by H. P. Bayne
“Want to talk about it?”
Bouncing ideas off of Eva was usually helpful, so he filled her in, detailing what they’d already done and what they had yet to do. When he finished, he wasn’t any more excited about the upcoming tasks, but he at least felt a little better about where he stood.
“It’s not just a missing person case anymore,” Dez said. “We’re trying to solve a murder besides.” He sighed. “Whenever Sully gets mixed up in stuff, it always gets complicated fast.”
Eva chuckled. “Okay, I hear you. If you’re wanting something else to occupy your time, this Whitebear guy must have had family besides his wife and son, right? Could be he talked to them about any problems he was having back then. Do you have info on their whereabouts?”
Dez smiled, relieved for the alternative plan. “Lachlan would have something in the file, no doubt. I’ll ask him about it tomorrow. Maybe he can go and check into these racist jerks on his own and let me and Sully try Tim’s relatives instead.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”
Dez polished off the rest of his meal, and rinsed his dishes in the sink. After placing everything in the dishwasher, he headed for the backyard. Talking to Eva had helped a lot; playing with Kayleigh and Pax would erase the rest of his concerns.
For the night, anyway.
Dez called Sully first thing in the morning with Eva’s suggestion.
Dez had one caveat for his brother. “I think you’re going to have to be the one to tell Lachlan. He doesn’t listen to me.”
“He doesn’t exactly listen to me either.”
“I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m an idiot most of the time. He doesn’t seem to look at you the same way.”
“You talk more than I do. If he thinks I’m smarter, it’s only because I haven’t opened my mouth often enough to prove otherwise.”
“But you’ll tell him our idea anyway, right?”
Dez would have bet money Sully was rolling his eyes on the other end of the call. “Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
Dez felt equal parts relieved and smug when, a few minutes later, Sully called back with the news Lachlan was on board with the plan.
“He decided he wants to meet with the pathologist before going any further, anyway,” Sully said. “He gave me some names and contact info for Tim’s family. A few of them live in the city, including his mother. I thought we could try her first.”
“Kayleigh just left for school,” Dez said. “I’ll come and get you and we can head out from there.”
According to the file, Valerie Whitebear went by “Val.” She lived alone in a small house in the Riverview neighbourhood, save for a dog that made itself known by a shrill round of barking the moment Dez rang the doorbell. From his spot on the front steps, he could see a chihuahua, paws up on the windowsill of the living room window, making frantic efforts to warn off the would-be visitors. Dez narrowed his eyes at the animal, but as might have been expected, it failed to respond favourably.
Sully elbowed him. “Leave it alone.”
“I hate yippy dogs.”
“To be fair, they probably hate you too.”
Sully turned his focus back to the door as it opened. A short, plump woman faced them, peering through a set of heavy, red frames. She wore no makeup on a face lined by time, and her hair was almost completely grey. She swam in a baggy sweatshirt and faded jeans. The fact the flower box beneath the living room window looked far newer than the house suggested she was something of a green thumb—a likely explanation for the fraying on her knees.
Her eyes held a wariness as she studied both Sully and Dez, showing a likelihood this wasn’t the first time a stranger had turned up on her doorstep. In this neighbourhood, strangers didn’t often come bearing glad tidings.
“Yes?” Her tone matched her expression, the single word stretched to lengths reeking of suspicion.
“My name is Sullivan Gray, and this is my brother Dez Braddock,” Sully said. “We’re working with a private investigation firm called Fields Investigations. We’re looking into the disappearance of a young man named Gabe Pembroke. I understand he’s your biological grandson.”
She didn’t say anything immediately, her eyes simply making another pass between her visitors. The slight tensing of muscles in the woman’s forehead and jaw suggested concern—more than Dez had seen in the faces of Shelby and Will Pembroke.
“Yes, he is,” she said. She made no move to allow Dez and Sully inside.
“We were hoping we could speak with you for a few minutes,” Sully said. “There’s actually something else. It’s about your son, Tim.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Please,” Sully said. “It’s important.”
One more glance between them, another long pause. But at last, she shifted, stepping away from the door and leaving it open to let them in.
They stopped in the entrance to remove their boots, then followed Val into a small, cluttered living room. The dog was now on the couch, still barking up a storm.
“Pepper!” Val shouted to be heard above the noise. “Enough!”
Pepper emitted one more bark, as if to make a final point, then fell silent. The dog jumped from the couch and trotted over to Val, allowing her to scoop him up. She carried the dog to a recliner and sat, leaving the couch for Dez and Sully.
“He’s a good dog, but loud,” she said. “He’s actually very friendly once he settles down.”
Dez wasn’t sold but figured that wasn’t what Val wanted to hear. “I’m sure he is.” He looked to Sully, wondering whether he planned to continue with the explanation he’d as good as promised at the door. But Sully’s attention had shifted from Val. The way his eyes had fixed on a spot near the home’s entryway told Dez the three of them weren’t alone. He repressed a shiver and took up Sully’s conversational slack.
“Has anyone been in contact with you about Gabe’s disappearance?” Dez asked.
Val shook her head slowly, lips pressed outward until she spoke. “No.”
Dez resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. It was there in the woman’s movement and tone: She wasn’t telling them something.
He pressed on. “Thing is, Gabe went missing shortly after a trip out to Edge Creek, right near where his father died. In the course of trying to find him, we’ve stumbled upon something unexpected. We have reason to believe Tim’s death might have been a homicide.”
Val lost a shade of colour as her mouth popped open. Dez waited, anticipating denial or even anger. What he got was as unexpected as the news he’d just dropped: excitement.
As the initial surprise faded, the woman clapped her hands together once and sat up straight in her chair. “I knew it! I told police at the time there was no way my son would have killed himself, but no one believed me. I know what they were thinking: ‘Just another drunk Indian.’ But Tim wasn’t what they thought. He didn’t drink.”
“We know,” Dez said. “Which is one reason we believe it was a homicide. We intend to—”
Sully’s palm, landing hard against Dez’s chest, silenced him mid-sentence. His eyes were wide, but this time, as Dez followed his brother’s sightline, he saw what Sully saw.
So dropped the second bombshell in five minutes. Peering around the corner, where living room met entry hall, stood Gabe.
13
From where Sully sat, facing the side-by-side images of Gabe Pembroke and Tim Whitebear, the similarities between father and son were blatantly obvious.
Gabe’s skin and hair colour matched his father’s, as did his deep brown eyes. He possessed a similar height and slim body shape. The structure of his face was different, his cheekbones and jaw less broad and sharp, but his eyes were very much the same. What was perhaps most fascinating to Sully was the change in Tim’s appearance. He was still broken and bloodied, but standing next to his son, some of the injuries appeared less catastrophic, like some sort of divine healing had taken place.
“Gabe?” Sully sa
id. He half-expected the youth to bolt. He was relieved when he instead took a cautious step forward, far enough so he stood at the border of the living room.
“How long have you been here?” Dez asked.
“Since the other night, when I was at Edge Creek,” Gabe said. “Who told you to come looking for me? My mom?”
“Your girlfriend,” Sully said. “She’s worried about you.”
“Liz? Is she okay?”
Dez smiled. “No doubt she’d be better if she knew where you were.”
Gabe took one more step toward them. “You said you think my dad was murdered.”
Dez nodded. “We’re pretty certain, yeah.”
“How do you know?”
There was the question, the one to which Sully’s answer could prove either a help or a hindrance. He took a quick breath and forged ahead. “This will sound weird, but I can see things most people can’t. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been able to see ghosts, but only the ghosts of people who’ve died because of homicide. I’ve seen your dad.” He turned his gaze from Gabe’s wide eyes to Val’s. “I can see him right now.”
Val’s shoulders went rigid. “Here? He’s here right now?”
Sully nodded, then tipped his head back toward Gabe. “Standing next to Gabe.”
Predictably, Gabe’s eyes shot to the side, seeking something he probably wouldn’t see. “Where?”
“Pretty much where you’re looking,” Sully said.
Predictably, Gabe wasn’t sold. “Prove it.”
Sully turned to Tim. “Show me something only they’ll know.”
Tim stepped forward and touched his fingers to the back of Sully’s hand.
An image flashed into his mind. A field. A clothes line. A crow sitting on a fence post. Tim as a small child and his mother, so much younger then, reading to him from a book while they sat on the stoop of an old house. The book was The Little Engine That Could. As Tim studied the pictures from his spot cuddled up next to his mom, he could think of nothing he wanted to do more than work on trains one day.
Tim broke the connection, leaving Sully facing Val and Gabe. “He showed me something from when he was a little kid—a house in the country with a clothes line.” He turned to Val. “You were reading to him from a book. The Little Engine That Could. That’s when he decided he wanted to work with trains.”
Gabe peered at Val, as if watching for a reaction. It took a moment, as if she were locked in the memory. Then she brought her hands to her face and covered her mouth as a sob broke free.
Her reaction, it seemed, was sufficient proof for Gabe. His eyes welled with tears, and he brushed them away before they had a chance to fall. “Is he okay?”
The answer would hardly come as a relief. “If I can see them, it means they need some sort of help. Sometimes they want justice. Other times, they might want to protect something or someone, or just feel they’re not ready to cross over. I haven’t figured out yet what’s holding your dad here, but he’s obviously got a major connection to you.”
Gabe’s eyes had yet to shift from the spot next to him. Sully considered if the teenager could see Tim, the two would be looking each other in the eye. “I think I heard him the other night. When I was at Edge Creek, I mean. I was standing on the tracks beside Liz when the light came toward me. But I saw more than a light. A shape of a man was inside it. I couldn’t see anything more, not enough to see who it was. Then I heard a voice in my ear. It said my name, my full name: Gabriel. At the time, I thought something evil was trying to suck me in or whatever. But after I came here, my grandma told me what happened to my dad at Edge Creek. She thought I’d probably seen him.” He turned, met Sully’s eye. “Do you think that’s true?”
Sully peered at Tim, received a nod in reply. “Yeah, it was him. I think he was trying to communicate with you, protect you probably. He cares a lot about you.”
Gabe took another swipe at his eyes. He opened his mouth but closed it again, and Sully suspected the words were caught behind a lump in his throat.
Dez leaned forward, elbows on knees as he faced Val. “All these years, when Gabe ran away from home, he was coming here, wasn’t he?”
Val wiped away tears, then grabbed at a napkin on the coffee table to blow her nose. That done, she nodded. “After Tim was killed, Shelby cut all of us out of her life. Too hard for her, I guess. But Gabe is my grandbaby, and he’s all I have left of my son. I couldn’t lose him too. So I kept trying. I’d send cards and gifts at Christmas and Gabe’s birthday, and I’d try to phone. She’d never let me talk to him.”
“When I was little, I thought Will was my real father,” Gabe said. “Mom didn’t tell me any different. Then I was digging through her stuff one day and I found my birth certificate. I saw my birth father was actually Tim Whitebear, so I confronted her about it. She told me he abandoned us. She didn’t say anything about him being dead.
“I was just a kid at the time, so I didn’t know anything about how to find out more about him. But my mom had put me in the Big Brothers program, and the guy they paired me with helped me research my family tree. That’s how I found an obituary about my dad. It had the names of his family members in there, so I learned my grandma’s name. I told Mom and Will I wanted to get to know my dad’s family. They got major aggro over it, so I bailed. I found an address online for Valerie Whitebear, and I came here.”
“I didn’t go behind Shelby’s back,” Val said. “Gabe came to me. He took the bus here, turned up on my doorstep. One look at him and I started to cry. He looked so much like Tim did at that age.”
“Shelby and Will called the police a few times, trying to find Gabe,” Dez said. “They came here and talked to you about it. It’s in the reports. You didn’t say anything.”
Val’s face hardened. “If the police had shown up first, I probably would have. But Shelby and Will turned up before the police. They didn’t call the police right away that time. They looked first. Gabe saw them outside, and he ran and hid. I was going to tell them about him being there anyway and basically beg them to let me have a relationship with him. Less than five seconds after answering the door, I changed my mind. I don’t know how much you know about them, but they can be very hard people. Will was so angry, I was afraid to let Gabe go with them. I know it’s probably wrong, but I lied and said he wasn’t here. I couldn’t help thinking Will might beat the boy if I sent him home with them right then. I told myself I was protecting Gabe by letting his mom and stepdad cool off a little first.”
She looked down, scanned her hands before continuing. “The police turned up later on. They said Shelby accused me of having something to do with Gabe’s disappearance. I was scared. I thought if they found Gabe there, they’d charge me with something. I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but it was my word against theirs. And even if nothing came of it, I knew they’d never let me see my grandson again. So I lied to the police too. I think they knew I was lying because they asked if they could search the house. Gabe had gone out with one of my daughters for ice cream, so he wasn’t there when police searched.
“They left after, and nothing else came of it. They came back over the years on other occasions when Gabe would come to see me, but we got good at making up stories. Way I saw it, the police didn’t provide answers to me when Tim died, so I didn’t owe them any answers. And if my place was a safe haven for Gabe when he needed one, I’d do anything to make sure it would continue to be.”
To others, Val’s dishonesty might seem reprehensible. To Sully, it was completely understandable. He’d grown up in foster care. Until he’d been taken in by the Braddocks at age seven, he’d never known what it was to feel safe and loved. He’d never had a safe space, a place to go when the world closed in. Even if Shelby and Will weren’t abusive, Sully had the feeling they could be hard, maybe even cruel, at times. Gabe had found a safe haven with his grandma, one they both knew would be ripped away if it were ever discovered. In Sully’s experience, lying could sometimes prove necessary. This
, in his opinion, was one of those times.
“When Gabe turns eighteen next year, he’ll be able to come and go as he pleases,” Val said. “Until then, his parents can prevent him from coming to see me. I don’t know if you can do anything about it, but I’m hoping you’ll keep this to yourselves. I don’t know what I’d do without my boy.”
Gabe turned to her, and Sully could see the fire in his eyes. “No way they’ll keep me away from you. You’re the only person in my life who gives a damn about me.”
Val smiled at him. “Your mom and stepdad care about you. They just show it in a different way.”
Gabe frowned. “A very different way.” He turned back to Sully and Dez. “You’re not going to tell them, are you?”
Sully met Dez’s eye. He knew where he stood on the matter, but he needed to check in with Dez before he promised anything. One side of Dez’s lips quirked up in a half-smile, enough to assure Sully his brother was onside. Dez, after all, knew everything about Sully’s past—both before and after the two had met. He would be no more eager to tear away Gabe’s most important emotional support than Sully was.
Dez returned his gaze to the teen. “It’s pretty evident you’re safe and cared for here. Your secret’s safe with us.”
Gabe’s shoulders sagged, relief rather than defeat. “Thanks,” he breathed. He came fully into the room and settled himself on the armrest of his grandma’s chair. “So what you said about what happened to my dad. Who did it?”
Sully shrugged and shook his head. “We don’t know. He showed me what he could of what happened to him, but he didn’t see who did it.”
“What happened?” Gabe asked.
Sully chewed at the inside of his lower lip. Gabe might be okay knowing, but Sully doubted Tim’s mother would be as ready to handle it. The picture was there, burned into Sully’s brain. He’d felt Tim’s dread at waking to feel the alcohol being pumped into him. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for embedding the image in the minds of Tim’s loved ones.