“What’s the point of proving she’s related to me if she’s going into foster care?”
“It’s more to prove Raven is her mother. And if she is, where is she? What’s happened to her?”
“I can’t live with that,” Keelyn said.
“What do you want to do?”
“I feel like I’m . . . we’re supposed to take her.” She placed her lithe hands over his, a gesture of promised expectation. “I think Lucent is a stone that was dropped in the middle of a big lake that caused these ripples to flow out. I need to have her close.”
Lee swallowed heavily and slid his hands from hers. He couldn’t have imagined that putting a ring on Keelyn’s finger might mean an instant family.
“That’s not smart. If he’s targeting your family, having the two of you together will put you in more danger.”
“It’s my job to protect her. I need to do for her what I didn’t do for Raven.”
“Keelyn—”
“It will be easier to protect us both if we’re in the same place.”
“I might have to move in.”
A smile brightened Keelyn’s eyes, and Lee’s spirit lightened. “No, no, Mr. Watson. Not until you say those two simple words at the end of a long aisle and I’m dressed in something expensive and white.”
Chapter 4
BLACK CLOUDS ROILED overhead as Nathan approached Ruby’s in his platinum SUV, and his windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the rain. At the diner’s road entrance, two squad cars remained to control the crime scene. Nathan stopped and erased the vapor from his driver’s-side window then pushed his badge against it. The patrol officer gave a quick salute of two fingers off his forehead and Nathan proceeded through the barricade of their vehicles at a slow pace.
He parked toward the front of the paint-faded structure and buttoned up his black trench coat. Several additional officers were inside the restaurant gathering witness statements. They would need, at a minimum, their basic information before allowing them to leave.
The killer could be among them.
Nathan exited his vehicle and stood so he faced the corner of the parking lot where the Highlander was parked. The crime geeks were trying to keep a blue tarp over the vehicle, both as protection against the weather and as futile hope against the rain washing away precious evidence.
As he paused to take in the overall picture of the crime scene, he heard the bell of the diner clang against the glass as the door opened.
“Hey, Nathan. Where’s your old standby?”
He turned around. The officer, Danny Smith, seated his cap on his head. “Brett’s taken an extended leave for a family issue.”
“Rumor is the two of you are splitting up as a result of your wife’s case.”
Nathan pulled his chin up. Brave for a man he barely knew to question an unsubstantiated dissolution of a partnership. “Brett’s a big boy. He can admit it when he makes a mistake. His mother is dying. That’s why he’s not here.” Nathan looked purposefully at the diner, then back to the officer. “Anything from inside?”
The young man rubbed an index finger under his nose. “A few people saw the man Keelyn described sitting with her but none of them saw him in the vicinity of the SUV. Of course, we probably haven’t caught everyone. There may have been a few who left at the time of the crime. Those”—he shrugged helplessly—“we’ll never know about.”
“Make sure everyone’s comfortable as can be inside. Let me take a closer look at the vehicle, and we’ll see about starting to let some of these folks go home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ruby’s sat in a rural part of the community, just off Colfax as you headed east out of Denver. Arapahoe County was large and the easternmost part was relatively undeveloped. South of this location, the area was growing, but Ruby’s remained a hallmark to the past. Open fields surrounded the restaurant from where it sat off this well-known road.
No hope of another business’s surveillance video capturing his ghost killing a woman here.
What was Lucent’s relation to the woman?
If Lee’s story held a grain of truth, Nathan’s life had just become infinitely more complicated. How could he explain a psychotic hallucination coming to life?
The same psychiatrist who told him seven years ago Lucent was a hallucination had been killed here today by someone using that same name. Could this man have somehow been involved with the ghost that influenced John Samuals to kill his wife and two children? Nathan ran the toe of his polished shoe through the water, watching the ripples race toward the edge.
Was Raven the answer? Was she really missing? Was this child her daughter?
Lucent’s placement of the vehicle in the lot was clearly purposeful. From Nathan’s position near the front door of the diner, the white SUV was to the right and not easily seen from the entrance unless you took a couple of steps out onto the pavement and looked that direction. No other cars were parked close. Nathan paced across the lot.
Was he trampling on the killer’s DNA as it floated by in these rivulets of rain and oil?
He approached the CSI van. Owen hopped out of the back, and they shook hands briefly.
“What do you think?” Nathan turned his collar up against the biting wind.
“I think she was shot at this location.”
The tall, heavyset man motioned him to follow, and tugged on gloves as he trudged the short distance. They approached the car from the driver’s side, which stood open, Nathan presumed, as Lee had left it.
“The VIN and registration confirm this is the good doctor’s car. It appears the woman was shot with her back up against the passenger’s door. We found a slug near the armrest. Were there any signs of restraint on the victim?”
Nathan shook his head. “Unknown.”
“Then I’m guessing the killer met her here. There’s a purse with her ID on the passenger’s floorboards and what I assume are her keys in the ignition. Question is why she was on the passenger’s side.”
“They just declared her dead when I arrived at the hospital. I’ll have to make a trip to meet with the medical examiner later today. The girl was in the back?”
Owen sniffed sharply with a nod, and Nathan wasn’t sure if it was to supply needed oxygen for his large frame or to clear the snot dangling from his nose. The rumbled honk made him lean toward the latter, and he had to resist the urge to grab the handkerchief from his pocket.
Why ruin one of Nana’s hankies?
“Where’s the car seat?” Nathan asked.
Three officers combed through the waist-high brush that lined the front side of the parking lot. The wind picked up and pressed the rain into a slant.
“Wasn’t one,” Owen said.
Strange. It would be unlike a woman, especially a doctor, not to secure the child safely. What were the circumstances that brought the three of them together?
“Any luck on prints?” Nathan asked as he leaned into the vehicle, pulling his jacket tight against his chest to prevent contamination of the scene.
“Yeah, lots. We’re going to need Miss Blake’s for exclusionary purposes. Watson’s will be on record.”
“How far into processing the scene are you?”
“We’ve done interior photos, diagrams, and a quick scan for trace evidence.”
Rain specked the leather. Owen motioned Nathan back so he could close the driver’s door. “There’s a pull cover over the cargo space. Just need to quick pop the back gate to make sure there aren’t any surprises back there before we seal it up and tow it back to the evidence lot for a more thorough inspection.”
“Weapon here!” one of the officers shouted.
Owen lumbered that direction with Nathan a few short steps behind.
“Grab me a few shots before I pick it up.” Owen waved to the photographer as he bent over and pulled the dried shoots of grass to the side. “I need an evidence bag over here!” he yelled. Owen laid a hand on his thigh for support as he bent down to grab the revolver. Keeping his bee
fy, gloved fingers well away from the trigger, he examined the barrel at close range.
“Any blowback?” Nathan asked.
“Not grossly. We’ll get it processed. Have more info in a week or so. Maybe sooner if you buy me dinner.”
“I can arrange that. Let’s take a look in the back. After that, I’ll let you get it sealed and towed.”
Thunder cracked, and Nathan’s heels lifted off the pavement. Lightning flashed clear light into the gray day. His vision spotted with yellow halos.
“Yeah, we’re going to have to get the tarp down before we get electrocuted.”
Nathan contemplated whether Owen’s big frame or the thin metal poles placed him more at risk. He slipped on a pair of gloves himself as they rounded the end of the vehicle.
Booms of thunder concussed the sky, and Owen placed his hand on the latch release. Nathan held his breath. A faint whine sounded in the vacant wake of the thunder as the door rose slowly toward the storm clouds.
A Mexican-style blanket lay haphazardly over a bulky object.
Owen leaned in and pulled away one side of the blanket.
“Now, who do you suppose this is?”
Chapter 5
KEELYN SAT ON THE passenger’s side of a squad car in front of the house where Nathan said he’d known her sister to last live. The patrol car’s lights flashed ominously into the night, the alternating red and blue a signal that trouble may have passed through. Raven’s home resembled an old barn, red brick with a gray slate roof, and was located in an older area of Denver where the houses were small and tightly packed.
Lee and Nathan just completed a search of the home. Raven wasn’t there, nor was there any evidence of a child’s presence except for one simple book, Pinocchio, found on a bookshelf filled with glass vases that no sane adult would have within reach of a cruising toddler. No child’s clothing. No child’s bed. No child’s fingerprints smudging the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.
Nothing.
Only mystery. Where had Raven gone?
First, the note on her kitchen table: Sorry about last night, Clay.
Who was Clay? Did he know where Raven was? Could he be Lucent—the man that had approached her in the diner?
Lee collected a baggie of syringes from the bathroom medicine cabinet, and insinuated that Raven used drugs. Why jump to that conclusion first? It wasn’t the stated fact that bothered her but his unconscious covering of his observation.
Was he hiding something? His body language suggested it was probable.
Lee also grabbed Raven’s toothbrush for the DNA tests and then led Keelyn into the garage where there were boxes and boxes of Bibles with a stickered bookplate listing information for North Creek Church.
This was particularly mysterious because Raven had sworn off her faith or even the tiniest belief in a loving God.
What anchored like hooks in Keelyn’s heart were the unopened letters she’d sent to Raven over the last couple of years. Letters inviting her sister to be with her. To stay with her. All unopened, except the first one. A letter sent long before her child was born. Raven would have been almost fifteen, a constant runaway from social services.
In her hands she still held her note as evidence of the anger her sister harbored for her. The edge of the envelope was hacked open.
Although she already had suffered through it once, Keelyn pulled the note free again. She knew what she had written. Keelyn had been ready for Raven to live with her.
Raven had scrawled two words in red marker diagonally across the face of the note. Large, red dots appeared at the beginning lead of each letter, as if the pen was held there intentionally to let the ink leach like blood into the paper’s fibers.
TOO LATE.
Keelyn, a young woman of twenty-three at the time of the incident, had begged her father to take the three survivors of John Samuals’s rampage in. He refused. The court stated that since she was an adult, if she proved enough income, she could garner custody herself. Social Security death benefits weren’t going to cover full-time daycare, an apartment, and everything that went along with raising three children.
The challenge provided much needed direction. Keelyn had earned a basic psychology degree, but since graduating, nothing had struck her fancy enough for solid commitment. Her father allowed her to live with him and do as she pleased as long as she kept the house straight and his meals on the table.
Then, suddenly, her father died as well.
At first, Keelyn tried minimum wage jobs but the income never provided the amount she would need to care for her siblings. More education was the answer, and she finished her master’s in three years. Interpersonal communication with an emphasis on nonverbal patterns. Unfortunately, the two youngest had been legally adopted by their foster families.
Only Raven floundered.
Keelyn leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes.
Her stomach grumbled under her hand—the same sensation she had when she first awoke that fateful day.
Keelyn cracked her eyes open to see Ariana’s face peeking around her bedroom door. Not a bedroom exactly—it was nearly empty except for the cot she slept on—but where she slept when she was there. Her half siblings, five altogether, slept in gender specific rooms across the hall. She gave a half-hearted smile and waved the preteen in. Ariana crossed the room and sat on the wire frame, her black hair tangled from last night’s sleep, her brown eyes brooding.
“Hungry?” Keelyn asked.
It had been days since any of them had eaten a full meal. A sleeve of saltine crackers shared between seven people didn’t go far.
“The police are here.”
Keelyn edged up onto her elbow. “What?” she asked, tilting her head toward the door at the sound of a child crying. Was it her three-month-old brother? “Where’s Dustin?”
“In his crib. They’re saying we have to leave.”
A shotgun fired, shaking the whole house. A cacophony of children crying competed for decibels. Keelyn grabbed Ariana and held her close. Who was firing? Were the pellets going out or coming in?
Another boom.
With shaky arms, Keelyn pushed Ariana off the cot and onto the floor. “Get down, get down.” She shoved her hand into the middle of Ariana’s back and pushed her into the dirty, threadbare carpet, away from the window.
Another blast. Now screaming. A man in pain. Outside.
“Daddy’s mad.”
They were on the ground facing each other, Ariana’s brown eyes dark against pale skin and pink lips. Keelyn threaded Ariana’s hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling. “Why?”
“He made me.”
Keelyn’s eyes locked hers. “Made you—”
The screen door slammed. Her mother, Sophia, pleaded with John between sobs. The words smashed together nonsensically like a bowl of alphabet soup.
Keelyn placed her finger to her lips. “Stay here and be quiet.” She crawled to the window, drew the once-white lace curtains to the side, and peeked out.
A deputy’s car sat on the front lawn, but she couldn’t see the officer. Sirens sounded off in the distance.
John Samuals unhinged . . . again.
Keelyn turned back to Ariana. “Can you help me?”
Ariana sat up, uncertainty crossed her face. “Do what?”
“We need to get the others in here so I can keep you safe.” Keelyn thought quickly. It would be easier for Ariana to grab their sisters, since they could walk on their own. “You get Cheyenne and Carissa. I’ll get Micah and Dustin.”
She grabbed for her. “No! I want to stay here. Stay with me.”
Ariana huddled into a fetal position and began to cry. Keelyn crawled back to her position and placed a comforting hand to the small of her back. Ariana reached up and snaked her arms around Keelyn’s neck, tipping her forward.
Keelyn lay next to her again. “It’s going to be okay.”
Now, the sirens were loud. Tires screeched to a halt. Doors slammed.
For over two hours, they rested there listening to John’s ramblings, their mother’s pleading and intermittent crying jags. Why didn’t the police storm in? Why weren’t they helping? Few other sounds came from inside the house. Where were the other children? Why weren’t they crying? Were they still alive?
Keelyn’s side began to cramp and she shifted her position. Ariana pulled her arms back from her neck and placed a palm against her cheek. “Will you check Carissa? Tell her I’m sorry.”
What was she talking about?
Keelyn took her hands in hers. “Of course. Now, Ariana, under the cot and promise me you won’t move.” Her sister scurried under and turned around, her eyes wide with pleading. There it was . . . the reason Keelyn would never stop coming to this desolate acreage of lost dreams.
“Cheyenne . . . Micah . . . into the closet until I come back and get you.”
They hustled into the small space and closed the door behind.
Keelyn peeked out her door. John paced at the bottom of the staircase, twirling a knife in his hand.
A large hunter’s knife.
Keelyn stepped slowly down the stairs.
John’s voice, steely and hushed. “Please, don’t make me. I don’t want to kill them.”
Her fright over those words caused her to stumble down the remaining stairs. When John heard her footsteps, he snapped the blade up where it rested against his forearm.
A thin line of red imprinted on his skin.
Blood.
Keelyn’s stomach squirmed like an octopus trapped in a fishbowl. Its slimy, cold tentacles slithered out and seized her heart and lungs, making it painful to inhale. John backed up, a sneering smile on his face, as he approached her on the landing. Her mother was seated with Carissa, a dingy bundled towel at the child’s neck, her brown hair slick with sweat as she whimpered.
“What’s going on?” She eyed John first, then her mother. “What happened to Carissa?”
Poison Page 4