by Jon Mills
“An ad?”
He nodded. “Your mother was real proactive. Some folks liked it, others just thought she’d lost her marbles.” He got up and asked if she wanted a beer. She declined. He returned with one and twisted around the frosted bottle. “Fortunately there is no law against making enquiries.” A circle of condensation formed at the base.
Kara leaned forward. “I’m going to speak to them tomorrow.”
“Who?”
“Ray, Seth, Darryl. I figure I’ll start with Ray being as he fits the description of the recent attempted abductor.”
Noah squirmed in his chair. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ve already cleared it away.”
“With who?”
“Henry put me in contact with a guy from Washington State Bureau of Investigation. We had a long chat this afternoon about what’s being done with the case of the four boys. As I have gained credibility from my work in New York, he was more than willing to have me come in and look over the files.”
“Looking over files is one thing, getting involved is another. What’s your BCI lieutenant say?”
“I haven’t been in contact with him.”
Noah closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
Chapter 18
It had been a conversation stopper. Kara could tell he was turned off by the idea of her getting involved but what she couldn’t figure out was why. After clearing up, they moved to the living room with their drinks. The music next door hadn’t let up and the aroma of weed had managed to seep in through the open patio door so Noah closed it. He turned on some soft music in the background — jazz — and returned to a recliner chair. A large crescent moon illuminated the dimly lit space and for a second, she had a memory of her first few dates with Michael, long before he’d put a ring on her finger and their marriage had spiraled down to become another statistic of failure.
Kara noticed the photo of his late wife on the counter. It was a picture of them both standing on a rocky precipice overlooking the ocean. They looked happy, content, satisfied with their lot in life. She could remember a time like that before the arguments, before the cold shoulder and before the final conversation that made it clear her dream of growing old with someone was just that, a dream.
“Who were those people you got into an argument with in the diner?” she asked.
He took a swig of beer and set his bottle on a table to the right. “It’s complicated.”
She nodded. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
He smiled. “You have an inquisitive mind.”
“Is that a roundabout way of saying I’m nosy?” she said with a smile before taking a sip of wine. “No, I’m just curious.”
“Curiosity can lead you into troubled places.”
“Is that why you leaked out information to Henry, to avoid trouble?”
The corner of his lip curled, and he shook his head before picking up the bottle. “The man who approached me, the elderly one. That’s Hal Carter. The young guy is Jesse, his son, and the woman is Hal’s wife, Sarah.”
“So what — you get involved with an older woman?” She chuckled.
“No, she was the drunk driver responsible for the death of my wife.”
For a third time that evening she could have heard a pin drop.
“Oh.” Kara looked down into her wine. “I’m sorry.”
He breathed in deeply. “No need. They’re angry because I appealed a decision after she only got three years. She was released two months ago, and was let go.”
“Three years, that’s all?”
“That’s exactly what I said. Currently the law in Washington State for vehicular homicide for first-time offenders is two to three years. Though they have plans to push a new bill through to get it raised to the same level as first-degree manslaughter. That would increase it to eight and a half years.”
She nodded. “You think the judge will send her back?”
He sighed. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “According to my attorney, the judge claims that she was a model prisoner. She now attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.”
“And so they want you to drop the appeal?”
He nodded and took another swig of his beer. “I haven’t yet filed the appeal as my attorney needs to look into a few things first.”
“Damn, that’s gotta be hard.”
“For them or me?”
“For both of you.”
He studied her before he asked, “But am I not right to appeal?”
“You’re asking me?” she asked.
He nodded.
She took a deep breath and blew out her cheeks. “Look, I get it. She took a life. How do you put a value on that? The justice system is messed up, that’s for sure. Someone deals drugs and they do more time, someone kills someone in a vehicle and they can be out in three.” She shook her head trying to wrap her mind around it. It’s why she’d thought of quitting. Back when she first had an interest in law enforcement, she thought she could make a difference, and in some ways she had but at the end of the day all of them were slaves to the justice system, and at times it wasn’t fair.
“Yeah, especially since in some states the sentence is up to ten years. Even that’s a joke.”
“How many years did you expect her to get?”
“If I had my way she’d rot in prison.”
He got up and went over to the fridge to get another beer.
“For making one bad decision?”
He shot her a sideways glance. “That decision didn’t just take her life. It took mine, her family’s, hell, there were many in the community that were affected by her death. It was senseless. There was no need for it.”
She could feel the atmosphere in the room shift. It no longer felt warm and she was now seeing another side to him, one that was full of pain, one that he probably hid from those around him. Noah tossed a beer bottle into a recycle bin that was already overflowing with bottles.
“You work tomorrow?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Then you might want to slow down,” she said. He shook his head and took a seat, cracked the top off another beer and downed a large gulp making a point that he listened to no one except himself. Kara remained there for a few more uncomfortable minutes before she said, “Well, I should probably get going.”
She got up and placed her half-drained glass of wine on the counter. He rose. “Look, you don’t have to leave. I mean, not right away.”
“I shouldn’t have pried, I’m sorry.”
“Stay.” He paused. “Please. It’s still early.”
Kara stood there for a second then picked up her glass again and took a seat.
Over the next hour they talked about their upbringing, parents and what led them to get involved in law enforcement, along with how it was different from the east coast to the west. From there on out the conversation flowed and she shared with him what she’d learned from her mother’s files — the different avenues that led to nowhere and some of the tips she’d received from locals who knew the various suspects at the time of Charlie’s abduction.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to sound like I’m against you talking to them or folks that know them, but whether you agree or not they were cleared in the original case. You’re liable to get some backlash if you go digging up the past. I would hate to see you facing a civil lawsuit,” Noah said.
“No, I understand.”
“Those three suspects aren’t from the four counties where the four boys went missing, and Washington Bureau of Investigation has to be called in to assist with anything related to our county.”
“So can’t you make it happen?” she asked.
“Me?”
“Well you are the lead detective for Clallam County, are you not?”
“Yes, but like I said, Charlie’s case is closed.”
“But the attempted abduction isn’t,” she added.
He stared back at her blankly. N
oah scratched his stubble and took another sip of beer. “I’ll make a couple of phone calls. I can’t promise anything.”
“Of course not.” She smiled.
“And I would want to be kept abreast of anyone you’re going to meet.”
“Certainly.”
He grumbled. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
She smiled. “I guess this makes us partners.”
“Well let’s not jump the gun.” He finished the remainder of his beer before switching the conversation.
Kara downed her drink then crossed the room and scooped up her jacket.
“Where you going?”
She replied as she headed out, “Need to grab something. I’ll be right back.”
“What?”
She left him with his mouth agape as she headed home.
The alcohol was well and thoroughly in his system and he was beginning to doze in his recliner chair when there was a knock at the door. Another knock and he climbed out of his chair and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, hold on.”
Noah opened the door and Kara brushed past him juggling two large corkboards under her left arm, and another under her right. She tossed them down on the floor looking windswept and exhausted.
“You want to give me a hand? There’s quite a lot of paperwork to bring in.”
“What the hell is this?”
“My mother’s files. You wanted to know what was in them. My father wants them gone. I can’t keep them at the house. Now being as we’ll be working together I thought we could store them here. I’ll of course bring dinner tomorrow night, so you don’t need to worry about that. Although you might want to cut back on the liquid courage.” She made a clucking sound with her lips. “I need you level-headed.”
“Um.”
She brushed past him without batting an eye. “Well come on, let’s go.”
“Kara. Hold on a minute. Wait up!”
Noah lugged the final large box from her car to his apartment and dumped it alongside three others. He collapsed to his knees and exhaled hard. “If I was tipsy earlier, I’m sober now. This is a shitload of paperwork. And I thought my desk was busy.”
Kara tossed her jacket on the back of his recliner and slipped off her shoes. She poured herself a glass of wine. “Right, let’s get started.”
“What are you on about?” he said looking at her like she was a deranged woman on a mission. She crossed the room and started fishing out papers, and a box of tacks.
“Well, if my mother was right, if Kyle Harris is telling the truth, we have less than four days until another boy is taken, potentially from Clallam County. The question is, where do we start?”
He shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“We have four boys that were taken five years apart, three suspects that were originally associated with my brother’s case but never questioned, a man in prison telling us to look into the original charges against him. Where to begin?”
She stepped back from the three boards which she’d set up in his living room, leaning them against the wall without even asking him if she could. The middle board held a map that had been torn and taped back together, pins had been stabbed into the locations where each of the boys had been taken. Then there were the suspect photos on each wall, with history about who they were, their age, what they did for a living, where they said they were when the abduction took place.
This woman is out of her damn mind.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up here. When I said I would make a few phone calls, I didn’t have this in mind.”
She ignored him and tapped a finger against her lips. “Obviously we need to understand why Kyle Harris was focused on as the prime suspect.”
“We already know that. Your brother’s shoe and jeans were found on his property.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, back in 1991, Henry Ellis had suggested to those in charge of the investigation to bring in Ray, Seth and Darryl for questioning but it was shot down. He said that his hands were tied. Any suggestion made unless it was directly related to Kyle Harris, or cleared by Robert Smith, was put on the back burner. And yet we know that at least one of them matched the suspect sketch that was drawn up in the attempted abduction prior to Charlie. So you’ve got to ask yourself, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why rule them out without due diligence? Why go through the other fourteen but not them?”
“They already had Kyle on their radar.”
“Exactly but why?” She took a sip of her wine. “It would have taken less than half a day to bring these guys in and run through a few questions. But all the focus got put on Kyle.”
“They had evidence,” Noah said.
“Okay but according to Henry, these three were considered people of interest before they searched Kyle’s property.” She crossed the room and dug into the boxes and fished out a few more sheets of paper and pinned them on the board. “I looked a little deeper into this, you know, going back to the original accusations that were made against Kyle Harris. Besides the obvious flaws in the two-year case — what seemed to be overlooked is what happened after. It was suggested by his lawyer at the time his name was cleared to follow through with a civil lawsuit against his accuser, but more specifically with those involved in the investigation. So I did a little digging. It turns out that he did move ahead with that and one of the names that was brought up in that suit’s settlement was Robert Smith.”
“Clallam County sheriff at the time of the investigation,” Noah added.
Kara nodded. “He retired one year after Kyle Harris was arrested, charged and went to trial.”
“So you think he had a grudge against Harris?”
“I would say so. You build a case against a guy and it falls flat, and then he turns around and sues you and he wins. I know I’d be pissed. So I went back through some of the old reports from the news around that time and it’s pretty clear based on the questions posed to him that he didn’t consider anyone else a person of interest. At least that’s what he was telling the media at the time.”
Noah leaned forward in his chair and gazed at the paperwork, then shrugged and tossed it down. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. He’s inside and best of luck trying to prove Smith had some ulterior motive to see it pinned on him.”
“Look, I’m not saying the sheriff planted my brother’s belongings or that he was in any way involved in the abduction. I’m suggesting that he had a good reason to keep the limelight on Harris and build this picture of a monster living among us. You only have to see the way the community treated him the first time around. Now we have a major event occur and he lives not far from the abduction site. Single guy lives alone, previous shady past, and a sheriff with a grudge against him. It could easily be said that he didn’t stand a chance in hell of being ruled out. Meanwhile our actual guy, who we assume is a resident of the area, knows about the case and takes some of the clothing and plants it on his property. The kind of DNA testing back in 1996 wasn’t anywhere close to what it is today. Now if we could get some of that retested that would definitely be a step in the right direction.”
Noah pulled a face. “That’s if it even exists. And best of luck trying to locate it. Evidence retention laws are sketchy at best. The rules for how long they keep evidence vary from state to state. It can be stored until a case is closed or kept in long-term storage if it’s a cold case but if you’re right and Smith had a grudge against Harris, I would imagine your brother’s shoe and jeans would be long gone by now.”
“Can you find out?”
He sighed. “I’ll make some calls.”
Kara felt hopeful as she returned home that evening. They’d only scratched the surface but the possibility that the one responsible for the attempted abduction could be their man had sparked something new. It was the kind of emotion she felt when she first joined law enforcement. There was a real sense that maybe after all this time they could nail this asshole — if he even existed. As she veered into
the driveway, the glow of the SUV’s headlights washed over the rear of her father’s truck and she spotted a body lying on the ground nearby.
“Dad?”
She slammed the gear into park, pushed out and hurried over to where he was laying. He was sprawled out on the driveway and a portion of grass. The first thing that went through her mind was a heart attack, the second was someone had attacked him — it was neither. As soon as she reached him the smell of alcohol hit her, as did the sound of snoring. The fact that he’d managed to drive back from the bar was a miracle. She cast a glance around. Embarrassed, she tried to wake him by giving him a shake. Nothing. He was three sheets to the wind. She dropped to her knees and slung one of his arms around her neck, clasped on to it and slipped her left arm around his waist and hauled him to his feet. It was like he didn’t have bones in his legs. They dangled, and he slurred his speech. She couldn’t make sense of it except one word. Anna.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.”
Kara had to drag his limp body a few yards to the side door then lean him up against the wall while she juggled the keys. All the while he was mumbling something under his breath. Please don’t vomit, she thought. The last thing she wanted was to end the night coated in his digestive juices.
Once inside, she flipped a light on and carried him into the living room. There was no way in hell she was going to lug a hundred and seventy-five pounds up the stairs. She dropped him onto the couch and went off to find a blanket.
When she returned he mumbled and talked to her like she was her mother.
“Anna. I love you, Anna.”
“Alright Dad, quiet down. Go to sleep.”
She covered him with the blanket, propped him on his side just in case he vomited and then headed out to the kitchen.
She poured herself a glass of milk and leaned back against the counter. A flood of memories hit her. The sound of her mother’s voice. She wanted to smile but all she felt was the loss and pain.