Steve stared at the down-turned head of the young man on the other side of the small office. Colin Anderson continued to shift his weight from foot to foot, his hands in his pockets, taking deep ragged breaths.

"You were driving the Chevelle when Johnny Seddon assaulted my client at Charlie's?" the San Francisco cop asked when he knew he could keep the anger out of his tone.

"Yes, sir." Anderson's voice was almost inaudible.

"And you were the one who shot her father?"

Anderson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yes, sir…." He was staring at the floor, almost unable to stop fidgeting.

Steve jammed his own hands in his pants pockets, balling them into fists, trying to separate the outraged friend and partner from the detective who had a job to do. An angry exhale of breath through his nose was the only indication of his frame of mind, but it was not lost on the young man in the room with him.

"Why are you telling me this?"

He could see Anderson close his eyes then a long beat later raise his head. "Because I haven't been able to eat or sleep since it happened… and I can't live with the guilt anymore…"

Steve stared at him silently for several long moments then he nodded at the chair behind the large and messy wooden desk. After a confused beat and a furrowed brow, Anderson moved to the chair and sat, slumping, his head still down. There was a metal and naugahyde office chair in front of the desk and Steve pulled it around to the side before he sat. He knew from long experience that proximity was paramount in getting a nervous suspect to open up.

The silence lengthened; even sitting, Anderson couldn't keep still and, in the quiet, Steve could feel the anxiety, the need to tell his story, building in the troubled young man. He waited until he was sure Anderson was uncomfortably close to his breaking point before he asked quietly, "So you were Johnny Seddon's best friend?"

Still looking down, Anderson snorted derisively. "Nobody was friends with Johnny."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean nobody… nobody," he emphasized, "called Johnny a friend. They hung around with him because he bought them drinks and paid for pool games and stuff like that… but they weren't his friends."

"Why not?"

"'Cause he wasn't a nice guy." Anderson finally stopped fidgeting, slumping a little deeper in the large wooden chair.

"So why did you hang around with him?"

Anderson snorted again, this time a cross between regret and embarrassment. "Because I made a mistake a couple a years ago and he was making me pay for it."

Steve frowned. "What kind of mistake?"

Anderson bit his bottom lip, his stare unfocussed. "He talked me into helping him rob a couple of hikers in the park… just for the hell of it. We stole their money and their cameras… and he pistol whipped the man… for kicks, he told me afterwards. We weren't caught… and he held that over my head. He always threatened to go to the police…" He closed his eyes again, his jaw clenching. "I couldn't do that to my mother… to my family…"

Steve waited a few seconds. "How many young women did Johnny rape?" he asked suddenly and Anderson's head snapped up, his eyes wide.

They stared at each other for a long beat before Anderson opened his mouth and sucked in air in a silent gasp. "Five… that I know of…"

The muscles in Steve's jaw tightened. "And he got away with them all?"

Still staring at him, his face almost stricken, Anderson nodded.

"Why?"

The troubled young man shook his head slowly and sadly. "Because his grandfather owns the town," he shrugged helplessly, "and Johnny knew he could get away with it…"

"Did his grandfather know what he was doing?"

Anderson stared, frowning, as if that thought had never occurred to him. Then he shook his head slowly, "I… I don't know… I never met his grandfather. He's kind of a… a hermit, I guess."

"What about Johnny's parents?"

"His dad took off years ago, when Johnny was just a kid… seven, eight. His mom lives with his grandfather. I've met her a couple of times, but we don't hang out there."

"Does she know, do you think?"

Anderson nodded with a derisive snort. "Oh, yeah, she knows…"

"Did Johnny live with them?"

Anderson shook his head. "Sometimes. He had a small cabin just outside of town… a party cabin, I guess you could call it. He stayed there from time to time. A lot of people would squat there with him, you know… people that came here in the summer. He would pretend to be the big man in town, you know…"

"Did he have a job?" Anderson shook his head. "Then where did he get his money from?"

The young man chuckled dryly. "Johnny was a momma's boy… he was a choir boy when he was around her and she always made sure he had as much money as he needed…. He never had a job… he never even worked in one of his grandfather's stores." There was a bitterness in the tone that told Steve more than the words ever could.

"So these girls that he… assaulted, were they all local girls?"

Anderson nodded. "He may have been a lot of bad things, but we wasn't stupid."

"What do you mean?"

The young dark-haired man snorted and shook his head in derision. "He knew he could get away with it with local girls… 'cause their families wouldn't say anything. 'Cause there aren't that many jobs in this town, especially in the off-season, and their daddies and mommies livelihoods depended on them keeping their mouths shut." There was genuine anger in his voice.

"So why did he go after my client? She definitely wasn't a local."

Anderson looked away, exhaling loudly. "He, ah, he said he had a… he had a need, if you know what I mean, and he said she looked pretty… and ripe…" He looked apologetic, the words obviously hard to say.

Steve nodded softly, knowing Anderson was watching him peripherally.

"We'd been drinking that morning, in his cabin… he had more than me but we were both kinda high. We were behind their car when they pulled into Charlie's and Johnny told me to pull over on the road. They didn't see us." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We saw the girl go into the office and get the key to the washroom. Johnny got all excited. He'd… he'd attacked another girl in there last year. So when her father went into the office, he told me to drive into the lot… I knew what he was going to do…" He closed his eyes. "Johnny kept a gun under the front seat. He'd threatened me with it before… and I know he would've used it. I know he would. There was nothing I could do to stop him…"

Steve swallowed heavily; he knew his hands were starting to shake as he tried to suppress his anger. "Is that the gun you used to shoot the girl's father?"

Anderson hesitated for a beat then closed his eyes and nodded. "He scared me, the father… Johnny had never been caught before… and this guy, this guy was like a machine, he was beating the shit out of him. All I could see was Johnny getting hit over and over again and the blood… He was going to beat Johnny to death, I knew he was and I had to do something…" He squeezed his eyes closed and inhaled sharply. "I'm glad I didn't kill him… I didn't want to kill him, I just wanted him to stop hitting Johnny…" Very slowly tears began to trickle down Anderson's cheeks.

Steve slumped back in the chair slightly, watching as Anderson dealt with his inner demons. After several long seconds, he asked quietly, "What happened next?"

Anderson opened his eyes and palmed the tears from his face, sniffling. "Johnny got away… he crawled back to the car and I booted it out of there. He was out of his mind, he was yelling at top of his lungs, how he was going to kill that old man. He took the gun from me and was waving it around. I was scared shitless… We were tearing down the road, back towards the cabin but he screamed at me to stop. He pulled me out from behind the wheel then he turned the car around and we went back to Charlie's. We waited just around the bend for their car to leave and we followed them.

"Johnny held back for a bit at first, to like taunt them, you know… then he raced up behind them… they started to go faster and block the road and Johnny was getting madder and madder 'cause he wanted to get close enough to shoot the old man…" Anderson dragged a ragged breath into his lungs. "Finally he lost it and rammed the back of their car and it spun out of control and into a tree. We stopped, we didn't know what to do. Nobody was moving in the other car and we thought they were dead. Johnny wanted to get out and put a bullet in the old man's head but I lied, I told him somebody was coming… another car, and we booked it out of there."

Anderson stopped and took another deep breath. He was staring at the floor, the silent tears continuing to flow. "He, ah, he drove about a quarter mile then he slowed down… he said he wanted to go back, he wanted to finish the old man off for sure, and he started to turn around again. I couldn't let him do it…". He paused, staring into nothing with a ferocious intensity. "He'd put the gun on the seat between us and I just picked it up and shot him in the head."

Steve didn't move, he was barely breathing.

"The car kept moving and it rolled into the ditch… I left the gun on the seat and I got out and started to walk back to town…. I passed the other car… I knew they were both still alive so I just kept walking, I knew somebody would find them…" He sat very still, taking slow deep breaths, staring at nothing.

An uncomfortable silence filled the small dark office as both men wrestled with the stark reality of what they were facing. Eventually Anderson turned his head.

"Am I going to go to prison?"

Steve felt his heart leap into his throat. He leaned forward slightly. "I don't know, Colin, I really don't know… that's going to be up to a judge and a jury… What you need right now is a really good lawyer."

Anderson frowned. "Aren't you a lawyer?"

Steve froze, unable to stop the brief, ironic smile that crossed his lips. "I'm not the man you need, believe me." He snorted softly. "Listen, ah, I think we need to go see Chief Hogan, tell him what you just told me."

Anderson sat up quickly, his face suddenly contorted in fear. "No, not Chief Hogan, not him."

"Why not?"

"'Cause he set this whole thing up, blaming that girl's father for Johnny's murder."

"Why? Why did he set it up? Does he work for Mr. Chisholm?"

Anderson shook his head vigorously. "No, no, you don't understand. Chief Hogan hates the Chisholms as much as anybody, maybe even more. But he needs to stay the chief to keep everybody safe."

"What do you mean, to keep everybody safe?"

"Chief Hogan is the only person keeping this town alive. If the Chisholms pull out of town, it'll die; they'll take all their businesses and their money with them and the town'll die. Nobody'll move here, the town'll disappear. If old man Chisholm thinks it was somebody from outside that killed Johnny, he won't blame the town."

"So Chief Hogan is willing to lie and fake evidence to make it look like my client killed Johnny?"

Closing his eyes, Anderson nodded. "He doesn't have a choice."

Steve gritted his teeth. "Neither do I," he said sharply as he got to his feet, stepped to the other chair and grabbed the younger man's arm, pulling him to his feet. "We're going to go see him anyway. I have a couple of surprises up my own sleeve."

He dragged Anderson towards the back door and opened it. He stopped short, staring into the barrel of a .38.

"Just where to you think you're going?" Chief Hogan growled.