Caleb stopped and cried again, his shoulders heav ing with the flow of tears that dripped onto his hands. His grandmother gasped and held a hand to her mouth. Both she and her husband were tearing up.
‘‘How do you make a decision like that? How do you do that? You’ve seen Henry, how special he is. He’s my brother. How could they ask me to make that kind of decision?’’
He sniffed and blew his nose again.
‘‘Mal begged me. He was crying and begging me not to shoot him. But I did. They called Shipman off and they took the gun from me. Jefferies told me I was a murderer now and that he owned me. He said it wouldn’t be too bad because I would make a lot of money. He took Mal’s watch off him and gave it to me and told me that as long as I did what he wanted, Henry would be safe.’’
‘‘So you killed Jefferies,’’ said Diane.
Caleb was silent for a long while. No one said any thing.
‘‘It’s funny,’’ Caleb said. ‘‘I wrote the virus Jefferies wanted, and it never occurred to him that I would put it on his computer.’’ Caleb looked at Diane. ‘‘I owned his network. I knew everything he did, including where he kept all his money, who he had hired, and where they worked. I had their programs. I had every thing. I had it all sent to my computer here.’’
Frank raised his eyebrows. Diane could imagine what he was thinking.
He drank the last of his water. He’d stopped crying, and his face was like stone. His eyes were mere slits, and his mouth was set in a grim frown.
‘‘Jefferies so admired Alexander the Great. Well, I knew about Alexander the Great too. And I knew what he would do to defeat an enemy. He’d cut off its head. To kill a snake, you take off the head. In this case it was more like a hydra and two more would grow back. I had to kill the others too. I shot Jefferies. I was going to kill Peeks, but someone beat me to it. I was going to get everyone who wore that stupid pinky ring. It was the only way I could make sure Henry would be safe. After I shot Jefferies, I put Mal’s watch on him. He could have the damn thing back.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you come to us, Caleb?’’ said Arlen. ‘‘We would have helped.’’
Caleb looked at his grandparents. ‘‘You would have done the right thing, and you would have been killed for it. I had no place to go for help.’’
‘‘You should have come straight to me, son,’’ said the sheriff. ‘‘I would have handled it. You didn’t have to kill them.’’
‘‘I couldn’t take the chance with Henry’s life, Sher iff, I’m sorry. You’re a good man, but there’s one of you and a whole gang of them. All of them vicious and cold-blooded. Jefferies was the mayor; Peeks was the chief of police. They’d hired a bunch of their own cops. His friend Bryce controlled the crime lab. Jeffer ies had a judge killed and was friends with the gover nor. He bragged that he was going to get someone inside the GBI. Where could I go? Who was I sup posed to go to? Who could I trust? As far as I was concerned, he had broken the social contract.’’ Caleb looked at Diane. ‘‘Are you familiar with John Locke?’’ he asked.
Diane nodded. ‘‘You no longer had to give up your right to aggressively protect yourself and your family, because the government had not fulfilled its part of the bargain. From your point of view, the government could not maintain social order. Does that sum up your position?’’ said Diane.
Caleb nodded. ‘‘What else could I have done?’’
David was faced with the same dilemma exactly, thought Diane. He dropped out and started his own investigation. He skirted the law a little, but he wouldn’t have killed. But then, David was a lot older than Caleb; he had a world more experience, re sources to use, and maturity. It makes a difference. Caleb was essentially a kid. He was a kid for how long—almost twenty years? And a young adult for one.
Epilogue
The aftermath to the whole Jefferies episode was un settling to everyone in Rosewood. The meth lab explo sion the previous year had brought people together. But this series of events and disclosures was divisive. The fallout reached everyone from the governor, whose PR people tried to spin the damage by ex plaining that photo ops with Jefferies didn’t mean they were bosom buddies, to individual families like the McConnels, whose son, Ethan, wandered onto the mu seum overlook and was threatened by security guard Gage Shipman.
Andie told Diane she heard from Mrs. McConnel that she and her husband might divorce. The police man friend of Mr. McConnel’s buddy, Barrel, turned out to be one of Jefferies’ hires. Mr. McConnel, who had voted for Jefferies based on his law-and-order stance, now felt betrayed and humiliated, and his wife was not kind. Like a lot of people, she couldn’t resist the I-told-you-so’s.
Frank and his department came out well. Caleb’s computer was a gold mine—literally. It had every sin gle thing in it Frank needed to untangle Jefferies’ em pire. Caleb gave Frank a flash drive containing a total copy of the information. He seemed to understand that Rosewood might not be eager to share with At lanta. Caleb gave David all his algorithms to ponder. David, a lover of algorithms, was bubbly with ex citement.
Janice Warrick never discovered who the shadow man was on the security tape.
Rikki was the most disappointed. She thought she sent a chunk of Jefferies’ money to her own account in the Caribbean via her cell phone, which she threw in the river along with the hard disk. She had no way of knowing that Caleb had already emptied all but a thousand dollars from each account. He put the money in a holding account for the authorities to fig ure out what to do with. The prison guards said Rikki stomped around her cell for days ranting at her bad luck.
Jennifer Jeffcote-Smith received an undisclosed sum from the city, but she wasn’t happy either. Her reputa tion was tarnished by her proximity to the Jefferies gang, and her husband’s relatives
with her as Mrs. McConnel was
were as relentless with her husband. Diane had seen her one last time in passing at the post office as Jennifer was leaving town. Her in-laws were laughing, telling all their friends to move to Georgia, where they pay you a lot of money for being stupid. Jennifer was probably heading for a divorce too, thought Diane.
Many on the city council wanted Douglas Garnett to run for mayor. But he really liked being chief of detectives, and Edward Van Ross reinstated him. Garnett and his wife sent Diane a bouquet of red roses.
