The Masked Truth(76)

She goes quiet again.

“I know that silence doesn’t mean you believe me. It means you don’t want me to be disappointed when I find out I’m wrong. I’m not going to do anything stupid, Mom. The evidence will exonerate him. I’m certain of that.”

“I hope you’re right, baby.”

I don’t even have time to process the implications of that manifesto before Detectives Buchanan and Wheeler return. They don’t talk to me. They want my mother, because clearly, despite being only six months from the age of majority, I’m still a child who cannot be told “important stuff.” I am, however, old enough to know when important stuff is being discussed and get my ass someplace I can eavesdrop.

Max is about to be charged with six counts of murder.

It’s not just the manifesto or the fact that his prints were found on a gun. Two more weapons have been recovered: Predator’s and Gray’s guns. Both have Max’s prints on them.

That is, of course, impossible. That is to say, it’s impossible that he actually touched those weapons. Yet his prints are on them, which, combined with the manifesto, means he was thoroughly and completely framed … before we ever set foot in that building Friday night.

I’m no computer whiz, but I presume it would be possible to get the manifesto into Max’s computer, dated to look as if it had been there before Friday. They could then have gotten his prints from Friday, put them on the other weapons and then dumped both in the warehouse. But I don’t think that’s what happened at all. It’s too haphazard. Gray was not haphazard. He didn’t take us captive and then, when things went wrong, kill us all and later say, “Shit, we left witnesses. Wait! One’s a schizophrenic. Let’s pin it all on him!”

Even as I’m thinking that, I stop. Mentally rewind.

When things went wrong, kill us all.

That’s not what happened, is it? I remember Sandy dumped in that room. That was always the plan.

Kill us all.

I should be dead. I wasn’t supposed to be marched down that hall by Predator and released—I was supposed to be marched down that hall, shoved into that room and shot.

If Gideon hadn’t protested, that’s exactly what would have happened to me. Gideon blew everything to hell. And Gideon saved my life.

We were all supposed to die. And Max would take the fall.

The hostage scenario was to keep us calm. Convince us we’d all be free soon, and then kill us, one by one. Instead of fighting back, we’d happily walk down that hall to our deaths, thinking only of freedom, a few steps away.

Once we were dead, all they had to do was frame Max. They’d have killed him last to make it look like a suicide. One gun—Predator’s—would have been responsible for all deaths. They only had to put Max’s prints on it, which would have been easy enough to do while he was lying there, dead. The manifesto was already on his computer, ready to be found in the wake of the tragedy.

Why?

Why would anyone want seven therapy kids dead? How could we have any possible connection beyond that weekend?

I don’t know. Right now, I don’t care. Because Max is about to be arrested and charged with six counts of murder.





MAX: REALITY


Reality: the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.



Max has been clinging to the certainty of exoneration. The reality, however … yes, the reality is much different, and while his mother might insist no charges will be laid, she has not helped allay his fears. They sit by the window. He’s writing. She’s staring out, searching for words that don’t come, until finally she says, “Is there any chance …?”

“That your son gunned down six people?” he says, not looking up from writing.

“Certainly not. But Mr. Robb … your lawyer …”

“I know who Mr. Robb is, Mum.” He puts down his pen. “The drugs alleviate the mental confusion. They don’t add to it.”

“Yes, well, Mr. Robb needs to know if there is a possibility, however remote, that you did anything Friday night. Perhaps involving the boy who accidentally shot himself. You said you tried to stop him. If you grappled for the gun, or if you even grabbed it …”

“I didn’t touch Aaron or the gun. Not while he was holding it. Riley says—”

Her lips tighten. “I don’t care what this Riley says. You are putting far too much stock in the words of a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“Seventeen-year-old girl, who is also my sole witness until Brienne recovers. Riley’s dad was a police detective, which means she knows far more about crime scenes than I do. With Aaron, she demonstrated from the physical evidence that I was not within contact distance at the time of the shooting.”

“This girl’s father was shot, wasn’t he? Killed in the line of duty?”

“Yes.”

“And she herself witnessed the death of the couple she babysat for?”

“Yes …”

“There aren’t any suspects yet in that case, are there?”

He blinks at her, wondering for a moment if his meds are working, because she can’t possibly be insinuating what she seems to be.

She continues, “It seems terribly coincidental that she’d be caught up in this only a few months after that tragedy.”