Page 12 of Of Angels & Absolution

“You read this entire file?” I ask, hopelessness weighing down my tired limbs as I thumb through the huge stack of papers remaining.

“Yep,” he says. “Got a question?”

“Only a million,” I admit with a little laugh.

“Shoot, why didn’t you ask?” he says, spinning the folder toward him and pulling it over.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I didn’t want to look dumb.”

He tips his chin back and exhales, taking me in through the stream of smoke. “There’s a reason people go to law school to learn this shit,” he says. “Want me to give you the gist, and then you can read through for details, already knowing the basics?”

“God, yes,” I say, sinking back in relief.

“Basically, everyone involved in this case is happy it’s sealed, and there’s a reason it can’t leave this room,” he says.

“What does that mean?” I ask, my heart skipping.

“It means there’s a lot of fuckery in this file,” he says. “Maybe even more than the average case.”

“Such as?”

“Basically, as soon as they got the DNA back from her clothes, the prosecutor decided it was gang related and made up his mind about what happened. Then they found some evidence to support that, got eyewitness testimony from a Mercy Soules—” He raises a brow at me and drags on his cigarette before he goes on. “And then a body showed up, no dental records obviously, but it fit her description well enough that they were happy to call it a day, case closed. It was a terrible, rushed, sloppy job, but because of the prosecutor’s track record withthe judge—which is of course not supposed to be a factor, but in a small town, how can it not be?—he was trusted, and the defense… Something was going on there too. In the end, though, prosecutor got a win, judge got one more tally on his list of cases that made good on his campaign promise to clean up the town, reduce crime, and crack down on local gangs. Everybody wins—except the three kids who went to juvie.”

“The defense,” I say, staring down at the pages in front of me, since I can’t look him in the eye. I wish he hadn’t looked at the case. I’d rather have gone to a stranger, hired some paralegal online to dumb it down for me. I don’t want a guy I respect to know what I did.

Dynamo takes a slow drag on his cigarette, slumping back in his chair with his wrist resting on the top of the back of it, which is up against the table.

“Everyone seemed happy enough with the outcome except the father of said Mercy Soules, who got a new, better lawyer for his son. Money doesn’t buy everything, but it does buy freedom. The minute Daddy lawyered up, suddenly the son got out on good behavior and time served, and everyone went away happy. At least everyone who was going to make noise.”

“What about Angel?” I ask, starting to flip through more pages. “The Norths have money.”

“Yeah, I found that interesting too,” Dynamo says. “He was in for under a year, though, so not too long. My guess? His parents knew he had protection in there from some other Crossbones who were doing time, and they didn’t want to bring more scrutiny to the organization, knowing their son was safe and it would be risky to try to buy off a judge. They’ve got people in their pockets, but this guy wasn’t one of them.”

I take a few minutes to absorb that as I look through the file, and then I go back to the beginning. I stare at a grainy, photocopied picture of her bloody clothes in the dirt. I’m glad it’snot in full color. Juvenile trials are closed, and the details were never shared to the public, but I had to look at this picture once before, identify them as the same ones Eternity was wearing that day. The blood splatters slither into my thoughts unbidden at random times or creep into nightmares just when I think I’ve locked them away for good.

Maybe that’s what I was trying to do to the boys too, stunned with the pain of rejection and her death. I couldn’t contain that amount of pain, so I locked away every reminder of her, as if I could seal my pain like a confidential file, never have to examine it too closely again. But it’s been ripped wide open now.

“Talk to me about this,” I say. “The main piece of evidence, right?”

“Until they found the body,” he says. “Which turns out, didn’t have the impact you’d think. They didn’t even bother with an autopsy. But then, decapitation is a pretty obvious cause of death.”

“So, the defense thought they were guilty too,” I say, mostly to myself. “They were afraid what the autopsy would find, and that it would make the murder charge stick.”

“Could be,” Dynamo says, flicking his cigarette into the trash can in the corner. “They rushed a plea deal as soon as the body was found, which the prosecution was all too happy to take.”

“Which means… One of them probably confessed to something,” I say, feeling sick. “Even if it wasn’t murder.”

“That, I don’t know,” he says. “My guess is, we’ll never know, unless you find those boys and get them to tell you themselves.”

Why would one of them confess, if they didn’t do it?

The only explanation is… They did.

They did something to her, and even if it wasn’t outright murder, it led to her death.

I shiver, my skin crawling at the reminder of Saint’s rough hands, Angel’s soft mouth, my own trembling surrender.

“I do know this,” Dynamo says, draping his other hand on top of the one with the missing middle finger and burn scars under the tattoos. “Beheading is not the Crossbones signature kill.”

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