Pierce and his wife, they’ve got this big old house out on Lafayette Road. They have a pool and a huge yard and Mindy Pierce, she liked having kids around, so Teddy was always there, playing with his cousins and I was right there with him. Sheriff Pierce treated us al like one big family. He used to give money to Teddy’s mom, and if things got too hard at home, he’d step in. We just worshipped him, you know? And I believed everything he told me about my mom and the investigation too.”
“So . . . what changed?”
“I don’t know if I can tel you. I don’t know if you’l believe me.”
“Sam . . . come on.” Hannah shifted her weight, started to stand.
“No. Okay. Just wait.”
She sat back down.
“Okay. Look. Teddy’s dad was scary, al right? He was real y violent, and things were getting worse. Teddy was afraid, so he went to his uncle Jerome and he asked for help. And a few weeks later Teddy’s dad died in a car accident. The cops said he was drunk and drove his car into a tree. It happened late at night, no one else was around. His car went up in flames and he died. Sheriff Pierce dealt with the investigation and it was ruled an accidental death. But then, at the funeral, Sheriff Pierce came up to Teddy and made it very clear that Teddy owed him a very big favor.”
“Jesus,” Hannah said. “Pierce kil ed him?”
Sam nodded. He was very pale, very tired looking in the moonlight. “We were actual y okay with it, you know? We were only kids. Teddy was just relieved that his father wasn’t going to beat his mom up anymore. Or hurt his sisters.” Sam’s expression had darkened. “But then, a few weeks later, Teddy found out that Sheriff Pierce had taken out a life insurance policy on Teddy’s father, in his mom’s name. I guess he used a dodgy broker, or leaned on someone to get the paperwork filed because Teddy’s mother didn’t know a thing about the policy until after Teddy’s dad died and the insurance company got in touch with her. Again, we thought it was a good thing, you know? Sheriff Pierce, looking out for Teddy’s mom.
But it turned out he wanted the money for himself. Told Teddy’s mom it was payback for al the years he’d been helping her out. He forced her to hand the money over to him. There wasn’t a thing she could do about it. You give him what Sheriff Pierce wants and you don’t ever get in his way. If you get in his way he comes after you.”
“What do you mean, he comes after you?”
Sam’s face was screwed up in his efforts to explain. “It took me and Teddy a long time to real y get it. I mean, taking the insurance money was the first crack in the halo, obviously. But you have to understand. We were boys. We real y loved him. So we made excuses, pretended not to see the smal things we saw. It was only as we got older that we started to hear the rumors and we could see for ourselves how it real y works. Sheriff Pierce runs this town and everyone in it. You talk back to him, and your daughter gets pul ed over, maybe there’s a little bit of pot in her car. Or your house is suddenly broken into three times in a row and the cops can’t do anything for you. He leans on people, you see? And he’s got something on everyone. He keeps a filing cabinet in his workshop.
It’s where he keeps al his blackmail material. I’m pretty sure he’s even got something on the prosecutor, Jackson Engle. Or maybe Engle just likes the way Pierce does things. Doesn’t real y matter.
Either way, they’re a team.”
“How do you know?” Hannah said.
“What, about Engle?”
“About the filing cabinet? About the blackmail.”
Sam shrugged again. “Teddy figured it out. He spent a lot of time in that house. Sheriff Pierce likes to drink. He likes to brag. Teddy hates him now, you know? He got out of Yorktown as soon as he could, got a scholarship and went to col ege in New York. Columbia.
I don’t think he’s ever coming back.” Sam looked sad, and lost, and despite everything Hannah felt a pul of sympathy for him.
“What about you, Sam? What are you going to do?”
“I . . . do you want me to talk to someone? Do you want me to talk to your boss? About the photo ID, I mean. About Michael Dandridge?” he asked.
Hannah shook her head and pressed the palms of her hands to her forehead. She closed her eyes and listened to her own breathing. What should she do? Here was clear evidence that Dandridge had been set up for the Fitzhugh murder. Could she honestly say that she stil believed with absolute, unshaken certainty that Michael Dandridge had kil ed her father? And if she couldn’t say that, if she didn’t believe that, what did that mean? She had the horrible, sickening feeling that she’d been on the wrong side. Should she bring this information to Robert Parekh? But if she was jumping to conclusions, if the scar on Michael Dandridge’s hand was some crazy coincidence, she would have betrayed her mother, betrayed her dead father, for nothing.