by H. P. Bayne
The judge sent back a thumbs-up, proving emoticons were not just for the young and trendy. Dez unpacked himself from the SUV’s driver seat for a return to the building on the next block and the vestibule housing the callbox to the suites.
Using his finger to trace the numbers, Dez sought out 412. He’d scanned the photos he’d taken earlier, noting the unit in question was marked as “occupied” rather than by name. While, in Dez’s experience, that was a move used mainly by single women, it wasn’t surprising Lars—the subject of a lawsuit that had drawn plenty of public attention, and who was, quite possibly, a killer—would want to keep his whereabouts as private as possible.
Unfortunately for the disgraced teacher, at least a few people knew where he lived, not all of them at his behest. As Dez pressed a fingertip to the buzzer next to the suite number, he began the process of revealing himself as one of those people.
“Forget something?” There was a decided drawl to the voice crackling from the speaker, a leer behind the words that suggested Dez was on the money about the affair.
Dez grinned into the box. “I forgot to tell you I love you.”
“Who the hell is this?”
Dez debated between his two options. He decided Sully’s investigation had the best chance of getting him through the security door—if he worded things that right way. “I’m a private investigator. I’m trying to find Carter Devereaux’s body.”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“You’re a spelunking expert, aren’t you? I want to ask you some technical questions.”
It was bull, but it got Dez the reply he was after. The buzzer system remained silent so long, he suspected the man might have crawled out a window, but he was instead met with the eventual obnoxious sound of the door lock buzzing open. Dez seized the handle and passed through.
Riding the elevator to the fourth floor, he found the apartment door in question and rapped. The man who answered was smaller than Dez had anticipated, although why he’d expected taller or broader seemed odd. It was natural for anyone who’d made a name in the caving world to be small enough to fit through tight spaces.
Lars’s eyes travelled up his visitor’s form, and Dez met him at the top with a grin. He’d gotten used to the glancing expressions of alarm that passed across men’s faces when they encountered him for the first time, and he’d learned to offset his size with congeniality and humour.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I don’t look like much of a spelunker.”
Lars raised a pale blond eyebrow knit through with an old scar. “You’re not kidding. You wouldn’t fit through most cave entrances, let alone sixty per cent of the passages. Listen, I’m not sure why you’re here, or what exactly I can help you with.”
“Let me in and we can discuss that.”
Dez watched for unvoiced thoughts on the pale, lightly freckled face, but Lars did a good job of keeping them to himself as he turned away and led him down a hallway and into a living room.
Dez took advantage of the short walk to scan the apartment for any recent signs of female company, but nothing immediately revealed itself. The living room itself was on the dark side, lit only by a pair of table lamps, but a man used to life in the world’s darkest spaces probably didn’t notice or care. It wasn’t doing Dez any favours, the shadow keeping him from getting a wholly accurate read on the other man. There was enough light, though, to take note of the disappointing fact there were no clear signs of a date night: no glasses or coffee cups sitting out, no discarded and forgotten underwear peeking from between couch cushions, nothing on the TV but a reality program Dez had never cared to watch.
There wasn’t anything particularly obvious about Lars either that screamed “I just had sex.” There were, however, signs of an attempt to hide some psychological discomfort.
Lars slid comfortably into a spot on the sofa, lounging against the cushions and draping a tightly muscled arm across the back while laying an ankle across his opposite knee. Dez, taking one of two heavily-stuffed chairs, had seen this posture before. There was comfortable, and there was too comfortable. People with something to hide either turned into blabbering fools, or they did exactly was Lars was doing now.
“I understand you were Carter’s teacher.”
Lars met the question with a smile smooth enough to qualify as a new brand of butter. “And I was also in charge of the science club and the caving team.”
“I’m aware.”
The smile faded at the appropriate juncture. “Everyone’s aware. The fact I lost my job and am being sued by Carter’s parents has been all over the news.”
“That’s got to be pretty crappy.”
Lars gave up the pretence, dropping the crossed ankle to allow him to sit forward, eyes burning a hole into Dez’s skull. “Look, it’s late, and this isn’t exactly my favourite topic of conversation. You want to tell me what you need so we can wrap this up?”
“Like I said, I want to find him.”
“Have his parents hired you?”
“No, my client is someone else.”
“Who?”
“All I’m at liberty to say is that it’s someone who wants to see Carter at peace.”
Lars seemed to consider that a moment before responding. “Did you give any thought to the possibility he is at peace? He loved cave exploration. Some people think of it as dark and claustrophobic, but to people like me and Carter, being down there is like discovering a new world. There’s peace down there, more than most people will ever understand. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a piece of the earth no one’s ever set foot in. Some people might think Carter needs to be taken from that place and given a proper burial. Not me. Trust me when I say he’s more at home buried beneath the rock in a cave he loved than under six feet of dirt in a cemetery surrounded by strangers.”
“Maybe it isn’t all about Carter,” Dez said. “His parents could use the closure.”
“What closure? Their son is dead. They can haul him out of there, but that won’t change a damn thing.”
With Lars getting more annoyed by the minute, Dez decided now was the time to get to the crux of the matter. “You were there the day Carter was killed.”
“I was,” Lars said. “I’m the one who called 9-1-1 to report the cave-in.”
“Why did you go?”
“Evan called and told me Carter had gone alone to the cave. It wasn’t safe, not by himself.”
“After the flood and everything, I thought it wasn’t safe at all.”
Lars considered Dez’s statement before answering it with a shrug. “It wasn’t, at least to some extent. That’s true enough. But I knew that part of the system like the back of my hand. The park shut the whole thing down as a precaution, but I understand rock. There were stable areas within those caves, and there were other parts that were genuinely unsafe.”
“But you went with the kids that summer anyway, even though the caves were supposed to be closed.”
“Let me ask you something,” Lars said. “If you went back to your house one day and someone had stuck up some signs telling you to stay out, would you?”
“First off, it would depend why those signs were there. If the floor had dropped out or there was a ticking bomb inside, I think I’d have a pretty easy time staying out.”
“Not me,” Lars said. “I’d been exploring those caves for well over a decade, ever since I was around the age of my students. I knew them well, and everything that meant anything to me at the time was wrapped up in that place. No one was going to keep me out of there, particularly people who hadn’t even consulted real experts. They were being overcautious. I knew the caves could be explored safely so, yes, that’s what I did.”
“Only they apparently weren’t safe, because Carter’s dead.”
“Listen, that kid reminded me a lot of myself at that age. He meant a lot to me, so don’t take this the wrong way. But he was young, he was relatively inexperienced, and he was stubborn and impulsive. I told the kids they
were not to go into those caves without me. He went anyway. And I’d told the kids to stick to the areas I pointed out as stable. He wasn’t content with that. Evan said Carter had found some new passage he wanted to explore. As soon as I heard that, I took off for Winteredge, hoping I could find him. All I found was his car in the parking lot and some of his gear next to the collapsed crawl. I backed out and called 9-1-1. By that point, I knew I was too late.”
“You said you found some of his gear. Why would it not have been with him?”
“The crawl he’d gone into was too tight; I’d been inside it before. I’m thinking he wasn’t planning on staying in there for long, just long enough to satisfy his curiosity, see if there was anything deeper in.”
“You said you’d been in there before?”
“Before the flood. I didn’t consider that portion of the caves stable, so I didn’t go back in, and I advised the kids as much. Like I said, Carter could be pretty rash. Most kids are. When you’re that age, you think you’ll live forever.”
“You got fired, I think, because you weren’t supposed to be caving with the kids outside of the school year,” Dez said. “Particularly given it was an off-limits area.”
“That’s what they told me. Hey, I knew I could get into some trouble. There was no insurance and no sign-offs from parents during the summer months. But, like I told you, I got into caving at that age. I remember the feeling of it, of discovering something I loved more than anything I’d ever known. A couple of the kids in the caving club—Carter and Evan, mostly—they were just as diehard about it as I’d been at that age. I knew if I didn’t keep them under my wing, they’d go off on their own. I thought I was doing the right thing, making sure they had the proper guidance while they explored. You know teenagers. You can warn them off something, but that’s only going to make them want to do that very thing even more. I’m not trying to sound cold about this, but Carter knew the risks when he went in there. He went anyway.”
It was possible the man was lying, but there was a sense of logic to the explanation. If Lars took it to court, Dez could picture a scenario in which a judge tossed out the parents’ lawsuit. They’d agreed, after all, to allowing the kids in the caving club in the first place. No one could shelter their children forever; Dez was dreading the day Kayleigh—already enthusiastic and headstrong at seven—became too old to reign in. And while there was a responsibility that came with teaching kids about the world’s more dangerous activities, educators couldn’t be expected to be with their students around the clock. Carter had been seventeen, plenty old enough to make his own decisions.
He’d made one, and he’d paid the ultimate price. At least, that was how a court might view it.
Unless they could find evidence Carter hadn’t made the choice.
“There’s some talk maybe Carter wasn’t alone when he died,” Dez said.
Lars’s brows lifted. “You think someone else was trapped in there with him?”
“Not exactly,” Dez said. “Some people think maybe there was more to Carter’s death, that maybe he was the victim of foul play.”
The eyebrow paused a moment. Then it returned to its regular position as a laugh ripped from Lars’s throat. “Holy hell, you’re not actually trying to tell me Carter was murdered.”
“I don’t know,” Dez said. “That’s just one of the things being said.”
“For what reason? He was seventeen years old, for God’s sake. What cause would anyone have to want him dead?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. I’ve been told to ask questions, that’s it. You knew him. You taught him for a while, right?”
“A couple years. And, no, I can’t think of a single reason why anyone would want him dead. Beyond that, I was in the cave that day. There was no evidence of anyone else having been present. It was just Carter’s car, his stuff I found.”
“Someone could have done something to him and left before you got there.”
“Listen, man, someone could have set a spaceship down in the centre of the park, got out and done a jig. Doesn’t mean it happened. Carter’s death was an accident.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because nothing else makes sense, that’s why. Look, are we about done here, because I’m beat.”
“I’ll bet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dez hadn’t actually intended to say the words out loud, but there was sometimes a short and unguarded path between his brain and his mouth. Once in a while, something slipped past unchecked.
He contemplated just going with it, confronting the man in the hopes he could elicit a confession and bring to an end Dez’s dealings with the judge. All he needed, after all, was proof the woman was cheating, enough to allow Montague to divorce her without giving up any of his accumulated wealth.
But Lars had just proven he could provide a decent explanation when pushed into a corner, lie or not. Added in was the likelihood confronting the man now, without the benefit of a confession, would simply drive the lovers to ground. If the two were having an affair, and Lars lied about it, then simply went about it in a smarter way, Dez could be stuck with the judge even longer.
If he wanted this sorted out sooner rather than later, he’d have to play it smarter than these two.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Dez said in response to Lars’s question. “Other than it’s late and I’m tired, so no doubt you are too. Listen, I might have to see about getting into that cave at some point. If I do, I might need to come back here, see if you have some tips for me.”
“You want a tip?” Lars asked. “Don’t pursue this investigation. Your client, whoever it is, is grasping at straws. All either of you is going to end up is empty-handed.”
11
When Dez returned home, Sully was waiting.
“How was your day, dear?” Sully deadpanned as his brother dropped into a chair at the table.
He caught the glare Dez shot him.
“Wonderful. I’ve just lost another couple hours of my life tailing Tessa Montague—who, I might add, was probably having a hell of a lot more fun than I was. You’ll never guess where she ended up.”
“I’m not that kind of psychic.”
“Lars Ahlgren’s apartment.”
The words were sufficient to land Sully in the chair next to his brother’s. “Carter’s teacher?”
Dez nodded. “At least I’m reasonably certain that’s the apartment she went to. There was no sign he had a woman over, but all the usual evidence was probably in the bedroom.”
Sully smirked. “I take it you didn’t check.”
“Coming up with an excuse to invite myself into some dude’s bedroom is more than my job’s worth. And I didn’t think it was smart to confront him about a possible affair either. Next thing, he’d be calling her, and they’d be going to ground or, worse, staying completely away from each other. The judge would think I’m a complete moron, and so would Lachlan. I’d find myself out of a job all over again.”
“Maybe not. Lachlan needs the help.”
“He could find any kind of help he wants—provided he could avoid offending the help so badly they up and quit.”
More conversation could be had about Dez’s employment issues, but Sully was more curious about what he hoped was the other part of his brother’s chat with Lars.
“Did you ask about Carter?”
“Yeah, I asked about Carter.” Sully listened as Dez filled him in on what the other man had said, leaving neither of them any the wiser.
“He could be lying,” Sully said.
“Damn straight he was lying. I’m just not sure exactly what about. He’s hiding something. I’m pretty sure about that. But his story’s believable, I guess.”
“You’re not convinced.”
“I’m convinced if he goes to court with what he told me, it’ll probably be enough to sell to the judge. But, no, I’m not sold. I know Dad always told me not to focus on motives, to let the evidence lead
me, but I can’t help it. I just can’t think why Lars would want a seventeen-year-old student permanently out of the way.”
“Maybe Carter was going to report him, that he was taking the students and trespassing in the caves.”
“Yeah, but why would Carter do that when he clearly loved going there? And even if he was going to rat Lars out, is that enough to kill over? I don’t know, man. I can’t see it.”
“Yeah, me neither.” The other topic needing discussion was rattling around inside Sully’s brain, looking for the right moment to make itself known. He’d accepted the fact he would have to tell Dez about his visit to the Devereaux house. Eva had been there. If it got back to Dez any other way besides through Sully himself, there would be hell to pay, and he’d have a bitch of a time getting his big brother to trust him again.
“Hey, D, there’s something I need to tell you.”
The familiar expression was back on Dez’s face, a look fearing some form of impending doom. Sully didn’t know which was worse, the dread or the anger that would follow. “God, what?”
“I paid a visit to the Devereauxs this evening.”
He waited for the explosion, but got only silence, a pair of green eyes fixed on him as if trying to process.
Sully filled the silence, taking the opportunity to provide the explanation he hoped would save him. “I needed to see if Carter was there, if he would tell me anything. He was there, but he wouldn’t give me the answers I was looking for. Eva suggested he might be trying to protect whoever it was who killed him.”
The mention of the name—intentionally inserted—pulled Dez’s high-speed locomotive off the track just before the collision. “Eva? What’s she got to do with this?”