Page 123 of Never Forget
Morrison arrived that afternoon with the two agents behind him.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Reeves. May we come in?"
I stepped aside and let them through.
We sat at the kitchen table. Morrison on one side, Brooks and Whitfield flanking him. Jamie and I on the other. Whitfield opened a notebook.
"Someone's in custody," Morrison said.
Jamie's hand found mine under the table.
"He turned himself in three days ago. Walked into the station and asked to speak to a detective."
Jamie went still. "He turned himself in?"
"He wanted a deal. No jail time in exchange for everything he knew." Morrison paused. "Which, as it turns out, was a lot. He gave us the pay. The drop. The instructions. The name of the person who paid him."
"Who?"
"We'll get there. I have to tell you first—it was an interesting story to hear. We'd been looking at the fire department as one of the angles on your arson. And it turned out the fire department was the reason he came in."
I looked up. "How so?"
Morrison's face did something that was almost a smile.
"A few weeks ago, he was in a car accident with his daughter. Four-year-old in a car seat. He was hurt too, but it was the little girl he couldn't stop thinking about. The fire department cut her out and brought her to him."
He shook his head.
"He figured out that if he kept taking the kind of work he'd been taking, eventually he was going to end up in a cell, and there'd be nobody to raise his daughter. So he stopped. Got clean. Kept his head down for a while."
Jamie hadn't moved.
"But he'd set your house on fire before all that. He'd been told it would be empty. When he found out about your niece—when he realized how close he'd come—it sat on him. He came in because he couldn't live with it. And because he knew whoever paid him was going to come looking for him eventually, and he'd rather be the one who walked in first."
I couldn't speak for a second.
The call came back before I could help it. The residential street off Coleman. The utility pole. The man on the stretcherwith his good arm around his daughter and his fingers closed around mine.She's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.
I didn't say anything.
"The person who paid him," Morrison said. "Bryce Montgomery."
Jamie's hand went still in mine.
I looked at her.
She wasn't surprised. Her face slowed like a part of her had been braced for something else slotted into place for this. She'd half-known. She'd half-known for a long time. I hadn't.
Morrison let the name sit for a second. Then he kept going.
"SLED has been building a case on Montgomery for years. A pattern of complaints dating back to his time in law school, continuing through his work at the City Attorney's office. Women he pursued, pressured, discredited when they tried to come forward. He's been careful. His name is on very little. But we've had a file."
Whitfield turned a page.
"The arson gave us a thread we could pull. Paid arsonist, money trail, phone records. Once we had cause, we got warrants. Everything we'd been sitting on for years became admissible. He was arrested yesterday morning."
Jamie still hadn't spoken.
