Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Patterson shrugged.
Harry reckoned Bakshi would hand it over to Patterson at this point, her the good cop, Patterson the bull.
That didn’t happen.
Bakshi returned her attention to Michelle Dietrich, and she said, “We know about the insurance fraud. We know about Karl Abernathy’s subsequent extortion.”
Dietrich’s eyes grew large, and her face faded of all color but her cosmetics.
Bakshi didn’t let up.
“We know Simon Avery overheard your husband talking about committing the felony he eventually committed. Abernathy stole your stuff, but you and your husband sold it to get out of the debt you’d accrued in Misted Pines and to live your life until the insurance payout you fraudulently received gave you breathing room to recoup from bad investments. We know Abernathy was a whole helluva lot more gung-ho than you expected him to be in covering all your bases. So we know you’re fucked, Mrs. Dietrich.”
Michelle Dietrich sat completely immobile, her eyes still wide. And it didn’t take an investigator who did hundreds of these interviews to see they’d nailed every bit of it, and she was into it up to her neck.
“Now, allow me to educate you about what it means when you’re fucked in this manner,” Bakshi continued. “You don’t get to make demands. If you don’t make a statement of your own free will, I’ll invite you to walk right out of this station and take your chances with Abernathy running amuck and snipping loose ends. Choose. Now. We got shit to do.”
Dietrich remained still, her eyes filling with tears, everyone tensed, waiting for her to ask for an attorney, before she burst into sobs.
“We loved Sonny!” she cried.
Harry felt eyes on him, but he didn’t take his attention from Dietrich.
“I still can’t believe…I can’t…I can’t…” Her breath hitched three times. “I can’t believe Karl did that to him and Avery. They came to our Christmas parties!”
Fuck.
They nailed every bit of it.
Bakshi, Patterson and Rus didn’t move and none of their expressions shifted from mild interest.
“It got out of control!” she shouted. “I told Gerald! I told him! And now—” She tossed both hands out to her sides, collapsed back in her chair and said no more.
“Where’s your husband?” Bakshi asked.
“He’s…our son has some friends with a condo in Aspen. He’s there.”
“Fuckin’ bitch,” Jesse groused at learning the Dietrichs were hiding out in a rich person’s playground.
Harry tore his eyes off the woman and looked at Wade.
Wade instantly left the room.
“We’ve been arguing about it, for weeks. He was dead set against me coming. I had to leave in the middle of the night,” she continued. “He’s been calling incessantly, demanding I come back. Well, no. I will not.” She sniffed. “I’m tired of running and I’m so damned tired of hiding. I haven’t been home in a year!”
“Did you know about the murders of Simon and Avery?” Bakshi asked.
“He…he”—more breath hitching and tears—“he told us. He said they’d talk.” She leaned forward and put her hand on the table. “I swear to you, I swear, Ger and I had nothing to do with that. Nothing. We…were…horrified. We couldn’t believe it. And we were so very sorry for their daughter. So, so very sorry for that young woman.”
Not sorry enough to ease her pain at not knowing where the fuck they were for sixteen years.
Cade shifted close to Harry.
Harry didn’t move but it felt he might break his jaw at how hard he was clenching his teeth, so he forced himself to relax.
“Then he told us, Karl that is, he told us we were implicated,” she carried on. “He had to leave the gun with their…um, remains. And it was one of the ones he stole from us.”
“One of the ones you instructed him to steal from you,” Bakshi corrected.
Dietrich looked away.
“And that’s when the money demands started?” Bakshi asked.
“Yes,” Dietrich answered and looked back at Bakshi. “And they were never ending. Sometimes, he’d disappear, a month, two, three, even four, we’d think it was over, then he’d be back. You cannot even imagine. It was a nightmare.”
“Now see,” Patterson entered the conversation, “my definition of a nightmare is being nineteen, having my parents accused of a crime they didn’t commit, they disappear, I don’t know where they are for sixteen years, then I hear they’ve both been shot multiple times, including in the head and buried on the side of a mountain so all I got back of them is bones. Not I got my shit fucked by making bad investments and I didn’t tighten my belt. Instead, I decided to do something illegal, and as illegal shit has a tendency to do, it spiraled out of control, and I gotta pay for it in a variety of ways over the years. That sounds to me more like consequences.”
Dietrich’s mouth tightened.
“Let’s talk about Dern,” Bakshi suggested.
Dietrich turned to the other agent, her face going slack. “Leland?”