Chapter 39
Jamie
Jamie finds himself speeding toward the Drake house. While he doesn’t have enough for an arrest warrant yet, he knows it’s
just a matter of time. But tonight he’s going to talk to Wes as a brother. He’s going to ask him why he lied about knowing
his sister, about why he was kissing her, why he was seen with her just a few days before she disappeared. Was Wes the one
who knocked Jamie into the ditch? Had he simply come back to the gravel road to make sure Jamie was dead? Was he planning
on finishing the job but was interrupted by the woman who came upon them driving down the road? And he wants to ask him if
Wes’s dad used his influence to cover up the crime. He just needs fifteen minutes with him. He’ll get his answers.
He pulls down the lane leading to the Drake house, parks next to Wes’s truck, and steps from his car.
Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot rings out from above. Instinctively, Jamie reaches for his sidearm and takes
cover behind Wes’s truck. He makes a call for backup and, knowing that it could take a while for them to arrive, decides to
go inside the house.
The newly fixed front door is unlocked, and Jamie cautiously pushes it open. The house is dark. He has no idea who is in the
house with him but is confident that the shots came from the upper level.
He takes the steps two at a time, and at the top of the stairs he pauses.
The acrid smell of gunpowder bites at his nose, and dull light from the master bedroom seeps into the hallway.
Over the pounding of his heartbeat, Jamie hears crying.
Harsh, hiccupping sobs. “ATF,” he announces. “Come out of the room, hands up.”
There’s no response, no movement, only the sound of weeping and murmuring. Are there two voices? He moves down the hallway,
pressed as close to the wall as possible, and pauses outside the bedroom door. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” comes a female voice.
“It’s over now.”
Dammit, Jamie thinks. He has no idea what he’s going to walk into. He peeks around the corner, then pulls back, fearful that
he might find a gun in his face. Breathing hard, he reviews what he saw in that split second. Not a shotgun. Three figures
all on the floor. And blood. Lots of blood. He takes a deep breath, grips his service revolver tightly, and steps into the
room.
“Let me see your hands,” he barks. Instantly two pairs of hands go up in the air. From the light of the closet, he sees Lucy
Quaid and Madeline Drake huddled together. Madeline is crying, and she’s covered in blood. Lucy is dry-eyed, but her face
is pale. Next to them is Wes with a hole the size of a fist in his chest, blood pouring from the wound.
“It’s right there,” Lucy says, voice shaking and nodding toward the revolver lying on the floor next to them. “She had to
do it,” Lucy says. “He was killing her.”
“Don’t move,” Jamie says, watching the two women carefully. “An ambulance is on its way,” he says. “Who else is in the house?”
he asks.
“No one,” Lucy says.
“How about the ranch hand? Trent?” Jamie says, peering down at Madeline.
“No,” Lucy says, trying to wipe the blood from her sister’s face, just as Trent appears in the doorway.
He takes in the bloody scene in front of him, and his face goes white. “Oh my God,” Trent says.
“Go wait for the ambulance,” Jamie orders. “Now!”
Jamie tries to get a good look at Madeline’s injuries, and through the blood he sees an angry red welt encircling her neck
and a leather belt lying on the ground next to her. “Wes did this?” he asks, addressing Lucy, who nods, her eyes wild with
fear. “And she shot him?”
“We both did,” Lucy says.
“You both shot him?” Jamie asks in surprise. “Where’s the other gun?”
“There’s just the one,” Lucy says. “It happened so fast.”
“Okay, lie down on the floor, and put your hands behind your back.”
“But why?” Lucy asks, still clutching to Madeline. “He was choking her. I kept trying to pull him off, but he was too strong.”
“We’ll sort through it, but for now lie facedown. Do it!”
Lucy complies but continues to talk. “He wouldn’t stop. He was so angry. I grabbed his gun. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t
listen.”
“Stop talking,” Jamie says. He snaps a pair of handcuffs around Lucy’s wrists, then rattles off her Miranda rights and asks
if she understands.
“Yes,” Lucy says, her words muffled by the floor. “Madeline? Madeline? Are you okay? Is she okay?”
Madeline is still crying, gasping for air and unable to speak, and Jamie takes a closer look at the injuries around her neck.
Her trachea and face are swollen, and small crescent-shaped abrasions line her neck where he imagines her fingernails dug
into her skin hoping to loosen the belt. “Madeline,” Jamie says, “the ambulance is on its way. It’s going to be okay. Is that
what happened? Did Wes try to kill you?”
Madeline looks up at him. Her gaze is unfocused, and small red pinpoints dot her eyes and lids. Broken blood vessels from the attempted strangulation.
She gives a slight nod. “Johanna,” she rasps. She winces as if she just swallowed broken glass. “She knew,” Madeline says
hoarsely, each word an effort. “I think he did it. I think he killed Johanna. There are pictures of what Wes was doing to
me. Johanna was the one who took them.”
Jamie runs the scenario through his mind. Initially, he thought that Wes and Johanna were having an affair, but this makes
sense. What had Wes texted Johanna? Johanna, come on. You know me. And Johanna had responded, No more secrets. The secret wasn’t an affair, it was domestic abuse.
“The baby,” Madeline rasps through her damaged vocal cords. “I think it’s coming.”
“No!” Lucy cries, struggling against her restraints. “No! You have to help her. It’s too early.” Jamie helps Lucy to her feet
and leads her to a corner of the bedroom.
The sound of approaching sirens fills the air, and within minutes EMTs flood the room. They are loading Wes and Madeline onto
stretchers when Lucy asks, “Is he dead?” Her words are lost in the chaos of the scene. Jamie knows Wes is probably dead, and
if he isn’t, he’ll never be able to open his eyes or speak again. He also knows that whatever secrets Wes Drake had, he has
taken them to the grave.
Hours later, back in his motel room, Jamie lies on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
He and Sheriff Colson spent the last several hours interviewing Lucy Quaid, who repeated everything she had said to him earlier.
She entered the room to find Wes choking Madeline, she tried to stop him, and when he wouldn’t she was able to grab his handgun and use it against him.
Though the bullet struck him in the shoulder, Wes kept coming, turning his rage on Lucy and knocking the firearm from her hand.
There was a struggle, with Madeline coming up with the gun and firing the final bullet.
Colson asked Lucy if Wes was so intent on killing his wife, why didn’t he just shoot her with the gun he had with him? Why
slip off his belt and try to strangle her? Jamie thought he knew the answer—domestic abusers liked to inflict pain, liked
the control they had over their victims, and besides, strangling was quieter than a gunshot. In the end, they let Lucy leave
the station. Her story made sense given the evidence. They found the pictures documenting Madeline’s abuse in the desk drawer
in the stable office and the originals on Johanna Monaghan’s home computer. From where they sat, the shooting was justified.
And for now, in Jamie’s mind at least, Wes is still the main suspect in the murder of Johanna. Between the photos of him entering
the barn behind her just before the explosion, the threatening text messages, and the fact that she knew about the domestic
abuse, it’s their best bet, though there are some loose ends he needs to tidy up.
And then there’s the second murder now linked to Wes, though Jamie hasn’t voiced this suspicion aloud. He got there too late.
Wes Drake was brain-dead before Jamie had the chance to ask him about Juneau, before he could beat the truth out of him, and
now he’ll never know what happened to his sister. The thought makes him want to break every piece of furniture in this hellhole
of a room.
He reaches for his phone. He expects the call to go to voicemail, but Tess picks up on the third ring.
“Jamie?” she asks groggily. He glances at the alarm clock on the bureau. Five in the morning. He finds he can’t speak. Grief
has coiled itself around his vocal cords. “Jamie?” Tess repeats, this time on high alert. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” he manages to say finally.
“Well, you picked quite the time to hear it,” Tess says, not meanly, but her words aren’t filled with the warmth he’d hoped.
He wants to tell Tess about Nightjar, about walking down the dark mountain roads, about the man who took Juneau, but all he
can say is “I’m almost done here. Just a few more days and I’ll be able to head home. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“Good,” Tess says. “That’s good.” Silence stretches between them, and Jamie wants to lie here with his phone pressed against
his ear listening to Tess’s breathing until he falls asleep. “But don’t wait until you get home,” Tess says. “Call me tonight.
I want to hear all about it.”