Chief Jerome Harris had spent twenty-seven years in law enforcement, and he had never once been on the wrong side of an interrogation room door. That changed on a Tuesday morning, when Deputy Mayor Harold Finch called him at seven o'clock and requested his presence at Town Hall. By seven-thirty, Harris was seated in a windowless conference room on the third floor, facing a panel of three town council members and the county's district attorney, a sharp-featured woman named Diana Cross who had prosecuted two dozen homicides and lost only one.
The fourth letter lay on the table between them, enclosed in a clear evidence bag. Harris had turned it over voluntarily, knowing that withholding it would only make things worse. He had not yet decided whether that had been a mistake.
"Chief Harris," Diana Cross began, her voice carefully neutral. "This letter makes a serious allegation. It accuses you of a hit-and-run in 1991, of leaving a seventeen-year-old boy paralyzed in a ditch, and of covering up your involvement for the past seventeen years. I want to give you an opportunity to respond before we take any formal action."
Harris looked at the faces around the table. Deputy Mayor Finch was a thin, nervous man who had been appointed to his position after the previous deputy mayor resigned in disgrace three years earlier. The council members were a mix of East End and West End representatives, their expressions ranging from concern to barely concealed satisfaction. He had made enemies over the years. Some of them were sitting in this room.
"The letter is accurate," Harris said.
The silence that followed was absolute. Diana Cross blinked, clearly expecting a denial. Deputy Mayor Finch's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air.
"Could you elaborate?" Cross asked.
"On February 14, 1991, I was driving home from a late shift with the state patrol. The roads were icy, and visibility was poor. I felt an impact that I told myself was a deer. I stopped, I looked back, I saw nothing. The next morning, I heard about Marcus Webb. A seventeen-year-old boy found in a ditch on Ridge Road. He had been struck by a vehicle and left for dead. He survived but was paralyzed from the waist down."
"And you did not come forward?"
"I did not." Harris's voice was steady, but there was something beneath it, a weight that had been pressing down on him for seventeen years. "I convinced myself that it might not have been me. The timing was right, the location was right, but I told myself there could have been another driver. I told myself that if I had hit a person, I would have known. I told myself a great many things, and none of them were true."
"Did you take any steps to conceal your involvement?"
"I had a broken headlight repaired at an auto shop two towns over. I paid in cash. I did not report the damage to my insurance company. Six months later, I transferred out of the state patrol and returned to Briarwood. I told myself I was coming home. The truth is that I was running away."
Diana Cross leaned back in her chair. The council members exchanged glances. Deputy Mayor Finch had gone pale, his fingers drumming nervously on the table.
"Chief Harris," Cross said, "you understand that this is a confession to a serious crime. Leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury is a felony. The statute of limitations on hit-and-run offenses in this state is ten years, so you are not facing criminal prosecution for the accident itself. But obstruction of justice, evidence tampering, and official misconduct are separate matters. And regardless of the legal outcome, your position as chief of police is in serious jeopardy."
"I understand."
"I am placing you on administrative leave effective immediately. Deputy Chief Marcus Webb will assume your duties pending a full investigation by the state attorney general's office."
The name hit Harris like a second blow. Marcus Webb. He had worked alongside Marcus Webb for five years, had promoted him to deputy chief, had trusted him with the day-to-day operations of the department. And the boy he had left in that ditch, the boy whose legs would never move again, was also named Marcus Webb.
"Is there a relation?" Harris asked, though he already knew the answer.
Diana Cross's expression flickered. "Deputy Chief Webb is the younger brother of Marcus Webb Sr. The boy you struck on Ridge Road was his brother. Deputy Chief Webb has recused himself from the investigation, naturally. But the situation is... complicated."
Harris closed his eyes. For seventeen years, he had worked alongside the brother of the boy he had crippled. He had mentored him, promoted him, trusted him. And Marcus Webb had never said a word. Had he known? Had he been waiting all this time for the truth to come out?
Or had he been the one who wrote the letter?
The thought was like ice water in Harris's veins. Marcus Webb had access to the department's records, including the investigation into the letters. He had been present at briefings, had seen the samples of the typeface and the paper, had known about Agnes Thorne and her typewriter. He had the means, the knowledge, and a motive that Harris had never considered.
"Who will be handling the letter investigation while I am on leave?" Harris asked.
"Detective Varga will remain the lead investigator. She will report to Deputy Chief Webb for administrative purposes, but the state attorney general's office will oversee the case."
Harris nodded. It was the best outcome he could hope for. Varga was competent and thorough, and she would not let the investigation be derailed by political pressure. But she would also be working under Marcus Webb's supervision, and if Webb was the copycat, she was walking into a trap.
The meeting concluded with formalities. Harris surrendered his badge and his service weapon, signed a document acknowledging the terms of his suspension, and walked out of Town Hall into the pale morning light. Reporters were gathered on the steps, their cameras clicking as he emerged. Someone shouted a question. Someone else shouted an accusation. Harris walked through them without speaking, his eyes fixed on the middle distance, his mind churning through the implications of what he had learned.
Varga was waiting for him in the parking lot, leaning against her unmarked sedan with her arms crossed. Her expression was a complicated mixture of anger and sympathy and something else that Harris could not quite identify.
"You should have told me," she said.
"I should have told a lot of people."
"Did you know about Marcus Webb? About his brother?"
"No. I knew he had a brother who was disabled. He never told me how it happened. I never asked." Harris paused. "Do you think he wrote the letter?"
Varga was silent for a moment. "I do not know. But someone in this town knows a great many secrets, and Marcus Webb has access to the personnel files, the evidence logs, the investigation records. If anyone could find out about your accident, it would be him."
"And Agnes Thorne? Does he have access to her typewriter and her paper?"
"Webb was one of the officers who searched her house. He was in the basement. He could have found the typewriter and moved it before we obtained the warrant."
Harris leaned against the car beside her. The morning sun was climbing higher, but the air was still cold, and his breath misted in front of his face. He was no longer the chief of police. He was a suspended officer, a confessed felon, a man whose career was almost certainly over. But he was also the only person who understood the full scope of what was happening in this town. He could not stop investigating just because he had lost his badge.
"I need you to do something," he said. "Off the record."
"You are asking me to compromise my investigation."
"I am asking you to look at something that the official investigation might miss. The bypass vote. The land deals. The Vance family's financial records. Agnes Thorne said the letters were designed to influence the vote. If that is true, then the copycat's goal is not just revenge. It is political. Someone wants the bypass to fail, or someone wants it to pass. Either way, the letters are a means to an end."
"What do you want me to look for?"
"Follow the money. Who profits if the bypass passes? Who loses? And who has been buying up land along both proposed routes? Agnes said the Vance family has been positioning themselves for this vote for forty years. If the copycat is working for the Vance family, or against them, the financial records will show it."
Varga nodded slowly. "I will see what I can find. But you need to stay out of sight, Chief. The press is going to be all over this story. If you start conducting your own investigation while you are suspended, it will make everything worse."
"Worse than it already is?"
Varga did not answer. She did not need to.
Harris spent the rest of the day in a rented room at a boarding house on the edge of town, a place that accepted cash and did not ask questions. He had chosen it deliberately, a place where no one would think to look for him. His suspension was public now, the story spreading through Briarwood like a virus. His phone buzzed constantly with calls from reporters, from colleagues, from people he had not spoken to in years. He ignored them all.
Instead, he spread the contents of his personal investigation file across the small desk in his room. Photographs of the letters. Copies of the evidence reports. Transcripts of his interviews with Agnes Thorne, Walter Dempsey, Gerald Kilpatrick, and Marisol Varga. And the notes that Kilpatrick had kept for fifty-six years, the yellowed pages filled with the names of the men who had killed Nathaniel Thorne.
He had been looking at the case from the wrong angle. He had been focused on the letters themselves, on the typewriter and the paper and the method of delivery. But the letters were only the surface. The real story was beneath, in the history of the town, in the land and the power and the blood that had been spilled to keep them in the right hands.
The bypass vote was in two weeks. The town council was scheduled to cast their ballots on the same day that the state attorney general's office was expected to announce its findings on Harris's case. The timing was not coincidental. Someone had orchestrated all of this, every letter and every death, to culminate in that single moment.
But who? Agnes Thorne had started the fire, but someone else had added fuel to it. Someone who knew about Harris's secret, who had access to Agnes's typewriter, who understood the political landscape well enough to manipulate it.
Marcus Webb was the obvious suspect. But Harris had been a detective for too long to trust the obvious answer. Webb had a motive, but so did a dozen other people. Gerald Kilpatrick had spent his entire career covering up the truth. Lawrence Vance had a fortune riding on the bypass vote. Even Walter Dempsey, the retired mail carrier, had been following Agnes Thorne for months, watching her every move.
And then there was Marisol Varga, whose mother had been the keeper of the Vance family's secrets, whose aunt had been the woman whose false accusation had started the whole tragedy. Varga had access to the evidence, access to the investigation, access to everything. If she was the copycat, Harris had just handed her the keys to his entire case.
The thought made his stomach turn. He had trusted Varga. He had mentored her, promoted her, confided in her. If she had been playing him from the beginning, then he was an even bigger fool than he had imagined.
But he could not think that way. He needed evidence, not suspicion. He needed proof.
At nine o'clock that night, he made a decision. He could not sit in a rented room while the town tore itself apart. He could not wait for the official investigation to reach conclusions that might take weeks or months. He needed to act, and he needed to act now.
He picked up the phone and called the one person he knew would answer: Gerald Kilpatrick.
The editor of the Briarwood Sentinel picked up on the third ring. His voice was wary, guarded. "Chief Harris. I did not expect to hear from you. The news is saying you have been suspended."
"I have. But I am still investigating. I need to see your original notes from 1968. Not the ones you gave me. The real originals. The ones you have been hiding for fifty-six years."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. When Kilpatrick spoke again, his voice was quieter, almost a whisper.
"I do not know what you are talking about."
"Yes, you do. You were at the planning meeting the night before the lynching. The photograph proves it. You were not just a reporter covering a story. You were part of the conspiracy. You have been lying to me since the beginning, and I need to know what else you have been lying about."
The silence stretched on. Harris could hear Kilpatrick breathing, could almost hear the man's mind working, calculating the risks and the consequences.
"Come to the newspaper office at midnight," Kilpatrick said finally. "The back door. I will be there alone. And Harris?"
"Yes?"
"If what you are saying is true, if I have been lying to you, then I have been lying to myself as well. I have spent fifty-six years telling myself a story about what happened that night, and I am not sure I know the difference between the story and the truth anymore. Perhaps it is time to find out."
The line went dead. Harris put down the phone and looked at the clock on the wall. Three hours until midnight. Three hours until he confronted a man who had been hiding the truth for longer than Harris had been alive.
He reached into his bag and pulled out the cream-colored envelope that Agnes Thorne had left for him on the day she vanished from her house. He had not opened it yet. He had been afraid of what it might contain, of what new secret it might expose. But he could not delay any longer.
He opened the envelope and read the letter inside.
It was not an accusation. It was not an exposure. It was a warning, written in Agnes Thorne's careful, deliberate script.
*Chief Harris, by the time you read this, I will have told you the truth about my letters. I do not regret what I have done, but I regret the deaths that have followed. I did not intend for people to die. I intended for the truth to come out. There is a difference, though I know it is a thin one.*
*The copycat is not finished. The fourth letter was only the beginning. The copycat intends to expose every secret in this town, and the secrets you know about yourself are not the only ones you carry. There is something else, something you have forgotten, something that will destroy you if it comes to light. I do not know what it is. But the copycat does.*
*Be careful, Chief. The truth is a weapon, and weapons can cut both ways.*
Harris read the letter twice, then folded it and put it back in the envelope. He thought about the warning, about the copycat's intentions, about the secret that he himself might have forgotten. He had been carrying the guilt of Marcus Webb for seventeen years. What else was buried in his past, waiting to surface?
He did not know. But he was about to find out.
At eleven-thirty, he left the boarding house and walked through the dark streets of Briarwood toward the Sentinel building. The curfew was still in effect, and the town was silent, the houses dark, the streets empty. An autumn wind rustled the fallen leaves on the sidewalks, and somewhere in the distance, a dog barked at something unseen.
The back door of the Sentinel office was unlocked, just as Kilpatrick had promised. Harris pushed it open and stepped inside, his footsteps echoing on the linoleum floor. The newsroom was dark, the presses silent, the desks empty. A single light burned in Kilpatrick's office at the far end of the room.
Harris walked toward it, his hand resting on the grip of his service weapon, which he had not surrendered after all. He was not a police officer anymore, but he was still a man who understood that some truths required protection.
He reached the office door and pushed it open.
Gerald Kilpatrick was slumped over his desk, a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead, his eyes open and staring at nothing. On the desk beside his body, a cream-colored envelope lay unopened, addressed in the same slanted, deliberate script that had appeared on every letter that had torn this town apart.
And on the wall behind the desk, written in what looked like Kilpatrick's own blood, was a single word.
REMEMBER.
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