SMOKESTACKS
CHAPTER | TWENTY-THREE
"Joaquin?" Savannah asked Kevin as he led her toward where Archie and Veronica were talking to his boyfriend. "FP called Joaquin? Why?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Kevin sighed, holding the door open for the girl.
Savannah moved to stand next to Archie, her eyes settling on the Southside Serpent that sat in an armchair before them.
"It was basically just a warning." Joaquin told them, his foot tapping nervously against the floor. "Said to lay low."
"No one uses their one call to say lay low." Veronica argued, her arms folded across her chest.
"Joaquin, do you know something?" Kevin moved closer to his boyfriend, eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm not talking to you as your boyfriend. I'm talking to you as the Sheriff's son. Did FP kill Jason?"
Joaquin didn't say anything for a moment, letting out a sigh before uttering, "Yeah."
"Oh my god."
"I mean, I assume."
"Did you see him pull the trigger?" Veronica inquired, desperate to find out if her father was linked to Jason Blossom's death.
"No, no, God, no."
"Then why do you think he did it?" Archie frowned at the Serpent boy.
Joaquin closed his eyes for a beat, hands clasped together tightly. "On July 11th, I got a phone call in the middle of the night from FP. He said he needed help with some clean up job at the Whyte Wyrm."
"What job?" Kevin demanded, looking as if he were about to be sick.
"The basement of the Whyte Wyrm is off-limits to everyone. But that's where I met FP." Joaquin continued, wringing his wrists. "And that's where I saw... He'd been shot. I never asked FP if he did it, I just - I mean, I was terrified, I just assumed. We stashed the body in a freezer, cleaned up the mess, got rid of any evidence."
"You are a criminal." Kevin told him, his voice close to breaking.
Savannah didn't say anything, merely stared at the boy that had practically covered up the death of Jason Blossom. She thought that if it had been FP, this boy would have let him get away with it.
"You disgust me." Savannah snapped at the boy, Veronica slipping a hand into hers quickly, as if to calm her.
"Joaquin." She said, addressing the boy. "FP has done jobs for my dad, Hiram Lodge, in the past. Do you think killing Jason was one of them?"
Joaquin bobbed his head in thought, trying to recall a time when he'd heard the name. "There was one time I overheard a conversation between FP and Mustang."
"Who's Mustang?" Archie asked.
"He's another Serpent. The only other guy who knew about the cleanup. The guy you got into a fight with at the Wyrm."
"Yeah, thanks for that." Savannah turned her attention to Archie, "Dragging my brother into a bar on the Southside, just after he'd been beaten up. Don't think I've forgotten."
Archie shot an apologetic look in her direction before they looked back at Joaquin, focusing on the task at hand.
"Anyway," Joaquin continued, "I heard him tell FP something about some rich guy. I don't know who."
"Where is Mustang?" Veronica asked him.
"No, no, no." Joaquin shook his head, eyes wide. "You do not want to go see him."
"Yes, I do." Veronica corrected him with a frown, looking to Savannah who merely shrugged.
"I mean, I'm feeling up for a little bit of risk and potentially death." Savannah said, sarcastically, "Tell us where he is."
"You're going to take us or I'm gonna tell my dad about your little cleanup job." Kevin threatened, stalking closer to his boyfriend.
"Safe to say that your relationship is on the rocks, huh?" Savannah joked.
No one laughed.
That was how they found themselved at a dingy motel, staring into the bathroom of Mustang's room to see him dead in the bathtub, a needle hanging from the crook of his arm.
It wasn't a surprise that it would be ruled an overdose. The room was littered with pills and other various drugs, a bong and empty bottles of alcohol. The place looked like the cheap version of a VIP room at a club.
Joaquin and Kevin ran, the latter telling the others to call his dad.
Which they did.
"How'd you know he lived here?" The question that stumped them all.
"Sheriff?" Saved by the deputy. A woman in a brown jacket ducked under the crime scene tape with a leather bag in hand. "Found it under his bed." She opened the bag to show hundreds of dollars within.
"Maybe crime pays well afterall." Savannah muttered to Veronica, who was staring at the bag with wide eyes.
"Hermione Lodge." Sheriff Keller had noticed the band on the bag. "You mind explaining to me why your initials are on this bag?"
"Not Hermione Lodge, Sheriff." Veronica spoke up, hesitantly. "Hiram Lodge, my dad -"
"Veronica!" Her mother cut her off with a look of outrage.
"He was doing business with the Serpents!"
"And that's all we're saying until there's an attorney present."
"Kevin, where are we going?" Savannah cried, as the boy dragged her, Betty and Jughead through the woods. "What did Joaquin say to you?"
"Joaquin said that he didn't know if it would help your dad or make things worse, Jughead." Kevin explained, a flashlight in hand.
"Whatever it is that we're looking for." Savannah muttered, using the light on her phone as a guide, not feeling as prepared as the other three. She'd been on her way to Pop's for a shift when Betty called her.
So much drama in one day.
She was surprised she hadn't been fired yet.
"I guess we're gonna find out." Betty sighed, trailing behind Jughead. "And why did he wait so long to tell us?"
"FP called him from jail." Kevin said, pointedly. "Told him to forget about their plan, some contingency plan. He said it was too dangerous."
"Déjà vu." Jughead commented, his light flickering against the maple syrup sign.
Savannah remembered trekking out here with Betty and Jughead to find Jason and Polly's getaway car. She could remember how hollow she had felt after that night, finding out that Polly was pregnant and just how deep the roots went in the lies that were Jason Blossom.
She took in a shaky breath, trying hard not to think of Jason, despite how all their efforts revolved around finding his killer. Jason Blossom was the centre of their attention, all the time.
"Right here." Jughead rifled through a particularly bare bush, retrieving a backpack and unzipping it swiftly.
Jason's football jersey.
The one that they had saw in the back of the car, evidence that proved he had torched it, removing the jacket before he set it alight.
Savannah couldn't help but stare at it, the name, specifically. How many times she had saw him wear that jersey, she couldn't count. All the memories she had of him, suddenly in each one, he was wearing that jacket.
The girl sniffled softly, her head falling into her hands as she sat in the Andrews' garage.
"Why would FP say Jason's varsity jacket is dangerous?" Betty asked, curiously. "What could that mean?"
"I could ask my father?" Veronica offered as she moved into the room, shutting the door quietly behind her. "He would know, considering we found concrete proof that he hired the Serpents to kill Jason. Which probably means that your dad pulled the trigger, Jughead."
They shared a look of despair. Two children, forced to live with the decisions that each of their fathers had made.
"I'm sorry."
The group fell into silence as it started to hit them, that Jughead's dad had really killed Jason and Hiram Lodge had paid him to do it. Savannah ran her hands through her hair, stood up and joined the group.
She stood next to Jughead, who felt as if he should be used to feeling disappointed in his father by now. Her hand slid over his shoulder in support and his own covered hers. They both needed a friend right now.
"No." Betty shook her head defiantly. "No. No, I'm not giving up yet." She reached for the jacket, holding it up for them all to see before she thrust it at Archie. "Put this on." She swung it over his head, waiting for him to slide his arms through the sleeves.
"What?"
"Put it on."
"Betty, this is weird."
The girl didn't listen to him as she went around the jacket, feeling the pockets, sliding her hands up the jacket and around the zipper. "There's a hole in the pocket."
"Now we're grasping at straws." Kevin interjected, their eyes never leaving as Betty started to feel along the lining.
"Okay, no, I don't know about you guys, but whenever I have a hole in my pocket," Betty defended herself, "I always lose my chapstick in the lining."
"Or my Montblanc." Veronica chimed in.
"Hold on." Betty murmured, her fingers grasping at something and tugging it out from within.
It was a silver pendrive, small enough to have been hidden inside the jacket. Betty held it up, victorious, as Kevin scoffed and Veronica frowned at the object.
"What the hell?"
"Nancy Drew strikes again."
Savannah smirked, "Grasping at straws now, are we, Kevin?"
She wasn't ready.
The group all gathered around Archie's laptop, perched on the edge or squished in the middle of a small couch. Their eyes glued to the screen as the pendrive was pushed into the slot, waiting for the familiar popup.
"Savannah?" Veronica asked gently, lifting her eyes from the screen to look at the girl that stood in front of them. "Are you okay?"
"I don't know." She mumbled, starting to pace back and forth. "We don't know what's on that drive, it could be anything."
"Don't you want to know the truth?" Betty stood up from the couch to take her friend's arm, halting her mission to pace a hole into the floor.
"Yes." Savannah sighed, and Betty smiled, leading her over to the group, urging Archie to budge over.
The pendrive had one file on it. A video.
A video that showed Jason Blossom, tied to a chair in the basement of the Whyte Wyrm, a bar on the south side of Riverdale. A Serpent, Mustang, who they had found, overdosed in the bathtub of a dingy hotel room, was taunting him.
"Oh my god." Veronica gasped as they watched the unthinkable.
That Clifford Blossom, Jason's own father, walked into the basement of the Whyte Wyrm, stood in front of his son. His eyes caught onto the outline of Nana Blossom's ring in his shirt pocket and he stepped forward to take it from him.
Jason tugged at his restraints, not saying a word as his father took one last look at him, raised a gun and fired.
Savannah could feel the group gasp and recoil into the back of the couch, but she didn't move. His own father had killed him. The man that had raised him as his own, encouraged his successes and should have wanted only the best for his son.
When she felt a hand on her shoulder, the girl leapt up from the couch and raced from the garage. Her body crashed against the wall outside of the Andrews' house, unable to keep herself upright as she slid to the ground.
And that was when it hit her, that Jason Blossom, was well and truly, dead.