There was something sad about that. Nick and Steve had each settled in a place they felt was home, but without a family to make it home.
They sat side by side without talking as the minutes ticked by. Nick hadn’t been to the coast since the last time he’d visited Steve. He found the rhythm of the ocean soothing, comforting. The anger he had walked across the sand with—anger at his brother for the situation and at himself for considering that Steve might be guilty—dissipated.
“What’d they take?”
“Your computer.”
“They were there a long time.”
“You told them they could search your apartment.”
“And see? They didn’t find anything because I’m innocent.”
Steve jumped up and started walking down the beach. Nick followed him.
“She was raped,” he said.
“Shit.” Steve paused in stride. “I didn’t do it, Nick. You have to believe me.”
“I want to help you, Steve. But you need to be completely honest with me.”
“What do you want from me, Nick? I told you everything I know. I didn’t kill Angie.” Steve stomped off again, and Nick trailed at a distance to give his brother time to cool off and think about the situation.
The differences between Nick and his brother didn’t elude him. Steve thrived here among the hordes of people, on the edge of a major city, where he couldn’t possibly know even a small fraction of the population by name. So anonymous, it made Nick uneasy, coming from a town where he could engage in a conversation with a stranger and learn that they had more than one mutual acquaintance.
Even now, in the middle of a murder investigation where he was a suspect, Steve waved to people he recognized, smiled, acknowledged peers. Like he was on stage, always on show. It was the old Steve coupled with a Steve he didn’t really know, and that bothered Nick.
Just how much had Steve changed since he left Montana?
Nick caught up with Steve and asked, “What do they want with your computer?”
“I don’t know. I guess to see where I’ve been, what I’ve done online. It’s actually really easy to track e-mail and Internet traffic. It should be a piece of cake for the police.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do they want to know where you’ve been online, what e-mails you sent? Why is your computer important to them?”
Steve paused. “Angie had an anonymous online journal. It was…irresponsible. I told her to tone it down, but she didn’t listen. I know that journal had something to do with her murder. I guess the police just want to make sure I didn’t say something incriminating online or threaten her or something. Or maybe they are looking for something like that to pin Angie’s murder on me, but I didn’t do it. And they’re not going to find anything that said I did.”
Steve sounded defiant, and Nick’s uneasiness grew. The police had mentioned the website. Nothing in detail. “I need to look at this journal.”
Steve shook his head. “There’s no reason for you to.”
“Dammit Steve!” Nick stopped walking. His brother turned around and glared at him. “You have to take this seriously,” Nick said. “Your ex-girlfriend was murdered. The police are looking at you. You have motive and no real alibi.”
“I had no motive to kill Angie! Whose side are you on?”
“I want to be on your side. I really do. But look at the facts. Angie was eighteen years old. You’re old enough to be her father. That’s—” Nick cut off what he was about to say, something that would be impossible to take back.
Instead, he softened his tone. “What’s going on with you, Steve? You’re not working, you’ve been going to school long enough to earn three degrees, and you’re dating college girls. You’re just shy of forty and your girlfriends can’t even legally drink!”
“Why are you judging me? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you know me?”
“I thought I did.” Nick hated the direction this conversation had taken, but he had no choice. The truth demanded that he push Steve.
“I don’t make it a habit dating girls at the college. Angie was the only one. It—I understand what you’re saying. Really. And you didn’t know Angie. She was different. She needed me. We hit it off.”
Nick wasn’t certain he fully believed Steve, but why would he lie?
“Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
Steve clenched his fists. “Do you think I did that to Angie?”
“No.” But Nick had waited a beat before answering, and Steve seized on it, his jaw tight but his eyes filled with hurt.
“You think I’m capable of that type of cruelty? That I could rape a woman? You think that of me? You really don’t know me.” Steve stared at the ocean, his eyes watery. “You don’t know me at all.”
“That’s not what I said—” Nick began, but Steve cut him off.
“I thought you were here to help me, Nick. I was wrong. I didn’t think I had to prove to my own brother that I’m innocent. Maybe you’re right, maybe I do need a lawyer. Because if my own flesh and blood believes me capable of murder, it’s no wonder the fucking police are trying to hang me.”
“That’s not how it works—”
Steve shook his head, waved his arm toward his apartment building up the beach. “Why don’t you go join your buddies who turned my apartment upside down? Skewer me because I’m the easiest to blame. And let Angie’s killer walk the streets free. Because the truth doesn’t mean anything, does it? As long as you guys have someone to throw in jail, the truth doesn’t matter.”
Steve turned and walked up the beach, back toward the apartment. Nick watched him, perplexed. What was that about? He replayed the conversation and didn’t see what he’d said to set off his brother. But the pressure of a police investigation, the stress of being a suspect, of having the police in your home, asking personal, embarrassing questions…maybe it had just gotten to Steve.
Steve had asked Nick for help and the only way Nick could do that was if he knew all the facts.
Nick understood why the police suspected his brother. Older man, much younger woman dumps him. Restraining order. There was more to that story than Steve let on. And Nick had to see Angie’s website to know exactly what the police had on his brother. And hope that Steve trusted him enough to be completely honest once his temper cooled down.
Steve jumped into a small, sporty car and drove off. Nick started back up the beach, noticed that the police vehicles were gone. He hoped the apartment door was unlocked. If not, he knew a few tricks. Hunger and weariness ate at him. It had been a long day and he needed to get off his feet. Or rather his knees. Walking on the beach had not been a wise move. He wanted his pain pills, but refused to give in to the need.
Nick slowly crossed the beach and opened the rental car, unzipped his shaving kit, and poured two prescription-strength Motrin into his hand. He swallowed them with the now cold coffee he’d picked up at the airport after he’d flown in, hours before, wincing at the foul taste.
Grabbing his bag, he started toward Steve’s apartment again. Grinding pain in his knees and ankles forced him to walk slowly.
He counted twenty-four stairs. There were twenty-two stairs in his house in Bozeman. He could have moved his bedroom downstairs to the guest room, but he had refused. It would have meant he’d been defeated by the pain, defeated by his mistakes, defeated by a killer.
He could do this.
One.
He put his right foot on the first stair, and pulled his left foot to stair two. Okay. The pain was minimal, but he had known it would be. His right knee hadn’t been as damaged as his left.
Bracing for the electric jolt he knew would come, he pulled his right leg up to the second stair.
His vision blurred and he took a deep breath.
He did four more stairs in the same fashion, trying to pick up the pace, until it became obvious that he wouldn’t make it, not like this. He swung the bag in his right hand to build mom
entum, then tossed it up the stairs, praying it would make it to the landing and not roll all the way down. It made it, barely.
He grabbed both railings and used them as crutches, putting more pressure on his right knee than he should, but relieving his left leg. He reached the top and sank down on the landing to catch his breath and wonder again what he was doing. Could he even catch the bad guys anymore?
Inevitably when he was in pain, self-pity took hold.
That’s it, Sheriff. Get off your ass.
Nick hauled himself up and shuffled across the balcony to Steve’s apartment. The door was locked, but not bolted, and Nick easily popped the old lock.
When Nick opened the door, he was surrounded by a bright, orange glow. It took a moment to realize the light came from the setting sun shining through the large, sliding-glass windows that made up the back wall of the apartment. The sun rested on the ocean in front of him, bleeding into the sea, the water sparkling like bursts of firecrackers.
Spectacular.
For a brief moment Nick forgot everything that troubled him. Before him the vast ocean unrolled endlessly, the sun illuminating everything in sight. The orange turned red as the sun rapidly sank lower, with finally just the tip visible on the calm water.
For a minute, a far too short time, Nick felt as peaceful as the glassy sea.
The sun disappeared. And while the colors were still vibrant, Nick saw that the ocean wasn’t as calm as he’d thought. Its waves crashed on the shore, the night claiming its time.
The mess of the police investigation brought home the reason he was here in the first place. He reluctantly turned from the view and dropped his bag by the door.
On the wall next to the door was a framed photograph of a former president of the United States handing a much younger Steve a commendation. Nick remembered that day nearly fifteen years ago. It had been before their parents died, shortly after he’d joined the police academy. Nick was idealistic and eager, and still thought he could convince his dad that he was just as heroic as Steve. That he, too, would have risked his life and saved those kids.
But Paul Thomas had only had faith in one of his sons, something Nick had never understood, and with his father ten years in the grave, he would never get the answers.
The one thing Nick could figure was that Steve had followed in their father’s footsteps. That he joined the army and moved up in the ranks. That he, too, had earned a Purple Heart. They had war stories to share, political discussions, a love of history.
Nick simply had a driving urge to right wrongs, and becoming a lawyer had seemed the perfect answer, until that day he knew he was destined to be a cop.
Some cops became cops because of tragedy, but Nick became a cop because of hope. He’d been at the police academy for a workshop on juvenile crime and gangs. One of the speakers was a kid, Jesse Souter, who’d grown up with a drug-addict mother and a petty thief of a father. Jesse’s time spent in and out of foster homes coincided with his parents’ prison stints. It was no wonder the kid had turned to crime.
But one day a Missoula beat cop had arrested Jesse for shoplifting a six-pack of beer and beef jerky. The five-dollar crime was a turning point. The cop befriended and guided Jesse, and showed him his own potential. Jesse grew up and became a cop himself.
He could have so easily gone the other way.
It was the hope that these kids could be helped, that all they needed was guidance and an example, that changed Nick’s career choice. He enrolled in the police academy the next day and never looked back, never doubted his decision. He couldn’t point to a Jesse during his tenure as a cop, but he knew he’d helped a few lost sheep find the right path. And that had been enough.
Looking around Steve’s apartment and the general mess left by the police, he thought that maybe he should have become a lawyer instead. Right now Steve needed a lawyer more than another cop.
Steve’s natural tidiness was still evident through the disturbance. Steve used the dining area as his office, and the empty place where his computer had sat looked particularly barren.
Along the walls of both the dining area and adjacent living room were framed articles. Dozens of them. Nick limped along, glancing at the headlines. Local soldier saves three dozen children. Sergeant Thomas brings fellow soldier to safety. Two presidential commendations for Thomas. Congressional Medal of Honor for saving schoolchildren.
And more. All the articles had pictures of Steve in uniform, all taken more than a dozen years ago.
Staring at the history of Steve lining the walls, he couldn’t help but wonder what Steve had really been doing for the past fourteen years since he left the military. He had no real job but collected a decent pension. He’d been going to college part-time for nearly ten years, dating a girl half his age, and getting wrapped up in a murder investigation.
The thought of Steve raping a woman made Nick physically ill. He wanted to stand by his brother, but if it were true Nick would walk away. He wouldn’t be able to look at the brother he’d long admired, long respected, and see in his face a rapist. A man no better than the Butcher.
Nick had told the two detectives the truth: if Steve was guilty, he would turn him in himself.
As Nick looked at the framed awards, the commendations under a spotlight, the newspaper articles and photographs, Nick wondered if he really knew his brother.
Every answer came back no.
TEN
ELIZABETH RIMES was the most beautiful creature on the planet. It was a shame she lived three thousand miles away.
She went to Atlanta Tech, which he’d discovered through a small picture on her online journal. She would never have expected anyone to research the statue in her photo’s background, discovering its history and location on the Atlanta Tech campus.
She lived in an apartment near the campus (“I bike to school every day. It’s a nice ride, not too far. But when it rains I take the bus.”) He figured out which Starbucks she frequented (“I sat and drank my latte and looked at the small lake. It’s peaceful here, I come by almost every day.”) Her favorite singer was Enya, her favorite color sky blue, her favorite movie Sleepless in Seattle.
He hadn’t seen Sleepless in Seattle until he read her journal, then he bought it. It was fate, an omen. The movie was about a long-distance relationship. A woman who was in love with a man she’d never met but felt she knew with all her heart and soul.
Just like he did about Elizabeth.
He had some money saved. He had it all planned. He’d register for classes at Atlanta Tech. Elizabeth had announced that she would be the teaching assistant for a computer design class in the fall. He would be in that class. Find an apartment near hers. Run into her at the Starbucks. Befriend her. Ask her out.
Kiss her. Touch her. Make love to her.
So beautiful. Long, long, soft blond hair. Sweet.
He’d been talking with her through her journal page for months. They’d become friendly and she had given him more details about her life, details that would help him track her down. He knew she had two cats. He pretended to have a cat, even took pictures of the neighbor’s cat to send to her, but truth was he hated them. Dirty animals who licked their butts and ate rotten food. Disgusting.
But Elizabeth loved cats, and so he pretended to. He looked at the picture of Elizabeth with her cats on her journal page and grimaced. One of them had its filthy tongue out and was about to lick her cheek.
When he arrived in Atlanta, the cats were the first thing that had to go. He’d taken care of the beasts before, he would happily do it again. She would never know what happened to them.
He clicked on the message icon for Elizabeth and wrote a message. It was perfect, and he knew she would respond.
Hi Elizabeth. I’m sorry I haven’t been around for the last couple days, but I had some sad news. Remember I told you about my cat Felix? I sent you his picture last month, he’s black and white and very friendly. Well, he was hit by a car Sunday and I took him to the vet but t
hey couldn’t do anything. He died this morning.
I miss him already. The car didn’t even stop.
I wanted to share with someone. My roommate never liked Felix and doesn’t care that he’s gone.
I knew you would understand. How are Scooter and Belle? I hope they’re doing well.
By the way, I’m thinking of transferring to Atlanta Tech in the fall. I applied in the computer engineering department and my professor here gave me a terrific letter of recommendation. Do you know anything about AT? If you don’t, that’s okay.
Talk to you later, I’m going to take Felix’s food and toys to the SPCA, maybe they can use them. Maybe I’ll come back with another cat, though I don’t think anyone can replace Felix.
Your friend.
He signed off with his auto-signature and the avatar of a bouncing smiley face.
If this didn’t work, there would soon be a time when she would let him know everything. He’d make certain of that.
Angie had told him things because he was safe. She trusted him. And she betrayed him by whoring around.
Slut.
He glanced up, wondering if he’d spoken out loud. But no one looked at him. The library was quiet, everyone studying. Normally he wouldn’t go to the library to go online—he didn’t have to, he had a great setup at home—but there was a pretty girl he liked to look at. She worked part-time Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Becca. Not as pretty a name, not as pretty a girl, as Elizabeth, but she was close. So he came to the library when she worked just to look, to hold her image close to him so when he went home he could picture her. Her wide mouth, red lips, sweet smile. He wanted to kiss her, but he never approached her. Twice, she’d come to him to gather books off the table. She smiled at him, murmured hello, complimented his shirt.
When he first met Angie, she was also nice to him. She talked to him, actually seemed interested in what he had to say.
She was a liar. When he’d found her MyJournal page the fantasy that was sweet Angie vanished. He was devastated, livid. She was a whore, a slut, just like the woman who’d turned against his father.
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