False Positive

by Andrew Grant

  The woman had stayed ahead of the game for so long for a reason.

  Actually, for several reasons. She was smart. She was subtle. She was patient. She was organized. She was disciplined. And these were all traits that had enabled her to develop a set of rules, and to stick to them. It didn’t matter if she was tired. If she was hungry. If there was something else she’d rather be doing. If circumstances called for a particular response, she answered. Always. And without question.

  Until that morning.

  She knew there was a chance her vehicle had been spotted at the meeting she’d attended on Sunday night. She’d been the first to enter the diner. The other person could have been in the parking lot, waiting for her to arrive. Watching. Noting the details of her Mercedes. Gathering information. That’s what she’d have done, if the roles had been reversed. So according to her rules, she should switch to another vehicle. A clean one. Which would be easy to do, because she had one standing by, not far from the route she was on. A standard move in her rigorously prepared game plan.

  But nothing was standard anymore.

  She had a unique rendezvous coming up, and she could see that allowing someone else a hint of something familiar—even if it was just a car they recognized—could actually help her.

  She wasn’t breaking her rule, she reassured herself. She was flexing it.

  Giving herself an even greater chance of success.

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Tuesday. Morning.

  Ethan missing for eighty-six and three-quarter hours

  Bronson Segard was lying completely still when Devereaux stepped into his room in the hospital, thirty minutes later.

  Devereaux had given no thought to what he’d do if Segard had fallen into a coma or died. It was as if his brain had defaulted to a primitive, instant response mode, and was only capable of looking one step ahead at a time. When he saw the old man’s pallid, almost transparent skin it struck Devereaux that he might have made an error of judgment. But given he was there—and in the absence of other options—he figured he may as well soldier on.

  “Mr. Segard? It’s Cooper Devereaux. Do you remember me? I need to talk to you. Urgently. I need your help.”

  The old man didn’t respond.

  “It’s about my father.” Devereaux leaned in closer. “You knew him. He was your friend.”

  The old man showed no reaction.

  “Mr. Segard? Can you hear me?”

  There was still no answer. Devereaux was about to turn and head for the door, bereft of further ideas, when his eye settled on the monitor above Segard’s bed. The little dot had suddenly picked up the pace on its journey across the screen.

  “Mr. Segard, give it up. I can see your pulse rate increasing. I know you’re awake.”

  Segard opened his eyes.

  “Busted.” His voice was like a soft breeze blowing through dry grass. “Now knock off that needing-me bullshit. Accept it. You’re wasting your time. Look at me. I’m wasting away. How can I help you?”

  “I need your brain, not your body.” Devereaux perched on the edge of the bed. “I’m looking for information. About my father. To do with the night he was killed. I’ve seen the file. I read Tomcik’s report. And Jenner’s. And I need to know why what they said was wrong.”

  “I wasn’t Tomcik’s partner, back when your father bought the farm. And I never worked with Jenner. I don’t know what they wrote in those reports.”

  “Jenner was killed only a few weeks after my father. And it was the Kerr case, for Pete’s sake. It was huge. It made Tomcik into a rock star. You guys must have talked about it.”

  “Not really.”

  “I know you did. You came to my building. You gave me a warning. You said, If she finds out about your father. I figure the she is Loflin. But you know more. You know something, anyway. And whatever it is, I need you to tell me.”

  “What did Tomcik’s report say?”

  Devereaux told him, keeping as close to Tomcik’s words as he could remember.

  “That sounds like what happened.” Segard clasped his hands, making the tendons in his wrists stand out like wires.

  “No! Not you, too.” Devereaux felt like he was going crazy. “That is not what happened. The reports all said my father was killed at home. But he wasn’t. I was the one at home. And I was alone. Tomcik came and found me there, afterward. That’s when he told me my father had been killed. I remember it like it was yesterday. I still dream about it. And Jenner was with him when he pulled me out of the place I was hiding. So why would he lie in the report? Why would they both lie?”

  “Son, we need to step this back a little.” Segard started to wheeze. “First question. Have you found out about Madison Nesbitt?”

  “Yes, I have. But she’s dead. She was killed in a fire in 1975.”

  Segard shook his head, which made his snow-white hair rustle softly against the stiff pillowcase.

  “She—” Segard’s wheezing grew stronger, obscuring his words.

  “Was the daughter of a murderer,” Devereaux suggested, trying to pick up the thread.

  “That, too—” Segard broke off again, wracked by a fit of coughing. “Her father was a scumbag called Burke.”

  “Mitchell Burke.” Devereaux nodded, willing the old man to continue breathing long enough to finish the story. “He strangled a bunch of people.”

  “He did. Till Tomcik took him down. In ’68, I think. Madison was nine years old. She went into the system, and ended up in foster care. Tomcik made sure she went to a good family. Kind people. Had heaps of money, too, which was a bonus. They adopted her when she was ten. That’s when they changed her name to theirs. Nesbitt.”

  “She was born Madison Burke?”

  Segard nodded.

  “She had to go through life knowing her father was a serial killer?” Devereaux was horrified.

  “Yes.” Sadness spread across Segard’s face. “She was a difficult child. Trouble was never far behind her. She could never escape her genes, I guess. I wasn’t honestly too surprised when the fire happened. All those deaths. What a tragedy…Anyway, Tomcik learned. He had to break the cycle. So with you, he did things different.”

  “Because I was different.” Devereaux pushed himself away from the bed, sending an avalanche of fishing magazines sliding to the floor. “My father was a cop, like him. Like you.”

  “Your father was not a cop. He just wanted to be one. He bought an old Javelin squad car when the department was done with it. Lived in a cop neighborhood. Took a job as a security guard, so he could wear some kind of uniform. And he had to tell you something. He was always going out all night. You were a kid. You believed it. So Tomcik made it true. He fudged the paperwork. You could do that kind of thing, back then. He changed your last name, right away. Or more like, he gave you a last name. Your father had never enrolled you in school, so you’d never had much use for one. Tomcik made it look like you’d been a Devereaux all along. Part of a good Alabama family. Ties right back to the Bonapartists. Never a Kerr. He made you the son of a detective, Cooper. Of a hero. Not of a monster.”

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Tuesday. Morning.

  Ethan missing for eighty-seven and a quarter hours

  Devereaux had always made a point of only hurting people who deserved to be hurt.

  That had been his way even before he joined the police. Whether he’d been dealing with thieves. Bullies. Drug dealers. Muggers. Extortionists. Arsonists. Fraudsters. Rapists. Sadists. Killers. They’d all been bad people. They’d all had their punishments coming to them.

  But the truth was, Devereaux hadn’t ever been motivated solely by an urge to make a living. Or defend society. Even when he was in uniform. There was a part of him—if he was completely honest—that had always enjoyed the violence. He’d kept that fact in the shadows. Disguised it. Given it other names. But there was no hiding from it now. Segard had exposed everything. Devereaux didn’t have a cop’s blood in his veins. He had a murd
erer’s blood.

  Segard had been wrong about only one thing. Tomcik may have had the best of intentions. But the cycle of destruction hadn’t been broken.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Devereaux didn’t know how to form a noose, so he tied a Honda knot—the kind cowboys used to make lassos with in the Old West—then slung the rope over the beam in the center of his great-grandfather’s cabin.

  Except that it wasn’t his great-grandfather’s cabin anymore. It was somebody else’s great-grandfather’s cabin. To him, now, it was just a cabin. He had no business being there. He had no family ties to the place. The decaying wooden structure couldn’t magically connect him with any previous generations. And that was just as well, given what lurked in his DNA. He’d thought he was a good man. Or that he at least had the potential to be good. Because his father was good. But thanks to Tomcik’s meddling, Devereaux’s assumption was wrong. His logic was faulty. It was a false positive. His relatives were poisonous. Therefore he was poisonous. He could see that now. It wasn’t his foster families’ fault he’d gone off the rails in his younger years. His schools weren’t to blame, either. For his poor grades. His bad disciplinary record. The kind of people he hung out with. It was unavoidable.

  It was written in his genes.

  Looking back, the FBI had been right to reject him. They were the only ones who’d ever taken a proper look. They’d done the psychological tests. Picked up on his deficiencies. And seen what everyone else had missed.

  He was cursed. He contaminated everything he touched.

  The sooner the world was rid of him, the better off it would be.

  Chapter Seventy-five

  If everything was still on track, this would be the last stop she’d have to make.

  It had involved a slight detour to reach another Internet cafe, but the woman wanted to check on her webcams one last time. To be certain that everything was ready for their arrival, less than a hundred miles up the road. They were tantalizingly close. But she’d invested so much time and effort over the last few months it would be crazy not to take a few more minutes and make sure every detail was still perfectly on track.

  The woman was desperate for things to run smoothly, since she’d have company with her for the first time. She wanted the torch to be passed without a hitch. And she didn’t want to get bogged down in any avoidable snafus that could make her late getting to the girl’s house for the start of the next phase. The more time the girl spent with her mother, the more opportunities there’d be for the plan to be knocked off track.

  Normally the woman wouldn’t be too anxious about a thing like that. If something unexpected happened, she’d just wait. Retrench. Bide her time until the circumstances were to her liking. But now, time to wait was something she didn’t have.

  They’d been on the road since before dawn, so as soon as she was done with the computer the woman let the boy stretch his legs and use the restroom. She changed her wig and her cardigan, one last time. Made the boy change his shirt. Checked the car. Retrieved a discarded sweatshirt and his cuddly rabbit from the foot well and threw them in the trunk with the other things she’d need to dispose of.

  But she let him keep his little monkey.

  She was thorough. Not heartless.

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Tuesday. Late Morning.

  Ethan missing for eighty-eight hours

  Devereaux never got as far as putting his head through the loop in the rope.

  Would he have done it if the beam hadn’t collapsed when he tried to test its strength? He was adamant that he wouldn’t have. That the whole thing was symbolic. That it was just a way to help him get over the shock of learning about his heritage.

  A shaft of sunshine blazed into the room from a new hole that had been torn in the roof when the beam gave way. Devereaux lay on his back, pinned in place by pieces of the wooden framework and dislodged shingles, and stared up through the gap. He could see the blue sky, way above the cabin. Closer to him specks of dust and tiny fragments of wood floated aimlessly, trapped in the bright confines of the light. He stayed still, watching them drift. They were displaced and unwanted, just like him. But unlike him, they didn’t have a choice.

  He moved one leg, freeing it from the debris. He pulled the other one clear. Then he heard a car approaching. He threw off the rest of the clutter and a second later he was on his feet and heading for the door.

  He figured it would most likely be Lieutenant Hale. The officer at the archive must have realized he’d been played and raised the alarm. His lieutenant would have called Hale, out of professional courtesy. And she would have wanted to contain the damage. The worst case would be that she’d sent a pair of uniforms to bring him in, again. If so, he could get to the woods long before them. Retrieve his car. Head back to the archive. Return the file. And then, when he was ready, he’d face the music on his own terms.

  The engine note grew louder, but when the car appeared Devereaux could see it wasn’t Hale’s. Or a squad car. It was a Subaru station wagon. In dark green. It was moving fast. The driver was confident. Or reckless. A kid had probably stolen the car, and now was out to drive around until he wrecked it or got it stuck in a ditch. He’d probably pass right by—why would he be interested in a broken-down old cabin when he had someone else’s vehicle to play with?—but Devereaux reached for his Glock anyway, just in case. He held it ready, down at his side. Then he caught his first proper glimpse of the person behind the wheel.

  It was Loflin.

  Loflin, who’d killed Tomcik.

  Tomcik, who’d given Devereaux his name.

  Discovering the true identity of the man Tomcik had killed had thrown Devereaux for a loop, at first. But the reality had sunk in now. And he could see that nothing had really changed. Tomcik had stopped a serial killer. That was the bottom line. He was a cop. It was his job. Devereaux would have done the same thing, in his shoes. A murderer is a murderer, whoever his offspring may be.

  Devereaux felt the familiar calm clarity descend upon him. He understood what it was now. Where it came from. But he didn’t reject it. Or fight it. Even though he knew it was a murderer’s legacy. He saw that he could use it. He stepped back behind the cabin door and waited for Loflin to come closer. She had a debt to pay for what she’d done to Tomcik.

  But she also had Ethan.

  First things first.

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Tuesday. Late Morning.

  Ethan missing for eighty-eight and a quarter hours

  Loflin jumped out of the car, leaving the door open and the engine running.

  “Cooper? Are you here? It’s Jan. I need your help. Right now! I’m in a whole heap of trouble.”

  “I’m inside.” Devereaux kept an eye on her through a crack in the door.

  Loflin raced across the open ground toward the cabin. Devereaux waited for her to cross the threshold, then grabbed her by the hair. He pulled her forward and flung her against the wall. She slammed sideways into the wood and slid down to the floor. Devereaux picked her up. He hauled her to the couch. Pushed her face-first into the cracked leather surface. Put his knee between her shoulder blades to hold her in place. And jammed his gun against the base of her neck.

  “You kidnapped an innocent child, Jan.” He leaned down so that his mouth was near her ear, close enough that he could smell the lacquer in her hair. “You killed a retired cop. That’s two lines you can’t uncross. I could beat you to death and drag your body into town behind my car, and they’d still give me a medal. You know it’s true. But I’m a fair-minded guy. I’m going to give you a chance to avoid that happening. All you have to do is tell me where Ethan is.”

  Loflin started to mumble into the cushions so Devereaux let her raise her head a couple of inches.

  “I don’t have him.” She gasped for breath. “I didn’t take him. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “There was an eyewitness.” Devereaux pressed harder with the gun, breaking the skin and drawing a l
ittle blood. “At the hotel. The clerk I spoke to. David Day. The one you carefully avoided seeing on Sunday. He ID’d you from your photo. And Ethan’s clothing was found at your house. You can’t talk your way out of this, Jan. The time for bullshitting is over. Tell me where the boy is. If Ethan doesn’t walk away from this mess, neither do you.”

  “I can explain.” Loflin was almost shrieking. “This witness? Dave the clerk? I didn’t deliberately avoid him. And he didn’t identity me. He made a mistake. You need to listen. Because I know where Ethan is. Or where he’s going to be. Very soon. That’s why I’m here. Why I came to find you.”

  “Quit lying.”

  “I’m not lying! You want to know who kidnapped Ethan? It was my mother! She looks just like me. The clerk obviously mixed us up.”

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Rebecca Loflin.”

  “What was her maiden name?”

  “Rebecca Nesbitt. But she was born Madison Burke.”

  Devereaux let Loflin go. She flopped forward and sprawled on the couch for a moment. Then she rolled over, hauled herself upright, and turned to face him.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” Tears of frustration were starting to form in her eyes. “I’m not lying. I swear to you.”

  “Madison Burke’s dead, Jan.” Devereaux kept his voice calm and level. “She was killed in a fire. At the Nesbitt house. A few years after they’d adopted her.”

  “No.” Loflin was adamant. “She didn’t die. She survived the fire. She was the only one who did.”

  “The FBI says she died.”

  “What would they know? They weren’t there. The Nesbitts lived in the middle of nowhere. They had no neighbors. No family. No friends. The kids were home-schooled, so there were no teachers. My mother was practically the same age as her foster sister, Rebecca. She had no driver’s license. No photo ID was on file anywhere. Neither of them had ever been to a dentist’s office in their lives. So when the fire department finally showed up, she pretended to be Rebecca. No one ever knew the difference.”