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He sighed. “She didn’t want to believe she had missed her daughter’s true feelings about med school, but when I explained how Lucy adored her and wanted to be like her, she came to terms with the idea. I think.”
Maureen made a motion with her hand for him to continue.
“I had no idea how far Lucy was going with her research until the day before she was murdered. She mentioned she’d met a young man who was helping her from that gritty perspective. I don’t think she meant to say as much, but she did.”
“You’re saying she was talking to someone involved in the trafficking?”
He nodded. “I didn’t know that for sure until after ...” He drew in a heavy breath. “Anyway, I warned her she needed to discuss this with her mother and that she needed to be more careful. This was far too dangerous. She promised she wouldn’t see him again and she would talk to her mother.” He paused to collect himself. This was the worst travesty of all. His terrible, terrible mistake. “Sadly, I believed her.”
“You have a teenage daughter—they lie,” Maureen ranted. “You should have known this.”
“I was busy at work and ...” He shook his head. “I suppose I just wanted to believe her. It was easier. She’d made me promise never to tell a soul, and believing her gave me the easiest out.”
Maureen only glared at him now.
Didn’t matter. She couldn’t possibly make him feel worse than he already did.
“I couldn’t get the idea that she was taking far too many risks out of my mind, so I called her. It was the day she ... died. She didn’t answer or return my calls. I suppose she didn’t want to hear my warnings anymore. I left her several voice mail messages. I had done some research into the family. I’d deduced—based on the things she had told me—what she was investigating, and none of it was good. She was playing with fire, and I was terrified for her.”
He closed his eyes and thought of that bastard Ray Johnson, who had come to his home and warned him what would happen if he opened his mouth. How did men like that get away with their evil deeds? No one in the family had ever been arrested. Maybe the evidence wasn’t there, but the innuendos were. Still, no one had ever been able to stop them.
The one thing Bart knew for a certainty was that Raymond Johnson Junior, a.k.a. Ray, had a younger brother named Ian, to whom Bart suspected Lucy was talking. He was likely her source, and he was somehowinvolved in what happened to her. Bart was sure of it. Why else would he have been hidden away only days after her murder?
God, he didn’t even want to think about the rest.
Bart should have gone to Louise as soon as he recognized Lucy was skating too close to danger. He should have gone to her father ... someone. But he had not, and now she was dead. What if he could have stopped her murder?
The question gutted him. He could scarcely bear to even consider the possibility.
“What exactly did you tell Louise about this family?”
“I told her what I just told you.” He considered the rest. He’d broken laws ... Ruth would never forgive him. Worse, Finley wouldn’t understand. “You see,” he went on, “I was so certain of what I believed—particularly after the younger son disappeared—that I started to follow the older brother. I took vacation days from my work and tailed him like I knew what I was doing. Finally, and I’m sure by the grace of God, I discovered where the missing brother was. He was in a warehouse—an old closed-down warehouse—that his brother visited each day about the same time. I foolishly thought all I had to do was prove it—whatever it was.”
“So you broke in to the warehouse,” Maureen suggested.
Bart nodded. “After I saw the brother take food there a third time, I waited until a couple of hours after he left, and I went inside. Based on his routine until that point, he wouldn’t be coming back before the next day. Getting in wasn’t that difficult. I had seen where he hid the key. Apparently, he worried about forgetting it or keeping it with him.” Who knew what the bastard had been thinking.
“Anyway, when I got inside the warehouse it was empty. The younger brother heard me come in, I think, because he started to demand why I had come back. Obviously, he thought I was his brother. He kept asking why I didn’t just kill him and put him out of his misery. He wailed ...” The agonizing cries echoed in Bart’s brain.
He closed his eyes, remembered just standing there and listening. The man had cried and pleaded. He wanted to die.
“What did you do?” Maureen demanded, clearly horrified.
Bart opened his eyes. “Nothing. To do anything would have been to sacrifice my wife and daughter. The bastard—the older brother—had found my voice mails on Lucy’s phone. He warned that if I told anyone what I knew, he would kill my family. He bragged about all the things he and his father did without ever getting caught and if I didn’t believe him, I should just check it out. And I did. He was right. There were endless crimes the family was thought to be responsible for, but no one could ever touch them.”
“I want the names,” Maureen demanded, moving toward him. “I swear to God, I will kill you myself if you don’t tell me.”
Bart stared up at her. “Then you’ll have to kill me, because I cannot tell you, and even if I was willing to take the risk, it would not bring Lucy back. And it would in all likelihood get you and your own family killed as well as mine.”
She shook her head. “They can’t be that untouchable.”
“They are. Trust me. I’m married to a judge.”
“But you told Louise everything.”
“She swore never to connect how she learned the information to me and my family. She would tell the older brother—in the event she was caught—that she had found Lucy’s notes and had been following him. I could see how he would believe her story.” Bart released a beleaguered breath. “The truth is, I would have told her anyway. She had a right to know, and I couldn’t bear to keep it from her any longer.”
“You didn’t consider you might need to protect her?”
