by Alex Kava
“I know some detectives with the Omaha Police Department,” Andrew continued.
Melanie heard only bits and pieces of what Andrew Kane was saying. Something about Charlie being a minor, about Jared having killed before and about her not even being in the bank. She wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was back at that nightmarish scene, and only now did she realize Jared had never told her where he’d buried him. And she had never asked. She remembered seeing her brother hosing down his tennis shoes and the muddy shovel, scrubbing down the floor and the wall while she just watched, unable to move, unable to help. She wasn’t even sure if Jared had told their mother when she got home later that night. And yet, he must have. Why else would she have told everyone that her husband “just up and left”? Why else would she be so absolutely certain that Jared couldn’t have killed Rebecca Moore? Because that was exactly what Corrine Starks told the police, that her son couldn’t possibly kill anyone. She had to have known.
The bathroom door opened, startling her back. Jared looked awful. He hadn’t showered. His short hair stood up in places like Charlie’s, but the difference was Charlie wanted his that way. She was certain Jared did not. His face was unshaven even though Melanie knew he had bought disposable razors at the gas station. And his eyes were red and swollen. He scraped his hand over his face when he noticed her staring at him.
“What’s your problem?”
“Where’s Charlie?”
“Don’t worry about your precious little boy,” he said in that tone meant to sting her. “He’s getting us some new wheels. He should’ve been back by now.” He checked his wristwatch and headed for the door, stopping at the window first to peek out. “Here he comes.”
Melanie found her shoes and followed Jared out, leaving Andrew Kane on the bed and closing the door just enough that no one could see inside the room. Charlie pulled up to the door in a white Ford Explorer, looking out at them with a wide grin. He rolled down the window and said, “I stopped at a gas station up the street and just traded vehicles. It was so easy. The lady left this one running with the keys in the ignition while she went inside to pay. We still need to change license plates, but can you believe how easy it was? I wish I’d thought of this a long time ago.”
Melanie smiled at Charlie’s enthusiasm even while Jared was holding up his hands to get him to quiet down. Then suddenly, Jared seemed to do a double take, looking into the back seat with his cupped hand and face against the window.
“What the fuck did you do?” Jared said as he reached for the back door handle. It was locked. “Open the fucking door.”
Charlie punched at the buttons until he found the right one and heard the click.
“Did it ever occur to you there might be a reason she left the engine running on a warm, humid morning?” Jared asked as he yanked the door open.
Melanie’s heart sank to her stomach. There, in the back seat in a child’s car seat, was a baby, its sleepy eyes only now starting to open.
“Oh my God!” Melanie’s hands flew to cover her mouth.
Jared slammed the back door and pulled open the driver’s door, standing aside while he told Charlie to “get the fuck out.”
“Wait a minute,” Melanie said. “What are you gonna do?”
“Get out of the fucking car, Charlie.” Jared had to tell him again because Charlie was in such a frenzy he couldn’t seem to undo the seat belt. “I can’t believe you fucking screwed up again. Have you ever heard of the fucking Amber Alert? Jesus, Charlie! I’m tired of cleaning up your fucking messes.”
Finally, Charlie half slid, half jumped out, and Jared got in.
Before he could close the door, Melanie grabbed at his arm. “What are you gonna do, Jared?”
He wrenched his arm away, giving her a shove back so he could slam the car door. All he said before he tore away was, “I’ll take care of things.”
CHAPTER 60
8:20 a.m.
Omaha Police Department
Grace raced into the conference room only to find them all waiting.
“Sorry,” she said, taking the chair at the end of the table next to Special Agent Sanchez.
“We’re still waiting for Rob Thieson with the State Patrol,” Pakula said, “but he sounded like he might be really late. Why don’t we get started. I think I know most of what he’s going to report, anyway.”
“That they haven’t found the fucking Chevy with any of their roadblocks?” Detective Ben Hertz complained.
“Actually,” Pakula said, pushing aside the file folders in front of him, “it’s not a Chevy anymore. The Chevy was found in the parking lot of a manufacturing plant just north of Auburn.”
“Wait a minute,” Grace said. “I thought you told me the gas station clerk was in Auburn and they were headed south?”
“That’s what I thought when I talked to you last night. One of the workers reported her car stolen after she got off work late last night. The Chevy was parked two slots away.”
“So what are they in now?” Sanchez wanted to know.
“A cream-colored Taurus. But it could already be something else.”
“This is ridiculous,” Hertz said. “They’re starting to make us look like a bunch of fucking fools.”
“Do we even know what direction they’re headed?” Grace asked, but before any of them could answer, she added, “Is it possible they’ve backtracked?”
“I’m thinking it might be easier to find them if we know who the fuck they are.” Pakula looked to Darcy Kennedy. “Please tell us you have something.”
Grace could see that Pakula hadn’t gotten much sleep. He was guzzling coffee and she knew the OPD’s coffee was even worse than over at the Hall of Justice.
“Well, I know you’re all waiting for me to say it’s Jared Barnett,” Darcy said, ignoring her own reports piled in front of her. “The thing is, I can’t get a definitive print. Even the ones on the butcher knife were so smudged, I swear it’s like he did it intentionally.”
“Are you saying we’ve got nothing?” Sanchez almost came out of his chair.
“I do have a perfect print on the inside of the Saturn, on one of the back windows. There was a smudge of vomit next to it, so there’s a very good chance it belongs to the one who threw up.”
“Excellent,” Sanchez said. “So who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the fuck?”
“Calm it down,” Pakula told Sanchez, and Grace realized they were all running on little sleep. She was probably the most rested one of the bunch.
“He’s nobody in the system,” Darcy explained. “Chances are he’s never been fingerprinted before. I did find a match, though.”
“Wait a minute,” Pakula said. “I thought you said the print didn’t match anyone in the system.”
“I said it’s not anybody in the system but I do have a match on file. Grace had me go back to one of the convenience stores that was robbed last week.”
They were all staring at Grace now. She knew what they were thinking: was she nuts for interrupting the tech’s time with a string of piddly robberies when there was a manhunt for killers going on?
“She discovered the same person was in each of the stores right before the robberies took place.” Darcy pulled out black-and-white photos, and Grace recognized them as stills from the surveillance cameras, the date and time stamped in the corners. And in each photo there was the same young man.
“Look, I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous,” Sanchez was at it again. “What the hell does this have to do with anything?”
“One of the videos shows him opening a door to one of the refrigerated cases,” Darcy said, ignoring Sanchez. “He left his fingerprints up high and inside. I went back yesterday and after a week it was still there—no others, not that high.”
“I hope you’re getting to some point soon.”
“He’s one of our bank robbers,” she said, pointing to the young man in the grainy photo. “The prints inside the refrigerat
ed case’s door match the ones on the inside window of the Saturn.”
This time even Sanchez was quiet.
“But I can’t give you a name because he’s not in the system.”
“Holy crap!” Pakula said, rubbing a hand over his face then up over his head. “You were right, Grace. It’s the convenience-store robbers escalating.”
“Or practicing.” Grace waited for the idea to sink in. “I still think it’s Barnett. You said the gas station clerk was shot. Where?”
Pakula wouldn’t meet her eyes and she knew even before he said, “In her face. Her jaw was ripped open.”
“Any connection to Jared and the bank teller?” Grace asked.
“None that I can find.” Pakula pulled out a file and flipped it open. “She went for much older men than Barnett. The only connection I could make was that she used Max Kramer last spring to get her out of a DUI conviction, which he’s still calling her about. She probably stiffed him for the bill. One of her roommates thinks she had a rich married guy wound around her little finger, but I have her phone records for the last several months right here and I haven’t found the mysterious guy named Jay. Oh, and we have this,” Pakula said, tossing a plastic bag containing a piece of jewelry onto the table. “Wes Howard found this in the mud next to the Saturn. It was Tina Cervante’s. Given to her by JMK, her supposed mystery man.”
“Wait a minute,” Grace said. “I’ve just seen those initials somewhere.” And she started riffling through the papers she had received yesterday for Carrie Ann Comstock’s drug case. “Here it is.” She pulled out a document and threw it down on the table next to the locket with the initials JMK. At the bottom of the document was the stamped initials JMK next to the signature—J. Maxwell Kramer. “Is it possible Tina Cervante was having an affair with her attorney?” she asked.
CHAPTER 61
8:53 a.m.
Andrew didn’t know what was going on. He had heard Jared yelling, car doors slamming and then a car screeching away. Now Charlie sat on the end of the bed, staring at the TV and flipping the channels, though he didn’t appear to be watching or looking for anything in particular. Melanie paced the length of the room, taking quick glances when she passed the window. Neither one of them seemed to be aware that he was even in the room.
He had asked Jared earlier to untie him and had gotten, instead, a look of contempt, hollow-eyed with just enough of a smirk to know he was no longer a novelty to the madman. He was no longer the fascinating author who had captured his interest. Not only had he betrayed the psychopath’s trust but now he was excess baggage. Andrew didn’t need to rely on research to guess—to know—his time was limited. He also knew his chances with these two would be better than with Jared.
“What happened?” he tried again. Before when he asked he caught a glimpse of Melanie’s eyes, enough to realize it was something bad. There was panic there. And there was panic in her short explosive steps. Her entire body seemed to move with a nervous energy that she didn’t quite have complete control over. “Did Jared do something?”
“No, I did,” Charlie said without blinking, finally settling on the Cartoon Network and a Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote episode.
“What did you do, Charlie?” He asked it as softly as he could, keeping his own panic from his voice. He tried to ignore the phone cord digging into his wrists. He tried to avoid shifting to a more comfortable position, though he hadn’t found one yet. “Charlie, what is it you think you did?” he asked again, trying to duplicate the tone he imagined his friend Tommy Pakula would use, the one that got drug dealers and wife beaters to confess to him. “I’m sure it couldn’t have been anything to deserve the way Jared yelled at you.”
“No, I screwed up really, really bad.” He sounded like a little boy, more like a seven-year-old than a seventeen-year-old. His eyes never left Wyle E. Coyote who’d just blown himself up with a stack of dynamite. “I screwed up again. It’s all my fault.”
“Stop it!” Melanie’s voice made both Andrew and Charlie jump, though Charlie’s eyes still didn’t leave the TV screen. “I don’t want to hear it.” She didn’t miss a stride of her pacing.
“It’s not your fault, Charlie.” Andrew had nothing to lose. “All along you’ve only done what Jared told you to do. You did what Jared wanted you to. But you don’t have to do everything he says. You’re a good kid. I can tell. You want to do the right thing.” He noticed that Melanie had stopped and was now watching him. When she didn’t try to stop him, he continued, “You don’t have it in you to do the kind of stuff Jared does. You’re not like him, Charlie.” No response. Charlie didn’t even flinch. The Road Runner had just whizzed through one of Coyote’s barricades without a scratch and Charlie didn’t even blink.
Andrew looked up at Melanie, waiting until she met his eyes. He had her attention now. But did he have her anywhere close to being on his side? Was she strong enough to go against her brother? Would she see that she needed to choose between her brother and her son in order to save her son, if not herself? Andrew knew there was a bond between her and Charlie. He had witnessed the panic in her eyes earlier when she realized Charlie was gone, and seemed to be comforted only when she noticed his beat-up backpack hadn’t left with him. But was the bond between mother and son stronger than the bond between sister and brother?
“You know he’s going to kill me,” Andrew told her in that same soft voice, keeping out the emotion despite the lump that threatened to bring it on without warning. She didn’t look away and his eyes held hers. “Hasn’t there been enough killing already?” He couldn’t read her eyes. Couldn’t tell whether or not he was getting to her. “I can help you. Both you and Charlie. But it has to stop, Melanie. It has to stop now. Can you make it stop?”
It wasn’t Melanie who answered. It was Charlie with his knees up against his chest again, hugging them and rocking back and forth. “I couldn’t stop,” he said. “I screwed up bad, really bad. Jared said nobody can help me. I did it. I screwed up. I wasn’t supposed to do anything. I was supposed to wait. Just scare everybody and hold them up while Jared did what he had to do. I was supposed to just scare them. I screwed up.” It was like a floodgate had been opened, the words coming almost without him taking a breath except to wipe at his nose with his shoulder, never stopping his rocking rhythm. “I saw her and I lost it. I lost it. I forgot that she couldn’t recognize me. I forgot. And I panicked. I thought she’d tell. I didn’t mean to shoot her. I just didn’t want her to tell. The gun went off. Just like that. It just went off and there was blood. There was a hole in her and she was bleeding and I knew I did it. I didn’t want the others to tell everybody that I did that. They saw it. They saw what I did. So I shot them, too. One, two, three. Just like that. The woman at the front desk. Bam! The guy in the doorway. Bam! The old man. Bam! I screwed up. I fucking screwed up.”
And then it was over. Charlie continued rocking, his eyes still staring at the TV, but the flood of words stopped as suddenly as they had started.
Andrew looked from Charlie to Melanie, waiting. His heart pounded as he watched her. She had stood the entire time with her arms crossed, her body finally still. Her face was expressionless. Her eyes, too, seemed void of emotion, even the panic was gone as if silenced by Charlie’s confession instead of being intensified by it. She’d have to do something now, wouldn’t she?
She walked over to her son until she was standing between him and the TV. “Look at me, Charlie.” She waited for him to look up at her. She waited for the rocking to slow. “I want you to listen to me, Charlie.”
Andrew held his breath. Here it was. The defining moment. Would they finally decide to rise up and stand up against Jared? Was this the last straw for Melanie?
“Listen to me, Charlie,” she repeated, and Andrew heard a strength in her voice that hadn’t been there before, a resolve and command. “You didn’t kill anybody. Do you hear me, Charlie? You did not kill anyone. And I don’t want to hear you ever say that again—do you understand? Don
’t you ever say that again.”
Then she walked away and began pacing again as if there had been no interruption, no confession, no exchange, as if there had been no denial. Even Charlie stopped rocking, his feet back on the floor, TV channels flipping again before his unblinking eyes.
Andrew seemed to be the only one who realized what had taken place, what this silent bond of denial meant. And Andrew Kane felt as if someone had just knocked the wind right out of him.
CHAPTER 62
9:05 a.m.
Max Kramer crushed the paper coffee cup and tossed it at the trash can, missing, not even hitting the rim. Not a good sign. The caffeine had made him shakier than usual. Probably not the caffeine but all the wine he’d managed to down last night. After Barnett’s phone call Max started opening wine bottles from his wife’s reserve, getting a rush each time he popped a cork. He had left before she got up this morning so he wouldn’t have to endure both a hangover and her wrath.
He swiveled his leather chair around to stare out the window and down at the mall. Another fucking beautiful day. A little too warm and humid for him, but the Nebraska sky was cloudless, not a wisp of white to mar the blue. As a young man he used to brag about Nebraska’s blue skies when he was traveling back and forth to New York City, working for a huge law firm and flying coach because his bosses cared even less about their attorneys than they did their clients. Back then he did have a passion for the law, for righting wrongs, even for blue skies. He couldn’t remember the day it stopped. It wasn’t one event in particular, some injustice or a major failing. It wasn’t any one thing. Instead, it happened piece by tiny piece. First one exception, one exemption, one small unintentional slip to take advantage of the rule of law. Then another. And another. He couldn’t even remember when the unintentional changed to the intentional. It had happened so gradually, so smoothly, so easily.