Brutal Honesty-Part Fifteen (The Final Chapter)

There was no trace of that boy in the man she saw through the one way mirror. Dimitri Youngblood sat at the table, expressionless. The only other things in the room were the handcuffs on his wrists, just another cold thing in the cold building. No warmth in his eyes, his face, his heart. Just an icy coldness that to tell the truth, chilled Casie to the bones. His eyes were dark and impassive, staring at the door, almost as though he was willing them to bore an invisible hole through the arctic, biting steel.

She took a deep breath, bracing herself for what was to come. Natalie stood next to her, as calm as ever.

"Just do it, Casie," Natalie said to her cousin, squeezing her shoulder. "I know you can."

Casie took two steps to the door and had her hand on the doorknob.

"Will you come with me?"

"Of course," Natalie replied with a warm smile. "I was waiting for you to ask. I will always be with you. You're my partner."

They opened the door together and sat themselves across the table from Dimitri, who barely acknowledged their entrance other than casting his gaze briefly on each of the two agents.

"Hello, Dimitri," Casie greeted her former boyfriend. He didn't respond. "Look, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. But you never know-you might want to."

Dimitri looked at her for a long time in silence before speaking.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I want to talk. I want to talk to you, Casie." He fiddled with his thumbs for a moment, staring at the ground, before he met her eyes.

"About..."

"About us," he conceded.

"Us?" Casie asked incredulously. "Dimitri, the last time we went on a date was over twenty-five years ago!"

"I know," Dimitri sighed, "and I wish I could say I'd seen you yesterday, and we'd been together...But that'd be a lie, and right now, right here, Casie, I'm done with lying. I'm done with lies and this whole mess that I've turned my life into."

"It didn't have to be this way," Casie murmured softly.

"Yeah, well, we all have to make choices. Maybe I just made some wrong choices. Some bad choices. But then again, we all have, haven't we?" Dimitri laughed bitterly. "It's like my whole life is flashing before my eyes-all the could-have-beens, all the could-bes. Every day of my life, I feel like you're slipping further and further away. And I'm afraid to lose you. Do you know I tried to forget about you? Tried to forget about the life I'd left behind. But I was lying to myself. Funny, I figure all of this out while some FBI agent is pulling my arms behind my back and snapping a pair of handcuffs around my wrists. But then again, life's always full of surprises, isn't it?"

"Dimitri," Natalie said, "it's okay to feel the way you do. It's okay to be human, you know. You don't have to be perfect to be wanted. You don't have to be so distanced from other people in order to be powerful. Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone always has another chance."

"No," he replied, shaking his head, "not me. There won't be another chance for me."

"Of course there will," Natalie said kindly.

"Look," Dimitri said. "I want to talk to you, Casie, but I want to talk alone."

Casie glanced at Natalie. Natalie nodded.

"All right," Casie granted. Natalie took the hint and rose from the table, a guard outside admitting her into the hallway. The lock clicked as the door slid shut.

Dimitri stared down at the handcuffs encircling his wrists.

"While I was...you know, while I was doing Marianne's-your mother's-dirty work, I met someone who told me I needed to tell the truth. She said I needed to tell you the truth."

"Who?"

"It's not important," Dimitri insisted.

"It's just a name," Casie said. "I was just curious. Like I said, you don't have to tell me anything, Dimitri."

"I don't know..." Dimitri looked up at the door, and then dropped his eyes again to the floor, smooth white concrete, illuminated by institutional fluorescent light. "Just a name," he repeated. "All right. I don't see why not... It was a woman."

"A...woman?"

"Not what you think," Dimitri said quickly, maybe too quickly. "Her name was-is-Treali Storm."

There was a sharp intake of breath.

"You said Treali Storm?" Casie's eyebrows shot up, incredulous. Dimitri didn't respond. "What happened? How did you two meet?! Do you know where she is?"

"Look, I don't know what happened to her. Your mother introduced us."

"You do realize that Treali Storm is on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Dimitri, this information could be very important!"

"Like I said, Casie, it's not important."

"All right," Casie conceded. "Let's talk about what is important."

"The truth," Dimitri said. "Only the truth."

"That's right, Dimitri. The truth." Casie waited a moment. "Uh, the truth about what?"

"The killings. You know, Miranda Swift, Jonas Ephraim, Brianna Parks, Kenneth Wilkinson...Even the lady cop."

"Dimitri, are you sure you don't want a lawyer?"

"Yeah," Dimitri replied, finally looking Casie in the eye. "I'm sure. Absolutely, bedrock sure. No lawyer for me. I don't need one."

"Just for the record, Dimitri, I think a lawyer wouldn't be a bad idea. But whatever you want to do is fine."

"I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry."

"Why me?"

"Because I think you're the only person left in this world who might care about me." There. He'd said it. He looked away, embarrassed, really.

"You mean that, Dimitri?" Casie's mind raced, but she paid it no heed. She leaned forward to catch Dimitri's next words.

"Yeah, Casie. I really do. And I want you to know I'm sorry. I wish I never left you there the way I did. I still remember you standing there in the doorway of the school office, just trying to make me feel better...Then Grandpa came and I never saw you again, never called, never wrote, never tried to track you down. I wish it could have been different, but, well, I chose my life and you chose yours."

Dimitri Youngblood stared into Casie's eyes, his own eyes burning with passion. "I love you, Casie," he finally said, the words escaping his mouth. The only words he had ever truly wanted to say. He needed so badly, so desperately, to hear those same words from Casie, but alas, he heard only silence.

Natalie Schultz sat across the hall in an identical interrogation room. Marianne Schwartz stared stonily at her from across the metal table. A part of Natalie wanted to reassure her aunt, but the other half of her reminded herself that Aunt Marianne had kidnapped her, and held a gun to her. She shuddered, remembering the look in Marianne's eyes when she had pulled out that gun. An almost psychopathic frenzy driving her out of control, out of reach. She had taken some sort of sadistic pleasure out of having her daughter and niece utterly at her mercy. A terrible woman, but a wonderful actress. Too wonderful, Natalie thought bitterly. You cooked Christmas turkeys and helped us pick out trees every year! Natalie wanted to scream. You organized family reunions, ran for mayor, went running to the principal when I was being bullied and my own mother didn't notice! You went to baptisms, first communions, confirmations, weddings, and funerals! So why did you do that if all you wanted was to kill us?! Why?

But she said none of it, only looked at Marianne with sad, sad eyes and told her what her rights were for the tenth time. Marianne didn't seem to hear anything. She stared at Natalie, through her, rather, her eyes burning a hole through Natalie like lasers almost as if she wasn't sitting there. In the past hour, Marianne Schwartz had not moved, except for her chest as her lungs inhaled and exhaled. She had not spoken, only stared at Natalie with that same glazed-over look in her eyes.

"Marianne, please, talk to me," Natalie pleaded. But it was no use.

"I don't know what to say, Dimitri," Casie finally spoke. "I don't understand you at all. You ask me on a date, and I say yes, and then we go out for a year and a half. Unlike most guys, you're totally faithful and never cheat. Then, you mysteriously disappear following your parents' deaths, and I never see you again. When I do, I've found out you're responsible for over fifty deaths. Now you tell me you love me, here, in an interrogation room?! I really don't know what to say."

"Just say you love me," Dimitri whispered softly. "That's all I want to hear."

Casie forgot for a moment about her job, forgot about extracting a confession, forgot about the case she was about to close, the case in which Dimitri was clearly the perpetrator. She walked around the table to where Dimitri sat, imagining she was walking through clouds, and whispered from only two inches away the words he wanted to hear most.

"I do love you, Dimitri," she murmured. She caught him in an embrace, making up for all the years she hadn't seen him, had almost forgotten he existed but for a few old letters and poems. Her hand trembled as it came up with the handcuff key, and she unlocked his manacles. Together, they caressed and she kissed him long and hard, like two lovers separated for millennia before meeting again.

It was only a few moments later, but it seemed like forever, that Casie finally let go, and he, too, reluctantly dropped his arms.

"I'm sorry," Casie whispered, "I shouldn't have done that."

"I confess," Dimitri declared. "I confess to everything."

After Casie had obtained a typed, signed, and witnessed statement from Dimitri, the guard came to escort Dimitri from the room. She joined Natalie in the adjoining room with Marianne, trying to recall how it felt, finally being alone with Dimitri. He was so good-looking, nothing like the portly boy with glasses and a double chin she had last seen decades ago. Now, Dimitri was a fit man's man. A killer, too.

Marianne Schwartz did not blink upon seeing her daughter on the other end of the table. She didn't flinch, or speak. Her cuffed hands rested neatly in her lap, and her dark gaze lingered for only a moment upon her daughter. Then, it shifted to a corner of the room. Casie's attention lingered for a moment in the sweet memory of Dimitri, then returned to the present, to her traitorous mother in front of her.

"Why?" was the question Casie asked. It was the only one she could think of, the only one that truly fit the situation. "Why?"

"Don't bother me with questions you should know the answers to, Casie." Marianne stared at her daughter. "Why do you think? Do you think I took pleasure out of killing people? Do you think I wanted people to die? No, Casie. What I've done I've done for you." Her lips spread into a smile on her elegant face. "Because I care. Because I love you."

"Shut up," Natalie said. "If you cared about your daughter, then why did you hold a gun to her head, tell me that. You're a liar, and you're lying to the one person you should love most."

"No," Marianne said softly. "Why should I lie now? There is no reason to."

"You've been lying to me since I was born," Casie said scornfully. "All this pretense of a caring mother, a loving mother. You're a murderer, Mom."

"So what?" Marianne snapped. "So what if I am? How should that affect you?"

"Mom, I'm-"

"-an FBI agent," Marianne finished. Her face contorted with rage. "I refuse to speak to you, Casie Schwartz. You are dead to me!" She pounded her fist violently upon the table, accentuating each hateful word, then cast a furious look at Natalie. "And you too! The both of you are dead to me! Dead! Dead! Dead!" Her voice had a chilling quality to it that frightened Casie. She called for the guards. Two of them opened the door, one of them approaching Marianne, who made a break for it. She burst down the hallway, cackling and screaming in a way Casie had never heard before. Casie closed her eyes. She didn't want to see.

Marianne Schwartz only made it about twenty feet before people started shooting at her. But even with a bullet in the thigh, a bullet in the shoulder, a bullet to her knee, she was still moving. Finally, she crumpled to the ground. Casie was too late. She reached her mother as Marianne lay on the concrete floor, red seeping out from under her.

"Mom, I love you," Casie said, "I thought you loved me too. Why?"

With her last burst of strength, Marianne slapped her daughter's hands away from her.

"Keep off me, Special Agent Schwartz, you are dead to me."

"Mom, I'm your daughter."

"You're not my daughter, Special Agent Schwartz," Marianne spat furiously, her eyes full of rage. She took one last, shuddering breath, and then lay still in the institution even as correctional officers dialed 911 for emergency personnel.

Casie didn't remember crying, or storming angrily away. When she woke up, it was past midnight, and she was at home. She awoke screaming, her sheets all bunched up and the pillow wet with tears and sweat. The nightmares had finally caught up to her. She found she couldn't go back to sleep. Rather, she didn't want to, for fear of finding herself trapped again in a hellish dreamscape.

So she sat alone at the kitchen table, on the cold ceramic chair, instead of reclining on the luxurious sofa. The living room was covered with crime scene tape. She stared at the clock, daydreaming that she was part of a Dali painting, and the clock was slowly melting, a distorted shape, the incarnation of her fears. Death. The clock was ticking.

She wondered why her mother would have wanted to kill the four celebrities. There had been no obvious connections. But to her, it was as if everything was suddenly clear. Casie knew why Marianne Schwartz had killed them. They had been blackmailed, by Marianne, who threatened to release slanderous information to the press if they didn't send her money, a check monthly. Casie remembered her mother staying up late to count the money, taking her daughter along with her when she went to the bank to cash in the checks. Maybe Marianne had had incriminating information, maybe not. But eventually, the four celebrities stopped cooperating and she decided to eliminate them.

Were there other victims who had been manipulated by the contriving Marianne Schwartz into giving up a portion of their wealth? Casie didn't know. She didn't want to, either. Casie was still stunned, caught in permanent shock, that her mother could live with her the way she did, and expect Casie to still love her. And how she'd died...Marianne had always seemed to love Casie. Why did she shove her away in the end? Casie was afraid to ask, because she was afraid of what the answer might have been. Afraid that her mother truly did reject her. Rejection was the last thing Casie needed.

For hours, she couldn't tear her gaze away from the lonely clock. It chimed one, then two, then three. By the time it chimed seven, Casie's eyes were aching. She wanted to cry, but found she had no tears left. The phone rang.

"Hello?" Casie answered, her voice cracked.

"It's Natalie."

"Yeah."

"Dimitri Youngblood was found dead this morning. He hung himself in his cell last night. The note he left was a poem. I think it was for you. Your name was on it.

With every breath I take

With every step I make

I'm moving closer to you

And farther from you at the same time

I want to love you

I really do

I want you to love me too

But time and time again

I realize that maybe it's not meant to be

I love you oh so much

But with you I cannot be free

My love and your love

They are killing me

"That's all," Natalie finished simply. There was no reply. "Casie, are you okay?"

Natalie couldn't hear her partner crying, because Casie had hung up.

One Year Later

Eugene Kaufman stood on the steps. Inside the church, somewhere, he knew Casie Schwartz was contemplating her last moments as a single woman. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again.

The sun was out, and the sky was a brilliant hue of blue he hadn't seen before, and hadn't thought he'd ever see again. The church was beautiful, too. The stained glass windows depicted various biblical stories. His favorite was the two women at Jesus' tomb. An angel in white sat on the rock, and said "Do not be afraid."

They always say that, don't they, he thought to himself with a hint of amusement. But we can't help being afraid. It's human nature.

The bell in the church rang, silencing the birds for a moment. July 28. A date he would remember forever, and celebrate as his anniversary until the day he died.

But for now, he would be content with what he had. A beautiful wife inside who no doubt loved him, too.

Casie Schwartz sat alone in the small chapel. Her dress had been handmade, by her and Natalie Schultz. It draped exquisitely over her curves, and had a train eight feet long. Embroidery and pearls adorned the gown, which was topped by a long veil.

She closed her eyes. Dear God, let my mother rest in peace. Let Dimitri rest in peace. And let us live the way you would have us live.

In just one hour, she would be a married woman.

Natalie Schultz strode down the central aisle of the cathedral, smiling in her pink dress. The dress was handmade, and she had calibrated the pattern perfectly to hide her sidearm and still show off her body, although hers wasn't nearly as nice as Casie's. Behind her came Casie's two sisters, smiling in their own pink dresses, also handmade.

At last, Casie herself entered the church and walked down the aisle escorted by Judge Yosef Schwartz, who had a look of tiredness in his eyes. But he was smiling, a warm, friendly smile. Yosef was proud of his daughter. Content with her choice for a husband.

Waiting at the altar was Eugene Kaufman, wearing a tuxedo he had had in his closet for a long time. Today was the perfect occasion for wearing it.

The priest at the front of the church began the ceremony. Casie didn't hear a word he said, just gazed into Eugene's eyes, remembering the day he had proposed to her.

They had just apprehended Treali Storm, FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, and the helicopter blades were still turning when Eugene had turned to her and yelled over the helicopter.

"Casie Schwartz, will you marry me?!"

Casie had given him a horrified look, but smiled broadly.

"Yes! Yes, I will!"

She saw his lips move, and the priest smile kindly.

"I do," Eugene said softly. Casie smiled. A minute later, Eugene was nudging her. She snapped back to the present.

"I do," Casie said affirmatively. It was good to be honest with herself, and with her new husband.

"You may kiss the bride," the priest said. The smile never left her face.