Page 96 of Capitol Matters

I blinked hard, trying to convince my heart of what my brain knew.

“Put your hands up!” the investigator commanded.

My father—Grimm—obeyed while looking my way piteously. “Fitch, please,” he begged. “Don’t let him kill me.”

“Don’t talk to him!” the investigator told Grimm. Then, to me he added, “You’re all right, son. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

But he had changed, too. No longer the suited man who’d somehow found me after months of waiting. Now he looked like Vinton, and his bald head gleamed in the sun as he bore down on my father.

“Get on the ground,” Vinton growled.

My father trembled as he did so, kneeling with his hands clasped behind his head.

This wasn’t an arrest. It was an execution. I’d seen it. I’d seen the aftermath of my father’s body sprawled on the dining room floor with bits of his brain stuck to the rug. I’d seen my mother beside him, lifeless and empty, her glassy eyes staring at nothing.

“Fitch!” my father cried out. A desperate plea.

Clapping my hands over my ears, I let the moldy dollar bill flutter to the pavement.

I couldn’t help. Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t watch it happen again.

The pistol fired, and my father flinched away, but the bullet hadn’t gone into him. Instead, Vinton toppled over backward, leaking blood from a hole in the back of his skull.

I hit the ground, too, knowing what I’d done but unsure how. Like my first murder, this one happened too quickly. Scattered thoughts pieced together into action.

I made an investigator—it wasn’t Vinton; never had been—shoot himself in the head.

A wail escaped me, and I doubled over, sinking onto the sidewalk. Breaths came and went in gasps.

I hoped Donovan hadn’t heard the crack of gunfire. More than that, I hoped he didn’t come out and see that I had killed the wrong man.

Someone stood over me, casting a long shadow. Tears flooded my eyes as I looked up to see my father smiling warmly.

“That’s my boy,” he said.

I threw myself onto him, hugging his legs while my body shook with sobs. He smelled like old booze and sweat. Nothing like my father, but I clung on anyway. Long after the illusion faded.

The docks were crowded with ramshackle buildings like this one: hollow, brick and metal structures with broken windows and piles of debris scattered around. Ocean salt crusted everything, and the air stunk of diesel fuel from the tanker ships harboring nearby.

Broad daylight didn’t feel like the time to be doing this. Wicked, seedy things were meant to happen at night, when evil flourished. Imagining the gang loading the kidnapping victims into cars and driving them here atnine in the morning seemed awkward and contrived. I had a vague hope of finding the five people alive, but corpses were much easier to move. I knew that from experience.

Most of the warehouse’s entrances and exits were boarded over. Donovan and I had nearly circled the building before we found a door obscured behind a stack of wooden crates. I caught my brother’s attention with a wave, and we veered toward it.

As we walked, Donovan broke what had become a lengthy silence.

“Fitch, I’m sorry.”

I rolled my eyes. “You mentioned that.”

Picking up my pace put a gap between us that my brother hurried to close.

“I feel like you’re mad at me.” His voice was quiet enough that I struggled to hear him over the squawking of the seagulls overhead.

When he spoke again, it sounded like a question he meant only for himself. “Is this my fault?”

I stomped one foot in an abrupt halt. Turning toward my brother found him far more composed than he’d been at Lock n’ Roll. He wasn’t crying, at least, but he looked so wounded I couldn’t ignore him.

“Donnie, we’re good,” I said. “I don’t blame you, okay?”

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