Looking at the man he hadn’t seen in years, a memory struck Colt.
It was when Colt had been young, seven, maybe eight, and ill. Colt didn’t get sick often but he was then, so sick he didn’t go to school, which he’d always liked, even as a kid, it was an escape from home. He didn’t even go over to Morrie’s which meant he had to be really sick because he always preferred to be at the Owens’s, not to mention he knew even then Jackie was a helluva lot better at taking care of a sick kid than Colt’s Mom was. In fact, he was so sick his mother braved the world she didn’t often go out into unless it was to hit a liquor store and she took him to see Doc. Then later, with no one to watch him, even though she was half-snockered, she put him in her car and took him to Norm Lowe’s pharmacy to pick up Colt’s prescription.
Colt remembered Norm looking down at his mother from the raised station, the white shelves of medicine behind him, wearing a crisp white labcoat with his name embroidered in cursive with blue thread over the coat pocket, the filled prescription bag in his hand, the bag held back from Colt’s mother, and saying, “Now, Mary, we both know this wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Colt remembered it clearly, like it happened the moment before, but until that second he’d buried it. He’d buried it because, that day long ago there were people in line behind his mother. Everyone knew Norm’s meaning, refusing his mother Colt’s medications. He was intimating that she’d take them herself. Even Colt knew it, at his age, and he’d been humiliated, mainly because Norm Lowe was probably right.
His mother didn’t fight it. She grabbed Colt’s hand, ducked her head and walked as straight a line as she could muster right out of the store. She took him back to Doc and Doc saw them right away. Handing her the prescription from his cabinet, Doc said to Colt’s Mom, “Next time we’ll remember this, Mary. You got somethin’ you need for Alec, you’ll get it direct from me.”
Colt couldn’t remember if his mother ever gave him the drugs and it was the only time he remembered ever needing any.
He did remember, years ago a new chain store pharmacy was put in at the edge of town and he’d talked Melanie into moving her prescriptions to the chain, though he never could understand why he wanted her to do this. Most of the folks on insurance or Medicare didn’t have a choice but to go to the chain. If they did, they’d go to Norm just because he was a local. Not Colt.
Since Colt was seven to the time that chain opened, he never stepped foot in Norm Lowe’s pharmacy, partly because he had no need, partly because that buried memory kept him back.
Now, staring at him, Norm’s back ramrod straight, his face looking carved from a rock, his wife a mess in front of him, his son on the road carrying out a violent rampage, Colt found he could call up no empathy for the man.
He would soon understand why.
“We’ll give you some time,” Sully, seated by Evelyn, said quietly.
Everyone waited for Evelyn to pull herself together and Colt watched as Norm squeezed her shoulder. Colt didn’t know why but this gesture looked to him less like a show of support and more like a demand for his wife to get control. It was then Colt knew Norm Lowe was not the kind of man who would allow his wife to walk down the street with frosting on her lip. Not because of how this would reflect on her, but because of how it would reflect on him.
Evelyn nodded her head and lifted it, wiping the tears from her face and swiping under her nose.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Sullivan,” she whispered.
“You okay to talk now, Mrs. Lowe?” Sully asked and she nodded again but it wasn’t her who talked.
“We found that,” Norm announced, dipping his head toward the medium-sized box on the table beside two untouched Styrofoam cups of coffee, “in the house.”
“And what is that, Mr. Lowe?” Sully asked and Evelyn made a noise that sounded painful, a choked sob, a sob Norm ignored.
“Dennis asked his mother to hold some things at the house. She did. Never told me. I knew about that, well…” he let that hang and Colt watched Evelyn’s face blank so much it was void. One second, she was tearful, the next, her face was a clear slate. She was so good, it only took a second. A defense mechanism, a practiced one. It was then Colt knew Evelyn Lowe lived under a tyrant.
As had Denny.
“I never looked in the box either,” she said quietly. “I just thought it was stuff he and Marie couldn’t hold in their house.”
This earned her another shoulder squeeze from her husband as he reminded her at the same time telling Sully that his wife was an idiot and he himself had not one thing to do with that box or what was going on with his son. “They got five bedrooms in that house, Ehv.”
“Yes, yes, I didn’t think. Stupid of me,” she said quickly.
“After we heard of the goings-on, Evelyn remembered the box,” Norm stated and Colt thought his choice of the words “goings-on” to describe a killing spree was both interesting and sickening, more the last than the first, far more. “She pulled it out, opened it up and showed it to me. That was less than an hour ago. We brought it right here.”
In other words, my son is a psychopathic killer but I’m a decent citizen here to help.
“May I look in the box?” Sully asked and Evelyn pressed her lips together. Norm nodded curtly.
Sully got up and pulled back the flaps to the box. The room went wired as he looked inside. He dipped in his hand and it didn’t have to go very far. Colt could see from his vantage point the box was filled with photos and he knew what they showed. Colt had no reaction to this. It wasn’t surprising and he was finding it was better to store up his reactions for shit that was worth it.
Sully pulled out only a handful. He managed to keep his expression neutral as he flipped through them. Then he put them down on the table and turned to the Lowes.
“That’s a lotta pictures of Feb Owens and Alec Colton,” he remarked.
“Box’s full of ‘em,” Norm agreed amicably.
“Denny take these?” Sully asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Norm answered.
Sully looked down at the box, dug his hand in and pulled out more from the middle, flipping through them he said, “Looks like someone’s been takin’ pictures of Feb and Colt for years.”
“Looks like,” Norm replied.
“You have any idea why Denny would have these?”
Evelyn Lowe made a high-pitched sound in the back of her throat but Norm talked over her, saying, “No idea.”
Sully looked to the woman. “Mrs. Lowe?”
She got another squeeze from her husband, therefore she repeated, “No idea.”
Sully’s face got tight and his eyes rested on Norm’s hand on Evelyn’s shoulder a brief moment before he looked at Denny’s father.
“You think I could talk to your wife in private?”
“No. I. Do. Not,” Norm answered, enunciating each word clearly, helpful citizen a memory in a flash.
“Norm,” Evelyn whispered.
“We’re not suspects in this situation,” Norm told his wife.
“No one said you were,” Sully put in.
It was then Norm drew the line in the sand, showing directly where he and his wife stood and the fact that their son stood on the other side and that was exactly how everyone, including the police, should view it.
He did this by saying, “And we won’t be treated as such.”
“I’m sorry if you feel I’m treatin’ you that way,” Sully sat back down, letting Norm have the dominant position. “Not my intention at all. Just tryin’ to get to the bottom of things.”
“We have no involvement in this,” Norm stated firmly. “Dennis brought the box to the house. We kept it there for him not knowing what it contained. Evelyn says she thinks he brought it over just over a year ago.”
When Feb was back in town. It could be he brought it over because Marie could discover the box and run into Feb or, for that matter, Colt. It was more likely he brought it over because he was making plans to set up even
more thorough surveillance of Colt and Feb. With video, he didn’t have to flip through photos nor did he have to court getting caught taking them.
“Can we keep the contents of this box for the investigation?” Sully asked politely.
“Why would we need it?” Norm asked back, happy to be rid of it.
“Thank you, we appreciate you bringing it down,” Sully’s tone had a finality to it.
“Shit,” Sean, one of the newer detectives, said from beside Colt, “he’s lettin’ the mother off the hook.”
“She’s got somethin’,” Mike Haines, another more experienced detective in the unit, muttered from the other side of Sean. “Sul won’t let it go.”
Norm helped his wife out of her seat and Sully rose from his.
As they turned to the door, Sully used a conversational tone that smacked so contradictorily against the words he said that they struck the room with a force that couldn’t be ignored. “You have heard, of course, that Denny attacked another one of Feb Owens’s friends last night. Blade of a hatchet cut into his shoulder, it took forty stitches to close him,” Sully was looking in the box, the Lowes were silent because, of course, they hadn’t heard, and Sully continued as if in afterthought. “Oh, and two unidentified bodies have been found, one man killed early this mornin’ in Oklahoma, appears to be in a rage, not much left of him. The other’s been dead awhile, just discovered this mornin’ in Pueblo, Colorado. He’s got a face left so they’re siftin’ through missing persons.”
“What?” Colt whispered, not having heard this.
“News just came in ‘bout ten minutes before the Lowes showed,” Garrett “Merry” Merrick, another veteran detective, murmured.
Evelyn had frozen, Norm’s face turned from rock to ice.
“‘Course, odds are, we’ll catch him as he’s told us he’s comin’ up here to do the same to Colt. Still, we reckon he’s pretty angry, seein’ as he didn’t get to dispatch his intended victim in Texas. So, we don’t get hold of him beforehand, we suspect the bodies’ll pile up from Oklahoma to here. Takes a coupla days to make that ride, you take time out to murder people. We figure couple more bodies at least. Maybe fathers, maybe brothers, maybe husbands.” Sully shrugged like it didn’t matter much to him. “You see it all in this job, gotta find a way to shut it down.”
“Ehv, let’s get you home,” Norm said to his wife with false courtesy but he didn’t take his glacial gaze from Sully. He knew the game Sully was playing.
Sully was throwing the photos back into the box and flipping back the flaps, muttering, “Helps, sometimes, knowin’ what drives ‘em. Not all the time, mind, but sometimes.”
Colt’s eyes went to Evelyn. She was cracking, plain to see.
Norm’s hand was firm on his frozen wife’s arm. He’d slipped up, bringing her to the Station. She’d either demanded to come, which was unlikely, or she’d been so undone by the news, and thus so fragile, Norm didn’t know what to do with her and he’d made the mistake of allowing her to come, thinking he could keep her under control.
Then again, a mother’s love, even if her son had gone bad, was hard to control. Colt’d seen it over and over. Pete Hollister’s mother was a prime example. That woman knew what her son did to Feb, putting Feb in the hospital, and she stood by Pete, badmouthing Feb along the way.
Sully knew this too and he was going to play it.
Norm saw his wife breaking and his voice was a warning when he said, “Evelyn.”
“Also helps us,” Sully cut in, “if we know, to figure a way to bring ‘em in, you know, safe like. Get ‘em help.”
“You don’t want to help my son,” Norm accused, casting doubt on Sully, hoping Evelyn would rise to the bait.
Sully looked at him and asked good-naturedly, “You know me, sir?”
“I –” Norm started but Sully cut him off.
Good-natured gone, colder than steel and firmer than concrete in its place, Sully said, “You don’t know me, Mr. Lowe, so you can’t say that about me.”
“He was touched,” Evelyn whispered and the observation room went electric.
“Evelyn,” Norm snapped.
Sully turned fully to her, she had his complete attention. “Touched?”
“Touched.”
“Evelyn!” Norm’s voice was sharper and his hand on her arm gave her a quick but vicious shake.
“Mr. Lowe, due respect, but I’m thinkin’ you shouldn’t handle your woman like that in front of a cop,” Sully warned quietly, but quiet or not, that steel was still in his tone.
Norm instantly dropped his wife’s arm but declared, “We’re leaving.”
“When he was a little boy. Norman’s brother,” Evelyn said softly.
“Quiet now, Evelyn,” Norm hissed at his wife, leaning toward her. “You don’t know that.”
She turned her head to him, still talking softly, finding her way, uncertain of her footing and downright scared, she whispered, “I know it.”
“You don’t.”
“Denny told me.”
Norm threw out a dismissive hand. “I think it’s clear by his behavior that Denny tellin’ you anything can be taken with a grain of salt.”
Still soft, Evelyn said, “Not then, not then, Norman.”
“Ehv.”
“He was five,” she whispered and Colt closed his eyes.
“Jesus, sick, fuck, Christ,” Sean muttered and Colt opened his eyes.
Evelyn looked back at Sully, squared her shoulders and sucked in oxygen through her nose, counting on it giving her strength. “Far as I reckon, it’d been happenin’ since he was a baby.”
“No, now it’s Jesus, sick, fuck, Christ,” Mike remarked.
“Evelyn, you be quiet, you hear?” Norman warned.
She didn’t take her eyes off Sully when she replied, “Been bein’ quiet a long time.”
“No use dredgin’ this up,” Norm told her.
For some reason those words were Norm’s mistake. Evelyn’s body visibly locked but her eyes sliced to her husband.
“No use dredgin’ it up.” Her voice was still soft but it held an angry hiss. “No use takin’ him to see a psychologist when he had those dreams, would draw those pictures. No use havin’ him talk to someone when he killed our dog,” Evelyn returned, building her backbone with every word.
“Holy fuck,” Merry muttered.
“Classic case. Christ,” Mike noted.
Norm looked at Sully and declared, “Denny didn’t kill our dog.” “So, Sparky fell on a hatchet?” Evelyn asked, unpracticed sarcasm in her tone but still, it worked.
“Evelyn, I hardly think –” Norm started but Evelyn interrupted him.
She looked back to Sully and said on a rush, “Norm’s brother liked babysitting. He did it for us a lot. A lot. Kept tellin’ us to go to movies, out to dinner, have a break from our boy. Felix had no wife, no girlfriends, no interest, never did, but he liked babies, he liked little boys, he liked them a lot. Used to go to the park just to watch them. I’d take Denny on the weekend, he’d always be there to come with me. I thought it strange, thought he was a bit peculiar, but it was more than a bit peculiar.”
“Denny told you he touched him?” Sully asked.
“Told me, yes, told me how too,” Evelyn answered.
“Dennis couldn’t know –” Norm started but stopped when Evelyn looked at him again.
“If he didn’t know, if you didn’t know, why’d you send Felix away?”
“He got a position out of state,” Norm reminded her.
“You arranged for him to get a position out of state.”
Norm dismissed his wife and looked at Sully. “This is ridiculous. Felix died of leukemia five years ago. He can’t even speak for himself.
“And thank goodness. Thank goodness. Thank goodness for that,” Evelyn said. It had built up for years and she’d been holding it back, or Norm had been crushing it down, but now she let it go. There was a force of feeling behind her words so strong it was a wonder her husb
and didn’t go back on a foot. Hell, she’d been holding this back so long, it was actually a wonder she herself didn’t implode.
“That’s my brother you’re talkin’ about, Ehv.”
“That’s the man who drove our boy into madness, Norm.”
Sully cut in. “You know how he links to Feb and Colt?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said.
“Absolutely not,” Norm said at the same time.
Evelyn turned to him. “We do,” then she looked back to Sully, “or, I do.”
Norm was losing it, his face getting read, his eyes already blistering hot, if she didn’t find alternate accommodation that night, she’d catch it.
“Evelyn,” he bit off.
She ignored him and kept looking at Sully, taking a deep breath, she said, “Sometimes he’d talk to me. Not much, sometimes. I wanted him to talk to someone else…” her head twitched in her husband’s direction, it wasn’t much but her accusation was clear, “but we couldn’t do that so I thought it would be good if Denny would talk to me.”
“So he told you about Feb and Colt,” Sully prompted.
“Once, each,” she nodded and went on, “February stood up for him, something at school,” her eyes slid to the side, taking in her husband a moment then they went back to Sully, “not long after, Alec Colton beat up his father and went to live with the Owenses.”
“He say why this meant somethin’ to him?” Sully asked.
“No, but I reckon in February’s case, no one stood up for him, not in his whole life, and he had some demons he was battlin’, he didn’t need the likes of Devon Shepherd’s uppity daughter makin’ his life a livin’ hell at school.”
“Colt?” Sully pressed.
“Hero worship, I guess. I suspect, beatin’ up his Dad like that and endin’ up with the Owenses, Alec Colton did somethin’ Denny wanted to do. Then, of course, there was the fact that Alec had Feb.”
“I don’t believe this,” Norm muttered.
“You were hard on him,” Evelyn told Norm.
“I’m his father!” Norm’s voice was rising.
“You were too hard on him,” Evelyn shot back.
“He was a difficult boy to raise,” Norm returned.
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