Chapter 22 | Evidence

Katherine's POV

"What exactly are you going to tell the police? They won't seriously believe you did this all alone," Chad fiddled with the scrambled eggs on his plate, maneuvering them around to make it seem as if he had eaten.

I shrugged my shoulders, "What are they going to do, tell me I didn't do it? It will be their word against my own, and in the end they'll have what they want. With the confession, they'll have proper grounds to arrest me."

"Are you sure you want to do this? I can tell them the truth. I'll tell them it was me who killed Benji," he pulled his cup of coffee to his mouth, taking a sip.

I could feel my heart pounding away in my ears, and felt my body heating away with anticipation. Prison was a different playing field than jail, and the likelihood of me seeing the light of another day was slim. It was two murders, I would surely get the injection before my life was up. There was no running, someone had to do the time.

"If I let you do that," I began, "Who will take care of Callie and the baby? Financially she will be set, Stefan's estate will cover that much. Odds are she will never have to work a day in her life if that's what she wanted, or the baby wouldn't have to. It's the baby's money. College is taken care of, the first car, first down payment on a house, and then some. Callie is going to need you emotionally, and you're going to need her. They will eat you alive in there, Stefan's name is great. They will empathize me, I was his wife. He cheated on me, got another woman pregnant, and I lashed out of anger and fear."

Chad's face turned green, I knew he was squeamish by the thought of prison and the things the men were capable of doing to him. He was squeamish at the thought of everything Callie was going through. She had called every night since she had been arrested. She had told him of the other females gawking in her direction, and she told him the story about a woman she had befriended. Her cellmate was awaiting trial for a murder she had committed against her boyfriend, a murder that could've passed for manslaughter. A sheer sign that Detective Massey was out for blood, his scope aimed at Callie.

"The last thing I want is for Callie to be taking the fall for anything," I cleared the dishes from the table following breakfast, "She was only responsible for kidnapping Stefan, the rest is on you and I. She would never forgive me if I let you go to prison, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

He reluctantly nodded his head, a worrisome look spread across his face.

He steadily wiped the table with the intentions of keeping himself as busy as possible, "What if nobody has go to prison?"

I shrugged my shoulders, "Someone is going to prison, there's no way around that. It's murder, two murders. Things like that don't get brushed under the rug."

"I know," he marched his way over to the sink to peer over me, "What if we caught whoever is coaching the cops in our direction? It's got to be one of us, right? What if we find out who's talking, and we somehow pin the murders on them?"

An imaginary lightbulb pinged off from the top of my head, "You're right! Massey said there was someone working from the inside of the investigation, that means one of us is secretly a nark. Then ironically he makes a crack in the case and discovers Stefan's body? There is seemingly no possible way he would've been able to track down the body, even with cadaver dogs. He wouldn't have known where to start, not unless someone was talking. What if Massey threatened someone with jail time, like Melanie and Jeremy? You said so yourself, they're both acting too strange for comfort. We both know they're the weakest links of the bunch. It's pure process of elimination, we stake them out."

Chad seated himself on the sofa, "But how do we do that? How are we going to find out who's talking when they won't even talk to either of us?"

"There's only one way," I balanced myself upwards placing my hands on the countertop, "We ride it out. We keep Callie calmed and maintained in the meantime and assure her we know what we're doing out here. We follow the two until there's something suspicious. They can't keep up the act for long, eventually one will give us a sign and we act from there."

I watched as Chad's breathing slowly became unsteady, signaling the beginning of another episode. He was mentally always on edge, and every day was growing increasingly harder for him the longer Callie remained incarcerated. He didn't have a history of anxiety attacks before now, and I knew it had to deal with everything he had been forced to go through. It was all slowly eating at him. The murder, Callie and the baby, and his fears of potentially going to prison. The only thing I ever knew to do was talk him through it, and emotionally attempt to be there for him. Deep down, however, I knew I was never helping enough.

Chad remained on the sofa while I scoped through Callie's apartment for anything related to the kidnapping. Her house was organized, everything had it's own place. She was so organized, she even labeled where certain things should go. Nothing out of place, and everything seemingly in order. I went through the kitchen and the living room, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that struck me as seemingly related to her plans to kidnapping Stefan.

"Did Callie ever mention how she came up with her plans to do what she did?" I asked Chad, hoping he would lead me into the direction of something I wasn't seeing.

He shook his head, "She never mentioned it. Her and Melanie did it together, it could have all been plotted in her head."

"You don't plan something with such precision in your head," I peered around the apartment for a sign, "There's something here, I just don't know where."

Before I knew it, I had completely turned Callie's apartment inside out. In the end, I had found nothing remotely related to Stefan's kidnapping, not the first clue.

Chad pointed towards a single closet in Callie's living room, "What about in there? Have you looked in there?"

"Her broom closet," I tilted my head to the side trying to make sense of why Callie would hide important information in a broom closet, "I've looked everywhere else. Right now I'm at a crossroads."

Chad creepily moved his hand towards the door knob as if his body had magically turned into slow motion. A part of me wanted to stop him in his tracks, afraid of what could've been behind the door. I wanted to know where everything was, I had to get rid of it. At the same time, however, I didn't want to know the extent of Callie's demise. I had cut her revenge too short, killing Stefan before she could act out her plan completely.

The inside of the broom closet resembled any ordinary closet. The broom and mop leaned against the wall, dish rags were folded neatly on the shelving, her laundry soaps and powders were on the top shelf. The only thing seemingly odd was an old tattered black shoe box shoved deep in the corner on the top shelf.

Shaking he eased himself upwards to grab the box, retrieving it from it's deep hideaway. I could tell, by the way he was breathing, he was both anxious and nervous about the contents we were about to unravel. Inside it was filled with composition books, articles pulled from the internet, printed off text messages and emails, and polaroids of Stefan at various locations.

The amount of detail and precision Callie had put into the demise was horrifying, but at the same time it was seemingly brilliant.

Chad's fingers traced the outline of Stefan, he was beaming from ear to ear. Deep down I knew he missed him.

I rested a hand on his shoulder, "He's not mad at you. He never hated you as much as you might have hated him, he considered you like a brother."

I watched as a tear fell from Chad's cheek, landing right on the photograph.

"You know," he began talking through his sobbing, "I didn't even want the firm, I wanted it because he wanted it. I wanted him to work harder for it, I knew he could work harder. The only reason I did it was to push him to go further, and look at all of the things he accomplished. I didn't think he would be arrogant enough to cheat on you, he had everything. Great house, vehicles, amazing job, and a beautiful wife. He traded that in for a woman he met at a bar, he ruined her life."

I shook my head in agreement, "You understand now, you understand why he had to die. You need to focus on what's important, if we're going to frame the nark we have to get rid of all of this."

He continued to sob clutching one of the photographs for dear life, and I wanted to give it to him. I wanted him to be able to keep one last piece of his best friend, it broke my heart to know that wouldn't be possible.

Reluctantly after a few moments he seized the photo from his grasp, placing it back into the box and covering it with the top.

He sighed out a hint of relief, "What do we do with it?" I peered over my shoulder in the direction of Callie's fireplace, "Got any matches?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "Callie leaves the lighter on top of the mantle, you think we can burn it all?"

Within moments we were both settled in front of the fireplace watching as the photos and composition books grew in flames. Slowly burning and becoming nothing more than ashes.

As it burned I felt a huge wave of relief rushing through me, a sign that everything had just become a little easier. A sign that maybe we were going to get through this, me and Chad might actually be able to pull this off. We might actually get to cheat the system and avoid prison altogether.