Scattered Graves

a kid for how long—almost twenty years? And a young adult for one.
What would any of us have done if our families had been threatened in that way? What would I have done had I known what Ivan Santos had in mind for Ariel and our friends at the mission? thought Diane . Would I have gone after him?

Epilogue
    The aftermath to the whole Jefferies episode was un settling to everyone in Rosewood. The meth lab explo sion the previous year had brought people together. But this series of events and disclosures was divisive. The fallout reached everyone from the governor, whose PR people tried to spin the damage by ex plaining that photo ops with Jefferies didn’t mean they were bosom buddies, to individual families like the McConnels, whose son, Ethan, wandered onto the mu seum overlook and was threatened by security guard Gage Shipman.
    Andie told Diane she heard from Mrs. McConnel that she and her husband might divorce. The police man friend of Mr. McConnel’s buddy, Barrel, turned out to be one of Jefferies’ hires. Mr. McConnel, who had voted for Jefferies based on his law-and-order stance, now felt betrayed and humiliated, and his wife was not kind. Like a lot of people, she couldn’t resist the I-told-you-so’s.
    Frank and his department came out well. Caleb’s computer was a gold mine—literally. It had every sin gle thing in it Frank needed to untangle Jefferies’ em pire. Caleb gave Frank a flash drive containing a total copy of the information. He seemed to understand that Rosewood might not be eager to share with At lanta. Caleb gave David all his algorithms to ponder. David, a lover of algorithms, was bubbly with ex citement.
    Janice Warrick never discovered who the shadow man was on the security tape.
Rikki was the most disappointed. She thought she sent a chunk of Jefferies’ money to her own account in the Caribbean via her cell phone, which she threw in the river along with the hard disk. She had no way of knowing that Caleb had already emptied all but a thousand dollars from each account. He put the money in a holding account for the authorities to fig ure out what to do with. The prison guards said Rikki stomped around her cell for days ranting at her bad luck.
Jennifer Jeffcote-Smith received an undisclosed sum from the city, but she wasn’t happy either. Her reputa tion was tarnished by her proximity to the Jefferies gang, and her husband’s relatives
with her as Mrs. McConnel was
were as relentless with her husband. Diane had seen her one last time in passing at the post office as Jennifer was leaving town. Her in-laws were laughing, telling all their friends to move to Georgia, where they pay you a lot of money for being stupid. Jennifer was probably heading for a divorce too, thought Diane.
Many on the city council wanted Douglas Garnett to run for mayor. But he really liked being chief of detectives, and Edward Van Ross reinstated him. Garnett and his wife sent Diane a bouquet of red roses.
Former mayor Walter Sutton was as disappointed as Rikki Gillinick. The citizens of Rosewood did not want him as mayor again. They somehow blamed him too for the corruption in city hall, though Diane wasn’t sure why. Edward Van Ross was pressed into service for a term as mayor. He told everyone it was just until Rosewood got back to normal. Diane wasn’t sure that would ever happen. A group of people actually ap proached her to run in the special election. Diane couldn’t think of anything she had rather not do than run for mayor. She politely declined.
Curtis Crabtree died on the way to the hospital. Shipman clung to life and slowly recovered in the prison hospital. Caleb told Diane and Frank that Crabtree and Shipman tormented him over how they cut up his friend Malcolm and fed him into the wood chipper. The one nice thing that Jefferies had done for Caleb was to tell Curtis and Shipman to lay off— but, Caleb added, that was just so his work wouldn’t be affected.
Diane had asked Colin Prehoda to take Caleb’s case. He loved it. Diane had invited him to lunch in her office and told him about Caleb and what hap pened.
‘‘I can get the kid a medal,’’ he said. ‘‘My wife can get him a movie.’’
Diane frowned. ‘‘For himself, he needs to know that killing wasn’t the answer,’’ said Diane. ‘‘He doesn’t need to go the rest of his life thinking there was no alternative. Everyone needs to know you can’t get off scot-free for murder, no matter what the circum