Page 49 of Buried Too Deep

He’s not.

Alan got into Medford’s back seat and hunkered down, drawing his gun from his pocket. It was the same gun with the same silencer that he’d used that night twenty-three years ago. He’d been tempted to throw it away hundreds of times since that night, but he never had.

He’d kept the gun as penance. And as a reminder of what he was capable of doing.

Tonight, it would serve another purpose. Tonight, it was the best way he could think of to redirect the cops’ search for Jack Elliot’s killer. If Medford told the police about the Broussard laptops, the police would quickly connect Alan to the shooting of Broussard’s secretary and to Cora Winslow and her dead father.

Tonight, Alan would give them an alternate, indisputable connection.

Medford would make a perfect fall guy.

Alan had remained hidden for about five minutes when Medford finally left his house, tears running down his face. That made some sense as Medford appeared to be leaving his wife behind.

And she’ll call me crying, Alan thought with disgust. She always called, crying about whatever trouble her drugs and gambling had caused, and Alan would have to counsel her. Cheryl Hughes was an unpleasant mess of a woman. Nothing like Alan’s own wife had been.

May she rest in peace.

The thought of his Anna still had the power to shred his heart. The way he’d found her body in her favorite chair, her blood and brains staining the paisley fabric, still had the power to crush him in his dreams.

It had very nearly crushed his real life, too. The scandal of suicide would have been terrible. He’d thought quickly back then, staging the car accident and fire that would be the story the media shared.

Over and over again.

A bribe to a corrupt ME had ensured that his wife’s suicide would remain Alan’s little secret. The ME had died in the hospital a few weeks later as Alan had held his hand.

Alan hadn’t used this same gun that time.

He hadn’t actually killed the man, either. Not technically. He had held a gun on the ME until the man had taken a handful of his own pills, sending him into a coma.

Alan had been called to the man’s bedside by his wife since they’d been part of his congregation. He’d held the man’s hand and prayed for him to survive. Out loud, anyway.

In his mind, he’d prayed for the man to stop breathing. And he had. Alan had been there for the man’s wife and children in the months that followed. They’d been better off without a man willing to take bribes, anyway.

He’d done all of that while missing his Anna so very much, hating her at the same time for leaving him. But now he felt only sadness. And, in his dreams, guilt.

Cheryl would have to live that nightmare, too, after she discovered Medford dead in his car. Alan might have felt bad about that had Cheryl’s excesses not caused Medford so much pain.

Sniffling noisily, Medford closed the trunk and got behind the wheel. He picked up a phone—not his normal cell, Alan noticed—and typed something into a browser screen.

Alan sat up and pressed the gun to Medford’s temple. “Drop the phone, Medford.”

The phone clattered to the center console as Medford’s mouth opened in shock. “Reverend Beauchamp. What are you doing?”

“What I have to,” Alan said sadly. “Where is Cheryl?”

“Inside,” Medford whispered. “She’s dead.”

That was a shock. “How?” And then he understood Medford’s tears. “You killed her.”

“I couldn’t leave her alone. Nobody would be here to make sure she didn’t shoot up. She’d hurt herself.”

“So you killed her?”

“She didn’t feel any pain,” Medford whispered. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Neither do I. “I’m sorry for this, Medford.” And he really was.

Not wishing to draw it out any further for either of them, Alan pulled the trigger, the silencer muting the blast to a soft pop. He winced at the spray of blood that hit the driver’s-side window.

---