by James Hunt
Kerry was aware of how elusive Cutters had been. But that didn’t mean it was impossible to bring him down.
“There has to be something,” Kerry said. “If I can testify against him, about what he’s making me do—”
“And how do you think that would go over?” Roy asked. “Or did you forget that you’re the daughter of the city’s most-hated cop? Do you have any idea what the media would do to you? What that would do to your family?”
Kerry hadn’t considered the kind of exposure going after Cutters would entail. She knew firsthand how difficult a public trial was on a family, and she never wanted to put her children through that experience, no matter what.
“What did you think was going to happen when you agreed to help him?” Roy asked, his tone still berating. “This is a mess you can’t just clean up, Kerry. It doesn’t go away. Ever.”
Kerry wasn’t sure exactly what she expected in coming here. At the very least, she knew it would cover her ass if she actually decided to go through with the job Cutters gave her. But deep down, she was hoping that her father had one last trick up his sleeve. Because even though she was a grown woman, there was still a small piece of her that hoped her dad would be able to get her out of this jam.
Roy softened a little bit and then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I know you think there is a way out of this. And believe me, nobody wants that for you more than me. But there are some lines that cannot be uncrossed.”
It wasn’t the answer Kerry had expected to hear from her father, and she felt that small glimmer of hope she was looking to find here diminished.
“A man like Benjamin Cutters wouldn’t stay in business as long as he has if he didn’t know what he was doing,” Roy said. “He’s a very powerful man.”
“I know,” Kerry said.
Roy quickly reached across the table and grabbed hold of Kerry’s, squeezing it firmly. “No, you don’t. Because if you did, this conversation would never have happened.”
“So that’s it,” Kerry said.
Roy nodded. “That’s it.”
Kerry and Roy sat in silence for the rest of the visit. Both were pondering the path that lay ahead for her and the consequences of taking that first step. When the correctional officer finally told everyone time was up, Kerry and Roy stood, and Roy walked over to his daughter and hugged her tightly.
“Be careful,” Roy said. “Please.”
“I will,” Kerry said.
Roy leaned back and offered a sad smile. “You’re still the best cop I know. No matter what you’ve done.” He fell back into line with the rest of the inmates, and Kerry stood with the other family members as they watched their fathers, sons, brothers, and friends walk in a single file line out of the visiting area and back into their cells.
Kerry returned to the parking lot and sat in her car. Coming to visit her father was a Hail Mary pass at a way out. But as her options diminished, the path ahead became clearer, the pitfalls and dangers starting to take shape.
A lonely hollowness Kerry had not felt in ages gripped her, fueling her doubts and fears. She glanced at the prison in her rearview mirror. She had fought long and hard to avoid the same fate as her father. But no matter what happened, she would not let her family suffer the way she had growing up. She would see an early grave before she allowed that to happen.
And as Kerry sat in her car, thinking of what to do next, one person came into her mind. Someone she trusted with her life and her family’s life. But she hadn’t spoken to Jim since she had left the department, and she didn’t want to burden him with her problems.
5
Jim drove Nate from the station and back to his apartment complex. The ride was silent for the most part, save for a few mutterings from Nate under his breath. He sounded worried, but then again, his son was missing.
It was still hard to believe that Nate had tracked him down, but once the shock wore off of seeing his old friend, unease settled in its place. Jim had not filed the missing persons’ report, just as Nate requested. He did look up the boy, though and confirmed Nate had a son.
Jim also saw the arrest warrant issued by the judge in North Carolina, where the boy’s grandmother lived. The warrant had been filed almost five years ago, and there hadn’t been any activity on the matter in almost four. It seemed the parties involved were satisfied with marking the case unsolved.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Jim asked.
“I already told you my son is gone,” Nate answered, his tone petulant.
“I mean about the arrest warrant,” Jim replied. “The fact I haven’t turned you in or filed the report for your missing son means I’m breaking the law.”
Nate calmed down. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re right.” He nodded and cleared his throat. “I really appreciate what you’re doing for me, Jim.”
Jim turned off the highway and onto the exit ramp. “So what happened?”
Nate cleared his throat again, fidgeting in his seat, unable to get comfortable. “I don’t even know where to start. Should I pick up from when I last saw you?” He glanced at Jim and grinned, and for a moment, Jim saw a flash of the friend who had become a brother to him. “No, probably not.”
“Tell me about the situation in North Carolina,” Jim said.
Nate sighed and shook his head. “It’s complicated. I met this woman, we had a thing, we had a kid, and it turned out she was a drug addict.”
“That’s not normally something that comes as a surprise, Nate,” Jim said.
“Yeah, well, I might have been using at the time, too,” Nate said. Nate kept his head down, avoiding Jim’s gaze, but Jim still saw the man’s cheeks flush red.
“And are you using now?” Jim asked.
“No,” Nate answered quickly. “I cleaned up after my kid was born. Because I didn’t want him to grow up the way we did, you know? I wanted to be a good father. And I’ve done that, Jim. I got him the hell out of that backwater town the moment I could.”
The Nate Jim remembered had always been a bit of a lush, so the fact that he’d made the jump to drugs wasn’t a surprise. Nate had introduced Jim to alcohol and cigarettes at an early age, and the pair had gotten into their fair share of trouble. But it hadn’t been booze and cloves that had bonded them so tightly. It had been their experience together at one of the many foster homes they shared.
“You remember what it was like?” Nate asked as though he could read Jim’s thoughts. “What we went through.”
“I remember,” Jim answered. “It’s one of the reasons I became a detective.”
Nate flashed an easy smile, the one that always charmed the girls at the orphanages. “That’s not all you’ve done, is it? I read about that non-profit you started with your father’s money.”
Jim had inherited a fortune from a psychopath. The man had been a killer and someone who found pleasure in torturing children. He had sought to sire an heir to ascend to his throne, but Jim made sure the man’s legacy was shattered. Jim didn’t want anything to do with the man’s money, so he set up a trust for at-risk youth for the state of Washington. The building was being constructed, and there was already a long list of children who needed help. It was a way for Jim to give back to a community that desperately needed assistance.
And not only was his father a psychopath, but he happened to be the leader of a secret organization that called themselves The Greeks. Naturally, it had garnered Jim a lot of attention. That had been the last case Jim and Kerry had worked before his leave of absence. It had been a difficult one, but Jim had been surprised by her sabbatical.
“I thought it was a good way to spend the money,” Jim said. “I thought it might be nice for kids to have a better future than we had growing up.”
“Yeah, that would have been nice to have that kind of money when we were in the system, huh?” Nate asked. “I wonder if things would have turned out differently for us.”
Jim had asked himself that question thousands of times, but it
wasn’t good for the psyche to dwell on “what-ifs” for too long.
“Do you ever think about that night?” Nate asked.
Jim knew the night Nate spoke of, but he wasn’t in the mood to relive it. “Not for a long time.”
“I think about it a lot,” Nate said. “Especially when I’m watching my boy sleep. I can’t imagine ever hurting him like that bastard tried to do to us.” He looked at Jim. “He would have killed us both, you know that, right?”
“I remember what happened, Nate,” Jim answered.
One of the foster homes Jim and Nate had been assigned to was owned by a married couple. The woman wasn’t ever around, and the man was a drunkard. He used to hit Jim, Nate, and the other kids. He would go on day-long benders, screaming at the kids, threatening them, and it was all they could do to lock themselves in the room they shared and wait for him to pass out.
But one night, the bastard decided threats of violence weren’t enough anymore. He decided that he was going to make good on his promises. There was a gun in the house, an old revolver stashed up in the ceiling.
Jim and Nate had tried to get a few times just so they could get rid of it, but they were too short of reaching even after standing on the chairs. They were only ten years old then, but they were still the oldest of the group staying at the house.
And that night, when the drunk brought that revolver down and beat down the door to the room, Jim lunged forward, trying to wrestle the gun away, and managed to get the man to drop it. But once the man no longer had the revolver, he focused all of his strength and effort on Jim, choking him.
Jim had thought he was going to die. He could still feel the man’s hands around his throat even to this day. But just before the world faded to black, a gunshot thundered in the room, and Jim was released.
Gasping for breath, Jim saw the drunkard on his back, blood pooling in his mouth as he choked on his own blood, a hole in the side of his belly where he’d been shot. Nate was standing off to the side, holding the gun with the other kids behind him. A little bit of blood was on his face, his eyes wide and bulging. He gripped the revolver like a vice, knuckles blanched over the black steel.
The police showed up shortly after the gunshot. A concerned neighbor had finally called the cops, but why they had never called the authorities every other night the bastard was screaming at the top of his lungs, Jim didn’t know.
Nate was never charged with anything, even though their foster father had died. It seemed both the officers and the social workers involved understood the kids had gone through enough.
Ever since that night, until the day Jim was adopted by the Swisher family, Nate and Jim were true brothers, and they always had each other’s back. It was why Jim didn’t file the paperwork and why he hadn’t arrested his friend.
You don’t turn your back on family.
“It’s just up there,” Nate said, pointing to an old ten-story building up the road.
Jim parked on the street and then followed Nate into the apartment building. The place was in disrepair, but Jim had visited a lot of places like this during his time as a detective.
“Not much better than the places we lived in growing up, huh?” Nate said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Jim said.
“Yeah, I guess you have,” Nate said.
Once they reached the sixth floor, Nate led Jim out of the stairwell and down to the apartment. He unlocked the door and then stepped inside.
“Okay,” Nate said, opening the door. “Here it is.”
Jim stepped through the entrance of the apartment and stopped when he reached the middle of the open floor plan. It was a small apartment, barely enough space for one person, let alone a father and son.
Nate shut the door behind him, then locked it. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s all I can afford by myself.”
Jim looked to his friend. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of. You’re doing what you can to take care of your son. It’s more than either of our parents ever did for us.”
Nate offered a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”
Jim examined the surroundings, searching for anything that stood out to him and saw the chessboard on the kitchen table. “Do you play?”
Nate walked up to the chessboard and gently rolled the king that had been toppled. “I started playing after you were adopted. I needed to find a way to occupy all the time I found myself with. I got pretty good at it, and I enjoyed the game. More importantly, it kept me out of trouble most of the time. After my son was born and he was old enough to understand the game, I taught him. It was through chess I learned how smart he was.”
“He’s gifted?” Jim asked.
Nate picked up one of the pawns. “His teachers told me he has a genius-level intellect. Top 1% of the 1% or something like that.” He returned the piece to its square. “I don’t know where the brains came from. Not from me and certainly not his mom.”
“The grandmother,” Jim said. “Does your son know about her?”
“Yes,” Nate answered. “He understands not to call her, though.”
“You’re sure about that?” Jim asked.
“I’m sure.”
Jim nodded and checked the windows, making sure that they hadn’t been broken and saw no sign of a break-in. He examined the front door as well, again finding no sign of tampering. “Does anybody else have a key to the apartment besides you and your son?”
“Just the landlord,” Nate said, growing a little antsier. “
Jim walked to the precipice of the bedroom’s entrance and gestured inside. “Mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest,” Nate answered.
Jim entered the bedroom and saw the two twin mattresses lying on the floor. There was no bedding except for a single pillow for each mattress and a yellowed, white sheet. There were dirty clothes scattered about the different corners of the room, but while it was a little messy, there wasn’t much to make a clutter, to begin with.
Everything in the apartment was bare-bones. It seemed the only forms of entertainment that existed were the chessboard and the television set.
Jim walked over to where he assumed the boy slept. Books were scattered around the mattress, stacked in haphazard piles. They were classic literary works. Most of them looked like they were checked out from the library. “How old did you say he was?”
“Nine,” Nate answered. “I told you, he’s very smart.”
Jim set the books down. “Does he come directly home after school?”
“No, he goes to an afterschool program to give me a few more hours of sleep,” Nate said. “He also likes it because there’s a chess team at the program. He plays there with kids a lot older than he is and more experienced in the game than even me.”
“I’ll need the name of that program,” Jim said.
Jim crossed over to Nate’s side of the room. Pictures were taped to the walls. Some of them were of Nate and his son, a few of which were Nate when he was younger, probably in his early 20s. But there was one picture taped up of a woman sitting in Nate’s lap at a bar somewhere. It was the only picture with the woman in it, Jim pointed out. “Who’s that?”
Nate grimaced. “I’ve meant to take that down.”
“Is that your son’s mother?” Jim asked.
Nate walked over and carefully peeled the picture off the wall. “Just a girl I was dating. We’d been together for about a year, but we broke up six weeks ago.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “Any reason she might want to take your son?”
Nate shook his head. “She doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
“You’re sure she doesn’t have a key to the apartment?” Jim asked.
“She had a key, but she gave it back,” Nate answered, folding the picture into his pocket. “I guess it’s possible that she could have made a copy and not told me. But I don’t know why she would want to try to take my son?”
“Was Tim close with her?” Jim asked.
“No
,” Nate answered.
“I’ll still need her name and phone number if you have it,” Jim said.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you need,” Nate said.
Jim circled the apartment one more time, making sure he hadn’t missed anything, but without forensics being able to come in and take a closer look at the fibers, there wasn’t much more he could do by himself.
“What about when you’re gone at night?” Jim asked. “Does anyone stay with him?”
“No,” Nate answered. “He’s here by himself.”
Even though the boy was probably sleeping most of the time, that was still a long period for a boy his age to remain unsupervised.
“So what now?” Nate asked.
“I’ll knock on a few doors in the building, see if anyone heard anything last night,” Jim said. “And I’ll look into that afterschool program and follow up with your ex.”
“Yeah, okay,” Nate said.
Jim studied his friend a little more closely. He was taking a risk helping Nate, but that wasn’t what worried him. “You know I tried to get you adopted with me. I begged my parents to do it, but they didn’t have the room. And by the time they did, you were gone.”
“I know you did, Jimmy,” Nate said. “I don’t blame you for the life I had after we were separated. I’m glad you turned out all right.”
All of this was like a blast from the past, and Jim was still wrapping his head around seeing Nate after over ten years.
“No one has called me Jimmy in a long time,” Jim said. “Why did you come to find me? Now? After all of these years?”
“I know it’s been a long time.” Nate pocketed his hands, shifting his weight between his feet. “I just took a different path than you did. You wanted to fight back against the system that hurt us, and I just wanted to get as far away from it as I could.” He glanced to the crummy apartment and scoffed. “A lot of good that did.” He swiped at his nose. “I never thought I would be a father. I don’t think I even wanted to be a dad. After all the shady experiences we had growing up, it’s not like I had a good role model to base fatherhood on after everything we went through, you know?” He steadied himself. “But I’ve done everything I can to provide a better life for my son than what I had. He’s my whole world, Jim. He’s the reason I’m not in jail or dead of an overdose. I just want him back. I there isn’t anyone else I trust to help me.”