Only two hours after leaving my own Halloween party senior year on Saturday, October 31, 2018, my best friend was killed in a car accident. I remember the call like it was yesterday. She had just gotten the car as an eighteenth-birthday present the week before. I remember the pain that tore through my heart when I heard the words “Hannah had an accident.” One moment she was on the dance floor dressed as Frankenstein’s bride, and the next minute I received a phone call from her mom stating that she was unresponsive and on life support. Hannah’s brand-new car had collided with a guardrail head-on at upwards of fifty miles per hour, and she died on impact. Within twenty seconds of hearing this news, my entire life flipped upside down.
Hannah’s death never fully made sense to me. The police claimed that she must have been looking down in some way in order to swerve straight into the guard rail, yet Hannah was the most cautious driver I knew. She was constantly telling me “The music is too loud, for crying out loud!” Knowing that her life ended because she did the exact same thing she was always telling everyone not to do seemed ironic and bizarre to me. However, at the time, I brushed it off by saying that no one is perfect. I thought that it was just a horrific coincidence that Hannah’s biggest mistake was avoiding her own strict precautions.
After Hannah died, I never fully recovered. I lived every day wondering if there was something I could’ve done to keep her alive. I would ask myself every time I looked in the mirror: If she’d stayed at the party an hour longer, would she still be alive? Eventually, I realized that the only way that I would cope with losing my best friend was to forgive myself first and foremost.
Each day, I got a little better at it. I learned how to build a life for myself, and I simultaneously helped Hannah’s family heal. I took Tod and Shannon, Hannah’s mother and stepfather, under my wing, and even entered the police academy in order to work under Tod who is a police captain working alongside his best friend, forensic medical examiner Dr. Dean Alexander. Along with me at the academy was Hannah’s older brother Jack, who I became close with in the years following Hannah’s death. I used to be so unsure of what I planned to do with my life, but after Hannah’s death, it felt like my calling to fulfill her dream of being on the police force since she never could.
On the fifth anniversary of Hannah’s death, I finally was in a place where I didn’t forget Hannah because I never could, but I was finally able to accept that she was gone. I had recently been promoted to detective, and I had become engaged to an amazing man who picked up every piece of my heart that had broken and helped to piece them back together. For the first time since Hannah was alive, I was able to feel a form of serenity. I was able to breathe again. However, everything changed when I was once again pushed down memory lane.
One day at work, Tod asked me to straighten up some old case files in the back of the department since we had a lot of spare time on our hands. As I was transporting a full box of files to the opposite side of the room, I accidentally tripped on the corner of the file cabinet and crashed with a bang. As I was attempting to put all of the scattered files back into the box, I came across one that made my heart momentarily stop. Lying there amongst hundreds of other cases long forgotten was a file that had “Hannah Malvern: Accidental Death” typed across the label.
I knew in the back of my mind that I should’ve just put the file back into the cabinet with the others. I tried to tell myself that the only thing reading Hannah’s file was going to do was bring back the pain that I had been running from for five years. I knew the legal and necessary thing to do was to keep my personal matters out of my job at hand. So, I sighed and threw Hannah’s folder along with the others needing to be filed away.
I hadn’t even noticed how long I had been simply staring at the manilla folder when I heard Tod call out “Everything okay, Justine? Oh, I mean, Officer Rodgers? I heard a crash” I slightly chuckled to myself as I heard him call out my first name. That’s the difficult part about working under your basically surrogate father. Sometimes we slip up on keeping the boundaries between work and personal life private.
“Yes, Captain, everything’s fine. Just dropped a box of files.” I placed the box back into its desired position and headed back to my desk. I glanced across the room to see Jack looking straight at me with concerned eyes. He must have heard the crash as well. I mouthed, I’m alright and he gave me a sad smile. Jack seemed off, but I knew that I had too much work to worry about at that moment. With a faint sigh, I tied my red curls back out of my face and sat down, preparing to interview an awaiting convict. I forgot about Hannah’s file and never thought of it again throughout the day.
****
After my shift was over, I entered my apartment surprised to see Matt, my fiancé, waiting for me with flowers. With our hour distance due to him being in law school, I was not expecting to see him tonight. A giddy smile spread across my cheeks as I embraced him in a warm hug, kissing him gently when we pulled away. I walked to the living room and opened my work bookbag, removing my laptop as I still had some work to do on my current case. As I sat on the couch, Matt brought me a plate of warm pot roast and said “By the way, Justine, I found this out front before I came in. It has your name on it, so I figured you’d know what it is.
He handed over a large envelope with “Officer Justine Rodgers” scrawled across it in messy handwriting. For a moment, my heart rushed. As a police officer, it’s hard to tell what could be delivered to your doorstep. I decided to wait until I could open the envelope privately, in case there was something inside that would be a danger for Matt to see.
When Matt left to drive back to school, I closed my apartment door softly and returned to the couch, reaching for the envelope. I exhaled and opened the envelope, my heart racing. To my surprise, nothing crazy happened. I reached in and when I saw the envelope’s contents, I gasped audibly. Hannah’s case file was inside, along with a faded pink spiral notebook. Attached to the notebook was a small sticky note that read, Trust your gut. I tried to get you to pick it up earlier, but you didn’t take the bait. Just read.. If anyone can avenge her, it’s you. No one will believe me.
I was beyond confused, yet I found myself doing the exact same thing I told myself not to do just hours earlier. I opened Hannah’s accident case file, the curiosity overcame me. The same person who had mysteriously delivered Hannah’s file to my doorstep had made notes throughout the file but the one that stood out the most to me read, “I KNEW IT. THIS WAS NO ACCIDENT.” I followed the arrows drawn stemming from the note and before I knew it, I felt my hand instinctively cover my mouth as a faint tear ran down my cheek.
Inside the chart was a letter from the automotive forensic investigators outright addressing that Hannah’s car’s motor and steering system had been tampered with after manufacturing. However, there was a stamp across the letter that read “out ruled.” Also inside Hannah’s case file was her cause of death ruling as accidental along with Dr. Alexander’s signature. I shook my head, confused, and laid the file aside. The tears were now falling at a steady rate as the questions swirled in my mind. Why was Hannah’s death not declared a murder? And who would want her dead?
I turned towards the notebook included in the envelope, searching for answers. Sure enough, I found them. The notebook turned out to be Hannah’s diary, left along with her other forgotten items when she passed from one world into the next. Once I started reading Hannah’s own thoughts from the weeks just before her death, fear and disbelief clouded my senses.
In her diary, Hannah wrote about situations that she had somehow kept private even from me. At first, the entries I read through were not out of the ordinary. She babbled on about mishaps with teachers or other friends and which boy she thought was attractive that week. One entry written on October 24, 2018, only a week before her death, stood out to me. The page had been dog-eared, likely by the same secretive source that left everything on my doorstep. Written in familiar handwriting I knew all too well, Hannah had said:
“I can tell that he knows I found the driver’s license. I don’t know what is coming next or if I’ll even get to find out, but I’m afraid of my own stepfather at this point. He knows that I know he isn’t who he says he is. I just hope that he isn’t like his father.”
When I read the words “my own stepfather,” my breath hitched. Everything I’d ever known had suddenly become a complete lie. All I could think was how? At that point, I made the executive decision that I was going to go straight to the coroner’s office and ask Dean what this was all about. I felt as though I was floating and that the air had left my lungs. All I knew was that the exact thing I had been trying to run from for the past five years was coming back to haunt me.
***
When I showed Dean the file and the diary, he started to cry. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Then, he just started talking. It was as though as soon as I opened the file, the dam broke. “I knew someone would figure it out eventually,” Dean croaked between tears. “I can’t keep it a secret anymore. I’ll tell you everything.”
Over the next fifteen minutes, Dean did indeed tell me everything and the truth hurt more than I thought it would. Dean told me that five years ago Tod had approached him, asking him to rule out Hannah’s death as an accident even though there was foul play in her car accident. Dean elaborated in detail about how Tod had told him not to ask questions about why, but that he needed him to announce the death as an accident. Dean looked me in the eye and told me, “He threatened me and told me that he would hurt my wife if I didn’t declare it an accident.” I reached out to hug Dr. Alexander and knew what had to happen in order to finally make everything right and get some answers.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s time to put Tod behind bars. But first, I need answers. You need answers. We deserve that much.” Dean nodded at me solemnly, his olive cheeks streaked with tear marks. I told Dean the plan I had made before I drove to the station, where for the first time in my life, I finally knew what I needed to do. I’d never been more sure of anything since Hannah was alive. When I pulled into my usual spot, I cut the engine and took a deep breath, calling Dean and waiting for him to answer the phone.
When he did, I slipped my phone in my back jeans pocket, the mic still turned on, and walked into the station, hurrying towards Tod’s office. Thankfully, he was in there, typing away on his laptop. I locked the door and turned down the blinds, even though I knew no one else was in the station at the time. “Hey, Justine. What’s up, sweetheart?”
“Cut the crap. I know.” I replied, not a hint of happiness in my voice.
Tod lowered his eyebrows and said, “What do you mean?”
“I know you killed Hannah, you scumbag. And I want to know why.” To my surprise, Tod let out a belly laugh, the entire desk vibrating as he laughed.
“My, my, my. It only took you five years. I always thought that maybe you’d be the one to figure it out.” Anger coursed through my veins as he continued. “You ask why? Well, I’ll tell you why. I’m not afraid to tell you the truth. Hannah got her nose a little too deep. She was a sweetheart, but she was too smart for her own good. She found my old driver’s license and started to figure everything out. I knew she would tell her mother and eventually everyone, and I couldn’t have that happen. So I did what I had to do. Hannah, nor anyone, will ever know that it wasn’t those foggy October roads that killed her.”
I was raising my voice at that point. “Tell everyone what? What are you talking about? What about finding an old driver’s license could possibly lead you to murder your own stepdaughter!?” Tod seemed genuinely confused after I asked.
“Oh, you didn’t figure that one out? Jeez, I figured you’d found it all out just like Hannah did. When she saw my old driver’s license and saw the name ‘Christopher Roberts,’ she researched everything. She found out that I’m actually not Tod Williams, but that I was stealing his identity in order to cover up the truth. I’m the son of…”
I cut him off in order to say with him at the same time, “serial killer Allen Roberts.” I allowed my jaw to drop, my mind finally piecing everything together. Tod, or rather Christopher, nodded with a frown. “And where is the real Tod Williams?”
Christopher gave an evil grin and replied, “Well, unfortunately, he had to suffer the same fate as sweet Hannah. I was only twenty. I deserved a second life where I wasn’t solely viewed for my father’s crimes. So was he, but he went peacefully. And well, I used Tod’s life to become a cop so no one would ever know. Hannah was the exception.
“So why tell me?” I asked as Tod raised from his seat. I watched cautiously as I heard a snap, a click, and then he faced me head-on, raising his 0.9 mm glock holding me at gunpoint. My stomach dropped to my feet as he stated, “Because, hon, I know you’ll be the last to ever know.”
At perfect timing, Tod’s office door burst open, with multiple of my colleagues in full bulletproof gear. Among them was Jack, beaming brighter than I’d ever seen him before. “Lower your weapon! Game’s over, Christopher.” Jack stated boldly, allowing our fellow detective, Alicia, to place handcuffs around his wrists.
“But… how?” Christopher asked me, a worried look on his face. I smiled and pulled my phone out of my back pocket, where Dean was still on call. “That horrific traitor, “ Christopher huffed, annoyed.
“Thank you, Dean. For recording and for everything. His confession was all we needed. We’ve finally reached the bottom.” I say into my phone, pressing the end call button. As Alicia hauled Christopher Roberts, formerly known as Sergeant Tod Williams into a nearby inmate cell, Jack turned to me thoughtfully.
“I knew you could do it. I’ve known for years that my little sister was stolen. I just knew that no one would believe me if I suspected my own stepfather.” A tear rolled down my face in understanding. The final puzzle piece fit into place as everything made sense: the file cabinet protruding at the station, Jack’s cautious looks, and the envelope at my doorstep. Jack and I both knew that no more words were needed. I pulled him into a tight hug, both shedding tears.
As I walked out to my desk, prepared to finally head home and tell my awaiting fiancé every last detail, my eye caught on the photo on my desktop, and for the first time in so long, I truly smiled. I smiled not because I was over Hannah’s death, but because I had finally given her the justice she deserved. I looked down at my watch, declaring that it was one in the morning on Halloween night, 2023: five years after Hannah’s last breath. As I stared into her beautiful blue eyes shining back at me from the photo frame, I whispered, “It’s done, my friend. And I’ll always be here. I’m so sorry it took me so long.” I pulled on my jacket and left the station, looking up at the sky and knowing that Hannah was smiling down at me.
