The Red Hunter(108)

I am happy about that, as happy as I can be.

“We know that it was Rhett Beckham and John Didion who were guilty of murdering Chad and Heather, and the crimes against you, Zoey. And that it was Mike who hired them that night.”

Boz stops to look between us.

“So I guess what everyone’s thinking is that your father organized or helped carry out that heist and hid the money. Mike, we’re supposing, felt that he didn’t get a fair shake and that’s why he sent Didion and Beckham to Chad’s place.”

Paul nods, looking solemn, rests his head in his palm. And my body is tense suddenly. Boz didn’t come out here to tell us things we already knew.

“But—you know,” he says, looking back and forth between us. “With everyone dead—Mike, Didion, Beckham—there are things we just may never know.”

Poor Boz. This thing had been haunting him for years.

Paul found me that night because he’d installed the Find My Friends app on my phone. He’d installed the app on my phone when he started to suspect that I had killed Didion. When he figured out where I was that night, he’d ducked out of the hospital and took a car service, following my blue blip on the screen of his phone.

“With Seth gone, and that phantom bag of money, too,” said Boz, shaking his head. “He’s the only person who Mike may have talked to. And the money, the bag it was in. Maybe there might have been some DNA evidence even after all these years.”

“They still can’t find him,” said Paul. “That’s amazing.”

“All that cash, untraceable bills,” Boz said. “He could be anywhere.”

Seth. He was the piece that didn’t fit into the puzzle. I couldn’t believe he’d go to work for Mike. Also, that money. I’d seen it there next to Mike when we were both lying on the ground. Could Seth have taken it and Paul not seen him? Paul claims that it was there one minute, but that he was so consumed, thinking that I was dying in his arms, that he never noticed that it was gone. The idea that Seth would take it and run off. It did not fit. But what else?

“There were other people involved,” says Boz. “Must have been. We know that. I’m sorry. We just may never know who.”

We all sit for a moment, listing to the whoop-whoop of a police siren passing down below.

“Do you think you can live with that?” asks Boz.

A long moment passes among the three of us.

“I think we have to,” says Paul.

It’s then that my eyes fall on a picture I’ve been looking at all my life. It was hanging over Mike’s head as he sat at his desk as long as I’d been coming here. Paul, my father, Boz, and Mike all in the stern of a boat. Florida, I think it was. They’re holding a marlin, a big one, grinning ear to ear. My dad has a beer lifted at the camera, the water a glittering green all around them. That’s when I get it. The third man in the heist. Boz.

We have all made mistakes, done wrong. Boz, Mike, and Paul, police officers charged with the duty to protect and serve, organized the robbery of a drug dealer. Maybe Paul did it to help my father. Maybe he did it for some other reason. Boz and Mike were likely just greedy. Like most cops, they had an idea of who was good and who was bad in this world. And robbing a drug dealer to help another officer in trouble maybe didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Paul had an affair with my mother, his best friend’s wife.

Even Mike didn’t know how bad things would get when he hired Didion and Beckham to get what he thought belonged to him.

I murdered a man in cold blood. I have taken to the streets, fancying myself a hero, a crime stopper, and there are more than a few people walking around this city with wounds that I have inflicted in the name of justice. But some people would just call me a vigilante, a thug no better than any other. Street justice is not justice, they might say.

Who’s right?

Paul turns, and his eyes fall on the picture I was looking at. When he turns back to me, he has his cop’s face on, blank, waiting, giving nothing.

“Can you live with it, Zoey?” asks Paul.

Boz and I lock eyes. “What choice do I have?” I ask.

After a moment, he gets up and moves toward the door. He turns and looks back at us.

“Hey, you heard about that girl they’re looking for? The vigilante. The one that they think killed Didion?”

“Helluva thing,” says Paul, putting his reading glasses on again. He turns back to the screen.

“They say she’s disappeared,” says Boz. “She hasn’t been around in a few months.”

I look at him and smile a little. I hear you, Boz. I get it. We all have to agree to live with, to let it go, or none of us can.

“Hope they never find her.”

“Me, too.”

? ? ?

LATER, I AM ALONE IN the school doing the glamorous work of washing towels and wiping down surfaces. The dojo is a sacred place and must be kept clean. The altar especially. For ours, I have chosen the laughing Buddha surrounded by children to remind me that this place is for turning kittens into dragons. As I wipe his shiny head, my phone starts to ring.

I look down and see that it’s Melba. When I pick up, she’s crying on the other end.

“Melba,” I say, alarmed. “What is it?”

“Do you know about this?” she asks. “Did you have something to do with it?”