by Jan Burke
I watched the sheriff’s deputies taking Cleo away in handcuffs. They had helped her rinse out her eyes and were going to take her to the hospital.
“I hope they know who they’ve got there,” I said. “And that they keep her away from the kids.”
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “They’ve been warned about her.”
“You told them about the booby trap?”
“Oh yes. Bomb squad is on the way.”
“Ms. Kelly?” the deputy nearest to me said. “I’ve got a call from your husband, Detective Harriman, patched through.” He handed me his phone.
“Irene?” Oh, how I love that voice.
“Please come here to me,” I said before he could yell at me. “I need you.”
He said he was on the way. That was a good way to end the call.
AMINUTE later someone asked me if I could explain about the dead man in the bed upstairs.
CHAPTER 58
Thursday, May 4
10:00 P.M.
A LEASED PRIVATE ESTATE
SOMEWHERE ON THE WEST COAST
OF COSTA RICA
HE didn’t hang up this time.
The story made CNN, which his satellite dish picked up. The news was rather shocking.
Cleo — who might lose the sight in one eye — was under arrest, as was Anna.
Roy was dead.
Giles was dead.
Dexter was missing, being sought in Europe.
His own photo was displayed. The story, being told in a one-sided, brutal fashion, would probably soon make even this haven unsafe.
And on the screen, two people had made pleas directly to him.
Graydon Fletcher, telling him that he loved him, and hoped he would honor the family name by returning to those who cared for him. He would do all he could to help his son, and knew that Nelson would want to do what was right.
And Elisa. She looked directly into the camera and said, “Nelson, please come home to me. I need you.”
She wouldn’t answer the questions of the reporter who wanted to ask her how in heaven’s name she could want to ever see the man who was responsible for so much evil.
Evil.
Did anyone ask the children if their lives had been miserable?
What would have happened to Troy if his drug-abusing parents had raised him? Would his life have been half as happy as it was in Roy’s household? Not a chance. The boy might have been blown up in a meth-lab explosion by now.
And Aaron. A pot-smoking musician for a father and a whining loser for a mother — a woman who handled stress with a booze bottle. That boy had been worse off with Roy? No way.
Carrie, raised by a short-tempered man who hated her mother? That could only cause problems down the road.
Genie. Jenny. Well… she wasn’t unhappy in her new family. Nelson had made sure of that.
BEING happy in your family was important. He had loved being a Fletcher, and now he couldn’t even use the name.
He considered the people he had met here. Men who had bilked their business partners and fled the country. Men avoiding alimony and child support. Retired drug lords. Oh, there were many fine people, too, and the country was beautiful, but… he wouldn’t be mixing with the fine people. Why complain about the others, and their pasts, though? There was no real crime here.
No real family.
No Elisa. He could hide in Antarctica, and she would still have a hold on him.
He was not meant to live like this.
He hadn’t killed anyone. He didn’t think anyone could prove he conspired to do so. Cleo might say so, but what was her word against his? He could always say that he didn’t see Jenny until she was older, and that he didn’t recognize her. And look how hard he had worked to free Mason!
If the worst happened and he went to prison, Elisa might still visit him. Might wait for him!
She needed him. Those words decided it.
He made the call.
CHAPTER 59
Tuesday, May 16
10:00 P.M.
THE SOUTH OF FRANCE
DEXTER FLETCHER got out of the used Renault he had purchased under a phony name and made his way up the stone walkway to the cottage. This would be the perfect place to wait for all the excitement to die down.
A soft breeze brought the fragrance of a nearby meadow to him. No other structures stood within miles of the cottage and its outbuildings. Solitude and quiet. He craved both.
He had come here with Cleo, some years ago, and knew it to be one of her favorite safe houses. The cottage held pleasant memories for him.
Cleo had installed a special doorknob that read fingerprints rather than codes, far more secure than a keypad entry system, and eliminating the need to carry a key. His only fear was that she had deleted him from the user list programmed into it.
He took hold of the doorknob and pressed his right thumb, then his left index finger, onto the reader. He heard a satisfying click and turned the knob.
His last thought, as he smiled and stepped onto the pressure-sensitive plate on the other side of the threshold, was, Good old Cleo, always looking out for Uncle Dex.
His DNA was in debris found half a kilometer away.
CHAPTER 60
Friday, June 16
10:00 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
MASON FLETCHER might have spent another year or so in prison while a notoriously slow system worked on a review of his case, but the Fletcher family clout was still worth something, and the Express and other media outlets kept the pressure on, so the district attorney got on the bandwagon and agreed that he should be released, and before the end of May, a judge agreed. The full exoneration process was still in the works, but no one doubted Mason would be completely cleared.
NELSON FLETCHER was in custody. Elisa apologized to me — she told me that Ben had mentioned what I said to Frank on the phone that day in the mountains, and it occurred to her that she could use the same words to lure Nelson back to the U.S. “The difference being,” she said, “that when I said them, I was utterly insincere. I owed him a little insincerity.”
They were a changed family, she said, but a happy one. “Thank God for that therapist you and Ben recommended.” They were in good hands, but I knew from personal experience that therapy isn’t a breeze. Mason was still in the throes of readjusting, but helping him do that was Jenny — as she now insisted on being called. The help was mutual. Mason helped her to cope with the aftermath of her experience in the mountains. He was also teaching her to paint.
Caleb had moved back home. The bond between him and his brother was stronger than ever, and he was reestablishing his relationship with both his sister and a new foster brother — Troy had not been parted from his sister. They saw a lot of Carrie and Aaron — now known again as Carla and Luke — whose surviving parents saw the benefit of letting all of the children spend time together and keep connections, and be known by whatever names they chose. Set free from the confines of their previously hidden life, the four children were already showing an eagerness to explore the world around them.
“So,” Elisa said to me, “I’ve gone from walking around by myself in a big empty house to waking up with four — sometimes six — children beneath my roof. Only if Richard were here could I be any happier. He would have loved this family.”
It was an easy family to love, full of bright, bold beings. Having heard of his courage, I believed Richard Fletcher would have been proud of it on that count, too.
Caleb and Jenny were over their scrapes and bruises a little sooner than I was, but we all recovered nicely. I was especially glad that the bite mark she had given me healed, not because it hurt, but because the guilt I saw on Jenny’s face — whenever she happened to notice that little crescent of bruising — was too hard to take.
ANNA STOVER claimed that she had merely been disoriented up in the mountains, but wasn’t believed. It was hard to convince anyone that a woman who worked with Las Piernas’s search-and-rescue team and
had spent many hours training others in orienteering and searching those same mountains for lost hikers had become disoriented on paved and marked roads, but her lawyer was saying it had been a very stressful situation and could have happened to anyone. She was facing a number of charges, the district attorney arguing that she could have saved lives and prevented injuries if she hadn’t impeded their investigation.
Ben said perhaps it was a case of misguided family loyalty, but he said it without conviction. The Las Piernas SAR group, suffering major public-relations problems, asked Ben to come back and take over. He declined. I suspect he’s going to start his own team.
CLEO’S lawyers have a difficult client. They did talk her out of trying to claim that Caleb and I were a home-invasion team that killed Roy and tried to beat and blind her. She was able to prove that she was out of the country when Gerald Serre — Aaron/Luke’s father — was killed. She claimed that had been Sheila’s work. That would explain how Sheila knew where to be the day the remains were recovered, and her interest in the investigation, as well as the presence of her DNA on the cigarette butts at the scene, but no one was calling that case closed just yet.
One reason for that hesitation was that Sheila was being accused by her own killer. Cleo’s DNA matched the DNA found in the shoe she left in Sheila’s backyard. Striations on the bullet that killed Sheila were matched up to one of Cleo’s many weapons. The ATF was interested in the design and material used on the booby trap at the cabin. They said they had a call from Interpol about a similar trap that had killed a man in France, at a place owned by someone matching Cleo’s description.
IT took me a while to begin to trust Graydon Fletcher. He weathered a sudden drop-off in attendance at the private school, multiple investigations, arrests of several family members, and plenty of suspicion other than my own. Frank told me that he was fully cooperative with the police, and as more became known, the more I began to doubt that he had been part of Giles Fletcher’s conspiracy.
I suppose it was his daughter Edith who paved the way for my ending up liking the old man. She was actively getting the rest of the family to reexamine certain attitudes toward insularity, and Graydon backed her up on all of it.
NO ONE had heard from Dexter. The largest donation toward the reward for his capture came from his wife.
ONE other thing made me decide I liked Graydon. When it was discovered that he was the sole beneficiary of Sheila Dolson’s will, he made a gift of Altair to Ethan Shire.
ALTHOUGH he suffered a few permanent effects from his gunshot injuries, Ethan recovered and went back to work. Shortly after that, he moved in with Ben, who was teaching him how to work with Altair.
LATE one evening, two days after Ethan moved out, Frank and I were sitting up in bed, finishing off bowls of chocolate ice cream in the nude. I got up and put the spoons and dishes in the kitchen sink without bothering to put on a robe. When I came back to bed, Frank had a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read.
“What?”
“Awfully quiet around here,” he said, reaching for me.
I felt my face break into a grin. “Ain’t it great?”
“Damn straight,” he said, and proceeded to try — successfully — to make me holler.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY individuals deserve thanks for their help with this book and, as always, I ask readers to understand that these experts are not responsible for my errors.
Wayne Bowlby, who worked for many years for San Diego County Child Protective Services, patiently answered my many questions when I first began working on Kidnapped. Conversations with Detective (Ret.) Ike Sabean, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau Missing/Abducted Children, regarding a subplot in Bloodlines led to the questions that began this book.
Additional help with forensic science and police procedural matters came from other members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, especially Detective Elizabeth Smith, Homicide Bureau; Barry A. J. Fisher, Director of LASD Scientific Services Bureau; and David Vidal, Senior Criminalist, LASD Scientific Services Bureau.
Carolyn Rollberg kindly spent time talking to me about the experiences of those who visit prisoners in California, and her openness is deeply appreciated. I received additional help from several members of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, especially Tip Kindel, Training and Regional Public Information Officer.
Forensic anthropologists Paul Sledzik and Marilyn London have once again provided invaluable assistance with those aspects of the book.
Major (Ret.) John F. Mullins took time from his own writing to provide helpful advice and encouragement.
Laura Rathe, Beth Barkley, and other dog handlers on the SAR-DOGS list were generous with their time and expertise.
Dr. Ed Dohring has faithfully provided medical information for every book, and has my thanks for that, for daring to hold conversations that gross out other people in restaurants and, most of all, for his friendship.
S.G., Sandra Cvar, Eileen Dreyer, Jerrilyn Farmer, Tonya Fischer, Julie Herman, Sharan Newman, Timbrely Pearsley, John Pearsley, Jr., Twist Phelan, Christopher Rice, and Gillian Roberts have my thanks for their additional support and help above and beyond the call of friendship and family.
Marysue Rucci, David Rosenthal, and Carolyn Reidy — your patience and support have meant so much, as has the support I’ve received from Micki Nuding and Louise Burke at Pocket Books. Thank you for that and so much more. Thanks also to the sales reps at Simon & Schuster, especially Laura Webb, who will probably never know how terrific her timing with encouragement has been. Rebecca Davis, Tara Parsons, Alexis Taines, and all the others who have worked with me these past two years have my sincerest gratitude. Many thanks are due to Philip Spitzer.
Timothy Burke, I want to share the return-address label with you for a long, long time to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATIONALLY BEST-SELLING author Jan Burke is the author of eleven novels and a collection of short stories. Among the awards her work has garnered are Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar® for Best Novel, Malice Domestic’s Agatha Award, Mystery Readers International’s Macavity, and the RT Book Club’s Best Contemporary Mystery.
She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project (www.crimelabproject.com) and is a member of the board of the California Forensic Science Institute. She lives in Southern California with her husband and two dogs. Learn more about her at www.janburke.com.
OTHER BOOKS BY JAN BURKE
Bloodlines
Eighteen
Nine
Flight
Bones
Liar
Hocus
Remember Me, Irene
Dear Irene,
Sweet Dreams, Irene
Goodnight, Irene
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