Cold Case Affair

by Loreth Anne White

  Then you shouldn’t have any trouble asking him about it. Or are you going to just ignore it, and sweep that under the carpet, too?

  Muirinn was right. He had to talk to his father. Now. No matter what he discovered, he had to face this.

  Jett waited in his truck at the top of Muirinn’s driveway for Brock to arrive. He wound down his window and stuck out his elbow as he saw Brock’s SUV approach.

  “I left a message on her voice mail to say I was sending someone around. She didn’t pick up, but I’m pretty sure she heard it. She should be expecting you.”

  Brock gave his twisted grin. “No problem.” He hesitated. “You okay, bud?”

  “Yeah. You just keep an eye on her, okay? I’ll explain later.”

  Brock reached out his window, smacked his palm on the hood of Jett’s truck. “No worries. She’ll be waiting for you, safe and sound when you get back.”

  Jett drove to his parents’ house. The northern night was dusky, but not dark. There was no moon, and an eerie stillness.

  He slammed on the brakes suddenly as a coyote darted out from a bush and froze in his headlights.

  Heart hammering, Jett waited for the animal to gather its wits and trot into the trees before putting the truck in gear.

  But the incident had rattled him further.

  What else are you hiding, Jett? The fact your father killed my family…you going to sweep that under the carpet, too?

  The deep gut-honest truth was that Jett had thought briefly of his father when Muirinn first showed him Ike’s photos, when she’d mentioned his dad’s kinship with Chalky Moran. And Jett had brushed those thoughts right under his mental carpet. He didn’t want to think it remotely possible that his dad might be the bomber, even though all the signs had been staring him in the face.

  Could he have seen it years ago?

  Had he subconsciously avoided facing the truth?

  And how much better would that make him than the rest of the people who’d tried to bury the evidence—like Ike Potter or the cop who’d removed the photos?

  Jett pulled his truck into his parents’ driveway and sat for a moment, fighting his worst fears.

  He had to ask his father outright. No matter what the consequences. Because he’d said it himself to Muirinn, the time for secrets was over.

  Jett banged on the door.

  His mother opened it, belting her robe around her waist.

  “Jett? What is it? Goodness, you look awful. Come on in.”

  “I need to speak to Dad.”

  Worry flared in her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  Jett stepped past his mother and into the mudroom. He lifted up one of his father’s work boots just as his dad came through the living room.

  “Jett?”

  He didn’t reply. He turned the boot over, read the size on the Vibram sole. Size 10. His chest tightened.

  He looked at his father.

  Adam Rutledge stared at the boot in Jett’s hands, then lifted his eyes slowly and met Jett’s gaze. He said nothing, but Jett’s heart sank at the expression on his father’s face.

  He put the boot down, marched into the living room, straight for the booze cabinet. “Want a drink, Dad? Because I sure as hell need one.” He poured two fingers of scotch and downed the shot. Eyes burning, he poured another.

  Jett’s father limped into the room, cobalt eyes intent on his son. Jett watched his father’s distinctive hobble. It was just as Trapper Joe had demonstrated—the perfectionist, an explosives expert, a veteran miner who bore the battle scars of Tolkin in his body.

  And what scars did he bear deep in his soul? What secrets were buried there? What guilt?

  “Where did you go in the plane today, son?” Adam said, jaw tight. “Who did you go see?”

  “Trapper Joe. Gus had some crime scene photos of the bomber’s prints down in the mine. Did you know that?”

  His father swallowed. “No,” he said quietly.

  “We took those photos to Joe to see what he could tell us about the man who made them.”

  “Then you came here, to look at my boots?”

  “Because the prints were made by a veteran miner with size 10 feet and a lame left leg—an explosives expert who had an accomplice waiting up at the Sodwana headframe while the bomb was planted.”

  Jett paused, giving his father a chance to offer some explanation. Some denial. But his father remained silent, neck muscles bunching, the fingers of his right hand twitching at his side.

  “Did you do it dad? Did you ‘fix’ the strike by planting that bomb, killing twelve men?”

  “Jett!” His mother admonished from the doorway.

  “Stay out of this, Mom,” he said coolly, eyes focused solely on his father, willing him to deny it, to offer some explanation, anything.

  Instead, Adam Rutledge’s face turned ash-white.

  Nausea gushed up into Jett’s throat, mixing with the acrid heat of whiskey. But he had to see this all the way through. He had to pick a side, and that side had to be justice. It was the only recourse, the only way to end the secrets, heal the rifts in this town.

  It was also the only way to make things right with Muirinn.

  He slugged back the last of the whiskey, slapped the glass down.

  “Did you kill Gus O’Donnell, too?”

  His father tensed visibly, saying nothing. Jett’s mother started sobbing uncontrollably.

  He turned to his mother. “Did you know that Dad rigged that blast, Mom?” His voice remained ice cool. “Did you suspect what he’d done? Or did you just turn a blind eye that help bury it like the rest of this godforsaken town?”

  Her sob turned into a wail, and Jett’s heart plummeted even further.

  He stared at his parents, eyes burning. “You’re not going to deny any of this?” he said, unbelieving.

  His mother just cried softly. His father glared, his body humming with tension.

  Shaking with anger, Jett stormed out of the house, his entire world shattered.

  The screen door slapped dully closed behind him, the sound echoing into the pale, moonless night.

  Waves of violent anger, pain, regret all churned through him as he marched toward his truck.

  The screen door suddenly swung open behind him, and Jett tensed, hearing his father hobbling out over the gravel.

  “Jett!”

  He couldn’t face him.

  Jett climbed into his truck, started the ignition and slammed the gearshift into reverse. He wanted to get the hell away from here. But he couldn’t—he just could not hit that accelerator. His father had admitted nothing yet, and Jett still wanted desperately to believe that his dad was coming over to tell him it wasn’t true, that there was some rational explanation for it all.

  Staring dead ahead, fists tight on the wheel, he listened as his father’s footfalls crunched over the gravel, coming nearer.

  He turned slowly to look at him—the face he knew so well and had loved so deeply all his life. The face of a man he’d respected, the man who’d taught him so much.

  His father clamped his hands down over the open window. “It was a mistake, son,” he whispered hoarsely. “A mistake.”

  Jett felt sick.

  He shut his eyes tight, gripping the wheel, his ears ringing as he fought the urge to punch down on the gas, flee from things he didn’t want to hear.

  His father’s arthritic hands gripped the door tighter, gnarled knuckles white. “The blast wasn’t supposed to kill those men, Jett,” he whispered urgently. “They were not supposed to die!”

  Chapter 15

  The knowledge that his father was a murderer swilled dangerously inside Jett. “So you did do it,” he whispered. “You’re the killer.”

  “The blast was just going to be a warning, Jett, to spook management and scabs. We’d been without work for almost a year, and union funds were depleted. There was no more strike pay coming, and the longer those scabs kept working, the longer management could handle the strike, and the longe
r half the men in this town stayed unemployed. People were losing homes, they were being forced to leave town. The strike was killing this place—that mine was the only goddamn gig in town!”

  “So you tried to fix it all with a bomb?”

  “A warning! There were not supposed to be casualties, son.” Adam’s eyes glittered feverishly in the glow of the northern night. “The man-car carrying those men was not supposed to trigger the trip wire. The ore car—which is wider and has a third wheel that sticks out—that was supposed to trigger the explosion. But I was cold, wet. It was a long climb, a long hike underground, my fingers were numb from white hand. I…I must have gotten the trip line too close to the track. God knows, Jett, I have not lived a day without regretting what happened.”

  Jett couldn’t even look at his father. “You killed Troy O’Donnell,” he whispered. “You tore Muirinn’s life apart.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen, you’ve got to believe that!” Anguish torqued through his father’s voice. He gripped the door tighter. “I did it for you, son. For your mother. We were desperate. If the mine stayed operational with scabs, it meant that men like me—the veteran miners who built this place—would go bankrupt. And if we couldn’t buy stuff in the stores, the shops were going to go under, the support industries were going to go under, the whole damn town was going to go under. We would have lost our house, everything.”

  “You murdered people to keep the house I now live in,” Jett said quietly. “I used to admire you, Dad.” He shook his head. “I used to be so damn proud of you.”

  “I did it so we could remain proud. So I could care for all of you.”

  The irony hit Jett hard—the things people did for love, the secrets they hid, the lies that bound them, the ripple effect down through the generations. The lingering poison.

  He thought of what he’d done to Muirinn, and she to him—for love.

  “The deaths were a mistake.” Adam whispered again. “But I never did anything to hurt Gus. Nor would I ever try to harm Muirinn. I am not a murderer, son.”

  Jett turned slowly to stare at his father. Tears glistened on the man’s rugged cheeks. A man Jett had always looked up to. Admired. Now he could barely even look at him.

  “Who was your accomplice? Chalky Moran?”

  His father’s mouth shut in a grim line. Silence hung for several beats. A coyote yipped somewhere on the outskirts of town, hunting neighborhood cats.

  “It’s in the past, Jett.” Adam said almost inaudibly. “It’s over. Can’t we just leave it in the past?”

  “It’s not over.” Jett ground the words out through clenched teeth. “Gus O’Donnell died because of those photos Ike Potter gave him. And Muirinn and her baby almost died, too, because someone out there is still prepared to kill to keep this secret.”

  “I swear on your mother’s life that I had nothing to do with that,” Adam said hoarsely.

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Start with your accomplice. Was it Chalky?”

  Silence.

  So the identity of his accomplice was a secret his father still wanted to keep. A sick coldness slicked down inside Jett’s belly. “Step back from the truck,” he ordered quietly.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Jett didn’t know what he was going to do with this mind-blowing news—that his father was the mass murderer who’d evaded an FBI manhunt.

  He needed to think, process. Someplace where he could find distance, objectivity.

  “What would you do, Dad?”

  Silence.

  “Step back from the truck,” Jett repeated through clenched teeth.

  And he drove off, leaving his father standing in a settling cloud of dust, his eyes burning with tears—the tears of betrayal.

  Jett did not drive home. He headed instead for the unprotected cliffs to the west of Safe Harbor. It was a place that drew him in both good times and bad.

  Easing his truck onto the grassy verge, he cut the engine. The night was clear, dusky, the sun not far below the horizon. But the peaks themselves were hidden by a dark band of storm clouds—the pending front was beginning to move in. He called Brock. “Everything okay there?”

  “All quiet,” Brock said. “Nothing going on apart from the old tenant awake, light on in her cottage down at the bay. Otherwise, nothing but raccoons.”

  Jett killed the call.

  He stared out over the ocean, watching the timeless heave and pull of the dark water, listening to the soft crunch of waves at the base of the cliffs. And he tried to process the knowledge that his own father was responsible for a mass murder, a case that had been mothballed, never solved, the truth buried by people in this town that he’d loved so deeply.

  A pod of killer whales, sleek as mercury, ribboned through the swells below, hunting seals as the midnight sun began to rise again over the distant peaks.

  The world in beauty and death.

  Beginnings and endings.

  It was time for justice to be done, for the past to be put to rest. For new beginnings.

  But to do that Jett would have to take his own father down. He rubbed his brow.

  All he had to do was pick up the phone and call the FBI, tell them that his dad was a killer.

  It wasn’t as easy as one might think.

  As the day brightened, Jett drove to the airstrip, picking up a bagel and coffee on the way. He wanted to get his plane into the air, get above it all during those rare dawn hours when the world was still pure. When he came back down to earth, he’d face his duty. He’d call the feds.

  He parked his truck and headed on foot out onto the airfield, coffee in hand. Dew glistened on the grass, and on the wings of his plane as they caught the first warm rays of the sun.

  After one more phone call to Brock, who said all was still calm at Mermaid’s Cove, Jett swung himself up into his cockpit.

  Muirinn watched dawn breaking over the sea, the loaded shotgun resting in her lap. All night she’d sat, absently rocking in her grandfather’s bent-willow rocker, thinking about Troy.

  Her son.

  Another tremor of emotion ran through her body, and she placed her hand over her stomach.

  Two children.

  A son and a daughter.

  Again her eyes filled with moisture. But with it came the anger, the profound sense of betrayal. And so it had been all night, waves of intoxicating exultation washing through her, alternating with shafts of bone-deep sadness at the sense of time lost with her son, exhausting her.

  One thing Muirinn knew for sure was that as much as she might spark and simmer and clash with Jett, he was—and always would be—the father of her son. And she was not going to leave Safe Harbor.

  She was going to give birth to her daughter here, raise her baby girl in this town, and watch her son grow into a man—from a distance if necessary.

  She’d run the paper. Be a mother. Grow vegetables in the garden and show her daughter how to collect clams, just as Gus had shown her.

  And God help anyone who tried to take that away from her now.

  Because no matter how hurt Muirinn might be, Jett had done an incredibly bold thing going after his child, alone. It was the kind of move that defined him. He had a rock-solid core of values he was not prepared to compromise. And he valued family.

  Then she thought of Adam Rutledge, and cold anxiety surged fresh through her. He was family, too. But she had to believe that Jett would do the right thing, and see justice done.

  She had to believe in him.

  Even if the rift between father and son meant she and Jett could never be together.

  Finally, she slipped off, eyes closing as sleep claimed her.

  Sun was hot on Muirinn’s face when a noise in the hallway startled her awake.

  Someone was inside the house.

  She raised the shotgun, heart in her throat. “Who’s there!”

  “It’s just me, Muirinn. Oh goodness, child, p
ut that gun down. What on earth is going on?”

  “Mrs. Wilkie?” Muirinn swallowed, disoriented. “I…it’s nothing. I was having—” she laughed, embarrassed. “Just a bad dream.”

  The old woman frowned and tutted. “It’s the baby. The hormones can do it to you. I’ve never had children myself,” she said, setting her basket down on the kitchen counter. “But when my sister, Margaret, was pregnant with my godchild, she had vivid nightmares all the time. Chamomile tea really helped.” She tapped her basket, smiling warmly. “I brought you some scones for breakfast, baked in my wood oven. And strawberries, fresh from Gus’s garden.”

  She removed a cluster of smiling daisies from the basket, and busied herself emptying the older foxglove blooms from the copper vase and rearranging the daisies in their place.

  Mrs. Wilkie had left the front door wide open to the bright morning, and a soft warmth drifted inside on the sea breeze. Muirinn glanced nervously at the door. She knew there was a bodyguard outside, yet she was suddenly filled with an unspecified sense of trepidation.

  “I’ll make you some chamomile tea, dear. It’ll be good for those nerves, and for the baby.” Mrs. Wilkie shuffled into the kitchen and took down one of the tea tins Gus kept on the shelf. “With a few sprigs of mint. You used to like that mix as a child, remember? I used to make it chilled for you in the summer.”

  Muirinn felt surreal, as if she couldn’t believe the past events had actually happened, that she’d slept in a rocking chair with a shotgun. That this woman had just walked into her home with a basket of flowers and breakfast. Maybe she was just confused by the heat of the sun that had been on her face while she slept. Still, it seemed strange that Mrs. Wilkie hadn’t really asked about the gun. Or mentioned the bodyguard outside.

  “I…I’d love some tea. Thank you.” Muirinn clicked the safety on her weapon, got to her feet, set the gun against the wall and stretched her back. Not only was she thirsty, she was starving.

  Chimes tinkled in the breeze, and Muirinn glanced at the open door again. “Did you see anyone outside, Mrs. Wilkie?”