An arsonist Amber had been hunting Down had gotten a little too close to home and burned her place to the ground. She narrowly escaped but now Chase wanted me to help them bring this guy to justice and since she had helped us years before with the kids, I was the first to jump on board with catching him.The only thing they knew about him is that he had a lot of fires under his belt and He knew his way around accelerants. The FBI got a hold of the case when he started a blaze at the local precinct in a neighboring city that spread down an entire block and a half and now, he was taking the chase personally.
Whoever this was, was taunting her for weeks. Phone calls, notes left in the mailbox, the latest was a bouquet of red roses … the edges of the petals had been singed
with a note saying “There’s Beauty in destruction, soon you’ll see the world through my eyes.”
She didn’t scare easily because over the ten years she had been with the FBI, She had gotten love notes like that numerous times and they'd all proven to be fruitless.
Amber, Chase and I went over the case file, David Gallagher was in and out of juvie as a youngster but mostly for petty theft and assault there was nothing that pointed to a reason he would turn to arson out of nowhere and then we found it.
He had grown up in an Orphanage Which unfortunately wasn’t uncommon around Tralee. Once we found the records from the background at the orphanage we started looking into the ones in charge.
There were cases of neglect, abuse, sexual harassment ,rape... no wonder this kid was a mainstay in juvie, it was safer than the place he called home.
While looking into him we found out that he had two sisters,
A younger sister, Roslyn and an older sister, Dianna. The younger sister had recently Died - she was fifteen and it was at the hands of the Orphanage. She was admitted to the hospital for fractured ribs and a broken
leg, when She told the social worker that the staff had done it, He tipped off the orphanage and instead of doing his job and getting her to safety, she was released back into their care and they killed her.
There’s the trigger, Now why turn to arson but on such a minimal scale?
Dianna,The older sister had died in a car wreck two years earlier. This guy had been a ticking time bomb for a while now.
“Amber. While we had him in interrogation, Gallagher said we’d be sorry and mentioned something about Dianna. Is there a death certificate in the files for her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we think she may have found someone to issue a false one.”
“Okay, thanks we’ll check that out.”
It took us a few days to get the files on Dianna but, after we did we realized that when Dianna was alive, she had better luck with the system and there was a contact helping her that was working on getting the others out of the system. - She was about to age out at eighteen and then she’d be on her own
Trey Kepner was a twenty two year old, he had just started working at the department of child services but had a turbulent past of his own with his biological parents so, when Dianna’s file hit his desk, he was determined to help her and her siblings. His adoptive parents were well off….. But, After her death - he just seemed to disappear too.
Chase ran through the door.
“Wait! Hear me out, He’s twenty two with a turbulent past of his own, she’s eighteen, pretty and vulnerable, what if they bonded and he pulled some strings to help her fake her death and they were working on getting David and Ros out of there when She was killed. “
Just then we heard it come over the scanner “ Fire at Tralee Orphanage, 124 West 1st street.”
I looked at Chase and Amber and without skipping a beat She glanced back with determination. “Let’s go.”
We should’ve been a good thirty minutes out, but we made it there in fifteen. Gotta hand it to that woman, When someone takes everything from her she’s like a bull in a china shop.
We were the first on the scene and Chase’s hunch was right. Dianna was alive and well. Trey used his parents' money to help her fake her death and disappear.
Unfortunately, They were days too late trying to get her siblings out and it cost them Roslyn’s life.
David went off the deep end but Dianna was a full blown sociopath when we got her back to the headquarters in Tralee. What’s bad is that aside from burning down Amber’s house, The rampage they went on was understandable. Three kids, years of unthinkable abuse, no one would listen to them or try to help. It was almost like they got backed into a corner and were forced to resort to this. Dianna was too far gone it was clear but David was just scared and doing anything he could to keep himself safe and in his mind that meant protecting Dianna and lashing out to get anyone to listen.
“It’s days like this that you feel like you’ve failed. We’re locking up two victims that were forced into becoming monsters."
I couldn’t shake the Gallagher case. It still messes with me if I think about it too much. How many more budding sociopaths are being created just because we have a broken system?
I was so angered by the fact that I’ve lost so many friends and family members to corruption that it never even occurred to me that we are raising them and then putting them in positions of authority, only to create more.
“Hey, Megan. I can set you up with an interview to work with kids like David."
“Sounds Exhausting…..I’m in.” Chase grinned to himself "What's so amusing?"
“Wha-? No, nothing I mean… I just think it’s cute how “Mama’s actually a mama now and it’s showing.”
I just smirked
“You know you’re a hell of a lot softer than you like to admit.”
“Shut it…”
“It doesn’t take away from your “Badass”, Megan. If anything else, It just adds to it.
You’ll do great, I’m just concerned with the number of complaints those assholes are gonna file because you broke a jaw or reached out and touched someone.”
He said while throwing a punch through the air jokingly