Chapter 6 - THE SHATTERED TAILLIGHT
“Vanessa?”
The name tore from my throat before I could stop it. I shoved the chair back so violently it crashed to the linoleum floor. Mark was already moving, his hand instinctively going to his radio, but I beat him to the door.
“Claire, wait! You can’t go to an active scene!” Mark shouted, grabbing my arm.
“That’s my husband’s car!” I screamed, wrenching free. “That’s the woman who helped destroy my family! You can’t stop me, Mark!”
I didn’t wait for him to argue. I sprinted down the sterile hallway, burst through the back doors of the precinct, and practically threw myself into the driver’s seat of my car. I slammed the gas pedal before the door was even shut.
The quarry road was a treacherous, winding stretch of asphalt that cut through the dense pine forest just outside city limits. It was the same road where Lily had died. The exact same curve.
As I approached the bend, the night sky was glowing an angry, violent orange. Plumes of thick, black smoke choked the air. Three police cruisers were parked at erratic angles, their red and blue lights slicing through the rain and smoke.
I parked haphazardly on the shoulder and jumped out. The heat hit me instantly—a suffocating wave that smelled of burning rubber and gasoline. Down in the ravine, Peter’s black SUV was completely engulfed in roaring flames.
“Claire! Get back!” an officer yelled, jogging toward me.
But I wasn’t looking at the fire. I was looking at the back of an ambulance parked near the guardrail. Sitting on the bumper, wrapped in a foil shock blanket, was Vanessa. Her face was streaked with soot and blood from a deep gash on her forehead. Her expensive black dress was torn at the shoulder.
I shoved past the officer and marched straight toward her.
“Where is he?” I demanded, standing over her.
Vanessa looked up at me. For the first time since I had known her, the arrogant sneer was gone. Her eyes were wide, dilated with raw, primal terror. She was trembling so violently the foil blanket sounded like crinkling glass.
“He tried to kill me,” she whispered, her teeth chattering. “He drove us right off the edge, Claire. He unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped out before it went over. He left me in there to burn.”
“Where is he, Vanessa?!” I grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her. A paramedic tried to pull me off, but I held on tight. “Why were you in his car? You were packing to leave the state!”
Vanessa let out a ragged, hysterical sob. “He intercepted me on the highway! He ran my Lexus off the shoulder and forced me into his car. He was out of his mind, Claire. He said the police were going to find out about Chicago. He said if I took the fall for the embezzlement, he’d let me live.”
“You’re lying,” I said, though my stomach churned with doubt. “Peter is a coward. He’s an embezzler, but he doesn’t have the spine for murder.”
“He killed his partner ten years ago!” Vanessa screamed, spit flying from her lips. “He rigged the brakes on that car, Claire! And he killed Lily!”
The world went perfectly silent. The roaring of the fire, the crackle of the radios, the sirens—it all faded into a dull, underwater hum.
“What did you say?” I breathed.
Vanessa looked at me, tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her cheeks. “I didn’t chase her that night. Peter did. He realized she had the ledger and the proof about Chicago. He took my keys. He drove my Lexus, Claire. He chased her in my car so that if anyone saw, they’d think it was me.”
Answer one: Peter didn’t drive his SUV that night; he drove Vanessa’s car to frame her. Open two: But if Peter drove Vanessa’s car, whose car forced Lily off the road?
“You expect me to believe you just handed him the keys?” I asked, my voice dangerously soft.
“I didn’t have a choice!” Vanessa cried. “He hit me! Look at the police report from the day after the crash—I had a bruised jaw. I told everyone I slipped in the kitchen.”
I stepped back, feeling dizzy. I looked down into the ravine. The firefighters were spraying foam onto the blazing chassis of Peter’s SUV.
“Ma’am, you need to step behind the barricade,” the paramedic said gently, guiding me away from the ambulance.
I walked blindly toward my car. My mind was racing, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. If Peter chased Lily in Vanessa’s Lexus, then the broken taillight at the crash scene would belong to a Lexus. But the police report said there was no secondary paint transfer. No sign of collision. Lily had stopped before going over the edge, and then something forced her down.
As I reached my car, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a text from an unknown number.
I didn’t kill her, Claire. Come to the community center. Alone. I have the ledger. I will prove it. — Peter.
I stared at the screen. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone. He was alive. He had fled the crash and gone to the one place he knew I would eventually go.
I looked back at Vanessa, who was now crying into the paramedic’s shoulder. She was a master manipulator. Was she telling the truth, or setting Peter up?
I got into my car, locked the doors, and read the text again.
I drove away from the fire, leaving the sirens behind, and headed toward the darkest part of town.
When I pulled up to the community center, the building was pitch black. The streetlights in this neighborhood were broken, casting long, menacing shadows across the brick facade. The front door was slightly ajar.
I grabbed a heavy Maglite flashlight from my glove compartment. I wasn’t walking in there defenseless.
I pushed the door open. “Peter?”
The beam of my flashlight swept across the lobby. It illuminated the newly repaired drywall, the stacked folding chairs, and finally, Lily’s piano sitting in the center of the main hall.
Sitting on the piano bench, bathed in the pale beam of my light, was Peter. He was covered in mud, his suit jacket torn, bleeding from a cut on his cheek. In his lap was a thick, black leather-bound ledger.
“I didn’t touch her, Claire,” Peter said, his voice breaking. He looked like a terrified child. “I swear on my soul. I chased her, yes. I wanted the ledger back. But when I got to the quarry road… she was already dead.”
“Vanessa said you drove her Lexus,” I said, gripping the flashlight like a bat.
May you like
“I did,” Peter confessed, crying freely now. “But I never caught up to her. Someone else beat me to it.”
Cliffhanger: Peter opened the ledger and pulled out a photograph. “Lily didn’t just figure out about Chicago, Claire. She figured out who my accomplice was.” He turned the photo around. “I wasn’t embezzling alone.”
