The Closer He Gets

by Janice Kay Johnson

  He was taking a logical leap from the little Zach had overheard as he’d raced to futilely save a man’s life. Bran hoped he wasn’t way off track.

  But the guy didn’t even hesitate this time. “Yeah, she’s a checker at that little market on Laurel.”

  “I know the place. Wonder if I’ve ever seen her there,” Bran mused, even though he had stepped foot in the place only once, and that was over two years ago, to ask questions in pursuit of an investigation. Mostly he knew of it. A small grocery store, it catered to the surrounding Latino population. Everyone who worked there spoke at least rudimentary Spanish, unlike at the Safeway or Haggen stores.

  “She’s pretty enough, I guess. Kind of quiet.”

  “Yeah? I guess Andy wouldn’t like a girlfriend who argued with him.”

  The other deputy gave a bark of laughter. “That’s safe to say.”

  “So she met Antonio at the market?” Bran was prodding.

  Sager grimaced. “Way I heard it, Hayes decided to surprise her by picking her up after work and found her lingering in the parking lot with Alvarez. He took a swing then, but the girlfriend found herself some guts and got between them. Alvarez took off.” He shrugged. “Guaranteed to piss off Andy.”

  How many people knew this story and had kept their mouths shut? Bran tried to hide his fury but said, “That’s more than I heard. You know, you should tell the special investigators about this. And maybe the DA. Uh, Christine Campbell, I think.”

  Sager looked alarmed and backed up a few steps. “I have a wife and kids.”

  Time to quit pretending. “So it’s okay to let the witnesses be terrorized by that asshole and his friends? Damn it, you’re a cop.”

  Maybe he was projecting more menace than he’d intended because Sager talked fast. “I wasn’t there. It may not even be true.”

  Bran straightened, pushing away from his car. “Tell me who you heard it from.”

  Dave saw the steel in his eyes and shuffled a few more steps back. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I won’t say where I heard it. I promise.”

  He hesitated, his basic decency at war with his sense of self-preservation. At least, Bran hoped that’s what was happening. Hearing laughter and a shouted goodbye from somewhere near, Bran tensed. It wouldn’t be good if anyone interrupted them right now.

  Fortunately the voices receded.

  Dave groaned, wiped a hand across his face, and said, “Bobby Ketchum and Todd Vance were talking in the locker room. I don’t think they saw me.”

  Ketchum, Bran knew, was tight with Andy Hayes. He’d have thought better of Todd Vance, but didn’t really know him.

  “There are times we have to back each other when civilians don’t understand what came down,” Bran said, “but this isn’t anything like that. Wearing a badge shouldn’t give us immunity when we kill a guy because of a personal beef.”

  “No.” Dave grimaced. “I know you’re right. But there’s been a lot of talk, a lot of pressure. The brass thinks a conviction would make the department look bad.”

  “A cover-up makes us look a hell of a lot worse.”

  Sweat beaded on Dave’s forehead despite the day being in the low sixties. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Why did I ever tell you anything?”

  “I said I wouldn’t name you and I meant it.”

  He glared at Bran. “I’m holding you to that.”

  He leaped into his vehicle, undoubtedly regretting that he’d stopped to talk to Bran at all, especially right when the shift was changing and a lot of people could have seen them. Everyone assumed Bran and Zach were close.

  If only they all knew, Bran thought sourly. So far, every step forward was followed by two back.

  His fault as much as Zach’s, he knew, even if he was less sure how to fix it.

  What surprised him was how much he wanted to fix the relationship with his brother. Having Zach walk back into his life had shifted something in him. Whether Bran liked him or not was irrelevant.

  He gave a short laugh. Truth was he and his brother were too damn much alike.

  Waiting until he saw the Explorer speed out of the parking lot before he got into his Camaro, Bran mulled over how he’d tell MacLachlan and company what he’d learned without admitting he’d been asking questions.

  * * *

  MONDAY MORNING, ZACH stood to the side and watched as the tow truck backed up to his garage. A police photographer had already come out and taken a few dozen pictures from every angle. Detective Easley had given his permission to have the battered Silverado hauled to the wrecking yard, where it would be parted out.

  Just the thought curdled Zach’s stomach.

  He sure wasn’t in the mood for a visit from Bran, but damned if that wasn’t his Camaro pulling up to the curb.

  Zach’s brother got out, raising his brows as he looked at the tow truck. “Something wrong with your pickup?” he asked, cutting across the patchy lawn.

  “You could say that.”

  With an irritated glance, Bran walked right past him, circling the tow truck to see into the garage. On the threshold, Bran came to a dead stop. He stared for what had to be a couple minutes before turning around.

  “What the hell—?”

  “I had visitors last night. Three of them. They beat the shit out of my truck and then ran when I came out.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Unfortunately not well enough to identify them. One guy never got out of the SUV. The other two were carrying some kind of long-handled tools. Maybe mauls.”

  Bran nodded.

  “I had my Glock with me. I’ve never wanted to shoot someone so bad.” That excited whoop had told him they’d had fun here in his garage.

  “I can see why,” his brother surprised him by saying. He hesitated, obviously something was on his mind. “I’ve been asking around,” he said finally. “I heard something you need to know.”

  Zach watched as, with whining gears and a clank, the tow truck driver began to attach the pickup. “What’s that?”

  “Apparently, Hayes’s confrontation with Alvarez was the second of two parts. The way I hear it, the evening before—” His gaze went past Zach. “Oh, damn.”

  Zach turned to see an older pickup slamming to a stop right behind Bran’s black Camaro. A man leaped out and stormed toward them.

  It took Zach a moment to bring into focus someone he hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. Dark blond hair had become white. His face was fleshier, his nose had some broken veins that made Zach wonder if he was a heavy drinker. His skin looked leathery. His body had thickened.

  But—damn—he was unmistakably Jack Percy, who was now in his sixties. And in a rage, from the look of it.

  He got right in Bran’s face, not even glancing at Zach. “You son of a bitch, you’ve been asking questions about me. You couldn’t have the decency to talk to me? You had to go behind my back?” Spittle sprayed Bran, who didn’t as much as flinch. “I was good to you when you were a kid. If you’re suggesting what I think you are—”

  “Good to me?” In disgust, Bran wiped his forearm across his face. “You call sneaking into my mother’s bed behind Dad’s back being good to our family?” He’d started low but ended up yelling.

  Zach was vaguely aware the tow truck guy had stopped work to gape at the scene being enacted on the lawn. But he couldn’t tear his gaze from Jack Percy’s stunned expression.

  “What would make you say that?” Jack asked. He might still have been going for belligerent, but his voice faltered.

  Bran looked as hot under the collar as Zach had yet seen him. He snarled, “I walked in on you, in my parents’ bedroom. You were both so busy, you didn’t even see me.”

  Jack took a cautious step back. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your mom came on to me, not the
other way around.”

  Bran leaned in, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “And that made it okay? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Ah...”

  “You son of a bitch. Do you have any idea how much I wanted to tell Dad?”

  A nerve beneath Jack’s eye twitched. “Why didn’t you?”

  Bran huffed out a breath then turned his back on their father’s old friend. He walked in a small circle before facing him again. “I would have if my parents hadn’t split up anyway.” He shook his head. “But don’t you dare blame her. You were on top.”

  Jack’s face worked. He was actually afraid, Zach realized. And maybe he should be. Bran had stored up even more hostility than Zach had realized, maybe because he’d had to keep his mouth shut while seeing the friendship endure between Dad and this man.

  Jack looked sidelong at Zach as if suddenly becoming aware someone else was there. His expression of dawning shock gave Zach, at least, some satisfaction.

  “Zach? Is that you?”

  “It’s me.” He didn’t elaborate.

  “What the—?” Jack’s gaze darted from one brother to the other.

  “Do you want to know why I’ve been asking questions?” Bran had a grip on his temper again. His voice had become silky.

  Jack didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “What I’d really like to know is whether you thought Sheila was as pretty as Mom. Whether you had a taste for little girls. Maybe you still do. What do you say, Jack?”

  There was a frozen moment during which Jack processed what Bran had just suggested.

  Then, with an angry roar, he flung himself forward, a big fist swinging for Bran’s face.

  Zach stepped toward them, but Bran had already blocked the punch and stuck out his foot, sending their father’s old friend crashing to the ground.

  Then Bran planted that same foot on his back and put some weight on it as he bent forward. “Want to try that again, Jack?”

  The older man’s face flushed dark red. He didn’t move, but his glare could have lit the coals in a grill.

  “Answer me, Jack. Did you ever even think about what it would be like with my little sister?”

  “No! Goddamn it, no! That’s sick. I’d never...” His body sagged.

  “But you’d betray your wife and your best friend both,” Bran said with contempt.

  Jack’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your mom...she was so beautiful. I never thought I could have a woman who looked like her. I let it go to my head, but it’s not like I really had her anyway. Her interest didn’t last very long, you know. She moved right along.” Old hurt was in his voice. But something else, too.

  Bran removed the foot he’d had planted on Jack Percy’s back. His eyes briefly met Zach’s, his naked torment visible.

  Lip curled, Zach looked down at the piece of shit lying on his lawn. “I suppose you felt real bad after.”

  “I always wondered if Michael knew,” Jack mumbled. “And Janet—” He choked. “I hope to God she doesn’t. I’m lucky to have a good woman like her. I just... I went crazy there for a while.”

  Nothing he said suggested real remorse, Zach couldn’t help noticing.

  “Get up,” Bran snapped.

  Jack pushed himself awkwardly to his hands and knees, then by degrees to his feet. Grass stained his canvas carpenter pants. He brushed at his shirtfront. At last he lifted his shamed gaze to Bran and Zach, now standing shoulder to shoulder.

  “Hate me for what I did, but nothing in the world would have made me hurt Sheila. She was the sweetest kid—” He swallowed. “And I got to say one more thing. All that talk about your dad...” He shook his head. “He’d no more have done something like that than I would have. You kids were everything to him. What happened to her broke him. His job was to keep her safe. He could never understand how he didn’t hear the back door opening and closing. Why didn’t she scream? Call for her daddy? And what if she had and he didn’t hear? Do you know how many million times he asked himself that? His little girl dying that way, him losing her, and then his wife and his youngest boy, too.” He looked at Bran. “He hid the worst of it from you, but it about killed him. I guess maybe it did, in the end.”

  “I think it did, too,” Bran said quietly.

  In that moment Zach would have given anything to have come back to Clear Creek before Dad died. To have been able to say, I missed you. And I love you, Dad.

  But he also knew he’d never be satisfied until he had his answers. Monsters were good at hiding in plain sight. Families were the last to guess.

  When neither brother said anything, Jack nodded, turned and shambled away. Bran and Zach watched him get into that old pickup, start it and drive away without ever once looking back.

  “Shit,” Bran said under his breath. He bent his head and pinched his nose so hard between his thumb and forefinger, Zach would have sworn he heard cartilage creak.

  Zach couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  He met the tow truck driver’s stare and waited until the guy’s face reddened and he went back to work. Then Zach laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “Come on into the house. At least have a cup of coffee. Or, hell, a beer.”

  “Yeah.” Bran let out a long breath. “Damn. I lost it there. I never do that.”

  Zach shook his head even though Bran’s outburst had jarred him in a way he didn’t recognize. “You’re entitled once in a while. Anyway, he’s the one who took a swing, not you.”

  Bran only grunted, but he did walk with Zach to the house. As Zach shut the front door, he heard the clank of chains, a mechanical groan and, a minute later, the sound of the tow truck moving slowly down his driveway and into the street.

  No reason he should feel as if he’d been turned upside down and shaken.

  * * *

  LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Zach strolled into Fabulous Interiors, once again wearing his uniform. Only Tess was behind the counter, Greg having left to take his seven-year-old daughter to spring soccer practice while his wife chauffeured their son to some other activity. As slow as business had been, Tess had shooed him on his way.

  Predictably, Zach frowned after taking a look around. “Are you here alone?”

  “For the moment.”

  “I guess you can’t help it,” he conceded, not sounding happy.

  She smiled at his tone. “No, I can’t. Anyway, there are businesses on each side. We share a hall and a restroom with the coffee shop. People walk past the front windows often enough, I don’t feel all that alone.”

  He nodded. “I installed the cameras today, but they feed to a receiver I need to put inside your house.”

  When she asked, he explained that he’d gone with three cameras, one looking at the back of the house and one on each side. All had motion detectors and quality night vision. If something happened, they could watch what the camera had recorded.

  “Okay. Um, do you want to follow me home?”

  “I’d rather nobody sees me arrive. I’ll come over after dark. Don’t turn your front porch light on. I won’t use the doorbell, I’ll knock.”

  “Three times?”

  He cocked an eyebrow, not amused.

  No surprise, he waited until she had closed the shop. The last thing she did was let him out the front.

  His knock didn’t come until almost nine. Days were stretching now, in early May, with sunset at eight-thirty or later already. A box under his arm, he slipped inside the moment she opened the door. He’d changed to all black—chinos and a long-sleeved T-shirt with boots.

  Didn’t it figure? Black suited him, enhancing his air of danger. He could have been a burglar...no... Tess thought, her grandmother had had a more romantic term. Second-story man.

  “Where do you want the rec
eiver set up?” Zach asked.

  “That depends. Does it just record, or if I hear something outside, can I watch?”

  Zach’s smile was wolfish. “You can watch.”

  “My bedroom, then.”

  He followed her without comment. By his very presence, he shrank the room and made her acutely conscious of the bed. Thank goodness she’d made it that morning. It looked less suggestive than it would have if disheveled.

  Zach set up what looked sort of like a notebook computer. He showed her how to switch from one camera to another.

  “I’ll go out in back and trigger this one. Stay here so you can tell me if it works.”

  Barely a minute after he disappeared, the screen brightened to a sort of greenish hue and there he was, walking into the middle of the yard, looking directly into the camera then returning to the back door. The camera hadn’t yet lapsed into stand-by mode when he reappeared.

  “It worked?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the screen, which abruptly went dark.

  “How’s the picture? Could you recognize me?”

  “Yes.” Tess shook herself slightly. “This is weird. I never imagined...”

  “You’d need any kind of home security system?”

  After a moment she nodded.

  “Better safe than sorry. And, I’ve got to tell you, I’d really like to catch these bastards on camera.”

  She finally raised her gaze to meet his. “Did you install any of these at your house?”

  “I did. I wish like hell I’d done it Saturday.”

  “My father would say you’re shutting the barn door...”

  “After the horses are all out?” His smile was a little crooked. “My dad used to say that, too.”

  They stood there looking at each other for a minute, the bed assuming larger and larger proportions in Tess’s peripheral vision.

  She had to get him out of there. This man could break her heart.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?” There. That was pleasant but impersonal.