Parker continued driving at a speed well over the speed limit. Who was going to stop him? Toby? Let him try. Besides, it would save him a trip. He was on his way to see the new chief anyway. After all, Toby had been the captain on the first river body case. Maybe he knew something about what Clint was hiding. And Clint was hiding something. Parker had sensed it when he’d been talking to him. He’d felt it in his gut the moment he’d mentioned the body they’d pulled from the river. He was sure he’d seen something in Clint’s eyes, a fear that had had nothing to do with his illness. It had been there in the room with them, hanging in the air with the scent of death. Clint had been afraid, but what had he been afraid of? Sometimes it wasn’t what the person said but rather what they didn’t that told you more than their words ever could.
He continued to Delaware Drive, when his phone went off. He pulled over to take a call from Rick. And why not? He wasn’t getting much help from anyone else.
“I found something that might be of interest to you,” Rick said.
“I’m listening.” Parker watched a couple walking hand in hand, making their way toward the pedestrian bridge. He looked away.
“The victim had a girlfriend, Candy. I found her online on one of them social media sites. Man, people blab about everything these days. Why can’t they keep their mouths shut? But hey, who am I to complain? It makes our job that much easier. Anyway, seems she has a connection to some people in your town.”
“Oh yeah,” Parker said, knowing who Candy was. Did Rick think because Parker was a rookie he didn’t know how to do his job? Maybe. Maybe that was the real reason he’d been given the river body case in the first place, and it had nothing to do with his connection to the town. Let the rookie have it, and maybe he’d mess it up, because no one wanted the case solved anyway. No one wanted to disrupt the symbiotic relationship between the motorcycle gang and the entire Slate Belt area.
Rick continued. “She was posting about how much she missed her boyfriend, blah, blah, blah. But she mentioned her aunt who had passed a few years ago of cancer, a Beth Jackson, married to a John Jackson. Ring a bell?”
When Parker didn’t respond, he said, “I did some more digging, a few more clicks. Guess where John Jackson lives?” He didn’t wait for a reply this time and kept talking. “He’s still at his old man’s house about a mile down the road from our buddy Clint.”
Parker closed his eyes. He knew all of this, although he hadn’t known Russell had been Becca’s neighbor when they’d been kids. That was the strange part about their town. The people were so spread out that it was impossible to know who your best friend’s neighbors might be.
“So,” Rick said. There was a beat or two before he added, “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I have to go,” he said. “Thanks for the help.”
Parker pulled into the lot of Portland’s police department. He cut the engine and got out of the car, spying the chief’s cruiser as he walked into the squat brick building. The place was a mishmash of colors, mostly beige and cream. It smelled like coffee.
Jenna, the only secretary in the department, sat behind a small desk behind the counter. She hadn’t changed. She still wore her hair long and straight and parted to the side. But her black frames were new, giving her a no-nonsense look, a different kind of look than when she’d walked the halls in high school.
“Is the chief here?” Parker asked.
“Hey, Parker. He’s in his office. Go on back.”
He rapped his knuckles on her desk. “Thanks, Jenna.”
Any other day he would’ve knocked before entering the chief’s office even though the door was wide open. Given his foul mood, he walked in without bothering.
“What brings you by, Detective?” Toby asked, closing the file at his desk.
“I just came from Clint’s,” he said.
Toby sat back in the chair. Underneath his uniform was a body he’d allowed to go soft with age, plump, a sign he was comfortable in this town with his job and position. He ran a hand down his face, his stubby fingers stopping at his chin. “He’s in bad shape,” he said.
“Yes.”
Toby nodded. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“What do you know about the first river body case?”
“It’s been a long time. I can’t say I remember much. Nothing is jumping out at me anyways. As I recall, it was taken from us pretty quickly by some of your guys.” He pointed at Parker’s suit, his uniform. “Why?”
Parker sat in one of the chairs in front of Toby’s desk without being asked. “We found the rifle.” He’d gotten the call earlier that morning. His team had dragged the river for nearly twenty-four hours before finding it. If only they’d found the knife too.
“Who’d you trace it to?”
“It looks to be clean.”
“Prints?”
“We’re working on it.”
Toby threw his hands up. “Well, I guess you don’t have much then, do you?”
“What does Clint know about the first case?” he asked. “What’s his real connection to the Scions? There’s more to it than him just being Russell’s stepbrother.”
“Now, hold on, Son,” Toby said. Parker hadn’t been called son since he was a boy running plays on the football field and fishing in the river with his dad. “I think you’re jumping to conclusions you don’t want to jump to. I’ve known Clint a long time, and there isn’t any way he did something illegal. He was a good cop. He kept that stepbrother of his in line. And speaking of the Scions, I think I have something you might want to take a look at.” He pushed the file on his desk toward Parker.
Parker opened it. It was an arrest report listing the names of eleven club members, including John Jackson, who had all been arrested for disturbing the peace.
“You see the date right there.” Toby tapped the report where the date was typed in. “These fellas spent the night in jail. They weren’t released until noon the next day. So, you see, they were in jail when your victim was shot and whatnot.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” Parker looked up from the file. “It looks like this name was added on as an afterthought.” He pointed to John Jackson’s name, which had been typed underneath the other names.
“Watch yourself, Son.” Toby shifted in his chair, lifting his bulk and settling it back down again. “You don’t want to go around accusing the wrong people.”
“Why don’t you level with me,” Parker said. “What exactly is going on here?”
Toby grabbed the report from Parker’s hands. “Damned if I know,” he said. “My advice to you is to take this seriously”—he shook the report in Parker’s face—“and start looking for another angle. Because if you don’t and you’re looking for trouble, well, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.” He dropped the file back onto the desk.
“That’s it?” Parker asked. “That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“That’s it.”
“Right. Well, thanks for nothing,” Parker said and stood. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“Son,” Toby said, “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you’re going to take my advice and leave this one alone.”
“I can’t do that, Chief,” he said and snatched the file on his way out the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Becca sat in the chair next to her father’s bed. Her back was sore, and her neck was stiff from craning it forward, staring, waiting for him to open his eyes. Wake up, she pleaded silently. Why did Parker want to talk with you?
The last time she’d checked, Matt had been in the backyard, pacing back and forth, stomping the crabgrass and weeds. He’d been on his cell phone with a client, a call he had to take, he’d explained to both her and Jackie over an hour ago.
Becca rubbed the back of her neck and stood to look out the window again. She arched her spine and twisted from side to side. Matt had stopped pacing. He was bent over, scratching Romy behind her ears. Normally, the sight of the two of them together would
’ve filled Becca with . . . what? Affection? Yes, she would say it was affection she was feeling, fondness. Whenever anyone showed kindness to an animal, her heart lifted. But this was Matt, the man she had lived with for the better part of five years; the emotion she should be feeling was love.
Romy lay down, hoping to get her belly scratched, but Matt ignored her at this point, distracted by his phone call.
“Becca,” her father said.
She spun around and returned to his bedside. “I’m here,” she said.
He touched his throat. She picked up the Styrofoam cup filled with water, angled the straw to his lips. He wouldn’t drink. She was struggling to accept he was getting weaker with each passing hour, so much weaker than when she’d first arrived a few short days ago. She was keenly aware she was running out of time.
“We need to talk,” she said, looking down at the Styrofoam cup in her hand. “It’s important. It can’t wait.”
He blinked. She wasn’t sure he understood, but she pressed on.
“There are things I’m starting to remember. Things I don’t think you want me to remember.” She paused. She wasn’t being clear. She could be talking about any number of things she wished she could forget, not just the things he wanted her to forget. I knew about the other women. Mom and I both knew. She wanted to shake him. How could you do that to us? To me?
Now that she was older, she understood the cracks in her parents’ marriage, the holes, weren’t about her. And maybe they weren’t about her mother either. There were flaws inside of her father, weaknesses, and she and her mother just happened to be the collateral damage. But somehow, she couldn’t say these things to him. Sometimes the pain was still too raw. Although she was beginning to understand how infidelities happened, how under the right circumstances, it could be almost impossible to stop them.
She took a deep breath and continued. “There was something that happened when I was a little kid.” She’d blocked it from her mind, or rather it had been eclipsed by another tragedy that had occurred a few short days later when her father had brought the other woman into their home.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?” she asked.
His eyes were no longer focused on her, his gaze vacant.
“I think it might have something to do with the body they pulled from the river. I know it doesn’t make sense, but . . .” I might know something about it, Dad. I’m not sure. I think I might be involved. Help me to remember. The memory was there, and it was getting closer, but each time she reached for it, clinging to the threads of a frayed childhood, the images faded, becoming blurrier, until they slipped away.
His head rolled to the side.
“Dad.” She touched his shoulder, then put her hand in front of his mouth to check he was breathing. She pressed her middle and index fingers to his carotid artery. She felt a pulse. Thank goodness. She sat back in the chair. It had taken all the courage she could muster to bring up her childhood, where the dark corners of the past lurked.
Where all she had to do was look.
Becca’s father’s eyes had closed and stayed that way. Outside, a lawn mower started. She went back to the window and found Matt riding her father’s John Deere. She didn’t even know he knew how to drive a riding mower. It was so out of character that she was stunned into watching him complete the neat little rows one after the other, the bag collecting the cuttings and the fallen autumn leaves. If she squinted, blurred her vision a little, it could’ve been her father sitting in the yellow bucket seat. They were more alike, her father and Matt, than she’d ever wanted to believe. How could she not have noticed this before? She backed away from the window, found herself rushing out of the room.
Jackie was in the kitchen on the phone. There was a stack of medical bills in front of her. She smiled when she saw Becca and motioned to the backyard, where Matt was cutting the grass. She gave Becca the thumbs-up and continued talking to whoever was on the other end of the line.
Becca slipped past her, not knowing where she could go to get away from everyone in the house, a place she could go to be alone, sort through the mess in her mind. She paused next to the basement door, deciding it was as good a place as any, and quietly opened it. She hit the light at the top of the steps, looked down the narrow staircase.
When she’d been a child, the basement had been off-limits. It had been where her father had escaped on the rare nights he’d been home, the place he’d gone to get away from Becca and her mother. She’d been curious about what had kept him away from them, what he’d been doing in the damp cold below. And she hadn’t forgotten the scolding she’d taken for the one time she had ventured down to his cave, as he’d referred to it, how he’d grabbed her arms, fearing she’d cut herself on his fishing lures or accidently ingested poison.
What she’d found had been two tackle boxes overflowing with hooks and lures along with dozens and dozens of containers of all different sizes containing pesticides for killing weeds, insects, a variety of plant diseases. They’d been stacked along the floor and lined up along the shelves against the wall. She may have been young, but she’d been old enough to know not to touch the sharp points of a hook or open containers carrying chemicals, whether the image of Mr. Yuk’s face had been stuck to them or not.
Besides, she’d been more interested in the box of magazines she’d spied underneath her father’s workbench. She’d dragged the box out and removed a magazine from the pile only to find a picture of a topless woman. She’d looked over her shoulder, straining to listen for any sounds coming from upstairs. When she hadn’t heard anything, she’d opened the magazine to the centerfold of a woman with her legs spread, displaying her most private part.
Becca had thrown the magazine and kicked the box back under the desk, wiping her hands on her jeans—but only after she’d paged through the entire issue, seeing the women’s curves, comparing her own body to the women’s on the smooth, glossy pages and feeling desperately inadequate. She’d wished she could’ve stopped herself from looking, mostly because it had felt wrong to look, and she’d been embarrassed not only for herself but for the naked women too. But she’d looked. She’d been young and curious about her body, about sex.
What she hadn’t been able to articulate at the time was how it had made her feel cheap and worthless. And wrapped with all the other emotions she’d felt toward her father, she’d had to contend with these feelings too.
Now, she made her way down the steep stairs for the second time in her life. The air was damp and filled with the scent of mold and earth and something else she remembered from her childhood, the scent of her father, a mixture of the outdoors, the soap he’d used, tinged with the smoke from his rolled cigarettes, the way his skin had smelled when he’d returned home after one of his shifts.
She continued to the bottom step and hesitated, her hand covering her mouth to keep from gasping. Everywhere she looked, in every conceivable space, there were containers and more containers, bags and tubes and pumps. All of which contained chemicals, some kind of poison or another, all meant for lawn care.
Had he really thought he could’ve kept them together with a perfect yard like her mother had said? The idea was so absurd, pathetic even. You did this to yourself, Dad. Although she was beginning to wonder if it had really been of his own making, or rather if it had been the result of a man who had been so burdened with guilt, plagued with remorse from what he’d done.
She wove around several of the large plastic buckets, finding a path to the workbench at the far end of the room. She wasn’t sure what her intentions were as she started rummaging through his tools and fishing lures, removing cobwebs from the desk. The dust and dirt made her sneeze. She didn’t find anything of interest on top of the workbench or inside any of the drawers other than a pile of the rolling papers for his cigarettes, the ones that had led to his cancer. She supposed what she really was after was whether he’d gotten rid of the box of magazines.
Slowly, she pushed the metal stool aside.
The cardboard box was in the same spot on the floor underneath the bench. She yanked it out, opened it up. The same magazine was on top, but now it was faded and yellow. She bet if she dug through the stack, she’d find some issues that could be worth money, collector’s editions. She pushed them aside. At least he hadn’t added to his collection.
In the corner next to the table leg, she saw another box, one she hadn’t noticed before. It had a lock. She got down on her hands and knees, pulled it out. A spider darted across the floor. She jumped, nearly banging her head.
She took a deep breath and tried again, grabbing the lockbox and putting it on top of the desk. The key was in the lock. All she had to do was turn it. Whatever was inside might not be important. Otherwise, why would her father leave the key in the lock? But she’d come this far, so she might as well check. She paused. This was a violation of his privacy, a blatant violation. She turned the key.
Inside, she found her father’s copy of the divorce agreement, his birth certificate, and buried farther down was her parents’ marriage certificate. There was the title to his truck and the deed to the house. The last item she pulled from the bottom of the box was a manila folder. Her palms were clammy. Upstairs, she could hear Jackie talking on the phone amid the hum of the lawn mower outside. She opened the folder and found a single sheet of paper with the Portland Police Department’s letterhead.
She searched behind her for the metal stool she’d pushed away and plopped down on it. The date at the top of the page was October 14, 1994. It was written in her father’s sloppy handwriting. It appeared he’d interviewed someone and jotted everything down so he wouldn’t forget. The one sentence that stood out, the one her father had put an asterisk by: “The victim was last seen by the witness wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and jeans.” The witness’s name was blacked out. Scrawled next to it was another note. “Witness does not want to be identified.” There were other notes on the page in the same sloppy handwriting, but Becca had read all she needed to. Her body quaked. The tremors reached as far as her core.
River Bodies (Northampton County Book 1) Page 18