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Noah said, “He was late, and it almost got Josie killed.”
“No,” said Josie. “I chose to go in there alone. There was no threat when I went inside. How the hell could I have known Gamble would come here? How does he even know Brooke? Or Raffy?”
“Listen, Detectives, we don’t have time for any of this right now,” the Chief interjected. “We can hash out blame later if you want. Right now, what’s most important is that Quinn is alive, Gamble is out of commission, and we still have a mother and son to find. Gretchen and Mettner went to the bridge from the article—Old Arch Bridge. Lenore County deputies were able to direct them there, but it’s been closed since that accident. It was shut down years ago. It was too structurally damaged from when Brooke’s car went through the guardrail. They closed it off. There’s nothing there. No one. We pinged Raffy’s phone and got nothing.”
“What?” Josie said. She ran a finger the length of the scar on her face, feeling a brush burn where Gamble had damn near ripped her face off. “That can’t be right. Why would he leave the article if he didn’t mean for us to go to that bridge? That’s where the accident took place.”
Noah said, “Are you sure it has to be that bridge? You think he’s trying to recreate the accident?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “I think that he is. I think all of this is leading to that. He’s taken huge risks committing all these murders. He was careful—using a bicycle, throwing suspicion onto Archie Gamble, and turning the phones off—but he was only being careful long enough to be able to see his plan all the way through.”
“What’s his plan?” asked the Chief.
Noah said, “To expose every single one of Beau Collins’s secrets and destroy his life.”
“And to leave Beau alive to endure the aftermath,” Josie said. “This was always about making Beau suffer. Think about this: Raffy and Brooke went to Beau for help in their marriage. Beau had an affair with Brooke. According to the diary, she was going to leave Raffy.”
“What diary?” Noah and the Chief said in unison.
Josie explained about Brooke’s diary. “But once the accident happened,” she continued, “Beau abandoned her. She was still married to Raffy. He was responsible for her, and she needed a lot of care—still needs a lot of care. Even if he could have gotten past the cheating—which he never would have, given that he was violent toward her to begin with—he isn’t married to the same person anymore.”
“But he still has to live with the aftermath,” Noah said. “Caring for a wife who fully intended to leave him for their therapist, who no longer even remembers him, all while said therapist goes on to become rich and famous, living in a grand home with his wife, who is healthy and unscathed.”
“He’s been planning this for a long time,” Josie said. “I don’t know if he worked at WYEP before all this or if he got the job afterward but he lost weight, dyed his hair, changed his appearance and ingratiated himself into Beau and Claudia’s inner circle at the TV station so that he could gain inside knowledge of their lives—find out all of Beau’s sordid secrets. Brooke said she got a settlement from the accident and that’s when Raffy left her to ‘live in town.’ He must have gotten his apartment with some of the money so that he could start dating Margot without her ever knowing he was still married or becoming suspicious of him. Claudia must have found out who he was somehow. She must have thought he was going to expose them just at the moment they were about to go national. She showed up here with money. Thirty thousand dollars in cash. Maybe she meant to pay Raffy off, but then alone with Brooke, she couldn’t bring herself to do it?”
Noah said, “I don’t think Raffy would have taken the money anyway. This was never about the money for him.”
The Chief said, “Quinn, I know you just got your ass kicked in there, but I need you to focus. If this guy means to end it all tonight with Beau’s secret child and the kid’s mother, where would he do it?”
Josie looked around until she saw Brooke in the back of one of the ambulances, looking scared and confused. “It’s a long shot, but she might know.”
Noah and the Chief followed Josie over to the ambulance. They waited outside while she climbed in and sat on the bench beside the gurney. Brooke’s brows furrowed as she studied Josie. A few seconds later, she smiled and said, “You’re the police!”
Josie couldn’t contain her own smile. “You remembered! That’s great. Yes, I’m Detective Josie Quinn. We met earlier. We talked, and you told me about the accident you were in, how you have trouble remembering things. We talked about your husband and the ‘accident lady.’”
Brooke nodded along, although Josie wasn’t sure how much of the night she truly remembered.
Josie found her phone inside a coat pocket. Somehow, it had survived the attack by Archie Gamble. She pulled up the photo of Beau Collins, remembering what Brooke had said, that seeing his face sometimes helped her remember things. She handed the phone to Brooke. “I want you to hold that. Look at his face.”
Brooke peered at it. Her face clouded, then realization flashed through her eyes. “That’s him! My lover! He’s on television and I’m here. My husband says he’s a ‘lecherous liar.’”
“Yes,” Josie said. “That’s what you told me earlier. Brooke, I know you use your diary to keep track of things you’ve forgotten. You remember how, in the diary, you wrote about your husband being abusive? How he hated Beau? This man.” Josie tapped the screen.
“I—I think so, yes. I would have to see the diary again, but if you say that’s exactly what I wrote, I believe you.”
“Okay,” Josie said. “I’m going to tell you something now that you didn’t write because you didn’t know about it. Your husband, Raffy, made a plan to hurt Beau and some people that Beau cared about.”
“All this time, I thought Beau cared about me,” Brooke said in a small voice.
“I know,” Josie said. “I’m very sorry.”
Brooke looked from the photo to Josie. “I deserve this though, after what I did.”
Josie gave her wrist a light squeeze. “Brooke, I think you deserve much better than all of this.”
“Thank you,” said Brooke. “You’re with the police, right?”
Outside the ambulance, the Chief made a noise. Josie shot him a glare and then turned back to Brooke. “Yes. That’s right. You were helping me to figure out where your husband would take this man.” Again, she tapped the screen. “If he was going to do something bad to him.”
