Nearly Found by Cosimano Elle

Author:Cosimano, Elle [Cosimano, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-05-18T07:00:00+00:00

18

JEREMY PARKED IN FRONT of my trailer and killed the engine. I knew he wanted to come in, but I needed to be alone.

“I’ll let you know if I find anything,” I said, holding the police records to my chest. “And Jeremy? Thank you for helping me.” I opened the door.

“I just want all of this to be behind us. You want that too, right?” he asked.

The police records were hot in my hands. I remembered what Anh had said. That sometimes you have to get through something before you can put it behind you. “Yeah, I want that too.”

I went to my bedroom and fanned the police records over my comforter. The list of my father’s Known Associates seemed like a logical place to start. My mother, Butch, and I were first on the list, but below that was a list of other names. Jason Fowler, denoted as our landlord. Reginald Wiles, cross-referenced with his own case number. Then Anthony DiMorello, Karl Miller, and Craig Reinnert. My mind skipped over the old photograph of the poker club.

I flipped the page. According to Nicholson’s files, an arrest warrant was issued for my father on June 28, 2009. A day earlier, an anonymous call had been placed to the police department, disclosing the details of a several counts of extortion and an illegal gambling ring being run by my father, in connection with a money laundering operation that used Reggie Wiles’s brokerage firm as a front. The call had been traced to a phone in the lobby of the Belle Green Country Club. June 28 was the date Reggie Wiles had been arrested, according to the article in my bag. The same anonymous call—originating from the Belle Green Country Club—had incriminated both of them.

My stomach roiled. The anonymous call, the warrant for my father, the murder of Karl Miller, who was buried in the same golf course where the call was made. What if Karl Miller had been the one who’d made the anonymous call and turned my father in?

Or worse . . . What if my father killed him for it?

I dug the plastic bag out from under my bed. Carefully, I removed the faded photo of my father and his friends. Karl Miller had his arm around Reggie Wiles. Reggie Wiles had his arm around my dad. They were all smiling.

I thought about Jeremy and Anh. The long stretch of days when we didn’t speak. But even when Jeremy and I were angriest with each other, like the day we’d argued in the hall at school, or when Anh and I were at our most competitive, fighting for a life-changing chemistry scholarship, I could never have imagined killing them. The idea of my father—the man who’d gently placed Band-Aids on my knee, who’d never touched my mother when they argued—murdering anyone didn’t sit right. This had to be wrong. I had to be wrong. There had to be another explanation.

Maybe Lonny was right. Maybe I shouldn’t blindly believe. Maybe

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