by H. P. Bayne
This time, the blood looked to be flowing out of Lana’s face rather than into it. “A chat?”
“I didn’t mean it in the Al Capone sense. I just want to talk to him.”
Dez took the gaming system with him back into the house, setting it on the table while he tended to his hand in the bathroom. He had just picked out what he believed to be the last piece of gravel when his phone rang. Sully’s number showed on the screen.
“Hey,” Sully said. “I’m still following Lars’s vehicle, but I had to take a different street because it’s not very busy here and they’ll notice me following them otherwise. I’m like two blocks from the Devereaux house.”
“You think that’s where they were heading? The Devereauxs’?”
“I don’t know where else they’d be going around here.”
Keeping the phone to his ear, Dez left the bathroom and headed for the living room and the large picture window facing the street. Sure enough, not thirty seconds later, Lars’s Jeep passed by, moving at a slow crawl as it trolled past the house. Even from here, Dez could see Tessa in the passenger seat, her eyes fixed on the front of the residence.
“Yeah, they just passed by,” Dez said.
Lana appeared at his side. “What’s going on?”
Dez decided honesty was the best policy. If Lars and Tessa were targeting the Devereauxs’ home, Dez would be sick if something happened and he hadn’t provided a warning.
“Lars Ahlgren’s Jeep just went past,” he told Lana. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think you should keep your eyes peeled. I’m going to make a couple phone calls, make it known I’ve got the device. Hopefully, that will direct attention on me instead of you and Hal.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I mean, after what just happened to you….”
“What just happened?” Sully said from the phone still in Dez’s hand.
“I’ll explain in a minute,” Dez told his brother. “Stay on Lars and keep me posted on his whereabouts. I’ll call you right back.”
Disconnecting with Sully, Dez turned full attention to Lana. “Maybe you should think about heading somewhere else for a bit, at least until Hal gets home.”
“If they’re thinking about breaking in here, I don’t want to leave it unguarded.”
“I understand, but if anyone’s thinking about hitting the house, I’d rather it was just property at risk rather than you. Do you know any of your neighbours? You could go there and still keep an eye on your place. If anyone shows up and looks like they’re trying to get in, you could call the police.”
“I used to know our neighbours on both sides and across the street, but Hal and I don’t socialize much anymore.”
“I’m sure they’ll understand. I’d feel better if I knew you were somewhere safe.”
“Okay,” Lana said. “I guess I would too. There’s a retired lady who lives beside me. I could go there. I know she’s home because I was talking to her from the garden earlier.”
That sounded like a good plan to Dez, and he told her so. He waited until she got a few of her things together and walked out with her, gaming device tucked under his arm.
“You’ll call if you find out anything?” she asked once they’d reached the sidewalk.
“Yeah. And you’ll call if you see anything suspicious?”
Receiving a nod, Dez parted ways with Lana, waiting until he saw her being let into the neighbour’s home. Then he placed the gaming system back onto the seat and circled back around Emily’s car, heading to the driver’s side.
He groaned as he reached his destination, eyes dropping to the sideview mirror now folded against the car window. A dent and a large white scrape had been left on the mirror’s bracket, giving Dez one more thing he’d need to fix for his neighbour. Hoping for the best, Dez popped the mirror back out and let his breath out in a whoosh as it settled back into its proper setting. Thankfully, Evan had been coming from the front side of the car. Had he come from the other direction, he probably would have knocked the mirror right off.
Settling back in behind the wheel, Dez started the car, keeping his eyes peeled as he dialled his brother.
Sully picked up where he’d left off. “So what happened?”
“Lana was on the fence about giving me the device, but she couldn’t reach Hal so she called Evan instead. She was basically looking for someone to tell her it was okay. Anyway, that took a while and by the time I left with the system, Evan had gotten there. He tried to run me down, but I threw myself across the hood just in time.”
“Jesus, Dez. Are you okay?”
“Scraped my hand up a bit, but that’s it. I’m fast on my feet. Shoulda been a stunt man.”
“It’s not funny. You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t. I’m fine, I mean it. Don’t make a thing of this.”
“It is a thing.”
“Look, if I’m any judge, he wasn’t going that fast. Sure, maybe if I’d landed the wrong way or if I’d ended up under his wheels I would have been seriously hurt, but if he’d just hit me, it probably would have only meant a few injuries.”
It usually took a lot to get Sully’s hackles up, but Dez had managed it. “Why are you downplaying this? You’re basically saying the same thing I am. If things had gone a different way, you could have been killed. Period.”
“Okay. Fine. I hear you.”
“So what do we do about it now? Go to the police?”
“Lana suggested that, but I said no. I’d rather talk with Evan first, find out what the hell he was thinking.”
“You really think that’s a good idea after what just happened?”
“We need to know why, don’t we?”
“It seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?” Sully asked. “Lana calls and tells him you’re there to pick up the Xbox, and next thing you know, he shows up and pulls that stunt? Dez, we’ve been focused all this time on Lars and Tessa, but what if we’re wrong? Eva thought Carter might be trying to protect the person who killed him. What if that’s because the person who did it is his best friend?”
It was food for thought, but Dez wasn’t sure he wanted to chew and swallow that theory. “I don’t know, Sull. I really don’t think that guy has it in him, do you?”
Sully had an answer for that too. “He just tried to run you down. If that’s not proof he’s capable of murder, I don’t know what is.”
25
Sully kept a couple blocks from Lars’s Jeep, doing his best to watch for it when he passed through cross-streets.
He hadn’t seen the SUV in a while, but it wasn’t until he’d gone a few more blocks that he was forced to admit it.
He’d lost them.
Reluctantly, he dialled his brother with the bad news.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dez said. “Need be, I can call Montague and he can do his creepy little GPS trick with her phone.”
“Want me to go talk to Evan?”
“Nope. I’m on it.”
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll come back you up.”
“He’s half my size, bro. Don’t worry, I won’t confront him unless he’s out of his car first.”
“Probably just as well you handle it without me,” Sully said. “After his stupid stunt with you, I’d probably punch him in the face as soon as I saw him.”
Dez chuckled. “That’s my boy.”
“He’s only a few blocks from the Devereauxs’, right?”
“Yeah. Just checked there. His car’s not back and there’s no one at home.”
“You sure he didn’t park in the garage and lock himself in?”
“No garage. I looked. Maybe he went to Roanna’s.”
“We still don’t know where she lives, do we?”
“I can check with Lachlan. If he can’t figure it out, he’s slipping bad. What are you going to do?”
Sully had been thinking about that as he drove around, looking for a sign of the now-missing Jeep. “I need to find Carter, try to talk to him. If it w
as Evan, and that’s what Carter’s been hiding, I’m hoping I can convince him to tell me.”
“Lana Devereaux headed next door to her neighbour’s, if you’re looking for her.”
“Actually, I was going to try the caves.”
“You better not be thinking about going down there again, man.”
“I’m not going anywhere far,” Sully said. “I know better.”
“Do you?”
“Dez, come on. After last night? I’m not stupid, all right?”
“Yet I’m not convinced.”
“I’ll stick to the second entrance. You know, the one we left by.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
Sully listened as Dez blew out a breath, the sound of frustration. Dez made that noise a lot. “Okay, fine. Just watch yourself.”
“Yeah. You too.”
In the past, they’d camped in the park so often Dez had typically bought a yearly pass. Given the way the past couple of years had gone for him—between the unemployment and depression—Dez had given up on renewing the pass.
That was starting to become a costly problem given the number of times they’d had to come in here within the past few days. Dez had given Sully some cash from the advance Lachlan had reluctantly agreed to provide, but Sully’s wallet was approaching empty. Just enough to buy his way into the park one last time.
Once again, Winteredge was nearly dead, just a few people out for a hike or taking advantage of the final days of summer to camp. No one was parked at the trails leading to the collapsed cave.
Sully’s plan was to head to the second entrance—he knew how to find it now after last night—but he made one quick stop first. Having been in the early stages of hypothermia, he and Dez hadn’t been in any state to stop back at the hole they’d initially fallen through to mark it off. Sully did that now, dragging fallen trees into an obvious square around it. It was the best he could do for now, and he resolved to tell the girl working the entry about the hazard on the way out.
Pax had been sniffing around the area while Sully worked, and the dog trotted over as Sully patted his leg and gave a low whistle. Then the two of them set off for the second entrance.
Lachlan came through in less than ten minutes, calling Dez with information on Roanna’s current address.
She, too, had remained at her parents’ home while she went to university, and Dez had only just turned onto the street when he saw he’d been right to assume Evan would come here.
The car was sitting outside on the street, the driver’s side mirror dangling by its wires. Dez allowed himself the smug smile as he considered how much better his own borrowed ride had held up.
He pulled over, and just in time, too, because Evan chose that moment to emerge from the house, face tear-streaked and crumpled as he headed toward his vehicle.
Dez cut him off with a shouted, “Hey!”
Evan’s attention snapped to Dez, but only long enough to recognize the threat. Then he ran for his car.
Dez’s legs were a lot longer, and he beat him there, keeping a defeated-looking Evan from escaping.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Dez demanded. “Why did you try to run me down?”
Evan met his eye, but only for a moment. What initially looked like a precursor to attempted defiance turned to defeat, the young man’s reply coming simply as a shrug.
“Were you trying to kill me?”
“No,” Evan said. “I mean… I mean, no.”
“I don’t know, man. Trying to hit someone with your car, that usually entails some not-so-good intentions.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking, all right? I wasn’t thinking, I guess. Carter’s mom called me about the Xbox and she was upset, so I went over. I saw you and something inside me just snapped. But I slowed down as I got closer to you, all right? Maybe I was looking to hit you, but I didn’t want to kill you.”
“You realize there are a hell of a lot of problems with that, don’t you? Not so easy to predict how things are going to play out when you screw around with a car-versus-pedestrian situation.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Are you going to call the police?”
“I wanted to talk to you first, find out why. I mean, maybe you feel like I’m harassing you with this investigation, but I didn’t think it merited this sort of response.”
“That’s not why I did it. I mean, yeah, you and Oliver pissed me off cornering me at university like that and then bugging Carter’s parents and Ro. But….” Evan paused, taking a few breaths through his nose. For some, that might indicate an attempt to calm down; in Evan’s case, Dez could see the anger mounting with each breath so, when he next spoke, his words were an erupting volcano. “You want to know what really did it, man? You want to know why I finally snapped? Because of you and your friend, Ro dumped me. After Oliver talked to her at school and convinced her Carter’s still around, she feels too guilty going out with me anymore. She said she feels like he’s watching.” Evan paused long enough to let loose a laugh, the sort that exuded pain rather than amusement. “Even dead, Carter gets the girl. I should have known it would work out this way. I should have seen it coming. He’s an impossible act to follow, and it’s even harder now that he’s dead. Only Car could pull off a trick like that.”
The level of fury rolling off Evan had the question forming in Dez’s brain and coming out of his mouth within the same second. “Did you kill Carter?”
That stopped the rage in its tracks, stilling Evan and drawing colour from his reddened cheeks. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“You… how… why would you ask me something like that?”
“Think about it. You just tried to run me down. You’re shaking with anger over the Carter and Roanna situation. You told us before you weren’t jealous of them together, but you weren’t being altogether honest about that, obviously. Because it’s not just that you were jealous, Evan. You still are. My question is, were you jealous enough to kill?”
“Could we talk somewhere else, please?”
“Uh-uh. Not after your little stunt today. Roanna’s okay, right? I mean, you didn’t hurt her, did you?”
“Of course not! I’d never hurt her. I love her. That’s the whole problem!” He quieted, the tension in his facial muscles suggesting he was forcing himself to take the long, deep breaths he was sucking in now—blessedly different from the short nasal puffs precipitating the explosion. Dez allowed him the time, crossing his arms as he awaited further response.
By the time Evan next spoke, the splotchy redness in his cheeks had faded a little. “You want the truth? Sometimes back then, I wished Carter was gone. Not dead, okay? Just gone.
“I was jealous. I pretended I wasn’t because it was easier. I knew I wasn’t half what Carter was. I tried, but he was too perfect. He was better looking, smarter, better at sports, better at getting girls, better at video games. There was nothing I did he couldn’t do better. When we were kids, I was happy just being around him, and I was cool just because I was his best friend. Then Ro came along. I liked her, but of course he got her. I’d never told her how I felt, and I never told Carter for that matter. There didn’t seem to be any point. I knew which way that whole thing was going to go. They didn’t get together to spite me, and they didn’t know how much it hurt me. So when Carter started screwing around with Tessa, I just sat there and I waited. I didn’t say anything to Ro. Maybe I should have. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew something was going on. All I had to do was be there for her, the way Carter should have been. And I was there. I was there when she found out about Tessa, and I was there when Carter was killed. But not ‘there,’ the way you’re saying. I wasn’t with Carter when it happened. I didn’t hurt him. I’d never have done that.”
“Even if it meant getting Roanna? Even if it meant finally proving you were stronger than him, better than him at something?”
“Even then. The thing is, I love Ro, but I loved Carter too. He wasn’
t just my friend. He was my brother. We grew up side by side, and long before Ro came into the picture, it was always him and me. I couldn’t have killed him if I wanted to. That’s the thing with family. You can be pissed to hell at them, but when push comes to shove, you’ll always have their back.”
Dez might have had a few issues with Evan’s honesty, but there was no arguing that point. “And you and Roanna were together when Carter was killed?”
“No. I told you that. But we were going to hook up later. And not hook up, the way you’re thinking. Just as friends.”
Dez uncrossed one arm to scrub a hand down his face.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Dude, you just tried to run me over, and you’ve admitted to lying to us before. I don’t know what to believe where you’re concerned.”
“Look, if you think someone hurt Carter on purpose, I’d look at Lars and Tessa.”
“I know Lars probably considered Carter the third wheel in that relationship,” Dez said. “But come on. Lars was a good-looking, talented guy with a job; Carter was a high-school kid. I have a hard time buying that Lars would have seen Carter as real competition when it came to the woman they both wanted.”
“That wasn’t the issue,” Evan said.
When he didn’t say anything further, Dez prompted him forward. “What was?”
Evan winced as if it pained him just forming the words he had yet to speak. “Carter swore me to secrecy on this, okay? I’ve never told anyone, not even Ro.”
Dez was not a man of infinite patience, and he was rapidly approaching his limit. “Just tell me.”
Evan drew in a breath and released it through pursed lips before explaining. “Not long before he died, Carter told me Tessa ended things with him. He said she wanted to be with Lars. But Carter said he’d found something else out. He said she had another guy, someone she was really serious about. Lars was happy enough being the boy toy, but Carter wasn’t. He was pissed. He didn’t say much to me about it, and I didn’t ask. I really didn’t want to be in the middle of all that. Then he called me up that morning.”