A Necessary Evil(49)

Then one day when he was watching Franklin and Kitty at the park, he saw they had a pretty, young, blonde-haired girl with them. When Collin saw the way the old man doted on the little girl, he knew he had to take her if he was ever going to get Franklin to confess.

But before he could formulate a plan to snatch the little girl, his mother got sick again. This time, she declined in a matter of weeks, and by September of 2013, she was once again on her deathbed. But the doctors made it clear to Collin that this time, there would be no recovery, no remission.

On that last day of his mother’s life, Collin had sat at his mother’s bedside and held her hand. She was wheezing and struggling for every breath. It made him feel horrible and helpless. Not only seeing his mother this way, but knowing that she was dying with a broken heart. No matter what Julian McAllister had done, Martha had loved him. She’d loved him, and she’d lost him, and it was all Franklin Cartwright’s fault.

Collin told his mother of his plan to seek vengeance for his father’s murder. Her eyes opened wide and tears streamed down her face. With ragged breaths and trembling hands, she reached for his hand and squeezed it the best she could. She used her final words to tell him it was never too late to change—to end the cycle of violence.

He knew what his mother wanted, but his desire to see Franklin pay outweighed even his mother’s dying wish. She passed away that night without saying another word, and Collin immediately put together his plan.

He followed Franklin’s daughter Katherine and her daughter everywhere they went, waiting for the perfect opportunity. But he realized quickly that he needed to practice his plan before he tried to snatch the young girl. He had to get it just right, so he set out to find similar girls with whom he could hone his skills. Over the course of two years, he’d successfully taken six girls, held them in The Vault, and killed them the same way he planned on killing Mollie.

Of course, Frankie knew the grim details of what he’d done to the girls while they were in his possession, but he didn’t want to interrupt Collin’s defense, so he kept quiet and let him finish pleading his case. Besides, he wasn’t doing himself any favors, and Frankie was more than happy to let him continue to seal his own fate.

When he finally got to the part of the story where he had kidnapped Mollie from the mall parking lot, he made no excuses for his actions. He was righteously indignant. Collin truly believed he was doing God’s work. That he had every right to take Franklin’s granddaughter, hold her captive in his family’s bunker, and use her as leverage to get Franklin to confess his sins publicly and turn himself over to the police.

Collin stopped talking suddenly and hung his head. He remained silent, and it was so quiet in the warehouse, Frankie could hear the drip-drop of water falling from the rafters. But just when Frankie was about to shove Collin back down in his seat and dismiss the jury to begin deliberations, Collin cleared his throat and spoke again.

“I am not the villain here. I’m merely a son seeking justice for his murdered father. A son who never got to know his father because this man,” he pointed directly at Frankie, “murdered him in cold blood. This man. Your so-called benevolent boss. Your magnanimous leader. You all know what he’s really capable of. All I wanted was to make him acknowledge his crimes. Admit he took a father away from his son. Pay for his sins.” He hung his head again, and Frankie thought, for a moment, he saw tears in Collin’s eyes. Collin wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I regret the methods I had to employ to accomplish this. I wish I didn’t have to kill those girls.” He looked up and pointed at Frankie again. “But it’s your fault. None of them would have died if it wasn’t for you. Their blood is on your hands.” He turned to the jury. “If you’re going to kill me no matter what I say, then all of this…everything I’ve said…is pointless. But at least now you know the truth about your boss. At least now he can no longer hide behind his so-called good deeds. His secret is no longer a secret. Everyone now knows Franklin Cartwright is a monster.”

Without saying another word, Collin sat back down in his chair and stared straight ahead.

“Well,” Frankie said as he stood, tugged on the hem of his suit jacket, and addressed the jury. “I guess the defense rests.”





Chapter 25




Mollie



She was nervous being in the interview room of a police station. Mollie wasn’t sure why, exactly. It just gave her an uneasy feeling to be sitting at a cold, metal table in a room where the heat had apparently been turned back a few notches. She vaguely remembered seeing an episode of Law & Order: SVU where Lieutenant Benson instructed the other detectives to make the interview room colder in order to make the suspect uncomfortable. But she wasn’t a suspect. She was the victim. So why did she feel so anxious?

Mollie’s hands were wrapped around a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. She didn’t regularly drink coffee, but considering the early hour and the fact that she and Laurel had stayed up talking until three in the morning, she sipped at it anyway. Kitty sat next to her in the matching metal chair, checking her emails from her phone.

Just when Mollie thought she was going to lose her mind from boredom, Detective Jamison opened the door, stepped inside, and sat across from her.

“Thank you for coming in, Mollie,” he said with a curt nod.