Scotty looked at Carrie with disbelief. "Your brother?"
Carrie nodded. "I only found out a few days before Matt disappeared"
Scotty and Vera leaned closer, waiting for her to continue.
"Matt was doing some research project on his uncle for school, trying to find about things about him. He heard his uncle had been seeing a woman before he was killed in Vietnam, my mother. Except he found out he was off by a few years about when they were seeing each other, and it wasn't his uncle who'd been seeing her. It was his father."
"So Matt told you?" Vera asked.
"I didn't believe him at first. Then he showed me something that convinced me..."
("True Colors" - Cyndi Lauper)
Sitting in the library, Carrie sighed impatiently. "I don't know what I'm doing here."
"I just want to show you something." Matt said, quietly.
"What do you think you're trying to prove?" Carrie asked, irritably. "We're not related, all right?"
Matt sat down next to her and leaned closer. "Look, maybe this is a long shot, but I thought of something." With that, he pulled the dog tag from around his neck and showed it to her. "This belong to my uncle before he died. My dad wanted me to have it so I'd feel like I'd known him. There's supposed to be two of these on here but for as long as I can remember, there's just been the one. My dad said he lost the other one when I was about two. That's right around the time you would've been born, right? That's a funny coincidence, don't you think?"
Carrie looked at the tag and didn't say anything.
"Do you remember seeing anything like that ever?"
Carrie stared at the tag for a moment then turned away. For a moment Matt thought he'd made a mistake. Then she opened a pouch on her bag and pull something out.
It was a tag just like Matt's.
"My mom said this was from my dad. It's the only thing she'd tell me about him."
Matt smiled and looked at her.
"Do you... do you want to meet him?"
Carrie eyed him warily for a moment, then started breathing heavily. "No," she said, standing up. "No, I don't. I can't deal with this, all right? Just stay away from me."
She walked towards the exit, glancing back to see Matt sigh and lower his head.
"Hell of a bombshell to just drop on somebody like that." Vera said.
"Yeah," Carrie answered with a condescending nod. "High school was miserable enough without somebody putting something like that on you too."
"So you talk with Matt much after that?" Scotty asked.
"We weren't exactly hanging out together." Carrie said. "My mom never wanted to tell me anything about who my father was. After she died a few years ago, I wasn't interested in finding out. I'm still not." She sighed. "I'm sorry about Matt, but the truth is I wasn't a part of his life and I never would've been."
"You didn't tell us about your daughter, Richard." Jeffries said from across the interview room table.
Richard stared at Scotty and Jeffries in disbelief. "You saw her? You talked to her?"
"Is there a reason you left that out before?" Scotty asked.
Richard shook his head, still looking stunned. "What could that possibly have to do what happened to Matt?"
"Why don't you let us decide that?" Scotty said, with a trace of impatience.
"Look, it wasn't like I was some deadbeat dad who left a pregnant woman."
"So what happened?" Jeffries asked.
Richard sighed and lowered his head. "I lost a brother and a wife in the span of five months. I was taking care of a baby all by myself. I was lonely, confused. Eventually I started seeing this woman at my work, nothing serious, didn't last long. A few weeks later, she calls me out of the blue, tells me she's pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby."
He looked up at the detectives sadly. "I was willing to make a go at it with her, but she made it clear she wasn't interested in raising someone else's kid, and she said if I wasn't gonna be there, she didn't want me around the baby. She said half a father's worse than no father at all." He gave the detectives a pleading look. "What the hell was I supposed to do? Matt didn't have anyone else. I convinced her to take the tag. I though when the baby grew up, she should have something to remember me by." He sighed. "I never even got to see her, but knowing she was out there somewhere, I tried to take comfort in that after Matt..."
Scotty nodded quietly for a moment. "So you knew Matt found her."
"He told me." Richard said. "I didn't know what to tell. I just did the best I could..."
("The Way It Is" - Bruce Hornsby and the Range)
"I'm not mad." Matt said, sitting in the car outside of the school. "I just don't understand why you didn't tell me all this time."
Richard sighed. "I don't know. I meant to tell you. I just wasn't sure how to do it." He leaned closer. "Listen, son, you gotta remember this is a big deal for her too. You can't just force your way into someone else's life."
Matt shrugged. "I'm not trying to force anything, dad. I just want to get to know her better. Don't you?"
Richard looked as though he were somewhere far off for a moment, before turning back to Matt. "Yeah, I do. But that could take some time. And you gotta be ready to give her some space if she wants it."
Matt nodded.
Richard put a hand on his son's arm. "I know it's a little confusing. Sometimes life throws you a curve, trust me. All you can do is try your best to do the right thing. You know?"
Matt smiled slightly and nodded again.
Richard smiled back and patted him on the arm. "Okay. Pick you up after school."
As Matt stepped out of the car, he looked over to see Chris rushing up to him. "Look, we gotta talk."
Matt looked uneasy.. "About what?"
Chris gave him a look of disbelief. "What do you mean 'what'? You know exactly what I'm talking about. Are you actually gonna go through with it?"
"Why not?"
"Look, I don't wanna get involved all right? It'll probably just make things worse."
Matt shook his head. "How could it make things worse?"
"Look, it's just not a good idea, all right? I don't wanna get in the middle of this." Chris gave Matt a serious look. "And neither should you."
Chris stormed off, with Matt following, calling after him, leaving Richard in the car, looking very confused...
"You know what Chris was talking about?" Scotty asked.
Richard shook his head.. "I don't know. He was going on about something. I just assumed it was some teenager stuff, nothing serious."
Jeffries and Scotty gave a suspicious look to one another.
Richard looked at the detectives intently. "Did you guys really talk to her?"
Scotty nodded solemnly.
"I never even knew her name."
Scotty paused for a moment, as if considering something, then looked back at Richard. "Carrie. Her name's Carrie."
Richard nodded, his eyes misting. "Would you tell her, if she ever wanted to meet... or talk, I'm still around."
The two detectives nodded in acknowledgment and walked out of the room.
"So Matt and Chris were into something together," Jeffries said once they were out of earshot. "Something Chris didn't want to be part of."
"We need to talk to Chris." Scotty said. "Find out what that was and how badly Chris wanted out."
Chris Sanders looked uneasily at Stillman the following day, not noticing Lilly watching on the other side of the two-way mirror.
"You're a hard man to find, Chris." Stillman said, sitting down.
Chris shrugged. "I wasn't hiding from anyone. I had my kids for the day. We went for a drive, and I turned my phone off so no one from work would bother me. I didn't know anyone was looking for me."
"We have a witness that saw you arguing with Matt outside the school a couple of days before he was killed, about you not wanting to get in the middle of something."
Chris paused, then nodded quicky. "Yeah, I remember, and if he's dead then I was right."
"Right about what?" Stillman asked, leaning closer.
"About not wanting to get involved."
"Involved with what, Chris?" Stillman asked sternly. "What were you and Matt up to?"
Chris shook his head. "It's not what we were up to." The look on his face turned nervous. "Have you talked to Russ Mueller?"
"The social studies teacher?" Stillman asked. "Why?"
Chris rolled his eyes. "Some teacher he was. If he found out Matt knew what he was doing," Chris gave a pained look. "Then it's no wonder Matt ended up dead."