"People like this," Charlie said, holding up one of the photos from the files. "Did you kill this man?" It was the body of man laying on the ground, his brains leaking from his skull. "What about this one," she said, holding up another picture. "This one, and this, and this one?"
"All the information you need is in there," Joey replied, fearing the anger radiating from her former lover would burn her.
"Except I bet, the actual evidence to convict you of these murders," she snidely said. "Or are you going to deny your guilt, even when it's obvious how you came by this information."
"Not that obvious," Joey murmured.
"Sure looks obvious to me," she said. "And if not, what are these maps then, what do the names and crosses mean?" Charlie asked, though she strongly suspected what the answer would be, should Joey actually tell the truth that is, because there was only one reason to have these maps in with the photos. She also recognised some of the names, knew they'd been connected to the ongoing investigation into the Braxtons, and worst of all, she knew that these people had disappeared without a trace.
Joey sighed before answering. "It's where the bodies are buried," she said.
"The bodies you put there," Charlie sneered as she once again accused her.
"Yes, but not in the way you think."
"Oh, so you're not a murdering bitch in the pay of the Braxtons?" Charlie said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Your skill with a gun makes more sense now," she added. "Especially the heart shots to Angelo's chest."
"I already told you how I knew how to use a gun," Joey said.
"Duck hunting," Charlie mockingly said. "Tell me, that shooting range you also said he used to take you too, let me guess, it was human shaped targets." The look of disgust on Charlie's face when Joey didn't answer, drove another nail into Joey's heart. "He taught you how to group your shots for the most effective kill, didn't he?" Charlie said. "Don't try to deny it, your silence speaks a thousand words."
"I won't deny it," Joey finally said.
"Makes a change," muttered Charlie.
"I know how to use a gun, I know where to hit a target for the maximum effect and I've pulled the trigger plenty of times," Joey said. "But never at another human being," she told her.
"What, Angelo Rosetta doesn't count as a human being?"
"Not sure corrupt pigs do actually count," Joey said, her attempt at levity failing badly. "Anyway, if I hadn't shot him, you'd be dead," she reminded her.
"And none of which proves that you're not a killer for hire," Charlie said.
"My job with the Braxtons was purely to document and clean up other people's work."
"I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Believe what you want," said Joey, knowing she'd be wasting her time trying to convince Charlie otherwise.
"Seriously, you're going with I'm just a cleaner?" scoffed Charlie. "You really must think I'm an idiot."
"I've never thought of you as an idiot," Joey assured her.
"Yeah, sure, you've probably been laughing this whole time, especially once you got me into the sack," she said. "God, you must have really enjoyed fucking my body, while fucking with my head."
"I did enjoy having sex with you, Charlie," Joey honestly said. "But I never enjoyed lying to you and I never fucked with your head," she said. "At least I never meant to."
"Could have fooled me with all the smart arse remarks you've made during this trip of hell," she said. "Oh that's right, you did fool me."
"Whether you choose to believe it or not, I truly am sorry that you've been caught up in my mess," Joey told her.
The hardest thing for Charlie, aside from the obvious betrayal and hurt, was that she wanted to believe that Joey truly was sorry, yet her anger and disappointment refused to accept any of it. This was a criminal, a totally untrustworthy, worthless criminal who would betray her in an instant. Yet Joey had remained at her side when she could easily have gone on alone, she'd even saved her life on more than one occasion because she had stayed, the little voice in her head tried to reason with her. But she's a lying bitch was the counter-argument currently taking place in her head. Once again, anger won out.
"You make me sick," Charlie seethed. "The lies, the pretending, all of it."
"At no stage have I ever pretended to be a font of morality or honesty," Joey said as calmly as she could while hurting inside.
"And don't I know it," muttered Charlie. "I kept telling myself that you weren't to be trusted, but I wanted to, because we were stuck in this situation together," she said.
"I wish things had been different, Charlie, that I'd never been there that night, that…"
"What did happen that night?" Charlie interrupted her. "The night that you murdered Harvey Ryan."
"I never murdered Harvey Ryan," Joey said. "But they wanted me to," she told her. "They wanted me to get my hands dirty."
"They already were dirty," Charlie said. "Even if you are just someone who cleaned the bloodied mess up afterwards, you're still an accessory to murder, and worse, you still stood by and allowed these people to die."
"Most of them deserved it," Joey said. "They were bad people."
"I know some of the names in these files, Joey," she said. "They weren't bad people at all, they were good, honest people who witnessed a crime or were working with us to bring the Braxtons down. They didn't deserve to die."
"I had nothing to do with those ones."
"How convenient," she sarcastically said.
"Again, believe me or not, I don't care," said Joey, though she did. "But I was only involved in disposing of the bodies of those who deserved it," she said. "They weren't model citizens, Charlie, they were nasty, dangerous people who took pleasure in hurting others."
"Something you know all about," Charlie couldn't resist saying and she was pleased to see it hit a nerve. "What proof did you have that these so called nasty people deserved it?"
"I never accepted an assignment without first running a background check on whom the target was going to be, and if it turned out they were an innocent who just happened to have seen something they shouldn't have, then I passed on the assignment."
"For someone else to clean up after that poor innocent was murdered in cold blood," Charlie said, full of scorn for this woman and for those she worked for.
"I can't help it if others don't follow the same code as I do and just take the money, regardless of who the intended victim was."
"You call that a code?" she said. "Who the fuck made you judge, jury and executioner?"
"If the cops did their jobs and put these bastards behind bars, then they wouldn't be free to roam about hurting people, and providing me with a job."
"We do our jobs," Charlie said. "And while I'm the first to admit that the justice system isn't perfect, we do our best with what have."
"Yet men like the Braxtons continue to do business right under your noses," Joey pointed out. "And with the help from cops like Watson."
"Not all cops are corrupt."
"And not all who work for the Braxtons are bad people."
"Well you're certainly not a model citizen," scoffed Charlie. "Whether you killed these people or just cleaned up after the fact, you're still no better than those who ordered the hits or did the actual deed," she said. "And what about Harvey Ryan? We know he was mixed up with the Braxtons, but he was hardly a danger to others, he was just a corrupt and opportunistic businessman who didn't even have the guts to make a statement against the Braxtons," Charlie said. "Yet as you were there that night, then you obviously believed he deserved to die, since your so-called code only allowed you to be involved in specific deaths," she pointed out. "Or so you say."
"I was set up," Joey said and Charlie laughed.
"Yeah, right."
"It was meant to be a low life drug dealer who had beat up his girlfriend, a friend of Bianca Braxton, but when I got there, low and behold, it was ex-Mayor Ryan," Joey explained to her. "Before I could get the hell out of there, the others showed up."
"Heath and Kyle Braxton, Brodie Upton and Penn Graham," Charlie listed the names of the others. "At least those were the names you mentioned in your police statement or was that a lie as well?"
"Only a little."
"Only a little, oh, that's ok then," Charlie muttered.
"Penn wasn't there, but the others were."
Charlie stared, her face dark with rage as the real lie came to the fore. "If Penn wasn't there, then it is more than just a little lie that you told," she said through gritted teeth. "You said Penn Graham pulled the trigger, but it's now obvious it couldn't have been him, unless he somehow managed to pull it off in absentia, which would make him the world's greatest ever marksman."
"Heath gave me the gun," Joey said. "He told me to show my loyalty by pulling the trigger."
"And like a good little girl, you did as bid, didn't you and that's why Ryan's photo isn't in here, because you didn't want to implicate yourself," she said. "All that crap about only being a cleaner, it was just another lie, like everything else," Charlie said. "You really are just a murdering bitch and you're under arrest."