying to sell was being polluted and should be protected.
He’s willing to testify against Ridgeway to lessen his sentence. ”
“Wow,” I say. “What a game changer. It corroborates all the circumstantial evidence.”
After we hang up, for the rest of the way into my office, I luxuriate in the thought of Ridgeway finally paying for what he and Lasserio did to Clarissa.
And what they tried to do to me. But I remember not to be such a hypocrite, that I’ve employed similar tactics in the past. Sure, not as egregious, but still, it’s the reason I’m enrolled in anger management classes.
I park in my lot across from the old grain silos.
A gust of biting wind blows my hair around and I put my hood up on my way in.
If there’s one thing I learned from Allison, it’s that justice is complicated and difficult, and working in law enforcement, whether it’s within a department or on my own, will always be a hell of a struggle.
Violence often goes unanswered. But I know I won’t stop working at it, one way or another. It’s my life’s work, God help me.
As I walk in, I see the poster Jess had framed for me lying torn on my desk, all the broken glass that used to be the frame swept into the bin and taken out months ago. But the torn poster remains on my side table. I spliced the two halves together with tape on the backside.
I read it for the thousandth time:
Justice and power must be brought together so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
As unattainable as it sounds, Allison has delivered me to a turning point: I have to figure out how to try to bring justice and power together in the most ethical way possible, in whatever small ways I can manage.
As I stare at the words, it occurs to me that’s what Allison’s murderous crusade was all about.
And—not that I’d ever say so aloud to anyone, except maybe Jess or Jeremy—as undeniably messed up as it was, she probably focused more attention nationally to some of these issues than I or Jess can ever hope to.
In some ways, as twisted as it was, she lived up to her moniker: the Confession Artist.
For the immediate time being, though, I’m trying to focus less on Jess and more on myself.
I’ve come to realize that I’ve employed my heightened protectiveness of my little sister as a type of shield, allowing me to attend to her and avoid doing some hard work on myself.
In case you can’t tell from the sound of that: I, too, have recently hired a therapist, even before signing a contract that I would, and have begun working through some of my own shit, notably the likely lifelong legacy of Sophie’s tragedy, my failure as a cop and my complicity in the Coleman shooting, the trauma I faced at Allison’s hands, and the harassment saga at the department.
I always figured that last one paled in comparison to what I’d witnessed on the job—all the domestic abuses and sexual assaults—and didn’t warrant a paid counselor.
But now I know that the smaller injustices—all the little cuts into the flesh—add up and leave their painful marks.
Make your anger go from a simmer to a boil.
But like Jess said in her speech in Dallas, secrets are rarely better kept locked away—and knowledge and truth are powerful tools to begin the healing process.
The old saying, the one repeated to me so many times online when the Confession Artist was nipping at my heels, is holding true so far: The truth is finally starting to set me free. The smooth, unpicked skin on my thumbs, which I haven’t slashed with my other nails in weeks now, is proof of that.