by H. P. Bayne
“I wasn’t worried about the gun,” Callum said. “I meant us.”
Sully fielded that one. “We’ll be safe pretty soon too. Come on.”
Using their cellphone flashes to guide them, Dez trailed after Sully and Callum down the tunnel.
11
Dez and Sully held back on their questions until they got safely across the river and into Dez’s vehicle. Only there, the wilds of the Forks safely on the other side of the Kimotan, did Dez turn in the driver’s seat to face Callum in the back.
“What the hell happened back there? Why’d they want to kill you?”
Callum shrugged and dropped his head, eyes falling to the centre console in front of him. “Long story.”
Sully turned in his seat. “We’ve got the time.” As usual, his voice was softer and warmer than Dez’s, and it seemed to do the trick, encouraging Callum to lift his head to meet Sully’s eye.
“It’s going to sound bad.”
“We’ve heard a lot over the years.”
Callum managed a slight smile. Dez found himself struggling to picture this seemingly meek young guy in the role of murderer, but he’d been surprised before.
“How much did they tell you? Dad and Drea?”
Sully answered. “They said you had some problems after your birth mom died and you got mixed up with some things that worried them.”
“I’m not an addict, you know. I’ve used, but I’ve got a handle on it.”
If Dez had a nickel. He harrumphed before he could catch himself.
Callum’s gaze shot toward him. “I’m not lying. It’s true. I can quit anytime I want.”
Dez cast an eye over Callum’s form: lean, closer to skinny, pallid complexion, dark circles around the eyes. The eyes themselves were clear and focused, the pupils sized as they should be, so Callum had that much to back up his position. While his appearance fit with what Dez knew of addicts, if Callum was severely hooked, surely he’d be itching for a fix by now.
As if to attempt to convince them further, Callum went on. “I know Dad and Drea think I’m screwed in the head, but I don’t use like they think I do. I haven’t done meth or anything. I smoke weed mainly, and I use other party drugs when I can get them. But I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole.”
Dez wasn’t convinced. In his experience, people addicted to substances lied out of necessity, so got very good at it. Could be Callum wasn’t feeling the pain yet. Or it could be he’d been a prisoner so long, he’d already gone through the worst of the sickness. In all honesty, his pallor and dark circles could be explained away by captivity. Dez tried to keep an open mind as he continued his questioning.
“How’d you end up with the OC?”
Callum ducked his head again. “Stupidity. I went through a bad period at home when Dad and Drea found out I was partying—or how I was partying—and that I’d stopped going to school. They grounded me and took away my phone and gaming system. I was pissed off, so I ran. I burned through my friends’ places. None of their parents would put up with me on their couches for more than a couple of nights. Know I shoulda just gone home, but …” He trailed off, a yet-unspoken truth on his face, waiting to be told.
“But what?” Sully asked.
Callum sighed. “Okay, I’ve done some drugs besides the ones I told you about.”
Dez offered a knowing smile. “Like the pile of coke and meth you and your buddies were arrested with?”
“I’ve tried it, but that’s it. I don’t use it regular. Just when there’s nothing else around. The people I hang with, it’s not usually a problem. I’ve used coke and heroin and some fentanyl. I know it’s stupid and dangerous and all that, so don’t lecture.”
“You’re an adult, Callum,” Dez said. “We’re not going to lecture you. You’ll do what you want to do. We’re not here to haul you into a treatment program.”
Callum’s head snapped toward Dez, shock written all over his face. “You’re not?”
Dez shook his head. “Nope. It’s something less pleasant. You used to spend some time with your dad’s aunt Mildred, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
“How’d you end up there?”
Callum changed position, slumping down in the seat and crossing his arms. A new position sometimes meant a change inside the person being questioned. Time and answers would tell.
“Like I said, I needed someplace to stay. Things were getting out of control on the street for a while, and I wanted off. You know, take a breather, get myself straightened out a little. I remembered my dad mentioning this aunt of his who kept to herself and lived in a small town. I called Casey and asked about her, and she got me some info. I turned up at Mildred’s house one day and offered to help her around the place. She didn’t let me in the first couple of nights, so I slept on the porch. I guess she finally started feeling sorry for me, so she let me in the house.”
The possibility that someone connected to Callum’s criminal lifestyle had found out about Mildred and where she lived occurred to Dez. “How’d you get out there? You don’t have a car, do you?”
Callum stared at Dez like he was nuts. “Yeah, I have a car. Dad and Drea gave me their old one when I turned sixteen.”
“Where is it?”
“Hopefully still by the the Forks Bridge. I had to leave it when the OC took me across.”
“Which all brings us back to where we started,” Dez said. “How’d you get mixed up with them?”
Callum returned to scanning his knees. “I got bored, all right? And …”
Sully picked up where Callum had trailed off. “You ran out of dope.”
A nod. “I needed to fix, so I came back into the city. Mildred asked me not to, but I couldn’t help it. Not the way I was feeling. Only, I didn’t have money, and she wouldn’t give me any.”
Dez raised a brow at Sully while Callum’s gaze remained fixed downward. If the refusal of money had led to an argument, they might have a motive and an opportunity for murder.
Sully gave a near-imperceptible nod, indicating he’d read Dez’s unspoken thought.
“How was Mildred when you left?” Sully asked.
Callum’s eyes clamped onto Sully. “Why?”
Sully traded a look with Dez before continuing. “Because she’s dead. Didn’t you know?”
The flush creeping over Callum’s face suggested he did know—and perhaps knew more than he’d hoped to let on.
“You think I did something to her, don’t you?”
“We didn’t say that.”
Dez opted for the more direct. “Did you?”
Callum’s glare fired on Dez. “No! Of course not. Jesus!”
“Not like you’d admit it if you did.”
“Well, I didn’t, all right?”
Dez let Callum’s worry fester a little before continuing. “What do you think happened to her?”
“She was old. She probably fell over and couldn’t get up or something, so she drowned.”
The statement revealed something interesting and potentially damning. Callum knew how she died. Knew and hadn’t called for help.
Sully proved he, too, had observed it. “But you didn’t call nine-one-one.”
“Yeah, who says?”
Dez met Callum’s glare with his own. “We know who called, man, and it wasn’t you. Sully talked to him. Guy’s traumatized. So, yeah, we know you didn’t call. Question is why.”
“I know what you’re thinking, and no, it’s not because I killed her or anything.” Callum fixed them each in an imploring stare. “I told you I was using drugs and stuff. I’d come back to her place after spending a week or so partying. It was weird I couldn’t find her in the house, so I checked the yard and then the maze. There she was, dead. First thing I thought was people were going to blame me. Not ’cause I killed her, but because maybe I should have been with her, looking after her or something. She wasn’t my responsibility, but some people would think she was. I didn’t want to answer questions, so I left.
”
“And you left her lying there in the pool?” Sully asked. “You didn’t even pull her out before leaving?” His tone revealed a change, no longer warm and understanding but appalled. It took a lot to get to Sully, but Callum had managed it.
“Thought you weren’t supposed to move dead bodies. And she was obviously dead. I touched her. She was stiff already. I looked it up after. You only go stiff after you’ve been dead for, like, several hours or something.”
Dez shook his head. The care this guy had taken of the aunt who’d put a roof over his head—or rather, the complete lack of care—was horrible. Horrible and all-too common in people who’d fallen headlong into addiction. At some point in the life of many addicts, they tuned out everything but themselves. Themselves and the drugs to which they’d become so desperately connected. Combine that with a kid who’d survived a horrible trauma and refused psychological help, and you ended up with a person who was incapable of seeing beyond himself and his own pain.
Dez knew it. Had his own life turned out just a little different—had Sully not come into his life as a child—he might well have been the mirror image of the young man sitting in his backseat.
“You didn’t really answer our questions about the gang,” Sully said. “Why don’t you tell us about your time with them or why they decided to kill you. What happened?”
“Like I said already, I had nowhere else to go. They gave me a place to crash. I partied with a couple of them from time to time, so I had an in. All I had to do was send a text. I met them at the bridge and they took me over with them.
“It was all right at first. We just partied, basically. Then they started demanding I pay for the coke they’d given me. I told them I didn’t have anything, but they knew about my family. I think they figured they must have money. If they do, no way they were going to give it to me to pay off a drug debt.”
“They basically burned through their savings getting you a lawyer,” Sully said.
Dez hoped the words would sink in, but it was anyone’s guess at this point.
Callum carried on as if Sully hadn’t spoken.
“I offered to do some drug runs for them to work off my debt, but they said they didn’t need another runner. I figured out they were waiting for an excuse to do something to me. One of the guys you knocked out—the one with the gun—they call him Psycho. You can guess why. He gets off on killing, he told me. I’ll bet if you pull those bodies out of there, you’ll find way more than just a head shot. I bet he unloaded a whole clip into them to make it last longer.”
Dez glanced at Sully. The haunted expression on his face suggested whatever he’d seen back in the Forks backed up Callum’s theory.
Callum shifted again, bowed forward now, elbows on knees and head down to hide his face. His shock of dyed black hair flopped forward, providing a solid veil—not unlike his great aunt’s ghost, Dez thought.
He shuddered and tried to put it out of mind as Callum continued.
“I was desperate, thinking they were going to torture and kill me. I told them about my great aunt, said she lived in this big house and probably had money around. I offered to get it for them. They agreed, but a couple of them insisted on coming with me. When we got there, she was already dead.”
“These guys know your family lives there?” Dez said. “That’s great, man.”
The head shot up. “What the hell was I supposed to do, huh?”
Dez didn’t have an answer. Callum had gotten in so far over his head, surfacing again—and staying there—would take a hell of a lot of work.
Dez sighed. “Okay. So they know. And they obviously know about your inheritance. Was that the plan? Kill your family and take what you’ve got coming to you?”
“Not my plan. It was theirs. I said no. Which is how I ended up at the kill pit. I may be a lot of things, but I’m no killer—especially my family.”
His head dropped again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“How much do you owe?” Sully asked.
“Three thousand in coke, but once they found out I’m in line for an inheritance, they started talking about making me pay them back for my stay too. They want an even ten.”
“Ten thousand?” Dez asked, voice turning up at the end to register his shock.
“Yeah. Where the hell am I going to get that kind of cash?”
Dez felt Sully’s eyes on him, and he turned to meet the gaze.
Sully silently mouthed one word: “Paul?”
Paul Dunsmore, the last man standing from the now-defunct Dunsmore Developments. His father had been involved in some highly illegal activity, inadvertently bringing about the demise of the company. Paul had liquidated what assets he had and was sitting pretty on a huge nest-egg as a result.
Paul was one of the good ones. He’d used money over the years to fund badly needed social programs and his hefty donations had made it possible to open various shelters and supports for those in need.
Dez nodded at Sully before returning his attention to Callum. “Let us check into it. Might be we can figure something out.”
Brows raised in an indication of hope. “What, seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. But there will be conditions—primarily that you straighten yourself out. Get yourself some treatment, a job, that sort of thing.”
“Who’s going to give me a job?”
“Hey, lots of people are needing workers right now. Might not be glamorous stuff, but dishing out donuts is better than carrying out wet work for a gang who will kill you otherwise, right?”
“Guess so, yeah.”
Sully pulled out his cellphone. “Give me a minute.”
After Sully had stepped from the car, Dez turned back to Callum. “I know what happened to you when you were a kid, but you’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with it and move on.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Nope. I’ve been there. I was seven when my little brother was drowned behind our house. He was murdered. So was my dad. For a couple of years, I thought I’d lost Sully. I fell apart, started drinking heavy. My wife kicked me out and wouldn’t let me see our daughter—for good reason. To top it all off, I lost a career I loved with the police.
“It took me two long years I’ll never get back, but I figured it out. No one else decides how you play the hand you’ve been dealt. You can fold or you can play it through, do your best with what you’ve got. It’s not easy, and you’ll feel like falling sometimes. But from what I understand, you’ve got a family who loves you. That’s a hell of a lot more than a lot of the people out there on the street. Maybe you’re just going to have to suck it up and apologize. ’Cause you know what? Life dealt you a bad hand, but it doesn’t mean anyone owes you anything. Man up and deal.”
He half-expected Callum to swear at him and bail out of the vehicle, but he stayed. His eyes, which had narrowed into a glare during Dez’s speech, now softened.
“How’d you get through it?”
Dez smiled. “In a word, family. I’ve lost people, but I’ve got all the support I need right here. And one other thing. It’s no secret anymore, so here it is: Sully sees ghosts. For me, it’s been scary as hell, but it’s also a constant reminder there’s more to this world than we can see. The people we love never really leave us, you know. Your birth mom, she’s still around somewhere, watching you. If you can’t fix yourself for you, do it for her. Give her less reason to worry, huh?”
Sully opened the passenger-side door and dropped back in. “We’re on—if Callum will go for it.”
Dez inclined his head toward the back seat. “Tell him. I think he’s ready to listen.”
Sully turned to face Callum. “We’ve got a friend who’s got some money. He’s a great guy, donates to a lot of good causes. He’s willing to donate to yours if you’ll meet with him and go along with the rules he sets.”
Callum sat up a little straighter and his face tightened. Dez smirked. At twenty-one, Callum had already learned the devil w
as in the details. “Such as?”
“First off, a solid, thirty-day treatment program. Paul’s got a friend at Birchwood who can get you in.”
Callum frowned. “I can’t pay for Birchwood. It’s private.”
Sully smiled. “All part of the service. Paul’s donated a lot to Birchwood over the years. You’d be going as his guest, so to speak. And he’ll find you a job. He runs a couple of shelters downtown and he knows other good people working in similar set-ups, helping people who need it. You’d be making a bit of money while helping people who are struggling.”
“Hang on. How’s this going to work? He just gives me the ten thousand and trusts me to follow through?”
Dez raised a brow. “Won’t you?”
“Yeah, but … why?”
“Well, first off, you won’t be touching the money,” Sully said. “Dez and I will deliver it.”
Dez frowned. “We will?”
Sully met his eye. “We will.” He returned his focus to Callum. “The main point here is this really is a trust thing. Once your debt is cleared, I guess you’re good to go and do whatever you want. You’re being given a choice to keep doing what you’re doing or to start doing the right thing. And I’m not just talking legally. I mean, the right thing for you and the people who care about you.”
Callum studied Sully a long moment, unmoving, face still in thought. He had yet to respond when Sully’s phone dinged with an incoming text.
“That’s Paul,” Sully announced upon reading it. “He was going to contact his friend at Birchwood. They’ve got a place for you there now, if you want it. Up to you, man.”
Dez expected some hemming and hawing. But it seemed Callum had already finished his thinking.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
12
Paul was waiting for them at Birchwood when they pulled into the tree-lined parking lot.
Sully grinned as he met Paul’s eye through the windshield, then got out and exchanged a hug with him once Dez had parked.
“Thanks for this, man,” Sully said.