Retribution Read online

  Tom stepped in behind her. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” she quietly said, walking in to hug Tyler.

  “I feel…violated,” Tyler said, holding her. “Aren’t the police supposed to make you feel safe?”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work, buddy,” Tom said, joining them for a hug.

  “Tomorrow at ten,” Davis said from the doorway. “You want me to come pick you up, or meet me there?”

  “We’ll meet you there,” Nevvie said, focusing on Tyler. “What about the kids?”

  “They want to talk to them, too.”

  “Shit. That means we have to pull them out of school. Okay. Thanks, Davis. I’m sorry this fucked your evening.”

  He waved her off. “It’s okay. It’s my job. Bob said to joke about billable hours?”

  Nevvie chuckled. “Yeah. It’s okay. Thank you.”

  He left them alone, and she heard when he shut the front door behind him.

  “Let’s go check the girls’ rooms first,” Nevvie said. “Before we bring them home.”

  “Good idea,” Tom said.

  Fortunately, it looked like with Zoey and Willow’s rooms they’d shown a little bit of respect and compassion. While they had searched and not perfectly put things back, they weren’t in complete disarray. After a few minutes in each room, Nevvie felt they could bring the kids home, and she had Tyler call next door to Andrew to give the all-clear.

  When Andrew followed the kids inside, he and Colin, who’d come with him, both pulled up short in the living room.

  “Bloody hell,” Andrew muttered as he looked around. He immediately reached over and straightened a picture on the wall. “Bastards.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Dunn sent a message.”

  “That he’s a fucking asshole,” Nevvie muttered, putting books back on a bookshelf.

  But Andrew and Colin wouldn’t let Nevvie send them away. They immediately pitched in to help, as did the kids, to put the house right again.

  By three a.m., Nevvie was near collapse, but they were in their own bed.

  “That was a total fucking dick move,” Tom said. “They could have brought the dog in first.”

  “That’s not very melodramatic or imposing, though,” Tyler said, sounding exhausted. “They do that first, then we have a potential case against them for harassment, if they continue to search after the dog hasn’t alerted. That’s really why they kept an officer out in the driveway with us the whole time, because they wanted to find out if it would rattle us in any way and we’d reveal something.”

  * * * *

  Tyler knew tomorrow was going to be long and draining. Andrew insisted on going, with the excuse that at least he could take the kids home if the adults were held there longer. Colin insisted on coming, too.

  Tyler couldn’t help but wonder who had his gun, or if it was the same one that had killed Cole. And if the figure captured in the security system pictures was responsible. No telling how long the gun had been missing. Literally could have been years, or a day.

  When they arrived at the station Friday morning, Tyler volunteered to talk to Dunn first, with Davis Hammond sitting next to him. He expected Dunn to hammer him, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  “Well, Mr. Paulson, we have a problem. The ballistics evidence from the shooting fifteen years ago is no longer in evidence.”

  “Then you have a problem, officer, not I.” Tyler had opted for snooty Brit today, because fuck Dunn, that’s why.

  “Where’s the gun?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Awfully convenient your wife threatens Cole Johnson, threatens to kill him, he shows up dead less than twenty-four hours later, shot with a gun the same caliber that you own, and, whoops, it’s missing.”

  “Yes, very convenient.”

  “Tyler,” Davis scolded.

  “No, he wants to be a shit, I’ll be one back. We’re innocent.”

  “You lied about all the windows being rigged with sensors.”

  “No, we didn’t lie. You yourself said the alarm company said all the openings were rigged. And yes, in fact, all viable openings are rigged. I would suggest you find out who that person was on our security system’s cameras. They likely hold all the answers to your questions.”

  “Look,” Davis said to Dunn, “I’m being a nice guy and letting you talk to them. No one’s under arrest, because you have nothing right now to arrest them for. I can pack everyone up and take them home and make you look like an idiot in front of a judge when you try to compel them to appear, or you can be nice to them.”

  Dunn left Tyler sitting there while he moved to talking to Nevvie in another room with Davis.

  It was over two hours later when Dunn returned, looking haggard, but smiling. Davis wore a stony gaze when he followed him into the room.

  Dunn didn’t bother sitting. He leaned in, hands on the table and looking smug. “Your wife confessed, Mr. Paulson.”

  “What?”

  “When we told her we were going to charge Zoey with the crime—”

  “Tyler,” Davis said, “stay quiet.”

  “Bloody hell, Zoey didn’t do anything!”

  “Of course you say she didn’t,” Dunn said. “But she was the only one, besides Willow, small enough to fit through that little window. That’s why your wife told us how she, in fact, did it.”

  Tyler stared at Dunn, certain maybe he’d had another heart attack and had died and was in some weird form of hell. “Are you completely deranged? No one could fit through that fucking window!”

  Davis tried to stop him. “Tyler—”

  Tyler slapped the table. “I shot him, right? I shot the bloody bastard. Put one right between his eyes.”

  Dunn’s smile faltered. “What?”

  “I shot the bloody bastard between his eyes. Right in the damn head and he went down like a sack of wet cement. Bam! Arrest me. Nevvie’s lying to protect me.”

  Davis started coughing, which suspiciously sounded like laughter, and finally pointed at the detective. “You, out. Now. I want to speak to my client alone.”

  Dunn finally left. Tyler knew there was likely a recording device in the room, and he didn’t care.

  “What the bloody hell? Why would Nevvie confess to something she didn’t do!”

  “For the same fucking reason you just did, Tyler. He bluffed her about Zoey, and Nevvie confessed. But here’s the problem—so did Tom, and Mikey, and Willow.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. And here’s the real kicker—so did your father. They’ve got all of you confessing to a crime none of you committed.”

  Chapter Six

  Nevvie paced in the small interview room and fought the urge to do what she always saw in the movies and stick her tongue out at the mirror.

  Wait, fuck that.

  She walked over to the mirror and flipped it a bird.

  She’d sent Zoey out to go sit with Andrew, Colin, and Mikey in the lobby and wait for them, and they’d started questioning Willow. She’d insisted on sitting in as Willow’s mother, even though Davis was there. When Dunn told Willow that Zoey must have done it, Willow confessed.

  But…Nevvie confessed, right on the heels of that, and ordered Willow to stop talking while Davis had tried to get both of them to stop talking, and was ordering Dunn out of the room. Then Nevvie had ordered Willow out of the room, to go wait with Zoey, Mikey, Andrew, and Colin.

  A very confused Dunn had looked like he was trying to process all of that when Andrew had burst into the room and confessed, with Mikey and Zoey on his heels and also confessing.

  It appeared the only one who hadn’t confessed was Colin.

  Now, Andrew and Davis were somewhere else, while Nevvie had been asked to remain there. Willow and Zoey were once again sitting out in the lobby with Colin and Tom, with orders from Nevvie to stay there and not talk to anyone except family or Davis. But it was so late in the day, and Mikey had been allowed to leave, that Nevvie had given him the keys
to their car and told him to take it because he had a football game to play in. They could ride home with Andrew and Colin.

  She flipped the mirror another bird, this time with both hands.

  Fuck them.

  Davis looked smug when he finally returned with Dunn, who this time looked defeated.

  Dunn sat at the table, his attitude now a complete one-eighty from the cocky bastard he’d been the last time he’d talked to her. “Mrs. Kinsey-Paulson, when I talked to you earlier, you confessed to shooting Cole Johnson. Were you lying?” His tone even sounded reasonably respectful.

  “Depends. You still trying to railroad me or my daughters, asshole?”

  He shook his head. “Did you kill Cole Johnson?”

  “No! We keep telling you we’re innocent. Zoey is the victim of a crime, here. You have some unknown person caught on camera. Go look for that asshole! They probably stole the damn gun.”

  He slowly shook his head. “Do you have any evidence or knowledge that Mr. Andrew Paulson might have killed Cole Johnson?”

  “What? No! Dad doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun. I’m not sure he’s ever even handled a gun in his life, much less fired one. If there’s one person in all this besides me and my husbands and my kids who I know with one-hundred-percent certainty did not do this, it’s Andrew Paulson.”

  “The night of Cole Johnson’s murder, do you know Mr. Paulson’s whereabouts?”

  “He told us he was going to spend the night with Colin.”

  “Colin?”

  “Colin Dawson, his boyfriend.”

  She noticed Dunn wasn’t taking notes. She assumed at this point she was only confirming information they’d already confirmed. “And to your knowledge, do you know if Mr. Paulson knew where Cole Johnson lived?”

  “Not before, no. After, he said he and Colin heard sirens Saturday morning. We all knew where Cole lived after that.”

  Dunn wouldn’t look Nevvie in the eyes. “Do you know if Mr. Paulson is experiencing any age-related signs of dementia?”

  “What? No. He’s sharp. He probably heard we were all confessing and jumped in, too. He loves his granddaughters. All the grandkids.”

  “He is insisting he shot Cole Johnson. When we told him no, we aren’t going to charge any of you, he adamantly refused to recant when we gave him the chance to.”

  “What?”

  He glanced at Davis, then back down again. “He insisted on writing out and signing a confession that he shot and killed Cole Johnson.”

  Nevvie tried to figure out why Davis looked so fucking amused. It took her a moment to puzzle it through, and when she did, she nearly blurted it out and managed not to.

  She returned her focus to Dunn. “We done here, detective? Because you fucking trashed our house last night, made us miss our son’s football game, and now you’re trying to say an eighty-year-old-man, who’s never shot a gun in his life, suddenly, what, went aggro and killed a kid?”

  “He said he took the gun from your house when he stayed overnight a few weeks ago.” Dunn finally looked up at her. “He gave us the exact date. Said it was the night before Thomas and Tyler flew to Brussels.”

  Nevvie glanced at Davis, who still wore a smile and wasn’t telling her to be quiet. “Wait, what? He did stay over that night, yes.”

  “He said the gun safe was open, and he took the gun to keep it safe. Then he forgot to tell you he had it. Then when Zoey was attacked, he knew Cole’s parents wouldn’t be home that night because of the fundraiser. He claims he walked to Cole’s home from Mr. Dawson’s home, shot Cole once, and returned to Mr. Dawson’s home. Then he threw the gun in a river the next day, but he doesn’t remember where.”

  Nevvie sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “No way he did it. I would not believe it unless you had a picture of him doing it, and even then I’d scream PhotoShop. He’s not capable of it.”

  “We done, detective?” Davis asked.

  Dunn finally stood. “We’ll be in touch.” He walked out.

  Nevvie leaned in. “What the fuck?” she whispered.

  “Andrew confessed.” Davis smiled. “And he won’t recant.”

  Nevvie knew her suspicion was correct then as to why Dunn looked defeated. “But they have to know Andrew didn’t do it!”

  “Oh, they do. He’s insisting he shot the kid once. Now, they won’t confirm it, but I have a feeling the kid was shot multiple times. Andrew told them he shot him once, mimed exactly how he did it and everything.”

  “Mimed?”

  Davis grinned. “Held up his left hand and said he put a bullet in the gun and shot the kid.”

  Nevvie snorted. “Well, for starters, he’s right-handed.”

  “Oh, they discovered that when he started writing out his ‘confession’ and was doing it right-handed.”

  She giggled. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Then the whole, ‘I put a bullet in the gun,’ business. They asked him to show them. So they provided several fake guns, right? Told him to pick the one that looked most like the one he’d used. He did. A dummy .38 revolver, and then he proceeded to show them how he did it, which in and of itself was amusing. He couldn’t give them an answer where he got the ammo, because Tyler said the gun had none with it. When they asked him exactly how he’d shot Cole, he mimed putting the gun up to the side of Cole’s head before he pulled the trigger. Right against Cole’s temple.

  “I was watching Dunn’s face at that point and thought he was going to throw up because I could tell he knew Andrew wasn’t the killer. Then they asked Andrew if he was sure that was the kind of gun he used, and exactly how he’d shot Cole. He swore up and down it was, and asked for a stack of Bibles.”

  She giggled again. “No shit?”

  “No shit. Now, either he’s senile, or a great actor. I’m not sure which because I keep bouncing back and forth between them.”

  “He’s not senile.”

  “That’s what I thought. Dunn looked like someone kicked his puppy when Cash had Andrew show her how he loaded the gun. She nearly dragged Dunn out of that interview room by his damn ear.” He chuckled. “Then Colin talked to them and swore Andrew was with him all night.” His smile faded. “He was willing to swear an affidavit that Andrew was at his house, in his bed, and that they’re…together.”

  “Why do you look sad?”

  “Because he also admitted he knew publicly saying that would probably ruin any chance he might have to reconcile with his daughter and sons, but he wasn’t going to lie and say Andrew isn’t his boyfriend and lover when he is.”

  * * * *

  Tyler and Davis sat with Andrew in the interview room, Detective Cash on the other side of the table. Nevvie and the others had gone home earlier, using Colin’s car. Colin refused to leave until Andrew was released, and sat waiting in the lobby.

  “I don’t know why I’m not in a jail cell yet,” Andrew said. “I told you, I shot that boy. I showed you how I did it and everything. He lived close to Colin.”

  Detective Cash had taken over the questioning because apparently Dunn was about to have a bleeding ulcer. He wasn’t even in the room at that point.

  “Mr. Paulson,” she gently said, “Mr. Dawson swears you didn’t leave his house all night. And we’ve already sent a detective out and pulled surveillance video from the security system of his neighbor across the street. Your car never left that night. No one left Mr. Dawson’s house that night.”

  “He’s trying to protect me. He’s lying. He loves me. But I shot that boy. He hurt our Zoey, and I shot the smarmy little bastard. And…well, I walked. After I crawled out a back window. That’s why you couldn’t see me. Why am I not arrested yet?”

  Someone knocked on the door and cracked it open, motioning to the detective. She left the room, and Tyler reached over to hold Andrew’s hand.

  Andrew squeezed. “I did it, son. I’m sorry.”

  Tyler hoped this wasn’t the start of the inevitable downturn. He’d hoped for many good years yet with him. H
e prayed this was simply his father acting, but…

  To be honest, the plaintive tone Andrew used even had Tyler wondering if his father had finally hit senility and had managed to hide it remarkably well until…this.

  Maybe the stress of it all triggered something.

  Detective Cash returned a few minutes later. “We’re done,” she gently said. “Mr. Paulson, and Mr. Paulson, you’re both free to go. Thank you for your time today, and we apologize for keeping you so long.”

  “No!” Andrew said, standing and pounding on the table. “Arrest me! I did it! Me, and only me!”

  Tyler draped an arm around his shoulders. “Dad,” he said, “it’s all right. We’re done here.”

  “But they want to arrest Zoey, and—”

  “No, sir,” Cash said. “We’re not arresting anyone in your family. You’re all free to go. Most of your family’s already gone home.”

  He turned to Tyler, looking confused. “Gone?”

  Tyler swallowed back sorrow. “Davis will drive us home, Dad.”

  “Home?”

  “Home.”

  “But Zoey—”

  “Is already home with Nevvie, Tom, and Willow.”

  He stared at Tyler, brow furrowed. “But I need to confess.”

  “It’s all right, Dad. They know we’re all innocent. We can go home.”

  “Where’s my Colin?” His plaintive tone nearly finished Tyler, and it was all he could do to not start crying. “Is my Colin still here?”

  “He’s waiting for you, Dad. He’s right outside. We’re going to get him now.”

  There was something heartbreaking in his father’s uncharacteristically slow shuffle as they headed out to the waiting room. There, they collected Colin, who when Andrew saw him let out a small sob and started crying as Colin held and comforted him. They waited for Colin to finally convince Andrew to start walking again, keeping a protective arm around Andrew’s shoulders. As Tyler glanced around, he saw plenty of uncomfortable expressions that an elderly man had been held and questioned for so long.

  And when he spotted Dunn standing to the side, he realized several of his fellow officers were shooting him dark and thunderous glares.