by Lauren Carr
There hadn’t been any sign of the old man since he’d driven off in pursuit of Suellen’s killer—the same man who had killed his wife. It had been more than twenty-four hours. She found it strange that he had not returned home. The sheriff and the State Police were speculating that the old man had caught up with the killer, and it hadn’t ended well.
“Is Josh there with you?” Cameron asked the sheriff.
Seconds later, Joshua was on the phone. “Yes, hon.”
“I have a hunch,” she said.
“Glad you have something.”
“Can you meet me at Brady’s home tonight when I get back?” she asked. “I’ll get the search warrant.”
“What are you searching for?” Joshua asked.
“A picture of our killer.”
Before she could explain further, a beep indicated that she had an incoming call from the Pennsylvania State Police impound lot. After a quick good-bye and a “love you,” she hung up and connected with the clerk on duty.
“Gates here.”
“Are you the detective looking for a 1982 Dodge van with orange stripes?”
“That would be me.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Cameron said. “Do you have one?”
The sound of the door opening alerted her to the arrival of Vinnie Brady.
“Yeah,” the clerk said. “What do you want with it?”
“I want it brought to our state lab for our crime-scene people to go over,” she said while opening up her folder and taking out her list of questions for Vinnie.
“Send me the paper work, and we’ll release it,” the clerk said. “No need to hurry. It’s been here for thirty years. I doubt that it’s going anywhere.”
Two sheriff’s deputies escorted Vinnie Brady, who was clad in an orange jumpsuit and wearing shackles on his wrists and ankles, into the room.
Stunned by the sight, Cameron disconnected the call without a farewell.
According to his bio, Vinnie Brady was approximately Joshua’s age. But he appeared to be old enough to be Joshua Thornton’s father. He was so gaunt that his flesh was practically hanging from his skeleton. His face was drawn. His eyes were yellow from jaundice. His thin, stringy salt-and-pepper hair hung down past his shoulders. Seeing the attractive young woman sitting on the other side of the table, he smiled, revealing a mouthful of gums. The few teeth he had were brown.
Maybe they brought me the wrong prisoner.
“Vinnie?” Cameron held up her police shield. “I’m Detective Gates, with the Pennsylvania state police. Are you Vinnie Brady?”
“Yup.” He dropped his hands, which were heavy because of the shackles, down on top of the table. “Got any cigs? And I’m talking about the real stuff. None of those vapor crap sticks. They taste like shit.”
She slid the new pack of cigarettes that she had purchased on the way to the jail over to him, and he greedily snatched it up. While she lit a cigarette for him, she said, “I’m investigating the murder of your aunt, Monica.”
Vinnie’s mouth dropped in midpuff. When he found his voice, he said, “Aunt—Aunt Monica? She’s dead? Who killed her?”
“That’s what we want to know.”
“It wasn’t me,” Vinnie said. “I never killed nobody, and if I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have been Aunt Monica. I loved Aunt Monica. She was always real good to me. Why, even after Uncle Clyde cut me off and disowned me all those years ago, I could always count on Aunt Monica to sneak money to me when I was in a fix.”
“When was the last time you saw your aunt?”
Unable to recall the last time he’d seen her right away, Vinnie groaned. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke before he finally said, “Around a year ago.” He hung his head. “I was in a bad way with some really bad guys. I’d lost some stuff that they’d told me to deliver for them…We’re talking some big bucks. They were gonna kill me. I tried everything, and—”
“Aunt Monica came through for you?”
“Ten thou. She told me she’d sold some stuff to get it and made me swear not to breathe a word of it to Uncle Clyde.”
Cameron nodded her head. So that was the source of the money problems that Monica was talking about when she sold the livestock to their neighbor.
Vinnie’s yellow eyes misted over. “When was she killed?”
“Eight months ago,” Cameron said.
To her surprise, Vinnie’s eyes grew wide. He was so stunned that he dropped the cigarette down onto the tabletop. “Eight…eight months ago! How was she killed? Why didn’t Uncle Clyde say something?”
“What?” She blinked several times. “You’ve seen your Uncle Clyde? When?”
Chuckling, Vinnie shook his head. “Should’ve known. Everyone in my family is crazier than shit. That’s why I’m the way I am. I told my lawyer that I should plead not guilty by reason of insanity for all of the stuff that they say I’ve done. You know who my pa was, don’t you?”
Before she could respond, Vinnie saw the answer in her eyes.
“Ma tried to tell me that he didn’t do it—kill those two deputies, I mean,” Vinnie said. “I was only a little more than a year old when the sheriff and his men came to get him, and he tried to shoot his way out. Ma and I were there, too. We hid in the closet. She said he was crazier than shit. When he saw those men coming up to the house and saw that they all had guns and rifles, he thought they were the Vietcong.”
“He had a flashback,” Cameron said. “That’s why he shot at them. Even so, they had to shoot him. Otherwise, he would have killed them. It was a tragedy all around.”
Vinnie nodded his head. “Everyone kept telling me that my dad was a cop killer, but Ma kept saying that he didn’t do it. She had all these excuses. Said he’d been with her the night that those two cops had been shot. Yeah, right. She said that he’d lost his gun in a poker game, but she didn’t know who he’d lost it to. Pretty convenient, if you ask me. I mean, if he was really innocent of killing those two cops, why didn’t she clear his name by telling the cops who he’d lost the gun to in that poker game?”
“Maybe to protect the real killer?” Cameron said.
“And how about me, huh? Growing up as the son of a cop killer?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Not that I didn’t want to believe her. One time I got this really good public defender, and I asked him to look into my dad’s case, and he actually did. He learned that during Dad’s autopsy, the medical examiner had found a bullet hole in his back, where the one cop had shot him.” He scoffed. “Proof positive that everyone was right. We Bradys are all crazy.” He grinned. “But I ain’t killed anyone…yet.”
“It’s never too late to turn your life around, Vinnie.”
“You mean like Uncle Clyde did?” Vinnie said. “Uncle Clyde was just as wild as my pa until he met up with nice, sweet Aunt Monica, who wouldn’t have nothing to do with him as long as he was running around smokin’ pot and drinkin’ moonshine and stealing. I guess that after my pa got killed, Uncle Clyde saw the writing on the wall. He got all respectable and got a job and convinced Aunt Monica to marry him, and they started farmin’.”
He broke into a laugh and took a long drag on his cigarette.
“I feel a ‘but’ coming,” Cameron said, trying to urge him on.
“That’s why I was so surprised to see him at Moonshiner up in Salem a few months ago,” Vinnie said. “I hadn’t seen him in so long that I wasn’t sure it was him. There he was, at the bar, drinking whiskey straight up like he always had. He’d given up drinkin’ in order to get Aunt Monica to marry him. They didn’t even have booze at their wedding. When I told him I was Vinnie, his nephew, he came after me and got his hands around my throat. My friends had to break it up. He said I was lying, because his nephew was just a little kid. I decided to back off. The old man was nuts.”<
br />
“Have you seen him since?”
Vinnie nodded his head. “Different places. All old haunts that he and my pa used to hang out in. I’ve talked to him a few times. We talk about the old times, but they aren’t old times to him. To him, they’re the recent past. He talks about Pa like he’s still alive. I don’t correct him, and I don’t try to tell him I’m his nephew. He’s gone nuts.” He looked across the table at Cameron. “Where is he? Is he in jail? Did he kill Aunt Monica?”
“We don’t know where he is,” Cameron said. “He hasn’t been to the farm in at least a couple of days. You said he was frequenting the old haunts. Where did he hang out before he married your aunt?”
“Tracy left her chicken Divan casserole on warm in the oven,” Joshua said to J.J., who was sitting at the kitchen table. Even though J.J. uttered a noise that made it sound like he had heard him, he had his doubts. “Whenever you or Izzy or Donny get hungry, dig in.”
Suellen’s attorney had sent a copy of the farm’s business portfolio for J.J. to go through. In a matter of minutes, he had spread out the paper work across the kitchen table.
“Tad says he may be able to release Suellen’s body in a couple of days,” Joshua said. “He told me that she had already made arrangements for her funeral—”
“All paid for, too,” J.J. said. “I just have to schedule the date and time with the funeral home.” He stopped reading and rubbed his eyes.
“This might not be the best time to bring it up,” Joshua said as he slipped into the chair across the table from him. “But I do have to ask you something.”
J.J. lifted his eyes from the paper work.
As gently as possible, Joshua said, “I told you that I was there when Suellen passed away.”
J.J. looked at him in silence.
“I asked her who—” Joshua stopped. “But she didn’t want to waste time answering me. She wanted me to promise her something before she passed. It was important to her.”
“What?”
“That I would make sure that you kept your promise.”
Taken aback, J.J. sat up straight.
“My problem is that I have no idea what promise you made.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It was something to her,” Joshua said.
“It’s not important.”
“Don’t you lie to me,” Joshua said. “You and this promise were the last things on her mind when she was dying. I promised her that I would make sure that you kept it. For all I know, you promised to throw her ashes off of the top of Mount Everest on New Year’s Eve, and I’ll be damned if I’m going mountain climbing in the middle of winter. So I need to know what I signed up for.”
J.J. stared across the table at him.
As he waited for a response from his son, Joshua stared back at him. When no answer came, he said, “I can see that you know exactly what promise she was talking about. So spill it.”
“It’s—” His voice soft, J.J. started again. “Suellen made me promise to move on. To get married and to have a family…She didn’t want me to be alone. She…wanted me to love again.”
“Oh.” Joshua sighed. “I guess I promised to be your matchmaker or something.”
“Dad?”
“Don’t worry, Son.” Joshua flashed him a weak smile. “I’ve been through this. First, you need time to grieve—to heal. Right now, you can’t imagine ever being able to love someone like you loved Suellen, but eventually, you will.”
“So I need to move on,” J.J. said. “Find another woman to make me forget about Suellen, like how you found Cameron—”
“Is that what you think? That I forgot about your mother? I haven’t forgotten about her. I think about Valerie every single day.”
“Maybe. I guess.” J.J. shrugged his shoulders. “I just don’t see it.”
All compassion for his son’s grief evaporated. “What is your problem with Cameron?”
J.J. pushed away from the table and stood up. “I’m going to take a nap.”
Joshua blocked his escape. “No, we’re going to have this out here and now. I’m not going to let you tear this family apart because of some—” He searched for the right word but was unable to come up with it. “I don’t even know what we’re dealing with! Did she say or do something to offend you?”
“Dad, you know I’m not easily offended,” J.J. said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“At least give me a clue.”
“Nothing.” J.J. brushed past him and trotted up the stairs.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing!” At the top of the stairs, J.J. spun around. “Have you ever seen me be rude to her? So I don’t fawn all over her like the other kids do. Is that really such a big problem?”
“Everyone can see and feel your resentment toward her, J.J.”
Flapping his arms, he said, “Can’t make everyone love ya, I guess.” He whirled around and disappeared down the hall.
“I’m meeting Cameron and Detective Cross at Brady’s farm,” Joshua said. “Anything you want me to tell Detective Cross?”
“Give her my love.”
Chapter Twenty
Cameron arrived at the garage of the Pennsylvania state police forensics lab in time to see the old, rusted 1982 Dodge van being towed inside. There was no mistaking it—it was the van she’d been looking for. The thick bright-orange stripes along its sides were still visible.
“You’re kidding me, right?” the supervisor of the forensics team said after reading the paper work that Cameron had sent over before leaving Youngstown. “From a 1988 cold case?”
“I suspect that this was the murder victim’s van.” Cameron tugged on a pair of evidence gloves. “The van disappeared around the same time as the victim. Everyone assumed that he’d gone on a cross-country road trip to California. Now, if his van had been found in a ditch or something, they would’ve known that something had happened to him. So I thought, where would a killer abandon a van if he wanted people to think that the victim had taken off? The answer is the airport.” She grinned when the tow truck detached from the van and drove away. “The airport reported this van in 1990, and it was towed to the police impound yard, where it’s been since then.”
“Are you sure it was the victim’s van?” the supervisor asked.
“The year and description match,” Cameron said. “The DMV said it will be a couple of weeks before they can dig through their files to confirm it. They haven’t scanned in the records from that far back yet. But I know of one way to find out if my suspicions are right.” She grasped the handle of one of the van’s rear doors and, with effort, yanked it open. The rusty hinges creaked.
“But the murder victim was found elsewhere, and his van was stolen,” the supervisor said. “After all of these years—after all of these decades—what viable evidence do you expect to find in his van?”
When she’d opened the rear door, she’d created a cloud of dust. She and the supervisor coughed and waved their hands as they looked over the van.
The back of the van was filled with four suitcases, along with a guitar case and boxed amplifiers. the rear compartment was also littered music books and magazines as well as a few yellowed bags from fast-food restaurants.
Over the decades, the latches on the guitar case had rusted shut. Cameron forced them loose with a screw driver and opened the case to reveal a red electric guitar—the same one Dylan Matthews held in his publicity photograph.
“Yep, this is the right van all right.” A grin crossed her lips.
Cameron spotted an old tire and a jack near the door. Even through the dust, she recognized the brown stains on the tire iron resting on top of a used tire. Lying next to the tire was a plastic bag from a dry cleaner. Upon examination, she found the same brown substance coating the inside of the bag. She held up the tire iron and the plastic bag and held them u
p.
“You asked what I expected to find. For one thing, the murder weapons.”
During the drive to Brady’s farm, where he was going to meet Cameron, Joshua told himself that if J.J. hadn’t been in mourning, he would have shaken him.
J.J. had been right. He was never rude to Cameron, but everyone could taste the resentment, which hadn’t developed until after Joshua and Cameron had eloped and gotten married in a private ceremony at the local church with only Tad, his wife, and Donny present. All of Joshua’s other children had been away at school. While Murphy and Sarah hadn’t seemed to mind, J.J. and Tracy had been angry about being left out of the launching of a new chapter in their father’s life.
After moving back to Chester and getting married, Tracy had gotten to know Cameron better and had eventually forgiven them.
With a sigh, Joshua prayed that the same thing would happen with J.J.
Turning off of the main road and into the gravel driveway of Brady’s farm, Joshua was surprised to see Tad MacMillan’s red SUV. He had expected to see Detective Cross’ unmarked police cruiser, which was parked behind it. But what assistance could Hancock County’s medical examiner offer in the investigation of a homicide that had taken place in Pennsylvania?
“We’re in the dining room,” Cameron called out to Joshua when he stepped through the front door.
From the front door, Joshua saw that Cameron, Tad, and Detective Cross were standing in a circle around the dining room table, which was littered with crime-scene pictures of both Monica Brady’s and Suellen Russell’s murders.
Joshua stepped up to the table to give Cameron a quick kiss before taking a spot between her and Tad.
On the other side of the table, Lillian looked him up and down. “Glad you could make it, Prosecutor. Your lovely and capable wife seems to think that she has worked out a theory.”
“And she needs my expertise to confirm her hypothesis,” Tad said.
Joshua turned to Cameron. “Let’s hear it.”
“First,” Cameron said, “Vinnie, Clyde’s nephew, solved the mystery of the Bradys’ money problems that caused Monica to sell their livestock to the neighbor.”