Sinnerman

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  On top of the dresser there were several framed photos of a child at various stages of life. In one, he looked to be about four. He held up a giant fish attached to a long rod. A much younger Decklan stood next to him with the proud parent smile plastered across his face. And there had been a third person in the photo, but it had been ripped, and all that remained was a hand from the person on the boy’s arm. His eyes were darted downward and fixed on the fish with an innate fascination, but he didn’t express a smile like his father. His face was stolid and emotionless.

  In another photo the boy was older. He posed with a deer of some kind, or maybe it was an elk. I’d never been around anyone that hunted before, and I couldn’t tell the difference. From the look of it, the animal was dead and the boy was covered in blood. But that wasn’t what stood out to me the most. My eyes were drawn to the boy’s hands, his left one in particular. In the photo at four years of age, his hands were perfect. But something happened between the first photo and the second. A few of his fingers were bent over in such a way they appeared to have been mangled, almost like he’d contracted some sort of disease that caused them to degenerate. The only problem with that theory was, his other hand looked just fine.

  Behind the photo of the boy and the animal was an album. I grabbed it and flipped through its pages. It was a timeline of photos at every age in school that started with Kindergarten. In the first three his hand was visible and looked fine, but once I got to his second grade picture it was obvious that great effort had been made to conceal it. And there was something else. The boy no longer smiled as he had in the first couple of pictures. He looked solemn and detached. I turned a few more pages and immediately recognized the photo before me. I’d seen it at the art institute earlier that day. Thoughts flooded my mind, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. The girl in the painting hadn’t been a girl at all, it was a boy.

  “What are you really doing here?” a voice said from behind me.

  The woman who first greeted me at the front door stood in the doorway. She’d been so quiet, I hadn’t heard her approach.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just—”

  She shook her head at me and entered the room.

  “There’s no need for excuses, dear. But I would like to know the real reason you’re here.”

  “What’s your relationship to Decklan?” I said. “I can tell you’re related in some way.”

  “I’m his mother. And,” she said and pointed to the album I still clutched in my hand, “I’m that boy’s grandmother.”

  CHAPTER 43

  “He always could hit every target he aimed at,” the old woman said about the photo of the boy with the dead animal. “Won his first award when he was ten. I’ve never seen anyone who could hit a bull’s eye the way he could.”

  “What’s his name?” I said.

  “What’s yours?”

  “Sloane.”

  “And you’re a PI?”

  I nodded.

  She sat down on the bed and placed one hand behind her to brace herself.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t stand for long periods of time anymore. My back isn’t what it used to be. Let’s sit a minute and have a little chat woman to woman while the boys run around being boys.”

  I sat a couple feet away from her on the bed.

  “Do you know why I question the real reason you’re here?” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “No one has ever come looking for Laurel. Not a single person. Since the day she walked out the door, she hasn’t been missed by anyone in this town.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “She up and left with another man when the boy was only seven. Now you tell me, what kind of mother does that to her child? Leaves him without so much as a note, a phone call, a visit? I’ll tell you—the trampy kind. That woman was only interested in one thing since the day she set eyes on my son—herself. And she only cared about one thing—money.”

  “If that’s true, why’d she leave all this?” I said.

  “She found money somewhere else.”

  “What about her son?”

  “She never wanted that boy from the moment she found out she was pregnant with him. She told Decklan kids weren’t part of their deal, like a child was some sort of business transaction two people make with each other. It sickens me to think about it, even now. I was surprised she lasted seven years.”

  I’d never had children, but the notion that a mother could abandon her child seemed callous. I wondered what kind of world we lived in where so many women who were desperate to have babies were denied that right while others who were undeserving pumped them out like balls in a paintball gun, one right after the other. It didn’t seem fair.

  “That must have been a difficult time for your grandson,” I said.

  “It was hard on them both. My son gave that woman everything her heart desired. He built her that art studio downtown and gave her whatever she asked for. But, it’s like I told him. Women like that are never happy. They wrestle with themselves their whole life, and in the end after all he’d done, I was right, and she still walked out.”

  “How did he take it when she left?”

  “He didn’t want to talk about it. He just focused on his work.”

  “And your grandson?” I said.

  “He was never the same after she left. Poor boy.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You need to understand, my grandson was a quiet boy to begin with. And when that poor example of a woman up and left, it got worse. He’d lock himself in his room for hours. Turned out he was writing her letters. He’d write her every day and beg her to come back. Decklan told him we had no place to send them, but he wrote the letters anyway. He’d created this fantasy, maybe it was his way to cope so he didn’t have to face reality. When I could get him out of his room, he planted himself on the front porch and waited for her to drive up. He’d convinced himself she would come back, and no one could make him believe any different. It amazed me how much he loved that loony woman. He didn’t seem to notice that she didn’t give a damn about him.”

  I took out the note Sinnerman left for me in the park and folded it so she couldn’t see the words.

  “By any chance did the paper he wrote on look like this?”

  Her eyes scanned it and then expanded to the point that I no longer needed a verbal answer.

  “Where did you get that? Do you know my grandson—do you know where he is?”

  I pressed harder.

  “Is this the paper?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen your grandson?”

  She tapped one of her fingers over her lips and then said, “I don’t know. He left.”

  “How long ago?” I said.

  “It’s been years now, about two decades.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went?”

  A tear oozed from her eye and splashed down on her wrist. She took her index finger and cocked her head to the side and dabbed the wet spot with it.

  “Decklan set aside a big chunk of money for my grandson that he was entitled to when he turned eighteen. The day after he took out his inheritance, he left town, and I’ve never seen him since.”

  “Have you tried to get in touch with him—to find him?”

  She nodded.

  “And?” I said.

  “I have no idea where he is. Have you ever tried to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”

  I had and what I’d learned was that no matter how hard someone tried to hide, there was always a trail.

  “Couldn’t you track him through his bank account, credit cards, that type of thing?” I said.

  “He cashed it out.”

  “All of it?” I said.

  “Every penny.”

  I had the feeling there was a lot more to the story, and I wasn’t about to leave before I found out what it was.

  “Why did your grandson w
ant to leave so bad?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. Even after all this time…it’s just too hard.”

  It was time for the sympathy vote, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my suspicions.

  “You asked me before why I was here,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “I’m looking for your grandson.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he knew my sister,” I said. “In fact, I believe he might have been the last one to see her alive.”

  Giovanni and Decklan appeared at the door.

  “What are you two talking about?” Decklan said.

  I gave Giovanni the I-need-more-time look and hoped he grasped my meaning. He did.

  “I’d love to see the rest of this magnificent house,” he said to Decklan.

  Decklan’s house paled in comparison to Giovanni’s, but Decklan took the bait, which was all that mattered. When they were safely out of sight, Decklan’s mother grabbed my arm.

  “Is your sister—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How long ago did she pass away?”

  “A few years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” I said. “I hope you can see now why I need to find him.”

  “How are you so sure the man you’re looking for is my grandson?”

  “Because he wrote me a note on that piece of paper I showed you, and I believe his mother’s art studio was the only place around that used it.”

  “I see.”

  “What made him leave?” I said.

  She sighed and then breathed in and exhaled with force, like she was prepared to give a long speech.

  “Decklan had a hard time after Laurel left. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat. All he thought about was her. And you need to understand that every time he looked at my grandson, he saw Laurel staring back at him. It pained him to even talk to the child. At first, he just distanced himself from him, but after a while, just to have him around was more than he could bear.”

  “So he ignored him—his own son?”

  She hung her head like she’d just been disgraced in public.

  “He sent him away.”

  “Where, at what age?”

  “To an all-boy school about three months after his mother left, and when he came back, he was like a different person.”

  “In what way?” I said.

  “He had fits of rage and night terrors. He’d wake up at all hours and scream for his mother. This went on for years. He was so angry.”

  “How did Decklan react?”

  “He didn’t know what to do. I’m sure he loved the boy, but you have to understand, he’s never had a high tolerance for that type of behavior.”

  That type of behavior? I couldn’t believe she’d uttered those words. The child lost his mother. How could his father expect anything less?

  “And he was violent,” she said. “The older he got, the worse it was, and it escalated to the point that he went after Decklan one night with a knife.”

  “Was he hurt?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “It was more rage than anything. He thought his father hated him, and by then—well, he pretty much assumed his mother felt the same way too. All those years and he never heard a word from her. But the night he got physical with the knife—well, that was the last straw for Decklan.”

  “How old was your grandson when this all happened?” I said.

  “Sixteen. Decklan gave him some money and said he’d pay for him to have a place of his own and all of his expenses, on one condition.”

  “Which was?”

  “He left and never came back.”

  The entire story was unreal, and I felt like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. I couldn’t believe a father could do that to his own son.

  “And did he—leave I mean?”

  She nodded.

  “I kept in touch with him and visited him at the place his father set up for him, and I begged Decklan to take him back. He needed his father. But both of them were too proud to even speak to the other. And that’s how I lost him.”

  “What happened to his hand?” I said.

  “Burned himself on the stove when he was a little boy. He used to light things on fire over the burner. When I asked him about it he said he liked to watch things melt down into ash. It drove his father crazy, but he still did it whenever he wasn’t around. And then one day it got out of control, and when he tried to put it out, he lit his own hand on fire.”

  “Where was Decklan during all this?”

  “I’m embarrassed to say the boy was home alone, but I didn’t live here then. He called 9-1-1 himself and was taken to the hospital. By the time Decklan arrived, child services had arrived. I thought they would take him, and I was relieved when they didn’t. Sometimes I wonder if he might have been better off if they did.”

  I went to close the photo album and return it to its rightful place when I noticed a pocket attached to the back cover. A picture protruded from it. I pulled it out and stared into the face of a young, brunette woman.

  “That’s her,” the woman said.

  “Laurel?” I said.

  She nodded.

  Laurel looked a lot like Sinnerman’s victims. Dark hair, dark eyes, slender, same age group—I was astonished.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me,” I said.

  “I don’t know how any of this helps you, but if you do find my Samuel, will you tell him how much I’ve missed him all these years? It would mean everything to me if I could see him again.”

  There were a couple of things that stood out most in our conversation. Sinnerman strangled his victims with most of his force applied with his right hand. The left was weak and made strange looking imprints on the bodies. The burns from the stove made sense. And then there was the comment about him being able to shoot at a target with impeccable accuracy.

  I thanked her again and then asked if I could use the restroom before I left. I’d seen what appeared to be the corner of a notebook stowed away under the dust ruffle of the bed. Once she exited the bedroom I went back in, snatched it and plunged it into my bag. As I left the room, I looked back at the picture of the child with the fish on the dresser, but I no longer saw an innocent little boy—I saw the face of a killer.

  CHAPTER 44

  We reached the car and Decklan waved farewell to Giovanni, his newfound friend, and then went around to the side of the house and gazed at the monstrosity of daisies in his flower bed.

  I turned to Giovanni and said, “I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Do you want me to accompany you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I need a moment alone with Decklan.”

  I tossed my handbag in the car and shut the door and made my way over to him.

  “I just want you to know that you disgust me,” I said.

  Decklan turned around with a dumfounded look on his face and then turned to the left and then the right like he thought my words were meant for someone else.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you turn your back on your son?” I said. “After all he’d been through with the loss of his mother, I’d love for you to explain to me how a person justifies doing that.”

  “You’re out of line.”

  “Of the two of us, Mr. Reids, I assure you the only person out of line here is you—the out-of-the-ballpark-and-never-going-to-return kind of out.”

  “You don’t understand, my son was—”

  “Torn up when his mother left, I know,” I said. “So were you. That doesn’t give you the right to shun him.”

  “It was so much more than that. You could never understand.”

  “He was angry, hurt, frustrated, and he needed help. What’s not to get? And you could have got him the help he needed, but instead you chose to abandon him, and for that I hold you responsible.”

  “For what? I don’t know wh
at kind of stories my mother has filled your head with, but Samuel made his own choice to disassociate from this family. He was more than happy to do so. It was what he wanted.”

  “And what about you?” I said. “It’s easy to shift the blame to your son, but you’re the one who asked him to leave and never to come back.”

  “It was his decision, and he made it.”

  “You talk about it like you gave him a choice. Cut the crap Mr. Reids. We both know you didn’t.”

  Decklan plunged the hoe he held in his hand deep into the terra firma with great force and then said, “Enough! How dare you come to my home and assume to know anything.”

  “You have no idea,” I said. “Not the first clue about the man your son is today.”

  Decklan took three steps toward me and in doing so violated my inner circle of trust. A circle he wasn’t in, not by a long shot, and before I knew it he’d lifted his hand in the air and that’s all it took for Giovanni. He was out of the car and by my side in a flash.

  “Back up out of my face,” I said.

  “Or what?”

  Decklan turned to Giovanni. “You need to get a handle on your woman.”

  I still had a lot to learn about Giovanni, but one thing I knew without a doubt was that no one spoke to him that way and got away with it. I held my hand out to Giovanni to indicate I still had more welled up inside me that needed to come out. He grimaced but remained by my side in silence.

  I turned to Decklan. “You won’t understand this right now, but one day you will—I blame your son for his actions—there’s no excuse for the person he’s allowed himself to become. But you, Mr. Reids, will someday have to own your part in all of it. You weren’t there when he needed you most, and whether you realize that now or later, at some point you’ll never be able to forgive yourself.”