Page 91 of I’ll Be Watching You

“And because Dad confessed, the detectives didn’t follow up.”

“We don’t know that,” Jack began.

“I do. I talked to them. Why do you think I was adamant back then that we needed to investigate Devin’s murder? Because the police didn’t. They had no reason. They believed they had the killer. They didn’t verify Dad’s statement, because he had possession of the gun that killed Devin. He had the means. The opportunity. And he made up a believable motive, that they were arguing and it was an accident. I read Dad’s statement.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t?”

“I didn’t want to.”

That explained a lot, I thought. Though Jack was going through his own hell back then—he left the force in part because of Dad’s arrest and in part because he was in the middle of a divorce. It had been a dark time for him.

“It’s why I never took Dad’s confession at face value,” I said. “Dad is not one to lose his temper and act out. He wouldn’t hit someone in the heat of an argument. How could we believe he shot someone? With a gun that he didn’t even own? That suggests premeditated murder, that he bought the gun for the sole purpose of killing Devin.”

“What did Dad say about the gun?”

“That he’d always had it. But I know for a fact that he didn’t. Okay, maybe not for a fact, but Mom and Dad own two guns. Dad a .45 revolver, and Mom has a 9mm semiauto that she used to carry when she was a prosecutor and is now in her nightstand drawer. I think if Dad bought another gun, he would have asked you or me about it because he really didn’t know much about them, and he rarely went to the gun range. And the gun that killed Klein was a Sig Sauer P320 compact.”

“You carry a similar gun.”

“Yeah, not that model, but I do love my Sig. There is a specific suppressor built for it. I don’t have one because what would be the point of spending the money when I have no cause for a suppressor? But the point is that Dad didn’t turn in a suppressor with the gun. It wasn’t even mentioned in the report. The police never followed up, and I doubt that even if no one else was in the medical building the gunshot would have been heard in the emergency room or in the hospital rooms in that wing. There was janitorial staff on-site, and no one in the original reports stated that they heard a gun discharge.”

Jack was quiet.

“I used to push Dad to tell me the truth,” I said quietly. “He never would. He told me not to visit if all I wanted to do was rehash the crime. I finally decided that it would hurt both of us if I cut off ties because he lied.”

“I thought he could be guilty,” Jack said equally quietly.

That surprised me. “You did?”

“Because he confessed. He had the gun. He confessed out of guilt and, while it made me angry that he would do something that hurt his family, something that gutted Mom, he was willing to take his punishment, which I could respect.”

“You thought he was guilty.” I was floored.

“I would say . . . I thought it was a possibility. I never had the one hundred percent faith in his innocence that you had. It hurts me to say it, but it’s true.”

“You never told me that.”

“Because I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to believe you were right, but my head told me only a guilty man would confess. Yes, I know, there are false confessions all the time, but this was Dad, not a career criminal, not someone seeking attention, not someone who was browbeat into a confession by a corrupt cop. But . . . if I’d read the report in detail like you had, I might not have come to that conclusion. It’s damning that he didn’t turn in the suppressor, and it’s negligent that the police didn’t document that one had been used.”

“They didn’t document it either way,” I said. “They didn’t try to explain why no one heard a shot, because they didn’t have to. Confession, plea deal, no trial. Case closed. And, to be honest, I think Mom had a lot to do with why the county attorney’s office didn’t conduct their own investigation. She probably used her clout to get them to sign off on the plea deal, and because everyone respects her, they didn’t want her name or Dad’s to be dragged through the media if there was a prolonged investigation.”

“You’re probably right,” Jack said. “But why Dad?”

“Well, think of it this way. If Dad never went to see Devin that night, and he was found dead in the morning, the police would have done a full investigation. The FBI may have been called in because it’s a federal building. They would have talked to his nurses, to Georgia, to the administration. Looked at his phone records, seen that he talked to Dr. Pierce. Called her, asked her what they talked about, and she’d say he was worried about a drug trial. She would give them a copy of the report that he shared with her, and then they might be suspicious because, according to Georgia, all the information Devin had collected was gone. The killer took it—most likely—so that would have given the police a motive. Maybe they call in the Neurovantix team and anyone at the VA who worked on the project. It would have shined a light on their fraud.”

“But Dad was there. He called the police.”

“Exactly. What did Mom say? It was two days after he was killed that Dad found the gun and the threat? Gives the killer enough time to research him, track us down, take our pictures, create a viable threat against us.”

“It fits,” Jack said. “Do you think they would have framed someone else?”

“Maybe. But it would be harder because every card key is logged after hours. Dad inadvertently gave them a fall guy. Himself. And because he confessed, the police didn’t follow up on anything else.”

I was positive I was right, or mostly right, because nothing else fit.

Jack turned off at the main Avondale exit.