Bevan Hart was on top of her, and would not move. She felt pain around her stomach. Brody and a police officer rushed to pull him off her, and he didn’t resist. They laid him to the side while two others pointed weapons, ready to fire.
Anya’s pain eased as she clutched Bevan’s gun against herself, relieved it was no longer digging into her from the owner’s weight. She slowly sat up. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Dan peeling off his tie to use as a tourniquet for the judge’s leg.
To her side Bevan Hart struggled to breathe.
“Get the paramedics,” she yelled, desperate to help.
Blood poured from a gaping wound in the middle of his abdomen. Penny Pascoe knelt on his other side. “I was a nurse. What can I do to help?”
Anya glanced across. From the degree of blood loss, there was little anyone could do without fluids and intravenous access. “Do you have any towels, something to put pressure on with?”
The judge’s wife immediately pulled off her skirt, exposing a half-slip. “Will this help?”
“Thanks,” Anya pushed hard into the wound. “An ambulance is coming. Just hang on, Bevan.”
He was agitated and tried to push her hands away.
“This will help stop the bleeding,” she said.
“Please,” he managed. “Let me go.”
Anya heard him but refused to believe he meant what he was saying. She had failed to save his daughter but wouldn’t fail him.
She pressed harder and he winced, moving his head from side to side.
“No, no more. I want to die.” he whispered. “Giverny is here.”
She continued to apply pressure but Mrs. Pascoe bent over the man’s face.
“Bevan, do you see her?”
He nodded.
“Is she happy?”
He smiled broadly.
“He’s about to pass,” she said, one hand stroking his cheek. The other hand rested over Anya’s.
Bevan gasped and expelled his last breath. Still with a smile.
Two ambulance officers pushed past the police and bent down to examine their patient.
“It’s too late,” Mrs. Pascoe said, “he’s gone.”
One checked for a pulse and the other tore open the shirt and attached ECG dots to a portable machine.
The line on the monitor was flat. “No pulse, no spontaneous breathing, he’s lost a lot of blood.”
Anya and Mrs. Pascoe stepped back as they worked through their protocol, pushing fluids into a vein, still trying to find a heartbeat, even trying to shock it into motion.
Anya was unaware of anything or anybody else in the room. Just the tragedy of Bevan Hart. First Giverny, then Natasha and Savannah, all dead, all unnecessarily.
Mrs. Pascoe placed an arm around her shoulder. “He’s at peace now, I felt him go.”
Anya excused herself and moved between two rows of bottles for some space. One of the officers removed an envelope from Bevan’s jacket.
“Looks like a suicide note,” he said, gloved hands unfolding the lower half.
“I am sorry for everything that has happened. But I can’t trust in justice any more. It doesn’t exist. Judges, lawyers are just playing a game. They don’t care about the victims of crime or their families. We’re just pawns to move around, no matter how much it hurts us.”
Judge Pascoe was being tended to by one of the ambulance officers. “Do we need to hear the ravings of a vigilante?”
“Wait,” Anya said. “I think we should all hear it.”
The officer continued reading aloud.
“I’ve already been through the trial process. After all the pain the judge decided to call a mistrial because of some stupid petty reason.
Did he care what that did to me or my family? Did he ask how hard it was to stand up and face the men who raped me? Then it felt like their lawyer raped me again, with the things he said about me and how he made out I was nothing but a liar. It was like being humiliated and violated all over again.
I thought I was strong enough to do this a second time, but I’m not. I am so sorry, Mum and Dad, for everything I put you through. I wish I hadn’t walked home that night and could take everything back. But no one can.
I hope you find it in your hearts to forgive me.
Your loving daughter,
Giverny”
The room fell quiet. Bevan Hart was no longer a maniac who broke into a judge’s house with a gun. This was a grieving father with a genuine reason to be distraught. It was never going to end well. His daughter’s final words would haunt them all.
Anya now understood why she hadn’t remembered petechial hemorrhages on Giverny’s face. They weren’t there. Giverny had killed herself, without anyone else present. She flashed back to that morning. Bevan Hart had been to the bedroom before finding his daughter. He could have picked up the note and hidden it from them. From his point of view, the Harbourns had driven her to suicide, helped along by judges, lawyers, and Savannah’s forced silence.
No one involved had won a thing, so far. Except the ones who were responsible for the entire chain of events.
The Harbourn brothers.