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He nods once. “I kept a copy of the engineer’s report before I submitted the original. It vanished from the file altogether. By the time I tried taking my case to the ADA, I was told to mind my own business and close it. It was an accident, they insisted, and if I tried pressing forward with it, they’d nuke my career. I was close to retirement at the time. After all the years I’d put in, honestly, I was scared. I know what the Black Hand is capable of.”
“How?” I ask.
“Because it wasn’t the first time I ran into them. And cutting brakes on cars is one of their favorite methods of silencing those who pose a threat to them,” Amstaff replies. “They did it to my car as well. You have no idea how powerful they are, how intimidating they can be, how deep they can reach. The mayor. The ADA. This whole district is under their thumb, Miss David.”
I keep staring at the file. “Where did you get all this?”
“I knew I couldn’t fight them out in the open, so I made copies of every case file where I suspected Black Hand involvement,” Amstaff says, pointing back at the credenza. “That whole thing is filled with them.”
“Why aren’t you going public with everything?” I ask.
“Because they have ways of silencing me,” he says, lowering his gaze. “They’ve found ways to get to me. My son has been battling leukemia for years now. One minute, he’s in remission; the next, he’s back in chemo. That’s a lot of money. I accepted their help, and it has cost me everything. My pension alone would’ve never been enough to keep him in all those experimental programs that have bought him ten more years and still counting.”
I give Kendric a horrified look. “This is insane.”
“It’s how they operate, Ariana,” Kendric replies with a heavy sigh. “They find weak points and exploit them. Once they have you hooked or demonstrably on their payroll, you become their slave. Any opposition leads to destruction. And they do it on every level—from rookies on the police force all the way up to state senators.”
“Why did they want my mother dead?”
Amstaff raises an eyebrow. “Why do you think?”
My mind isn’t that slow, regardless of the constant shocks that it’s been getting pummeled with over the past couple of days. I’m putting the pieces together, and the truth is looking uglier with each new connection made across the board. My lips move, the words slipping past before I can even register them. “My mother was writing about them.”
“And she was on to something,” Amstaff says. “I never got close enough to her laptop or any of her belongings to dig through. My guess is your father kept everything.”
“Why would he keep everything?” Kendric asks, his brow furrowed. “Chances are, whatever she uncovered, it could eventually implicate him, too.”
“He’d want to hold on to it,” I mumble. “Just in case the Black Hand got too bold or too brazen with him personally. To save his own ass, I guess. Maybe guilt, too. Oh, God, if what you’re saying is true, it means my father knows that my mother, his wife, the mother of his child, the woman he loved most in this world—”
“Was killed in cold blood, yes,” Amstaff concludes. “I’m deeply sorry, Miss David.”
“Ariana, you need to understand something. Detective Amstaff put his career in jeopardy the minute he decided to pursue this case well beyond what his superiors insisted that he stick to,” Kendric says. “He investigated, he produced that report, he put it in the case file and then submitted it forward to the ADA, who made the report disappear. The whole thing was carefully orchestrated and organized so that no one would ever question the conclusions. Using Amstaff’s son against him was their last resort.”
“I tried, you know,” Amstaff says, his voice trembling with remorse. “I did try. I sent the scoop over to other colleagues of Rose’s. Other publications. Even the Feds. No one would touch it. I tried to keep my name out of it, but they still figured me out. Shaun almost lost his place in a drug trial about three years ago because of my stubbornness.”
“Because of your moral compass,” I correct. “You were just trying to do the right thing. I will never blame you for any of this. You did the best you could in some rather shady circumstances. And your son, I can’t even imagine the strength it took for you to keep quiet about this.”
Amstaff shakes his head. “Not so quiet anymore,” he says, pushing the whole file closer. “Take it. Use it. My son’s cancer is back again.”
“Oh, but—”
“It’s too late for him,” he says, tears flooding his eyes. He rubs his face with his bare hands. “The previous drug trials, the chemo, it left him weak. His immune system is shot. He takes a shoebox’s worth of pills and supplements every day just to be able to put one foot in front of the other, Miss David. He doesn’t want to fight anymore, and I intend to spend whatever time he’s got left on this earth looking after him. But I can’t look away from the truth. I’m done hiding.”
“Amstaff knows about what we’re doing,” Kendric tells me. “We’re the ones who reached out to him about a year ago. We were digging into your father’s past.”
“Once I understood that I could trust these fellas, I knew it was time to do my part,” the old detective adds. “A few years too late, but hey, better late than never.”
“Thank you for this,” I say, taking the file. I hold it close to my chest, trying to breathe in and out without getting dizzy. “It won’t be wasted, I promise.”
Kendric gives me a long look and then tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. His touch alone is enough to soothe my frayed nerves, albeit briefly. “It will only get uglier from here. Even with this file and with Amstaff’s blessing, we still don’t have enough for a conviction against anyone in the organization. Everything can be spun as circumstantial during the trial,” he says.
“Go home,” Amstaff tells me.
“What?” I ask. “I can’t.”
“I heard about the Fed,” he replies. “You need to find a way. If you’re right, if I’m right, and Henry David kept your mother’s investigative notes and whatever else she uncovered for her article, then you’ll need all of that to nail those fuckers. You can’t go ahead without it. They’re crafty, Miss David. They have key players in their pockets, judges and government officials included.”
“State level,” Kendric reminds him.
