All Her Little Secrets

Ellice wakes up early the next morning and turns on the television. She hears the news reporter discussing the discovery of two bodies on Anders Creek Road near a stolen car. One of the bodies was identified as Geoffrey Gallagher and the other is an unidentified male. Ellice calls Sam, but he does not answer. A few minutes later, the doorbell rings. Two uniformed cops stand at the door and ask if she is the sister of Samuel Littlejohn. She lets the cops in as she remembers that there was an unidentified body found with Gallagher’s body.

Ellice identifies Sam’s body in the coroner’s office. Detective Bradford tells Ellice that they found Sam near Gallagher’s body. Ellice tells Detective Bradford about how Jonathan hired Sam to trail Gallagher. Ellice insists that Sam did not kill Gallagher or Michael and tells Detective Bradford that she needs to go home and grieve.

Ellice goes to see Vera and notices flowers by her bedside. Ellice picks up the envelope next to the flowers, which reads “some secrets are worth keeping” (235). Terrified, Ellice opens the envelope to see a mugshot of Vera from 1967. Ellice has never seen the picture before but knows that Jonathan is coming after Vera now. She wakes Vera up and asks her who gave her the flowers, but Vera does not remember.

Sheriff Coogler tells Ellice and Sam that he is going to search their house because Willie Jay is missing. Sam runs to find Vera. Ellice waits as Coogler goes through the house, then outside to the shed. When Sam comes back, Coogler throws Sam on the ground and grabs his billy club to beat Sam, but Ellice fights him off. Vera pulls up in her car and yells at Coogler to leave the children alone. Coogler says that he knows the children know something about Willie Jay’s disappearance and he is going to bring them in for questioning. Vera threatens to tell Coogler’s wife about the girl he got pregnant if he tries to hurt the children again.

At work the next day, Jonathan comes into Ellice’s office. She tells him to get out before she calls the police. He says that the police have been questioning him about hiring Sam and he threatens Ellice, telling her that if she continues talking to the police, he will tell them about Chillicothe. Jonathan tells Ellice that he knows she has secrets in her past and they will all come to light unless she backs him on the Libertad deal.

Ellice resolves to make Jonathan pay for killing her brother. Detective Bradford calls and says that she would like to speak with Ellice in person at the station.

At the police station, Detective Bradford and her partner usher Ellice into an interview room. Through the line of questioning, Ellice realizes that she is a suspect in Michael and Sam’s murder. She confesses that she discovered Michael’s body the morning of his murder and did not call for help. Ellice asks them why they are not talking with Jonathan, but they say that Jonathan claims that Ellice is trying to implicate him in the murders because of their difficulty together in the workplace.

The detectives show Ellice a copy of an email between Gallagher and Michael where Gallagher cautions Houghton about getting involved with Libertad because they are under investigation for distributing drugs, human trafficking, and gun trafficking. The detectives think that Ellice enlisted her brother to help her kill Gallagher and Michael so that Nate would promote her to Michael’s job, then killed Sam when he did not follow her orders. Ellice denies these claims and the detectives let her go, instructing her to bring them the documents from Michael’s safe deposit box.

At Houghton, Ellice asks Willow why Nate promoted her so quickly. Willow does not know, but tells Ellice that Jonathan recommended Ellice for a promotion because he said that she had a good background for it. Ellice realizes that Jonathan meant her Chillicothe background, which he could use to extort her to do whatever he wanted.

Ellice sneaks into Max’s office at night after everyone leaves. She finds a strange email that Max sent to Michael where he tells him that he is sad about Michael’s refusal, because he would have made a “very useful general” (269). She goes through his drawers and finds a thumb drive with her name on it that she takes with her.

Ellice goes through the thumb drive when she gets home. She sees that there are two files on it, one titled “The Brethren” and the other titled “Ellice Littlejohn.” Under her file, she finds information about the investigation of Willie Jay’s disappearance with her as the lead suspect. She also finds an arrest record for Vera where she discovers that police arrested Vera for killing her rapist, but she fled to Chillicothe.

Under “The Brethren” file, Ellice finds a white supremacist manifesto with the lapel pin image on the front of the document. Ellice realizes that Michael was killed because he found out about Jonathan’s money laundering and because he refused to join Max’s hate group. Ellice decides to turn the thumb drive over to the police in the morning, even with the incriminating information about her past on it, so that she can be free of her secrets.

The next day, Rudy tells her that he discovered that there were discrepancies with the shipping orders that he investigated. Rudy says that they are receiving shipments from an account called Cavanaugh Industries, but they cannot trace the source of the account. A few weeks ago, San Diego received 10 boxes from Houghton addressed to Libertad. On the television, a news story reports that the police are investigating several executives, including Ellice, in Michael’s murder.

Ellice sits at home and wishes Michael told her about the pressure he was under from Jonathan and Max. Grace comes over and Ellice tells her everything she has found out. Grace assures Ellice that they will find a way out of this because she did not kill Michael, but that she must resign from Houghton so that she can distance herself from the people she works with.

The next morning, Ellice goes to Nate’s office with her resignation letter and finds Jonathan in the room with Nate. She tells Nate that she believes that Libertad is laundering money and that she does not feel that she can work at Houghton anymore because of her ethics. Jonathan, who is wearing The Brethren’s lapel pin, tells her that her resignation is not an option. He tells Ellice that if she resigns, he will tell the police everything he knows about Chillicothe. He says that if everything about her past comes out, she would never practice law again. Ellice takes her resignation letter and returns to her office.

Rudy calls Ellice on her way to the police station and says he needs to meet with her before she talks to them. She meets Rudy in the park, and he tells her that his brother-in-law is a police officer and he told Rudy that they were issuing a warrant for Ellice’s arrest for the murder of her brother. He advises Ellice to take an attorney with her before she goes to the station. Ellice leaves Rudy in the park, determined to prove her innocence.

Ellice drives to a funeral home in Chillicothe where she arranges a simple ceremony for Sam. Afterward, Ellice drives to Vera’s farmhouse, thinking about the past and how Vera took care of her, even when Martha could not.

Martha takes a pregnant Ellice to Vera’s house. Vera reprimands Martha for letting something like this happen to her daughter. She gives Ellice tea mixed with alcohol for the pain and takes Ellice into the bedroom. She instructs Ellice to remove her underwear and she performs an abortion with a knitting needle. Afterward, Ellice tells Vera that Willie Jay did this to her. Ellice is so weak that Vera drives her home and Ellice does not speak for an entire week.