The Trust

Part 42: The Fear of God

I didn't expect the end to come so quickly, and be so neat. No fireworks, no complications. Just a sudden stop to all the fear and confusion we'd been experiencing for half a year. I'd hoped for closure but like everything associated with this particular little caper, ended up bitterly disappointed. Closure, rationale, a reason that made sense — we have none of that. We did get justice, I suppose. But sometimes the truth is just another bitter pill to swallow that tears  at your tender throat on the way down.

In the end, it was all about money. That's all it ever was. 

I sat freezing in the car waiting for Father Jake when it happened. I doubted he'd be able to talk any sense into Rob. I looked into my Uncle's black eyes and saw nothing behind them; shark eyes, cold and lifeless. There was nothing he feared, no one he cared for. He was an empty shell and so he was untouchable. Or so I thought.

A low rumble of thunder was coming from the east where the sky was a dark grey tinged with purple as the temperature seemed to rise just before the dawn. An inexplicably warm wind lifted my hair at the root as I got out of the car. The most brilliant sunrise was hidden just behind the dark clouds, a crimson slash underlining silver storm clouds.  I walked to the edge of the embankment, remembering how we navigated carefully down to the lake when we went fishing so long ago, my uncle Rob, Dad and me. 

I wanted to make Dad proud that day and catch a big one, and I messed up everything. For a while when I was little, I wondered if he left us because I tangled up my fishing line. It was a child's tendency to blame themselves for adult decisions they couldn't understand, the need to grasp at a reason even if it didn't make sense. I knew that intellectually although it took me a while to rid myself of the idea. 

I heard two things simultaneously; a scream of rage that raised the hair on the back of my neck and the distant wail of sirens. As if on cue, a thunder clap overhead startled me so much I almost lost my balance and lightening flashed across the sky. The sky opened up then; a pelting rain coming down as fast as a shower. Retreating to the car, I fished around for something to wipe my face, settling on one of Audrey's sweatshirts in the back. I was dying to know what Jake and Rob were talking about for so long. 

What was going on in there?

I texted Jake and quickly got a three word answer in reply. Almost got him. 

But how? My uncle was cunning and stubborn. I knew there was no way he'd confess to everything and spare my family legal expenses and a trial. He just didn't have it in him. If there was any decency in Rob, it evaporated long ago. Anyone with an ounce of humanity wouldn't have done what he did to us.

And then it happened. If you gave me a million years to think up an ending, it never would have gone down like this. Suddenly, three cop cars pulled up on either side of my car. They surrounded the house, guns drawn — I'd never seen anything like it, it was like something out of a movie.

Jake emerged first, hands in the air at first. He dropped them, nodding to the officer in charge and had a brief word.

Then, Rob came out. His hair was as wild as his eyes and he looked like he didn't know where he was. He stood in the rain without a coat or hood, letting himself be drenched. When the officers approached, he simply held both wrists out to be cuffed and they folded him into the back of a police car. 

A cop opened the passenger side of my vehicle and was asking me questions, but his voice faded away, as if in a dream. I watched the police car drive off with Rob in the back. He turned his face to me at the last second, his unseeing eyes wide and unblinking. He stared right at my face but didn't see me at all. 

The rest of the night passed by in a blur. Rob confessed to everything — the fraud with the town, the Ponzi scheme with his family members and something I didn't expect; something that sickened me. The murder of my beloved uncle Jack — his own brother. 

Taking nearly every cent from Jack wasn't good enough for Rob. He heard about an insurance policy and was working on Jack to make him the beneficiary. He brought up some stuff that happened in their childhood, worked on him for weeks until he relented. Eager to cash in, he switched out his heart medication for sugar pills. He was even more of a fiend than we thought. 

He spilled all of this to the police, openly, without a lawyer present. Nobody knew why.

Nobody except Jake.