CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Mick Sinatra arrived at Brent and MaKayla’s after word spread about the explosion. Everybody else in the family wanted to come to Jericho, too, but they were ordered by Charles to stay put and stay on lockdown. They didn’t know what was happening, but the stakes were getting higher and higher.

Charles and Jenay, Mick and Donald, and Brent and MaKayla, along with Reno, Sal, and Gemma, were all at the dining room table trying to make sense of what was happening.

“All we know so far is that the apartment was rented a week and a half ago,” Brent said, “to a guy named William Benjamin Goode.”

“Who the fuck is that?” Reno asked.

“We couldn’t find anything on him,” said Mick. “As soon as I got the name, I ordered a deep background. Nothing turned up.”

“Damn,” said Charles.

“Somebody’s toying with us,” said Jenay.

“But why toy with my children?” asked Charles. “Why toy with Donnie and Ashley?”

“They aren’t toying with her yet,” said Donnie. “That apartment number reference could be because I lived there, not because I lived there with Ash. Maybe I’m the one they’re really after.”

“They would have killed you when they had you,” said Brent. “The fact that the guy got away without taking you out makes it more likely you weren’t his target, just somebody he could use as a bargaining chip.”

“That’s still bad,” said Charles.

Then MaKayla leaned back. “Wait a minute.”

Everybody looked at her. “What?” asked Brent.

“William Benjamin Goode.”

“That’s the guy that rented the apartment Donnie and Ash once lived in, yes.”

“The one with the same address as that hotel suite,” added Donnie. “Why?”

“That’s what he said.”

“That’s what who said?”

MaKayla got up and hurried into the kitchen. They all got up and followed her.

“That’s what who said, Kayla?” Brent was asking her.

“I need my laptop. My laptop is at my office. But I think it’s on my tablet too,” MaKayla said as she opened her tablet that was lying on the center island.

“What are you looking for?” Reno asked her.

“My old convictions’ list.”

“What about it?”

But she was too busy strolling down a long list of names to answer any questions. Until she found it. “There he is!”

“MaKayla, tell us what’s going on?” Charles was as anxious to know as the rest of the family.

“That’s what he wrote.”

“That’s what who wrote?”

“Hank Logan.”

Donnie frowned. “Hank? What does he have to do with this?”

“We convicted him on a double homicide. I didn’t personally try the case though. Darren McGuire tried the case.”

“Darren?” asked Brent. “Maybe that’s why he was roped into this.”

“Yeah, they knew he was a crooked deputy DA who would gladly take a bribe,” said Reno. “Maybe that gunshot that took him out wasn’t because he was talking to us. Maybe it was by design all along.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Sal. “But I still don’t get what he supposedly wrote has to do with anything.”

“His case went up on appeal,” said MaKayla, “and I remember how he wrote a letter to the judge begging for mercy. I don’t hardly ever pay attention to these letters because I just don’t have the time, but the reason I remembered his letter was because he kept saying how he would be a better man and be good, but he kept leaving out the letter I.”

“Make yourself plain, Kayla,” said Charles.

“He kept saying will be good . Not I will be good. He kept saying if you overturn my conviction or show me mercy or whatever the letter said, he always said will be good . Will be a better man . He kept leaving out the I will be good. Or I will be a better man.”

“Okay,” said Jenay, although they still weren’t putting two and two together.

Except for Brent. “William Benjamin Goode. Will B. Goode.”

MaKayla nodded.“Right!”

“That’s some slick shit right there,” said Sal. “So you think this Hank Logan is involved in all of this? But all you’re basing it on is that name somebody used to rent that apartment, and the fact that he said will be good in a letter he wrote? I can see a loose connection. But that’s all you got?”

“There’s more,” said MaKayla.”

“Has to be for this to make any sense to me,” said Sal.

“The appellate court judge on his case made a note of how he never said I in his letters. And he wrote more than one. But it was as if Hank Logan refused to take responsibility for what he’d done. It was a death knell for his appeal. But here’s the kicker,” said MaKayla. “The appellate court judge that turned down his appeal was Alvin Clayton.”

They were all floored. “Oh wow,” said Gemma.

“That’s what I call a connection,” said Reno.

“Did you know Clayton back then?” Charles asked MaKayla.

“Only that he was on the appellate court for a short period of time. Since that case originated out of my office, I had to know that much. But that’s all I knew about him. I didn’t even remember he was the judge on that case until I saw his name in this file.”

“Well somebody remembered it,” said Jenay. “That’s why he’s dead.”

“There’s more,” said Brent, studying his wife. “Isn’t there?”

MaKayla nodded. “The two witnesses in the case, the two that testified under oath that Hank did not spend the night at their apartment as he claimed he did, but he left their apartment before nine on the night of those murders, was Donnie and Ashley.”

Everybody was astounded. They all looked at Donnie.

“And the apartment we lived in at the time,” said Donnie, “the apartment Hank lied and said he spent the night at, was 1498 Jasper Road. That same apartment that went up in flames tonight.”

Everybody now understood, without a doubt, the connections.

“So Hank Logan is the missing link,” said Brent.

“He wanted us to alibi him and lie for him,” said Donnie, “but we knew Daddy would skin us alive if we did something like that. We didn’t want to testify, either, because we were friends with Hank, but MaKayla’s office subpoenaed us. When we swore to tell the truth so help us God, we knew we had to tell the truth.”

“After he lost the appeal,” said Sal, “what happened to him?”

“He eventually lost all of his appeals, including a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court,” said MaKayla. “He was executed two years ago.”

“ Two years ago ?” Reno couldn’t believe it. “If he was executed two years ago, what they bringing that shit up now for?”

“I don’t know. But there’s got to be a reason.”

Mick and Sal both stood up and got on their phones to see what they could find out about Hank Logan’s background, and Brent made a call to his office.

While the men paced around the kitchen on their respective phones, Donnie and Gemma remained at the center island while MaKayla continued checking the files she had on her tablet to see if she could find any intel on Hank herself. Jenay went to the frig to see what she would whip up for the family to eat.

For several long minutes it was just phone conversations after phone conversations. Until Reno, Sal, and Brent ended their calls with little results. But Mick was still on the phone. He was still getting intel.

But as Reno and Sal talked quietly with Brent, and while MaKayla continued to search her own records for any mention of Hank’s next of kin or relatives, Gemma looked at Donnie, who looked flustered to her. “You okay, Don?”

Donnie exhaled. “I hadn’t thought about Hank Logan since his execution. That was a hard day for me and Ash both.”

“It was a hard day because you guys were once his friends?”

Donnie nodded as Jenay gave him a can of beer. “Thanks, Ma. What was hard about it was that we didn’t think he was the kind of dude to do something like that, you know? We still find it hard to believe.”

“So you could see how one of his family members would still believe in his innocence and want to, in their view anyway, get the bastards who got him?”

“I can see a lot of people still believing in his innocence,” said Donnie. “A lot of people think he was railroaded.”

“Did they say why?” Gemma asked him.

But Donnie was shaking his head. “Just a feeling. They had no proof.”

“But we did,” said MaKayla. “We had reams of it. Mountains of it.” Then MaKayla looked at Donnie. “Did you know any of his family members?”

“I knew of a brother.”

The ladies all stopped all movement and looked at Donnie. “A brother?” asked MaKayla. “He had a brother?”

“Sort of kind of,” said Donnie. “Hank told us once that they were actually father and son, but he said it was on the downlow so they told people they were brothers.”

“Why would it be on the downlow? What do you mean?”

“Hank said his father had a whole other family and couldn’t claim him. So they said they were brothers. But I don’t know if there was any truth to that. Might have been Hank just running his mouth because he saw the relationship Ash and I had with our father. Cause what he was saying didn’t make much sense to me.”

“But if it was true, that’ll warp somebody’s mind for sure. A father doesn’t want people to know you were his son?” Jenay shook her head. “That’s serious.”

“What was this brother-slash-father’s name?” asked Gemma.

But Donnie shook his head. “I didn’t know him like that. I’ve never even seen him before. It was just Hank talking about him. I don’t recall Hank ever saying his name at all really.”

“I know his name,” said Mick as he was ending his call.

Although Mick said it with his usual nonchalance, it sounded earth shattering to everybody else.

“You know his name?” asked Reno. “Well damn, Uncle Mick, what you waiting for? Tell us! And tell us where his ass been hiding so we can go get him.”

“He hasn’t been hiding anywhere,” replied Mick. “He’s being living in plain sight right here in Jericho.”

That surprised all of them. “Who?” Charles asked.

“Sergeant Dokery Pyles.”

Brent frowned. “ Doke ? My sergeant is Hank Logan’s brother?”

“That’s not his brother. But that’s his father, yes.”

“So it was true,” said Donnie. “Hank was telling the truth. But Sergeant Pyles? I can’t believe it!”

Although Reno and Sal had no clue who Doke Pyles was, the Jericho crew knew exactly who he was. He’d been on the force for years. And they all looked at Brent.

But Brent could not believe it either. He was floored too. “Even during Hank Logan’s trial, Doke never once showed any interest in it at all. He never . . .”

MaKayla went over to Brent and pulled him into her arms. Then she looked up at him as she held him. “It doesn’t mean anything yet. Just that they were related.”

But MaKayla the attorney had to admit, for Doke Pyles’ sake, it didn’t look good.