Chapter 35
Reagan
The courtroom is smaller than I expected. Quieter. Due to the nature of the case, the judge ordered the trial closed. No reporters. No spectators. Just the essential parties: the judge, the jury, the lawyers, a court stenographer, and the handful of people directly involved.
At the defense table is Shane.
He sits in a suit that doesn’t fit him right. His lawyer whispers something in his ear, but Shane isn’t listening. He’s staring at me. Those blue eyes that have done nothing but lie now burn with something that looks a lot like betrayal.
I look away.
Mason takes the stand first. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and khakis. Slicked-back hair. He looks uncomfortable as the prosecutor, a sharp-faced woman named Margaret Floyd, stands before him.
“Mr. Bloom, how do you know the defendant?”
“Blue, I mean, Shane, is my neighbor. We grew up together. Joined the same MC.”
“And you were expelled from that MC about eighteen months ago, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you tell the court why?”
“Objection,” Shane’s lawyer, Gonzales, says. “Relevance.”
“Overruled,” the judge says. “You may answer the question, Mr. Bloom.”
Mason’s jaw tightens. “Shane accused me of having sex with Reagan. He planted photos on my phone to make it look real. Reagan tried to tell the truth, that nothing ever happened between us, but Shane convinced the club she was just scared of me, that I’d threatened her.
The club believed him and kicked me out. ”
“But you weren’t involved with her?”
“No. She was fourteen. I saw her as a kid sister, nothing more.”
“Why would Mr. Fletcher frame you for something so compromising?”
Mason looks directly at Shane. “Because I figured out what he was doing to her. I tried to warn Reagan, tried to get her to see how sick he was. Shane needed me gone so he could keep controlling her.”
“And what was the defendant doing to her?”
Shane’s lawyer objects again. The judge overrules. Mason hesitates. Eventually, he manages to tell the whole story. I bury my gaze in my journal and pretend no one is looking at me.
“Mr. Bloom, what happened on the night of March 15th?” Floyd asks.
“I heard a scream in the middle of the night coming from Reagan’s house. I thought her mother was beating her again, so I ran over there.”
“Did her mother beat her frequently?”
“Yes. She was very…violent with Reagan. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I drove Reagan myself to the ER last January after one of their fights.”
Floyd gives the jury one of those looks you watch in legal thrillers. It’s like, “Did you hear that? Did you fucking hear that?” Then she returns to Mason. “Continue, please. What happened when you reached their house?”
“I banged on the door a lot, but no one opened. I heard her mother yelling and swearing. I heard someone else talking, a man, and then something like broken glass, so I kicked the door open and ran inside.
“There was like a thud and groans. Then no one was shouting anymore. I called Reagan’s name multiple times, searching for her. She yelled back, and I followed her voice upstairs. She kept shouting, ‘Hurry. He’s trying to escape.’”
“He? Who is he?”
“When I reached her room, I saw Shane. He was halfway through the window, and Reagan was holding him from behind, from his cut,” Mason imitates the hand movement, “trying to stop him from leaving.”
“Did you see anything else?”
Mason nods somberly. “Reagan’s mother was on the floor, covered in blood.”
“Was she dead?”
“I didn’t know at the time. Reagan was yelling for help, so I crossed the room and pulled Shane back inside. That’s when I saw the knife.”
Floyd goes to her table and brings a labeled plastic bag with a knife in it for everyone to see. “Is this the knife you saw?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She says something about registering evidence of the murder weapon.
Shane shoots up from his seat. “He’s lying! I didn’t kill her. He did!”
The judge’s gavel comes down. “Order.”
The lawyer pushes Shane back down to his seat with a scolding glare, and the judge prompts Mason to continue.
“He wrestled me, swung that knife at me. It was happening too fast. I managed to get a grip on his arm and squeezed the knife out of his hand, but then he punched me, knocked me down on my as—back and kicked me. I tried to fight back, to hold him off, but he managed to jump out of the window anyway and ran away.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“Reagan was bent over her mom, holding a phone. I assumed she was calling 911 as she checked her mother’s pulse. When I got back on my feet, Reagan said the police were on their way, but her mother wasn’t breathing. I tried CPR, but… She was far gone.
“As we waited for the police, I asked Reagan what happened, and she said her mother found them together, Reagan and Shane, in bed, and she flipped. Shane threatened her to shut up, but she smashed his head with a lamp and threatened to tell on him, so he pulled his knife and stabbed her.”
“Was there anyone else in the house?”
“Not that I know of. Reagan’s dad no longer lived in that house, not since…last year. He had a stroke and moved to a nursing home. I didn’t see anyone else that night.”
Floyd walks to her table. “Thank you, Mr. Bloom. No further questions.”
The defense grills Mason, tears apart his testimony, even accuses him of murdering my mother himself.
That’s what Shane has been saying. He did come to my room that night, with the intention to fuck me, but he saw Mason in my bed and got jealous.
They got into a fight. Mother came in. She fought Mason, not Shane, and that was when Mason stabbed her with Shane’s knife.
Shane’s story says Mason and I staged the whole thing to frame Shane for murder. The defense even uses Shane’s exact words every time I’ve tried to tell the truth about what happened between us: she has an overactive imagination.
But, unlike me, Shane has never written a story in his life. He has learned nothing about substance, details and evidence. He doesn’t know how to weave a plot so tight it becomes so believable, far more believable than the truth.
Gonzales’s argument falls apart with every question. It’s Shane’s DNA that is found inside of me, not Mason’s. It is Shane’s fingerprints that are on the knife, not Mason’s. It is Shane who fled a crime scene like a chicken, not Mason.
Who has an overactive imagination now?
I sit in the witness box next, my hands folded in my lap to keep them from shaking. Floyd approaches me with the same careful professionalism.
“Miss Fletcher, Reagan.” Floyd’s voice cuts through the silence. “Can I call you Reagan?”
I nod.
“How do you know the defendant?”
Here goes nothing. I state the obvious. “Shane is…my brother.”
“And the victim?”
“Sadie Fletcher was my mother, our mother.” The woman who used me as her punching bag but never laid a hand on him.
The monster who knew her son was fucking his sister and turned a blind eye but at the same time punished her whore daughter for it.
The evil I banished in my stories over and over until it finally came true.
“Can you tell the court, in your own words, what happened on the night of March 15th?”
I take a breath. The air feels too thin, like there isn’t enough oxygen in the room.
“I was in my bedroom.” Well, it was Shane’s bedroom before he left and joined the MC.
Then it became the guest room. It only became mine when he forced Mother to let me have it.
“It was late, around midnight, when I heard tapping on the window, and then Shane came in.”
“Your brother came into your room through the window? Why? Had he lost his key to the front door?”
“Objection.” Gonzales rolls his eyes. “Speculation.”
“Sustained. Please rephrase,” the judge says.
“Is it normal behavior for your brother to enter the house through your window?” Floyd asks.
I rub my fingers over my mouth. “No, but he’s been doing that for over two years now, for…obvious reasons.”
“What reasons, Reagan?”
I tell them everything from the day I got my period to the night of March 15th.
I tell them how I trusted him. How I loved those visits at first. How I waited for them.
And I tell them how much I dreaded them later, the vile things he threatened if I ever closed that window to stop him from coming in.
The jury shifts uncomfortably. One woman’s hand flies to her mouth.
Then I tell them in great detail about the night Shane forced himself on me and killed our mother to silence her after she found out. The same story Mason told. The story backed with irrefutable evidence.
Gonzales tries his magic on my person and testimony, too.
He questions my sanity because of my suicide attempt.
He questions my credibility, referencing the time Shane lied about Mason as if the lie was my own.
He questions my silence for the past two years and, finally, the motive behind my brave testimony.
I don’t take any of it personally. He’s doing his job. I’ve been dragged through the mud for way less. I just answer the questions. I even let myself cry at the end. This isn’t a cross-examination. It’s a simple interview about my greatest work yet.
The closing arguments come the next day.
Floyd stands before the jury with confidence. “Members of the jury, you’ve heard testimony about years and years of physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse. About a fourteen-year-old girl trapped in fear, in an endless nightmare created by the very people who should have protected her.
“The defense will try to tell you that Reagan Fletcher is unreliable.
That her mental health issues make her testimony suspect.
But I ask you to consider this: what would your mental health be like if you lived through what she has?
If you were violated repeatedly by someone you trusted?
If you had watched your mother die trying to protect you?
“The defense will try to tell you Reagan Fletcher’s testimony seeks revenge, and the defendant is innocent of her lies. But the medical records don’t lie. The DNA tests don’t lie. The fingerprints and the murder weapon don’t lie.
“We have an eyewitness who corroborates every part of Reagan’s story. Shane Fletcher raped his own sister and killed his mother to keep his crimes hidden. And now it’s time for him to face justice.”
The defense’s closing is predictable. He paints Shane as a young man who made mistakes. He questions my credibility. He suggests alternative theories to plant doubt.
But I can see it in the jury’s faces. His story doesn’t win this competition.
The jury deliberates for six hours. When they return, the forewoman stands.
“On the count of murder in the first degree, how do you find?” the judge starts.
“Guilty.”
“On the count of sexual assault of a minor?”
“Guilty.”
“On the count of incest?”
“Guilty.”
The judge’s gavel comes down. “The defendant will be remanded into custody pending sentencing.”
Shane’s face drains of color. His lawyer is already whispering about appeals, but Shane isn’t listening. He’s looking at me.
This time, I don’t look away.
The sentencing hearing is brief. The judge looks down at Shane, his face barely neutral.
“Mr. Fletcher, you have been found guilty of heinous crimes against your own sister.
Crimes that began when she was a child and continued for years.
And when your mother finally tried to protect her daughter, you murdered her in cold blood.
“This court finds no mitigating circumstances. No reason for leniency. You are lucky the prosecutor didn’t ask for the death penalty. You are hereby sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.”
The bailiffs move to take Shane away. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t utter a word until he catches my gaze. “I love you, Reagan. I’ve always loved you, baby girl.”
“I loved you, Shane. You never did.”