by Lisa Gardner
Sandy hesitated. “How?”
“Let’s start with Danny’s overcontrolled rage. He needs to learn to vent his anger steadily and constructively instead of letting it build to dangerous heights. Most experts would recommend daily physical exercise as a starting point.”
“He’s not athletic.”
“What about a family walk, Mrs. O’Grady? Or some teens like martial arts.”
“I … I could look into that.”
The agent nodded encouragingly. He continued, “Also for a child like Danny, violent books, video games, and movies are not appropriate. They only fuel angry thoughts.”
“Danny’s never really been into violent movies. But in all honesty, I don’t know what he does on the Web.”
“If you have a troubled son, you need to know what he’s reading or surfing on the Internet, Mrs. O’Grady. It can make a difference.”
Sandy hung her head.
“Danny’s issue with his father is more involved,” Quincy said quietly. “He and Shep need family counseling, or Danny needs private counseling, or both. You also might want to find additional family relationships for Danny with a grandparent or aunt or uncle. That way if things are strained at home, the child still has other sources of comfort and support.”
“I never thought of that,” Sandy said honestly. “Our family’s not that big. Shep’s parents passed away years ago. My own … God knows they love my kids, but they aren’t the warmest people in the world. It’s not their way.” She paused. “Do you think … Do you think Danny’s troubles are caused by the fact that I went back to work?”
Quincy smiled at her kindly. “No, Mrs. O’Grady. Being a working mom doesn’t mean you’re a horrible mom. Stay-at-home parents have troubled children too.”
Sandy nodded. She would never admit it out loud, but she was relieved. She hesitated, then asked, “My son was already troubled. Now at the very least he’s witnessed three violent murders. What will that do?”
“He needs to get it out. Keeping the experience bottled up will only make it worse.” Quincy’s gaze drifted toward Rainie.
“And if … if he did do something bad?”
Quincy was silent for a moment. “He’s going to need a lot of help,” he said at last. “Chances are that he’s experiencing a great deal of guilt and self-loathing. Someone needs to help him come to terms with that. Otherwise, there is the danger that he will simply shut down that part of himself. He will start actively considering himself to be a remorseless killer. And he will become one.”
A knock sounded on the door. Luke Hayes stuck his head in. His gaze went straight to Sandy.
“It’s time,” he said.
“Already?”
Sandy glanced at her watch. It took her a moment to read the dial, for her hand was still shaking violently. Nine A.M. The joint funeral for Alice and Sally wasn’t due to start until one. But the whole town was probably turning out, and people wanted to get good seats.
She had no choice but to go home. By the mayor’s orders, she and her family would be spending the day under virtual house arrest. He didn’t want them to upset the town, and that hurt Sandy almost more than the threatening phone calls, messages, and casseroles combined.
She slowly rose and gathered up her purse. She had hoped for easy answers this morning. Of course, there were very few such things anymore. Just more questions. And more doubts to torment her through all the long days to come.
She loved Danny so desperately. Was it right to actively wonder if her son was a murderer and still love him? Was it right to mourn for Alice Bensen and Sally Walker but still want the best for her child?
Suddenly, she felt so exhausted, she wasn’t sure how she was going to make it down the stairs.
She turned to Rainie one last time. “Do you know who this other person is yet? Do you have any leads on who did this to us?”
Rainie seemed to hesitate. “Danny ever mention anyone named No Lava to you?”
Sandy regarded her curiously. “Of course he did. No [email protected]. That was his teacher’s account. It’s Avalon, spelled backward.”
TWENTY-THREE
Friday, May 18, 10:05 A.M.
Rainie and Quincy climbed into Luke’s patrol car at a little past ten. Since Luke and Chuckie were sitting in the front seat, they took the back. Chuckie immediately looked self-conscious about having a commanding officer and federal agent behind him. He kept glancing nervously over his shoulder, as if he thought Quincy might goose him at any moment. After the second time, Quincy placed his face against the patrol car’s mesh divider. When Chuckie turned again, he discovered Quincy’s nose up close and personal. The rookie literally squealed.
Luke sighed heavily. Rainie shook her head. Quincy sat back, contented.
“You’re riling my partner,” Luke said at last. He was slouched low behind the steering wheel, studying Sandy and Shep’s quaint neighborhood with a deceptively lazy gaze. His hat was on the seat beside him; the brim limited his line of sight. The top of his head came to just above the dashboard; the lower vantage point expanded his field of view. Mostly, he watched the residential street for signs of out-of-place traffic, but from time to time he also perused the rooflines of the surrounding houses with his narrow gaze. Luke was an ace sniper.
“Any activity?” Rainie asked.
“Quiet as a church mouse.”
“How are you holding up?” Rainie asked Chuckie. He had his baton on his lap and was stroking the handle as if it were a favorite pet.
“All right,” Chuckie muttered.
He studied his lap, refusing to meet her gaze. His broad face was haggard, his hair uncharacteristically mussed. Rainie hadn’t given the green rookie any thought during the last three days. Now she regarded him intently.
“Cunningham,” she ordered more sharply.
Chuckie’s gaze reluctantly rose to meet hers. She held it for a minute. Chuckie was messed up. He had dark circles under his eyes and a nervous twitch in his hand. Apparently, seeing real action was different from boasting about it, and it was wrong of her not to have thought about him before now.
“You did well on Tuesday,” she said curtly.
“I broke a freaking door,” Cunningham muttered. “Left footprints everywhere. The state technicians yelled at me. That man Sanders said I was a disaster.”
“Sanders is full of shit. You acted with heart, Chuckie. The rest you’ll learn with time.”
Chuckie’s gaze fell to his kneecaps. He still looked troubled. When he had volunteered for this job, he had probably envisioned saving lives and protecting his community. He had not expected the debilitating frustration of arriving too late or the hard truth that today his job was merely processing the damage. Rainie understood. She knew one of the reasons George Walker hated her was that she hadn’t paid him the respect of personally visiting his family. She should’ve done that the very first day, except that she couldn’t bring herself to go, sit on a worn sofa, and make small talk while a father sat hollow-eyed and a mother wept. She just couldn’t do it.
Rainie turned back to Luke. He was still studying Shep’s house. It was a tidy, three-bedroom ranch with an attached two-car garage. Soft gray paint. Crisp white trim. One garage door was a brighter white than the other, obviously the one vandalized on Wednesday. Rainie wondered if Shep and Sandy could look at the bright white paint without remembering what was written underneath.
“We need to talk,” she said to Luke.
He nodded. He looked tired from his long trip yesterday, his cheeks not as freshly shaven as usual and his uniform rumpled. But his eyes were sharp and his hands steady. You could always count on Luke.
“How’d it go in Portland?” Rainie asked.
He frowned. “Thought we were debriefing after the funeral.”
“Something came up. You can watch and talk.”
“Apparently.” He slapped Chuckie’s leg with his hand. “Go get us some coffee, Cunningham.”
“Again?”
&nbs
p; “Three cups. The good stuff this time. We gotta impress the fed.” Luke shot Quincy a look in the rearview mirror.
“I take mine black,” Quincy offered.
Chuckie grumbled, but he knew when he wasn’t wanted. He got out of the patrol car and started walking to the grocery store around the corner.
“Chuckie needs some personal time,” Luke said the minute the rookie disappeared from view.
“I noticed.”
“He’s a good kid, Rainie. Just saw too much.”
“What do you suggest?”
Luke shrugged. “Kid that age? We should take him out shooting a few times. Then take him drinking after that. He’ll work through it.”
“Stress, guns, and alcohol,” Quincy said dryly. “Makes me wonder why the Veterans’ Administration hasn’t thought of it.”
Luke grinned at him. “You’re thinking quality time on the shrink’s couch, huh? Yeah, uh-huh. Chuckie boy will open up to some hundred-dollar-an-hour suit the day pigs fly. Sorry, feebie, but sometimes the locals know best.”
“All right, all right.” Rainie held up a hand. “I want to know about your meeting with the Avalons in Portland yesterday. Tell us everything.”
Luke’s face immediately fell. He released his breath as a sigh, his gaze returning to Shep’s house and looking troubled. “Jesus, Rainie, why don’t you start with the easy questions?”
“Do you like Mr. Avalon as a suspect?”
“I spent three hours in the man’s company, and hell if I know. First off, Mrs. Avalon isn’t Melissa’s mother. Guess she died in childbirth. So I met with Daniel Avalon and Melissa’s stepmother, Angelina.”
“Daniel Avalon?” Rainie asked sharply.
“Yep,” Luke said gloomily. “Weird, Rainie. Real weird. Mr. Avalon comes from old money. Invested heavily in real estate in central Oregon and made out like a bandit in the recent boom. He and Mrs. Avalon live in an old Victorian in Lake Oswego. Nice house, I guess. It was crammed full of so much junk, I was afraid I’d break something if I sneezed. They served me tea. In real china. With Mrs. Avalon all fussed up in some buttoned-up, lace-collar, cameo-brooch outfit that I think she bought at Jane Austen’s garage sale. Mr. Avalon favors tweed and doesn’t permit his wife to speak unless spoken to. Need I say more?”
“Stuffy and pretentious wasn’t a crime last I checked.”
“May I?” Quincy intervened.
“By all means,” Rainie assured him. She was sitting as far away from him as she could in the backseat. They were both pretending not to notice.
“Did Mr. Avalon wait many years before remarrying? Say twelve to fifteen years?”
“Thirteen,” Luke said. He looked at Quincy curiously.
“Did he speak of his daughter glowingly, but always as a child? ‘When Melissa was eight years old she was the best dancer.… Oh, little Melissa always had the sweetest smile. She used to charm everyone in grade school.’ Little acknowledgment of her life now?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, he had pictures of her all over the place, but they were mostly little-girl stuff. First ballet class, ten-year-old piano recital, that sort of thing.”
“No photos of her mom?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Her room still a little girl’s room? Lots of pink ruffles and teddy bears?”
“And clowns.” Luke shuddered.
Quincy nodded. “I’m guessing Mr. Avalon had inappropriate relations with his daughter.”
“Incest?” Rainie looked at Quincy incredulously. “Jesus, SupSpAg, how do you sleep with that mind?”
“I can’t be sure,” Quincy said modestly, “but it has all the classic signs. Domineering father alone with his young daughter for the first thirteen years of her life. Seems very doting on the outside. I’m sure if you conducted further interviews you’d find plenty of neighbors and teachers telling you how ‘close’ Mr. Avalon and his daughter were. How ‘involved’ he was in her life. But then she hits puberty and the jig is up. To continue risks pregnancy, plus she’s starting to get a woman’s body, and many of these men aren’t interested in that. So Mr. Avalon goes ahead and takes a wife, some poor, passive woman to serve as window dressing and help him appear suitable to the outside world. Now he clings to the fantasy of what he once had. And protects it jealously.”
“Does Mr. Avalon have access to a computer?” Rainie asked Luke.
“In his office.”
She turned to Quincy. “If Mr. Avalon was involved with his daughter, would he have problems with her relationship with VanderZanden?”
“He’ll have problems with any of her relationships. In his mind, she’s his.”
“That’s it then. He found out, got angry—”
“And got an alibi,” Luke interrupted flatly.
They looked at him sharply. He was nearly apologetic. “I tried, Rainie. I stayed in town till eleven last night trying to break this guy’s story. I’ve probably pissed off every blue blood in the city and it still holds. Mr. Avalon was in a business meeting all day Tuesday. His secretary swears it, and two high-powered muckety-mucks agree. They were working on some resort deal from noon until nearly seven o’clock at night.”
Rainie chewed on the inside of her lip. “Have you had time to run background checks on the supporting witnesses?”
“You mean between midnight and six A.M.?”
“Could be about money,” Rainie theorized. “Sounds like Mr. Avalon has a lot. If they do regular business with him … Maybe they’d be willing to vouch for his time in return for a few favors.”
“Possible. Don’t know how we can prove it, though. There is one other thing. I asked Mr. Avalon if he’d ever been to Bakersville. He said absolutely not. But I ran a background check before interviewing him, and according to state tax records he owns a cabin in Cabot County, just thirty minutes away. When I pushed him on it, he said it was merely a hunting cabin. He never used it himself but kept it for business associates. His wife nodded, like that means a damn thing. I don’t know. Something’s wrong there, Rainie, seriously wrong, but I don’t know what to make of it yet.”
Luke’s gaze returned to the street, where a teenage boy on a bicycle was coming into view. In sagging jeans and a loose jersey shirt, the kid seemed pretty nondescript. But he wore a green canvas backpack and he was staring at the O’Grady home intently.
“Here’s my question,” Luke muttered, tapping a finger on the steering wheel as he followed the kid with his gaze. “Why now? Melissa Avalon was twenty-eight years old. If Quincy’s right and Daddy was going to melt down, wouldn’t it have happened years ago?”
“Not necessarily,” Quincy answered. He had noticed the cyclist as well. Then Chuckie came into view, carrying a cardboard box with four cups of coffee. “Was this Melissa’s first time away from home?”
“Yep,” Luke said.
“That would do it.”
“I wonder if we’re making this too complicated,” Rainie murmured out loud, shifting in the backseat for a better view. “Mr. Avalon’s got motive. Mr. Avalon’s got money. His daughter just happens to die from a single gunshot wound to the head—”
“Assassination,” Quincy filled in.
“What if it wasn’t supposed to be a school shooting? What if Danny was being enlisted to create a diversion, something that looked like a shooting to disguise Melissa Avalon’s death. Except—”
“Except he accidentally killed two little girls,” Luke supplied dryly. He opened his mouth to argue more, then suddenly said, “Shit.”
The boy was in front of Shep’s house. His bicycle had slowed. His body shifted. The backpack slid down.…
Luke fumbled for the door handle. He shoved it open with his shoulder just as Rainie tried to bolt, realizing too late that the doors had shut and she and Quincy were trapped in the back of the police cruiser. Down the street, Chuckie saw the commotion and dropped his coffee. Rainie watched him reach immediately for his gun.
“No,” she yelled uselessly, and pounded
the unbreakable window. “Dammit, Chuckie, no!”
The boy saw Luke bearing down on him. He turned slightly and spotted Chuckie fumbling with his holster. His expression promptly shifted from purposeful to petrified.
Luke ordered, “Stop!”
And the boy shoved his backpack at Luke with all his might and took off, while the officer staggered back in surprise. Down the street, Chuckie was still juggling his handgun. Rainie couldn’t be sure from this distance, but it looked like the rookie had tears on his cheeks.
“Damn, damn, damn,” Luke shouted. He regained his footing and let the backpack fall to the ground, but the kid ran from the street to dart between the multitude of houses. A second later he was out of sight. With another sigh of disgust, Luke stalked back to the patrol car and settled for bailing Quincy and Rainie out of the backseat. They gathered around the backpack on the sidewalk just as Cunningham came running up, panting heavily.
“What’d he do?” Cunningham demanded breathlessly. He rubbed his cheeks. “What’s in the bag? What happened? Did he try anything?”
“One thing at a time, Cunningham,” Rainie growled. She looked at Luke. He shrugged, hunkered down, and placed his ear over the green canvas bag.
“I don’t hear ticking.” He hefted up the backpack and frowned. “No clinking. Hell, it feels like books.”
He resolutely unzipped the main pouch. Out poured two weighty volumes with fine leather binding and rich gilded edges—the Bible, Old and New Testaments: The note attached to the front said: To the O’Gradys. Jesus forgives.
“Oh my God,” Chuckie said desperately. “I almost shot that boy.”
Quincy said softly, “I think it’s time we took a deep breath.”
Luke picked up the two volumes. He carried them gently to the front porch and placed them in front of the door. Then, without a word, he went back to the wheel of his patrol car, slouched down to the level of the dashboard, fingered his hat on the seat beside him, and resumed keeping guard.
TWENTY-FOUR