Page 144

“The moose didn't kill him?” Marj asks.

“No,” Evan answers. He sounds disappointed. “Neither did Simon, but not for a lack of trying… a fact we are all choosing to ignore.”

She frowns. “Shame.”

Baryn makes a small sound beside me that might be agreement.

Mara ignores all three of them. “What he told you is lining up with what we're finding. The launch, Casey's remains, the duffel, the tapes. Once Cebastian started talking, he didn't stop. He gave them everything.”

“His father?” I ask.

Mara's expression changes. “Being investigated. Cebastian confirmed his father helped cover up Casey's death and arranged for her remains to be hidden.”

Evan grunts. “The chief is no longer working, his access has been revoked, and state investigators are going through everything. Old reports, evidence, complaints, all of it. They're not letting Stillwater handle any part of the investigation internally.”

For most of my life, the chief has been the end of the line. Every time the truth reached someone with enough authority to do something about it, that authority belonged to someone who had already chosen which people deserved protecting.

Not anymore.

“And Scofield?” I ask.

Mara exhales through her nose. “Having a very bad week.”

“Good,” Baryn mutters.

“The state is looking at the DUI incidents and the cover-ups surrounding them,” Mara continues. “There are people who have become considerably more willing to talk now that they know the chief can't make their statements disappear. Scofield hasn't been charged with anything related to Casey's death, because so far there's no evidence he knew what Ian was going to do to her.”

“He doesn't get a murder charge for being a piece of shit,” Evan adds.

“Unfortunately not illegal,” Marj says.

Mara's mouth twitches. “The point is, it's out now. All of it. Nobody can put it back.”

I think about being sixteen years old with a map spread across my bedroom floor. Casey with a camera in her hands. Every question that went unanswered because the people responsible for answering them had decided silence was easier.

The people who spent all those years making the truth disappear have finally run out of places to put it.

“Good,” I say.

Mara watches me for another second before nodding. “Yeah.”

There are other things we need to talk about. I can see them waiting between us, and I suspect she can too. Ian told me enough about Mara to rearrange pieces of our childhood I hadn't realized were out of place, but knowing something and being entitled to demand an explanation for it are not the same thing.

Marj pats both hands against her thighs and stands. “Excellent. Now that we've dismantled decades of institutional corruption, does anyone want pie?”

Faun lifts his head from my lap at the word pie.

Baryn looks down at him. “Absolutely not, sir.”

His tail begins to wag.

Marj points at him. “He can have a little.”

“No.” I tighten my hold on Faun.

“A tiny amount.” Marj pinches her fingers together to demonstrate.

“No.” Baryn gives her a look that ends the negotiation.