“And?”
She opened the envelope, slid out an eight-by-ten photo and handed it to Connor. “Do you recognize this?”
The photo was of a ring, taken close up and against a white background. In any other setting, the photo would have reminded Connor of the kind of picture he would see hanging in the window of a jewelry shop. Here, though, tonight, it could mean only one thing.
“That’s my mother’s ring.”
He knew this not just because the detective was asking about it. He recognized the distinctive, swirling pattern that had been etched into the band.
“You’re sure?”
Connor nodded. “Where did you find it?”
Olivia ignored the question. She held out a hand, requesting Connor return the picture. When he did, she swapped it with another. This time, he was looking at a piece of fabric. Unlike the ring, it consumed the entire frame. But from the look of it, Connor suspected its actual size wasn’t much larger than a quarter.
“How about that?”
He couldn’t be as certain about the fabric as he was about the ring, but Connor suspected he recognized it, as well. “My father was wearing a shirt like that, I think, the night . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence, so instead he asked, “Where did you get these?”
Olivia again held out a hand to request Connor return the second photo. She put it back in the envelope. “Like I said, we got a call.”
“What did they say?”
“They told us where to find your parents.”
“Did you find them?”
Olivia looked away, directing her attention once again to the envelope. “Yes.”
Connor felt a flutter of excitement in his chest. “What are you showing me this stuff for, then? Are they all right? Can I see them?”
“Slow down. Listen to me. The caller reported a fire at a parking garage in Linwood. He told us we would find your parents there. This was late last night, and the lot was nearly deserted. As we neared the top, one of the officers with me said he smelled smoke. And then when we finally reached the top floor, we found out why. Someone had lit a fire right in the middle of the deck. We called the fire department, locked down the garage. At first, we thought we had been played. Then one of the firefighters called me over.” She paused long enough to lean in and shake her head. “The bodies were no longer recognizable. All we managed to recover were a few scraps of clothing and your mother’s wedding band.”
The nervous energy Connor felt morphed into something dark and unidentifiable, but equally as intense. He got up, paced to the wall. “No, no, no.” Turned around. “That can’t be right. You’re mistaken. You have to be.”
“Connor, please. I wish we were. But if you’re sure about the ring—”
“Dental records. You can check those, right? We’ve been going to the same dentist as long as I can remember.”
“Not this time,” she said softly.
“Why not?”
Olivia sighed, tossed the envelope onto the coffee table. “The killer took their teeth.”
“What?”
Olivia shrugged.
“Okay, well, how about DNA?” he said. “You can test that, can’t you? I mean, we have to be sure this really is my parents, don’t we?”
“This isn’t CSI, Connor,” Olivia snapped, also getting to her feet. Then she seemed to catch herself, perhaps remembering Connor had just been told his parents were dead. “This case just isn’t that complicated. The killer told us where to find the bodies. You’ve identified your mother’s wedding ring and your father’s clothing. There’s nothing the lab can tell us that we don’t know already. I’m sorry. But we’re going to find their killer, I promise.”
“Well, you’ve done a bang-up job of the investigation so far, haven’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You tell me you’re going to talk to Carlos’s family—”
“How do you know the patient’s name?”
“—and it’s the only lead you’ve got. And I know you said it was probably a dead end, but still . . . who ends up talking to them? I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t you. It was me. I talked to them.”
Blood rushed to Olivia’s face. “You what?”
“I mean—how hard is it to follow up on one lead?”
“Connor, we went by the house multiple times. I told you—they were out of town. When did you talk to them?”
“Today. Just now.”
“Then I guess they just got back.”
Connor took a deep breath. “You happen to notice that big dog when you went to their house?”
“Of course.”
“Did it ever occur to you that if they had a dog, they had to have somebody taking care of it? Because it occurred to me, so I parked at the end of the street and waited. It took a while, but eventually I saw—” Connor realized he was about to mention Rosa and revised his statement. He still wasn’t sure whether both of them were illegal, but he was sure Adriana did not want to get her daughter involved. “A woman. She was hauling a bag of trash out to the street. I caught up to her before she made her way back inside. She was Carlos’s wife, she said. She told me Carlos had gotten involved in some bad stuff, and that’s what got him killed.”
“You shouldn’t have gone over there.”
Connor didn’t hear her. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts, overwhelmed by emotion. “She said my mom even came by to see her after it happened, told her she was sorry. So, yeah, you were right. There was nothing to it. But if you’d just been doing your job, maybe you would have gotten another idea after you talked to her, don’t you think? And maybe we’d be having a different conversation right now.”
CHAPTER 11
Olivia decided it probably wouldn’t have been hard for Connor to dig up Carlos’s name. Perhaps Kim had written about it in a diary or Connor had found it in notes she had brought home from the hospital. It didn’t matter. He was upset, and she didn’t see how it would do any good to ask again.
She did, however, chastise herself for not staking out the house like Connor had done. She could blame it on a long list of distractions: her ex-husband, who was suing her for custody of their child; the long hours; her decision to give up caffeine at this time. She could rationalize the choice by reminding herself she had other cases to work, and all of them demanded her attention. She could tell herself that from the beginning she hadn’t thought Adriana was involved. But she knew it really came down to her choices. It had been a mistake, and not one she could afford to repeat.
She let Connor rant until he was done. Everyone had their own way of grieving. Then she apologized again, assured him once more they would find the killer, and told him someone would be in touch when they were done with the bodies.
What Olivia didn’t tell him was the bad stuff Carlos Hernandez had gotten involved in. She knew about it because there was a file with his name on it.
According to the report inside, Carlos had entered the One Point liquor store in Windroff Park wearing a Halloween mask and carrying a Colt Python. He was barely through the door when the owner, Aden Tindol, had pulled a gun of his own out from underneath the counter and told him to get the hell out of there.
Seconds later, Aden had fired his weapon. A warning shot, he said, which was why the bullet had missed Carlos by a wide margin, instead drilling a hole into the far wall, only inches from the ceiling.
At that point, Carlos ran. Had he run out the store, Aden claimed he would have let the whole thing go. He had been robbed once before and the report he had filed with the police after that incident had led nowhere.
But the would-be robber hadn’t run out of the store. Instead, he’d sought cover down one of the aisles. Then there was more yelling—Aden telling Carlos to come out, Carlos telling Aden to drop his gun.
Eventually, Carlos had pushed over a metal rack of shelving, perhaps to create a distraction. It had crashed into another, and that one had crashed into a third. Thousands of dollars of product
ruined, Aden said.
Then, finally, Carlos had come out, only he came out running. Gun drawn. It looked like, on the CCTV footage, they were both within sight of each other for a good second and a half. It would feel an eternity in that situation, Oliva knew. But, unlike Carlos, Aden hadn’t hesitated to pull his trigger. In fact, he’d pulled it four times. Each round had hit Carlos square in the chest.
During the interview, the report noted, Aden had repeatedly insisted he hadn’t had any choice, and that he wouldn’t have shot Carlos at all if he had just left the store when he’d told him to. Not that it mattered. There was no dispute about whether Aden had been within his rights to defend himself.
CHAPTER 12
The more Connor thought about it, the more certain he was his parents were still alive. It wasn’t simple denial. He knew that. There was something that Olivia had said, something that didn’t sit right with him. It wasn’t that the killer had removed the victims’ teeth—he’d seen enough crime shows to know killers sometimes kept trophies from their victims. It wasn’t that the killer had called to tell the police where they could find the bodies, or even the fire itself. Although all of these things seemed a little strange. It was something else.
But what?
Connor reviewed the conversation with Olivia as he went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The argument with her had left his throat dry, aching. His mind jumped from one part of their exchange to another. She had asked if they could sit down. He had accused her of not doing her job, told her about his conversation with Adriana. He had asked about DNA testing, looked at the photos she had brought, said the scrap of fabric matched his father’s shirt, the ring was his mother’s.
He filled a glass with water from the tap, and as he was about to take his first sip the answer occurred to him. Could that really be it?
He scurried back to the living room to get his cellphone and called Olivia. “The ring you showed me. How did you know it was my mother’s wedding band?”
“We found it on the ring finger of her left hand. It just made sense. Why?”
Connor hung up. He wasn’t ready to answer that question yet. He had to be sure he wasn’t mistaken.
In his parents’ walk-in closet, he found a pair of photo albums and a box. One of the albums was blank and the other was only half full. It was the box that held most of his mother’s cherished memories. Although she kept promising she would sort the pictures in it, she never did.
He quickly scoured the photo album, but couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he dragged the box out of the closet and dumped the contents onto the dining room table. Connor’s old report cards. Elementary school artwork. Photos. Used plane tickets.
The photos had been dated on the back with a black magic marker. Connor picked them out one at a time, noting the dates as he did so. He was only interested in those that included his mother and, in particular, those where he could see her left hand. A photo from three years back confirmed what he remembered his mother telling him about her ring, but he wanted something more recent. Finally, he found it.
The picture was of his father and mother, her left arm draped over his shoulders. Behind them was a Christmas tree. The photo was dated December 24. That was only seven months ago, and probably the most recent picture he was going to find.
He looked closely at his mother’s hand. The ring was on her middle finger, just as it had been three years ago.
He remembered her telling him she had lost weight some years back and couldn’t find a jeweler to size her ring. Doing so would distort the pattern on the band. His dad had offered to replace it, but she had said no. She liked having the original, and besides—it didn’t matter which finger the ring was on.
So, that couldn’t have been his mother in the fire. Her ring, yes. Not her body.
The man who had abducted his parents wanted the police to think they were dead. That was why he had set the bodies on fire instead of dumping them in the harbor. That was why he had taken their teeth.
His parents were still alive.
Connor grabbed his phone out of his pocket, ready to call Olivia back and give her the news, when he noticed something else—a document, and on it a flash of letters. He hesitated. The document was a marriage certificate. The letters that got his attention spelled out the name Matthew A. Jones. The person he had married? Kimberly D. Snider. Connor’s mom.
Stay out of my system or I’ll make sure Matt finds out what you’ve been up to.
He sat back in his chair, feeling a cold prickle on the back of his neck. His mother had been married before, and Ion knew about it.
Then, another memory. Something Adriana had said: She said she knows what it’s like to lose someone.
Adriana had been talking about Connor’s mom. He had already ruled out both of her parents as the mysterious “someone.” Now, at least, he had an idea of who his mom must have been referring to. Matt. According to the date on the certificate, they had gotten married three years before Connor was born. He must have died shortly thereafter.
Now that Connor understood who Matt was, he wasn’t surprised his mom had kept that to herself. But how would Ion know about him? Had he dug up more about Connor’s life than just his email address? The answer to that was an obvious yes, so how crazy was this guy? Was he crazy enough to come after Connor’s parents as some sort of payback for hacking into his website?
If the information on TruthSeekers.com was a reflection of the man’s mental state, he was out there, for sure.
Connor wouldn’t call Olivia yet. The killer wanted the police to think his parents were dead. Maybe he should leave it that way for now. At least until he knew a little more about the man behind that website.
CHAPTER 13
Connor had come to the conclusion that Ion must have tunneled his way back into Connor’s computer while they were connected. It would explain how he had managed to shut down Connor’s system. It would also explain how he had gotten Connor’s email and enough information to start digging into his life.
That sort of tracing would have begun with Connor’s IP address.
But if Ion thought he was the only one who could locate a stranger by their IP, he was mistaken. Connor started his search for Ion with the email Ion had sent him. Most emails included the IP address from which the email originated, and this one was no exception. The IP address wouldn’t take him straight to Ion’s front door, but at least it would let him know where he needed to be looking. It would also let him know whether it was even possible that Ion was behind his parents’ abduction. If the IP traced back to France, for example, he could rule Ion out without any further investigation.
But it did not trace back to France, or even Boston.
The sender’s IP pointed squarely at New York. Watertown Heights, to be exact. Another suburb of the city, and one that was barely an hour’s drive from Connor’s house.
So maybe he was on to something, after all.
He tempered that hope, though, reminded himself that proximity alone did not make this man the kidnapper. He needed to find out more.
Connor searched the web for the TruthSeekers.com domain registration. Those could be public or private, depending on how much the registrant was willing to pay. When he found the domain, he took a deep breath, worried he might have come to a dead end, and clicked for more information.
Boom.
A name and address: Dylan Naese. 121 Forrest Creek Drive. New York.
He was in business.
Connor went straight to his car, stopping barely long enough to put on his shoes. It took him two tries to get it to start—piece of crap—and then he was on the road.
Connor wasn’t sure what he’d find at 121 Forrest Creek Drive. He pictured something small, maybe even run down. A manifestation of the man’s inner world. He was ready for that. He imagined himself charging straight up to the front door, pounding on it until the man answered. You’re Dylan? he would ask, just to confirm there was no mistake before deman
ding Dylan tell him where his parents were.
What Connor found, though, was not small, and not even a little bit run down.
The three-story brick Georgian loomed large in a neighborhood of large houses. It was surrounded by a brick wall and the driveway was blocked by an iron gate, complete with a callbox. Connor drove past it slowly and parked along the curb. He walked up to the gate so he could get a better look. The only lights that were on seemed to be those on the top floor.
The house was at the intersection of Forrest Creek Drive and Park Lane. Connor put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the corner, turned, then continued to follow the wall until it ended. Ivy clung to the brick, climbing all eight feet and over.
Perhaps there was another way in, he told himself. But there wasn’t. At least, there wasn’t one that was visible from the street.
When the wall that ran along Park Lane ended, Connor peered around the corner to see if there was an opening along the back of the property, but he couldn’t see much from where he was.
He looked over his shoulder—an action, he realized, that couldn’t be more suspicious—and slipped off the sidewalk into the darkness behind the property. There were only a few feet between Dylan’s wall and his neighbor’s fence, not enough space to walk straight ahead. Connor eased between the fence and the wall, palms pressed to the bricks. He considered pulling out his cellphone, using the flashlight on it, but worried that might draw attention.
The wall continued uninterrupted to the far corner of the property, and then turned toward Forrest Creek Drive. Only because Connor had already come this far, he finished scouting the perimeter in its entirety. When he reached the street, he leaned against the wall and dropped his head. He thought about the money this guy must have, the life he must live. He sighed. This was stupid. Connor was wasting his time. This guy wasn’t involved.
He went back to the car and called Olivia, told her about the ring, what he thought it meant. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake with the ring that he had made with the cash he had found after the abduction. Then he thought about the show Uncovered.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 5