August 4th, 8:40 AM:

      "I wonder how they're gonna handle things today," Briar remarked to Ashley, as they exited the parking garage and began the now-familiar walk toward the courthouse. "I can't imagine that Fraulein Rottenmeier would still be willing to represent him after he tried to crush her larynx."

      "No idea, babe," he replied, taking her hand as she stepped off the curb and they made their way across the street. "I just hope they don't end up having to declare a mistrial and making everybody have to go through this crap all over again." They continued walking down the block, and then, as they rounded the corner, he paused, a puzzled expression crossing his face. "Well, something's definitely going on," he observed. "Take a look at that, Tink."

      Stopping beside him, Briar looked in the direction of the courthouse, and noted that the street in front of the building was lined with patrol cars, and a number of uniformed officers had stationed themselves on the steps leading up to the building. Several of the reporters who customarily stood in the back of the courtroom were clustered together mid-way up the stairway, engaged in what appeared to be a rather heated exchange with two of the patrolmen, gesticulating wildly and pointing to their press passes. The officers simply stood with their arms crossed, shaking their heads, and after a few seconds the majority of the group turned and started making their way back to the sidewalk.

      As they continued walking, Briar nudged Ashley with her elbow and inclined her head, drawing his attention to the fact that the representative from a national tabloid who hadn't been allowed access to the proceedings had decided to use the argument to his advantage, and was attempting to slip past the officers and make his way into the building. The attempt was unsuccessful, though, and they snickered as the reporter was immediately stopped and handcuffed by Danny Belmont's new partner, a large, muscular patrolman of Tongan descent named Pasilio Taumalolo.

      Another group of people were turned away as they approached the steps, so they were somewhat surprised when Danny broke away from the cluster of cops and trotted down to meet them. "Hey there, we've been looking for you two," he informed them. "Chief Bledsoe and the Lieutenant want to see you, they told us to bring you in as soon as you got here. C'mon, I'll take you to them."

      He hesitated for a moment, glancing back at his partner and questioning, "Hey, Pasi, are you okay to deal with this guy while I take them in to the Chief?"

      "No problem, bro. Go ahead and get 'em in there, before somebody blows a gasket."

      Danny ushered them toward the entrance, drawing howls of protest from the newspeople still gathered at the bottom of the staircase. He opened the door, allowing them to enter, and once they were inside, Ashley turned to look at Danny, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "What the hell is going on here, dude?"

      Their friend shook his head briefly and replied, "I'm not sure of that myself, but it's got to be something major. A bunch of us got called to come in early, and all they told us was that court was canceled for today, and that we were to keep out everyone except certain people they specified, especially the media types, until we heard otherwise," He reached for the elevator panel, then paused momentarily as he acknowledged, "Now I know I'm still fairly low on the food chain in the department, and that the uniforms aren't always kept up on some of the details when it comes to major cases, but this is just weird, and it kind of worries me a bit, to be honest."

      "Considering what happened yesterday, we were kind of surprised that nobody called or emailed us not to come today," Briar said as they stepped into the lift. "Since he's probably gonna have to find a new lawyer and all. But this seems a bit over the top, unless..." She paused, her eyes flickering between the two men, before continuing, "You don't suppose she actually died, do you?"

      "I haven't heard anything about it, at least not yet," Danny responded. "But even if she did, this is definitely not the way they normally deal with this sort of thing. Yeah, things would be put on hold until they tacked on the extra charges, and found him a new lawyer, but neither of those things would be a reason to keep shit buttoned up like this."

      The elevator jerked to a stop, and when the doors opened, they caught a momentary glimpse of the occupants of the elevator directly across from them just before the doors slid shut. They saw Lee Kimble kneeling next to his father's wheelchair, and the dazed, almost uncomprehending expression on the older man's face sent a flicker of unease through all three.

      They exchanged unnerved glances, and Briar questioned, "Holy shit, you don't think he broke out of jail, do you?"

      "No, that one I definitely don't believe," was Danny's immediate response. "As dangerous as he is, there's no fuckin' way they'd be keeping that under wraps. You guys would have had SWAT teams parked outside your place as soon as they'd gotten word, and his face would be plastered across every TV network in the country. But something's definitely hinky, though, so I guess we should get you guys into this meeting, and maybe you can find out what it is."

      He led them down the corridor, the sound of their bootheels on the tiled floor echoing from the walls, until they reached a door at the far end of the passage. Danny tapped on the door, then opened it wide enough to peer around the frame. "Excuse me, sirs, but Briar and Ashley are here. Do you still want to speak with them?"

      "Yes, we most certainly do," they heard Dean Bledsoe confirm, and Danny stepped back, pulling the door back far enough to allow his companions to move past him into the room. As they crossed the threshhold, he started to close the door after them, but was stopped by the commander saying, "Come in, Officer Belmont. Since you are involved with our current situation, you may as well join us."

      He stepped inside and closed the door, and Garrett Sanger motioned for them to take places at the table where the two detectives were already seated. Both men wore deliberately neutral expressions, giving the newcomers no hints as to what the purpose of the meeting was, so after she had seated herself, Briar demanded, "What's all this about, anyway? We saw Martin and Lee getting into the elevator a couple of minutes ago, and they seemed to be kind of freaked out. Did Hardesty actually die? Or did he manage to escape?"

      "Neither one, actually. Or at least not in the way you're thinking," was Sanger's rather cryptic response to her query. "But before we explain further, I need to make it clear that anything you hear doesn't go any further until one of us says otherwise. Chief MacDevitt is back at headquarters right now working with Nancy Underwood from Media Relations to put together a press conference, and there's certain information that doesn't need to be made available to the general public. Agreed?"

      They all voiced their agreement, and after pausing to glance at Bledsoe, who gave a confirming nod, Sanger sighed and informed them. "We got a call from the warden at the detention center around seven this morning, telling us that one of his guards had called out an alarm a few minutes earlier, when they were doing the morning head count and getting everyone up for breakfast." He paused momentarily, then sighed again, and said, "They didn't get a response from Harris' cell, so the guard keyed himself in, and found a body. It seems that he committed suicide last night, sometime after the final check."

      There was no response at first, merely stunned stares, but after several seconds Ashley recovered himself enough to ask, "This is probably a really dumb question, but are you sure it was him?"

      "Very sure," Dean Bledsoe answered. "We both saw him, and did the formal identification, so his family wouldn't have to. It wasn't a pretty sight, and no matter how things were between them, that shouldn't be their last memory of him."

      "So I'm guessing he hung himself, then," Danny stated.

      "No, he didn't," Sanger replied. "His particular manner of death was... rather unusual, and it's one of the things that we'd rather not have making the rounds just yet."

      "But after conferring with the Kimbles' when they were here, we decided to go ahead and talk with you about it," Bledsoe added. "Since you're writing your book on the case, Briar, we all decided to let you have the facts of the matter, and let you use whatever you see fit. We know that you can be trusted not to sensationalize things, if that's actually even possible in this situation."

      She didn't respond immediately, and several emotions displayed themselves across her face: confusion, relief, sympathy, and apprehension. But after taking several deep breaths, she turned to Sanger and inquired, "How, then?"

      "He took one of the legs off of his bed, and wedged the end into a crack in the wall. Then, as near as we can figure, he jumped off the toilet seat and impaled himself on it."

      Briar and Ashley both winced at the statement, and Danny rocked back in his chair, blurting, "Jesus Christ! Are you serious?"

      "As a heart attack, Officer Belmont."

      "Wow! Now I see what you meant about not wanting Martin or Lee to have to identify him," Ashley observed. "But I do have a question, if you don't mind me asking. I know that usually someone would go to them to make a death notification, so if they weren't viewing the body, why did you have them come here?"

      "Because Keith left notes," Dean Bledsoe announced. "One of them was for his father, but since it's considered to be evidence, we can't let him have it just yet, so we asked him to come here to read it. And, as a matter of fact, that's another thing we wanted to speak with Briar about."

      She tipped her head and looked at him questioningly, and he explained, "Martin authorized us to offer you a copy of the letter, as possible reference material for your book, if you want to use it. It's definitely interesting, he actually explains some things that I'm pretty sure no one else knew about."

      After a moment of consideration, she said, "Yeah, I think I'd like to read it. Maybe whatever's in it will help tie up the last few chapters, when I get there. I figured on ending with the verdict, but that's obviously not gonna happen now."

      "Wait a second, you said 'notes'," Danny interjected. "Who else got one?"

      "Everybody, basically," Sanger answered. "He put that one on the wall, so anybody walking into the cell would see it. I have a copy of the picture, so you can see that, too." 

      He opened a folder that lay on the table in front of him, pulled out a large piece of paper, and slid it in front of Briar. Her companions crowded close to her for a better view, and they saw a photo of a cinderblock wall in a rather dingy shade of tan. Scrawled across it in large, ragged capitals, in a rusty-brown shade which stood out against the dull institutional paint was written:

     "I TRIED TO GET RID OF THE MONSTERS, BUT THEY FOUGHT BACK. I WON'T LET THEM WIN."

      "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ashley questioned.

      "That's what we've been trying to figure out," Sanger said. "His dad and brother had no idea, either."

      Then Briar took them by surprise with the statement, "It actually sounds like he may have been paraphrasing Friedrich Nietzsche." 

      "Are you talking about the German philosopher?" Bledsoe questioned, and she nodded emphatically, tapping a finger on the picture.

      "Yeah, I remember this because of a book I read for my Criminal Psych class in college. It was written by a guy named Robert Ressler, who was one of the FBI agents that started the psychological profiling program. He took the title of his book from a Nietzsche quote, because he said it should be a reminder to anyone in his line of work not to let the stuff they dealt with work its way too far into their heads. If I remember correctly, it goes, 'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.' So I guess something finally made it click in his brain that he had actually turned into what he was trying to get rid of."

      "Oh, fuck!" Ashley exclaimed. "Do you remember what Martin asked him yesterday? And how shocked he looked afterward?"

      "Yeah, I get what you're saying," Danny agreed. "It seemed like all the fight totally went out of him after that. Shit, I hope the poor old guy doesn't start blaming himself for this."

      "Hopefully his letter will keep that from happening," Sanger said, opening the folder again, and removing a sheet of yellow lined paper. As he reached out to hand it to Briar, his elbow nudged the folder, and several other papers slid across the table. He and Bledsoe both scrambled to collect them, but before they could, the others saw another picture, one which caused them all to flinch, at least slightly.

      This was a picture of Keith Harris, slumped against the grimy brown wall on his knees, arms dangling limply and one cheek pressed against the concrete. His eyes were partially open, and blood had streamed down his chin, but the most startling thing about the shot was the long, thin piece of metal that protruded from his back, stained the same rust color as the letters on the wall. 

      "Jesus! Did he write that with his own blood?" Danny wheezed.

      "How would that even be possible?" Ashley questioned. "Cause he sure as shit didn't get up off of that thing and write it."

      "The ME found cuts on several of his fingers," Dean Bledsoe told them. "Presumably he sliced them up taking the bolts out of the bed, and used them to put that up on the wall after he wrote the note to his dad."

      Briar said nothing, merely taking a long look at the photo before picking it up and handing it back to Sanger. Her face was expressionless as she sat back in her chair, and Ashley's reflected concern as he asked, "Are you okay there, babe?"

      She drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly before replying, "Yeah, I think so. I was just wondering if it makes me a terrible person that I can't make myself feel bad about this. I mean, I do, for Martin and the rest of the family, but after what he did to Sylvia, and all the others, I just can't come up with any sympathy for him. As far as I'm concerned, it was just karma finally showing up to collect."

      "Same here, hon," Danny stated flatly. "So if you're a terrible person, I must be, too."

      "Ditto," Ashley chimed in. "It might be an asshole thing to say, and I sure as hell wouldn't say it in front of his folks, but I for one am not gonna lose one second of sleep over the idea of him not being able to hurt anybody else. He can't escape from this, or get some sort of an appeal or pardon. It's actually over now, and we don't have to worry about him disrupting our lives, or anybody else's."

      She exhaled again, then slid the yellow sheet of paper across the tabletop and picked it up, holding it in both hands as her eyes scanned the page, reading silently to herself. The men watched as her eyebrows shot upward, a startled look crossing her face, and finally Ashley blurted out, "What is it, Tink? What did he say?"

      She glanced up from the letter, and said, "Well, I don't think it's what anybody would have expected, that's for sure. It sounds like he actually did finally have what my Grandma Calvert would've called a 'come to Jesus moment', and admitted to himself that at least some of the things he did were wrong. He also has a rather interesting explanation of why he thinks he did it. I'll read it to you." 

      Ashley and Danny lean forward in their seats, listening intently as she began to read:

"Dad,

      The first thing I need to tell you is that I'm sorrier than you'll ever know, I never had any intention of hurting you, or Lee, Diana, and the kids. All I wanted was to keep other people from going through what we did when Mom left, or when we lost Tracy, by making sure that the people I chose didn't have the chance to hurt more people than they already had. None of you were ever supposed to find out, because I knew that you wouldn't understand. But now you know, and the thing I most wanted to avoid is staring me in the face.

      I have to be honest, and tell you that there are a couple of them that I can't convince myself to be sorry for. Graff was nothing but an abusive pimp, and Milligan was a worthless pedophile, the world is better off without the both of them. But maybe some of the others could have turned themselves around if they'd had the chance, who knows?

      And as for the others, I suppose that I had myself so convinced that I was doing the right thing that I couldn't accept the idea that they wanted to stop me, so I felt like I had to get them out of my way. This is obviously when I should have realized that I'd lost control of everything, and maybe thought about stopping, but I didn't, and we can all see how that's turned out for everyone. I know it seems incomprehensible to all of you, and I understand that now, because it amazes me to think that I ever thought it was logical. But I think I might actually have an idea how that happened, and if I'm right, then this is the best thing for everyone. Because if my theory is correct, then I can't promise you that I wouldn't do the same thing again if I ever had the chance."

      "Well, it sounds like you hit it right on the head yesterday, Tink," Ashley cut in.

      Turning toward him with a puzzled expression, she questioned, "How do you mean?"

      "After we left here, you said that you believed that he'd kill somebody else if he ever got the chance, and it sounds like he pretty much thought the same thing."

      "Yeah, I guess it does," Danny agreed. "But I wanna know what sort of explanation he was trying to sell his folks. Go on, and tell us what it says."

      She turned her attention back to the paper, and continued:

      "You asked me this afternoon if anything you had done might have had anything to do with what's happened, and I never meant anything more than when I told you no. Anything good that I've ever done in my life I learned from you, and I'm sure that Lee would say the same if he were asked. But I have to confess, this isn't the only secret I've kept from you, and now it's time to come clean, because maybe it will shed some sort of light on why I've become the monster that everyone tells me I am.

      It started about seven years ago, right after Gramps passed away. I went over one day to help Mimi sort through some of their financial documents, and while I was there, a woman named Ramona stopped by to give Mimi her sympathies. I found out that she'd been Mom's best friend since middle school, but she'd moved out of state just before you got together, and had just recently moved back. They talked a bit, and when she got ready to leave, Mimi offered her some of Gramps' suits for her husband, since he'd just gotten a job in a bank. I helped her carry them out to her car, and when we got outside, where she knew nobody would overhear, she asked me if anyone had ever talked to me about my biological father.

      I don't suppose I have to tell you how much that question surprised me, because that was something that nobody ever mentioned. I started asking her questions, and found out that she'd been with Mom at the party where everybody assumed I'd been conceived. She said that she'd tried to get Mom to leave when she started getting 'friendly' with some of the guys, but she wouldn't, so all Ramona could do was hang around and make sure she didn't get hurt. 

      She also told me that there were only two black guys there that night, which narrowed down my list of possible sperm donors, and she gave me their names: Pernell McCutcheon and Lincoln Hicks. 

      At first, I told myself that it didn't matter, that I wasn't going to worry about it. I had the best dad in the world, so what did I need anybody else for? But it kept crawling around in my brain, waking me up at night, so I finally decided to do some research on them. It turned out that Hicks was a heroin-addict gangbanger who was killed in a police shootout in 1982 after he tried to rob a Rexall. He had a record of violent crimes almost as long as the guy who killed Tracy, and was apparently considered to be a sociopath.

      Then, when I managed to trace McCutcheon, I found out that he's spent the last thirty years or so bouncing in and out of mental hospitals because he was diagnosed as a violent paranoid schizophrenic when I was eight. He may still be locked up, for all I know.

      I obviously didn't have any way to get DNA samples from them, so I still don't know which one is responsible for my existence, but either way, mental illness and violence are a part of my makeup. It kind of makes me wonder if any of this was really avoidable, or if there was some sort of script for my life written in my blood. 

      So now you know why I can't promise you that I'd never hurt anyone else, because I can't even make that promise to myself. I know that there's no way that they're ever going to let me have another second as a free man, and maybe that's for the best. But I also know that I can't live under these conditions, so this is my only other option. I'd rather be dead than spend the rest of my life locked up, or to keep being a disappointment to you, so try not to feel bad for me, because this is the only way I can ever be free. 

      Always remember that I loved all of you, 

                                                                                                           Your son,

                                                                                                            Keith Everett Harris"

      There was a long silence after she finished reading, which was eventually broken when Sanger sighed, and said, "Now do you all understand why we wanted this to stay just between us?"

      "Yeah, because if this letter got out, then the families of the two men he mentioned would end up getting hounded by the media vultures, for one thing," Briar replied.

      "That, along with the fact that Lee Kimble and his kids would get put through the wringer all over again when they started dragging up Phyllis Kimble's past," Bledsoe added, glancing at his phone as it emitted its ear-piercing R2-D2 shriek. "That was Paul," he announced after a few seconds. "He and Nancy have contacted the media, and the press conference is scheduled to start in twenty minutes. He wants both of us there, Garrett, so get your game face ready. Briar, you and Ashley should probably hightail it out of here before the rest of the bloodsuckers get here, unless you want to have to engage in hand-to-hand combat to get to your car."

      After a brief discussion, Dean Bledsoe sent a court employee to go to the parking garage to retrieve Briar's Charger and drive it to the basement parking area in the rear of the building, while he made a copy of the letter for Briar. When they were called with the information that it was actually there, Danny escorted them downstairs before returning to his duties, and they waited with the radio on until the press conference began. Then, once they were sure that the journalist's attention was fully engaged, they left the parking area and started toward their home.

      When she finally made the turn into their driveway and turned off the engine, neither of them made any immediate move to get out of the car, sitting in silence for several minutes. Finally, Briar remarked, "I should probably call Wiley and tell him what happened, before somebody wanders into the garage and blurts it out."

      "I'm actually kind of surprised that he hasn't called one of us already," Ashley said. "It's been on every radio and TV station in the area for at least fifteen minutes already."

      "Yeah, but he just keeps an IPod going over a speaker in the shop, and sets it on random, so everybody gets some of their preferred music at some point in the shift." She reached for her seat belt, then paused, turning to look into Ashley's eyes. "It's actually over, isn't it?" she marveled. "It's finally, completely, really most sincerely over. We'll never have to worry about him again."

      "No, darlin', we really don't," he responded, as a smile slowly spread across his face. "Let's go inside now, okay? You call Wiley, and anybody else you want to, and I'll get ahold of the guys. We can invite them to come over later."

      "Any particular reason?"

      "To help us celebrate," was his response. "Because he's not the only one who's free now. So are we."