“Where is she?” he asks.
Kateri waits.
“Where is Birdie?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she says.
He stands up, swings, and punches a dent much bigger than his fist into the wall. His knuckle cracks open, bloody.
“I can have you restrained,” Kateri says, her voice louder.
“Fine,” Shannon says. “Can you find my fucking sister?” He has puffed up and she sees it for the first time, the propensity for rage in his curled fist, his hard breathing.
“Please sit down,” Kateri says.
Joel Hurt comes in without knocking, having heard the bang on the wall. He looks at the dent and down at Shannon’s hand.
“Should we move rooms?” Hurt asks. “Interrogation B is open.”
“I think we’re okay,” Kateri says. Interrogation B is a windowless, cinder-block room. She will lose him in there.
Hurt stays, though, his back against the wall, leaning, not asking questions, letting Kateri do her work.
“I need you to think, Shannon,” she says, “about who your sister might have agreed to go with.”
“No one,” he says. “Or, I don’t know, maybe anyone. She’s a little girl,” he says. “She’s never been anywhere. The only people she knows are my mom and me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
His lips part, and his eyes search the ceiling. “I think so,” he says.
“How do I know it wasn’t you who signed her out?” She’s pushing. He doesn’t fit the description the nurse gave her, fortyish, dark haired, unless he disguised himself really well. But she wants to see him react.
“It wasn’t,” he says, point blank.
She pulls out an enlarged copy of the signature on the discharge papers and shows it to him.
“That’s not my signature,” he says.
“That could be an S,” she says, pointing to the flourish.
“In the middle,” he says. “You think I signed it Jenkins, Shannon?” He thrusts the paper back at her. “This is not my signature,” he says.
“What about your father?”
Shannon covers his mouth before he starts speaking again. “Well,” he says. “If my father broke out of prison to sign my sister—who is not even his—out of the hospital, I would hope you would know about it,” he says. “Like, through the police network or something.”
“Do you know for sure that he’s still incarcerated?”
Shannon’s eyes look blank, his lips white. “The last I knew,” he says. He holds out his hand. “Can’t you check that? Don’t you have a database or something?”
“Of course,” Kateri says, but she makes no move to make a note or look anything up. “When’s the last time you had contact with him?” Kateri asks.
She watches him rub his neck and swallow. “I told you,” he says. “Two years ago.”
“After she was born,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“What about your mother? Did she have contact with him?”
“My mother was terrified of him,” he says.
“That could be a reason for staying in touch,” Kateri says. “Many women maintain contact out of fear.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “She didn’t leave. After Birdie, she like never left the house. We don’t have a phone. We don’t have internet.”
“Mail?” Kateri asks.
“I don’t know,” Shannon says.
“What about your father’s associates?” Kateri asks.
He says the word back to her. “He didn’t work with anyone,” he says, confused. “You mean like cousins?”
“Alliances he may have made in prison,” Kateri says.
Shannon’s face falls, and he looks down at his lap. “I don’t know,” he says, barely audible. “Not that I know of.”
“The remains we found were burned,” Kateri says.
“So?”
“Your father is in prison for arson. Arson doesn’t just happen to the same people twice,” she says. “Could he have put someone up to it?”
“I don’t know,” Shannon says.
“Could he have put you up to it?”
He looks around the room, like an animal looking for holes in the trap. “I didn’t do it,” he says finally. “But sure. If you want me to speculate for you, he could have put me up to it. But he didn’t. And I didn’t do it.”
It’s Hurt’s turn to chime in. “Crimes often repeat generationally,” he says to Shannon.
“I know,” Shannon says.
“You know?”
“Yeah, every goddamn fire in this town comes back to me,” Shannon says. “I get questioned every time.”
“Yes, but this time it involves your mother,” Kateri stresses. “Are you telling me that a fire happened to your mother twice?”
He looks at neither of them and holds his hands open, an empty offering. He stares at the wall behind them. “Do you want me to repeat myself?” he asks, and then does. “I didn’t do it.”
Kateri rubs the ever-growing crease between her brows and tries to switch gears.
“Your mother kept you both captive,” Kateri says. “Complicit. After your sister was born. You had to keep the secret too.”
He nods slightly.
“Where are you staying?” she asks, stretching her neck, watching, to see if he’ll unconsciously mimic her. She needs to get a better look at each side, the mark of a thumb and four fingers.
“I don’t know why that matters,” Shannon says.
“Well, it might matter a great deal,” Hurt says, sudden and loud, and Shannon jumps at the male voice.
“Do you have a friend,” Kateri asks, “or a coworker, maybe, who might have signed Birdie out for you?”
“No,” Shannon says. “I didn’t ask anyone to sign her out.”
“What about Bear Miller?” Kateri asks.
Shannon blinks, presses his lips together, and looks away from Kateri. “He didn’t sign her out,” he says.
Kateri cocks her head. “How do you know Bear Miller?” she asks.
“I work for him,” Shannon says.
“Is that all?” Hurt asks.
“Does it matter?” Shannon asks.
“Let’s say that it does,” Hurt says.
“Is it true,” Kateri says, “taking back over, that you’re staying with Mr. Miller in the model home at the River View site? On Fountain Street?”
Shannon’s shoulders sink low in the chair, his neck hidden, his hands laced together in his lap, fidgeting. He wags one foot.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he asks. “Since you seem to know exactly what I’m doing.”
“How did you get the money to pay for the lawyer when you put the property in your own name?” Kateri asks.
He won’t look her in the eye. She hears the click of his teeth.
“If you couldn’t pay the utilities,” she says, “and the taxes were years behind, how did you manage to pay Dan Sullivan for his services? It must have been, what? A thousand dollars?”
Kateri perches on the edge of her desk. She can wait a long time, but she watches all the small movements that Shannon makes, his fingers, folded, unfolded, his hands in his hair, his bouncing knee.
“Did Mr. Miller pay for it?” she asks.
It takes him a minute to respond. Finally he says, “He has been nice to me.”
“Nice,” Hurt repeats.
Shannon’s face flames up, hot pink spots on his cheeks. He bites his lower lip.
“How long have you known Bear Miller?” Kateri asks.
Shannon shrugs. “A couple of months.”
“Do you know anything about him?” Kateri asks.
Shannon’s eyes search. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“Anything about his family? His past? Where he’s from?” she asks. “Do you know if he goes by any other names?”
“No,” he says, an
d his chest caves a little.
She tries a little harder. “Michael?” she asks, then, “Bart? Bartholomew?” His face is blank. “Jane?” she says.
He jumps. “What? No.” Then he adds, “That’s a woman’s name.”
“Mr. Miller knew your situation at home, correct?” Kateri asks. “He’d been nice to you, as you said. He understood your struggle.”
“I guess,” Shannon says. “I don’t know why it matters.”
“Does he know about your sister?” Kateri asks.
Shannon’s face pales.
“If he was willing to pay your legal fees,” Kateri says.
“He didn’t pay them.”
“Who did?”
“I did,” Shannon says, but Kateri doesn’t quite believe him. He’s hiding where he got the money.
“He knew about Birdie,” Kateri says, and pauses for a long time, watching Shannon get uncomfortable. “Would he also hurt your mother?”
His face begins to look green in the hollows of his cheeks. “No,” he says, barely voiced. “No.”
“But he knows,” she says.
“Yes,” he says.
“Who hurt you, Shannon?” Kateri asks.
“What?”
She points at his neck. “Who tried to strangle you?”
“No one,” he says.
“You have visible bruising on your neck.”
He pulls his collar around him, lowers his head.
“Who did that?”
He looks small in the chair, hiding more than just his neck.
“How often did you fight with your mother?” Hurt asks.
Shannon shrugs.
“Often,” Hurt says. It is not a question.
“Sometimes,” Shannon says.
“Physical,” Hurt says.
“No.”
“You just punched a hole in the wall over a question,” Hurt says. “You’re trying to tell me that doesn’t also go on at home?”
Kateri watches Shannon press his lips together, flat, white.
“Did you fight about the house?” Hurt asks.
“Something had to be done,” Shannon says. “She wasn’t going to do anything about it. We were going to be homeless.”
“Did you fight about your sister?” Hurt asks.
Shannon clamps his jaw tighter.
“You were tired of being implicated in her hiding,” Hurt says. “You disagreed with the way your mother had chosen to keep her captive all this time.”
Shannon looks at Hurt, then looks Kateri in the eye.
“So you confronted her,” Hurt says, projecting. Kateri has seen other investigators use this, and she’s used it herself. Tell the story the way it might have happened and wait for the suspect to disagree, to begin to tell it right, or to crumple with guilt, or flare with anger at being caught. “It got physical,” Hurt says. “You’re still badly bruised,” he says, and Shannon’s hands go to his throat. “And in reaction, in rage, pent up from years of lying, you struck her.”
Shannon moves his shoulder a little, shifts against the wall. “Maybe you didn’t mean to do that much damage,” Hurt says. “But faced with what you had done, you tried to hide it, you destroyed the evidence, and you hid your sister in the safest spot you could find: the closet.”
Shannon’s nostrils flare, and he draws his lips in so tight they are nearly invisible.
“When you found out your sister was at Mercy, you staked out her guard, attacked him in the parking lot, signed your sister out, and fled.”
“Fled,” Shannon repeats.
“Did you sign her out?” Kateri asks. “Or did you send someone up? Tag team, so to speak,” she says.
“While you ambushed Craig O’Neil in the parking lot,” Hurt says. He shrugs, cool. “Maybe you didn’t mean to kill him. But he died, bound and drowning in the trunk of his own car.”
She watches Shannon swallow.
“We’re in the process of searching Bear Miller’s house,” Kateri says.
Shannon huffs.
“Your prints are on the murder weapon,” Hurt says.
Shannon’s mouth falls open, and his eyes spring with tears. “I didn’t do it,” he says. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Where’s the girl?” Hurt asks.
“I don’t know,” Shannon says.
“Triple homicide is a steep offense,” Hurt says.
Kateri watches two tears brim and fall from his eyes. “I would never hurt her,” he says.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean for it to go this far,” Hurt says.
Kateri leans forward on the desk. “Who’s the angel?” she asks.
Shannon closes his eyes for a long moment before he looks at her. His eyes have gone dark and searching with fear. “I don’t know,” he says, but he knows what she’s talking about. This is not a new phrase to him. She folds her hands and lets him sit with it, and she notices that he starts to shake, first in his hands, which he clamps together, and then in his arms and across his torso. She has knocked something loose in him.
Hurt nods at her.
“I didn’t do it,” Shannon cries.
“I have to arrest you,” Kateri says.
“Fisher,” Hurt says suddenly. “Stop telling him and just do it.”
She begins, reads his rights, her own voice wavering. He sobs for a minute—“I have to call Bear,” he says—and the break in his voice hits her hard. But then he seems to suck it all in, tight, pale, shocked into silence. He won’t meet her eye anymore. He makes the phone call with his back to her, and she can’t make out any of the words, and then she has a deputy, a young dad in his thirties, walk Shannon down to booking. He never looks back.
NINETEEN: SHANNON
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
I’d cut all my hours down at the Hub. Bear wanted me available to begin work on the house, and I’d been working six days a week. I couldn’t keep spending so much time with Bear. Not working meant less money. I needed to stay on top of the bills. But I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“How much are you making at the diner?” Bear asked.
“Three hundred,” I said.
“For six days?” he said.
I blushed hard. It was unheard of to him. We sat at the kitchen island. The stone always felt cold, even when the house was warm.
“Are you going to pay me?” I asked, when he didn’t offer.
He laughed. “You can have whatever you want,” he said.
It was hard for me to understand. I didn’t know what I wanted. I needed to just rely on regular money in my pocket. Junior gave me cash every week.
“I don’t think you understand,” I started.
He tipped his head, listening.
“Anything … means nothing to me,” I said. “It’s not a thing.”
“Do you want cash?” he said.
“I guess,” I said. “I mean, I’ve always just been paid cash, and that’s how I pay the bills and buy groceries. So, yeah, that’s what makes sense to me.”
“I don’t have cash on me,” he said, patting his shirt pockets like it might be there. “But I’ll take some out tomorrow and I’ll give you five hundred dollars.”
“I haven’t even done any work yet.”
He got up and came around the back of me, his hands holding my shoulders in. He put his lips on the top of my head. “It’s part of the anything you want,” he said.
The next day, he sent me out to buy paint. I’d picked the color myself, a buttery warm beige called D’Anjou, and I used Bear’s credit card, even though I protested.
“I can’t use your credit card,” I’d said to him. He hadn’t given me the cash yet.
“Sure you can,” he said. “Sign my name.”
“I can’t sign your name,” I said.
“People commit worse crimes all the time. You’re spending seventy-five dollars on paint.” He handed me a black AmEx card and waved his hand. “Take the Land Rover,” he said. “Take the roadster if you want.”
&
nbsp; “I can’t drive a stick,” I said.
He laughed. “What are you going to do when we go to Europe?” he asked.
I looked at him like I had no idea who he was. I didn’t know who he was. My eyes felt huge. Europe might as well have been another planet.
I sat in the parking lot of Lowe’s like I was someone else. I parked far away, so no one would ding the sides of the Land Rover, even though I’d seen Bear drive it with total abandon. I had his keys on the bear lanyard and his credit card tucked into my wallet.
I clicked the key fob to lock the car and caught the eye of a woman going in ahead of me.
It’s not my car, I thought. It’s my …
The word I had meant to think of, the word I was having trouble admitting, was boyfriend.
But the word that actually came to mind was master.
* * *
When I got back, I went into the basement. In the model home, it was just another part of the house, not like the cellar in our house, which was dirt floor and stone walls with spiders bigger than I ever wanted to see again.
This was finished, with dark shining hardwood floors and walls that were flat white with primer. I needed to mask everything down there and get it ready for painting. But before Bear came to see what I was doing, I went into the workroom, where the floors were cement and there was a tool chest, a closet with hooks for hanging hammers and extension cords, and I hid my mother’s gun.
It had been in the back of the Land Rover, wrapped in Buddy’s blanket, for days. It was like a beating heart out there. I was always aware of it, always afraid Bear would find it and question me.
I thought, I could probably tell him.
But instead, I stood it up in the closet with a broom and mop in front of it.
I moved a box filled with picture frames that still had the fake photos in them. A pretty, copper-haired girl in a white sweater. A baby with creamy, perfect skin.
I laid plastic over the floor—the way you would if you were going to hide a body, I thought. But it was blue masking tape instead of duct tape, and my tools were brushes instead of knives. I anchored the plastic down with tape and the weight of the paint cans, and I stood on a ladder to mask the ceiling. But my hands were shaking, all the secrets coming to the surface—the hidden gun, Birdie. Every day I braced myself for the next thing. A dead body. The police. I kept peeling the tape off and starting over.
The Watcher Page 15