We're All Broken

by O. L. Gregory

  The officers shared another look, before the second one answered. “There was a double-homicide over the weekend. Once we got into investigating the two seemingly disconnected individuals, we realized they had a connection.”

  “A connection that led you to me? Were they friends of mine? I haven’t really reconnected with anybody since I got out, aside from the employees here. You know, trying to keep my world small and manageable. Who died?”

  The second officer looked to the first officer, who cleared his throat. “They weren’t friends of yours. They were… connected… to your children.”

  Roger stepped forward. “Are my kids okay?”

  “Yes,” the second officer said. “They are one hundred percent fine. They were nowhere near the occurrence. We just found it odd that two people, who’d probably never met before, yet both had lived in houses with your children, would end up murdered on the same night.”

  “We do have a couple of other theories,” the first officer said, “but we needed to eliminate the most obvious conclusion first.”

  “That I would have killed them? But why? What did they do to my kids? Which two kids? The twins? My lawyer said they’ve been able to stay together!”

  “Mr. Hayes, please calm down. There were pending charges against one of them… for abuse. But know that your child was removed from his care, and she’s fine. The other one, we don’t know what the motivation would be. But none of that matters now, because you were here with a movie. It’s more likely one of them witnessed the other being gunned down, and the perpetrator shot the witness before fleeing.”

  Roger ran a hand through his hair again. “But my kids are really okay, and now the abuser is dead? And I don’t need my lawyer, because you’re satisfied with my proof, and no one is questioning my parole?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hayes,” the second officer said. “You’re in the clear, and your kids are fine. We’re sorry we interrupted your workday, and we’ll make sure to let your parole officer know we conducted a home visit and that you cooperated fully.”

  Roger shut his mouth and walked the pair of officers to the door, shutting and locking the door behind them. He let out a breath before turning around.

  He lifted his hand to show Max and Kelly. “Shaking. I’m actually shaking over having two officers show up at my door. I did nothing, but I was paranoid they wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I think that’s natural,” Kelly said, “after working so hard to get out. I don’t think anyone would fault you for being nervous.”

  “Good thing you rented that three-hour porno, man. How crazy is it that it saved you a bunch more questioning?”

  Roger raised his eyebrows as he nodded. “That may very well be the best impulse purchase of my life.”

  Kelly giggled before growing serious. “I know the mention that one of them used to have your child, and was an accused abuser, hit a nerve with you.” She did good in front of Max by not mentioning that he’d already known and told her that one of his girls had been in trouble and he’d made sure she’d gotten out.

  Roger nodded, grateful for her discretion. “It’s been my biggest fear that something like that would happen to one, or god-forbid more than one of them.”

  “It has to be comforting to know that she had already been removed from that situation. And now, he’s dead. She’ll never have to go through the ordeal of testifying against him, or live in fear that he might find her again.”

  Roger lifted his eyes to her. “That is a relief, all things considered.”

  Max nodded, solemnly. “I just hope whichever one was living with the other isn’t too torn up over losing that person.”

  Kelly backhanded Max across the gut. “Shut up,” she whispered.

  Roger shook his head as his hand paused in massaging the back of his neck. “At least it sounded like she didn’t have to bear witness to any of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ten Years Later

  “In here, Penelope,” Dale said to me. He flipped on the light switch and the room lit up.

  I stepped inside and took inventory. A basic table and a couple of chairs sat in the middle, under the florescent light in the center of the ceiling. Filing cabinets lined one side of the room, portable hard drives lined up by year on a shelf above them. Folding tables were set up to line the wall under the windows on the far wall, all manner of office paraphernalia on their surfaces.

  “What, exactly, am I supposed to do in here?” I asked, setting my station-issued laptop down on the center table, along with my water bottle, before moving my hands to my hair, preparing to turn my ponytail into a bun.

  “This,” Dale said with a hand sweeping the wall of cabinets and hard drives, “is The Land of the Lost.”

  My eyes followed his hand gesture as I finished off the bun. “What?”

  “These are all of our unsolved cases. All open, all dead-ended, all still in need of solving.”

  “And you want me to solve them, or convert all the paper to digital?” I asked, not really liking the concept of either.

  “You want to make detective?”

  My head whipped around to him. “Yeah.”

  “Well,” he head-nodded to the cabinets, “if you want the promotion, you can do it one of three ways.”

  I looked around the room. “Yeah… this wasn’t one of the requirements.”

  Dale shrugged at me. “All our detective spots are full. If you want the station to fork out the extra money in pay, you’re going to have to prove you’re worth it.”

  I let out a sigh and ground a palm at my temple. “Fine, what do I have to do?”

  “Option one, go ahead and finish digitizing all the files, with three backups, then shred the paper files.”

  I pointed to the cabinets, “Are they all full?”

  Dale nodded before turning to the empty wall opposite them. “We’ve only made it halfway through the conversion. This wall used to be full, too.”

  “Why the hell are there so many unsolved cases?”

  Dale looked nonplussed. “I take it you’d rather another option.”

  “Yeah, option one sucks.”

  “Good. Option two is to solve two minor cases.”

  I looked back at the wall of cabinets, then scanned the hard drives holding who knows how many more. “I could be here for a decade just trying to find two that struck me in such a way that I could pick it up and find the trail again. What’s option three?”

  Dale smirked. “Solve a high-profile case.”

  “Which are the ones that everybody has already tried to solve.”

  Dale shrugged. “They say a fresh eye never hurts.”

  “This is how you guys got the first half of the digitizing done, isn’t it?”

  He grinned. “You want to be a detective, so solve some cases.”

  I sighed and ground my hand into my temple again. “What’s the granddaddy of all the cases?”

  He smirked and pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket, holding it up in front of me. “I knew you were going to ask.”

  I smiled and went to grab it, but he lifted it away. My eyes shifted to his.

  “If you’re serious about taking a whack at it, then I feel like I should give you fair-warning, all things considered.”

  My brows creased. “Warn me about what?”

  “This is the serial killer your father copycatted.”

  My face fell, along with my voice, “What?”

  Dale’s hand drifted down to his side. “The Driveway Shooter.”

  I processed that. “A spur of the moment mistake justifies calling him a copycat?”

  Dale’s expression registered confusion. “When he got locked up for five years for attempted murder, it was because he followed the serial killer’s pattern.”

  I jerkily shook my head. “He followed the thought of vigilante justice. Not the full-on motive, at least not intentionally. And his timing was off.”

  “Um…” Dale tucked his lips between his teeth. I could
see the wheels turning in his head as he debated what to say next. “Have you… have you really never read your biological father’s criminal file?”

  “No. His crime was in the past. I read everything on the internet about the trial at the time, but his life is so quiet now, I haven't felt the need to dredge up his past.”

  Dale’s sigh was long. “Sit down,” he gestured to a chair as he took a seat in another.

  My gaze belied the cloak of the protective distrust I’d just wrapped around myself.

  “You were a kid, and I get that,” Dale said. “I’m sure they didn’t tell you the full story, because you were already going through enough, as it was.”

  I wrapped my hand around my water bottle, needing to hold onto something. “I knew enough at the time.”

  Dale scrubbed a hand over his chin and cheek. “Damn I hate to be the one to tell you this.”

  “How is it that you know all about it?”

  “Because we researched you up and down when we brought you in. And, hell, Penny, the first thing I did after I got into the force was to look up relatives and people that I knew, to find out who was hiding what.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want to risk running into the file on my mother’s accident.”

  Dale cleared his throat, “Okay, I suggest you read your father’s record. But, basically, he snapped. He was out on a drive, trying to quiet his mind, and stopped outside a bar. He was people watching. Saw a drunk girl almost get accosted by a drunk guy. She was saved from them, and then got behind the wheel, herself. Your father said there was something about her not wanting to become that guy’s victim, but not caring about making someone else become her victim.”

  “Because she was drunk driving?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. That matches the info I read in the trial transcripts, years ago.”

  He ignored that. “Anyway, something in him snapped and he followed the woman to her house. The police stopped him before he shot her.”

  “How did his lawyer prove that he was only attempting to copycat?”

  “Lots of little ways. Things like it wasn’t the right day of the week, as you said. His gun didn’t match, the killer was very routine-based, the center of the murders was off the mark from where he lived. There was plenty there to prove reasonable doubt. They chalked him up to a copycat, though he claimed he knew nothing about the killer targeting drunk drivers. I suggest you read the file, with police notations.”

  I nodded, thinking. “All they ever told any of us kids was that he’d relapsed into depression and had to be committed. I had to find out about the attempted murder on my own.”

  “Well, he was in a mental institution, not prison. He received intensive therapy for five years, where he became a stellar inmate. That’s why they let him out on parole after only five years.”

  “Is he still on parole? I mean, I talk to him and see him and all, but he never talks about anything to do with the charges, and I’ve respected his privacy.”

  “Yes, with a clean and solid parole record. Seems once he finally got it together, he was able to keep it together.”

  I looked at the hand Dale had fisted around the thumb drive. “Were there other suspects?”

  Dale shook his head. “They looked at a couple other people they thought capable of it, but no solid leads. The guys who busted your father really thought they were busting the serial killer. They walked around thinking they were going to get promoted, right up until the attorney general said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him for anything other than the attempted murder.”

  “So, despite all that, he’s still the number one suspect.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already thought of this. Poor Dad, after all he went through, he still had others’ lingering doubts haunting him.

  “Well, technically, but only because there’s nothing else to go on.”

  I put my hand out to him with a sigh. “Give me the drive.”

  “Didn’t you ever question why you and your bio siblings were never allowed any kind of contact, at all, once he got out?”

  “They said they wanted to shield us from any other relapses he might go on to have. That didn’t sit well with me. If he was deemed safe enough to be out on the streets, he should have been alright to at least visit.”

  “There isn’t anything else to find on him,” he thought to tell me. “And he didn’t actually commit the murder. He was mentally ill and took a long route to recovery, but he’s solid now. You don’t have to be afraid of what else you might find.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Can I have the thumb drive now?” I asked, putting my hand out again.

  “His name’s already been cleared of it,” Dale said softly.

  “But not really. Not if you felt the need to sit me down and go over his history before handing me the case. If I can solve it, I can get that one last cloud out from over his head.”

  He pushed the thumb drive up from his fist and held it out to me. “Do not make this personal. No one has been able to solve this in the past fifteen years. Do not get yourself so entangled that it takes over everything, do you hear me?”

  I reached up and snatched it from his hand before he could yank it away again. “It’s been personal for the past fifteen years, for him. All I want to do is take a whack at it.”

  Dale’s brow lifted, “Yeah, everybody does,” he murmured as he stood from the table.

  I rolled my eyes as I opened my laptop. Dale left the room, and I got to work.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Dad said with a bright smile when he opened the door to my knock.

  I stepped inside when he stepped back, closing the door behind me. Then I turned into his embrace.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, hugging me before pulling away.

  “Am I interrupting something?” I asked.

  “No, no. We need an excuse to stop working, anyway.” Dad waved me inside.

  I hung my jacket and purse on the pegs by the door and followed him into the kitchen.

  “Charlotte is working tonight, and Sophie has an evening class. But, please, stay for dinner.”

  Kelly looked up from stirring something on the stove. “Hey, sweetie,” she said with a smile.

  I shook my head, “You guys don’t have to feed me.”

  “What?” Kelly asked. “Your sisters aren’t here, so you can’t stay?”

  I smiled at her. “I didn’t mean to preoccupy your evening. I just wanted to talk to Dad for a minute.”

  Dad smiled knowingly, “Barbeque chicken, fried perogies with onions, corn on the cob, and watermelon.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Well, I mean, I guess I could text Logan and tell him to fend for his own dinner tonight.”

  “Tell him to come over,” Kelly said. “I was in the mood to cook and somebody besides us should enjoy it fresh. Your sisters will be getting it in leftover form.”

  “He’s working ‘til eight. He’ll just grab something on the way home.”

  “Well, grab a plate, it’ll be done in two minutes.”

  I shot off a quick text to Logan and pocketed my phone. He and I had been living together since college. He was interning at law offices while I was walking a beat. Dad had always told me he’d pay my way through school, but Sandy and Jake insisted on paying for my tuition, just as they had Sadie’s. So, Dad said he’d pay for an off-campus apartment for Logan and I. Sandy and Jake hadn’t been too pleased, but they also didn’t believe that high school sweethearts could make it for the long-haul and that I should ‘get out there’ and meet and date some other guys. Dad told me to follow my heart. As far as I was concerned, Logan had my heart, and that was that.

  Charlotte had left her group home the minute she turned eighteen, came to me, and I brought her to Dad. He talked her into attending college, and moved her in.

  Sophie, on the other hand, left her foster family at midnight, the day of her eighteenth birthday, and was on Dad’s doorstep by one a.m., with
a trash bag full of clothes and her other few possessions. She was still a senior in high school, and he gave her a car to drive back and forth every day, until graduation. She now attends the same local college that Charlotte does.

  All three of us were bridesmaids in Dad’s and Kelly’s wedding, two years ago. The rest of Dad’s employees serving as groomsmen. It’d been a small wedding, but memorable for all who had attended.

  And Conner and Chloe? Well, they preferred not to think of any of us as family. They were so young when everything went down, and had been with their adoptive family, ever since. That family was really the only one they remembered. I’d tried to get them to come here for a dinner, with all of us, but they had no interest.

  They wouldn’t even accept their afghans. Each of us had gotten ours for our eighteenth birthday. And we’d loved them, knowing both of our biological parents had worked to complete them. But Conner and Chloe’s blankets both remained here, still wrapped. Dad had said not to worry about it, that they’d be there if and when either one of them decided to come calling. He said the older you get, the more you question things like where you came from. He’d wait and be thankful for the three that he had managed to get back, to one degree or another.

  The three of us filled our plates and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “What did you need to talk to me about?” Dad asked.

  “Um,” I cut my eyes to Kelly and then back. “Maybe we can talk after dinner.”

  Dad shook his head. “Whatever we talk about, I’m just going to tell her later, so you may as well get it said now.”

  I settled my eyes on his. “You sure?”

  Something in his calm gaze faltered and he looked down to the table. “I wondered how long you could work as an officer before you read my file.”

  “I didn’t read it, Dad. I’ve been purposefully avoiding it. But I’m trying to get a detective position and I basically have to prove myself by solving an unsolved case, or two.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “What unsolved case do you need to talk to me about?”

  “The Driveway Shooter.”