The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

  “Oh, OK,” Dana replied. “Well, if you’re still in town tomorrow night, let me know. I’d love to return the favor of you buying me dinner last night. And Sundays are baking days—I usually take the afternoon to make one of mom’s recipes.”

  “Wow,” Reilly said.

  “Do you remember her peanut butter chocolate chip cookies? Uh! So good!”

  “I do!” Reilly responded wide-eyed, though he actually didn’t.

  “Then I’ll make those my project tomorrow. If you get free, just text me and I’ll make dinner for two to go with it,” Dana said, genuinely excited.

  “Sure, that would be nice,” Reilly said.

  “Yes, that sounds nice,” Corinne echoed. “Thanks, Dana.”

  “You come out here often?” Reilly queried.

  Dana wiped her forehead with the back of her forearm, even though Reilly hadn’t noticed any sweat there yet. He supposed it might be a force of habit when she was gardening. “I try to get out a few times per month. It’s a nice stress relief.”

  “Good for you.”

  “They were good people, and good to me. They deserve it.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Reilly and Corinne walked back to their car as Dana knelt down to commence her work around the stone.

  30

  Mario Cugino closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose. He inhaled the rich scents of his study—the distinctive aroma of genuine leather along with the earthy fragrance of oak, mixed with a hint of the fresh coat of varnish he had applied a couple of weeks ago. He sat in his favorite room in the house, during what had become his favorite time of the day. He and Jennifer had put Emedio down in his crib about an hour ago, and she had gone to bed shortly thereafter. She slept almost all the time now, thanks to the depression.

  He opened his eyes and soaked in the view of his study from behind his desk. An admittedly modest room, he had remodeled it from a sitting room in the back corner of their first floor. His work kept him on the road much of the day, without any workplace to light. He needed dedicated space in his home, which prompted the do-it-yourself redo that proudly took him only two months’ worth of nights and weekends. It also allowed him to get some distance from Jennifer and her suffocating sadness since his stepdaughter Stephanie’s murder early this spring.

  He had tried to be supportive. He had listened. He had provided the shoulder on which she could cry. But he had difficulty relating to her. He, too, felt incredibly sad. He loved Stephanie as his own child. When he courted then-divorced-mother Jennifer, he felt drawn to Stephanie almost as much as Jennifer. She was such a good kid: polite, kind, and sweet. She helped make his transition from “Mom’s friend” to “Mom’s boyfriend” to “step-dad” pretty painless. He still missed her every day.

  But he couldn’t wallow in pity the way Jennifer did. She seemed dedicated to it, as if self-destructive melancholy were now her duty in life. Instead, he tried to redirect his sadness, refocus the emotion toward something more productive.

  Justice.

  He knew if this resolved with a sense of justice—of doing something right and true—then he could finally feel better. It was so much more than closure, as Robin Roberts had suggested during their time on Good Morning, America yesterday. There was no substitute for, and no other word to describe, justice.

  He opened the top right drawer in his desk and removed the small metal box inside, placing it on top of his desk. He reached into the back of the left lower drawer, removing a small clear plastic case buried under a stack of old check stubs. He opened the case, removed the key within, and used it to open the black metal box. He threw back the top and admired the silver snub-nosed .38 caliber pistol inside.

  He noticed his tumbler of scotch also on the desktop, as if he had forgotten about it. He picked it up, swirled around the brown liquid inside as he brought it to his nose, inhaled its intoxicating bouquet, and then took a sip. He put the glass back on the desk blotter and plucked the .38 out of the box. He enjoyed feeling its weight in his hand.

  He had bought the gun a week after Stephanie was murdered. He had intended to have it available for self-defense, awakened by having experienced the world’s unpredictable horrors first-hand. You never know when you wish you had a gun until it’s too late, he had told himself.

  But now he had different intentions. This 15-ounce piece of steel served as his contingency plan. He had decided to give the state of Virginia one chance to get it right: a conviction on all counts for Dr. James Randall Franklin, followed by a sentence of death by lethal injection. But, if they dropped the ball, Mario was prepared to take matters into his own hands. His right hand, to be specific. The one currently holding this pistol.

  31

  Jack leaned forward on the sidewalk bench, propping his elbows on his knees. His hands instinctively came to his mouth, his right fist buried in his left. He ran the flat surface of his thumbnails back and forth across his lower lip, a subconscious habit he practiced during times of contemplation. The sun had set nearly an hour ago, leaving its last rays of the day shimmering across the iridescent, cloud-studded sky. The beautiful variegation provided a suitable diversion for his eyes while his mind churned through the events of the day.

  Aiden Dolan had not been home when Jack arrived here after leaving Boston Police Headquarters. Jack had knocked on the apartment door and had waited for ten minutes. The stakeout patrolmen had beaten him here by about forty-five minutes, and they claimed they had not seen him or Wendy Jenkins come into or go from the building in that time. Jack had decided to wait it out, for at least a little bit, before going back to Headquarters to pour through some files. With his luck, he would get halfway back to the station when the stakeout guys would call to say Dolan had returned. Jack picked a bench about fifty yards from Dolan’s apartment building, approximately halfway between the cul-de-sac and the first intersecting street. He calculated that he sat too far away from the intersection for Dolan to see him and decide to roll on by, and too far from the apartment building for him to notice when he pulled up to park.

  Jack was interested in learning a lot more about Aiden Dolan in a short time span, but the kind of car he drove tonight topped the list. He hoped it would be Wendy’s silver Cutlass Ciera. He knew in his core that Dolan had committed Fiona Evans’ murder this morning. He often likened these early intuitions to faith—a belief for which there is little evidence yet it felt known as truth. As valuably as this intuition might serve him, he knew it could only serve as a spark. He needed more evidence to continue to fuel the fire. If he had just one speck of physical evidence, such as identifying the silver car from the Denny’s parking lot as Wendy Jenkins’, his suspicion would set in stone.

  Given the multitude of similarities in their approaches thus far, Jack guessed Jeff Pine encountered similar hunches in the preliminary stages of investigations. He wondered if Jeff, as a man of deep religion and spiritualism, perhaps compartmentalized the information using different terminology than “faith” and “belief.” He made a mental note to engage Jeff in a philosophical discussion on this topic at some point, probably after the conclusion of this case.

  A black Ford Taurus turned the corner to Jack’s right and glided down the street, stopping at the curb a few feet in front of him. Camilla Vanderbilt got out of the driver’s seat. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Jack dropped his hands from his mouth. “Dolan wasn’t home.”

  “I didn’t think he would be.”

  Camilla sat down beside him on the bench. Now Dolan—or anyone else with the gift of sight—could clearly recognize something extraordinary about this street from a mile away, with a man and a woman in dark business suits sitting side-by-side on the bench on a Saturday night.

  “Whatcha got, CC?”

  She pulled the 3” x 2” photos of Aiden Dolan and Wendy Perkins out of her front jacket pocket and flapped them along each outstretched finger of her opposite hand, like some kid in a 50’s movie running a stick along a
white picket fence. “Neither Tina Langenbahn nor Sara Gardner had ever seen Dolan or Jenkins before.”

  “Can’t say I’m too surprised,” Jack replied, though echoes of his conversation with Randall the other night, in which Randall had suggested that the first two female victims had known their assailant, kept running through his head.

  “Something just doesn’t seem to fit, does it?” Camilla asked, as if reading Jack’s thought processes.

  Jack looked squarely at Camilla. “No, it doesn’t. I just…I can’t quite put it all together. I like Dolan so much for this. I’m trying to maintain a level of objectivity, but everything keeps falling into place.”

  “There are so many differences between Fiona Evans’ murder and the other two kidnappings. Maybe they’re not related at all?”

  “There are too many similarities for them not to be.”

  “Maybe they’re related, but different. Like a copycat?”

  “Or practice.” Jack’s back stiffened and his hands dropped even with his knees. “Maybe the first two were just Aiden Dolan’s dress rehearsals, and Fiona Evans was opening night.”

  32

  Mary Ellen Frontera looked at her wristwatch for at least the tenth time in the last twenty minutes, nothing unusual as she neared the end of her shift. She looked at the LED display above the main desk, praying for nothing new to light up. A feverish kid or a simple laceration would be no sweat—those can easily wait until the next shift. But a major trauma rolling in at 6:55 would be a whole other story. She would have to respond, which could mean being stuck here for up to an additional hour or so. She wanted nothing more than to put her feet up at home, her warmed-up burrito left over from last night on her lap and a glass of Pinot Grigio on the end table beside her, watching the all-new 48 Hours Mystery. She loved those real-life crime shows, but she hated missing the first five minutes. It’s no good watching a whodunit if you don’t know the crux of the mystery.

  She looked away from the LED screen, hoping that her ignoring it might keep it from changing, from adding any new names to the list of patients to be seen. She instead focused on the TV mounted across the hall, the one for patients and visitors to view. It scrolled through the hospital directory, a hospital map, and ads of various hospital programs, like the Safe Haven for Babies program and the Keep Feet Warm campaign.

  A bubbly, buck-toothed brunette crossed into her field of vision and smiled. “I’m taking report from you, Mary Ellen. Let me put my stuff in my locker and I’ll be right out.”

  Mary Ellen nodded, her face beaming. She loved signing out to Gretchen—always punctual and always perky. Hot-diggity-damn.

  Fifteen minutes later Mary Ellen grabbed her purse and lightweight jacket out of her locker. She trekked out through the main entrance to the Emergency Department and turned to her left, toward the Physician Parking Lot. Of course, the doctors parked in a lot no more than forty yards from any of the three main hospital entrances, yet the Nurse Parking Lot was located on the south end of the campus, a good ten-minute walk from the ED. Fortunately, the Physician Parking Lot was open also to nurses on the weekends, so tonight she had only a short walk to her car.

  She slung her jacket over her arm. As much as she wanted to savor the relative warmth of these last few nights when she could get by without needing a jacket, she walked briskly to her car. She didn’t favor this neighborhood. She heard tires screech nearby and quickened her pace. What sounded like a rather large and ill-tempered dog—like a Rottweiler or something of that ilk—barked in response to the car speeding by.

  She turned the corner of the building and the Physician Lot was in her sight. She heard a baby cry off to her right, from the bus stop across the driveway from her. Hairs stood up on her arms, and she knew it was due to more than the lack of a jacket. Something seemed off. Some primitive natural instinct deep inside told her to walk faster. Danger approached.

  You watch too much scary TV, a rational side of her psyche said from within.

  The baby wailed, and Mary Ellen stopped. The same instinct that seconds ago had instructed her to pick up her pace now forced her to plant her feet firmly on the concrete. The infant screamed again. Not a pained scream—she had heard that before, most commonly from her own doing as she inserted an IV into one of their tiny veins—but one of despair.

  Suddenly her mind clicked, a gear falling into place that could set the entire machination into effect. Her eyes had passed over the bus stop when she exited the hospital. There was no one there. No bus had come or gone in the thirty seconds since. She first checked the bus stop out of her peripheral vision and noticed no movement there. She rotated her head and shoulders to look across the street, and she quickly confirmed her initial image of an empty bench at the bus stop. She slowly walked into the street, crouching down to peer under the bench. In the shadows she began to make out the outline of a car seat.

  Her cautious amble turned into a full-out sprint. She dropped her purse and jacket on the sidewalk in front of the bench and bent over, pulling the car seat into the light. The crying stopped immediately, as she startled the infant enough to open his eyes and resurvey his surroundings. She took off his little blue beanie and rubbed her fingers over his fontanel. He sniffled as he looked up at her, unsure if he should start bawling again.

  She picked up the car seat by the handle and nearly reached the other side of the street before going back to get her purse and her jacket. When she grabbed the seat again to take the baby boy into the Emergency Department she noticed the embroidering on his light blue blanket that lay over him. Each letter inside a square, resembling a child’s building blocks, spelled out the name “TYLER.”

  DAY FIVE:

  SUNDAY

  33

  Vicki’s eyes popped open. The red LED slashes of the bedside digital clock stared brazenly back at her, showing 2:48. She convinced herself that the clock’s glow shone brighter than the last time she looked, six minutes ago. It had grown defiant, daring her to try to go back to sleep again. She had turned out the light shortly after 11:00 but had yet to fall into any sort of restful sleep. She might have dozed for a handful of minutes here and there, but she’s sure she saw at least one minute out of every half hour on that goddamned clock.

  Wednesday at the earliest, Prosecutor Dewey had told her. Probably Thursday. It depended on a number of factors, and cases like this always seem to take longer than predicted. Four more days, maybe five, until she would take the stand to testify against James Randall Franklin.

  Facing him for the first time since her kidnapping did not intimidate her. She had no fear of Randall. It had all happened so fast that she never really felt afraid of him. What made her dread reliving the entire experience was the guilt. How could she have been so stupid? So gullible? Her son’s allergist had knocked on the front door of their home, and she had let him in. She knew how weird he was, how she had always gotten a bad vibe from him. She had recognized that his creepiness had escalated during their routine appointment the week before. Yet she had opened the door and let him in.

  As if that weren’t enough, she then had allowed him to stick a needle into Jonah’s thigh. He had woven a complex yarn about a newly discovered, potentially devastating side effect of Jonah’s daily allergy medication. He held up a vial, allegedly containing the antidote, and injected it into her son. Within a half a minute Jonah felt woozy, and soon after he passed out. Randall had looked at her, frightened, telling her he had not expected this reaction. She ran to Jonah’s limp body, cradling him frantically, when Randall sneaked a needle into her jugular vein to inject the same sedative. Having a much more direct route to her brain—being injected in her vein rather than intra-muscularly—the drug didn’t take nearly as long to incapacitate her as it did her son. She collapsed almost immediately.

  Thankfully Jack had saved them. Jackson Byrne had given her the greatest joys in her life, packed into the last decade, which he culminated by serving as her savior against a mad man. She owed him everythin
g.

  She had never watched any portion of the ordeal, all of which had been broadcast on cable TV’s The Goodnight Hour. She had no desire to. Her only understanding of the events of that night came from what Jack divulged to her, in snippets over the last several months. He never volunteered anything; he just responded directly to her pointed questions, which were few and infrequent. She knew that his negotiated agreement with Randall entailed visiting him in prison, providing him with cases on which to assist. He endured that, at least once per month, for her and Jonah. Probably a small price to pay for the safe return of his wife and son, some might say, yet this added to Vicki’s sense of shame: Jack had to pay for her ineptitude as a parent in protecting their son.

  She rolled onto her back, glancing peripherally at the clock. Nine more minutes had passed. At this rate she wondered if she would survive until sun-up, or if the madness of insomnia might finally overwhelm her, consume her, bit by bit, until she just finally died, slipping into the dreaded—yet at this point enviable—Eternal Slumber.

  She grabbed her iPhone off her nightstand, hoping to find a diversion within. After a brief hesitation, she opened her Facebook app for the first time since her abduction. Though she had always been more of an observer than a participant in social media, posting her own musings only infrequently in the past, she hadn’t even looked at Facebook in the last four months. Dr. Inkler had suggested this could serve as a gateway into socializing again, especially during times of wallowing or perseverating. Surely this current insomniac state qualified.

  She caught up on the lives of friends for a while, but nothing garnered her attention for more than a minute before it wandered back to Randall. She feared she may never relate to her friends in the same way she had before being attacked. Her greatest fear now was that she would never be normal again.