Forgotten Pieces

by Tyler Anne Snell

  “Matt’s going to be here?”

  Maggie didn’t miss the extra infusion of excitement at the mention of his name. Another point of endearment for the man she’d finally opened herself up to.

  “Yes, sir! It looks like we beat him, though, so you’re going to have to entertain yourself with the TV while I talk to Mr. Meyers, okay?”

  “Kinda like I’m on a case?”

  Maggie laughed. There was no mystery where that talk had come from. Or who.

  “Yeah, kind of like you’re on a case.”

  Cody nodded, serious. But then he lowered his voice.

  “Who is Mr. Meyers?”

  Maggie opened the screened-in porch’s door. She dropped Cody’s hand to keep it from falling over. Someone had knocked it off its hinges.

  Seth.

  It reminded her that while she wanted answers, she’d forgotten the shape that Dwayne must have been in. How he looked. And how that might scare her son.

  Maggie paused before knocking on the front door. She bent down and looked Cody in the eyes.

  “I want you to know that Mr. Meyers might not look that great right now,” she started, trying to choose her words carefully. “He got hurt recently and probably has a lot of bruises and cuts, but he’s okay now. He just looks worse than he is.”

  Cody’s innocent eyes widened.

  “How did he get hurt?”

  Maggie had always tried to tell the truth to her son and so she made no exception here.

  “A bad man was angry at him.”

  “And he hurt him?”

  “Yes, but the bad man is gone now. He won’t hurt him or anyone else again. Okay?”

  Cody nodded. Maggie kissed his forehead and stood tall again. She ruffled his hair and turned toward the front door.

  “But why did he hurt him?” Cody asked.

  Maggie froze, fist in midair.

  “What?”

  “Why did the bad man hurt Mr. Meyers?” he repeated.

  Maggie opened her mouth but no answer came out.

  She didn’t have one.

  Why had Seth beaten Dwayne?

  She knew that Seth didn’t kill women but why hadn’t he killed Dwayne? Beating him to a pulp with a bat still riled up local law enforcement so why hadn’t he just finished the job?

  And why had she been at Dwayne’s to begin with?

  A sinking, sick feeling began to fill her stomach.

  Maggie took a step back from the door as the one lone detail from the week before filtered in. It wasn’t a memory but it was a fact.

  “Oh, God.”

  Maggie grabbed Cody’s hand again and spun around. She pulled him along with her so hard that he stumbled. She didn’t have time to explain to him why they were leaving when they’d just gotten there.

  They just needed to leave.

  Now.

  Because Maggie knew without a doubt that Seth hadn’t used the bat on Dwayne.

  She had.

  Which meant they hadn’t been invited over for the truth. He’d invited her over to silence it. And she’d been stupid enough to fall for it and, worse, bring her son.

  Maggie fumbled with her keys, her hands already shaking from the new dose of adrenaline raging through her.

  But for the third time in one week, someone had a different plan for her.

  She heard the footsteps too late.

  The last thing she remembered before everything went black was Cody screaming.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Light.

  Bright, blinding light.

  Maggie tried to blink it away. When that didn’t work she tried to bring her hand up to shield her eyes. The movement almost made her sick. Not only from pain but from fear.

  Because she couldn’t move much at all and she couldn’t understand why.

  “And here I thought you weren’t going to wake up.”

  Maggie blinked again until her focus finally adjusted. She was sitting on a bed, legs stretched out in front of her. She could move them but barely. Duct tape was wrapped around them, making her feel like she was in a cocoon. Her hands weren’t better off. The unmistakable coldness of cuffs pressed against her wrists.

  Those details alone would have put her in a panic but the way Dwayne Meyers was smiling at her, sitting in a chair in the corner, turned her body to ice.

  “Where’s Cody?” she rasped out.

  How long had she been unconscious?

  “Don’t worry, he’s in the guest bedroom watching TV. It was the only thing that would stop him from whining.” There was such disgust in his words that Maggie panicked.

  “Cody?” she yelled out. “Cody?”

  “Mom!”

  It was faint but he was definitely in the house.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, looking away from Dwayne’s obvious annoyance.

  “No,” Cody answered. “I’m scared!”

  Maggie’s heart threatened to break in half at his words.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” she tried.

  Dwayne let out a too-loud sigh. He leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees.

  “Now tell him if he doesn’t keep quiet, I’m going to kill you in front of him,” he said. “You don’t have to say that verbatim but I suggest you run that point home.” His words were less words and more of a hiss. A dark, evil hiss. One Maggie believed.

  “Hey, little dude, I’m going to need you to be really quiet right now,” Maggie said. Her voice wavered but she powered through. “So don’t say anything else until I come in there, okay?”

  “Okay,” he answered. It was small. Scared.

  The cold that permeated Maggie’s body heated in anger at the sound. She turned her gaze back to the man who held the forgotten pieces of her memory.

  She’d seen the pictures of Dwayne on the floor, bloody and unconscious, but it was nothing like sitting in front of the real thing. Bruises, dark and bright and varying shades between, covered his face, arms and neck. His nose had been broken and sat at an odd angle. He was still in pain. A lot of it.

  That much she could tell for certain.

  Which only added to the anger he seemed to have for her.

  “You’re admiring your handiwork right now, aren’t you?” he asked, motioning to his face. The bruises there were the darkest. “You sure caught me by surprise when you decided to use me as batting practice. I didn’t expect you to have any fight in you past your sarcastic comments.”

  Maggie took a small breath, trying to calm her racing heart. She needed to stay focused. Stay alert.

  “I don’t remember doing it,” she said. “I don’t remember last Wednesday at all.”

  The man snorted. Even that small bit of movement seemed to hurt him.

  “That’s what I heard. Apparently, Seth hit you a little too hard.” He smiled. If you could even call it that. “Or not hard enough, if you ask me. The damned fool always did have a soft spot for women. I heard what happened to him, too. Can’t say I’m sorry about it. Just another no-good killer off the streets.”

  That earned a few words from Maggie.

  “And what are you?” she asked. “Are you a killer, Dwayne?”

  He eased back in his chair, his smile sharpening.

  “You really don’t remember anything, do you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You couldn’t let the truth go and then it let you go. How much fun is that?” He repositioned himself again, like he was trying to get comfortable. Maggie couldn’t imagine that he could, given his injuries.

  The injuries she had inflicted on him.

  “You know you’re a lot like her in that respect,” he continued. “Erin, I mean. She also couldn’t stop digging—couldn’t let the truth go—and look where that got her. Dead on the side of the road.”

/>   “It was you,” Maggie guessed. Dwayne didn’t just have the missing piece, he was the missing piece. “Erin saw you in the truck before you went after her. She was waving at you.”

  Dwayne laughed. It was crude and cold and felt wrong in every fiber of her body to even hear.

  “Which is what you figured out last week,” he said. “In fact, we’ve already had this conversation. So let me skip ahead to answer a few more of your questions. It was me who was driving Ken’s truck that night. It was me who ran her over. And it was me who framed drugged-out-of-his-mind Ken. Then I just walked away.”

  Maggie couldn’t stop a small gasp from coming out. Picturing Erin’s body lying in the street like some forgotten rag doll. He talked about killing her like she had been nothing more than a piece of debris that had fallen out of some truck’s bed. And then he’d just walked away.

  “You didn’t look so surprised the last time I told you this,” he continued. “But I guess this time you found a different set of clues. To be honest, I thought I’d gotten rid of all of Erin’s evidence into Seth.”

  “So she figured out you were helping Seth, tried to take you both down, and you killed her for it.”

  “Oh, on the contrary, I didn’t even know who Seth was until Erin came along.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Dwayne’s smirk was back in full force.

  “Erin was a very singular woman. She had this sixth sense about people. I swear, if you had a secret, she could sniff it out just from a few minutes of talking to you. So when Seth started working at the hospital, she started to suspect he wasn’t who he said he was. It probably didn’t help that he was a grade-A idiot when it came to keeping all of his identities in order. I mean, sure, the first two times he was okay but by the time he became Seth he was having some issues keeping all his lies straight.” He shrugged, dismissive. Like it was no big deal he was talking about a serial killer taking people’s lives and then living them. “Either way Erin asked to meet me one night in private. Matt was in the middle of helping with some stressful cases at the department, the kind that kept him up all night, and was strung out and sliced thin, and she said she didn’t want to add to his stress until she had proof. Concrete proof. She was like that. Always worried about people worrying but also unable to let go of things she had no business grabbing in the first place. So she told me what she knew about the man and I told her I’d look into it.”

  Dwayne paused and cracked his neck. Although his tone was calm, Maggie could feel the mounting anger behind his words.

  “And I did. I looked into it and went straight to the source. I cornered that weasel after one of his shifts and asked him everything I could. And by God if he didn’t crack. Laid out the whole truth right at my feet.” He chuckled. “I remember thinking, ‘How can this guy, this little idiot of a man, pull off what he’s been pulling off for almost a decade?’ So I asked him. You couldn’t find a more surprised man than me in that room all those years ago when he started talking about how he’d been living off his old identities’ accounts, sucking them dry and then moving on.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “He even showed me on his phone all the money he had earned being Seth. The man was nearly a self-made millionaire just by hacking and killing nobodies.” Dwayne’s nostrils flared. His lips thinned. His smirk long gone. He tapped his chest with his index finger. “When I’d been breaking my back for the department for years and barely getting by?” He shook his head. “No. Not me. Not anymore. Not then, not now, not ever again.”

  “He bribed you to keep quiet,” Maggie whispered. She felt sick.

  “No, ma’am,” he was quick to respond. “I took what I was due from someone who found a way around the system. He didn’t fight me and I didn’t rat him out. We had an understanding.”

  “The only problem was Erin.”

  Maggie hated saying the words but knew them to be true. The reason she’d lost her life hadn’t just been Seth’s self-preservation. It had also been because of Dwayne’s greed.

  “She hadn’t told anyone else and I already had what I thought was all of the evidence she’d collected. Plus, Seth was too weak to shut her up. So I did what had to be done.” His anger ebbed. Maggie’s stomach rolled when she recognized pride starting to bolster the man up. “I waited a few months, making sure you stayed in your lane and didn’t find anything out, and then I retired. Easy as pie.”

  “How could you do that to Matt?” Maggie had to ask. “He looked up to you and still does. You’re his mentor. His friend. How could you hurt him like that?”

  “Listen, I still care about that boy,” he said, hands up in defense. “Hell, I’m even going to feel bad about what I’m sure I’m going to have to do to him when I’m done with you, but back then? I wasn’t about to let his nosy wife stop me from taking an opportunity I sorely deserved.”

  Maggie listened to every word he said but was still stuck on one part.

  When I’m done with you.

  It made the fear and anger in her chest turn to panic. Not for her but for her son.

  And for Matt.

  “He’ll come for you. Matt will. He’ll come for me and my son.” Tears started to prick the edges of Maggie’s eyes. Still, she persevered. “And when he comes, he’ll bring hell to your doorstep for what you’ve done.”

  Dwayne didn’t waste a breath.

  He smiled.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  * * *

  MATT WASN’T SEEING RED. He was seeing blood.

  After his call with Kortnie he’d barely made it out of his driveway before another call had come in. It hadn’t been a good one. Apparently, Dwayne hadn’t just woken up. He’d left the hospital, but not until he’d shot two people and killed a cop in the process.

  Matt had called Maggie before he’d even processed the shock of the news. When she hadn’t answered, he’d called in Deputy Carrington, who lived across the street from Maggie.

  She wasn’t home.

  The house was empty.

  Matt realized then that he already knew where she might be. Dwayne had played them. Something Matt guessed Maggie had figured out before she’d lost her memory. Which meant that Dwayne either thought he had a loose end to take care of before he bolted, or he wanted something else. Something more simplistic.

  Revenge.

  Matt slammed his hands against the steering wheel.

  He couldn’t pretend to know or guess at Dwayne Meyers’s state of mind anymore. The man had been his mentor. That mentor had just shot a civilian and then killed a good cop. Which meant he was more than capable of killing a good woman.

  And probably already had.

  Erin.

  Matt took a deep breath, trying to keep his rage under wraps. It was a hard feat, considering the car he saw parked behind Dwayne’s house as he pulled up. It was Maggie’s.

  Suddenly everything felt different. Looked different. The house he’d once found comfort in at times when he needed a friend was now dark. Filled with an evil Matt had been too blind to see.

  He cut the lights and stopped the Jimmy out far enough that it couldn’t be seen from the front windows. He pulled out his phone and texted Billy that Maggie was there.

  That she was with Dwayne.

  A man neither of them knew anymore.

  Matt pulled out his gun and checked the clip. His phone started to ring before he could open his door. It was Billy and Matt knew what he’d say if he answered.

  Wait for us.

  But Matt wasn’t going to do that.

  Instead, he left his car as quietly as he could and moved across the lawn, ready for anything.

  The screen door on the patio was still broken. It would make noise if he moved it to get to the door. He knew Dwayne wasn’t one to lock his windows, so he used that fact to his advantage. Slowly yet as quickly as he could, Matt went to
the first window.

  The living room looked the same as it had the week before when he’d first found Dwayne and Maggie unconscious. Neither were there now. He continued moving along the house until he was at the small bathroom window. With the foundation already raised a foot, he had to rise up on the tips of his toes to see inside. It, too, was empty. Next was the guest bedroom. It was small. Matt doubted if he was holding Maggie that he’d do it in there. Still, with the mind-set of no stone going unturned, he looked in through a part in the blinds.

  Fresh rage nearly compelled Matt to fling the window open.

  Cody was sitting on the bed, hands and legs bound. The TV in the corner was on. Maggie wasn’t with him. Neither was Dwayne.

  Matt knew that it might have been the wiser of choices to keep looking to see where Dwayne was. However, one look at Cody, small and with duct tape on his skin, and nothing could have made him leave. He only prayed the window was unlocked.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I still don’t understand what led me back here last week.”

  Dwayne stood, tall and proud despite his pain. Threats of Matt and the rest of the department swarming in had fallen on deaf ears. Though his distaste for what he was about to say was clear. His frown was deep as he explained.

  “You found Erin’s secret stash and started poking around Seth. He can kill people no problem, but the man gets jumpy when cornered. You asked a few too many questions and he went squirrelly. So he tried to convince you that Erin did suspect him but had it wrong all those years ago. He told you not to worry because I’d already questioned and cleared him before Erin’s death.”

  “Which I knew was a lie,” Maggie said.

  He nodded.

  “But you didn’t suspect my involvement then. You just thought it was a piece of the mystery you’d somehow missed. I told you we needed to meet in person to get all the details ironed out. You weren’t happy about my meeting place but you didn’t argue, either.” That’s why Maggie wound up at the hotel. That’s who she had been meeting.