by R. D. Brady
“True, but just in case, I’ve been trying to reach him. I haven’t been able to connect with him.”
“I haven’t either. I sent him a text a week or so ago but figured he was just caught up with college stuff.”
Reggie’s Hummer pulled into the driveway. Steve laughed. “Guess I’m not the only one who’s bored.”
“Just hungry. Trey is at Robert’s.”
Disconnecting the call, Steve made his way to the front door and had it open by the time Reggie was stomping the snow off his boots outside. Reggie ducked in the doorway. “I hope you’ve got supplies for lunch.”
“I do. But what’s this sudden worry about Rory?”
Reggie shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack by the door. “I don’t know. I guess with stuff happening, it’s just got me thinking. I just want to make sure he knows what’s going on and stays away.”
“Why don’t we call the school? They should be able to get in touch with him.”
Reggie grinned, slapping Steve on the back. “See? This is why you get paid the big bucks.”
They headed to the kitchen, and Reggie took a seat at the table while Steve headed for the fridge. Reggie scrolled through his cell phone, found the number for the school, and then dialed. Steve half listened as he made them some sandwiches.
“Looking for a student …”
Steve poured Reggie a mug of coffee and topped off his own.
“No. He should be there.”
Steve turned, looking at Reggie with a frown. A crease had appeared between Reggie’s eyes as he spoke. “That can’t be right. He left here weeks ago.”
A chill crawled over Steve skin. Oh no.
“Yes, thank you.” Reggie slowly lowered the phone.
“What happened?”
“Rory hasn’t been seen at school for at least a month.”
A month ago was the last time Steve remembered seeing Rory. He’d come up during some sort of long weekend. “Did he send any word to the school?”
“No. They were expecting him, but he just never arrived.”
Steve felt sick. “Reggie …”
Reggie nodded as he stood. “Yeah. Let’s go take a ride.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Nevaeh had to keep herself from chucking the phone across her office. Auburn had done a search of the prison. All prisoners were accounted for. Which meant if Jack wasn’t at the supermax, he had to have been released. Yet Auburn was digging in its heels and not so subtly intimating that if there were any problems, it was on Southport’s side, not Auburn’s.
Nevaeh knew people were covering themselves, but the longer they kept their heads buried in the sand, the longer Jack was free to play.
And no one liked the games Jack played.
She understood the prison’s reticence, though. Heads were going to roll. Allowing any inmate to escape was bad, but a notorious serial killer? People in the system were going to lose jobs. And if Jack was out, at least two people outside the system had already lost their lives.
Jack Kane on the loose. A shudder ran through her.
Nevaeh, like the rest of the country, had been obsessed with the Jack Kane case. He’d been a DA. His brother was supposed to have been the killer. But it had been Jack all along. His coworkers hadn’t noticed a thing. And yet he’d accrued more than two dozen kills while Steve rotted away in the New York penal system.
It was hard for Nevaeh to accept that anyone could consider Steve to be a murderer. She’d met murderers in her time. Some had been devastated by what they had done. Some had been cold about what they had done. Some had been righteous. Some had been justified. And she knew sometimes evil lurked behind an innocent mask. But it was still difficult to put the man she knew as someone who fit into any of those categories.
She’d met Steve and Julie through Reggie. She hadn’t known then that Steve Davidson and Steve Kane were one and the same. Reggie had offered Steve a job, and Steve had taken it quickly. It had been right after he’d changed his name. She couldn’t blame him for that. The Kane name had way too much notoriety for a few years, although it had died down for a little while until Jack had started his new religion and brought the family name back into the media spotlight.
When she’d first met Julie and Steve, she’d liked them. They were another couple the same age, and it was nice to have those couple friends that you could go and do things with. One night, Reggie shared with her Steve’s actual identity. It had been Steve’s idea to tell her. As the police chief, Steve didn’t want her finding out down the road when something bad happened. Nevaeh had been shaken at first. But Reggie had been adamant: Steve had saved his nephew, and there was nothing anyone could say that would make him believe that Steve was anything but an honorable man.
And the more Nevaeh got to know him, the more she agreed. He was the neighbor that people asked to check on their mail and let their dog out when they were out of town. He was the one who pitched in to help whenever there was a problem. Of course, that always led to the thoughts about media coverage of murderers where everyone said that he was just a normal guy next door before the incident.
And now I have two murders. Nevaeh stared at the files on her desk. It was going to take at least a week before the autopsies would even begin, if they were lucky. The medical examiner was located in Augusta. And with the roads the way they were, a week might be optimistic.
But from what Declan could tell, it looked like Laura had been killed sometime in the afternoon and Miss Minnie had been killed late the night before. Julie was supposed to have been at the clinic at the time that Laura was killed.
And Nevaeh couldn’t help but wonder, especially because of that note, if Jack had gone to the clinic just to see her. He’d tried to kill her before. Twice, in fact. According to what Declan had told her, which hadn’t been in any of the media coverage, when Jack had killed Julie’s sister, Simone, he’d actually been looking for Julie. Twice, Julie had escaped his attempts. And Nevaeh couldn’t help but wonder if she’d manage to escape a third time as well.
Nevaeh stood up and stretched, her shoulders feeling tense. Her eyes were burning, and she rubbed them, knowing it was a combination of staring at paperwork all morning and a lack of sleep. Last night all she could do was mentally review the images of the two crime scenes. Part of her was glad she hadn’t slept much, because when she did she still saw the crime scenes. It had been a rough night. She grabbed her thermos and unscrewed it, tipping it toward her mug. Three drops came out. She sighed.
This day is just not going my way.
She grabbed the mug and headed for the coffee maker in the main part of the police station. It definitely wasn’t as good as the French press she used every morning, but right now, she would take it. She’d just reached her door when heated voices caught her attention.
She stepped out of her office with a frown. Outside her office were two more desks for the deputies, and beyond that was a long counter that separated the bullpen from the waiting area. Off to the left were the hallways that led to the evidence room and down in the basement were the holding cells.
Right now there were two men standing at the counter, arguing with Chris. Nevaeh recognized them and wanted nothing more than to turn back into her office and shut the door. Instead she straightened her shoulders and headed for them.
Detective Sullivan turned his gaze from Chris as he caught sight of her. A smile crossed his face. “Chief. Good to see you. Last time we were in town we failed to observe protocol. This time we made sure to stop here first thing.”
Nevaeh placed her mug on the edge of Chris’s desk before stepping to the counter and crossing her arms over her chest. “What are you two doing back here?”
Detective Gomez snorted and opened his mouth to respond. But Detective Sullivan tapped him on the elbow, and he closed it. Detective Sullivan was definitely the better politician of the two. “We heard about your two murders. And we wanted to offer our help.”
Now it was Neva
eh’s turn to snort. “So you slogged out here in the middle of a winter storm in order to help me? That’s actually the story you’re going with?”
Sullivan shrugged. “Well, we did get a break in one of our cases. It seems that there were some hairs left on the body of Keith Hodgkins. And we got a match.”
“Two guesses who that match is for,” Detective Gomez sneered.
Nevaeh wanted nothing more than to punch the smug detective in his face. There was something about the guy that just rubbed her the wrong way. She’d read about his sister and knew he had a personal stake in this case. She hoped that was what was making him such a big jerk. But her patience with him was running awfully thin. “Why don’t you just save me the suspense?”
Sullivan hurried to speak, trying to break the staring contest between Gomez and Nevaeh. “It did come back a match to Steve Kane.”
Nevaeh didn’t take her gaze off of Gomez as she spoke. “Did it come back an exact match to Steve Kane?”
Sullivan had the humility to look a little sheepish. “Not an exact match, but—”
Nevaeh cut him with a glare. “So it could match someone related to Steve Kane.”
Gomez offered yet another snort. That man really was looking to get himself punched in the face. “The only other living relative that is currently free is a five-year-old. Unless you’re suggesting that somehow the little girl traveled to Albany and killed Keith Hodgkins?”
Yup, definitely looking to get his ass kicked. Nevaeh studied the two detectives. They were not going to let this go. They had decided Steve Kane was their man, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. She’d already been on the phone this morning with the governor of Maine, who’d just gotten off the phone with the governor of New York. Both wanted Jack Kane’s potential escape kept quiet until they figured out what was going on. But it looked like these two were going to need to be read in as well.
She sighed, disliking the idea of spending more time with either detective but also knowing there was no helping it. “Come back into my office. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Rory and his mom lived in a small gray two-story house that was about two miles outside of Main Street, the only house for about a half mile. It had at one point been a farmhouse, with dozens of acres of land. Slowly over the years, the land had been sold or foreclosed on by the bank, until all that was left was the house on the small quarter-acre lot.
The house itself had seen better days. The gray had once been white, and the front steps had an abandoned look to them. Reggie pulled off the road, parking along the side of the yard. The driveway and the front steps each had a couple of feet of untouched snow.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here,” Steve said.
Reggie turned off the engine. “Well, let’s just go take a quick look, and then we’ll head back.”
They’d debated calling Nevaeh. But the truth was, they had nothing concrete to go on, just a worry that something had happened to Rory. And besides, she had more than enough on her plate with the two murder investigations and coordinating with New York about Jack.
Steve got out of the truck and immediately sank into the snow. He wasn’t sure what to make of Rory’s disappearance. He’d left for school before Miss Minnie had been murdered. But if Jack had really taken Michael Foster’s place, then Jack had been out for a month. It was possible he’d already begun setting up in Dover. It was also possible Rory had just taken off. He had a lot of responsibilities on his young shoulders. Maybe it had all gotten to be just a little too much.
Please let Rory have run off with a girl somewhere.
Slowly, he and Reggie made their way to the front porch. The snow was actually a little deeper along the front path, reaching Steve’s thighs. He had to step high to get through.
The snow on the porch wasn’t as deep, only a couple of inches. He and Reggie kicked the snow away from the front door, pulled open the screen, and knocked on the heavy wooden door behind it. The door shifted a little. They exchanged a glance, and then Reggie tried the handle. The door pushed open easily.
It wasn’t unusual for doors to remain unlocked in Dover. People in Dover trusted one another. But if someone was going away for a while, they generally locked their doors.
Reggie pulled the Glock from the back of his jeans. He waved Steve to the side before slowly opening the door. “Rory?”
There was no answer.
Reggie stepped in. Steve followed quickly behind him, closing the door to keep out the cold, although it didn’t really help. The house was like an ice box, which made the sad condition of the house that much more apparent.
The floors were wooden but hadn’t been refinished in years. The living room was off to the right. A threadbare pink couch sat along the wall by the porch. A fireplace sat opposite the doorway. A single chair that didn’t match the couch sat on the other side next to a rickety-looking side table. Underneath it was a thin worn rug. Instead of curtains, bedsheets had been hung up to serve as window coverings.
Steve took it all in quickly, but it made an impression. I didn’t realize things were this bad, he thought in dismay. Rory had never said anything. They knew that he got disability, or rather, his mother got disability, and Rory paid for some of the bills through working at the lumberyard. Reggie actually paid him a couple hours extra each week, even though he didn’t work them. It was just because he was such a good worker. But obviously he needed a little more than what he was getting.
Reggie pointed straight ahead, and Steve followed him into a small kitchen. The kitchen looked like it had been created back in the 1950s and had not been updated since. Worn yellow linoleum with a green flower design curled up at the edges on the floor. The counters were also linoleum but seemed to be in better shape than the floor. The old wooden cabinets had lost most of their paint long ago. In the corner was an old card table, the vinyl ripped and repaired with duct tape. Two mismatched chairs stood silently next to it.
Reggie only took a quick glance before heading back out, but Steve opened up the fridge. There was only a small jar of jelly in the door and an old container of milk. He turned the container of milk, looking for the date along the top. It had expired a month ago.
He closed the door and headed back out. Reggie was already slowly making his way up the stairs. They creaked with every step he took. Steve shivered as a cold wind blew through the house. The house wasn’t any warmer than the outdoors. In fact, it felt colder. The heat was definitely off, but there had to be a window open somewhere, or maybe a few.
Reggie had reached the landing at the top of the stairs. He took a few steps into one room before shaking his head down at Steve, who was making his way toward him. Reggie stepped into another room across the hall and then stopped. “Steve? You need to come in here.”
Steve hurried up the rest of the stairs. He darted a quick look at the first room Reggie had looked into, noting a bed and dresser and a bag on top of the bed. That must have been Rory’s room. The bag suggested Rory never finished packing or unpacking.
Across the hall, Reggie had stopped in the doorway, but now he inched forward toward the bed. The first thing Steve noticed was the two windows that were open in the room. Snow had accumulated on the floor underneath both of them. The drapes weren’t blowing with the wind, but Steve realized why pretty quickly—they were frozen solid.
When Steve stepped into the room, he couldn’t see the bed because of Reggie’s bulk. He stepped to the side and with a shock realized there was someone in the bed. He caught sight of the light-brown hair on the pillow. “Mrs. Tilden?”
But even from here he could see that her hair was frozen. Ice covered her face. Mrs. Tilden was long dead.
Reggie looked at Steve, fear in his eyes. “We need to find Rory.”
Carefully trying not to touch anything, they quickly searched the second floor of the house. They moved to the first floor, and although there wasn’t much hiding space,
they checked every inch before moving on to the basement.
But there was no sign of Rory. All they saw of him was his bag on his bed, half filled with clothes. Steve’s gaze roamed the kitchen as he walked through it again, wanting Rory to pop up, healthy and hearty. But the house was silent.
Reggie stopped at the foot of the stairs, not saying a word, his eyes searching along the first floor before drifting back up the stairs. Steve did the same before asking, “Where do you think he is?”
Reggie’s jaw was tight, his gaze locked on the snow outside the window. “I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling that we won’t find him until the snow melts.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The chief stopped to pour herself a cup of coffee before she led Gomez and Sullivan back to her office. With a little annoyance, Gomez noted she did not offer either of them coffee. They had just driven hours to get here, after all.
The chief’s office was small, tidy, and organized, much like the chief seem to be. She ushered Gomez and Sullivan to the chairs in front of her desk. As he sat, Gomez caught sight of the owner of the lumberyard in a framed photo with a little boy behind her desk. Surprise flashed through him. He hadn’t known that those two were involved. It hadn’t been in her file. He winced, realizing he definitely could’ve handled the situation at the lumberyard better and would have had he known.
Truth was, he could have handled all of that better. But the Kane brothers just took all his professionalism and shoved it out the window. And even while he could acknowledge that, he also knew he was right. Steve Kane had started killing again, and this chief needed to see that.
She took a sip of coffee once she was settled behind her desk, cringing a little. Apparently department coffee in Maine wasn’t any better than department coffee in New York.