by David Archer
Sam nodded. “Did the deputy have any enemies that you know of?”
“Jack? He was a cop, so I’m sure there were a few, but nobody around here would do something like this. I know just about everybody in this town, and none of the people we handle could be this kind of violent. Even the drug dealers around here are smalltime, we’ve never had any of the kind of problems they get in the bigger towns.”
Sam nodded, then turned to Eric. “Eric? You see anything that might shed light on this?”
Eric looked at him. “Can I walk around for a minute?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Look at anything you need to.”
Eric nodded and started toward the remains of the trailer, carefully picking his way through the debris that was scattered all over the ground. He stopped and looked at numerous items that were laying on the grass, picking up a few carefully and then putting them back where he had found them. After about fifteen minutes, he returned to Sam and the others.
“The deputy had a son,” he said. “Based on what I see, I would say he is the most likely suspect at the moment.”
Merton appeared shocked. “Lee? Oh, no way. We had to go pick the kid up from school, he’s in shock over this.”
Sam looked at Eric, who appeared pretty confident. “Even so, Sheriff, I think we need to take a look at him. Perhaps we could get his school records, and if he has any kind of police record…”
“I’m telling you, there’s no way,” Merton said. “Lee loved his daddy to pieces. No way in the world he would never do anything to hurt him, or anybody else, for that matter. We can get you his school records, but the kid don’t have no police record at all.”
“All right, then,” Sam said. “Let’s take a look at the school records, then.”
That was when things began to change. They went to the sheriff’s office and sat down at a table while the sheriff arranged for Lee’s file to be brought from the school. As soon as it arrived, he handed it over to Sam, and they all started going through it together.
The boy was just about to turn sixteen. He wasn’t quite a model student, but he wasn’t a serious troublemaker, either. There were a few minor reprimands in his record, but nothing serious; most of them had been for rudeness or minor outbursts during class. The only thing of any real relevance appeared to be occasional trips to visit the school counselor, but the subject of the visits was considered confidential.
Lee was in a room at the sheriff’s office where deputies occasionally took naps when they were working late. There was a cot in the room, and the boy was laying on it, apparently asleep. Sam peeked in at him, but decided to leave it be for the moment. He and the sheriff went back to the table and Sam asked about the boy’s mother.
“Jack and Sophie never got married,” Merton explained. "She got pregnant just before Jack shipped out with the army for Afghanistan, and Lee was born while he was still on his first tour of duty. They were planning to be married as soon as he got home, but then Sophie came down with some kind of cancer, something in her kidneys. She was gone less than two weeks after the doctors figured out what was wrong with her. Jack came home after that. He took a hardship discharge so he could raise Lee. I hired him right about then, and he was with us ever since."
"Is that why he resented them?" Eric asked suddenly. “The little boy and his mother? Was it because he had to leave the army?”
Sam reminded himself that Eric was… well, he was still a kid. They weren't very good at contact or societal constraints, and everyone knew that. Sheriff Merton and his men had all been warned ahead of time, but that didn't stop them from getting angry.
"Hey," Sheriff Merton responded to the rhetorical question. "Jack served his country and this town. He was a good cop and a good man."
"Yeah? Apparently, he was a good man that didn’t have a single photo of his only son or the boy’s mother anywhere in his entire house. You might want to bury him in his uniform. He seems pretty fond of that, considering that every photo he owned was only of himself."
"Eric." Sam gave him a sideways glare and a slight shake of the head, but Eric didn't seem all that perturbed. "Sheriff, he does raise a bit of a point. Could it be that there was some animosity between the father and son that you aren’t aware of?"
Merton was glaring at Eric, but he shook his head. “I’m telling you, the kid loved his daddy. Whenever Jack was off duty, the two of them were always together.”
“And you never considered the possibility that it was because Jack wanted to keep his son under control?” Eric asked. “You never considered the possibility that Lee wanted to do something other than hang out with his father?”
Denny looked at Sam, a silent message passing between them.
They said he didn’t work well with other people. Maybe this is what they meant.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Merton said. “Jack and Lee…”
“According to Lee’s school record, he asked several times to speak with the school counselor,” Eric said. “There’s no indication what they talked about, but every meeting was at Lee’s request. That means he had a problem he wanted to talk about, and he wanted to talk to someone who would keep it quiet. If Lee didn’t have any social life of his own, which he couldn’t have had if he was always with his father, there was bound to be resentment. If the resentment went both ways, then you are probably looking at a situation that involved verbal, and possibly physical, abuse.”
Merton glared at Eric, and Sam tossed a glance at Denny, silently telling him to get ready for intervention.
“Now, look here,” Merton said, but Eric cut him off.
“I’m just curious, sheriff, but did anyone ever bother to ask Lee how he was feeling? Did anyone ever wonder why he was never allowed to go anywhere alone?”
Sam held out a hand toward Eric. “Eric, you don’t know that the boy was always under his father’s thumb,” he said. “Why are you assuming so?”
Eric turned to look at him. “Listen to what the sheriff has said,” Eric said. “The general consensus of opinion is that Lee and his father were always together when the boy wasn’t in school. Can you honestly tell me that any teenage boy would always, without fail, choose to be with his dad every minute outside of school? Lee is going on sixteen; he needed to be developing friendships of his own, hanging out with girls, learning how to be his own person.” He turned back to the sheriff. “But the only thing anybody knows about him is that he was always with his dad. That’s unusual, that’s abnormal, and it almost always indicates some kind of an abusive relationship.”Merton looked like he was about to explode, so Sam stepped forward, strategically placing himself between Eric and Merton, with one hand a bit outstretched. "Eric, that's enough."
"No, it isn't. You brought me along to consult, so I'm consulting." Eric turned back to the sheriff. "When we went to the crime scene, I found dozens of pictures of Jack, but no pictures, no report cards or anything else that was about Lee. According to school records, Lee is extremely intelligent, so that means he probably had a lot of things that his father should have been proud of, things that could be framed or put on display. They weren't. Nothing was, not even a childhood painting. Clearly, this also explains why there's no father of the year award in the collection."
Eric put his hands on his hips. “Mr. Prichard, did you notice Lee’s science scores? He’s only a sophomore, but he’s taking senior level chemistry and mechanical arts. Do you really think it would be hard for him to put together an improvised explosive device and get it to go off after he left for school?”
Merton lunged at Eric like a crazy man, but Sam was quicker and managed to hold him back before he could get hold of the kid.
"Sheriff!"
"You little smar—"
"Sheriff, Eric is on loan to my company." Sam pushed Merton back a bit. "You can't attack him, or you'll be facing criminal charges of your own. I don't want to put you through that, particularly because he's making a lot of sense."
D
enny looked over his shoulder, but no one outside the room appeared aware of the altercation. Hopefully, they could keep things at least somewhat discreet.
"I'm just saying—"
Denny put his finger to Eric's lips. "Not another bloody word." He tried, and failed, to ignore the way Eric had flinched back at the sudden movement. "Right, Sam?"
"Unless it's something helpful regarding the case," Sam began, no flexibility whatsoever in his voice, "then, no, I don't want to hear another word."
Denny looked back at the angry young man behind his finger. "Keep it together, lad. Next time the sheriff wants to take your head off, I think Sam just might let him." Denny slowly lowered his finger. "I get that you're a genius, and you guys…" He gestured with his hands to indicate something undefined. "…do this, whatever this is, but you're gonna have to act like a normal person until we get you back to Denver. Got it?"
Eric stared at him, the fight fading from his eyes. It wasn't replaced with the former Eric, though. It was replaced with cold, burning rage; simmering anger that needed just a little more heat to boil over again.
"Got it." Eric gave a single nod, lips pressed together, looking at Denny as if he were the stupidest man on the planet. "I'll keep it together."
"Good." Denny took a step back and lowered his hand.
Sam gave Merton some space, all four men exchanging various looks, and a silence settled over the room. Denny looked to Sam, hoping to receive an order of some sort, but Sam looked like he didn't know exactly how to move forward, either. Denny looked at Merton, who still looked more lost than anything, and then he looked back at Eric, who hadn't changed at all.
“Sheriff,” he said, “I think it’s time we talk with Lee.”
Merton turned and stared at him for a moment, then appeared to deflate a bit. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go wake him up and bring him in here.” He looked at Eric. “But he,” he said emphatically, “keeps his mouth shut.”
He stormed out the door and pushed past the rest of the team, who were waiting outside the room. Summer poked her head inside for a moment, and Sam motioned for her to come on in.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Not entirely,” Sam said softly. “Do me a favor and stay close to Eric, will you? He seems to like you. Maybe you can keep him calmer than Denny and I have managed to do.”
She looked at him for a moment, then walked over to where Eric was standing with his hands in his pockets. “Eric? You all right?”
Eric looked at her, but said nothing. After a moment, he looked down at the floor, but he didn’t object when she laid a hand on his shoulder.
A sudden commotion caught their attention and Sheriff Merton burst through the door once again. His eyes were wide and wild looking.
“Lee’s gone,” he said. “He’s gone, but that’s not the worst of it. I just found the deputy who was watching him in the men’s room, stabbed to death, and his gun is missing.”
FIVE
Sam had always thought of himself as a patient man. Had he lost his temper? Not quite, but for most of the time, he was able to keep himself relatively calm no matter what was happening. He was known for it, and he was used to people being able to count on his remaining calm.
Eric, however, could get to him. He had a knack for getting on every single one of Sam’s nerves, right down to the very last one.
"Given the circumstances, you're lucky he hasn't killed more," Eric said.
He wasn't even supposed to be at the case briefing. He was supposed to be getting coffee.
"It sounds like you're saying the victims deserved this." Merton was glaring at him again.
"Well, I'm certainly not saying they didn't."
"Eric, a word."
Sam beckoned him with a finger and walked to the nearest empty room, somehow managing to keep his temper under control. He didn't yet know what he was going to say, but he could only ask the locals to excuse so many infractions based on the 'he’s just a kid' excuse.
Sam took a few steps into the room and turned to face Eric, wasting no time in getting down to business. "What was that supposed to be?"
"It was the truth," Eric shot back, letting the door slam behind him. "They could have done something to help. They knew Lee, they knew his father, so they have no excuse."
"Excuse for what?" Sam didn't bother to suppress the disbelief in his voice.
"They left that kid in a dangerous environment, disregarded his obvious downward spiral, and thought there wouldn’t be any repercussions. It's stupid, and now you're going to start defending them."
"I'm not defending anyone, I'm trying to stop a killer." Sam narrowed his eyes a bit, keeping his tone firm but careful not to come across as too harsh. "We need them to cooperate with us if we want to keep anybody else from getting hurt, including Lee."
"So, what? You’re going to kiss their asses so you can throw their victim in jail? This is their fault." Eric gestured wildly to the door behind him. "They should have seen the signs. They should have done something."
"Sometimes nobody sees the signs, Eric, and it doesn’t always…"
"Nobody sees the signs because nobody pays any attention, Mr. Prichard!" Eric yelled, raising his voice for the first time since they met, and Sam was briefly silenced by the outburst. "Nobody pays any attention until the right person gets hurt, and then, when they finally do, all they say is that it isn’t their fault. People like you never give a damn about kids like me, and as long as the world goes on that way, there are always gonna be serial killers. There’s always gonna be tons of people who aren't quite abused enough to count as real victims; who aren't important enough to the world to count as real victims, who aren't quite innocent enough to count as real victims. The world ignores them, and then when they flip out and have victims of their own, victims you decide are worthy of justice, then they get the blame for everything, because otherwise the world has to admit that they treated another human being like shit, and nobody’s going to go for that."
Sam waited a few seconds and then raised a brow. "Are you finished?"
Eric glared at him, but said nothing.
"Good." Sam put his hands on his hips, using a no-nonsense tone that was surprisingly calm given his skyrocketing blood pressure. "Eric, we don’t have time to get into a big fight about what these people could or should have done to keep this from happening. No matter how Lee wound up this way, he has now killed five people. Now it’s our job to stop him before he can hurt anybody else." He nodded to the closed door behind Eric. "Now I want you to go with Summer. She’s going back to the house to try to figure out what Lee's end game might be."
Eric scoffed and spread his arms. "So, what, you're punishing me?"
"No, I'm putting you to work." Sam stepped past him and opened the door. "Look at it as a compliment. You don't use somebody you think of as a piece of shit, right?"
Eric stood still for a moment and glared at him silently, making Sam think of a pan about to boil over on the stove.
Sam didn't have time to worry about Eric’s feelings. If Eric was about to blow, then so be it. There had to be some reason he was on medication, right?
Eric suddenly looked as if he were about to cry, and then he lowered his head and hurried past Sam toward the door.
This will be a nightmare to clean up, Sam thought, taking a moment to pull himself together. One thing at a time, Prichard. One thing at a time.
Taking a deep breath, Sam left the room and approached Summer and Sheriff Merton, already dreading how the rest of the day might go.
* * *
Summer sighed and dropped onto Lee's bed, discouraged. Eric wasn't wrong. There really should be some indications of a father’s love and pride around here somewhere, but there weren’t any.
Incoming Call… The caller ID told her it was Sam.
She answered immediately. "Sam?"
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sam said. "How is Eric doing?"
“I’m not sure,” she said. “He’s outsid
e. Last I knew, he was still mumbling about how people should’ve seen this coming, and to be honest, Sam, I kind of agree with him.”
“But he seems to be calming down?”
“For the most part,” Summer said. “I’ve got to tell you, Sam, sometimes he just about breaks my heart.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Mine, too. Go and check on him, will you?”
She got up and went out of Lee’s bedroom, making her way through the shattered end of the trailer until she spotted Eric squatting in the yard. He was holding something in his hand and looking at it closely.
“He seems okay right now,” she said. “He’s looking at some of the debris in the yard. He said you sent him with me as some kind of punishment. Is that right?”
"He wants to argue with the local police, and I can't allow that." Sam sighed exasperatedly, and Summer could tell the problem was a lot more complicated than he had time to explain. "He blames the police and the townspeople for how Lee turned out."
She pursed her lips and continued to watch Eric and the yard. "I hate to say it, but he's not completely wrong. Everyone is a product of their environment, and the people around you are a big part of that." She shrugged, even though Sam couldn’t see it. “Not everybody has it easy.”
"I know that, Summer." Sam's tone was unusually clipped and terse. "Did you find anything new at the house?"
Her first instinct was to ask about the sudden change in his demeanor, but she decided to let it go. "I got into Lee's computer, and it turns out he had a bit of a crush on the sheriff’s dispatcher, Danielle Simmons. It looks like she might have been trying to help him. Based on everything he wrote, it looks like he was able to confide some of his problems to her, and she might’ve even stood up to his father for him once or twice.”
"You think she's an accomplice?"
"No, that's not the way it feels. I don’t think he would do anything that might put her in danger, and getting her involved in the murders would definitely do that. I was trying to get inside his head, figure out how she fits into his plan, but I don’t know anything about her."