Chapter 4 - THE FALL OF THE PRECINCT
By 5:00 a.m.,
the Westbridge Police Department was no longer a functioning police station;
it was a crime scene.
More State Troopers arrived to transport the local officers who had been involved in the cover-up.
Landry was the first to be led out in cuffs,
his face hidden behind his blazer as the news cameras—which I had tipped off—began to circle the parking lot.
The story of a high-ranking official's mother being beaten while the police watched was exactly the kind of scandal that the public wouldn't let die.
Brooke was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit fraud.
Arthur was charged as an accessory and with elder abuse.
But the legal battle was only beginning.
I spent the next several hours at the hospital,
sitting in the plastic chair next to my mother's bed as she drifted in and out of sleep.
The doctors confirmed she had three broken ribs,
a fractured wrist,
and a severe concussion.
"She's lucky to be alive,"
the surgeon told me,
looking at the X-rays.
"If that blow to her shoulder had been a few inches higher,
it would have crushed her skull."
I stayed there,
typing out the formal complaints and the direct memo to the Attorney General.
I made sure that every detail of Brooke’s gambling debts and Arthur’s failed business ventures was included in the background report.
I wanted the prosecutors to have everything they needed to ensure neither of them ever saw the sun as free citizens for a long,
long time.
By mid-morning,
the local mayor had issued a statement suspending the entire Westbridge command staff.
The "quiet daughter" they thought they could ignore had effectively ended a decades-old power structure in a single night.
Arthur tried to call me from the holding cell,
using his one phone call to beg for mercy.
"Clara,
please,"
he cried into the recorded line,
"we're family!"
"Think about what Dad would say!"
I held the phone to my ear,
listening to the man who had let our mother be beaten with a bat.
"Dad would be ashamed to have ever given you his name,
Arthur,"
I said,
my voice cold and final.
"Don't call me again."
"The next time you see me,
I'll be sitting at the prosecution table."
I hung up and looked at my mother,
who was finally waking up,
the light from the hospital window illuminating the bruises on her face.
She looked older,
more fragile,
but her eyes were clear.
"Is it over?"
she asked,
her voice a mere whisper.
"It's over,
Mom,"
I said,
leaning down to kiss her forehead.
"They're never coming back to the house."
"They're never going to hurt you again."
She closed her eyes and took a deep,
shaky breath.
"I just wanted to keep the family together,"
she lamented,
the classic guilt of a mother who had tried to love her children despite their flaws.
"The family is right here,"
I told her,
May you like
gesturing to the two of us.
"The rest was just noise."
