Chapter Twenty

"If you guys ask me, and I know that you haven't but I'm telling you anyway because someone needs to be the voice of reason here. You are in way over our heads right now," Rico declared.

He paced the Desai family's living room in frenetic circles, alternating between tugging at fistfuls of his hair and biting at his ragged fingernails. By ill timing and not by the design, the self-proclaimed math geek and mystery buff found himself embroiled in the center of his own personal mystery. He had simply dropped by Danny's house to retrieve a textbook he'd inadvertently left in the seat of Karen Desai's BMW. When Lacey and Jo arrived less than five minutes later, hiding a metal box between them stuffed to the corners with neatly bundled hundreds, Rico knew instantly that he had just stumbled into something huge.

"I don't know everything that's going on here...and I'm not really sure if I want to know," he continued in a disjointed rant, "But we have a case full of money and a dead girl! In every mystery I've ever read, these are not good combinations! I'm not getting a really great vibe here! You guys should take this money to the police and let them sort it out! They're the experts!"

Danny slowly came to his feet, shaking his head in refusal before Rico had even completely concluded his monologue. "No," he declared implacably, "Absolutely not. No cops." He directed Rico with a hard, implacable look. "This stays between the four of us."

"You can't be serious!" Rico burst out.

"Keep it down," Danny hissed, "I don't want my mom to know about this, okay! Let's just take a minute. Take a breath and we'll figure out what our next move should be."

"I vote for dialing 911," Rico muttered, that comment earning an impatient glare from Danny.

Jo shocked them all by curbing her own natural tendency towards shortsighted recklessness and backing Rico's argument. "He has a point, Danny," she uttered softly, "We don't have a clue what type of people we're dealing with and I'm scared. Regina Crane was obviously into some pretty heavy stuff here. Whoever sent her that money and the note could have very well killed her too. For all we know, they could have also had something to do with your dad's death. I agree with Rico. We're in over our heads."

"No!" Danny protested, his tone sharp and decisive, "If I take this to the police then they're just going to find a way to twist it all around and make me look guilty. I'm not doing it."

"Not my dad!" Jo argued, "We could reason with him! He would help you, Danny!"

Danny emitted a derisive snort. "Especially your dad, Jo. He wants me back in prison. That's the only thing that matters to him!"

Desperate, Jo bounced a beseeching glance at Lacey for support. "Talk to him," she pleaded, "He'll listen to you!"

"Don't do that!" Danny bit out with an affronted grimace, "Don't try to use my feelings for Lacey to manipulate me!"

Recognizing that he was truly beginning to grow agitated, Lacey made a cajoling gesture with her hands indicating that Danny should bring it down a notch. "Calm down," she soothed, "No one is trying to manipulate you, Danny. But you have to admit that this is way more serious than any of us anticipated. The kind of money Regina was keeping...who knows what or who she was involved with!"

"Then let's figure it out," Danny proposed capriciously, "We don't need the cops to do that."

While Lacey and Jo traded uneasy glances over that idea, Rico tossed Danny a look that clearly questioned his sanity. "What exactly are you suggesting here?"

"There's a return address on that envelope," Danny said, "Why don't we go there and see what we find?"

Rico processed that ludicrous suggestion with a series of rapid, disbelieving blinks. "Okay, so let me get this straight," he uttered, "You think four, unarmed teenagers showing up on the doorstep of a potential killer is better than going to the police so that they can do their jobs? Are you nuts?"

Danny drew himself up stiffly, his jaw set with an obstinate edge. "None of you are obligated to go with me," he determined tautly, "I can do this on my own."

The unspoken implication that being on his own was how he did most things had Lacey regarding Danny with a hurt expression. "God, Danny, don't be like that! It's not fair!"

"Be like what?"

"Build up a wall and shut us out! We're not the enemy, okay!"

"I know that, Lacey," he acknowledged quietly, "I'm not trying to make you out to be the enemy. But it's very easy for you guys to make it into a simple matter of going to the cops because it's not your freedom on the line here! It's mine! It's my freedom! I'm not going back to prison. That's the end of it."

Rico regarded him with an inquisitive stare. "I guess that's the part I don't understand," he mumbled, "Why do you seem so convinced that you will go back?"

Jo and Lacey regarded him with equally expectant expressions but Jo was the one to verbally push him for answers. "That's a really good question, Danny? Why are you so convinced?"

Whether or not he ever had any intention on answering that question became a moot consideration because, at that precise moment, a sharp knock sounded at his front door, followed by an official bark of, "Police! Open up!" Danny surveyed them all with a brief look of embittered irony, his conviction that the validity of his argument had just been proven perfectly clear in his expression. "Put away the lockbox and the note, please," he instructed Lacey brusquely, "I'd like not to give them more ammunition than necessary to harass me."

Lacey started to rise and follow him but, Danny refused her silent objective with a sharp shake of his head. "Don't," he urged her softly, "I'll be fine. Wait here."

Another round of pounding on the front door sounded and Lacey jumped. "Danny, I'm scared."

"Don't be scared," he assured her, "I'll be back..." Only to add in an uncertain mutter as he turned away from her, "I hope." With his countenance set in a deep scowl and his spirit prepared for battle, Danny stalked from the living room for the front door.

When he yanked it open he concealed his uneasiness and fear over finding Chief Kyle Masterson standing outside with two armed deputies. The flashing red and blue lights beyond them alerted Danny to the fact that this wasn't going to be the chief's run of the mill fishing expedition. "Chief Masterson," he sighed wearily, "I see you've come calling yet again. I'd ask what brings you by but, it's gotten a bit tedious by this point. Wouldn't you agree, sir?"

"I'm here on official business, son."

Danny angled a glance over his shoulder at the police cruisers situated at various angles at the end of his driveway. "Somehow, I picked up on that," he remarked dryly, "Let me save you the trouble and I'll just grab my jacket. It's a little cold tonight. You won't even have to bother with handcuffs."

"I'm looking for your mother, Danny," Kyle informed him, "Is she here?"

"My mother?"

Before Danny could even begin to formulate his lie, however, Karen came to stand alongside him. She regarded Kyle Masterson with a flinty expression while casually drying her hands with a dish towel. "You do remember what we talked about the last time you were here, don't you, Kyle?" she asked, "I hope you have that search warrant otherwise the next call I make will be to my lawyer."

"I have a warrant, Karen," he replied grimly, "But it's for your arrest."

"Excuse me?" both Karen and Danny exclaimed simultaneously.

Kyle Masterson took hold of Karen's forearm and pulled her forward to place her in handcuffs. When she started to yank away from him, he said against her ear, "Don't give me a hard time about this, Karen. You'll make it uglier for Danny." With that implied threat directed towards her son, Karen offered little resistance as he snapped the metal bracelets in place over her slender wrists. Kyle Masterson calmly began reading Karen her miranda rights while Danny flipped out completely. Karen tried rather futilely to calm him down. She glowered at Kyle over her shoulder.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Karen Desai, you're under arrest for obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence."

Danny then told Chief Masterson using very succinct and blistering expletives what he thought of those charges. "You don't think I know what you're doing right now?" he cried furiously. His efforts to get between his mother and Masterson was easily thwarted by the chief's deputy. "This is a freaking joke! You can't do this! You can't arrest her! She hasn't done anything wrong!"

"Do you remember that ride you took out to Pascal Lake the other night, Karen?" Kyle reminded Karen smoothly, "You were so distracted you didn't even know you were being followed. You went walking along the edge of the lake and you threw something in the water...or so you thought. But it landed on the rocks instead. And you know what it was? That necklace you claimed you had never seen before. That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

He watched Danny carefully for his reaction, not at all surprised when the teen grew excessively more agitated with that reveal. "Mom, no! Tell me you didn't do that! Please, tell me you didn't! I can't let him do this to you! I can't-,"

"-Danny, keep quiet!" Karen interrupted him sharply, "Not another word. Go back into the house, sweetheart. I can handle this. Just go back inside."

"He's arresting you, Mom! He's going to take you to jail! I can't let him do that! I can't!"

"It's okay," Karen soothed him, seeing very clearly that he was beginning to splinter apart emotionally, "Baby, it's alright. Go back in the house and I'll be okay. I promise you. Let me take care of this. Let me take care of you."

Sensing Danny's ever increasing vulnerability, Chief Masterson said, "You can fix this, Danny. She doesn't have to go to jail if you tell me the truth about how she got a hold of that necklace. We can make this whole thing go away."

Karen angled a feral look over her shoulder at him and hissed from between clenched teeth, "You shut your mouth! Don't you dare talk to him! If you're going to arrest me, then arrest me, Kyle! But you leave my son out of it!" Just as she tried to force him to lead her out of there before her increasingly hysterical son could completely blow his future apart, Jo, Lacey and Rico all materialized at the front door with fearful, confused expressions.

With stunned incredulity, Jo assimilated the flashing police lights, Danny's hysteria and Karen Desai's handcuffs in no particular order. "Dad? What...what's going on right now?" she asked in a slow, disbelieving tone, "What are you doing? Are you arresting Danny's mom?"

That single question seemed to unleash utter pandemonium. Lacey, Rico and Jo came at Kyle with simultaneous demand for answers and clarification while he blustered angrily over finding Jo and Rico at the Desai home at all. At the same time, he was forced to order his one deputy to drag Karen to the police cruiser while the other struggled to keep a belligerent Danny in line. Only Karen Desai's hysterical screams for him to stop and keep his head managed to keep Danny from coming to actual blows with the officer. Frustrated, angry and helpless, he ran back into the house with a worried Lacey whirling immediately after him. Once they were gone and he was left alone with his daughter and her best friend in relative calm, Kyle felt freer to unleash his full displeasure.

"You are seriously testing my patience, young lady. Get in the car...both of you," he ordered them, nodding towards his SUV, "You're both going home right now."

Jo crossed her arms obstinately. "No. I'm not going anywhere with you," she bit out, "Not until you explain to me why you just showed up out of nowhere to arrest Danny's mom!"

"This is not a freaking negotiation, Jo Marie!"

"You just arrested my friend's mother!" Jo flared, "I have a right to know why!"

"Ask him!" her father retorted furiously, "Why don't you ask the boy you're so willing to gamble your future on, Jo! Ask the boy who's been lying to you every opportunity he gets!"

"I will!"

"I don't want to have to force you into the car," Kyle grated.

"Then don't," Jo said, "Because the only way you're going to get me to leave here is kicking and screaming, Dad!"

Clearly torn between the desire to do exactly that and recognizing the futility in such actions, Kyle Masterson bit out a frustrated curse and jogged over to where his deputies waited expectantly. After giving them both instructions to take Karen Desai to the station for her booking, he rejoined his daughter and her friend. He leveled Jo with a stern look of disapproval and warning.

"I'm going to give you twenty minutes," he told her, "And then we are leaving, Jo, and you can kick and scream all you want."

Not exactly pleased with her father's intention to wait for her outside but lacking the time and initiative to argue with him about it, Jo ran back inside the house with Rico close on her heels. The scene they found waiting for them in the living room, however, brought them both to an immediate halt. Lacey knelt on the floor before a visibly distraught Danny, tearfully pleading with him to talk to her. It was clear that he was someplace else entirely right then. He rocked back and forth on the sofa, muttering to himself unintelligibly, his eyes fixed ahead in a sightless stare, his fingers bunched so tightly in the edges of the cushions that it was surprising that he didn't completely rip through the fabric.

Lacey threw a helpless glance over at Jo. "I don't know what to do, Jo!" she cried, "He's been freaking out like this ever since we came back into the house! I don't know what's wrong him! He won't talk to me!"

Jo recognized what was happening to him almost immediately. She was all too familiar with PTSD flashbacks and she didn't need any expert to tell her that Danny was trapped inside a rather horrifying one right then. She dropped down to her knees and scooted next to a tearful Lacey to cover Danny's quivering fists with her hands. "It's okay," she told him gently, "You're safe now, Danny. You're in your own house and you're surrounded by your friends and we love you. Whatever it is you're seeing right now, that's not real. It happened a long time ago, but that's not real now. Do you understand?"

He turned his glassy stare towards her, his breath leaking from his lungs in a shuddering sigh. "It's not real now. It's not real now."

"No. It isn't. That's all in the past and none of it can hurt you anymore. You need to put it away from you and calm down, okay," she urged him, bouncing a look over at Lacey, "You're scaring Lacey. And you don't want to do that, do you? I know how much you care about her and how much you want to protect her."

Danny regarded Lacey with a mournful look, his dark eyes brimming with unshed tears. "No," he whispered, shaking his head as his grip on the sofa cushions gradually relaxed, "I don't want to do that." He leaned into Lacey, who gratefully gathered him into her arms. "I'm sorry. I don't know where that came from."

Lacey accepted that apology with a relieved whimper. She framed his face in her hands and peppered his forehead and cheeks with kisses. "It's okay. Don't apologize. I'm just glad you're okay now." She rocked back on her heels to scan his face with searching eyes. "Does that happen a lot?" she asked him softly, "I've never seen you like that before."

"I just...sometimes I shut down when I get really overwhelmed or stressed, that's all," he replied in a gruff tone, "It hasn't happened in a long time now. I can usually get a better grip."

"That doesn't matter. Even if this was the only time that ever happened, once is enough. You have to talk to someone about it, Danny. That was terrifying."

Because he didn't know what else he could do, Danny mumbled apologies to her over and over again. "I don't want to scare you. I don't want you to see me like that." Lacey soothed him with sweet, soft kisses, murmuring nonstop reassurances to him. For the moment, Danny allowed himself to soak up her affection like warm rays of sunlight on a mid-summer day because he knew in a few, short minutes darkness would fall.

While Lacey preoccupied herself with comforting Danny and Danny mentally prepared himself for what he was about to do, Jo swiveled around to face an increasingly anxious Rico, acutely aware of the ticking timetable on which she'd been placed. "This is a nightmare," she groaned wearily, "I can't believe my dad just put Mrs. Desai in jail. I don't get what's happening!"

Rico fidgeted, fearfully darting his eyes between Jo and the front door. "Listen, I know Danny's upset right now but...your dad is gonna come charging in here any second, Jo, and that's just going to make everything worse!" he said, "We should get out of here! I've never seen him so furious!"

Lacey threw a glance at Jo over her shoulder. "It's okay. Rico's right. I'll stay with Danny. Don't piss your father off anymore than he already is."

"I'm not going anywhere with him! What he did just now was completely uncalled for!" Jo retorted, "I mean, what does he think he's going to accomplish by arresting Danny's mom anyway?"

"He thinks he'll get me to confess to murder." Those nine words, uttered in a tone completely devoid of emotion, commanded all the attention in the room. Three pairs of eyes swung around to Danny with nervous expectation. They watched as he calmly composed himself, scrubbing his face of remaining tears, and rose to his feet on shaky legs.

Danny walked over to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel. He deliberately moved as far away from them as possible in an attempt to impose a physical distance as well as an emotional one. "Chief Masterson thinks that by arresting my mother, he'll get me to break and I'll tell him why my mom threw Regina's necklace into Pascal Lake the other night."

Lacey squinted at him in confusion. "Regina's necklace? What are you saying? Why would your mom have Regina's necklace?"

"Because I had it," Danny revealed flatly, "It's been here in the house since Regina was killed and my mom found it the other day. That's the real reason she's been so strict about me staying home lately. And it wasn't Regina's necklace at all. It belonged to my Aunt Tara."

"What? You...you lied to me?" Lacey uttered the words in anguished disbelief, as if she wasn't quite ready to accept that reality as truth.

But Danny provided brutal confirmation in his unfeeling reply. "Yeah, Lacey, I lied. I tend to do that."

Rico recoiled at the marked lack of remorse he seemed to display. "I don't understand. Why would Regina Crane have your dead aunt's necklace? Are you making this up right now?" He leaned in closer to Jo and whispered in a worried under-breath, "Are you sure he's really okay...you know, in the head?"

"I'm not crazy," Danny said, "I'm actually telling you the truth for a change."

"What are you talking about, Danny?" Lacey demanded with a tiny shiver of dread, "That necklace was stolen the night Regina was killed. Remember? No one has seen it since. If this is your idea of a joke, it's not funny!"

"It's not a joke and I'm not laughing," he said, "I had the necklace and my mom got rid of it so that I wouldn't be incriminated in Regina's murder. That's the reason Chief Masterson arrested her tonight."

Jo shook her head at his claim, imagining that he must still be shaken up from his earlier episode. "Danny, you're wrong. My dad is on a witch hunt! He doesn't have any actual evidence to incriminate your mom!"

"You're not hearing me, Jo. Regina was wearing the necklace the night of the party," Danny recounted woodenly, "I remember feeling like I had been gut punched when I saw it hanging around her neck. All these memories of Tara went looping nonstop through my head. And Regina knew it. I don't know how she did but, somehow she knew what that necklace meant to me."

"When you came out of the kitchen you were upset," Lacey recalled in a shaky whisper, "I remember seeing the look on your face and wondering what happened. That's why I went after you and Jo."

"I was honestly going to try to put it out of my head," he continued, "You showed up and we had this great night and everything felt so right. But then I got that text from her...from Regina and I had to know what she was hiding. I needed those answers."

Jo released a low groan filled with sickening dismay. "Danny...please, tell me you didn't..."

"I didn't kill her, Jo," he revealed in an eerily disconnected manner, "She was already dead when I got there. But that hardly matters. As far as he police are concerned, I'm as good as guilty."

Lacey struggled to process everything he had told them thus far but found herself mired in denial. "This doesn't make sense. What you're saying makes no sense! Why are you doing this? You were with me all night! I know that and so do you!"

"No. I wasn't there all night, Lacey. You fell asleep. I put a blanket over you and then I left for Regina's after that. I came back a little over an hour later, took a shower and then got into bed with you. I'd maybe had twenty minutes of sleep by the time my alarm went off."

It was difficult for her refute his claims then, not when Lacey could so vividly remember how exhausted and defeated he had been the following morning. Now his inexplicable bout of hopelessness that day was no longer a mystery to her. Now she understood fully what worries had been plaguing him.

"So what are you telling me right now? You just snuck over to her house in the middle of the night? To do what, Danny?" she demanded with rising accusation and fury, "To get answers? To force her to tell you how she got that necklace?" And then she flipped unexpectedly, diving headfirst into denial once more. "No. No! I can't believe it! I won't! You wouldn't lie to me like this! I know you wouldn't!"

"Her neck was broken," he revealed quietly, "I could tell even before I got close because her head was turned at an odd angle from the rest of her body. She had a gash to her forehead...I think from where she clipped the coffee table as her body fell. I remember her eyes were open and when I felt for her pulse her skin was still warm. She was dead though. I knew it the second I laid eyes on her."

Lacey clamped her hands over her ears, pinching her eyes shut a futile effort to drown out his words. "I don't want to hear this! I don't want to hear this!" she cried. But she couldn't obliterate the veracity of his confession, not when Regina's mother, in a moment of heartbroken grief, had revealed to Lacey something that no one else in the general public had known...the true cause of Regina's death, not strangulation as everyone believed but a broken neck. Danny shouldn't have known that. He wouldn't have known that...unless he had been there, just as he claimed.

While Lacey descended into an emotional pit of anguish and wrestled with the numerous lies Danny had fed her, Rico once again resumed his anxious pacing. "So you're telling us that you went to confront Regina Crane the night she was murdered with the obvious intention of making her spill her guts to you and yet, conveniently, you found her dead when you got there. We're just supposed to take you at your word that you didn't go there to hurt her?"

"Believe whatever the hell you want, Rico! She was dead when I got to her house. In fact, her killer was in the process of making his getaway when I arrived. How's that for irony?"

Jo stumbled a step and gripped the edge of the sofa to keep from toppling over while, somewhere off to her side, Lacey dissolved into hiccupping sniffles as she fought to keep her tears under control. While Lacey waged the battle to compose herself, Jo began grilling Danny for answers. "What do you mean her killer was making his getaway? You saw who killed her that night? Danny, you could have cleared yourself a long time ago with that information!"

"Yeah right," he snorted, "Like that was going to happen! Come on, Jo! You can't be that naive!"

"It's like he had his very own one-armed man," Rico muttered to no one in a particular.

Lacey began prowling the interior of the living room, her hands fisted at her sides, her face streaked with tears. "So you actually saw Regina's killer that night? You knew who murdered her and left her there to rot like she was garbage?"

"I didn't see much of anything, Lacey! He was wearing a mask and I barely got a look at him!" Danny retorted, "I found him poking around in the house when I got there. I surprised him. We struggled and he hit me in the head with something. I don't know what it was but, I almost passed out. When most of the dizziness had passed I went to look for Regina and that's when I found her body."

She raked him with a disgusted grimace. "And so you just left her lying there?" she bit out accusingly, "You didn't bother to report what you had seen or anything? You just walked away like nothing ever happened?"

"Yeah. I walked away and I'd do it again. She sure as hell didn't have my best interests at heart so why do you think I would risk myself for her when she was dead?"

"You do know that Jo's father is waiting right outside, don't you?" Rico pointed out to him incredulously, "As soon as we leave this house, we're going to go marching straight to him to sing like canaries..." He caught a glimpse of Jo's flickering uncertainty in his peripheral vision. "Well, at least, I am!" he amended gruffly, "What you did was a crime!"

"Wouldn't be the first. So, go ahead. Do what you gotta do, Rico."

Jo blew out a humorless laugh, caught somewhere between hurt and anger over Danny's dismissive air. "That whole next day, you acted all shocked at the news of Regina's death but you already knew she was dead," she scoffed, "You knew before any of us and then you spent that morning probing me about my dad's investigation. Was that because you wanted to make sure you weren't under any suspicion?" His reaction to that was nothing more than the subtle tightening of his jaw. "God, Danny, I don't believe for one second you're actually this cold!"

"You don't know me as well as you think, Jo."

"I guess neither do I," Lacey spat, "So what did you do, Danny? Did you just take the necklace right off of Regina's corpse? Who cares that she was someone's daughter, someone's friend...that she was dead? Who cares that you let her freaking killer walk away? You got what you went there for, right?"

His eyes flickered with a nameless emotion before they hardened like polished stones. "Right."

"You lying son of a bitch!" Lacey wept, "I can't believe I ever thought that you'd changed...that I actually slept with you...that I thought I could lo-," She caught herself as her voice broke on a sob. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot!"

Danny covered his wince of pain with a defiant glare. "You wanted the truth, Lacey. Now you got it. I don't know what else you want me to say."

"Don't bother! I'll say it for you. We're done, Danny!" Lacey bit out sharply, adding as she turned to leave, "I never want to see your face again."

He tried valiantly not to betray his crushing anguish over having Lacey walked out on him but Jo saw the hurt reflected plainly in his eyes as he watched Lacey storm out. She didn't believe for one second that he was as unaffected as he presented himself to be. She met his steely eyes in belligerent challenge.

"So what's your angle, Desai?" she demanded, "You've been keeping this a secret for weeks. Why give it up now? What do you have to gain?"

"I won't let my mother be used as a pawn! Your father has been looking to pin this murder on me since the beginning. The way I see it, I've just given you all the ammunition he needs to do exactly that." He lifted his shoulders in a defiant shrug. "So tell him to come at me, Jo. I'm ready."