I took them, glaring daggers, more upset than I could express, but was it because of the deception or the things he’d done?
I wasn’t prepared to analyze that quandary.
“Keep your hands where I can see them. Are you armed?”
“No, Kobe.” He held his hands aloft. “You can check, but do you honestly believe I could ever harm you?”
No, I didn’t, but I was angry and hurt and confused. A nimiety of constantly changing emotions hit me from every angle, and I felt battered and bruised to the bone, my heart cleaved in half.
I didn’t check his pockets. I didn’t pull out handcuffs or frisk him or read him his rights.
“Get in the car. Passenger side.”
Dominique complied, keeping his hands in sight the entire time.
I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. Not the station. Not a church with a confessional. Not his house or mine or anywhere public where we might be seen or overheard.
The roads were a mess. Progress was slow. I drove to the place I’d been less than an hour ago. A place where the rawtruth would be forced into the open. A place I knew Dominique wouldn’t be able to summon a lie.
His daughter’s grave.
Nothing in Dominique’s body language changed when I pulled onto the weaving cemetery roads. I parked in the same spot I had earlier. The vortex of snow against the black sky made it impossible to see beyond the headlights. It caught in the wiper blades and gathered on the hood.
I hoped Bastian had left. This wasn’t something he needed to witness. After hearing about the killings on the news, the siblings had assumed the truth. Making a pact, they decided to keep the secret to themselves.Vindication, Bastian had told me.Justice.He did something I could never have done, but I love him for it.
As the bodies accumulated, Jolie approached her brother.It’s not enough, she’d said. She wanted the police to know Angelique’s name. She wanted them to know that her three-year-old accusations of rape had been real. She wanted validation for her friend. She wanted Yates’s career. Bastian had warned her off. He said it might jeopardize what Dominique was doing and put him in danger.
He was right.
She didn’t listen. Jolie carried her own guilt, convinced she had failed her best friend by not fighting hard enough on the night of the attack. She wanted a chance to fix it.
I killed the engine. Without a word, I got out of the car and forged a path through the tundra to the grave. The old tracks I’d made in the snow had long since vanished.
Dominique followed, his muffled footfall keeping time with mine.
At the headstone, I stopped.
Dominique joined me.
Snow accumulated on the arched top of the marker, covering the carefully placed yellow chrysanthemums, perfectly preserved in their frozen state. The single white rose was barely visible, blending with the soft flakes surrounding it, like it slept on a bed of cotton.
Angelique Sauvage, the granite read. Better known to her friends as Gigi.
May 14, 2008 – June 4, 2023
Fifteen years old. Nine months after she and her friend reported an incident of rape to a negligent constable. Nine months. Enough time to grow an unwanted baby in her belly before taking her own life.
“Sauvage?” I asked.
“Her mother’s last name.”
I had assumed. Hell, I had assumed a lot of things, so it was time for the truth. “Start from the beginning.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Dominique tipped his head to the sky and closed his eyes. Snowflakes landed in his hair and on his cheeks. They melted against his warm skin, running rivers down his face, but they did not hide his tears.
