Winter's Redemption

by Mary Stone

  Her world was going through a polar shift, and her internal compass was spinning.

  Gramma Beth and Grampa Jack had never raised their voices to her. She sounded like a spoiled brat, just admitting that to herself, but it was true. She’d come to them, traumatized and alone. Gramma Beth had scooped her up like a wounded chick—clucking and hovering—her Grampa Jack always a protective mountain somewhere nearby.

  They’d never shown any kind of regret that they’d been forced to alter their lives permanently. That she had caused them their own pole shift.

  Taking on a child—a teenager—under the conditions they had would have been enough to throw anyone. But they’d taken her in, already well-set in their golden years. Winter felt like caving underneath the guilt that suddenly seem to press down on her with the weight of a mountain.

  Gramma Beth—the pretty, fragile, songbird-like old woman across from her—looked as beaten and bedraggled as Winter felt. It was shocking. As indomitable as she seemed, Beth was elderly. So was Grampa Jack.

  Beth was her grandmother still, but only under a technicality. She’d been passed the baton of motherhood back from the second she’d opened the door to the police that night.

  Now, Winter could see the daughter in her too.

  Her own mother. Jeannie Black. It hurt too much for words.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you felt this way?” The words were quiet. Penitent.

  “Well,” Beth almost whispered, “I certainly wish I would have just texted you. The neighbors are probably dialing 911.”

  Winter was afraid to roll her eyes, still adjusting to the vision of a whole new Gramma Beth.

  “Most of my neighbors are 911.”

  “Oh, no.” Gramma Beth’s eyes widened. “They’re going to think you have a crazy grandma. That I have Alzheimer’s or something.”

  That teased the smallest of smiles onto Winter’s lips. “If you don’t come over here and sit down and tell me what the hell is wrong with you, I’m going to call your bridge club and tell them you are crazy and you do have it.”

  “You wouldn’t.” The menace was back.

  “Try me.”

  Instead of calling Winter’s bluff, her grandma rounded the sofa promptly and plopped down. “That was underhanded. You know Bertha is dying to get her cousin in on Bridge Night. To do that, she’d have to take me down, first.”

  “I always wondered where my mean streak came from.” Winter smiled slightly. “And stop trying to change the subject.”

  “Well,” Beth sniffed. “I suppose you know now. We don’t need to elaborate on it.”

  “I think we do. I don’t want you blowing up at me again.”

  “I won’t.” Beth looked tired. “I have a temper, but it wears me out. My fuse is long, but—”

  “There’s a powder keg on the other side. I get it. And I’ve been wrong.” Winter let go of some anger she didn’t realize she was hanging on to in that moment. Beth looked frail and old. Her grandpa obviously wasn’t well. It wasn’t time for that.

  It was time for vengeance. Her own hurts could wait.

  “You’re right. It’s The Preacher. He’s back.”

  “Winter Morrigan Black,” Beth cried out, sounding hurt and angry all over again. “I knew, but why didn’t you tell me?”

  Winter shook her head slowly.

  “Because he’s mine.”

  Beth shot to her feet. “You can’t mean to do this.”

  “Gramma Beth.” Her voice sounded stiff and stilted, even to her own ears. “I’m going to do this. He’s gone on long enough. He’s like an old wolf, and another reason you shouldn’t pass judgement on someone just because of their age. This wolf may have lost all of his teeth, but he’s still rabid.”

  “It’s not for you, child.” Her face crumpled. “Let someone else do it. Noah would do it for you. Or that Aiden.”

  Now, it was Winter’s turn to growl.

  “Noah is a friend. Not a white knight. Not my protector. Not my savior. I don’t need Noah. As for Aiden and the rest of the FBI, I don’t need anyone to solve my problems for me.”

  “You couldn’t have changed anything that night.” Gramma Beth’s eyes glittered with sorrow, but also strength. “You were only a child.”

  “I’m not a child anymore.”

  Just saying the words out loud tightened the resolve in her belly.

  Beth looked at her for a long moment. Winter wanted to squirm under the scrutiny, but urgency pushed and nibbled at her.

  “Gram, I have to. He’s mine.”

  Long seconds stretched, pulling at each of Winter’s nerves.

  Finally, Beth nodded. Her lips quivered once and then firmed. Holding her arms out, she pulled Winter in for a tight hug. Tears flooded Winter’s eyes, but she didn’t let any of them fall. Just put her hand on the delicate ribs of her grandma’s back. She seemed so fragile, but the intensity of the hug almost hurt.

  “I know you do, sweetheart. Just be careful.”

  She pulled away just as quickly, with a bitter and fierce light of hate in her eyes that reflected the glint in Winter’s own.

  “Let him find you and then put the bastard out of his misery.”

  28

  As he swept his gaze over the briefing room, Aiden kept the motion measured and even. He did not let his attention linger on any one person for longer than another, especially not her. Not Winter.

  With the possible exception of Bree, The Preacher case had pushed the already strained relationships of each person in this damn room to their absolute limit. One wrong move now, and those bonds were liable to shatter into countless shards like a piece of tempered glass. Once they were broken, there would be no putting them back together.

  Aiden tried to tell himself that the cost of his ambition did not matter. After all, he had finally done it. After more than a decade of relentless pursuit, after he had become all but certain he would be forced to contend with his own failure, he had finished what the murder of the Black family had started.

  The Preacher had a name, and Aiden aimed to ensure everyone in this room, in this building, in the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation, knew who had found that name.

  When the trepidation about the price he had paid bubbled to the surface of his thoughts, he beat the notion back and cleared his throat. He did not have to look to know that Winter’s intense stare was fixed on the side of his face.

  As he squinted down at his laptop, he wished he had been given enough time to throw together a few photos and locations for a visual aid.

  “All right. We’re all here.” He snapped his attention away from the screen and to the three agents.

  Bree’s patient focus was already on him, her slim hands folded together atop the table. The man to her side, however, had only just shifted his gaze away from the ceiling and to the front of the room where Aiden stood.

  As Noah Dalton’s green eyes met his, Aiden didn’t miss the glint of malevolence. He should have felt a measure of grim satisfaction at the obvious sign of envy, but like his effort to rationalize the underhanded tactics he had employed so liberally over the last few months, he could not drum up so much as a twinge of pride. For the second time, he pushed aside his uncertainty and forged ahead.

  “Midland City, Alabama. February fifteenth, 1927. Melvin Kilroy is the third child born to Mary and Joseph Kilroy. Then, three years later, July second in Rich Square, North Carolina. Nellie Banks, the first child born to Eileen and Kenneth Banks. Fast forward nineteen years, January. Hiltonia, South Carolina. Nellie Banks marries Joseph Kilroy. Nine months later, November twenty-second, 1949.”

  He paused to glance from person to person. Despite his disciplined avoidance earlier, he let his gaze linger as soon as he met those familiar, icy blue eyes. Time ground to a halt, and he was sure his stare was locked on Winter’s for at least a full minute. He could hear the rush of his pulse in his ears, but he ignored the unexpected rush of adrenaline and pried his eyes away from hers.

&nbs
p; “What happened on November twenty-second?” The flat tone of Agent Dalton’s query reminded Aiden of the precarious position of their collective emotional states.

  “I’m glad you asked,” was Aiden’s sardonic response. “November twenty-second, 1949. Fort Lawn, South Carolina, Nellie Kilroy gives birth to their first and only child, Douglas Kilroy. Now, Douglas was born happy and healthy, or at least healthy, but the pregnancy was a complicated one. It would have been manageable in this day and age, but back in the late forties, Nellie was lucky to survive. I didn’t find any definitive indication that the difficult pregnancy resulted in infertility, but based on the fact that Nellie and Melvin didn’t have any more children, it’s a safe bet.”

  “It’s not like birth control was widely available in the early fifties,” Bree put in. “Especially not in the South.”

  Flashing her a quick smile that was mostly genuine, he nodded. “Right. Now, Nellie and her husband, Melvin, they were what we’d probably refer to now as religious fundamentalists. To say they were old-school would be a drastic understatement. There may be a lot of people now who like to reminisce about the 1950s, the ‘good old days,’ but in the ‘50s, there were plenty of people who thought the same thing about the decades before them. And these guys, the Kilroys, that’s exactly how they thought.

  “Melvin Kilroy dragged his wife and son around the South with him so he could try to spread his agenda, so he could amass a following that would go with him back to the ‘good old days.’ He taught little Douglas the trade right along with him, and finally, when the kid was about fifteen, he picked a spot to stay and open up shop. McCook, Virginia. It’s a little rinky-dink town, almost right on the Virginia-North Carolina border.”

  When Aiden paused this time, he was sure there would be no interruption. By now, each man and woman in the room knew the direction his announcement was headed. Palms flat against the edges of the polished wooden podium, he leaned forward. The move was made to ease the strain on his healing leg muscles, and the dramatic effect was an added bonus.

  “Holy Trinity Baptist Church,” he pronounced. He could almost hear their eyes widen, and he fought against a self-assured smirk. “Founded by Melvin Kilroy in the early nineteen sixties, toward the beginning of Vietnam, right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. Now, if you take a look back through Melvin and his family’s traveling days, it’s a little tough to find every stop they made. But at every single stop I found, a woman went missing. Some were found years later, murdered, not much more than a skeleton left. But for the most part, they just disappeared.”

  “Holy shit,” Bree murmured.

  Aiden bit back a sarcastic pun and cleared his throat instead. He might have been elated by the discovery of The Preacher’s identity, but the fact remained that they were hunting the same man who had butchered Winter Black’s entire family.

  When he dared another glance to the stoic woman, her eyes glittered like a pair of glaciers.

  “A couple years after they settled in McCook, Nellie Kilroy died. Her death was ruled an accident, and sources said that she was thrown off a horse and then trampled. But the buzz around the area was that there was foul play. While Melvin was traveling around the country, he didn’t stay in one place for long enough for people to put together the fact that he was a grade A creep. But he’d been in McCook for half a decade at that point, and people had started to talk.

  “Between losing a hand around the church and all the rumors that were flying around town about Nellie’s death, the congregation stopped coming. Melvin and his son, Douglas, gave sermons to rows of empty pews. And then one day, Melvin threw in the towel. Right here.” Aiden paused to press his index and middle fingers against the underside of his chin. “One shot from a .38 Special, and that was the end of the Holy Trinity Baptist Church.”

  “Jesus Christ,” someone muttered.

  Aiden nodded. The comment was fitting.

  “This was just before the Tet Offensive was over,” Aiden went on, “and people were questioning the information that’d been fed to them about Vietnam. The hippie counterculture was in full swing, with lots of sinning going around. I’d be willing to bet that all those events were motivation for Douglas Kilroy to take up his father’s work. All the social upheaval, the departure from the nuclear family of the ‘50s. Never mind that the ‘30s were long dead too. Douglas Kilroy, The Preacher as he’s been dubbed, was on a crusade.”

  “Murdering bastard,” came from Bree.

  Aiden nodded again. Also fitting. Before anything else could be said, he continued.

  “Obviously, there aren’t any CPS records from the middle of nowhere in Virginia during the ‘50s, but I can say with some certainty that Douglas Kilroy was raised around plenty of violence. From an early age, his father taught him that violence was an acceptable method for him to express emotion and assert himself. Douglas carried that thought process with him when he was drafted to Vietnam after he turned eighteen. He served over there as a Green Beret, which explains where his physical prowess comes from.”

  “What—” Noah started, but sick of interruptions, especially from him, Aiden gave the big man a hard stare. Jaw tight, the agent leaned back in his chair.

  Turning his attention back to the group, Aiden refocused on his train of thought. “Given the limited amount of time I’ve had so far, I haven’t been able to find out much about his combat record, just that he served for around four or five years. In that four or five years, my guess is that Douglas used Vietnam as a sort of training ground. It’s not unheard of for serial killers to get their starts in active combat zones, especially conflicts as bloody as Vietnam. And once Melvin was gone, Douglas had even more motivation. He wouldn’t fail where his father had. He wouldn’t kill himself before his work was done.”

  Without another glance to the little group, he snatched up the remote for the television mounted to the wall at his side. As soon as he pressed the power button, a magnified image of a man’s driver’s license lit up the expansive screen.

  His well-kempt white beard, rounded cheeks, and easy smile all would have conveyed a calm comfort were it not for his eyes. They were black, the iris all but indistinguishable from the pupil. But it was not the color that unnerved him.

  Those were dead eyes.

  The look behind those eyes was the same cool apathy Aiden had seen on the faces of some of his generation’s most notorious killers.

  Sociopaths, people who operated by their own definition of right and wrong. People whose moral compass was crafted by their own set of twisted ideals. Though they weren’t ideals as much as they were rationalizations or excuses for men like Douglas Kilroy to carry out their macabre fantasies. To inflict pain and suffering for their own ends, to make others hurt so they could get off.

  “That’s him.” Winter’s quiet proclamation snapped him out of the reverie.

  Shifting his gaze to her, he offered a slow nod. “Douglas Kilroy, a handyman by trade. It explains how he gets into all the houses so easily. Alarm systems, locks, he works on all of them. Seems like he keeps up with technology, at least in that respect. Public records indicate he’s lived in Virginia for the last two decades. Local police raided his last known address as soon as I called in the APB last night, but they didn’t find a damn thing. He’s in the wind.

  “There’s an all-points bulletin out for him, as well as any truck matching the description of the red and green beater we’ve heard about. As of right now, it’s safe to say that Douglas Kilroy is one of America’s Most Wanted. As soon as someone spots him, we’ll be the first to hear about it.”

  The silence that descended on the room felt like a suffocating shroud, but try as he might, Aiden could not come up with a way to break the spell. Any words he thought to vocalize would only have made the eerie quiet more noticeable.

  Until Bree heaved a sigh and leaned back in her chair with a squeak, the only sound was the distant din of the HVAC system. Whether or not her intent had been to garner the atten
tion of the room, all three sets of eyes snapped over as she stretched her legs.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said as she spread her hands, a hapless look on her face.

  “What’s our next play?” To his surprise, the question was posed by Noah. The usual cheer had vanished from his demeanor, and his countenance was flat, almost tired.

  Maybe the deadpan look should have brought Aiden some manner of satisfaction, but instead, he felt the first pinpricks of unease on the back of his neck. Rather than answer Dalton’s question, he glanced over to Winter.

  She paid no attention to his scrutiny as she narrowed her eyes at the photograph on the television, looked back down to her notebook, and scribbled another line of text. She was brooding, he noted.

  Well, that probably wasn’t good.

  When Aiden, Winter, Bree, and Noah had taken the time to combine notes on the differing angles with which they had all approached the same case, he’d hoped the mind games and the secrets were at an end.

  Hope in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up faster.

  He had never entirely understood the old adage—why in the hell would anyone want to shit in their hand? But he was not naïve enough to believe that all the lies and all the manipulation that each occupant of this room had employed in the alleged interest of bringing down The Preacher would just disappear.

  That damage would last. He knew from personal experience that those wounds did not close easily. He hoped—there was that damn word again—that the same manipulative tactics he had used to secure himself a position in the grand finale of this case would not become the new norm for Winter.

  He had been sure he was ready to pay any price necessary to see to the removal of the single blemish on his otherwise spotless record. He had been sure there would be no price too steep, but now, he wondered how much of the sentiment had been his rationalization. After all, he had become adept at discovering the inner workings of those who rationalized all manner of despicable acts, hadn’t he?