“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” he said dryly.
She sighed. “Yes. Sadly, matters did not improve for Braden. There are never enough foster homes for teenagers, and I didn’t have one available at that point. I had to put him in a group home.”
She told him which, and Sean nodded. Unfortunately, the Elk Creek Home for Boys existed to take in kids who already displayed significant behavioral issues. He cringed at imagining Braden Wilson, traumatized and stuttering badly, plunked down in the middle of a bunch of tough kids angry at the world.
Hell, he thought; how many names were on the killer’s list?
“Do your notes indicate whether any particular boy tormented him? What about the supervisors?”
Mrs. Kelley opened Braden’s file, printing out the original work-up while she browsed her own notes.
Sean focused on the family information. Father: David Wilson. He’d abandoned his family when Braden was a baby and Braden didn’t know if he was alive. The complete lack of contact made it unlikely he’d now set out to avenge every perceived wrong done to his son.
Braden had an older brother, he had insisted, but not a blood relation. His mother had lived with a man for some years who had died in an industrial accident. The ‘brother’ was Aaron Voight. Braden called him AJ. He wasn’t asked, or hadn’t said, what the middle initial J stood for. Supposedly, Aaron had promised he’d take care of Braden, who had been certain this guy would rush to his rescue. Unfortunately, it turned out he was in the army, and when Mrs. Kelley contacted him, he was on the verge of deployment to Afghanistan.
Career military and unmarried, she had noted. Unable to provide stable living situation for a minor.
And there, Sean thought, was the military connection.
Aaron had told Braden to hang tight and said when his current enlistment ended he wouldn’t re-up so he could bring Braden to live with him.
Two years later, Braden was dead. Mrs. Kelley had attempted to contact Aaron, but found his email address and mobile phone number both invalid. She had tried to inform him via Army channels, only to be told they could find no records that matched the information she had supplied.
Guy’s a fucking ghost.
On a rush of frustration, Sean rejected the thought again. No, the guy was living and deadly – and somewhere within Burris County. Sean had no doubt this “brother” was their killer. He had the skill set. He had made promises to Braden he hadn’t kept. Guilt might as well have been a trip line for an IED. Because he couldn’t accept his own failure, he had to blame someone else for Braden’s descent into hell.
Not someone: everyone else.
Sean recognized that he might be indulging in psychobabble, but thought he was right.
He’d mount a search for an A.J. Voight, but knew it would be futile.
Mrs. Kelley gave him copies of key information to take with him, after which they discussed her vulnerability. He suggested she get the hell out of Dodge. He had no doubt her supervisor would gladly okay extended vacation time. Sean mentioned the idea of a cruise, which she jumped right on.
“My husband is retired. We can pack and go to my mother’s in Portland tonight. We’ve talked about taking a Panama Canal cruise.” She smiled weakly. “What better time?”
Sean asked her to stay in touch, and left with her personal email address that she promised to check wherever she went.
His phone had vibrated twice while he was with her. As soon as he reached his car, he checked messages.
The first was from the lieutenant. Sean returned it.
“Saunders is furious, scared shitless and resistant to the idea of going into hiding,” Wilcynski reported. “He’ll sleep with a gun under his pillow, he says. Goes without saying that he’s outraged at any suggestion he didn’t have to shoot to kill.” He sounded weary. “I have to agree. I read up on the incident and talked to a couple of other people, too. He aimed for mid-torso. If he’d tried anything fancy, he’d have risked hitting someone behind the kid.”
He listened to what Sean had learned, then said, “I’ll pursue the military angle. There may have just been a screw-up when DHS asked about this Aaron Voight. Or the inquiry might have been blocked for some reason. Say, he was special forces.”
“Worth trying,” Sean agreed, then mentioned his speculations regarding A.J.’s legal name. “He could have changed it along the way, of course, but what if his legal last name never was Voight?”
“You’re saying his parents weren’t married.”
“Right. He could have gone by Voight just because he lived with his dad and sometimes that’s easiest, but the last name on his birth certificate was his mother’s. Easy to go back to. In fact, he’d have had to use his legal name when he enlisted.”
Wilcynski expressed his frustration, which Sean shared. Following the trail of Braden and his mother had become even more critical.
The second caller had been Rey Mendoza. Emerson from the D.A.’s office said he was threatened all the time and had had a top-of-the-line home security system installed when he had his house built. “Turns out Emerson lives in North Fork. I approached Chief Lundy about getting round the clock surveillance on him, and I think he might go for it.” His tone became sardonic. “He likes the idea of North Fork P.D. making the arrest.”
Listening to the message, Sean gave a sharp laugh. That sounded like Lundy. A police officer parked in front of the Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney’s house might protect him, but an arrest? This guy was too smart to stroll right by the patrol car, inviting capture.
Back at his desk, it took Sean barely a minute to discover that the Fisks, unbelievably enough, were still in the same house. Apparently they felt no shame. He doubted the daughter still lived at home, though. She’d be nineteen now. In college? Conceivably even married, he supposed.
As if he’d conjured it, his phone rang and he saw that Payne was the caller.
“Kimberly Fisk is a student at Oregon Coast Community College in Newport,” he said. “Didn’t know there was a college there.”
“There are three community colleges here on the coast,” Sean said. “Coos Bay and Tillamook, too. Did you get an address?”
“Yeah, sounds like a typical off-campus dump she shares with a bunch of students.”
“Did you contact her directly?”
“No. Should I?”
“Let me think about it.” Remembering that Jason didn’t know Kimberly Fisk’s father had also been Braden’s foster parent, Sean updated him, adding, “We don’t want her to run home, that’s for sure.”
“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? Two for the price of one.” After a moment, Payne grunted. “Maybe three for the price of one. Depends on whether the mother did a damn thing to stop her asshole of a husband from beating on the boy.”
“Husband might be abusing her, too,” Sean suggested.
“Then he’d likely be beating on the daughter, too. And if that’s the case, why was Braden so angry at her?”
Sean remembered what Mrs. Kelley had said. Kimberly was the little princess and could do no wrong. Abused kids usually kept their heads down to avoid notice. Kimberly had either been full of herself, or the apple of her daddy’s eye. Or both. Neither sounded like he hurt her.
Sean said, “We might get a feel when we talk to the Fisks. They live here in Cape Trouble.” Which made them technically Daniel’s problem.
The group home, he had determined, was in Jasper Beach. The small community had grown up around the cove on the other side of the point that reared above Cape Trouble. The long-since deactivated lighthouse could be seen from both sides. Jasper Beach was something of an artists’ colony, with a number of studios, a gallery and a small grocery store/gas station. Kids from there attended Cape Trouble schools.
Several of the wealthiest early settlers had built big Victorian houses on the Jasper Beach side of the point. Even aging, they stood proudly separate from the plebeian cottages that otherwise made up the community.
>
Cape Trouble police officers occasionally responded to calls from Jasper Beach if sheriff’s deputies were too far away, but it was part of unincorporated Burris County, and thus the sheriff’s department responsibility.
Making a decision, Sean said, “Contact Coos Bay P.D. Ask if they can keep an eye on Kimberly’s house just for tonight. My gut feeling is we need to put her into hiding, but I’d rather make a solid plan than do something too fast. Tell them she doesn’t know what’s happening, so they don’t want to be too obvious.”
“Will do.”
“After that, see what you can find out about Braden’s mother and their lives before she died.” Sean would have liked to pursue this thread himself, but he had to delegate. Keeping the likely targets alive had to come first. “Unless Braden was on his own for a while,” he said, “they probably lived here in Burris County. How long had she been sick? Did she work? Where? If we’re lucky, you’ll find neighbors who remember the man she lived with. We need his name and history if we’re going to find his son.”
“I’m on it.” A thread of energy in his voice suggested that Jason knew how important this was.
Next, Sean called Daniel, who answered right away.
“Well, hell,” he said in response to the update and the news that yet another target of a deranged killer resided in his town, which hadn’t proved to be as peaceful as he’d expected it to be.
“Have you had any contact with the Fisks?”
“Not that I recall.” Daniel sounded thoughtful. “I think I’ll call Linda Grove at the high school and see what she can tell me about the family.”
“That would be interesting,” Sean agreed. “Given the rape, she’ll remember the daughter for sure. She might have some insights.”
“Do you suppose there is a chance in hell the Fisks still have the same computer? Assuming Braden used it for emailing and didn’t have his own.”
“It’s only been a little over two years. So there’s a chance. Huh. I should check for a Facebook page.”
Daniel waited while he did just that.
“If he had one, it’s been taken down. Probably he didn’t bother. It doesn’t sound like he had any friends.”
“He had to be in regular contact with his brother, or the guy wouldn’t know who to hold responsible for Braden’s problems. He could have found out about Frank Lowe and Judge Tranor from news articles, but not Emily and the teacher.”
“No. With his brother deployed, email is likeliest.”
“I agree. And while reading what he said would be interesting, we already have a good idea who is on the hate list.”
Sean felt unease stir. “Unless there are people who aren’t so obvious. If Roff wasn’t already dead, he wouldn’t have crossed our radar.”
“And we’d still be completely mystified, because nothing Emily told us would have connected her to Lowe or Tranor.” Daniel sounded as grim as Sean felt. “Shit. You’re right.”
“Do you suppose the guy has been saving the best for last?”
“You mean the abusive foster dad, the girl and the cop who killed Braden? That seems likely.”
“Which leaves Emerson and Mrs. Kelley that we can be pretty confident are also targets.”
“And Emily,” Daniel said, almost gently. “He’s not going to see failure as a successful outcome. She may have been almost incidental to start with, but now he’s pissed. You know he is.”
Sean squeezed the bridge of his nose until cartilage creaked. “I do know.”
The last thing Daniel said was, “Take care of her.”
*****
Midmorning Tuesday, Emily retreated to the office at the back of the store and pretended to concentrate on financials. Both her store manager, Cheryl Sizemore, and the clerk working today, Maria Gutierrez, knew about the two break-ins at Emily’s house. This was a small town, after all. They had fussed and asked questions, many of which she couldn’t answer. Why had he come back? That’s what they really wanted to know.
Of course, she couldn’t tell them. Even if Sean had been okay with it, she didn’t want to tell anyone.
How could she have done that to a boy who’d just lost his mother?
The awful thing was, beyond that one moment of shock when she told him the social worker was coming to get him, she could barely picture Braden’s face. He’d had that little importance in her life. A creeping sense of discomfort layered over long-held guilt made her wonder if she had really wanted to take him in at all. Had she felt the compassion she should have once he was in their home? Tried to like him?
She’d agreed readily enough when Tom talked about adding foster kids to their family, but somehow a hulking teenager wasn’t what she’d pictured.
As if height and the need to shave hadn’t allowed her to see the child he still was.
She thought now he’d scared her a little. When she tried to talk to Tom about it, he’d laughed at her.
“Cody will shoot past your height by the time he’s fifteen, too, you know,” he’d pointed out. “And he’ll need to shave and speak in mumbles when he isn’t responding with grunts.”
“Were you like that?” she had asked, and he’d hugged her and said, “Of course.”
And still, she hadn’t felt comfortable with Braden’s brooding silences.
When really, she thought unhappily, the poor boy was afraid to open his mouth because he knew how dreadfully he’d struggle to get the simplest words out.
Had she been the tiniest bit apprehensive and even angry when she was left alone with him that weekend?
She closed her eyes, appalled to understand that afterward, however unconsciously, she’d believed she would have gone with Tom and Cody if not for Braden. Magically, everything would have been different. They wouldn’t have died.
After receiving the news, she could hardly even look at him.
When the truth was, she dreaded visiting Tom’s parents and might have secretly been relieved that Braden gave her an excuse not to go.
She’d needed to blame everyone else for a tragedy that she couldn’t accept as random.
In a weird way, she could identify with a killer who needed to blame everyone else but himself. Whatever his relationship had been to Braden, he wasn’t there when Braden needed him. Accepting your own failures and inadequacies was a hard thing to do.
Emily remembered telling Sean about the accident. Blaming the cops. She’d been so angry, her skin had felt tight and hot. Now, ashamed, she thought, the patrol officer might really have made an error in judgment. But…people did. Sean had been willing to agree that cops screwed up, too. Had she really felt better to blame other people for Tom and Cody’s deaths?
No.
And, oh God, poor Braden.
But as the day went on, she circled back to remembering her own devastation. She had been utterly shattered. When she slept at all, she would wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling, ignoring her need to use the toilet, unable to imagine eating or returning a call. In those first weeks, she scarcely showered. Sometimes, her eyes had burned and she would realize that she had forgotten to blink. She’d been an automaton. When she eventually became able to resume a semblance of a daily routine, it was to find she’d lost so much weight, her clothes hung on her body.
Because the maternal instinct drove women to extraordinary lengths, she knew she would have managed somehow to be a parent if she’d had another child. Braden, still a near stranger, hadn’t been enough to pull her from her agony.
She was ashamed she hadn’t been strong enough to see how much he’d needed her, but understood why she had believed he would be better off with another family. Dealing with the loss of his mother was enough for a boy that age. After Tom and Cody were killed, Emily had walked in grief for so long, she hadn’t noticed when hours at a time, even days, would pass without the pain grabbing her and shaking her in its teeth. Braden hadn’t needed to take that walk with her.
She heard herself make a funny sound that might almost
have been a laugh. Sean was right. She had been healing.
Which didn’t actually mean she was ready to risk her heart again.
But then, he hadn’t asked for her heart or offered his. His main interest might be sex.
Oh, yeah, and keeping her alive.
Emily remembered Sophie Thomsen talking about silver linings, and it occurred to her she, too, had already found several, first among which was the realization that she did not want to die.
And then there was Sean.
They hadn’t talked about where she would stay tonight, but maybe they hadn’t had to. She wanted to be in his bed, with his arms around her.
Because he made her feel safe…and not safe at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That evening, Sean lowered himself to one end of the sofa, facing the chair where Emily sat with her quilting hoop. Different quilt in it, he’d noted. He stretched out his legs in a semblance of relaxation that lasted for thirty seconds, tops, before he rose to his feet to complete another circuit around the living room.
The limited space made him feel like a hamster on a wheel, frantically running in tight circles. As an outlet for intense stress, this wasn’t working.
Sex would.
“You’re making me nervous,” Emily said.
He stopped where he could see her from the front. She’d lowered the hoop to her lap and was watching him, worry shadowing her face.
“I’m sorry. I’m not good at sitting even at the best of times. Damn it, I wish I’d gotten a run in today.”
“You don’t have a treadmill?”
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