The jury came back with a ten-year jail sentence. Westfield will spend the next ten years behind bars, with the possibility of parole at eight.
Westfield is a hero among locals who, by far, rallied around him as he made their town safer.
I read the article that was dated almost eight years ago to the day. Again. Hoping that I was doing the right thing by sending it to whom I was sending it to.
I’d already made the move from Maine to Accident, Florida. Wake Westfield’s hometown.
As of last night, Lois had perished.
She had died at her father’s hands, and I knew it with such a certainty that I was prepared to do what I needed to make sure that Tony Haskins never touched another little girl again.
I picked up my pen, stared at the blank piece of paper, then pressed it against the blank topmost left edge.
Then I started writing.
My name is Dutch Duvall Panchek.
I’m thirty years old, and I need to know how to kill a man and get away with it.
I had to bribe a guard, who happens to be a very good friend, to get this to you. I know it’s a bit ‘weird’ but if anyone would understand, I knew you would.
A year ago, a little girl started to come to my practice. She was scared shitless of damn near everything, and any time her mother left her even to grab a tissue from across the room, the girl would freak out.
And by freak out, I mean, scream and cry in terror, freak out.
It took me a year to get her to talk. And when she did, I learned that her father, a member of our government, had been hurting her in the most disgusting of ways.
As of last week, the little girl, Lois, perished in a drowning ‘accident.’ Two days after that, her mother, Tamra, took her life by ‘overdosing’ on pills.
However, I know that Tamra wouldn’t do that. After learning of what her little girl went through, I’d seen fire in her eyes. Retribution. I know that Tamra, even after losing her daughter, wouldn’t make that decision. She was too angry. That anger would’ve kept her on this earth long enough to take her husband out with her.
And now, both witnesses to the hideous act are dead.
Leaving me alone to live with what that man’s done.
Which is why I’m writing you. I will not let him live his life as if he isn’t the vilest creature on this Earth.
He will pay for what he’s done, and that’s where you come in.
I want you to help me get away with murder.
Sincerely, Dutch Panchek.
After making sure that the letter was sealed, I walked it up to my brother, who was a corrections officer at the same prison that housed Wake Westfield—life was grand, how it worked out like that. What were the odds that my brother would be working the same prison?
It was a happy coincidence, one that I planned on capitalizing on handsomely.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, looking at the letter as if it was going to grow teeth and bite him.
“I’ve never been more sure about something in my life,” I admitted. “Take it to him. Bring me back his reply.”
As far as my brother knew, I was writing an inmate to research my upcoming book that I’d made up just for a ‘cover.’
Though, now that I’d been thinking about it for so long, I might very well write it. The psyches of inmates were definitely an interesting thing. Some inmates were apologetic about the reason they’d been imprisoned, while others were straight-up uncaring. I loved the dynamic of the ones that knew they’d done something bad, yet couldn’t give a single fuck.
“Do you think that you can get me a meeting with him next week?” I asked, blinking big blue eyes in his direction.
My brother, who was a redhead just like me, stared at me with the same blue eyes. Only, they weren’t nearly as ‘sweet.’
At least, I hoped mine appeared sweet.
“You’re so full of shit,” Tomas grumbled. “I’m doing this only because I know that you’re going to find a way to get it done on your own. And don’t try that same bullshit you tried the first time.”
“You mean, don’t try to talk to the inmate?” I asked. “Without first getting your approval?”
The thing was, being a psychologist, I was put in front of a lot of criminals that needed to be diagnosed. I spent a lot of time at the prison talking to them about decisions that got them into their predicament in the first place.
The one Tomas was talking about in particular was actually a man that’d killed his wife while he was having flashbacks of war. The man had thrown a punch in his sleep, knocked the wife backward, and she’d fallen and hit her head on the corner of the nightstand. She’d suffered a brain aneurysm.