Deadline

Jeremy said, “Daddy hasn’t made many mistakes, but he made one last night. He didn’t come back to see that I’d really done it.” He leaned back against the soiled sofa cushion and closed his eyes. A tear leaked from beneath his eyelid, rolled down his cheek, and was absorbed by his beard. “I didn’t want to blow my own brains out, but I hoped to die before anybody got here.”

“No such luck, Jeremy. I need you to clear up a couple of things.”

Eyes still closed, he asked, “Are you going to write about me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well, if it’s deathbed confessions you’re after, you’d better be quick.”

“Willard Strong’s version of Darlene’s murder. True?”

“Close enough. Main thing, he didn’t do it. I did.”

Dawson looked down at his phone to make sure he’d got that. “The Wessons.”

Jeremy opened his eyes as they filled with more tears. He struggled not to cry. “Randy and Patricia.”

“Was their last name really Wesson?”

“No, but I don’t know what their real names were. I lived with them for thirteen years and they took good care of me. They believed in Daddy and his crusade, as they called it.”

“What about the fire?”

“Daddy said it was necessary. He called it martyring them for the cause.” Jeremy wiped his eyes again.

It was a struggle for Dawson to maintain his objectivity as he asked the next question. “Amelia’s father. Suicide, or not?”

He stared hard into Jeremy’s eyes, demanding the truth. Slowly Jeremy gave a small shake of his head, then let it sink deeper into the cushion. “From the time we met, especially after we married, he would ask questions about the Wessons and other things I’d told him that didn’t add up. Daddy was afraid he’d really start snooping after the divorce. I wasn’t the congressman’s favorite person.”

“You’d hit Amelia.”

He winced, but he didn’t defend the abuse. “Daddy was afraid the old man would be out to get me. He said we needed to nip it in the bud.”

“So you nipped it.”

“I knew his schedule, knew when he would be in the house alone.”

“How’d you coerce him into taking the pills?”

“Daddy gave him a choice. Take the lethal dosage, or stand by and watch Amelia die slowly and in agony. He was going to die, no matter what, but if he wanted her to live, he would fake his suicide. The old man tried to reason, then to bargain. He wound up pleading, but in the end he swallowed the pills. We waited there until we were sure his heart had stopped.”

“And left him for Amelia to find.” Dawson wanted to strike him, to beat him senseless for the grief he had caused her, not just over her father’s death but over everything he’d done for a stupid, fanatical, baseless “cause.”

“‘Cause,’ my ass,” he muttered. Carl Wingert’s treachery was propelled only by his ego, his sick, sociopathic delusions of grandeur. Dawson was suddenly consumed by rage. He grabbed Jeremy’s hand as though he would arm wrestle him right there atop Jeremy’s chest. “You also need to answer for killing Stef.”

“Stupid move. I acted without thinking.”

“That’s not going to hack it as a defense.”

As though he hadn’t heard Dawson’s remark, he continued. “I’d been cooped up here for so long, to get out of here and actually do something felt good.”

“It felt good to kill a young woman?”

“I thought she was Amelia.”

“You wanted to kill the mother of your children.”

He turned away from Dawson’s accusatory glare, and his chest deflated as he expelled a long sigh. “If I had to think about it, I couldn’t have done it. So when I saw her—the woman I thought was her—it was like Providence. A sign. Something. If I acted on impulse and did it right then, I’d be done with it and not have to think about it anymore. That’s what went through my mind.”