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“It seems that Detective Taylor had been doing his own investigation on you.” I slapped him on the cheek until his eyes fluttered open one last time. “In fact, I hear they’ve uncovered a wealth of new evidence from his house in Nevada. What do you suppose they’ll find in there?”
“Fuck you,” he rasped, dangling like a limp noodle from the ceiling as Kodiak and I each supported his weight.
“Birdie will be free.” I leaned into his face so there could be no mistaking my words. “And she will never think of you again.”
With that final blow, Kodiak and I looked at each other, and then let him go, watching him twitch until he stopped moving altogether. He was gone from this earth. And tomorrow morning, the world would know exactly what a sick fuck he was.
“HOW’S THE BABY COMING ALONG?” The woman sitting across from me focused in on my protruding belly.
I wrapped my hands around the bump and glared at her. “Did you just come here to gloat? Isn’t that a little over the top?”
A smile I didn’t expect curved her lips as the district attorney shook her head. “I think I get it now.”
“Get what?” I studied her, trying to figure out what the hell she was smoking or why she was even here. It didn’t make sense for her to pay me a visit. Not when the last I heard she was dead set on crucifying me.
“I can’t even begin to imagine the long, hard road you’ve been down,” she said, her voice unexpectedly empathetic. “How many times you must have felt like the world was out to get you.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that, but as it turned out, she didn’t expect me to. She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a file, the smile slowly slipping from her face as she spread out an array of photos before me.
I swallowed, and it felt like my heart was lodged in my throat as I examined the contents. The room was unfamiliar, but there was an entire wall covered in photographs… of me. Notes and napkins and hotel keys. Pieces of my clothing… items I’d worn ten years ago. Journal entries of my activities, my cons, and even what I was wearing on certain days.
“What is this?” I asked, unable to hide the horror in my voice.
“You tell me,” DA Carrera answered. “We found this in Eric Brentwood’s home.”
The room spun as I considered her statement. It was obvious he was infatuated with me, but this wasn’t just obsession. It was psychosis.
“I’m giving you one chance to tell me the truth,” the DA stated. “If you want to save yourself, now’s the time to do it, Birdie. Tell me what really happened that night with Trouble.”
I bit my lip, wringing my hands together in my lap. Could I trust her? What she was asking required a leap of faith I wasn’t entirely certain I was willing to take.
“If it matters, then you should know that Brentwood is dead,” Carrera added.
That trap seemed way too easy to fall into. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief. “How did he die?”
“Suicide,” she answered without emotion. “It looks like he strangled himself over a period of several hours before he finally worked up the courage to take his own life. A little odd, if you ask me, but it is what it is.”
But to me, it wasn’t. Brentwood would have never killed himself. There was no way.
“I need to see proof before I talk,” I stated, preparing for a fight. “How do I know he’s really dead?”
“I thought you might say that.” Carrera leaned down and retrieved another file from her briefcase, but this time, she hesitated before she handed it over.
“These photos are graphic,” she warned.
“My whole life has been graphic,” I deadpanned. “Let me see it.”
She set the file in front of me and repeated the process, spreading the photos out so I could see them clearly. My heart seemed to stop as I studied the lifeless body of the man in the pictures. It was, without a doubt, Brentwood, but even so, my paranoia made me question it. These could have been doctored. Carrera could be in on this scheme with him for all I knew. I wasn’t in the business of trusting people in a position of authority, and it didn’t seem feasible that I would start now.
All these thoughts must have been evident because Carrera came prepared. Next, she slapped his death certificate on the table. Police reports. Statements from his neighbors. Things I was certain the public would never see. But she was showing them to me.
“It still seems too good to be true,” I admitted, my voice barely a whisper.
“Look, I know this is hard,” she conceded. “But I can’t do anything else to convince you, short of taking you to the morgue to see him firsthand. And given your current circumstances, that’s not going to happen. But let me just ask you this, Birdie. At this point, what have you got to lose?”
