by Anne Stuart
“At home, of course. You think I miraculously climbed out of my wheelchair, strangled and raped some poor girl, carried her up the mountain and dumped her into Silver Falls before climbing back down and getting back into my wheelchair? Don’t be absurd.”
Maggie didn’t even blink. “Why did you put it in that order?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said strangled and raped, not raped and strangled. I don’t think that bit of information was made public. That she was raped post-mortem.”
Stephen Henry looked at her blankly. “This is a small college town, Mrs. Bannister. If you think there are any secrets here you’re sadly mistaken.”
“It’s Sheriff Bannister, Professor. Or Maggie.” Her voice was even. “And you’d be surprised at the secrets some people can keep.” She looked over at Caleb, who was lounging off to one side, seemingly at ease. He gave her a faint smile.
“Answer her question, Father,” David said in a weary voice. “She’s not going to leave us alone until she gets what she wants.”
Stephen Henry looked sulky. “Most days I wake up, my aide dresses me and puts me in my chair and rolls me into the bathroom. I take care of my bodily functions. I come out and Dylan rolls me into my study, where I set to work on a new collection of poetry. Dylan leaves for the day, returning in time to assist me in getting ready for bed, and one day is pretty much the same as the next. Do you need any other details?”
“What about yesterday? Any phone calls? Did you check your computer, answer e-mails?”
“E-mails are an invention of the devil, the single greatest contribution to the wretched illiteracy of the masses. I won’t have a computer in the house.”
“Luddite,” Caleb said sweetly, and Rachel resisted the impulse to grin. David was almost as bad—he used a computer only when he had to, and if Rachel hadn’t insisted he would have continued to survive on dial-up in the house.
“So you have no witnesses to your whereabouts between the time your aide left and the time he returned.”
“You’re talking about yesterday? David,” he said promptly. “He came over in the middle of the day. We needed to have a family powwow, and he cancelled classes and came to talk to me.”
For a moment David started, and he glanced at his father so swiftly Maggie probably didn’t notice. But Rachel did.
“And I presume Caleb was there as well.”
“Not me, Sheriff,” Caleb said. “I think I was the family problem they were discussing.”
“Is this true, David?”
David hesitated. “Yes, it is. That we met, not that we talked about Caleb.”
“Then why didn’t he join you?”
“I assume he was busy elsewhere,” David said, glancing at him. “Maybe you should ask my wife where he was.”
Rachel froze. “I beg your pardon?” she said in her iciest voice.
David turned to look at her. “You’ve been up at his place. It only seemed logical.”
“Sheriff Bannister isn’t interested in your brother’s tomcatting ways, David,” Stephen Henry said.
Rachel looked over at Caleb, who simply looked back at her, unperturbed. “Caleb’s tomcatting ways have absolutely nothing to do with me,” she said, not certain who was pissing her off the most.
“There’s no need for anyone to get edgy,” David said with his usual easy charm. “I’m sure we’re just one of many families she’ll be talking to. That’s how police work is done, isn’t it? Patient footwork, talking to dozens and dozens of innocent people until you find the clue that puts it all together.”
“That’s the way it usually works,” Maggie said evenly.
“So tell me, Sheriff,” Caleb said suddenly. “Why don’t you think the murder over in Idaho was committed by the Northwest Strangler?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then why don’t you think our two little murders were committed by the same man?” David asked.
“We haven’t established that the second body found was actually a murder victim. And I wouldn’t exactly call our crimes little. No death is ever small.”
Rachel noticed she didn’t answer that question, but went on as if it had never been asked. “It’s turning out that our Northwest Strangler might not be that localized. There have been similar cases as far away as Portugal and West Africa.”
“Then that leaves our family out,” Stephen Henry said triumphantly. “Except, for perhaps…” His glance strayed toward Caleb, who was listening to all this with no more interest than if he were watching a trial on television.
“Except for me, Maggie,” he said. “I’ve been in Portugal, West Africa, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Russia…you name it, I’ve been there in the last fifteen years or so. Now all you have to do is find similar murders in each country, check my whereabouts at the time and you’ve got your man.”
“That’s not funny,” Rachel snapped.
His smile was oddly sweet. “I don’t know, I can find a certain black humor in it. What is it, Maggie? You want to take me in? I won’t put up a fight.”
“Well, I certainly will,” his father said. “Neither of my sons have a violent bone in their bodies, and—”
“Now that’s definitely not true, S.H.,” Caleb said. “I can hold my own in a bar fight, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. I fight dirty, I’m ruthless, and I can do what I have to to get the job done. Seems to me I’m the perfect candidate for murder.”
“And then there were the dead animals,” Maggie said, her voice even. “I’m not sure that torturing animals is something you just outgrow.”
It hit her so fast she was shocked. Rachel had been sitting there, an unwilling witness to all this, when her stomach suddenly lurched. “Excuse me,” she said, bolting from the room, barely making the bathroom before she was sick.
It seemed to last forever, which, considering how little she’d been eating, didn’t make sense. When she’d finally gotten rid of everything in her stomach she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as her breathing slowly returned to normal. No one had ever said a word about tortured animals—the very thought almost had her hurling again. She took calm, shallow breaths as a cold sweat covered her. What the…fuck…had she gotten herself into?
She heard the sound of voices in the hallway outside the powder-room door—Stephen Henry’s sculptured tones, David’s measured ones. She pushed herself up, splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth out before opening the door.
Her bright smile must have been a little wavery. “You okay?” Maggie asked, and Rachel realized with shock that she was the only one in the room who actually cared. There was too much going on in the tangled mess of the Middleton clan to pay much notice of a married-in stranger.
“Just a touch of the stomach flu,” she said, forcing her voice to sound stronger.
“Yeah, that’s been going around,” Maggie said, covering for her. “Caleb’s taking Stephen Henry home and then coming down to the station. I’m finished with David. He’s been real helpful.”
She couldn’t look at him. Not without thinking about it, not without having to turn around and head straight back into the bathroom. No wonder David had been so adamant about not having animals. She didn’t even want to think what he went through as a child, having a sociopath for a brother.
She’d spent far too much time reading about serial killers—before Tessa was murdered. Once that happened, she’d found the very thought of it so revolting that she’d had to avoid certain sections of the bookstore. Some of the other parents had wanted to read everything they could, trying to understand the how and the why of Tessa’s death. Rachel didn’t want to understand anything. She’d simply wanted to take her daughter and run to a safe place as fast as she could and David had appeared, deus ex machina, to protect her, when she’d never thought she’d needed protection before. And now here they were, in a place that was anything but safe.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t look at Caleb. He’d told her to leave town,
and she should have gone at the first warning. She should have listened. If Maggie was right, and you didn’t outgrow torturing helpless creatures, then chances were he’d moved on to bigger and better victims. And sending her out of town would have been the perfect setup. David would insist on coming with her and there would have been no one left to stop him.
Or maybe Caleb had some sick, strange compulsion and he was trying to stop himself. Maybe that was why he wanted to send her away, to somehow keep her safe from his own monstrous hands.
“Give an old man a kiss, Rachel,” Stephen Henry said, still with that annoying tone that had become part of his everyday speech.
She leaned down dutifully, trying not to look at the man standing behind his chair, the hand that rested on the handles, strong and long-fingered and tanned by the sun. Hands that had done things too horrific to even think of. Even if he’d been a perfect Boy Scout from there on out, there was a darkness of the soul that would never leave you.
She brushed Stephen Henry’s cheek with hers, but before she realized it, Caleb had caught her chin in his hand, tilting her face up to his, forcing her to look into his dark, endless eyes for a long, silent moment.
He had to see the disgust and condemnation there, even while she tried to hide it, and then she pulled herself away, stepping back. “Good night, Rachel. If Maggie hauls me off to prison without giving me a chance to see you again I hope you’ll be very happy with my brother.” There was that malice again, hidden beneath the polite words, malice that only Rachel seemed to hear.
“That’s not going to happen, Caleb,” Stephen Henry said. “As soon as I get home I’ll call our lawyer.”
“Not necessary, Father. I’m sure Sheriff Bannister and I can come to some kind of understanding. If not, I think I can manage to escape before she calls out the bloodhounds.”
Maggie didn’t blink, didn’t respond. “You take care of yourself, Rachel,” she said, turning her back on the men. “You and Sophie mean a lot to us Bannisters, and I need to make sure you two are safe. Nothing’s going to happen to either of you, not on my watch. But it doesn’t hurt to pay attention.”
Attention to what? Rachel wanted to ask. But they were already heading out the door, leaving her behind.
At the last minute Caleb turned back to look at them, an unreadable expression in his eyes. David put an arm around her. For some strange reason she wanted to throw it off, but she remained still, motionless, the perfect image of a devoted couple.
And then they were gone, the door closing behind them. David took a step away from her, almost as if she were an infection. “I’m going in my study for a while, dear,” he said smoothly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
At least his earlier amatory mood had vanished. The thought of fending off one of David’s rare romantic moves was enough to make her want to head for the powder room again.
But she composed her face in a Madonna-like smile, and kissed the air beside his cheek. “Sleep well, then.”
His smile was benevolent. “I will, my love. I will.”
14
It was a good thing he didn’t have to make conversation with Stephen Henry in the car. His adopted father kept up a monologue that wouldn’t have allowed the most determined chatterbox get a word in. Because if he had, Caleb would have probably slammed him up against the side of the car, shook him till his teeth rattled, and demanded to know what the fuck he thought he was doing.
Since Stephen Henry wouldn’t have told him, and since putting hands on the old man was probably not a good idea, it suited him just fine to chauffeur the old bastard back to his pilfered house and his highly paid houseboy.
It wasn’t until Dylan, a graduate student with the patience of a saint, was extricating Stephen Henry from the car that his father finally decided to address him directly, smugly assured that Caleb wouldn’t say anything in front of the help.
“You’ve been very quiet, my boy,” he said as Dylan settled him back into the chair. The old man was heavier than he looked. “Are you troubled about something?”
Caleb looked down at him. “I was just wondering about something. When you told Maggie Bannister that lie about David being over here, was it to give him an alibi or you?”
For once he’d managed to shock the old man into silence. “When you figure out what your answer is you can let me know,” he added, climbing back into the car and pulling out into the road without looking. Good thing no one was driving by to smash into, ruining his melodramatic exit, he thought sourly as he drove down the road. Though maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. He had no particular death wish, but things had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.
She must be pregnant. He’d been a fool not to realize what was going on, but the thought of his brother actually breeding had been too far-fetched to even consider in his darkest nightmares. No wonder she refused to listen to him and take her daughter the hell away from there. If she was carrying David’s child she wouldn’t very well bail on him, any more than she would harbor any unacceptable suspicions.
Of course, suspecting the black-sheep brother was just fine. She’d looked at him like he was Jeffrey Dahmer after Maggie dropped that bomb about animal torture. He’d have to thank the sheriff for that little extra. As if things weren’t complicated enough, now his sister-in-law was going to consider him the man most likely to become a serial killer.
Shit. He didn’t mind that part as much as he minded the fact that she was pregnant. It explained a lot about her. The gorgeous, female curves of her body, her pale, almost luminous skin. The fact that she was both attracted to and repelled by him. Hormones run amuck. He couldn’t thank his own reliable magnetism. She was simply knocked up.
Which made everything a lot more difficult. Maggie didn’t believe the serial killer had moved on, and neither did he. He’d love it if he was wrong, if life was just a series of ugly coincidences, if he could just head back to Africa or wherever the bureau decided to send him next and not have to think about what was happening in Silver Falls. Maybe he’d been wrong all this time.
Yeah, and maybe pigs could fly. Maggie might be right, and there’d be no more murders in Silver Falls, at least not for a good long time, long enough for people to forget.
But there had always been long waits in between victims, a studied methodology designed to outwit even the most trained of criminologists. And now there’d been at least three in the last few months. Maybe more.
Maybe David could bring it back under control, maybe he couldn’t. And maybe Caleb should just tell Maggie Bannister what was going on. The trouble was, he didn’t have an ounce of proof. Everything was pointing to him just as easily as it pointed to David, and he had to start thinking there was a reason for it. The crimes that were turning up, the murders around the world. He was willing to bet his life that they happened during David’s infrequent visits to his older brother.
That could point to him just as much as it could point to David. And if Maggie decided not to believe him, which was more than likely given his experience in this rotten little town that had always been ready to accept that the adopted kid was the monster, then he’d be locked up and there’d be no one to stop David.
He couldn’t let that happen. He could stonewall Maggie. She’d believe what she’d want to believe, but she wouldn’t come up with any evidence unless his helpful father decided to go one step further in protecting David. It was the way it had always been, with even their mother keeping a close eye on her damaged birth son. In the end it had killed her, and if he’d had any proof at the time he would have killed David himself.
But he hadn’t, everything had pointed to him, once again, and he’d gotten the hell out of there. He’d gotten out and kept on going, running until he could run no more. Until he’d heard his twisted baby brother had married.
One mistake he’d made was to be too careful. David wasn’t going to screw up without more help—he was cunning, deliberate, totally in control. He had no emotions, no weak
nesses as far as Caleb could see. If he was waiting for David to screw up he was going to be stuck in this hellhole for a long time.
In the meantime he had to get Rachel and her daughter out of town. She wouldn’t listen to his warnings, she wouldn’t listen to her own instincts. So he had no choice but to take it one step further.
Maggie Bannister was waiting for him, and he’d have to undergo what he’d been through so many times in his life. Denying his guilt without implicating David, at least overtly. He’d been doing it since David was ten and Stephen Henry had beaten him for supposedly lying about his brother, though he suspected the old man had known perfectly well who the guilty culprit really was. Not that Maggie could believe him if he tried.
If he was going to stop David he’d have to do it on his own—there’d be no help from their father. Sooner or later David’s little tricks could come back to bite him in the butt, and he could let go of the guilt.
Once that happened he’d be long gone, continents away, and he wouldn’t even need to think about it. Think about his niece or nephew growing up with a monster for a father. Soon enough it would all be over.
But first he had to get rid of Rachel.
Sophie woke up early, just after dawn. She took a quick shower and threw on the school uniform that she hated, the dull greens and grays of the ordinariness that her mother had only recently seemed to prize. She grabbed a soda from her fridge, a Butterfingers from her stash, well out of Rachel’s sight or they’d be long gone. She brushed her hair, working her fingers through the snarls, and reached for her barrettes.
Her fingers skimmed the intricately chased silver ones David had given her. He always asked her why she didn’t wear them, and she always told him she was saving them for something special.
Like when her mother came to her senses and left the creep.
That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The murders had just brought back all the fear and horror of Tessa’s death, and if Sophie knew her mother, and she did, she’d dig in even harder.