“Why did Bridgette leave?” she asked as his sobs slowed, trying to distract him.
He shook his head, rubbing his face with both hands. “I kicked her out.”
“Why?”
She settled back into her chair, giving him a second to get himself under control. He took a few deep breaths, finally clearing his throat before he got back to his story.
“We were in San Francisco. The boys were with us because the nanny had a family emergency and couldn’t stay with them.” He rubbed his face again before clearing his throat once more. “We were filming outdoor scenes for a movie we’d been working on for several months. Almost immediately Bridgette began accusing me of sleeping with the lead actress. Came down to the set and announced it to the whole crew and cast, even the woman in question while her husband was standing there beside her. That led to the biggest fight we’d ever had, a blow out that I tried to keep contained outside of the hotel suite we shared with the boys. But Bridgette . . .” He sighed. “I left her at the hotel, told her it was over if she left the room. Then I went out, got drunk at a bar down the street. When I got back, it was late, I was plastered. Any other night I would have just fallen onto the bed and passed out, but something stopped me that night.”
He glanced over his shoulder, as though checking to make sure no one was standing there. It took her a second to realize he was making sure Durango hadn’t wandered in.
“Bridgette wasn’t in the bedroom, wasn’t in the living room. I went looking for her, half hoping she’d left, but her clothes were still there. I checked Billy’s room, but he was passed out cold in his bed. Alone. She wasn’t in the bathroom, not on the balcony. The only place left was Durango’s room.” He visibly paled as the memory played out in his mind’s eye. “She was in bed with him, under the covers. Naked.” He shuddered. “He was asleep, thank God! But the image of her, of what she was doing . . . I will never get it out of my head.”
Gracie frowned, wondering why Durango had never mentioned this.
“I grabbed her by her hair and dragged her out of there. Threw her out into the hallway, told her I never wanted to set eyes on her damn face ever again. She didn’t even cry. She stood up, a sly smile on her face and said, ‘You’re just jealous that your son has a bigger cock than you.’” Jackson visibly shuddered. “He was thirteen.”
Silence fell between them. Gracie stared at her hands, filled with sadness that this sort of thing was allowed to happen to anyone. She wanted to curl up into a ball and hide from a world that would protect a woman like that. Those poor boys!
“I had my lawyer call her a few days later to arrange for her to get her things out of the house and to pick up Billy. It never even occurred to me that I’d kept her son from her when it all went down. But there was this boy, angry that his mother had taken off. Again. She did that from time to time, just disappear for days or weeks at a time, refusing to tell me where she’d been when she came back. I always kind of thought it was a sort of karma for the way I’d treated Macy.”
He picked up the wine bottle and crossed to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two more bottles. He poured them both a glass, lifting his own to his lips for a long gulp before setting it down, gesturing for her to take a drink of her own.
“I think we both deserve a drink right about now.”
She sipped hers, the desire to dull the painful edges of his story mixed with the need to be clearheaded enough to pick up on the unspoken tale he was trying to lay down. She knew this all had a point. She just wasn’t sure yet what it was.
“She’s gone a week before my lawyer calls me and says she denies the kid. Doesn’t want him back. Tells the lawyer that I can do whatever I want with him. I ask the lawyer what to do, and he says he’ll check into it. When he comes back another week has passed. ‘Man,’ he says, ‘there’s not much we can do to make her take the kid. And the father is a dead end because she didn’t name him on the birth certificate. The best thing you can do is call family services and let them take him off your hands.’ But then I looked at Billy and Durango together, realized they’re like best friends. Durango smiles so easy when Billy’s around. How can I take another person he cares about away from him? So, I tell my lawyer to do what he needs to do to make Billy my kid. She didn’t even fight it, signing away her parental rights like she’s signing over a car title or something.”
Jackson had to have been close to drunk what with having drunk most of one bottle and now half of this one. But his hands were steady as he lifted the glass to his mouth once again.
“That boy . . . He was a fucking handful. The school was always calling me about fights and these girls saying he did things to them they didn’t want. I had to grease a lot of palms to keep him in that private school until he graduated. And the therapy . . . But it didn’t seem to help. Some of the things . . .” He shook his head. “She did a real number on him, that woman. Every time I thought we were making progress, he’d do something else that I had to pay someone off over.”
Gracie tilted her head as she studied him. “Does Durango know about these things?”
“Some. Not all.” He sat up a little straighter. “Durango doesn’t want to hear anything from me, let alone things like this. He and Billy idolize each other. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two brothers who admire each other so much. They still look at each other like each thinks the other is a god.”
“Durango should know what you did for him. What you did for Billy.”
“He would just brush it off, find a reason why it was just me looking out for me. He’s convinced that everything I’ve ever done for him was motivated by my desire to keep the bad press from getting out.” Jackson snorted. “He obviously hasn’t seen all the tabloid stories about my drinking.”
Gracie touched his arm. “Durango’s a complicated man.”
“He is that. And now he’s all yours.”
Jackson stood up a little unsteadily, taking a second to hold on to the back of his chair. “There’s something you should see,” he said before leaving the room. She wondered if she should follow, but he was back just a moment later, a file folder in his hand. He set it in front of her, his finger holding it closed as he studied her face.
“Promise me you’ll proceed with caution.”
She nodded her head.
“I don’t want to see anyone else get hurt. Too much has happened. It just needs to end.”
“I agree.”
“You promise me you’ll end this no matter what happens.”
Overwhelmed with curiosity, Gracie nodded her head again. “I promise.”
Jackson let go of the file and picked up the unopened bottle of wine. “I’m going to retire for the night. If I don’t see you in the morning, it was a pleasure.”
He was gone before she could respond.
Gracie’s heart was pounding as she stared at the closed file. It took her a minute to get the courage up to open it, but when she did, she realized she’d been running down the right trail from the very beginning of her investigation into these murders. She was just focused on the wrong suspect.
Chapter 16
Los Angeles, California
Jackson Chamberlain’s Home
Gracie curled up on a stone bench in Jackson’s garden, a borrowed phone between her hands. She needed to call Axel, needed to know what was happening back in Springfield, but she wasn’t sure what she should tell him about her strange conversation with Jackson. She understood Durango so much better now. There were some things that facts on a computer just couldn’t explain. But now she could empathize with the pain he went through as a child, with the oddness of his childhood growing up in the shadow of a man like Jackson. He must have seemed like he was larger than life to Durango when he was a child. But he really was just a man, a flawed human being who’d made mistakes. It was sad that Durango could never see that.
It made her think of her own parents. Her father was such a pious man. Every word out of his mouth was straight from
his interpretation of the Bible. Gracie had hated him for that, hated that he so clearly loved his church and his God more than he loved his family. She never understood how a woman like her mother, a fun-loving, laid back, beautiful woman, could have fallen in love with such a man. But she did love him. Gracie never doubted it. Her doubts lay with whether or not her father returned that love.
She knew she caused her parents problems when she was a kid. Back then, she didn’t care, but as she grew older, she began to regret it. She still regretted it. The day she got the call about their accident was the first time she’d prayed in years, a prayer in which she asked for forgiveness for all she’d done and a request to go back and do it all over. But even her father’s God couldn’t allow that.
She missed them so deeply that her chest ached when she thought about them. But at least she had memories of them, she had the memory of hugs and kisses, of long afternoon discussions and Sunday night dinners. She had a childhood full of her mother’s love and her father’s presence.
Durango didn’t have that. He was robbed of those memories because his mother chose to leave this world when he was so young. It was a selfish thing for her to have done. No wonder he was so angry.
She wished she could help him through that anger. And she wished with everything she had that she could protect him from what she was afraid was coming next.
She couldn’t put it off much longer. It was after midnight back in Illinois.
The phone rang only twice before Axel’s sleep slurred voice filled her ear.
“I’m sorry to wake you.”
“No, I’m glad you called. We found something.” She could hear a rustling of cloth and the soft tones of a woman’s voice. She felt even worse then, realizing she was pulling him from Abigail’s bed. “Give me just a sec.”
She waited, her legs swinging against the edge of the stone bench. She glanced back at the house, wondering if she was keeping Randall up. The back of the house was dark except for a few lights in the living room. But she had this sense that someone was watching her even though she couldn’t see anything.
“Okay,” Axel said, drawing her back to their conversation. “We got the forensic reports from the coroner’s office in Chicago.”
“Good. What did they show?”
“Everything we expected. She was strangled manually, a t-shirt wrapped around her throat after the fact.”
“What about the sexual contact?”
“There wasn’t enough DNA for them to test.”
Gracie grunted. That could be good since it obviously wouldn’t indicate Durango. But it was bad, too, because it might have shown that he was not the last person with her. In fact, it might have been the killer’s DNA, and that could have been a huge break for them. But clearly, he was too smart to leave that sort of evidence behind. He never had before, why would he start now?
“There’s really nothing new for us to go on, just the same stuff. But I did notice one thing we’ve been overlooking all this time.”
“What’s that?”
“The killer leaves bruises on his victims’ left shoulders. The coroners assume that he’s holding the victim down with his right hand and strangling them with his left.”
“Yeah?” She’d noted the same thing on most of the coroner’s reports. But it didn’t seem to point to anything more than MO.
“Four of the Chicago victims didn’t have that bruise.”
“What?”
Axel grunted. “Four of the victims in Chicago weren’t killed by the same man.”
“You think—”
“I think Durango had it right when he arrested Dirk Francis. I think he killed four of the Harrison Strangler’s victims in Chicago. And if that’s true, it’s possible he knew the identity of the real killer.”
Gracie’s thoughts began to spin. If that was true, then Dirk Francis could be their clue to making connections they might not have been able to make otherwise.
“You have Durango’s notes on his interview with Francis?”
“I do. Calder and I have been going over them since we put it together. We haven’t found anything yet, but—”
“Do you think he was killed because someone was afraid he would identify the real killer?”
“I think it’s possible the real killer got into the prison and killed him himself. I have Zola up there trying to get the security footage as we speak. I’m hoping we’ll have it in the morning.”
“But wouldn’t Durango and his colleagues have gone over that footage before?”
“Not Durango. He was arrested not long after they found the body. He would have been pulled from the case.”
“If he’d seen it, he might have recognized someone.”
Axel was quiet for a second. “You think Durango knows the killer.”
“I know he does. This became personal for a reason, Axel.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Axel cleared his throat. “I wasn’t entirely sure Durango was innocent of these murders until we got this forensic report.”
“What changed?”
Axel cleared his throat. “Durango’s right handed. The bruises on the victims suggest the killer is left handed.”
“Yes, but he could use his left hand to throw investigators off.”
“It’s possible. But, I don’t know if you know this, but Durango damaged a few ligaments in his left hand when he was in high school. A football injury. He told me about it once when we were on a stakeout early in the days of Mastiff. It doesn’t really affect his day to day life, but there’s a definite weakness there. He can’t physically strangle a woman with his left hand.”
Gracie hadn’t known that. She tilted her head to one side. “Why didn’t that come up in his trial?”
“I don’t know. Maybe his lawyer wasn’t aware of it.”
She didn’t understand that. It would have played well in front of jurors, the idea of an injured teen powering through and becoming a cop anyway. And then it hit her. He would have hoped that he’d be able to restore his career when the trial was over. But if he allowed his lawyer to use that bit about his hand in court, it might have allowed the department to refuse his reinstatement based on a physical limitation. It had been known to happen before.
What a fucking joke. They were never going to let him come back. Not after a trial as sensational as that one was.
But something else bothered her about it. Wouldn’t the killer have known about this injury if he’d been in Durango’s life since he was thirteen?
“Was there a bruise like that on Sarah’s shoulder?”
“Yes.”
“Were there any other marks? Other bruises or anything?”
“I don’t remember. I could look, if you want.”
“Please. Anything that’s unusual that doesn’t have another explanation.”
Axel made a noise on the other end of the line like he sat on some unforgiving material. “What are you thinking, Gracie?”
“That this killer might have left a message for Durango. That he’s been leaving messages for him all along.”
“How so?”
She wasn’t sure she could articulate it in her own mind, let alone to him. But she tried.
“The killings in Chicago were out of character. He had a partner, and he was more careless than he’d been before. He left bodies in public places, places he knew they’d be found—”
“Wait! Are you saying there are other murders?”
Gracie had forgotten for a moment that Axel wasn’t completely in the loop. She chewed on her bottom lip, hoping to hell that the FBI hadn’t somehow put a bug on this phone.
“Fifteen.”
“Fuck!”
“Get that video and email it to Durango’s father, okay? You have that address?”
“Yeah, he gave us all his contact information when he called the other day. But . . . Gracie, you aren’t just a human resources secretary, are you?”
“No, Axel, I’m not.”
&nb
sp; “Somehow, I knew that. I’ve known it for a while.”
“I’ll explain when this is all over.”
“I don’t suppose it matters. But I’m glad you’re on our side.”
Gracie ended the call and walked back to the house. Randall smiled politely when she thanked him for the use of his private cell phone.
“Anything to help young Master Durango.”
She started up the stairs, exhaustion suddenly heavy in all her limbs. She was glad Durango had so many friends now. He was going to need everyone he could get.
She slipped through the partially closed doors of his bedroom. She thought he was asleep, but then he pulled the blankets back, sliding over a little to make room for her. She stripped out of everything but her panties and slid in beside him, welcoming the feel of his arms around her body. He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask any questions. He just pulled her close, his chin resting on the top of her head. He just held her until her busy mind finally slowed and allowed her to drift off to sleep.
Chapter 17
Los Angeles, California
Billy Chamberlain’s Home
“I don’t know what you expect to find here.”
Gracie touched the small of Durango’s back, looking over her shoulder as that feeling of someone watching washed over her. They’d driven past the house half a dozen times, both of them suspicious that there were no cops watching the place. They should have been sitting on this house just like they were still sitting on Jackson’s two miles to the south, but they weren’t. There was no sign of any police presence, and that scared Gracie more than the sight of an unmarked sedan would have.
“I don’t know what we’ll find.”
“You should be searching Jackson’s house. He’d be more likely to be hiding something than Billy.”
“What makes you think I didn’t?”
Durango looked at her even as the door knob turned under his hand, admitting them to the smaller, but still opulent, mansion his brother called home. He dropped the keys into his back pocket—keys he borrowed from his father’s collection hanging neatly labeled in the laundry room—and stepped inside. A rush of cool air hit Gracie in the face as she followed, snapping the door shut behind her with as little noise as possible. She was still convinced someone was watching her, though she couldn’t imagine who could see through the tall hedges that grew all along the front of the property. Billy was apparently very cautious of his privacy. The security gate looked simple, but she recognized the security system that chose who was allowed inside and who was stuck out on the street. It was very high tech. Very expensive.
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