The Sullivan Gray Series Box Set

by H. P. Bayne

  “Did Dez tell you about this man I’ve been seeing?”

  “He said something about it, yeah. Said to watch your back, just in case. Why?”

  “He’s here. I have no idea why, but he’s standing just inside the door.”

  “Fucking hell. What’s he doing?”

  “Staring,” Sully said. “Just staring.”

  “Think he’ll let you in?”

  “If he does, I’m not sure it’ll be for any good reason.”

  “Maybe we should leave. Copper said this guy almost killed you. Freaked him out pretty bad, from what I could tell.”

  It had freaked Sully out, too, if he was being honest. But saying it out loud wasn’t going to help. What he hoped would help was what Marc and Raiya had taught him, and Sully fought every urge he had to watch the ghost inside the house as he closed his eyes and focused inward, breathing deep as he pictured a steady light surrounding and protecting him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Ssh,” Sully said. “Grounding.”

  “This is the worst break and enter I’ve ever seen.”

  Hoping for the best, given he didn’t have time for much more, Sully opened his eyes. The ghost was still there, still staring at him, but Sully felt like his own fear was lessened a little—still there, but pleading with him to run rather than screaming it in his ear. It wasn’t ideal, but he could cope.

  “I don’t know who you are or what you want from me, but I’m trying to help,” Sully told the man, a quiver sounding in his voice despite his best efforts. “If there’s a way you could let me in, I’m hoping you can do that for me.”

  For a moment, there was nothing. No reply, not even a sign the catatonic-looking man had heard him. But then, as Sully continued to watch, the man lifted a hand. Held between finger and thumb was a key.

  The man knelt slowly and Sully’s eyes followed him down, noting as he pulled his sight back a bit he could see the reflection from outside in the door’s glass. And Sully could see it as the man lifted one reflected corner of the outside doormat and place the key beneath. Sully looked down at his own feet. The mat hadn’t lifted, of that much he was certain. And yet, he could see the man now settling the reflected mat’s corner back into place before standing and slowly backing away from the door. Sully watched him go until, finally, he faded away into the shadows cast in the narrow hall between stairs and wall.

  Sully looked back down at his feet, and then repeated the man’s recent movements, kneeling and peeling back a corner of the mat. There, resting on the veranda’s floorboards, exactly where his search had come up empty only moments ago, was the key.

  Bulldog eyed Sully’s find. “Get out. You just looked there.”

  “There wasn’t anything there to find until just now. I think he put it there.”

  “How’d he manage that?”

  “No idea. But there it is.”

  “Okay, great. You sure it fits the door?”

  Sully tried it, heard the click.

  “Wonderful,” Bulldog said. “Now I’m definitely staying out here. You need something, call. But I’m not coming in no haunted house unless it’s life or death.”

  Sully patted Bulldog on the shoulder and headed inside.

  There was no sign of the man, and Sully was uncertain whether the lingering chill he felt had more to do with the ghost or the fact the house was so dark inside. Betty had gone to great efforts with her garden, and the exterior gave the home the appearance of a small oasis in Riverview’s growing desert of unkempt complacency. Inside was another story. Not only was it shrouded in shadow—all the curtains drawn so the only light in the front hall came from the heavy glass door—it looked as if it was in dire need of an overhaul. A couple pieces of the stairs’ bannister were missing. The hall carpet was old, worn and tearing in places. The hardwood in the sitting room clearly was in need of some TLC. Dust drifted through the air in the cracks of light created by small gaps in the drapes, and Sully spotted pieces of sock lint and dust bunnies as he moved through the lower floor. It didn’t smell of cigarette smoke—Betty had seen to that much—but there wasn’t much else about the house’s interior to suggest she’d cared for the place. Maybe it was evidence of a woman whose garden was everything to her, who opted to spend every moment of every day there rather than indoors, where she felt closed in. But Sully suspected differently.

  Betty was a woman who scrubbed at stains at the Fox, who bussed tables seconds after customers had left, who was on top of it immediately whenever there was a significant spill or a broken glass. The Black Fox was a shining beacon of neatness thanks to Betty. But this house revealed another side to Betty, a woman who didn’t care, who’d given up trying for anything other than appearance. The exterior was bright, sunny, charming and welcoming; the inside made you feel cold and lost.

  This house wasn’t just a clue to who Betty was. This house was Betty. The only question that remained was why. It had gone unloved far longer than her son had been in prison, so the depression in this place had to come down to far more than that.

  The answer came in a heart-stopping glimpse at a handful of dusty photos propped on the fireplace mantle in the front sitting room. Sitting between Betty and a child Thackeray, smiling into the camera with a relaxed expression, the man was nearly unrecognizable to Sully.

  But he would know those eyes anywhere. He’d looked into them only seconds ago through the glass door.

  The man who had possessed him and had tried to kill him—the man sitting right now in Lockwood Psychiatric Hospital—was Betty’s husband.

  15

  The afternoon proved quiet, the police department’s usual clientele taking an uncharacteristic break from their shenanigans to enjoy the warm, sunny weather.

  It meant a shift in which Dez had some time to visit his father.

  He’d debated whether coming here was a good idea. He had no intention of telling Flynn what Sully was up to right now, and he always worried his father could read his mind. But Flynn also had a way of soothing Dez when his blood pressure was reaching roof-high levels and, with Sully getting himself into untold trouble, Dez figured he could use all the calm he could get.

  Flynn was just getting out of a meeting with the chief and waved Dez in as soon as he was free.

  “What was that about?” Dez asked.

  Flynn took a seat at the table and motioned for Dez to join him. He looked exhausted and pale, and didn’t immediately answer as he slumped back in the chair and massaged his forehead. The movement served to conceal his eyes from Dez, and it was a good thirty seconds before he looked back up at his son.

  “Because the son of the deputy chief is being looked at as a suspect in a murder investigation, the chief has asked to be kept up to speed,” Flynn said. “He was just updating me, as much as he could, on what’s been found so far, and Raynor remains convinced Sully was more involved in this than he’s saying.”

  “Raynor’s got his head up his ass. What about those clothes we found? Did they test them?”

  “They’re running DNA on some samples they took, but it’ll be weeks before we get those back.”

  “Couldn’t we send them to Uncle Lowell’s lab? He’d be able to get us something in days.”

  “I can’t imagine Raynor will be satisfied with results that came from the lab owned by Sully’s uncle. We’re going to have to wait this out, I’m afraid. In the meantime, the coat tested positive for gunpowder residue, but Raynor says it doesn’t prove anything in our favour. He says Sully could have been wearing the coat himself, or that he could have worn it while firing a gun after the fact and then concealed the clothing somewhere he could conveniently find it later.”

  “Concealed it when?” Dez asked. “The first officer showed up within two minutes of Sully reporting the shooting.”

  “I don’t know everything about Raynor’s working theory,” Flynn said. “Obviously, I’ve been kept out of the loop on a number of details. But maybe he thinks Sully didn’
t make the call immediately. Or, more likely, he thinks the items were planted later.”

  “That makes no sense. Sully had no access to the Fox while the scene was being held. And I have no doubt the building was searched top to bottom for potential evidence. Surely someone would have spotted clothing that matched the description Sully provided.”

  “Then it could have been planted in preparation of a pre-meditated killing. I’m not saying it’s a good working theory. But it is what it is, and we need to make do with it for now. Not our call.”

  “What motive could Raynor possibly think Sully would have to kill Betty?”

  “You know motive isn’t the starting point in a homicide investigation,” Flynn said. “It’s the evidence you follow. It’s too easy to get caught up in perceived motive and start bending the investigation to fit your working theory.”

  “But that’s exactly what Raynor’s doing.”

  “Dez, maybe we need to consider something we haven’t had the heart to ask ourselves.”

  “No, Dad.”

  “Dez—”

  “No! Sully didn’t do this.”

  “Listen to me, please. Something’s going on with him, something not good. He’s struggled in the past with the things he has to deal with, but he’s hitting up against something now I’ve never seen. If it wasn’t for the other night—”

  “Dad—”

  “He’s missing time, Dez. And he tried to kill himself. He’s never done anything like that before.”

  “Yeah, he tried to kill himself, not someone else.” Dez stopped as suddenly as he’d started, mind flashing back to that moment in the bathroom, to that shard of glass aimed for his throat.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Dez. What?”

  Dez considered not saying anything, had intended to keep that moment safely buried. But this was his dad, Sully’s dad. And the more Dez sat in the middle of this, the more uncertain he became about how best to help his brother. Their dad would know, and he’d do whatever was in Sully’s best interests.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell anyone about what happened in the bathroom the other night. Sully … or whoever was controlling him at the time, tried to stab me in the neck. I saw it coming, and I was able to stop him and get the piece of mirror away, but it was close.”

  “Sully doesn’t know?”

  “No, and I don’t want him to. He’d be wrecked over it. But, Dad, he remembers the thing that happened to Betty. There was no blackout, no missing time. He told me exactly what happened.”

  “Memory’s a strange thing, Dez. You know that. You can go to a crime scene, speak to five different people and get five different stories. Then you put them on the witness stand two years later and you’ve got five different stories all over again. I’ve read that memory records events in snapshots and fills in the gaps. Sometimes what gets filled in is close to accurate, and sometimes it’s completely wrong. If Sully had a similar blackout at the time of Betty’s murder, isn’t it conceivable he filled it in with something? Maybe something far more bearable to him than what actually occurred?”

  “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

  “Dez, I don’t believe Sully’s capable of killing anyone. But given what you’ve just told me, I’m concerned the man he saw—the man who possessed him—is capable. If Sully was possessed at the time of the shooting, isn’t it possible he was the one holding that gun?”

  “No, it isn’t. He remembers it, Dad, and I believe him.”

  “There’s no evidence anyone else was in there that day. They’ve found no eyewitnesses who reported anyone in those clothes, and certainly no one carrying a long-barrelled firearm. Surveillance video in the area has been checked, but that’s come up empty as well.”

  “There’s not a lot of outdoor surveillance video,” Dez said. “Most of the cameras in the area are intended to watch business interiors and till areas. And if the guy was smart—and he seems to be, given he’s avoided detection this long—he would have carried the clothes with him, geared up before going in and then discarded everything right after the shooting. Sully didn’t run after him. He stayed to try to save Betty, so there would have been no one following the shooter, giving him plenty of time to change or take off an outer layer.”

  “What about the gun?”

  “Duffle bag. It wouldn’t be seen as a big deal around there. Couch-surfers are always shuttling their possessions from one place to another in various bags. No one would have thought anything of it. So the guy carries the gun and clothes to the back door of the Fox, changes, arms himself, shoots Betty, dumps the gun at the scene and takes off. He stops a short distance away, once he’s certain he isn’t being followed, and he takes off the clothes he was wearing and stuffs them into the bag. He finds a nearby dumpster and gets rid of it, not realizing his plan is essentially perfect because the case’s lead investigator is going to be too blind to see reality.”

  “Dez.”

  “I’m not apologizing. Raynor’s a Class-A asshole. I have no idea why he’s got it in for Sully, but he does. I mean, I know the guy doesn’t like me, but holy hell. This is going a bit far, even for him.”

  “It’s not about you, Dez, and it’s not about Sully. It’s me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve never gotten into this with you, because I didn’t want you involved, but I think you need to know this isn’t about anything between you and Raynor. I’d rather you understand so you don’t go trying to take the guy’s head off and get yourself arrested. You know Raynor’s dad is Charles Raynor, the mayor, right?”

  “Everyone knows that. Raynor doesn’t let anyone forget.”

  “A few years ago, we received a complaint about some corruption that allegedly involved the mayor’s office. Due to the nature and sensitivity of the matter, it was brought to the chief directly, and he briefed me on it to get my advice. Because Charles Raynor’s position also makes him head of the police commission, we decided investigating the matter would have been a conflict for our department, so we passed it on to the feds to look into. But they wanted someone local to provide information on the man, so the chief suggested I do it. I didn’t have to deal with the mayor directly nearly as much as the chief, but I still had inroads to certain people central to the investigation. I asked some questions and word soon got around to the mayor he was being looked at for possible charges. In the end, nothing came of it, but Charles Raynor’s been looking for a way to get rid of me ever since. Problem for him is I’ve never given him anything to go after. I think the fact Sully’s being targeted on this thing suggests Charles put a bug in his son’s ear to ensure my son gets buried on this. If one of my boys goes down for a murder, the mayor would have every right to ask for my resignation. The optics would be bad, the father of a killer in the second-highest position on the police department.”

  Dez leaned forward, enabling him to keep his voice as low as possible. “Do you think there’s any chance Betty’s murder was ordered by the mayor so he could get the wheels spinning on this?”

  “No. That’s going far beyond what I believe the man’s capable of. But I do think he’s been keeping his eyes peeled for any possible opportunity to remove me. This situation probably felt like Christmas morning to him.”

  “And what about Forbes? I mean, the guy’s a dick and I’m still convinced he got his current position solely due to who his father is, but I never took him for crooked.”

  “I’m not saying he is,” Flynn said. “I’m sure Forbes is genuinely convinced he’s doing the right thing. But, like I said, it’s easy for inexperienced investigators’ minds to get clouded into believing their working theory is the only rational solution. Once you buy into it, you start to twist things to fit. I once saw a good investigator blow his reputation and career because he was convinced a particular convicted sex offender was responsible for a pair of attempted kidnappings of young boys. Turned out he was wrong, but by then it
was too late. His suspect, believing he was headed back to prison, committed suicide before we received DNA results that exonerated him. A man’s life was over, the department was thrown into a media firestorm and that investigator lost his job. I would hope Forbes would keep that in mind as he’s going about his investigation, but I can’t involve myself to remind him of that. In the meantime, all we can do is wait and hope for the best.”

  “That’s not all we can do. If Raynor’s not looking for other solutions, then I’ll do it for him.”

  “Dez, no. I don’t want you getting involved in this, either. We’re both too close to the situation, and the last thing I want is you getting suspended because you tried to interfere in an active investigation.”

  “I’m not looking to interfere. I’m looking to help. And I know what you said, but I know what Sully said was true, Dad. He didn’t do this. Not consciously or unconsciously. It wasn’t him.”

  “I’m not saying he did. Please understand that, Dez. I don’t believe it, either. All I’m saying is we can’t expect Forbes Raynor to keep an open mind if we’re not willing to do the same. Something’s going on with Sully and it’s worrying me, especially given what you just told me about the attempt to stab you. Let me ask you something. The sleeping pill he took that night. He said Lowell gave it to him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long has Lowell been giving him those things?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Dez shrugged. “It’s been a few years, anyway. Probably since shortly after Sully started working at the Black Fox. I’m guessing Sully said something to Betty about being tired, maybe word got back to Lowell, and he figured he’d help.”

  “Yeah, makes sense. I just wish someone had told me. Sleeping pills can be addictive.”

  “Sully doesn’t use them often, just when things get bad. He told me he doesn’t like feeling like stuff could be happening around him and he wouldn’t be aware of it or in any state to handle it. Makes him feel too open to attack, I think.”