“What did you do?”
“I looked back at Reeves. He nodded like we both understood each other. Because I did. This was a black site. No way the government was going to let that get out, even if it meant a few civilian deaths. He left the room. Leo was still crying. I told him not to worry, it was going to be okay. I told him what he did was wrong, but really, what would he get via the legal system? Not much. In the end, all he did was slip a girl LSD. No big deal. Unlikely worst-case scenario: They might charge him with manslaughter, go on probation. I told him all this because it was true, and as I did, I took out my gun and pressed it against his forehead and pulled the trigger.”
I cringe as though I’m there, Leo, as though I am standing right next to Augie as he kills you in cold blood.
“Reeves comes back in the room. He tells me to go home, that he’ll take care of it. But I don’t leave. I stay with them. I find my daughter’s clothes. I put them on her. I don’t want her found naked. We put their bodies in the back of the pickup truck. We drive across town to the train tracks. We get ready. I’m the one who heaves Diana onto those tracks. I watch that big engine steamroll over my beautiful daughter. And I don’t blink. I don’t flinch. I need it to be horrible. The more horrible, the better. Then I go home. I wait for the call to come in. That’s it.”
I want to call him names. I want to hurt him. But it all feels so pointless, so utterly wasteful.
“You’re a good interrogator,” I say, “but Leo didn’t tell you the whole truth, did he?”
“No,” Augie says. “He protected his friends.”
I nod. “I also called Westbridge Police Station. Your rookie cop Jill Stevens answered. It always bothered me that she left Hank’s file on your desk and that you didn’t follow up. But you did follow up, didn’t you?”
“I found Hank by the basketball courts. He was pretty shook up about the whole viral-video thing. I always had a soft spot for him, so I told him he could come stay at my house for the night. We watched the Knicks game on TV. And when it was over, I made up a bed for him in the spare bedroom. He goes into the room and when he sees the photograph of Diana on the bureau, he completely loses it. He starts sobbing and crying and begging me for forgiveness. He keeps saying it was his fault and at first I don’t know what to make of it, if he’s just having some kind of manic episode, but then he says, ‘I should have never gotten that LSD.’”
“So then you knew.”
“He kinda caught himself. Like he realized he had said too much. So I had to work him. I had to work him hard. But eventually he told me about that night, about what him and Rex and Beth did. You’re not a father, so I don’t expect you to get it. But they all killed Diana. They all murdered my little girl. My daughter. My life. The three of them got to live another fifteen years. They got to breathe and laugh and grow into adults, while my baby, my world, rotted in the ground. Do you really not get why I did it?”
I don’t want to go there. “You killed Hank first.”
“Yes. I hid the body where no one would find it. But then we visited his father. I thought Tom deserved to know what happened to his son. So that’s when I strung Hank up. Cut him up so it looked like it was connected to that viral video.”
“And before that, you went up to Pennsylvania,” I say. Augie was good, thorough. He would have gotten the lay of the land, looked into Rex’s life, learned about his scam, used it. I remember Hal the bartender’s description of the killer: raggedy beard, long hair, big nose. Maura, who had only met Augie briefly at Diana’s last birthday party, described the killer the same way. “You wore a disguise, even changed the way you walked. But when the tapes from the rental car place were analyzed, you matched the height and weight. Also your voice.”
“What about my voice?”
The door from the kitchen opens. Maura and Ellie walk through it. I didn’t want them to stay, but they insisted. Ellie noted that if the two of them were men, I wouldn’t insist they leave. She was right about that. So here they are now.
Maura nods at me. “Same voice.”
“Maura says the guy who hit Rex was a pro,” I say, because I want this to end. “Yet this pro let her escape. That was my first clue. You knew Maura had nothing to do with what happened to Diana. So you didn’t kill her.”
That was it. There was really nothing more to say. I could tell him about the other clues that had pointed me toward him—how Augie had known Rex was shot twice in the back of the head even though I never told him, or how Andy Reeves, when he had me strapped down, regretted killing Diana but not a word about Leo. But all of that wasn’t important.
“So now what, Nap?” Augie asks.
“You’re armed, I presume.”
“You gave me this address,” he says with a nod. “You know why I came here.”
To kill Beth, the last person who had harmed his daughter.
“What I felt for you, Nap—what I feel for you—that’s real. We did bond in grief—you, me, your dad. I know that makes no sense, that it almost sounds sick—”
“No, I get it.”
“I love you.”
My heart is breaking all over again. “And I love you.”
Augie’s hand starts to go into his pocket.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I would never shoot you,” Augie says.
“I know that,” I say. “But don’t.”
“Let me end this, Nap.”
I shake my head. “No, Augie.”
I cross the room now, reach into his pocket, take out his gun, and toss it to the side. Part of me doesn’t want to stop him. Let it end with a nice suicide. Nice, neat, complete. Rest in peace. Some would say that I get it now, that Augie wrongly taught me to be a vigilante, that just because the legal system doesn’t always deliver justice doesn’t mean I should take matters into my own hands, that I was wrong to do what I did to Trey the same way Augie was wrong to do what he did to Leo and Hank and Rex. Some would think that I’m stopping him because I want to let the legal system work, that I finally understand that I need to let our laws decide these things, not the passions of certain men.
Or maybe, as I cuff him, I realize that suicide would be the easy way out, that if he killed himself, it was over for him, that forcing an old cop to rot in a prison cell with all those ghosts is a far worse fate than a quick bullet.
Does it matter which is right?
I’m heartbroken, devastated. For a moment I think about the gun in my possession and I think about how easy it would be to join you, Leo. But I only think about it for a moment.
Ellie has already called the police. As they take Augie away, he looks back at me. Maybe he wants to say something, but I don’t want to hear it, can’t bear to hear it. I’ve lost Augie. No words will change that. I turn away and walk out the back door.
Maura is standing there, looking off into the fields. I come up behind her.
“There’s one more thing I need to tell you,” she says.
“It’s not important,” I say.
“I met up with Diana and Ellie at the school library earlier that day.”
I know, of course. Ellie had already told me.
“Diana said she was going to break up with Leo after the dance. I shouldn’t have said anything. What was the big deal? I should have kept it to myself.”
I had already figured this part out. “You told Leo.”
That was how you knew, Leo, wasn’t it?
“He got so angry. He talked about getting her back. But I wanted no part of it.”
“Which is why you ended up in the woods all alone,” I say.
“If I hadn’t said anything to him . . . none of this would have happened. It’s my fault.”
“No,” I say, “it’s not.”