Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  “Please…God.” He whispered the words out loud, praying for the first time in years, and found himself back at Lori’s funeral, gazing at the casket. Looking to Sara on his right and Kenneth on his left with the terrible sense that his children were likewise slipping away from him.

  And now he knew it was going to happen. He was going to prison. The separation of his family would be complete.

  His legs stiffened and began to shake. And then suddenly he could barely move as he shut his eyes and saw Kieran O’Shea looming over him .

  He could have killed you.

  The thought pushed him to keep moving, with shallow, anxious breaths amid the flashes of pain in his upper body, listening for the signs of an approaching car.

  Joseph Niles kept a stolen Glock 17 in a locked drawer that was part of the built-in shelving in his bedroom closet. The gun was in good shape; Joseph disassembled and cleaned it once a month. The drawer also held a suppressor that fit the threaded barrel and muffled the sound when he took it out for target practice in the woods. He affixed the suppressor to the barrel and went into the master bath to get a hand towel that he wadded up and put in his pocket, which held the disposable cell phone he had just purchased at a convenience store that did not appear to have a security camera.

  He looked into the mirror over the sink and stared at the dazed expression in his eyes and the blue-black bruise. The wound still hurt like Hell—a persistent reminder of the clumsy punch from Marco the day before. The punch had landed high, but with enough force to send him into an uncontrolled rage, resulting in a flurry of blows that nearly knocked his stepson unconscious.

  That beating was nothing compared to what had just happened, in the family room at the back of the house. Marco hadn’t fought back this time—the first sucker punch robbed him of that opportunity, and Joseph had had to force himself not to finish him off.

  Would have been so easy to kill him, he thought now. Right there. Problem solved.

  But the real problem would have still been there, tracking him for life.

  He went downstairs. Marco had been lying in a fetal position on the floor an hour earlier, groaning and whining enough to make Niles wonder about internal bleeding.

  The space on the floor was empty. Marco made his way over to the couch and was in a fetal position once again, but with his eyes closed.

  Joseph took a few steps closer, listened to the ragged sound of his stepson’s breathing. He then went out through the family room at the back of the house and into the three-car garage. The Hummer that Marco had been driving when he was arrested was still in the impound lot and wouldn’t be released until after the Monday morning hearing. But the second one that he had bought ten years before was there, in perfect condition thanks to clockwork maintenance.

  He stepped past it toward the Taurus that he used for work. It was gun-metal gray and unmarked, and probably less likely to be remembered by anyone in passing traffic. He slipped in, turned on the ignition and cranked up the heat before taking out the cell phone and tapping out a short text to April Devon.

  And then he was moving through the suburban streets. The early afternoon temperature was well below the freezing mark, but the pavement that had been plowed and salted earlier gave him some traction as he headed out of his suburban neighborhood and the back roads that would take him up the mountain.

  He checked the phone for a reply when he was within ten minutes of April’s house. There wasn’t one, and when he called her cell he went straight into voice mail. He hung up, sticking again to his rule to never leave a recording of his voice on her phone.

  The final quarter mile to the house took him up along one of the highest ridges of Short Mountain. The house was built on the edge of the ridge overlooking the valley below, a simple brick ranch set back at least fifty yards from the road amid tall trees.

  He knew the house well, because he had paid for it.

  With blood money, he thought. Draining you dry.

  Madison looked down at her Range Rover from the second floor dormer window of Kenneth Porter’s house. The Rover was parked in Kenneth’s driveway, looking beat-up from the salt that had been used on the road and the fresh sheen of ice on the windows. The last hour had a surreal quality and her mind was still trying to make sense of everything Kenneth had done for her; emerging from his garage with a shovel, working with surprising strength and stamina to free the Rover’s back wheels from the snow, wrapping his arms around her trembling shoulders and asking—no, insisting—that she come into his house to warm up.

  It was equally strange now, to be in his bedroom, sitting face to face on some very nice blue and white upholstered chairs, drinking coffee out of what looked like hand-painted mugs, and hearing Kenneth ask her, for the third time, if she was all right.

  This time she answered honestly. “I’m tired I guess. Late night last night.” She tried to smile. “Probably didn’t help my driving much.”

  Kenneth glanced out the window and made a dismissive motion with his hand “The whole street’s a sheet of ice, Madison. It could have happened to anyone.”

  He looked like he would say anything just to keep her from being uncomfortable. It was a strange feeling, to be liked so much, especially by someone she had been so awful to. In hindsight it was hard to imagine what had possessed her to call Marco and bait him with the idea that poor Kenneth Porter had some kind of gay infatuation with him. Hard to imagine how she could have been so cruel.

  Kenneth gave her a slight, shy smile.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “Nothing.” He blushed, as if he’d been caught admiring her.

  “You’re too nice, Kenneth.”

  He shrugged.

  “No really. I don’t deserve this.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  If you only knew. She took a longer look around the room. He had insisted on bringing her up here, talking for several minutes about his favorite artists and about the college—a “design school” she had never heard of—that he hoped to attend in a few years. She had listened with interest, intrigued by his intensity and thinking—with the lingering weed and vodka buzz—how funny it was to be in the room of a teenaged boy who wanted to do nothing more than talk to her.

  And even now—knowing how hellish it must have been to be beaten up in a high school hallway, how alienated he must have felt when no one but his sister tried to help him—she had the feeling that none of what he was going through at the moment was very important.

  Like he’s in his own world, she thought. An artist in his garret, biding his time until he gets away from people like you.

  “I know about what happened,” she said. “Yesterday, at school.”

  The light fell from his eyes. She felt a flash of guilt.

  “I’m sorry Kenneth.”

  “Sorry?” He frowned, as if she had just given herself away.

  “Yes…” She sat back slightly, searched for the right words. “I mean, I don’t know why anyone would hurt you.”

  Her mouth hung slightly open, as it always did when she thought she might be caught in a lie. Kenneth was still staring at her, still expecting her to tell him something that would explain why he’d been beat up.

  She thought of one very simple way to do that.

  “Can you imagine what it would be like to go through life knowing that your own father hated you?”

  He gave her a confused look. “Uh, no.”

  “Well that’s what it’s like for Marco.”

  She paused, suddenly conscious of a chill at the back of her neck. Marco had always been superstitious about revealing anything about what happened in his house, and she was certain that she was the only one who really knew.

  “His family is nothing like yours. Your father would do anything for you.”

  He looked down into his cup. “I know.”


  “Which makes you ten times luckier than me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She attempted a good-natured smirk. “My family’s a mess—always has been. I think they would have been just as happy if I hadn’t come along.”

  “Madison, that can’t be true.”

  The earnestness in his expression made her smile. “Yeah well, it is.” She looked around the room again, feeling a sense of calm in the clean, peaceful blue and tan tones. She had often imagined that one day in the not-too-distant future she’d follow her mother’s lead and start spending half her nights in therapy. She expected she’d feel as she did at the moment—encouraged and emboldened to speak about her worst fears: That ten years from now she’d be looking back and wondering how she had gotten through high school at the height of popularity but without any real friends. That her attraction to Marco had become an obsession that was going to break her heart. That she and Marco were both headed for some impending tragedy due as much to their completely dysfunctional families as to the horrible way they had both been behaving.

  Particularly when it came to people like Kenneth and Sara Porter.

  Innocents, she thought, with a fresh wave of remorse.

  “We’re not perfect either,” Kenneth said. “Sometimes I think our problems are even worse. My mom. My dad. My sister.”

  “Your sister’s a nice girl,” she said, without thinking.

  Kenneth frowned in surprise, because they both knew there was no longer any semblance of friendship.

  “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to her.” Her voice cracked.

  “You should tell her that.”

  “I will,” she said, knowing she would never have the courage. “Is she around?”

  Kenneth shook his head and gazed past her, toward the dormered window.

  “She went out a couple of hours ago. With Mr. O’Shea.”

  “What?”

  Kenneth sat back slightly, looking surprised by the intensity of her reaction.

  She carefully set her coffee mug down on the small table next to the chair. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” Kenneth said. “I saw her walk out of the house and get into his truck right after I woke up.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No. Maybe it was because of what happened to Mr. O’Shea’s little brother. She was his tutor.”

  She leaned forward slightly, her palms pressed between her knees. “So you heard what happened to Aidan.”

  Kenneth nodded. She stared at him, her heart sinking once again with the thought of Kieran and Sara at the tutoring center at school; the memory Kieran’s hand on Sara’s shoulder as he leaned down and said something that made her smile.

  She felt her mouth going dry. “Where do you think they went?”

  Kenneth stared down at his phone. “I don’t know but something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

  “Maybe they’re at his house,” she said. “Up on Short Mountain.”

  He frowned. “You know where he lives?”

  She nodded, remembering the time she had spent online after seeing Kieran and Sara in the tutoring room, and the address she had found for Kieran online. Curiosity overwhelmed her as she thought of them, mourning the loss of Aidan together.

  “Yes I think we could find it.”

  “Do think we should—”

  “I think we have to,” she said, cutting off any debate. “If you really want to make sure she’s okay.”

  Caruso went to a conference room to make the call to April Devon. After three rings he went into her voice mail, and left a terse message: “I know about your history with Joseph Niles. Call me ASAP. We need to talk.”

  And then he waited, scrolling through the crime scene photographs and transcripts and reports of a six-year-old murder that he had pulled from the VICAP and NCIS databases and news media web sites and saved to his laptop. A crime of uncanny similarities to his currently active investigations.

  April called him back five minutes later, sounding anxious and short of breath. Under different circumstances he would have asked her to come into headquarters to talk with him in an official setting but he wanted to ensure she wasn’t spotted by Niles. Fortunately she was already downtown, and agreed to meet him in a more informal setting that was probably better suited to his purpose.

  He watched her enter the restaurant from a booth at the very back, seeing her differently now behind the artsy glasses and pale red hair and black, nondescript clothing. Her shoulders were slumped as she walked, conveying an obvious reluctance to be there.

  She stood still for a moment when she reached the booth, and gave him a long look, as if she was trying to discern how much he knew. He gave her a half smile and a nod back. He needed her to be relaxed, her guard lowered.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “Like I had a choice?”

  He motioned toward the opposite seat at the booth. “You’re here voluntarily as far as I’m concerned. Just helping me clear a couple of things up.”

  April gave the room around them a quick, nervous glance and sat down. The waitress came to the booth. She ordered coffee, which was delivered quickly from the nearby bus station. Caruso waited until she poured in the cream, and then got right to the point.

  “I guess I can start by telling you I arrested Niles’ stepson today, for DUI and possession of marijuana.”

  She stared down at the tabletop, both hands gripping the mug. “Is that what we’re here to talk about?”

  “Partly. But I’m more interested in Niles’ ex-wife. Your sister, Sheila.”

  She shut her eyes, looking as if a long-dreaded moment had finally come.

  He opened up the laptop and brought up the first file, a screen shot from an adult entertainment site showing covers of DVDs that featured the performer who went by the name of Sheila “Sexton” in hardcore S & M films. Like April, she had strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. Unlike April, who didn’t appear to wear makeup and who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, she had outsized and obviously enhanced breasts, elaborate tattoos on her arms and lower back, and a bold, come-on expression well-suited to her profession.

  April glanced briefly at the screen, and shook her head.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  “You want to tell me more about her?”

  Her nostrils flared as she looked back down at the tabletop. “Which part about do you want to know? The drug addict, or the mental case, or maybe just the perverted—”

  “How did she hook up with Joseph Niles?”

  He watched the rise and fall of her chest, a series of deep breaths that seemed to calm her down.

  “In Nevada, from what we know. That’s where she went when she ran away from home at seventeen. She’d already been doing drugs for years and had become a complete stranger to our family. We found out a few years after she left that she had a child. She wrote us a letter and said she was getting married and moving back to northern Virginia. We learned later that she’d been working as a prostitute. It’s legal there. That’s where she met Joseph. He got a job with the DC police and they moved to a suburb just outside the city. She kept her last name.”

  Caruso nodded, mentally checking off what she told him from the details he had compiled on his own.

  “I think she got a weird thrill out of marrying a cop,” she said. “Particularly someone like Joseph, who had all kinds of perversions, according to what she told me later. It was a scary relationship—the whole moth and flame thing. He regularly beat the Hell out of her; she allowed and probably encouraged it. But eventually they came to hate each other.”

  “So he killed her.”

  She stared at him across the booth, acknowledging it without saying a word.

  After a moment h
e turned the laptop back around so she couldn’t see the screen, then scrolled through shots of a crime scene. It was the first floor bedroom of a house in Fairfax County, Virginia. Sheila Devon’s face was bruised and battered beyond recognition. Her nightgown had been ripped from her body, and she’d been manually strangled. The autopsy suggested the killer had put his full weight on her chest, breaking two of her ribs as he squeezed the life out of her.

  Just like the death of Cherilynn Jenkins, Caruso thought. A first floor intruder, in the middle of the night. And similar enough to the murder of Danica Morris, with the beating and strangulation.

  “It was set up to look like a break-in,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s what I heard.”

  “But Joseph wasn’t charged.”

  “No, he knew what he was doing. He came up with an alibi by booking himself into a hotel in Virginia Beach that weekend, but he could have easily driven back for a few hours in the middle of the night. There wasn’t any physical evidence tying him to it. He lawyered up with someone from the police union. And since there wasn’t any proof of his involvement the lawyer was able to keep the whole thing off his record.”

  Caruso nodded. In the absence of charges a good police union advocate would have ensured Niles’ file was clean.

  “I’m guessing you knew that he never would have been hired here if we knew,” he said.

  “Of course not.”

  “So you blackmailed him.”

  Her jaw dropped slightly, a telling sign. “That’s not true.”

  “You moved here right after he got hired, April. And I just talked to the real estate agent who handled the purchase of your house up on the mountain. She told me it was a cash deal.”

  Her face reddened. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s suspicious enough since you rented your last home in Virginia and the space you used for your business. And you paid plenty for the new place—buying the view I suppose.”