Chapter 7 #2
“I wish I were, but they've made the formal request. It's just a matter of time before the court makes a decision."
"No." The word tore out of him like something with claws, ragged and raw.
"You don't get to do that. You don't get to come into my house and drink my coffee and tell me that after twenty years of nothing, after my mother spent two decades waiting for justice that never came, now—now—you want to dig up my father's grave and for what? Confirm that it was an accident? That this hitman didn’t do his job because some idiot ran a red light?”
“This isn’t my decision,” Slade said.
"I don't give a damn whose decision it is.” Trent slammed his fist onto the table hard enough to send the coffee mugs jumping.
Hot liquid sloshed over the rims, pooling on the oak his father had sanded smooth with his own hands and seeping into yesterday's newspaper that Trent hadn’t yet found time to read.
"He's dead. He's been dead for twenty years. My mother’s dead. Everyone who your justice could have helped is dead.” Trent's voice cracked on the words.
“Your investigation couldn't solve it. Your justice system couldn't prosecute it.
My father burned in that car. Whatever was left of him, we put in a box and put in the ground, and my mother stood there in a black dress and threw dirt on her husband's coffin and didn't stop crying for three months.
" His chest heaved. His hands shook. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice that sounded like his mother was telling him to calm down, to breathe, to remember that anger was just fear wearing a mask.
He couldn't calm down. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't do anything but stand there and shake with a fury so deep it felt like it might crack him open.
"I was fourteen years old," he said, and his voice had gone quieter now, quieter and in that kind of quiet way his mother had always told him was worse than when he shouted.
"I watched my mother fall apart. I watched her try to explain to me why Dad wasn't coming home.
I watched her stand at that grave every Sunday for twenty years, talking to a headstone as if he could hear her.
" His eyes burned. He blinked hard, refusing to let the tears fall.
"She's been gone three weeks. I haven't even figured out how to move her sweater off the couch, and you're sitting in her kitchen telling me that the government wants to dig up my father. "
Dove slowly moved closer.
He wanted to hold up his hand. To push her away. But right now, she was the only person he had to hold on to.
She curled her fingers around his biceps, leaned into him, and suddenly, he could breathe again.
“I don’t want to dig up your dad,” Slade said softly. “I wanted you prepared for what’s coming.”
“And I'm supposed to stand here and thank you for that?”
“I want you to know that you can fight this request,” Slade said.
“You? A US Marshal is suggesting I take on your office?” Trent's voice steadied. His heart rate slowed to a less painful rate. He raised his hand and placed it over Dove’s.
Her presence made everything bearable.
“Why would you do that?” Trent asked.
Slade ran a hand over his face. He glanced toward the ceiling. “I spent two months with your dad. At first, he was just a job. Just another person the marshals service expected me to watch over. But as hours turned into days, and days into weeks, we became friends.
Jesus, Trent didn’t want to hear this. It was hard enough listening to Silas Monroe, Cullen’s uncle, tell stories about his dad.
About the good old days. About when they would sit out in the river, fishing, talking about absolutely nothing, and laughing their asses off over everything.
But to hear this from the man who’d been there when his dad died?
Trent wrapped his arm around Dove. He needed her strength. Her energy. Her kindness.
“Jack would tell me all about his wife. About how they met and how three weeks later he found himself at the local church getting married.” Slade pressed his hands against the table and stood.
“He would talk for hours about Linda and even longer about his slightly out of control teenage son who had a chip on his shoulder, an attitude the size of Texas, and how it was like looking into a mirror of his youth.” Slade waved a finger around his face.
“You look exactly like him except for the eyes.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Uncle Aaron,” Dove said. “Fighting this is probably a lost cause. Why do you believe he should?”
“I was there. I was driving that car when we got T-Boned. Jack’s legs were pinned.
He was unconscious. I tried to get him out, but the car was on fire and…
and…” Slade turned away and rubbed his temples.
“I was lucky. Broken bones. Burns.” He sighed and shook his head before turning back.
“I’m not sure exhuming your father’s body will give my office any answers other than a dead man didn’t execute his kill order, but an innocent man died anyway, and I still failed at my job. ”
“What else does this Parrish guy have that’s related to my father’s case?” Trent asked.
“Nothing really,” Slade said.
“Seems odd to want to exhume Jack’s body when the hit wasn’t completed,” Dove said. “And one of their own is a witness.”
“It’s all about verifying information.” Slade leaned over the table and took a swig of coffee.
“I have no idea if you’d win if you fought it, but you could certainly delay it.
I’d stand in your corner if you did. I’d give testimony on why we shouldn’t exhume the body because I was there when he died.
But if you’re gonna do it, you need to do it now. ”
“No offense, but it seems like a waste of time to fight it.” Dove patted Trent’s arm. “No matter how disturbing it is. And I don’t understand why you, of all people, want Trent to spend time and resources doing it.”
Slade sighed. “I'm just trying to save him some heartache, considering everything.”
“I do appreciate the thought.” Trent wished the anger would disappear, but it sat in the center of his gut, boiling.
“While I don’t want my father’s remains disturbed, I don’t have the means to fight the government.
Not when I’ve got Sovereign Resources wanting to mine in my backyard, and your ex-colleague doing backflips to make that happen. You want to help me, join that fight.”
“I haven’t spoken to Dutton in years, I'm happy to do a little digging, though,” Slade said. “But I hope you consider at least asking the court to hear why you don't want your dad exhumed.” He stretched out his arm.
Trent took his hand and shook. "I'll think about it."
“I’ll walk you to the door.” Dove squeezed Trent’s shoulder.
“Thanks. Those gators are quite the security system.”
Trent walked to the window above the sink and stared out at the moat, at the gators drifting through the dark water, at the cypress trees reaching toward a sky that was too blue and too bright for a morning that felt like the end of the world.
Behind him, he heard Slade's footsteps. The creak of the screen door. The click of it closing.
He heard Dove thank her uncle, and adding that next time, he needed to be more tactful and more honest from the get-go.
Trent appreciated that. He appreciated everything about her.
She reminded him of the air. Of the earth.
Of the water. Of things that were just always there. Always right. Always what he needed.
And that scared the fucking shit out of him.
He poured himself another cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and snagged the newspaper. He needed to do something normal and reading the paper was just that.
Dove reappeared and leaned against the counter. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I understand my uncle right now, except that he feels strongly about this.”
Trent lifted his mug, took a long, slow sip and did a mental check of his bank account. It was pitiful. Mallor’s Landing wasn’t cheap to run. The business side made decent money, but he sank much of it into the natural wildlife habitat.
“I think fighting it would cost more than I could ever afford, and for what? I’d probably lose.
” He grabbed a handful of napkins from the holder in the center of the table and mopped up the coffee he’d spilled earlier.
Luckily, the newspaper was mostly out of the splash zone.
He glanced up at Dove. “As much as I don’t want my father’s remains disturbed, if it means possibly bringing justice to those who betrayed him and those who he was fighting against, who am I to stop it.
Not to mention, what little money I do have, I might need to use to fight Sovereign Resources. ”
"I'm honestly surprised this is what my uncle wanted to discuss.” She strolled across the kitchen, opened the fridge, snagged some strawberries, and sat down next to him. “But I know that car crash changed him. Not just the crash, but the case he was working.”
Trent nodded absently at that, his attention snagged on something poking out from between the edges of the paper. Opening it, he stared at an envelope with his name written in curvy handwriting.
He turned it over in his hands and tore it open.
A photograph slid out with a yellow sticky note attached to it.
Mr. Mallor,
We have more where this came from. Sell us the property, or we send everything to the FWC and the police chief. You know what happens after that.
Beau & Emma Henderson
For the second time that morning, Trent slammed his fist on the table hard enough to rattle every mug in the kitchen.
“What the hell?”
He stared at the image of his equipment shed—the one on the main property.
Not the processing shed on the alligator farm.
The photo had been shot through the side window.
The workbench was cluttered with knives and scrapers, and laid out across it, three alligator hides—raw, unprocessed, and not a single FWC tag in sight.
Not that it mattered, because for him to keep all his permits, he couldn’t skin a gator on this part of his land.
It all had to be done on the commercial side.
He brought the image closer. A fourth skin hung from the ceiling hook. And in the background, barely visible but unmistakable, Trent stood with his back to the camera, skinning knife in hand.
“Fuck.” He shoved back from the chair. It scraped across the linoleum and hit the counter. He was on his feet, pacing, hands locked behind his head, chest heaving. "Son of a bitch." He kicked the chair.
"What is it?"
He grabbed the newspaper and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and exploded into loose pages that floated to the floor.
Dove didn't flinch. She picked up the letter. The photograph. Studied both.
He should have fucking known that a few bad decisions would come back to haunt him. Fallon warned him. Baily had. too. Hell, Silas smacked him on the backside of his head more than once, all while giving him a lecture on what it would do to his mama.
"Is this real?" Dove asked.
He braced both hands on the counter, head down, pulling air into lungs that didn't want it.
His mother's voice echoed in his brain. Tell the truth. Even when it's ugly. Especially when it's ugly.
“Yes and no,” he said. "I did some shit when I was younger that I'm not proud of. Mostly, I let people do things, and I turned a blind eye.” He turned and looked at her. “If that gets out, I could lose my permits. I could lose everything and Fallon—she’d fucking kill me.”
“She knows about this?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s part of why she and I fought like cats and dogs while we were together and all through our friendship.
She could tolerate some of the shady things I did because I mostly did good things for the Glades, but she couldn’t understand why I allowed Karl to do things I knew were illegal, and if he got caught, it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t me doing it—I’d lose everything. ”
Dove set the photo down. “So, Karl’s behind this?”
“It's always fucking Karl. And it's not the first time he's tried to hold it over my head.” A few years ago, when Dawson had brought Trent in for questioning during the Ring Finger murder case, Dawson warned him about covering for assholes like Karl, but Trent hadn’t listened. “Karl is the only person who knows about this, and I allowed him to use my land to do it himself. But Karl doesn’t do favors. He doesn’t lift a finger unless there’s something in it for him.
So I have to ask, what are the Hendersons offering that made it worth handing over ammunition against the one person who could also prove that Karl had his own skeletons he wanted to keep buried? ”
“You’ve got shit on Karl?”
“Nothing that I can prove, but I know some of the things he’s done. Only that's a two-way street, I don't think either one of us wants that shit storm.”
“This is blackmail and harassment. You need to take this to Dawson.” Dove inched closer, but Trent raised his hands.
“I can’t. Seriously, if I do that, he’s gonna have to call Keaton at Fish and Wildlife, and then there will be an investigation, and Mallor’s Landing will shut down. I can’t afford for that to happen. Not now.”
“You can’t let this go.”
“I don’t plan on it.” He let out a long breath. He just wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but selling to the Hendersons wasn’t the answer.