Page 67 of Deputies Under Fire
“Rory?” Judson shouted. “What the devil is going on?” He was running toward them, but pulled up when he saw the answer to his own question.
All hell was about to break loose.
“What will it take to get you to put down that IED and surrender?” Rory asked Frank.
Frank laughed, but there was no humor in it. In fact, just the opposite. He groaned, the sound of a man in emotional agony. Rory didn’t have a shred of sympathy for him, though, since he was looking at the face of a killer.
“No surrender,” Frank muttered. “This ends now.” And he shifted the IED as if ready to set it off.
Think. Think fast.Rory had to do something.
“At least tell us why we’re dying,” Rory insisted. “You can do that much for us. We deserve answers.”
Frank seemed to consider that, and Rory could feel the seconds ticking by. He had no idea how much firepower was in those IEDs around Ike, but it was possible they’d blow up the entire area. If that was the case, though, then Frank likely wouldn’t beholding yet another IED. Unless that was insurance that they all die.
Frank included.
But maybe that had been his plan all along.
“I didn’t mean for Mellie to die,” Frank finally said. “That was an accident. She’d seen Ike and me fighting at my wife’s grave, and she came to my ranch to check on me. I didn’t hear her when she drove up, and she walked right in to my workshop. She saw me making one of these.” He lowered his gaze to the IED. “She knew what it was, and she turned to run. I caught her, and, I, uh, had a knife in my hand that I was using to strip some wires…” His voice trailed off.
“And you murdered her,” Eden said, finishing his sentence. “You murdered her!”
Rory could only imagine the firestorm of emotions that she was feeling right now. Frank had killed her foster mother, and it didn’t matter that he’d just called it an accident. Mellie was dead. So were Lou Garcia, Brenda and Carter. Garrison had nearly been killed, too.
And Frank had clearly tried to cover his tracks.
Clearly taken steps to prevent him from being ID’ed as the killer. The CSIs had found no IED-making equipment during their search, so that meant Frank had cleaned up that area and had obviously moved his IED factory elsewhere.
“No,” Diedre sobbed. “No, please say this isn’t true.”
Everyone, including Frank, ignored her, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Judson easing back a few steps. Rory doubted the deputy was trying to distance himself from the blast, though. No. He was likely trying to get to Ike to see what he could do about saving him.
“Did Brenda walk in on you, too?” Eden snapped. “Did you kill her by accident as well?”
Frank didn’t react to the anger. “No,” he said with an eerie calmness, “but Mellie had apparently called her to tell her what had happened at the cemetery with Ike, and she told Brenda that she was coming to see me.”
So there was the motive for two murders. Heck, for framing Ike as well, since it was obvious now that the altercation at the cemetery had been what set Frank off. That had caused him to snap, and this was the result.
But there was something about this that didn’t make sense.
“There was five months between Mellie’s and Brenda’s murders,” Eden pointed out. “That’s a long time to wait to tie up any loose ends.”
Frank nodded. “Brenda kept asking me about Mellie, kept bringing up the visit that Mellie told her she was going to make to see me. I think Brenda was looking for evidence to prove that I’d been the one to kill her. Playing detective,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Brenda never said anything to the cops about Mellie’s plans to visit you,” Rory informed Frank.
“Because I told her that Mellie hadn’t come,” Frank admitted, “and I turned the tables on her by saying that Mellie had told me that she was going to see her, to see Brenda. So it was sort of an impasse. I wouldn’t tell on Brenda, and she wouldn’t tell on me. But I couldn’t risk Brenda staying quiet forever. So I asked her if I could meet her at her house to discuss it. She agreed.”
Frank stopped again. Rory didn’t know how much of those ten minutes were gone now, but each second counted.
“I drugged Brenda, planted those burner phones, took her to the barn. And I killed her,” Frank admitted. “At least I thought I had. When I left her, I believed she was dead.”
“But you set an IED just in case,” Eden snapped. “An IED that killed a CSI.”
“I’m sorry about that. He wasn’t meant to die. But I wanted to bring down the whole damn barn because I thought it was over. I thought Ike would be blamed for Brenda’s death, and that he’d end up rotting in jail. But you didn’t arrest him,” he practically shouted. “He was a free man, walking around, continuing to spread his hatred. Not paying for the misery he brought to my life.”
Rory didn’t voice the reason for that misery. It wasn’t just the incident in the cemetery, but the fact that Ike had had an affair with Frank’s wife. A wife he had obviously loved.
