“And where, pray tell, are we going?” Michael asked.
“To talk to someone.” Dean clearly didn’t feel like sharing more than that. I expected Michael to draw this out, to actually make Dean ask, but Michael just stared at him for several seconds and then nodded.
“No comments on my driving,” Michael said lightly. “And you owe me.”
“Deal.”
“Excellent.” Lia looked altogether too pleased with herself. “So Michael will go with Dean and Cassie, and Sloane and I will provide the distraction.”
“I like this plan,” Sloane declared brightly. “I can be very distracting.”
Michael and Dean weren’t so enthused. “Cassie’s not going.” The two of them spoke in unison.
“Well, this is awkward,” Lia commented, looking from one boy to the other. “Are you two going to start braiding each other’s hair next?”
Someday, I was fairly certain that Lia would write a book entitled Making an Awkward Situation Worse.
“Cassie’s a big girl,” Lia continued. “She can make decisions for herself. If she wants to go, she can go.”
I wasn’t sure why she was so gung ho on my accompanying them, or why she was volunteering to stay home herself.
“Dean and I are both profilers,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t that make me kind of redundant?” The only thing I would bring to this venture was objectivity. Lia’s ability made her the more obvious choice.
“No offense”—Lia began her next sentence in a way that more or less guaranteed the next words out of her mouth would be insulting—”but you simply cannot lie, Cassie. Agent Sterling got the truth about our last little adventure out of you so quickly, it’s embarrassing. Really. If you stay here, you’ll get us all caught. Besides,” she added, a smirk settling over her features, “Tweedledee and Tweedledum over here will be less likely to get themselves killed—or to kill each other—if you’re along for the ride.”
I thought of Lia and Michael dancing together just to get a rise out of Dean, and Michael’s inability to keep from poking bears with sticks. Michael, Lia, and Dean locked in a car together would be a disaster.
“Dibs on being Tweedledee,” Michael said blithely.
“Fine,” I told Lia. “I’ll go with them.”
For a moment, I thought Dean would protest, but he didn’t. “I’m ready when you two are,” he said gruffly.
Michael smiled, first at Dean, then at me. “I was born ready.”
We passed the ride to Broken Springs, Virginia, in tense and uncomfortable silence.
“Okay, I’m calling it,” Michael announced when the quiet got to be too much. “I’m turning on the radio. There will be singing. I would not be opposed to car-dancing. But the next person whose facial expression approaches ‘brood’ is getting punched in the nose. Unless it’s Cassie. If it’s Cassie, I punch Dean in the nose.”
A strangled sound came from Dean’s direction. It took me a second to realize that the garbled sound was laughter. The threat was so very Michael—completely irreverent, even though I had no doubt he’d follow through with it.
“Fine,” I said, “no brooding, but no radio, either. We should talk.”
Both of the occupants of the front seat seemed somewhat alarmed by that suggestion.
“About the case,” I clarified. “We should talk about the case. What do we know about this woman we’re going to see?”
“Trina Simms,” Dean said. “According to the visitor logs Agent Sterling showed me, she’s visited my father with increasing frequency over the past three years.” He gritted his teeth. “There’s reason to believe that it may be romantic, at least on her part.”
I didn’t ask Dean to elaborate on what that reason was. Neither did Michael.
“I doubt she knew him before he was incarcerated,” Dean continued, saying each word like it didn’t matter—because if he let it, it would matter too much. “She’s in her forties. In all likelihood, she’s either convinced herself that he’s innocent or that the women he killed deserved to die.”
The real question wasn’t how Trina Simms had justified her interest in a man most people considered a monster. The real question was whether or not she was a killer herself. If so, had she considered the murders a romantic gesture? Had she thought Dean’s dad would be proud of her? That it would bring them closer together?
I knew instinctively Daniel Redding didn’t care about this woman. He didn’t care about people, period. He was callous. Unemotional. The closest he could come to love was whatever it was he felt for Dean, and that was more narcissistic than anything else. Dean was worth caring about only because Dean was his.
“What’s our game plan?” Michael asked. “Do we just knock on the front door?”
Dean shrugged. “You got a better idea?”
“This is your rodeo,” Michael told him. “I’m just the driver.”
“It would be better if I went in alone,” Dean said.
I opened my mouth to tell him that he wasn’t going anywhere alone, but Michael beat me to it.
“No can do, cowboy. They call it the buddy system for a reason. Besides, Cassie would try to go after you, and then I would go after her, so on and so forth….” Michael trailed off ominously.
“Fine,” Dean capitulated. “We go in as a group. I’ll tell her you’re my friends.”
“A clever ruse,” Michael commented. It hit me then that Michael hadn’t agreed to drive Dean here for me, or for Lia. Despite everything he’d told me about their history, he’d done it for Dean.
“I’ll do the talking,” Dean said. “If we’re lucky, she’ll be so fixated on me that she won’t be able to pay attention to either of you. If you can get a read on her, great. We get in. We get out. With luck, we’ll be home before anyone realizes we’ve left.”
On the surface, the plan sounded simple, but lucky wasn’t an adjective I would have applied to a single person in this car. That thought lingered in my mind as Michael drove past a sign: WELCOME TO BROKEN SPRINGS, POPULATION 4,140.
Trina Simms lived in a one-story house the color of an avocado. The lawn was overgrown, but the flower beds had clearly been weeded. There was a pastel welcome mat on the front porch. Dean rang the doorbell. Nothing happened.
“Bell’s broken.” A boy with a buzz cut came around the side of the house. He was blond-haired and fair-skinned and walked like he had someplace to be. At first glance, I’d put his age at close to ours, but as he came closer, I realized that he was at least a few years older. His accent was like Dean’s, magnified. He offered us a polite smile, more a reflex in this part of the country than a courtesy. “You selling something?”
His eyes skimmed over Dean and Michael and landed on me.
“No,” Dean replied, drawing the man’s attention back to him.
“You lost?” the man asked.
“We’re looking for Trina Simms.” Michael’s eyes were locked on the man. I took a small step sideways, so I could get a better look at Michael’s face. He would be the first to know if the polite smile was hiding something else.
“Who are you?” the blond guy asked.
“We’re the people looking for Trina Simms,” Dean said. There was nothing aggressive about the way he said it, no hint of a fight in his voice, but the smile evaporated from the stranger’s face.
“What do you want with my mother?”
So Trina Simms had a son—a son who was significantly taller and bigger than either Michael or Dean.
“Christopher!” A nasal shriek broke through the air.
“You should go,” Trina’s son said. His voice was low, gravelly and soothing, even when the words he was saying weren’t. “My mother doesn’t like company.”
I glanced down at the pastel welcome mat. The front door flew open, and I nearly lost my balance hopping out of the way.
“Christopher, where is my—” The woman who’d come out of the door came to a standstill. She surveyed us for a moment with squinted eyes. Then she bea
med. “Visitors!” she said. “What are you selling?”
“We’re not selling anything,” Dean said. “We’re here to talk to you, ma’am—assuming you are Trina Simms?”
Dean’s accent was more pronounced than I’d ever heard it. The woman smiled at him, and I remembered what Daniel Redding had said about Dean being the kind of child people loved on sight.
“I’m Trina,” the woman said. “For goodness’ sakes, Christopher, stop slouching. Can’t you see we have company?”
Christopher made no move to stand straighter. From my perspective, he wasn’t slouching at all. I turned my attention back to his mother. Trina Simms had hair that had probably been up in rollers all morning. She wasn’t wearing any makeup except for red lipstick.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope you’re friends of Christopher’s?” she said to us. “He has all of these friends, but he never brings them by.”
“No, ma’am,” Dean replied. “We just met.”
If by “met” Dean meant “silently assessed each other.”
“You’re a pretty one.” It took me a moment to realize that Trina was talking to me. “Look at all of that hair.”
My hair was slightly longer and slightly thicker than average—nothing worth commenting on.
“And those shoes,” Trina continued, “they’re precious!”
I was wearing canvas tennis shoes.
“I always wanted a girl,” Trina confessed.
“Are we inviting them in or aren’t we, Mother?” Christopher’s voice had a slight edge.
“Oh,” Trina said, stiffening suddenly. “I’m not sure we should.”
If your son hadn’t said anything, you would have invited us in yourself, I thought. There was something about the dynamic between the two of them that made me uncomfortable.
“Did you ask them why they’re here?” Trina’s hands went to her hips. “Three strangers show up on your mother’s porch, and you don’t even—”
“He asked, but I hadn’t gotten to introduce myself yet,” Dean cut in. “My name is Dean.”
A spark of interest flickered in Trina’s eyes. “Dean?” she repeated. She took a step forward, elbowing me to the side. “Dean what?”
Dean didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t react in any way to her scrutiny. “Redding,” he said. He glanced over at Christopher, then back at Trina. “I believe you know my father.”
The inside of the Simms house contrasted sharply with the overgrown front lawn. The floors were immaculately clean. Porcelain figures sat on every available surface. Dozens of framed pictures hung on the hallway walls: Christopher in school picture after school picture, the same solemn stare on his face in each. There was only one picture of a man. I took a closer look and froze. The man was smiling warmly. There were a few wrinkles near the edges of his eyes. I recognized him.
Daniel Redding. What kind of woman had a fondness for doilies and hung a serial killer’s picture on her wall?
“You have his eyes.” Trina ushered us into the living room. She sat opposite Dean. Her gaze never left his face, like she was trying to memorize it. Like she was starving, and he was food. “The rest of you…Well, Daniel always said you had a lot of your mother in her.” Trina paused, her lips pursed. “I can’t say I knew her. She didn’t grow up here, you know. Daniel went to college—always so smart. He came back with her. And then there was you, of course.”
“Did you know my father growing up?” Dean asked. His voice was perfectly polite. He seemed perfectly at ease.
This was hurting him.
“No,” Trina said. Another purse of the lips was followed by an explanation. “He was quite a few grades younger than me, you know—not that a lady ever tells her age.”
“What are you doing here?” Christopher threw that question at Dean from the entryway to the room, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was cast in shadows, but his voice left no doubt to his feelings about this turn of events. He didn’t want Dean in his house. He didn’t want Dean’s father’s picture on his walls.
Not that I blamed him.
“Dean is welcome here,” Trina said sharply. “If things go well with the appeal, this could be his home.”
“Appeal?” Dean said.
“Your father’s appeal,” Trina said patiently. “The evidence they planted.”
“They being the FBI?” Michael asked. Trina waved a hand at him like she was waving away a fly.
“None of those searches were legal,” Trina said. “None of them.”
“My father killed those women.” Dean paused. “But you know that, don’t you?”
“Your father is a brilliant man,” Trina said. “Every brilliant man needs outlets. He can’t be expected to live as other men can. You know that.”
The familiarity with which Trina spoke sickened me. She thought she knew Dean. She thought he knew her.
But did she kill Emerson Cole? Did she kill the professor? That was why we had come here. That was what we needed to know.
“It must be hard for a man like Daniel,” I said. Dean’s hand found mine. He squeezed in warning, but I already had Trina’s attention. “To be caged, like an animal, like he’s less when really—”
“He’s more,” Trina finished.
“That’s enough,” Christopher said, crossing the room. “You need to go.” He reached for my elbow and wrenched me off the couch. I stumbled, trying to catch a look at Christopher’s eyes, to know what he was thinking, whether he’d meant to grab me so hard—
One second Dean was next to me, and the next he had Christopher pinned to the wall, his forearm pressed against Trina’s son’s throat. The contrast in their skin tones was striking—Dean’s tan and Christopher’s pale.
“Christopher!” Trina said. “This young lady is our guest.” Her chest heaved with agitation. No, not agitation, I realized. Seeing the look in Dean’s eye, the way he’d moved, she was excited.
Michael walked over to Dean and hauled him off his prey. Dean fought Michael’s hold for a second, then went still. Michael let him go and patted the front of Christopher’s shirt, like he was dusting off the lapels of a suit jacket, even though Christopher was dressed in a worn and battered tee.
“Touch her again,” Michael told Christopher conversationally, “and Dean will be the one trying to pull me off of you.”
Michael told me once that when he lost it, he really lost it. I could hear it beneath his pleasant tone—if Christopher laid another hand on me, Dean might not be able to pull Michael off.
Christopher’s hands knotted themselves into fists. “You shouldn’t have come here. This is sick. You’re all sick.” The fists stayed by his sides, and a moment later, he stomped out of the living room and out of the house. The front door slammed.
“I’m afraid Christopher doesn’t quite understand my relationship with your father,” Trina confided to Dean. “He was only nine when his own father left, and well…” Trina sighed. “A single mother does what she can.”
Dean came back to sit beside me. Michael stayed standing, and I realized he was watching Trina from an angle that decreased the chances that she would notice his attention.
“How long have you and Daniel been together?” I asked. You aren’t together, I thought. He’s using you. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“We’ve been seeing each other for about three years,” Trina replied. She seemed pleased to be asked—which was, of course, why I’d chosen that question. If she believed that we were on board with the relationship, it would feed into the happy little picture she’d painted in her mind. Dean was visiting. This wasn’t an interrogation. It was a conversation.
“Do you think this new case will affect his chances of an appeal?” I asked.
Trina frowned. “What new case?” she asked.
I didn’t reply. Trina looked from me to Dean.
“What’s she talking about, Dean?” she asked. “You know what a crucial time this is in your father’s legal situation.”
His
legal situation is that he’s a convicted serial killer, I thought. Based on my interactions with Briggs and Sterling—and Dean himself—I was almost certain this appeal was as fictional as Trina’s misguided belief that if the older Redding was released, Daniel and Dean would move in here.
“That’s why I’m here,” Dean said, casting me a sideways glance as he followed my lead. “That girl who was killed at Colonial? And then the professor who was writing the book?”
“The FBI tried to talk to me about that.” Trina sniffed. “They know I’m your father’s support. They think they can turn me against him.”
“But they can’t,” I said soothingly. “Because what you have is real.” I swallowed back the guilt I felt, playing on this woman’s delusions. I forced myself to remember that she knew Daniel Redding for what he was: a killer. She just didn’t care.
“This case has nothing to do with Daniel. Nothing. The FBI would love to pin something else on him. Left on a public lawn?” Trina scoffed. “Daniel would never do something so rash, so sloppy. And to think that someone else is out there—” She shook her head. “Claiming credit, trading on his reputation. It’s a crime, is what it is.”
Murder is a crime, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. We’d gotten what we needed here. Trina Simms wasn’t concerned with continuing Daniel Redding’s work—to her, the copycat was a plagiarist, a counterfeiter. She was female, a neat-freak, and controlling. Our UNSUB was none of the above.
Our UNSUB was a male, in his twenties, subjugated by others.
“We should go,” Dean said.
Trina clucked and protested, but we made our way to the door. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I said, as we were leaving, “what kind of car does Christopher drive?”
“He drives a truck.” If Trina thought it was an odd question, she didn’t show it.
“What color is the truck?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Trina said, her voice taking on the tone she’d used repeatedly with Christopher. “He never washes it. But last I checked, it was black.”
I shivered as I thought of the profile Agent Sterling had given us and felt the ghost of Christopher’s grip on my arm.
The Naturals (2 Book Series) Page 17