“To hell with it,” he mumbled. He wanted his parents back, and a segment on that show wouldn’t make the situation any worse. It might even help.
CHAPTER 14
Olivia wasn’t convinced the ring meant anything at all. The killer might have removed it for one reason or another and simply shoved it back on the wrong finger. She kept that to herself, though. It didn’t change anything. Whether the bodies were actually Connor’s parents or not, the man who had taken them was still a killer, and, according to the department’s forensic psychologist, would likely kill again.
She had traced the phone call back to a burner and the burner back to the 7-Eleven where it was sold. Unfortunately, the buyer had paid cash, so that lead died there. Subpoenaing T-Mobile didn’t do her any good either, since the phone was off.
So she was stuck waiting for the lab to see what clues, if any, they might be able to pull from the remains of the fire.
While she waited, she decided to follow up with the owner of the One Point liquor store. On its surface, the report had painted the picture of a man who was no more defensive than most might be after killing someone, even when it was done in self-defense. But Aden Tindol was ex-Army. And although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why that bothered her, it did.
It would probably amount to nothing. Likely she still felt guilty that she hadn’t spoken with Adriana before Connor had.
She stopped by the liquor store first, hoping to catch him off guard and ease her way casually into a discussion about the botched robbery.
A woman was sitting on a stool behind the counter reading a book. She was wearing a white wool sweater. (Olivia wasn’t surprised. The store was cold, even by her standards.) She looked up when the door chimed, nodded, and went back to her reading. A romance novel of some sort, Olivia assumed, judging by what she could see of the cover.
“Aden around?”
“Not tonight.” This time the woman didn’t even look up from her book.
“You know where I could find him?”
She shrugged. “I guess he’s at home. Is there something I can help you with?”
“You weren’t here the night of the robbery, were you?” Olivia didn’t remember seeing anything about a woman in the report. Still, she didn’t want to assume.
“Oh, you’re here about that?” the woman said, closing her book and sitting up a little straighter. “No, I wasn’t. Why? Are you a cop?”
Olivia showed the woman her badge.
“I heard it was quite a thing,” the woman said. “Aden was particularly upset about it.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me.”
“What exactly did he say?”
The woman pursed her lips, looked up at the ceiling for a second, perhaps trying to remember the conversation. “He just said he was upset.”
“That’s it?”
“I mean—basically. He spent most of the night cleaning up and was back at it the next morning by the time I came in for my shift. He looked tired, complained about the cost of the lost product and the damage to the wall.”
The woman’s gaze shifted. Olivia instinctively turned, looked in the same general direction. She saw the bullet hole near the ceiling she had read about in the report.
“He said it was a terrible time for something like this to happen,” she continued.
“What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know. He just kinda said it and moved on. Why?”
“Never mind. Thanks for your help.” Olivia headed to the exit.
“You want me to tell Aden you stopped by?”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not that important. I’ll catch him later.”
Olivia had lied. The more she learned, the more important it seemed she talk to Aden right away. There was something he was hiding.
Aden lived in apartment building two miles down from the liquor store. She decided to try her luck there next. Unit 217. The building was a looming tower of steel and cement that looked like it had seen better days. It was named Wooden Grove, which struck Olivia as ironic since there wasn’t a hint of nature within sight.
The glass doors to the lobby were unlocked. She pressed the button for the elevator and, after waiting for a minute or so, decided to take the stairs. When she exited the stairwell, she looked left, then right, assessing which way she needed to go, and started moving again.
The interior was better cared for than the exterior. That was true of a lot of buildings in this part of town, she thought.
She found the door and was about to knock when she heard shouting coming from inside. Most of it was inaudible, just the blurry noise of angry voices. They belonged to a man and a woman.
Olivia listened, trying to get the gist of the argument. She gathered he had done something that upset her. No, he was going to do something. What on earth could he be about to do that would make the woman this mad?
The way they were fighting reminded Olivia of how she and her ex-husband had fought when she found out he had cheated on her. But you don’t tell your girlfriend before you cheat, do you? So it couldn’t be that.
Then she heard the woman scream and decided there was no more time to wait around. Olivia turned the knob, pushed. The door swung open. She pulled her gun immediately.
Aden was barefoot, naked from the waist up. The sweatpants he was wearing were torn at one knee and looked like they needed a wash. He had his hands balled into fists, but they hung by his sides. The woman—a brunette—was holding a hand to her cheek. She was wearing a blue pantsuit and had backed up to the wall. With Aden dead center between her and the door, there would have been no getting around him.
Olivia announced her name, flashed her badge. “Are you all right?” she said to the woman.
The woman nodded.
“You want to tell me what’s going on in here?”
“Someone call you?” Aden said defiantly.
The woman looked away, shook her head. Olivia had seen this scenario play out before. Maybe it was bad. Maybe it wasn’t. One thing was for sure—she wasn’t going to tell Olivia anything. “You want to leave?”
The woman nodded.
Olivia gestured toward the door. “Go.”
The woman did, grabbing her purse from the glass console table beside the door as she left.
Olivia pushed her glasses back up her nose, then took them off, annoyed they weren’t staying in place. She might not be reading any menus without them on, but she could see Aden well enough.
“You know, I came here to follow up with you about the robbery at your store. But . . .” she trailed off. Olivia thought she saw something on the coffee table—something horrible. “Get on your knees,” she said to Aden. And before he even had time to move, she repeated the command. “Get on your knees now!”
Aden did as he was told.
The glasses went back on.
The thing on the coffee table was exactly what Olivia thought it was.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
Olivia stepped backward so she could close the door without turning around. She didn’t want anybody coming up on her from behind. Then she handcuffed Aden, cleared the apartment, and called in the bomb.
It wasn’t fully assembled yet. But it was close enough.
CHAPTER 15
Under normal circumstances, Connor would say his parents were entitled to their secrets. Everyone had a past. However, the circumstances right now were anything but normal. Connor hadn’t even been looking for secrets when he came across the marriage certificate. What might he find if he did?
The box Connor had taken out of his parents’ closet was still sitting on the floor in the dining room. The things that had been inside it were still spread across the table. He went through them again, this time examining everything. The pictures, dated all the way back to the eighties, revealed little. His mother and father he recognized, but the rest—all strangers to Connor. Friends of his parents, no d
oubt, who had come in and out of their lives years ago. He didn’t spend much time on them. In fact, looking at the pictures at all was mostly a “check the box” activity Connor did so he could tell himself he had been thorough.
He found a faded pair of movie tickets to The Usual Suspects, bound together by a rubber band. A drawing of a turkey he had made in preschool by tracing his hand. A plastic bag with baby teeth. High school yearbooks for both of his parents. The plane tickets he had seen before but hadn’t bothered to look at. A diploma from Columbia University with his mother’s name on it.
It all seemed like sentimental garbage to Connor.
He picked up the plane tickets. They were for Kimberly Jones and Frank Callahan. Destination: Prague. Connor knew his mother had researched her ancestry years ago and traced her lineage to the Czech Republic. He wasn’t surprised she had visited. She liked to travel.
He tossed everything back into the box, slid the box back into the closet.
There was a small bedroom on the first floor that Connor’s father had converted into an office. It had been Connor’s room before he had moved to the attic. That was his next stop.
He rifled through his father’s filing cabinet and found nothing of interest. Nor did he find anything in the desk drawers, the closet, or on the bookshelf.
Connor turned on the computer. At one time, this machine had sat in the living room, been shared by the family. That was when Connor had been little and his parents had wanted to monitor his online activity. He still remembered the password. Rickety Rat. It was a little-known character in a children’s book, but one he had loved.
Once he was in, he reset his father’s password and logged in again.
He examined the documents on the desktop and scoured the folders marked as “Frequent” by Windows. Nothing and nothing. Then he fired up Outlook and went through that as well.
That likewise appeared to be a big nothing burger until he opened the trash folder. There were only three emails in it. Two were spam. One was from a Roland Cooper.
Subject: Payment
Body: Let me know when and where you want to meet.
Connor read the message twice, and then asked himself the obvious: What payment?
He thought about the envelope of cash he had found the night of his parents’ abduction, still stashed away in the back of his sock drawer. Could this have something to do with that? It made more sense than anything else so far, so he decided that yes, maybe it did.
He needed to find out more. If this had something to do with the money he had found the night of the abduction, then was it so much of a stretch to think it might even be related to the abduction itself?
He looked up the name “Roland Cooper” online but found too many results for them to be meaningful. Okay. That was fine. The online search was largely reflex. It was not as if there was going to be a webpage called “The Nefarious Activity of Roland Cooper.” If Connor wanted to know what the payment was about (and if there really was anything nefarious going on), he would have to find a way to meet the man in person. A phone call wouldn’t cut it. Roland could just hang up. And even if he didn’t, Connor wanted to be able to look him in the eye so he could judge whether Roland was telling the truth.
He checked the Sent folder to see what his father had said in response but found nothing. Then there was a knock on the door. Connor looked at the time on the computer. It was eight-thirty a.m.
They’re early, he thought.
Isaiah Cook entered the house first. “This is going to be great,” he said, with more enthusiasm than Connor felt was appropriate.
Behind him came a throng of strangers. They hauled in cameras, audio equipment, and lights. Isaiah rattled off a handful of names as they passed, identifying the ones he felt were important. Connor didn’t catch any of them.
Suddenly a man was in his face. And although Connor hadn’t caught his name either, at least he remembered Isaiah had identified him as the director.
“So, let’s just get this straight. The guy came in through the front door. And then what happened? Exactly.”
Connor took a step back. He was overwhelmed and was starting to wonder if this whole thing was a mistake. All of these people in the house—his mom and dad wouldn’t like it. He didn’t like it. Connor wasn’t a people person, and these kinds of people—the ones who delighted in (not to mention profited from) other people’s tragedy—were the worst. But, he reminded himself, he had agreed to do this for a reason. And even if he hadn’t, he also felt like he was stuck now, so he did his best to be helpful.
“He attacked my parents, put them in his van, and took off. I didn’t see much. I was upstairs when it happened. My bedroom is in the attic.”
The director made a face. “Yes, but you heard something. You saw something. According to the police report, you saw a van pull up on the lawn, right?”
Connor nodded.
“Okay. Let’s start there.”
“I’m sorry, but what do you need to know all this for?”
“The reenactment, of course.”
Connor should have known that. Uncovered always did reenactments. Hell, Isaiah had told him they were going to do a reenactment when he’d called back. Part of him must still be thinking about that email he had found.
“Nothing tasteless. We just want to get a few key shots to sprinkle in during the interview. Now, the van, when it pulled up—how long did it take the guy to get inside the house?”
“Seconds, I think.”
“He had a key?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So the door was unlocked?”
“It must have been.” Connor remembered answering similar questions for the police.
“The police report said he was wearing a ski mask. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Two men entered carrying collapsible lights. “Where do you want them, boss?” asked one.
The director waved the men off. “Just put them down for now.”
The men shrugged and all but dropped them on the wood floor. Connor winced.
Then another man walked up. He was dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck. “How do I look?”
“Fine, fine. Actually, Connor, how does he look?” Then, to the actor: “Put the mask on.”
Even though Connor knew the man before him was an actor, and even though he watched the man put the ski mask on, his heart still began to race.
“What do you think?” the director asked again. “How does he look?”
Connor tried to hold himself together. He licked his lips, nodded. Once he found his voice, he said, “Good.”
“Nothing’s missing?”
Connor looked at the actor’s hands. “Gloves. The intruder was wearing gloves.”
The actor whipped a pair of black leather gloves out of his back pocket and held them up.
“No. Not like that,” Connor said. “They were driving gloves. The kind that are open on the knuckles. And they were brown.”
“Shit.” The director glanced around. Connor couldn’t imagine what he might be looking for. It’s not as if a pair of driving gloves would magically appear. “Helen!”
A mousy woman holding a clipboard scurried up to him. “Yes?”
“See if you can find a pair of driving gloves, will you? Brown, if possible. And tell everyone to set up outside. We’re going to shoot the intruder coming in through the front door.”
Then she was gone.
“If she doesn’t find a pair of driving gloves by the time everyone’s ready, we’ll go with what we have,” the director told the actor.
The actor pulled off the ski mask. “Sounds good,” he said briskly, and walked away.
At that same moment, a crash from the living room drew Connor’s attention. He saw one of the cameras the crew had brought on the floor and a man standing over it, staring down.
“What the hell, Dave?” the director shouted.
Dave immediately moved to pick it up.
> “I’ll be right back,” the director said to Connor. Then he made his way over to Dave, waving his hands in the air dramatically and telling him to be more careful.
Connor went into the half-bath off the hall for a minute of quiet. His heart was still pounding, and he felt like he was on the verge of a panic attack. He took a deep breath, told himself the man was just an actor, and wondered if this was what PTSD felt like. Sooner or later, he might need to talk to a professional if these attacks kept up.
Right now, though, he had a more immediate concern. After taking several more deep breaths to calm down, he pulled his father’s iPhone out of his pocket. Since the abduction, Frank had received only one call from someone he knew—his boss at Leewood Construction. He had demanded to know where Frank was, and then apologized profusely when Connor told him what had happened. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, okay?” he’d said before he hung up.
And that lone call was one more than the number of texts he had received.
But just because his father hadn’t received any texts recently didn’t mean he had never sent any.
Connor opened the messaging app. Most of the texts Frank had sent were to Kim. There was one, though, that got Connor’s attention. It was as covert as the email he had received from Roland, addressed simply to a phone number, and dated the day of the abduction: Deerfield Park. Noon.
He knew that park, had been there a bunch of times with his dad when he was little.
He did a quick reverse lookup and confirmed his suspicion. The phone number was Roland’s.
With that, he realized he had everything he needed to make contact.
His thumbs hovered over the phone’s two-dimensional keyboard. What should he say? Would Roland even show up? If Roland had been involved in the abduction, probably not. Especially if Connor pretended to be Frank in the text. But what other choice did he have? He couldn’t very well pretend to be a cop. To hell with it. Frank it was. If Roland didn’t show up, then Connor would know he was on the right track. If he did, then perhaps Connor could find out more about the nature of their meeting. Either way, it didn’t seem like there was anything to lose.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 6