by Lisa Jackson
“If you’re so sure, then let’s find out.”
“You and me?”
“Yep.” He climbed to his feet, then really looked at her. “You’re about dead on your feet.”
“Yeah, yeah, so you said.” She swatted the air impatiently. “I couldn’t sleep if I tried. Could you?”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t think so. Since my pickup is with the cops, we’ll have to use yours. I’ll drive.”
He sent her an over-my-dead-body glare. “I’ll drive.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Paterno couldn’t sleep.
The damned case was getting to him.
No two ways about it.
He stripped down to his boxers and T-shirt, found a glass in his kitchen and scooped up a handful of ice from an opened bag he kept in the freezer. With practiced hands he unscrewed the top of a bottle of rye whiskey he kept on the counter, then listened to the familiar crackle as the liquor hit the ice cubes. Swirling his drink, he refused to pay any attention to the few rinsed dishes sitting in the sink. Instead, he walked into his living room where the television was turned to two channels, ESPN on the main screen, CNN in the inset in the lower right-hand corner.
Jesus, it was hot. His air conditioner was on the fritz and his second-story apartment was sweltering. He opened the slider door to his deck but felt little relief.
Traffic was slow and quiet, the street below empty. He took a sip of his drink and felt the smooth liquor slide down his throat as he noticed a moth fluttering near the deck light. He slammed the screen shut and stared into the night.
So what was it he was missing?
Turning to his desk, he sipped his drink and stared down at his notes, arranged in disorderly piles. The drawings, yeah, he made nothing of them except that he had an inkling the points of the star had to do with the Flannery brothers…What else? The missing one was the missing brother, right? The broken lines…Maybe that was because Robert was in the middle of a divorce…No, it was because the person who died wasn’t part of the formation, just linked by marriage…Or was it? Shannon was in the center…her brothers circling around her…Oh, crap, did that make any sense? No. If it was a birth-order thing, wouldn’t the numbers run chronologically, age-wise? But the way he saw it, number five, without a point, was positioned next to the broken point of number two, with six in the middle. Any way you cut it, two shouldn’t be next to five. It should be surrounded by one and three…if his theory was correct. But then, who said a killer was sane?
Maybe he was way off base with the birth-order thing. Maybe there was another reason that the number six was significant and assigned to Shannon…or the kid? Maybe that was it. It was Dani Settler’s birth certificate, not Shannon’s. Maybe he’d made a big leap, following a gut instinct when there was nothing to base it on.
He had to step back.
Start over.
Forget any reference to “birth order” by the father.
His gaze moved to the next pile. Notes on the Stealth Torcher…No one killed in all those fires except for one woman. It was almost as if the arsonist picked buildings he knew were abandoned.
Paterno took another swallow and let a piece of ice flow into his mouth. He crushed the cube and thought, then thumbed through the three pages of notes on the Torcher…One woman died: Dolores Galvez.
Why did that name ring bells? There was something…But what?
He sat at the desk, and pulled out a box of notes he’d copied from the original investigation. The pages were yellowed and smelled musty from three years of storage and as he flipped through the reports he thought of all those fires, so close to Santa Lucia. At that time not only Patrick, Shannon’s father, was a firefighter, but so were his sons. All of his sons. Paterno double-checked. Aaron, Robert, Shea, Oliver and Neville. And two other familiar names as well: Ryan and Liam Carlyle. First cousins. “Incestuous little group,” Paterno told himself. He didn’t like them as a whole, including the deceased. Ryan Carlyle had been a piece of work and his cousins weren’t much better. Though she didn’t deserve the fate she’d been handed, Mary Beth had been a bossy fishwife. Her sister, Margaret, was a pious prig while Kevin, one of her brothers, was a real odd duck, a loner who kept to himself and though he had degrees up the wazoo, worked as a clerk for the Federal government. Liam, the eldest, the one closest to Ryan, also kept to himself. He’d been married and divorced a couple of times and after quitting the Santa Lucia Fire Department had landed himself a job doing arson investigation with an insurance company in Santa Rosa.
And Teddy, Ryan’s younger brother, was dead, killed in a fiery single car crash with Ryan at the wheel when he was thirteen.
Nope, Paterno thought, he didn’t like the Flannerys or the Carlyles.
Ryan had, arguably, been the worst. A wife beater. No two ways about it. Paterno had heard a small bit of tape that had been retrieved from the final fight between him and his wife, Shannon. Most of the equipment and recording had been destroyed, but the police had reconstructed one little bit of the tape where Shannon was yelling at her husband, and sounding as if she was fighting for her life. That scrap of audiotape had been used as the basis for the theory about why she might have killed her husband…Yes, it had proved motive, but, in Paterno’s estimation, not enough. The prosecution had persevered, insisting that Shannon had sought help from either a killer-for-hire or others who had abetted her—those others being her brothers, whose only alibis had been each other.
It had been a weak case and looking back at it now, Paterno wondered why the DA had decided to try it. Pressure, he decided, staring at the transcript of the tape.
He dug further until he found information on the sole victim of one of the fires set by the Stealth Torcher.
Dolores Galvez had been thirty-two, divorced, with no children, a waitress at an Italian restaurant that had gone under since her death. Dolores had one brother who lived in Pasadena. Her parents, as of three years ago, lived in LA. There was a note that her brother had thought she’d been seeing someone, but he’d never met the guy, never heard his name, just knew that Dolores was “in love.” She’d been reticent to tell the brother anything about the guy and he’d shrugged it off because his sister had been one of those women who fell in love easily—“a couple of times a year”—was the quote. But in all the notes about Dolores there was no mention of the man she’d been seeing at the time of her death. All the old boyfriends had been checked and had come out clean.
After the tragedy, the mystery man hadn’t come forward. If he’d attended the funeral, no one had bothered to make note of it.
Paterno didn’t like it.
It didn’t feel right.
But nothing about this case did.
He hoped the lab would come up with fingerprints off the cassette of the kid’s voice, or at the very least separate the sounds so that they might have a shot at hearing noises that would help pinpoint where the recording took place, but he didn’t have much faith. Shannon’s cell phone might give up some clues; the numbers recently called and those received would be on the screen and he’d already requested her records from the cell phone company. And then there was her truck. Would whoever had left the phone in the truck been careless enough to leave fingerprints or trace evidence?
He doubted it.
So far, this guy had been careful. He’d given the police only what he wanted them to have. Maybe the FBI would find something more from the van found at Blanche Johnson’s Idaho property. Something that would lead them back to the whack job who was holding Dani Settler and probably killed Mary Beth Flannery as well as Blanche.
There was a chance they would get lucky.
Paterno wasn’t banking on it.
He rubbed his face with one hand and felt eighteen hours’ worth of beard stubble as he glanced through another stack of notes about Blanche Johnson’s murder.
What was the message that had been left at the scene, in blood no less? Payback Time. What the hell did
that mean? And what did it have to do with Shannon Flannery?
Paterno felt he was spinning his wheels.
He’d have to call the authorities in Oregon in the morning and then have a chat with the elusive Nate Santana. See what that guy knew. He’d been gone a lot recently. Never around. And he was an ex-con, whether he had beat the rap or not.
Finishing his drink, he gave up for the night, walked to the slider and pulled it shut. The damned moth was still beating itself silly around the lightbulb.
“Give it up,” he muttered, snapping off the light. He didn’t know if he was talking to the fluttering insect or himself.
“Let’s try to call again,” Shannon said as Travis parked his truck behind a white Toyota Camry parked on the street in front of the small, darkened cottage.
“It doesn’t look like he’s home.” But Travis handed her his cell phone.
“His car is here.” Punching out the number, she nodded toward the car in front of them. “Come on, Oliver,” she whispered, waiting and then gnawing at the corner of her fingernail as the phone continued to ring. No light came on in the house. She snapped the phone closed. “Something’s wrong.”
Before he could say a word, she was out of the truck and up the concrete walk to the front door. As Travis slid out of the truck, she rang the bell repeatedly. Where was Oliver? she wondered. Her mind raced with ideas—maybe he had duties to perform, last rites or tending to the sick, but wouldn’t he have taken his car? A friend could have picked him up, or he could be with one of her brothers, she supposed, but it didn’t feel right. She stole a glance at the Camry parked in its usual spot and a cold knot of fear coiled in her stomach.
“Oliver,” she said and pounded on the door. “It’s Shannon. Open up.”
Nothing.
“Oliver!” Her fist was poised to strike the door again when Travis stopped her, his fingers surrounding hers.
“You’ll wake the neighbors.”
She glanced along the deserted street. “I know where he keeps a key,” she said and before Travis even thought about arguing with her, she was down the two steps of the porch and hurrying along a path to the back of the house. Reaching over and unlatching the gate to the fenced yard, she tried to keep her fear at bay. Oliver was fine. She just had to find him.
But she thought of Mary Beth and Dani and the fact that Oliver had so much wanted to talk to her today. Kicking herself for not listening to him, she walked to the back porch, reached under the lowest step and found the key. Within seconds she was twisting the lock and with Travis at her side, walked into her brother’s small, stuffy, spartan house.
She switched on the kitchen light.
Everything was as she would have expected. Not a dish in the sink, no stack of unread mail on the counter, neither of the two dinette chairs pushed away from the table. Aside from the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of a hall clock, there was no noise.
“Oliver?” she called. A cold shiver of fear chased down her spine.
In the living room a Bible lay open on a table next to his chair, the seat shiny from years of use. The fireplace was cold, never used, and on the walls were various pictures of Christ and Mary.
Her feet creaked upon the worn carpet as she walked quickly to the two bedrooms. One, his office, was as barren as the rest of the house with only a desk, a daybed and books, all sorted neatly on shelves. She’d seen them before: texts on religion, theology, psychology and the like. The next room, his bedroom with its small, neatly made bed and a bureau that he’d kept from his youth, was empty as well, the bed not slept in.
“Where is he?” she asked as her eyes swept the open door of the bathroom. Empty. Neat. The blue hand towel lying near the sink folded with military precision.
“I don’t know.” Travis walked back to the living room, to the table where the Bible was. He snapped on the light and skimmed the pages.
“Anything there?”
Shaking his head, he said, “Nah. Don’t think so.”
“It’s so late.” She frowned and was ready to call and alert one of her brothers, was already on her way to the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen, when she stopped and thought. Tried to get into Oliver’s head. She studied the crucifixes decorating the walls, the palm leaves, the artifacts. “If you were about to take your vows as a priest and you were worried about something…Something major was eating at you…” she thought aloud as she crossed the living room and turned the venetian blinds open to stare across the small front yards to the mission grounds on the other side of the street. Lights shone upward, displaying the bell tower and the crosses mounted high on the peaked roofs. “If you were really troubled, where would you go?”
“I don’t know. I’m not Catholic,” Travis said, but he walked to the window and, following her gaze, stared at the mission.
“When you’re upset, you, Travis Settler, where do you go when you want to sort things out?”
“I usually take a walk. Outside. Someplace quiet where I can think,” he said.
Shannon nodded, her finger pointed through the slats of the blinds. “I think he’s in the church at the mission. Across the street.”
“Could be,” he said.
Shannon was already striding through the kitchen, exiting the house the way they’d come in. She was running now, feeling a sense of urgency. Why hadn’t she stopped and listened to Oliver at their mother’s house? Didn’t she have a few seconds to give to her brother when he was so obviously tormented?
Stop it, Shannon, don’t beat yourself up. You still have no idea what was on his mind!
She dashed across the street and Travis was right beside her. They found a brick path and headed into the compound, an old mission that was still used by the church. This church was small, not nearly as large or modern as the main church, St. Theresa’s, located half a mile north, but it was close and Oliver’s car was nearby. This had to be the place.
The portico was shadowed as they approached, no sound from within.
Shannon wrapped her fingers around the big handle of the door and pulled. It opened silently and she felt a stir of trepidation, the same feeling she always experienced when stepping into a place where she wasn’t welcome, where there were NO TRESPASSING signs posted or implied. The church was like that—though friendly and warm and holy, filled with singing and prayers and organ music and hope during its hours of operation—dark and chilling, silent when no one was around. She’d always felt that way, ever since she was a little girl.
Her brothers, altar boys, had felt more at home inside the apse and nave, but she’d always felt alienated when the pews were empty, as they were now.
She stepped inside and stared up the aisle to the altar where candles flickered and the looming figure of Jesus hung on the cross, blood dripping from His forehead where the crown of thorns rested, His palms and feet, too, smeared with red, the slash on His side oozing.
For those without faith, who didn’t understand Christ’s sacrifice for humanity, the image could be frightening. As a small child, it had scared her to death.
She reached for Travis’s hand, linked her fingers through his and sent up a prayer for strength.
“He’s not here,” Travis said.
“But the candles are burning,” she whispered, motioning to the stand where several votive candles wavered as they passed. Glancing up at Travis’s shadowed features, meeting his gaze with her own, she said, “Someone lit them.”
“Shannon, the church is empty.”
“This part of the church is empty. We don’t know about the rest.”
“You want to go poking around in all the little nooks and crannies?”
“Don’t you?”
“It seems sacrilegious.”
“It is.” Pulling on his hand, she started down the center aisle of the nave, her gaze darting left and right, searching for anyone or for anything out of place. With each step her heart pounded in deeper trepidation and the hairs on the back of her arms raised, warning h
er. “Oliver?” she called in a voice slightly above a whisper. “Oliver, are you here?”
She paused. Listened.
Nothing.
Travis shook his head, but she started forward again, pushing aside her ridiculous reservations. This was a building, God’s building, and surely He would want the truth known. At the altar, she looked up, made the sign of the cross as the image of Jesus stared at her, but she didn’t genuflect. Just gripped Travis’s hand more tightly in her free hand.
She walked to one wall and opened the door to the small chapel, a place for private worship where she thought Oliver might have decided to speak to God. The room was dark. She fumbled for a switch and threw the lights. The room was empty.
“He might not be here,” Travis said, giving her hand a small, comforting squeeze.
“Let’s make sure.” Leaving the muted lights in the chapel burning, she walked toward the front of the church again, past the transepts, then peered behind the altar. Nothing. Just silence and the smell of ash and incense, a burning scent that permeated the stale air.
She eyed the sacristy but saw nothing other than the vestments and vessels used by the priests. On one wall, she saw the confessionals: two dark booths. Pulling Travis after her, she made her way to them. She remembered entering as a child, telling Father Timothy on the other side of the screen how she’d sinned: saying a bad word, or talking back to her mother or lying to her brothers. Then she’d waited for the priest to come up with a soft-spoken penance.
Now, she approached the booths.
Heart thudding, she opened one creaking door.
Nothing.
Holding her breath, she approached the other, her hands trembling as she yanked back the door. It, too, was empty.
Carefully, she walked to the side where the priests took their seats and opened each door, only to find them, too, vacant.
“Oliver?” she called again, her voice louder, echoing off the rafters, sending a chill through her own body.