Shattered

by Allison Brennan

  “I don’t want to hurt your family, Grant. Let me make that clear.”

  “You think Tommy’s killer is still out there.”

  “I do.” Max had called him last night after Agent Kincaid left and told him that Kincaid thought the killer was a woman. She had a few other things to say—both good and bad about the federal agent—but David had a strong sense that Max liked her. Which was a feat considering how angry Max had been when she felt forced to work with Kincaid.

  David wished he’d been there to see that.

  Ann the waitress came over with coffee for Grant and refilled David’s mug. When she left, Grant said, “I need more. Look, I want to help, but Doug and Jamie are my family. They put Tommy’s murder behind them. They had to, or they wouldn’t have survived. They have two little girls they need to protect. But now they’re thinking … and that’s going to bring back the old memories and pain. Yet they want to help as much as they can. We felt that if I was the go-between, it would cushion the pain somewhat. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fifteen years is a long time. Do you really—I mean, is there a chance the bastard who killed my nephew is still out there?”

  “It seems like a long shot, but so far there are four murders over twenty years that are identical on the surface. The first murder was almost twenty years ago. Maxine Revere, my associate, is in San Diego working the case.”

  Grant shook his head in disbelief. “Twenty years. How certain are you that this boy and Tommy were killed by the same man?”

  “Max is one hundred percent certain. So is the FBI agent who is assisting on the case.”

  “The feds are involved?”

  “Not yet. The agent is on her own time. She’s related to the first victim, Justin Stanton. They were both children when he was killed.”

  “It’s awful. There is no hell worse than losing a child.”

  “I hope I never find out,” David said. His daughter was the brightest spot in his life. “I have some questions, and if you can answer them, I won’t need to talk to your sister. However, as we move forward, there may be additional questions, and Max will likely want to talk to both of them.”

  “Meaning, if you get closer to finding out who did this.”

  “Yes.”

  “If I see that you’re making progress and my sister and brother-in-law are the only people who can answer the questions, I’ll go to them. I can convince them to help, but I refuse to get their hopes up. My sister—it was a dark time for all of us, but Tommy was her baby.”

  “Fair enough. The first question is pivotal—the police often hold back information, and because there was no suspect and the case is still open, I haven’t been able to find out a specific detail.”

  “I don’t know that I can—or should—tell you details about the investigation. If the police held something back—I was eighteen and in the navy when Tommy was killed, not on the force—they had a reason.”

  “We know that the first and third victims were both buried by the killer wrapped in a blanket from their bed, along with a favorite stuffed animal. It’s public that the boys were taken from their beds, drugged, wrapped in their own blanket, and suffocated. What is not public is if anything else was found on the body. The fourth potential victim is currently under investigation in Arizona, and we’re working on finding out if he was buried with a toy or stuffed animal. What about Tommy? Was there anything buried with him?”

  David didn’t have to wait for an answer. Grant McKnight’s eyes widened, then watered. He cleared his throat. “Yes. Tommy had a bear when he was found.” His eyes watered. “I’d given it to him when he was born. He started sleeping with it when I was deployed. He told me at Christmas—the last time I saw him alive—that the bear reminded him of the fun we had together.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  An odd mix of nostalgia and deep sorrow washed over Lucy as she stood in the small park where Justin’s body had been found.

  The park was a mile from Justin’s house, but she remembered her mother taking them there every week for as long as Lucy remembered.

  Until Justin was killed.

  The playground had seemed so big when she was little. She remembered the swings—her favorite—and the twisty slide, which was Justin’s favorite. And the little rocking horses that they’d outgrown by the time they started school, but loved to play on anyway. Pretending they were on the Pony Express. Or racing in the Kentucky Derby. Or riding mules down to the Grand Canyon like they’d watched on Brady Bunch reruns.

  Justin had been buried in the trees along the far perimeter of the park. At the time, everything south of the park had been an open field. Now new homes filled the acreage, large square boxes oblivious to the young boy who had died there.

  The park had been renamed. Lucy didn’t know who’d done it, possibly Andrew. Or maybe it was a family decision, one she was too young to remember or her family thought she was too young to be part of.

  Justin Stanton Memorial Park.

  A tree had been planted nearly nineteen years ago, on the one-year anniversary of Justin’s murder. Lucy remembered that day because she had cried—cried that her parents wouldn’t take her to the ceremony. Their priest had gone, blessed the tree, spoken to the group there, but Lucy was excluded. It was the first time and only time she had screamed at her parents. She remembered yelling at them, that she had to go, that she had to say good-bye, but they didn’t budge. She ran upstairs and slammed her door—breaking yet another house rule. But they hadn’t punished her like they had Carina when she slammed her door in anger when she was sixteen and grounded for breaking curfew.

  Her dad had taken Carina’s door off for a full month.

  But the week after the ceremony, Patrick had brought her to the tree.

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  She hated lying, especially to her parents, but she had never told them. And she had worshipped Patrick from that day forward because he was the only one who talked to her about Justin. He explained what had happened—she only knew Justin had died. Patrick hadn’t told her the details, but he explained that someone had taken Justin from his house and killed him. She didn’t think Patrick had said Justin was murdered. She didn’t remember the words he used, except for three short sentences.

  “Justin was suffocated. He didn’t know he was dying. It didn’t hurt.”

  But the pain to Lucy was real, and it had been from the beginning.

  Lucy didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Maybe Max sensed her sorrow, because she left Lucy alone. She walked the perimeter of the park and took pictures, wrote in a notepad, and even took a phone call. Max was a busy woman. Driven, dedicated, abrasive, but surprisingly astute. She gave Lucy the space she needed.

  Lucy had an overwhelming urge to call her brother. The RCK meeting would be starting any minute, but Patrick would pick up. She was pretty sure Sean would have told him everything, including what happened last night at the house.

  Patrick picked up immediately.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Am I interrupting the meeting?”

  “JT hasn’t locked us in yet.”

  “I thought Sean was joking about that.”

  “Nope. No cell phones, no computers, no electronics whatsoever for however long it takes us to get through business. Last year—when Sean wasn’t here—we didn’t get out until after midnight.”

  “I’m at Justin’s park. No one told me about the name. Did the family do it?”

  “No, it wasn’t us. Carina told me about it, thought Andrew had it renamed, but she doesn’t talk to him. I doubt she even mentioned it to him.”

  “When I was little, you took me here to say a prayer at Justin’s tree.”

  “I remember. I took you a few times.”

  “No one else would. I never thanked you for that.”

  “You don’t need to thank me, Lucy. Justin was our family.”

  “Well. I jus
t wanted you to know I appreciate that you were honest with me. You always have been, and that means so much to me, especially now when I realize it must have been just as hard for you. I’m really sorry I didn’t call you when I decided to investigate Justin’s murder.”

  “I wish you had, but I get it. I’m not angry about it. I’m here if you need me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sean told me about the reporter. He doesn’t like her.”

  “He made that very clear. I do. She’s very interesting.”

  “He also told me what happened last night. Are you sure you didn’t hear Dad wrong?”

  “I know what he said, Patrick. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. I’ll come down with Sean on Sunday, smooth things over.”

  “No, I don’t want you in the middle of this.” Her voice cracked. She didn’t want to cry, she didn’t want to get so emotional, but maybe she didn’t have a choice. Being here, at Justin’s park, remembering her early childhood, her family, the sadness that she grew up with. A deep, almost unbearable sadness that touched everyone she loved. It did get better over time. But it had shaped her. Maybe she didn’t realize how much until the last two days.

  “We’re family, Lucy.”

  “And I don’t want our family divided because of a decision I made. I handled the dinner completely wrong—I thought it would be better if I talked to everyone together, but I realized too late that I was dumping a huge amount of information on the family all at once about an extremely painful subject. Sometimes, I don’t think—I forget people don’t see the world as I do. In hindsight, I wish I’d talked to Carina alone.”

  “Why Carina?”

  “Because she’s the one most affected. She was a suspect, she went through questioning, she’s still harboring so much pain and guilt and regret. One on one, it would have gone much better.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but you can’t put the cat back into the bag.”

  “I’m going to try and fix this. If you come, Carina is going to feel like we’re ganging up on her.”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll do whatever you want. Call me. Anytime. JT will give us a short break at some point.”

  “Thanks.”

  “JT is staring at me with his laser eyes.” Lucy heard Jack say something in the background, then laughter. “But Sean’s here. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay. And Patrick? I just—well, I love you.”

  “I love you too, Luce.”

  Lucy gave Sean a brief update, then let him go too. They both had a job to do, and for the next couple of days, they would have to work alone.

  Lucy looked around for Max Revere, but didn’t see her. Where had she gone? Lucy glanced down at her phone. She hadn’t thought she’d been talking long, but fifteen minutes had passed.

  It was nearing the end of the school day for younger children, and Lucy watched as three mothers walked into the park with preschool-aged children. They let the kids run and play on the same playground Lucy and Justin had once enjoyed. Some of the equipment had been replaced, bark lined the foundation instead of sand, the trees had all grown and flourished, but the park was still the same.

  She saw Max walking toward her from where she’d parked on the street. She met up with Lucy next to Justin’s tree. “I’m right.”

  “About?”

  Max opened her iPad and flipped to a mapping program. “I had my staff research the area at the time Justin was killed compared to now. These houses were all put in ten to twelve years ago.” She waved to the backside of the park.

  “I could have told you that.”

  “But,” Max continued, “the houses in front of the park were all here. Justin was buried…” She started walking, barely looking where she was going, her eyes focused on the map. Max was also wearing heels—how in the world did she walk across the grass without her heels sinking into the soil?

  Lucy had to follow. She didn’t want to, but she had to.

  Max stopped between two elm trees. “Here. And if you turn and look, this is the only place that has complete and total privacy.”

  Lucy did look. Max was right. The park wasn’t large—the trees that framed the perimeter, where Justin had been buried, were only two deep, but they’d been growing here since before Lucy was born. A large grass area, perhaps large enough for a little kid’s soccer game, separated the trees from the playground. Beyond the playground was the corner and a four-way stop. The houses there were older, post-WWII-style bungalows, similar to the house that the Stantons had lived in when Justin was killed. But none of them were clearly visible from this angle, blocked by either the trees or the play structure.

  Max showed her the map. “This is a satellite image taken only a few months before Justin died. These same trees were here, only a little smaller. But my staff says based on the angle, this is still the only truly private spot in the park.”

  “It was the middle of the night—no one would be out.”

  “But in case someone was walking their dog, or a car drove by, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t seen. The grave was shallow, but she still needed time to bury the body.”

  Max was right. “It’s one more factor pointing to premeditated murder,” Lucy said. But right now, it didn’t help.

  “Maybe she lived in the neighborhood,” Max said. “Would people here notice someone new? Maybe not now, but it was a much smaller neighborhood twenty years ago. And it’s a park—wouldn’t someone be suspicious if an adult was hanging out at a park without a child?”

  “It’s possible. But she could have been a jogger, she visited after hours, or lived nearby. If she lived anywhere between Justin’s house and the park, the police would have spoken to her at least once. Or noted if no one was home and followed up.” Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. The headache had been slowing coming on all morning, a combination of stress and lack of sleep and drinking only coffee this morning. “I’m blanking on your timeline for a minute—the other boys were found in similar parks?”

  Max said, “Tommy Porter was found in a neighborhood park. Much larger than this one, with a baseball diamond and a soccer field as well as a playground. It was approximately one and a half miles from his house. Chris Donovan was found in a nature preserve less than two miles from his house. But there was a playground right down the street. Does that mean Chris wasn’t killed by the same person?”

  “No, look up where Tommy was buried.”

  “I just said—”

  “I mean, exactly where in the park he was buried.”

  Staring at the trees reminded Lucy of a game she and Justin used to play, sort of a weird version of Simon Says meets Truth or Dare. Because the trees were two deep, they would start at one end then ask a question of the other. Sometimes trivia about their favorite television shows—Full House and The Magic School Bus. Sometimes about what happened at Sunday dinner at Lucy’s house—she and Justin were both curious, and tried to learn everything they could about Lucy’s older siblings. Like when they hid in the back of Connor’s car when they were five and he was twenty. He still lived at home while attending the police academy. They really wanted to see his new girlfriend because Patrick kept teasing him about a girl named Darlene. But they didn’t realize that Connor was going to a party after Sunday dinner, and he drove all the way to La Jolla before realizing they were on the floor in the backseat. He had been livid with them for a week. Patrick had thought it was hilarious.

  It was within the confines, the safe zone, of the trees where Lucy had once asked Justin why his parents never kissed each other—she’d seen her own mom and dad kissing, usually in the kitchen when they didn’t think anyone was around. It used to make Lucy smile and scrunch up her nose—it had grossed her out, but she thought it was funny how her mom would blush. There was never a doubt in her mind that her mom and dad loved each other. It wasn’t just that they said, “I love you,” usually in the morning when her dad went to work, but more than words, they showed it every day.
The kisses. The way her mom would touch her dad’s hand when she gave him coffee in the morning. The way her dad would open a jar for her mom, then demand a kiss for his hard labor. Or the way he looked at her when she stepped into the room, as if she was the only person in the world in that moment of time.

  These weren’t things Lucy could articulate when she was younger, they were things she’d simply grown up knowing, and now, looking back, she realized how good she’d had it. She knew what love was because her parents were deeply in love. So when she and Sean found each other, she knew it was real.

  “I dunno,” Justin had said with a shrug. “Maybe because kissing is gross.”

  They had spent as much time among the trees as they had in the actual playground.

  Max turned her iPad to Lucy. “Here, this is a map of the Tommy Porter crime scene that my staff re-created.”

  Tommy had been buried among the trees as well, but the trees framed the baseball diamond.

  “Did Tommy like baseball?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Chris Donovan? Was the preserve important to him? Did he spend more time there than at the park?”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  She didn’t know. Her head ached and she felt sick, and not just from lack of food and too much coffee. Her heart ached for what could have been had Justin lived.

  “I might be too close to this,” she said.

  “Maybe, or you might just be starving. I know I am, it’s after one and your brother and sister interrupted my breakfast. I never finished it, and I’m more of a bitch if I don’t eat regularly.”

  Lucy almost smiled. “I don’t think you’re a bitch.”

  Max laughed. “Then you’re in an elite crowd of one.” They crossed the park. “Tell me, what were you thinking back there?”

  Lucy didn’t like sharing her theories until she fully developed them and could back them up with something more tangible than her gut instincts or the vague patterns she saw. “We need to find out if Tommy played baseball or if Chris hiked in the nature preserve.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that—my associate David has been building a rapport with the families, he can get the information. Why?”