A Necessary Evil(48)
She’d beckoned him closer with her frail, bony hand, and Collin sat on the edge of the bed next to her. She spoke in a voice soft and low as thunder as she told her son that his father had been a sinful man. Collin listened in silence as his mother described how her husband had kidnapped and murdered many young women. She’d known for years. When she was six months pregnant with Collin, she’d stumbled upon a wooden box filled with locks of women’s hair, each tied together with a different colored ribbon. When Martha had confronted Julian about the box, he’d laughed and confirmed her worst nightmares were real. Her husband was a serial killer. He’d used the old bunker out on the perimeter of the family property to hide the girls, take advantage of them, and kill them. Martha had been devastated and grief-stricken, but, being the Godly woman she had been raised to be, she knew she couldn’t divorce him. She was stuck married to a monster.
When she wheezed and struggled for air as tears streamed down her face, Collin had leaned closer and asked her to tell him the rest of the story. What had happened to his father? Martha grabbed at her chest, and for a moment, Collin had feared she might be having a heart attack. But after a few moments of anguished silence, she opened her eyes again, looked at Collin, and told him plainly that someone had killed Julian. She was sure of it.
He’d gone to the gym he owned in town to close up and collect the day’s profits. But he never came home. The next morning, when Martha woke up in an empty bed, she knew he was gone. Her woman’s intuition told her something horrible had happened to him. He hadn’t just run away. No matter what he might have done, he’d been excited about being a father. No, she knew in her heart he had paid the ultimate price for his sins. Someone had exacted revenge for their loved one.
She told Collin how she’d gone to the police that day, and they’d immediately launched an investigation into his disappearance. The detectives worked hard at trying to find Julian for nearly two weeks. Until the day an anonymous letter had arrived at the police department, outlining Julian’s alleged crimes. Slowly, over time, the detectives seemed to lose all interest in his case. Collin showed up at the precinct every other day, trying to convince the investigators that someone had killed his father. But they had just promised to look into it and politely shooed him out the door.
When it became apparent the police didn’t care, Collin became obsessed with finding his father’s killer. No matter what horrible crimes he may have committed, they weren’t his fault. He was a sick man, struggling with the disease of temptation. No one but God had the right to punish him for his alleged sins. He spent his days practicing Judo and researching everything he could find about his father’s crimes, in hopes of figuring out which of his victims’ loved ones had taken his father away from him before he even had a chance to know him.
Within a year, Martha had rebounded and gone into remission. No longer having to care for a dying mother, Collin had more freedom to hone his craft and focus on avenging his father’s murder. He had been at the library one day, searching through periodicals about missing girls who’d never returned home, when he’d found an article about a girl named Addie Jamison. She was the last girl to go missing in Lexington before Julian had disappeared. The article was dated July 15, 2008, thirty years after her disappearance, and the reporter was interviewing her former boyfriend, one Franklin Cartwright of Lexington.
Mr. Cartwright was a local businessman who owned many companies in the city, including the famous Trifecta Lounge, a restaurant which catered to the city’s elite patrons. Collin was about to close the article when something caught his eye. It was near the end where the reporter had asked him if he had any theories about who killed his high school sweetheart. Intrigued, Collin read the man’s answer. “I think whoever killed Addie has probably already paid for their crime. Karma is a cosmic (expletive).” When the reporter asked him to clarify, Cartwright went on to say that people always got what they deserved in the end. In that moment, Collin knew it had been Franklin Cartwright who had killed his father.
“That doesn’t sound like good enough evidence to me.” Franklin looked over to see Giovani Ricci standing from his seat and pointing at Collin. “You just assumed it was him because of an article?”
Collin looked at Franklin with his mouth hanging open.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm and your loyalty, Giovani. I really do. But let’s let the young man finish his story. He’s entitled to a defense. Besides, I’m quite intrigued to hear what he has to say next.”
The Italian-American nodded to show his understanding and returned to his seat.
Franklin looked at Collin and with a flip of his wrist said, “Please. Proceed.”
Collin gulped and looked down at his feet. After an awkward few seconds of silence, he faced the jury again and continued.
He went on to explain how his thirst for revenge against Franklin Cartwright grew into a rabid obsession. He would lie awake at night thinking of ways to make him pay. For a while, he wanted to kill Franklin with his bare hands, but over time, he came to realize he should repay him an eye for an eye. Franklin had taken away Collin’s father, so the best way to get back at him and make him feel the pain he’d had to live with would be to kill someone close to Franklin. At first, he planned on killing his only daughter, Katherine, but finding her alone at the exact right moment was difficult. She was always accompanied by one large man or another, clearly bodyguards assigned to her protection by Franklin.