The drive to the work address imprinted on Alice Sullivan’s W-2 forms took longer than the flight. Despite the full color GPS unit on the dashboard, Charley missed the building the first time around because it had been abandoned and left in disrepair.
“I’m asking for directions,” she announced, looking at Nick. She expected to be confronted with the typical male reticence, since in her experience, men drove, they didn’t inquire. Even her brother was like that.
But Nick just waved her on, directing her attention to a group of bicyclists up ahead who might be able to help.
Not your typical male, Charley thought as she honked the car’s horn. The bicyclists all pulled over to the side of the road.
Only one of the bicyclists was acquainted with the church she was asking about.
“They’ve built a new one closer to the center of the town,” the woman told her. “There’s talk of tearing the old one down, but nobody can get the minister’s wife to move.”
Charley exchanged looks with Nick. “The minister’s wife still lives there?”
The young blonde bobbed her head. “Mrs. Sykes. The church committee felt sorry for her. Her husband disappeared and her son ran off somewhere, oh, maybe five, six years now. It’s straight back down the road you came. Can’t miss it.”
“Want to bet?” Nick murmured under his breath.
“You didn’t see it, either,” Charley pointed out as she turned the car around again.
“Got me there,” he admitted.
Charley pulled the sedan up a weed-encrusted driveway, parking the car before a run-down building that looked as if it had come straight out of some second-rate horror movie. It was badly in need of paint and several pairs of loving hands to replace loose boards and missing shingles.
She realized she was looking at the same church that had been in the photograph.
“I think I saw this one in The Amityville Horror,” Nick commented, leading the way up the cracked walk. “The first sign of a spinning head and we’re out of here.”
“That was in The Exorcist. I think you’re mixing your horror movies,” she told him. What kind of a person lived in a place like this? she wondered.
A person who raised a serial killer.
The bell was broken, so she knocked. And then Nick tried when there was no response. Finally, someone approached the door.
An older version of the woman in the photographs Bill had discovered opened the door. She stood barring the way with her heavyset body, her eyes cold and assessing as she looked first at her, then at Nick.
Her breath was stale, like lost years, when she spoke. “If you’re here to sell me something, I don’t have any money. If you’re here to rob me, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“Mrs. Sykes, I’m Special Agent Dow, this is Special Agent Brannigan—”
“I didn’t ask for any agents, special or otherwise,” she said, slamming the door in their faces.
“Not exactly the last word in friendly,” Nick commented.
“We can come back with a warrant, Mrs. Sykes.” Charley addressed her warning to the door, raising her voice. After a beat, it opened again. Edith Sykes shifted her piercing, disapproving blue eyes from one face to the other and then back again.
And then she surprised them by sighing and shaking her head. It was as if all the fight had suddenly and inexplicably drained out of her.
“You’re finally here,” she said with both anger and resignation in her voice. “I’ve been waiting for you for six years.” As if consulting with her own inner voice, she stood undecided before them, and then stepped back. “Come in.”
It was a cold house. Charley felt it instantly. The house was filled with shadows and the ghosts of unhappy hours that had somehow knit themselves into a sorrowful lifetime. A house where love was not even an invited guest or an occasional intruder.
Mrs. Sykes closed the door softly behind them. “You’re here about Ronald, aren’t you?”
Charley and Nick exchanged glances. It was Nick who asked, “Ronald?”
“My son.” The words came out as if she was uttering a curse in mixed company. “I always wanted a daughter. But I got Ronald. A male. Just like his father.” Her mouth was pinched. The condemnation said it all. The woman raised her chin with an air of superiority that her parishioners must always have resented. “Robert got what he deserved, you know. Nothing short of that. Ministers are supposed to be good, not weak.”
“And what is it that your husband deserved?” Nick asked the woman.
There was malice in the blue eyes. “To burn in hell with his whore for all eternity.”
“Did you kill them?” Charley asked in the same voice she might have used to ask the woman if she had received the morning newspaper.
Mrs. Sykes glanced at her in surprise. And perhaps a little sadness. “Me? No. I wanted to, but no, I left that to God and he used his instrument.” There was something incredibly chilling about the smile on the woman’s face. Seeing it, Charley had to concentrate in order not to shiver. “He used Ronald.”
“And what did Ronald do?” Charley asked.
“What he had to do,” Edith snapped. “What needed to be done,” she said a little more softly. “Oh, he babbled about saving them after it was over. About having no choice because their souls would be lost otherwise, but I knew better. They had no souls.” She enunciated each word with the same amount of emphasis. “They were just evil and evil should never see the light of day.”
She continued ranting, her voice and zeal growing until she looked and sounded almost possessed. Charley remained silent, giving the woman center stage, letting her talk until they had what they needed. Edith Sykes did not disappointment them.
The story emerged in full regalia. Her “pathetic” son, as she referred to him, had adored his father and tried in every manner to cull the reverend’s favor. For all of Ronald’s efforts, Robert Sykes barely noticed his son.
“He did, however, notice his slut of a secretary,” Edith said, her mouth turning down. “When Ronald found the two of them having sex in the back of the church early one Sunday morning like two dogs in heat, he killed them both. I found him there, standing over their bodies, crying like the weakling he was. He was talking to his father as if Robert was still alive. As if he could explain his behavior.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Nick asked.
Edith eyed him. “And have them cause a scandal for me as their last act of defiance? Not very likely.”
“What did you do with the bodies?” Charley asked matter-of-factly.
“I had Ronald get rid of them.”
“Where?” Nick pressed.
There was hostility in her voice at his tone. “In the basement. Robert was to pour a new floor for me. There was some cement left over. He and his whore are under it now,” she informed them smugly.
“How did you explain that your husband was missing?” Charley asked.
“I told people that the Reverend had been called away, transferred to another parish back east and that I didn’t want to leave. I was born near here, you know,” she said with an air of someone who expected her every movement to be observed and preserved. And then she shrugged. “Ronald took off not long after that. Not so much as a Christmas card from him in all these years.” Everything in her manner condemned the child she’d given birth to. “Just like his father,” she repeated.
They let her talk longer, but she had little to add. For the most part, she repeated what she had already said. With each pass, she sounded more incoherent, more fanatical.
When Mrs. Sykes finished, Charley put in a call to the local police to have the woman arrested as an accessory after the fact. Given her mental state and her rage, Charley felt fairly confident that the late Reverend Sykes’s wife had earned herself a padded cell.
“IT’S ALMOST ANTICLIMACTIC,” Nick commented as they disembarked from their plane at John Wayne Airport. It was a good five hours after they had boarded it for Bakers
field.
He took the words right out of her head, Charley thought. Walking through the noisy terminal, she glanced at him and smiled.
“I know, after all this time, waiting, trying to find just a shred of evidence, suddenly it all comes tumbling together. Kind of takes your breath away.”
“My breath’s more stable than that,” he commented. And then he looked at her. “It takes more than that to take mine away.”
She had no explanation, or excuse, for the little thrill that shimmied up and down her spine. “Like what?”
He stopped just past the electronic doors that let them out to the parking lots. “Like you.”
Because the notion of what was behind the words unsettled her, Charley tried to shrug it off. “You’re punchier than I am.”
“Doesn’t change the facts,” he said softly.
If he kept talking like that, she was going to jump him, right there, right now, with a terminal full of people as witnesses.
“Look, why don’t you pack it in?” she suggested as a last-ditch attempt to save herself. “You’ve earned it, doing the knight-in-shining-armor bit, coming to my rescue and all.”
“What about you?”
The Robert Frost poem about having miles to go before he slept raced through her brain. “I’ve got one more stop to make.”
“The office?” he guessed.
“No, they’ve got everything they need right now.” She approached the car. They’d come here in hers, so she was going to have to drop him off before she went where she needed to go. “This is personal.”
“So are car accidents.” He positioned himself on the driver’s side. “You navigate, I’ll drive.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “You saying I’m too tired to drive?”
If she was spoiling for a battle, she was going to have to fight it alone. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
She gave it thought—exactly five seconds—and then opened the passenger door. “If I wasn’t so tired, I’d argue with that.”
“Good, get in the car.” Sliding in himself, Nick watched as she buckled up. “Where to?”
She gave him the address to the psychiatric hospital that had been her mother’s address for the past five years. Nick made no comment as he nodded and pulled out of the lot.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHARLEY DID HER BEST, under the circumstances, to talk him out of coming into the hospital with her. Admittedly, she was too drained to put up a decent fight.
She said as much when he pulled the car up into a parking space. “This isn’t fair, you know. You’re taking advantage of the fact that I’m having trouble thinking straight.”
He shrugged carelessly. “I use what I can.”
So she gave in even though her pride told her that she should have stood her ground. Because this was so very personal, so very private.
But because it was so personal, there was this need inside of her to hold on to something. To hold on to someone.
Even so, she had her doubts as she walked in through the front entrance of the squat, two-story building that did its best to put on a cheery face and pretend that all was well within.
It wasn’t and everyone knew.
Charley never felt more naked than when she came to visit her mother. She could feel every one of her emotions exposed for all to see. But because she was Charley, she gave it one more shot. Nick was as tenacious as she was, a disturbing thought if ever there was one.
“I don’t see why you won’t stay in the car. I won’t be long,” she promised, her words almost echoing down the long, winding corridor as she led the way to the room where her mother existed. She couldn’t truthfully refer to it as the room her mother lived in because her mother wasn’t really living. Claire Dow was in a place somewhere in between the living and the dead, a limbo created for the soul that hadn’t quite left the body yet.
Nick noticed that she had picked up her pace. He matched it.
“I don’t like sitting in cars,” he told her. “It’s too much like a stakeout. Besides,” he added after a momentary internal debate about the wisdom of giving voice to his concern, “you look like you might need the moral support.”
Charley slowed down. She didn’t know whether to feel touched or invaded. “This is my mother, not my father. She never uttered a harsh word to anyone, least of all to me.”
“That’s why I figure you might need the support. Because it hurts to see her like this.”
Charley did her best to hide the effect his words had on her. She’d never had anyone care like that before. She’d even shut her old partner out on this level. But there was no shutting out Nick.
“Wow, one course in Bureau profiling and you think you can read everyone.”
“Two courses.” He held up two fingers. “And not everyone. Just you, Special Agent Dow. Just you.”
The way he looked at her, she could almost believe him. Her mouth felt dry. “Lucky me.”
They’d reached her mother’s door and Charley hesitated before it, the way she always did. Not because she wanted to turn on her heel and run, but because she was bracing herself.
And then she glanced at Nick, about to make one last appeal for him to remain outside. Or better yet, to say she’d decided to come back tomorrow because she was too tired for this.
“If you’re going to say you’ve changed your mind, I’m not buying it.” Leaning over her, Nick knocked once, then turned the knob and opened the door.
Sunlight streamed into the room, bathing everything it touched in shades of gold. Claire Dow sat by the window. Her face was turned toward the sun, but she seemed to be in the shade. It was as if the rays couldn’t quite penetrate the shield of sorrow that surrounded her like an invisible veil.
Charley approached quietly, on the balls of her feet, as if any undue noise would disturb the silent woman in the armchair.
“I brought someone with me, Mama.” Her voice was so soft Nick had to concentrate to hear her. Moving so that she could be in her mother’s line of vision if the woman turned her head, Charley introduced him. “This is my partner, Special Agent Nick Brannigan.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Dow.” He moved forward, just to the left of Charley, and took the woman’s hand in his. He kissed it, then gently placed it back in her lap.
Charley thought she saw something flicker in her mother’s eyes but knew it was just wishful thinking on her part.
“Your daughter’s a very good FBI agent, Mrs. Dow,” Nick said to her mother. “She keeps me on my toes constantly.”
Claire continued looking out the window.
Charley pressed her lips together, wondering if any of the words she was about to say would get through to her mother, or if, like every other time, they would float aimlessly through the air. She knew in her heart that if this news had come five years earlier, it might have meant all the difference in the world. It might have saved her mother from this living tomb.
“We got him, Mama. We got the man who killed Cristine. And it wasn’t a mistake.” Charley dropped down to her knees beside her mother’s armchair, the way she used to when she was a little girl. She placed her hand over her mother’s, trying desperately to reach her, to somehow bridge the gap that only seemed to grow wider each time she came here. “It wasn’t me he was trying to kill. It’s not my fault that she’s gone, Mama. It’s not.”
It was a plea, a plea for her mother’s forgiveness. A plea to her mother to have her return.
And then Charley felt hands coming around her. Felt Nick carefully raising her to her feet. As she allowed herself to be helped, she realized there were tears on her cheeks.
Realized it at the same time that Nick saw them. Before she could brush the tears away, he had tilted her head toward him. Very gently, using his thumb and knuckles, he did away with the evidence.
“C’mon,” he whispered softly, urging her to move toward the door. “Give your mother a little time to absorb what you just told her.”
/> If only, she thought. If only it was just a matter of time and nothing more.
Charley shook her head, struggling to keep fresh tears from seeping through. “I don’t even know if she heard me.”
Nick checked the older woman’s profile. “She heard.” Something within his gut told him that he was right.
But Charley wasn’t sure. “I wish I could believe that.”
Taking her hand, Nick looked at her. His eyes held hers. “She heard, Charley,” he repeated. “She heard.”
Charley clutched the thought to her.
They were almost at the door, about to open it, when the words “not your fault” seemed to softly float through the air.
Charley’s heart stopped. She looked at Nick, her eyes wide. He was as surprised as she was, and then he simply looked pleased. Like someone whose faith had been rewarded. He nodded, confirming what she was afraid to ask.
Charley looked past his shoulder toward her mother. “Mama?”
But the woman at the window continued looking out. A sliver of sunshine seemed to slip along her form, drawing it out of the dark.
“DID YOU HEAR IT?” Charley asked once they were at the car. “Or was I just hallucinating?” Because at this point, she was ready to believe almost anything.
Nick grinned at her as he got into the car, commandeering the driver’s side again. She realized that she had let him hang on to the keys. “I heard.”
She eyed him, trying to make a decision as she slipped on her seat belt. “You’re not just humoring me.”
He laughed softly, starting up the car. “Humoring you is not one of the things on my list, Charley. I heard what you heard. Your mother spoke.” He backed the car out of the space. “And when she’s ready, she’ll come back to you.”
He guided the car onto the road. Charley stared at his profile. “Since when did you become such an optimist?”
Sundays Are for Murder Page 27