“And what about the time in between? It took three days to find him, Creagan. Three. And he wasn’t dead for that whole time. The medical report proves that.”
“What do you mean the medical report proves that?” he frowns.
“He didn’t show the signs of being dead and exposed to water for that many hours.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Creagan says.
His insistence is a little strange, but I don’t push him on it. The truth is, I have suspicions. Strong, complicated suspicions that have been creeping and tangling in my mind like vines for the past few weeks.
“Then let me have full access to the case files so I can see that. Either way, there’s still the question of who killed him and how they managed to do it without anyone’s seeing them. He was supposedly shot in broad daylight. And there were no signs in the sand that he struggled or fought back in any way. According to the way his footprints were positioned and the way his body fell, it looks as if he didn’t even turn around. How could that possibly be?” I ask.
“I don’t know, Griffin. It’s something we’re all trying to figure out,” Creagan says.
“And I should be allowed to help more than I have been. You cut me off from official involvement in the case too soon,” I say.
“I removed you from the task force because you are too close to the situation.”
“I was too close to my mother’s death and I got the answers to that,” I point out. “I arrested my own uncle after he spent my entire life stalking me. That’s too close, Creagan. But I did it because it needed to be done. And so does this. Another year shouldn’t go by with Greg’s still not having justice.”
Creagan still looks as if he’s waffling on the request. Even if he won’t relent and give it to me today, I’ll keep asking. The partial files I have are a start, but they don’t give the full picture. There’s information missing. Pictures missing. I need to have all the crime scene photos, rather than just a few snaps Eric was able to get for me.
Something has been bothering me about the ones I have, but I can’t figure out exactly what it is. It’s sticking in the back of my mind and won’t let go. I might have made a connection, but it doesn’t make sense. Not yet. Those pictures aren’t enough to give me the full idea of what happened. They all seem to be lacking something. I don’t know what, but each one feels incomplete. I feel that I need to see other angles. I Ii think if I could look at these still images differently, I will see what I need to know.
“I’ll consider it,” he finally relents. It’s a start. I’ll keep bothering him about it until I get the answer I want. He probably already knows that. “But for right now, I asked you here because I need to talk to you about something.”
“What is it?” I ask, back to the hesitant feeling.
This doesn’t sound the same as when he started trying to poke around in my mind and figure out what made it click; when he decided I needed to stretch out and stare at a ceiling while a woman whose name I wouldn’t even say for several months cracked me open and explored around.
“Your work in Harlan,” he says.
That’s not what I was expecting. But maybe I should have. Creagan doesn’t like the way it looks when a case he all but dismissed explodes into something huge and complex. And then doesn’t have a resolution. That’s what happened in Harlan.
Looking back, it’s hard to identify how it actually started, because it all became intertwined so quickly. Dean had been investigating the disappearance of a man after a bizarre set of actions, including filling and emptying his bank account a couple of times and marrying a woman no one had ever met or heard of. At the same time, I was drawn into the case of a missing internet celebrity, Lakyn Monroe, who was last seen leaving an appearance and seemed to have simply vanished.
That’s what brought Xavier Renton into my path. Or, more accurately, brought me into his path. Xavier doesn’t come into people’s lives. He exists in his own sphere and some people are fortunate enough to get absorbed into it. Lakyn was almost there. Xavier was imprisoned for eight years, accused of the grisly murder of his best friend, and was only getting more isolated and unpredictable as time went on.
According to what she shared with the public, Lakyn was working toward illuminating Xavier’s plight and getting him released. We later found out she was delving deep into the case and angering people who didn’t handle being angered well. This is where the cases really started to spiral and twist onto each other until they were strangling the small town.
In the end, lives were brutally lost, and a horrific organization known as The Order of Prometheus was uncovered. They were the ones who killed Xavier’s friend and framed him for it; they were the ones who murdered Lakyn; they were the ones responsible for the mysterious disappearance in Dean’s case and a host of other murders besides. They manipulated and controlled practically every aspect of the town and carried out cult-like rituals. They even tried to sacrifice me.
I came out of it all with Xavier as a new part of my chosen family, and complete enmity and bitterness toward the members of The Order who ensured he spent so much time in captivity and tormented him throughout it.
Though we pieced together some of the truth, The Order members disappeared before they could be brought up on any charges.
