Kaleidoscope (Colorado Mountain #6)(115)
“For mysterious crimefighters, maybe not,” I replied, “For average citizens like me, I’m thinking it’ll be all kinds of interesting.”
Jacob grinned, curled me closer, pulling me partially over his chest and his hand dipped under my sweater to make lazy circles on my skin.
That felt really nice.
He started talking. “Jon Prosky’s Mom has chronic progressive MS.”
I stopped thinking how nice his fingers felt at my back and whispered, “Oh my God, that sucks.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sucks more, she doesn’t have any insurance or a husband. When she started gettin’ bad, he couldn’t deal. He took off a couple of years ago. What she did have was a son who loved her way too f**kin’ much.”
“Uh-oh,” I mumbled, guessing what would come next.
“Yeah,” Jacob again agreed. “He loved her, a lot of people loved her, but only he got desperate. But then, with the dad gone and no siblings, he was up. He’s also, if you can believe this shit, a seemingly nice guy who did desperate shit that was also illegal shit and convinced himself along the way it was for a cause that was just. Made matters worse he convinced a pack of high school kids the same thing.”
I knew something about nice people being moved by extreme circumstances to do extreme things but I wisely kept my mouth shut on that score and asked, “How did he do that?”
Jacob rolled to his side, wrapped his other arm around me and tangled his legs with mine.
That felt nice too.
“Bills started piling up,” he explained. “Avenues for payin’ them started dryin’ up, and Prosky knew two things. One, he needed money. And two, he needed to be free to take care of his mom as things progressed.”
I nodded when he paused and he continued.
“So he needed to recruit a crew to do the dirty work. He did that and took pains to be certain he was not connected with any of them. Finding the drug dealer wasn’t hard. Convincing him to commit felonious acts was even less hard, seein’ as the guy would get his cut.”
“How did high school kids get involved?” I asked.
“The brainstorm came when he found out the dealer was dating a teacher,” Jacob answered. “Prosky, being nice and having a mission, unfortunately also has natural charisma, and there’s no denyin’ he loves his mom. He conceived this plan, the drug dealer, his girlfriend, a teacher, her brother, another teacher and their brother, McFarland were recruited on greed alone. The kids were recruited to keep all their hands clean. He convinced the kids they were doing something worthwhile, saving a life. The teachers pinpointed the kids to approach and made preliminary connections. The dealer was the trainer, since he’d had some B&E’s in his past, and enforcer in case they got out of hand or balked. McFarland was the good guy to the dealer’s bad guy, keeping the kids from freaking. He also did most of the fencing. Prosky was the spiritual leader, keeping them on target.”
“So did the kid who committed suicide think the dealer was going to hurt him?” I asked, and Jacob shook his head.
“No clue. He didn’t leave a note. But his buds were all brought in when McFarland and Wade started spilling and they talked. They said it was more likely he was devastated that he might have disappointed Prosky and his mom. Part of the recruitment process was to meet her, see what that disease was doing to her, how money could help and he thought he f**ked it all up. Kids that age get overemotional about a lot of shit. Prosky manipulated that, got them all worked up, feelin’ they were doin’ good deeds and screwin’ that pooch would f**k with their head. It f**ked with that kid’s head. Then again, for any of these kids to be willin’ to do his shit, they were all borderline anyway, something the teachers knew. They went over the edge just committing robberies. It wouldn’t take more to tip shit further.”
That made sense. It was whacked, sad sense but it was sense.
But one thing didn’t make sense.
“What was with the girl today?” I queried.
“The girl was McFarland’s brother’s girlfriend. The deal was no one outside the team knew shit about anything. After he got arrested, so he wouldn’t lose her, this guy talked to his woman to explain their mission, giving her the line they were doing bad things for good reasons. She didn’t give a shit about some woman she didn’t know in Denver who unfortunately has MS. She gave a shit that her man was going to spend the next at least two years honing his skills to become an ex-con, one who couldn’t get out and get a job that had shit to do with his degree. She was making rumblings of talking to the cops about a deal so her man’s sentence would be reduced, or even, since according to her his hands weren’t that dirty, get immunity and not do time at all.”
I didn’t like the idea of a bad teacher getting off that lightly, but I could understand her concerns.
Jacob kept talking.
“Prosky didn’t give a shit about all of them going down. They got arrested, he hauled his ass to Denver, didn’t look back and was already setting up another crew. What he couldn’t have was him going down. There would be no one not only to pay for his mother’s care but also no one to care for her as that disease took its course.”
“So he took this woman to scare her? Shut her up?” I asked, and Jacob nodded.
“Desperate act. Then again, it all was, the disease wasn’t going to quit, which means the acts would get more desperate so he was going to screw up eventually.”