Dominique didn’t speak for a long time. I gave him space while I absorbed his story. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. It was too immense. Too horrendous. A tragedy worse than I could have imagined.
“I didn’t set out to kill them, but everything she wrote. It ate at me. She held nothing back, Kobe. I read a shockingly detailed recount of that night. I won’t repeat it. Please don’t make me.”
“I won’t.”
“Thank you. She named the doctor and the constable. Of the boys, she could only name one. Jesse. No last name, but she described them in as much detail as she could remember. I located the doctor with ease and watched him in action. I listened to his colleagues speak of him behind his back. I witnessed multiple fights between him and his ex-wife. I observed him with students. He was an awful man. I hated him, Kobe, but I had no intention of killing him.
“What tipped me over the edge was Jesse. It didn’t take long to find him, which is why I figured Yates was full of shit. The boy was well-known on campus. He still is. Infamous among the female population. Feared.Hebecame an obsession, but even then, I didn’t plan to kill him.
“I knew about the charges filed and dropped. I saw the way women dodged him and watched him warily whenever he was around. When they made a petition to have him kicked out of school, I cheered. When the administration let it slide, I raged. But it wasn’t until this new school year began that I witnessed him cross lines with an unsuspecting female student that I knew he would never stop.
“He wasn’t even supposed to be on campus, but no one cared. I stepped in that night before he could… before he could hurt her like he had Angelique. Boys like Jesse don’t change, Kobe. They get a taste for cruelty, and if they get away with it once, it empowers them. It makes them bolder and more dangerous. I saw it happening, and no one was stopping it.”
“So you decided to kill him.”
“I decided to save his next victim from Angelique’s fate.”
“Same difference.”
“I made a plan that night, and it included all those who indirectly had a hand in killing my daughter.”
“How did you find out about Ford and Malik?”
“From Jesse.”
“The night you killed him?”
“Yes. He was drunk and easily overpowered. I made him talk first. I wanted to know everything. I wanted him to admit what he’d done.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, and I made sure he knew exactly who I was before he died.”
The mountain of information threatened to crush me. I had a thousand questions, but the big picture was clear. I’d witnessed our failing system more times than I could count over the course of my life. I’d seen abusers and rapists go free. I’d seen children suffer because their parents knew how to play the system.
I was that child, and no one had helped me.
How many times had Jesse dodged punishment? Would the law have ever caught up with him? How many people would he have hurt in the interim? Malik had already been acquitted of the assault of an underage girl. How empowering that must have felt. What would that have taught him? What did he have to fear with a lawyer father backing him up every time he misstepped? Navid was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Did he deserve the same fate as Jesse? I didn’t know.
Ford’s sudden spiral into depression made sense. The timing lined up with Angelique’s assault. Had it eaten at him? Had guilt swallowed him whole? His actions were not forgivable, especially in the eyes of a grieving father, but he hadn’t let the rush of it take him away like the others. In fact, it seemed to have broken him. Did that pardon his actions? Should he go unpunished? I was not in a position to answer those questions.
Dominique certainly didn’t think him absolved.
“Yates,” I said, zeroing in on the only man of the group who was still alive. “You knew he took off tonight. I told you. You knew Jolie was at the station, and your cover was about to be blown. You hunted Yates down. Were you…” I turned to him. “I need you to be brutally fucking honest with me, Dominique. Were you trying to get ahead of what you knew I was about to discover?”
“Upon leaving my house, yes, that was my thought. I knew my time was up, and if I wanted to fulfill my promise to Angelique, I had to act. I found Yates at the pub and had every intension of getting him alone.”
“You were chatting when I showed up. You bought him a beer and walked out. You left him there.”
Dominique stared into the middle distance, deep crevices cutting into his forehead. “I’m so tired, Kobe. I couldn’t go through with it. He was different.”
“How?”
“I told him who I was. Flat out. No bullshit. He stared at me with the most devastated look in his eyes, and I could almost believe his pain was real. He didn’t run from me. He didn’t deny his part. He didn’t reach for his phone or slap cuffs on my wrists and read me my rights. Ari Yates ducked his chin and cried, telling me he was sorry.”
“That’s all it took? Am I to believe Jesse didn’t apologize at the end?”
“Of course he did, but it was hollow. It was done from fear, not from his heart. There’s a difference. Ari and I had a long conversation. He recounted the night he tried to interview Angelique. He didn’t paint himself in a positive light. His shame was palpable. He told me everything, from calling her a whore to his adamancy that she see a doctor, which she had already tried to do. He recounted his search on campus. His discussions with the administration. He told me how he tried to find the girls and the boy who had come to him for help, but they had given him so little to work with.
