by H. P. Bayne
Still, he’d need to tell them something. “He didn’t get drunk on purpose. Someone did that do him. Then they put him on the line so he’d get hit by a train.”
Val’s eyes filled with tears and a quiet sob sounded. Gabe wrapped an arm around her and pulled her toward him, and Val released her dog so she could fully embrace her grandson. Sully lowered his head to stare at his feet, granting the pair as much privacy as the small room and situation would grant.
He felt regret plucking at him, the familiar sense of being the cause of someone’s grief. Sure, he hadn’t created the situation, but he was the one revealing the truth of it. But for him, they might have gone on, unaware of what their loved one had endured at the end. Throughout Sully’s life, the ghosts had transformed him into someone who had shattered people’s perceptions, had left them traumatized, had stolen from them their naivety about the nature of loved ones’ deaths. He’d been the reason for more tears than he cared to remember.
A gentle nudge against his ribs had him looking up. Dez offered a smile, one Sully found himself returning. If Val was Gabe’s safe haven, Dez had always been Sully’s, the counter-spell to a gift that sometimes felt more like a curse.
They waited silently until Val quieted and moved off to an adjacent room, muttering something about needing a tissue. When she returned, she gave Gabe’s shoulder a squeeze before settling back into her seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meeting Sully’s gaze with still-shiny eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Sully said. “I wish I didn’t have to say any of this to you.”
“I wish you didn’t have to as well. But I’m also glad. I’ve always known. It’s still hard to hear, but I want to know the truth—especially if it means my son can find peace. Do you think you can help him?”
Sully gave her a smile. “I won’t stop until I do.”
At Val’s insistence, they moved to the kitchen where she brewed them some coffee. They sat around the table, mugs in hand, while Sully and Dez fired off more questions.
“You said your grandma told you about what happened at Edge Creek,” Sully said. “You really didn’t know?”
“All I was told eventually was that he’d killed himself,” Gabe said. “No one said anything more about it, and I didn’t ask much. I did ask Mom about it once. But she lost it and told me never to bring it up again. And I didn’t want to bug my grandma because she has such a hard time with what happened to him. And then I started to get to the point where I didn’t want to know how it happened. Getting to know Grandma helped me get to know my dad, and I got so I didn’t want to think about how he died.”
Sully nodded. It made sense. The mechanics of death weren’t pleasant, even less so when the death was violent; Sully hadn’t met too many people who wanted to know precisely how a loved one had met their end, particularly if it had been traumatic.
Leaving the how aside, they still faced the two most important questions: who and why.
“We don’t need to talk more about how it happened,” Sully said. “But we do need to figure out who did it.”
Gabe sat back and crossed his arms. “My stepdad would be a good place to start.”
Dez tilted his head as he regarded the teen. “He seemed a little hotheaded, but I don’t know I’d go so far as to peg him for a killer. Why do you think that?”
Gabe shrugged. “He can be a jerk sometimes.”
“Is he ever violent?” Sully asked.
“Not really. Not with us, anyway. But then, Mom’s called him off a few times with me, so I don’t know. Maybe he would be if she didn’t stop him.”
Sully leaned forward and wrapped his fingers around his mug, soaking in the warmth. He was sitting adjacent to Gabe, with Tim hovering between them, emitting the kind of chill Sully often felt with the dead. He did his best to ignore the ghost for now, focusing instead on Gabe. “What do you mean, your stepdad’s a jerk? In what way?”
Gabe gave another shrug. “He says things to me sometimes. Stuff about my dad. Says I’m just like my father, that by killing himself, he showed all he knew how to do was give up and abandon his family. Or, if it wasn’t for him stepping in to help, Mom and I would have been in a really bad place.”
“The way you talk, it sounds as if Will knew your dad,” Dez said.
“He did,” Val said. “I thought you knew. Before Tim was killed, he and Will worked together for the railway.”
14
They left Gabe with Val, along with another assurance they wouldn’t reveal the teen’s presence there.
With Gabe having pointed the finger of doubt at his stepfather, the last thing Dez wanted was to create a situation where the teen was placed at greater risk. Will would already be angry with his stepson over his taking off again. If he learned he’d been staying with his grandmother—let alone that he suspected his stepfather might have played a role in his father’s death—Will might well be pushed over the edge.
If he was, in fact, the killer. For now, that was what Dez and Sully had to try to figure out.
Dez had made a note of the company name emblazoned on the side of Will’s work truck. He had Sully do a web search for the business’s contact number while Dez steered them away from Val’s house. A few seconds later, the provided number tapped into Dez’s phone on hands-free, they listened as the sound of ringing came through the SUV’s speaker system.
The company proved large enough to employ a receptionist, though not one who bothered to request additional information before providing Dez with Will’s cellphone number. He was on a job, she said; if he didn’t answer right away, they could leave a message.
Dez would have preferred to drive to the job site without forewarning Will they were on the way. Given his previous response to them, it was possible he’d invent an excuse so as to be gone by the time they arrived. Unfortunately, Dez could think of no better way to learn the location of his current work site.
Oh well, Dez decided. Nothing for it.
When Will answered his phone to hear Dez’s voice on the line, he didn’t sound as if he’d be eagerly anticipating the requested conversation.
“I’m at work,” he said. “I’ve got a lot on my plate today. If you want to talk, you’ll have to come by the house later, in the evening.”
Dez decided against continuing this game, instead going straight for the trump card. “It’s your stepson’s life we’re talking about here, Mr. Pembroke. A few minutes of your time is all we’re asking. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but when dealing with missing people, every minute counts.”
Dez waited until he heard the frustrated sigh from the other end of the line.
“One hour,” Will said. “I can give you five minutes. That’s it.”
Dez made a mental note of the provided address, then disconnected. Sully, he noted upon turning to him, was tapping the address into his phone’s map app.
“Five minutes,” Dez complained. “Doesn’t give us much time.”
Sully shrugged. “It’s five more minutes than I thought he’d give us.”
After lunch, Dez pulled up outside the house on which Will’s crew was working, one of numerous large homes being built in a new subdivision of Kimotan Rapids.
“Looks like they’ve been busy,” Dez said.
Sully tapped Dez on the arm and nodded in the direction of the house next to them, pointing out Will stalking toward them. “And I’m guessing he wants to get back to the job ASAP.”
Sully put his window down, presumably to speak with Will, but the man had other ideas. He ignored Sully, instead attempting to open the door to get into the backseat. Dez hadn’t yet put the vehicle into park, meaning Will was met with a still-locked door. Will thumped on the glass and Dez pushed the shift forward, resulting in the locks releasing. A moment later, Will dropped into the backseat and closed the door behind him.
“Five minutes,” he repeated, his tone terse.
Dez turned in his seat, allowing him to better study Will. “We’ve been
checking around. As we understand it, things aren’t always so great between you and Gabe.”
“He’s a seventeen-year-old kid. Find me one who does get along with his parents, let alone his stepfather.”
“But that’s not the whole picture, is it?” Dez said. “You’ve never gotten along well with him. We were told he had questions about what happened to his father—questions you and Shelby shut down at every turn.”
Will crossed his arms then uncrossed them, as if caught doing something suspicious. “Like I said, he’s a kid. What his dad did to himself isn’t something we want him exposed to. Not until he’s older. He’s always struggled with the fact his birth father isn’t around. Last thing he needed was to know how it happened, how Whitebear chose to end things all on his own.”
“So you and Shelby told Gabe his father abandoned him?” Sully said. “How was that better?”
Will’s glare snapped to Sully. “He did abandon him. What else would you call it?”
Sully turned to fully face Will. “I’d call it murder,” he said.
Dez hadn’t intended to slap Will upside the head with their knowledge, rather hoping to hold onto it a bit longer, at least until they could poke around a little more. Sully, it seemed, had other thoughts.
Will’s thoughts seemed pretty clear. He lost colour, and his arms, previously tensed as if seeking to control their movement, slumped to his sides. “What?”
“Tim didn’t drink,” Sully said. “Yet he somehow managed to get to a crazy-high blood-alcohol level and make it all the way out to the track.”
“Cops asked about that at the time,” Will said. “Never went anywhere because there was nothing to it.”
“Only there was,” Sully said. “We have reason to believe someone knocked Tim unconscious, pumped booze down his throat and took him out to the rail line in time for the train to come along and finish things.”
Will shot forward a few inches. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Will’s eyes dropped and his brows lowered, the picture of deep thought. Finally, his eyes snapped back up to Sully’s. “Hang on a goddamn minute. You’re not suggesting I had something to do with it? Is that why you’re here?”
“We’re here to ask questions,” Dez said. “Nothing more. We aren’t suggesting you’re behind it. But you were in a position to know what was going on in Tim’s life at the time. You were working together, we were told.”
“Yeah, we were. That’s no secret. And before you ask, we got along fine. We were friends, even. And, no, I had no designs on his wife—no reason to look for a way to take him out of the picture.”
Dez raised a brow. “But you still ended up marrying her a year or so after his death. You guys moved a little quick, all things considered.”
Will moved to cross his arms again, started to pull back but then ultimately decided to complete the move. “Look, Shelby was in a bad way afterward, as I’m sure you can imagine. As I said, I was Tim’s friend. I wanted to do right by him by supporting his wife and son. Emotions were running high back then, and one thing led to another. Next thing I knew, she and I were talking about getting married. I had been doing some work on the side in construction, and it seemed good for future prospects. Shelby had nearly nothing and a young kid to raise by herself. I became her main support. Getting married again, and to a solid breadwinner, made sense for her.”
“What about you?” Dez asked. “What did you get out of it?”
“What the hell do you think?” Will snapped. “And, no, I’m not talking about sex. Shel and the kids mean everything to me—and I include Gabe in that. Shelby supports me as much as I do her. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go support my family.”
He started to reach for the door handle, leaving Dez to fire out a quick, “Hang on.”
“What?”
“You say you were friends with Tim, so you must have known he didn’t drink,” Dez said. “Didn’t it strike you and Shelby as strange, the way it happened?”
“Sure, it did. But strange things happen sometimes.”
“Yeah, but why? Why would someone who sounds pretty well-adjusted do this? And he had a new baby. Seems to me that gives him something pretty big to live for.”
“Depression doesn’t always look like depression, though, does it?”
“You really think he was depressed?” Sully asked. Dez read his brother’s tone as subtly challenging. Dez took it as reason to believe he was on the right track in his questioning. If anyone was in a position to know the state of Tim’s mind at the time, after all, it would be Sully.
Will turned narrowed eyes on Sully. “Yeah, I guess he was. As to why, how the hell should I know? We hung out, but we weren’t exactly in the habit of crying on each other’s shoulders. If he had problems, he kept them to himself. Only real issue I remember him having at the time was someone spray-painting some racist crap on his car a couple weeks before he killed himself. He did a half-assed job of cleaning it off, but it was still on there, and he couldn’t get it in right away for repainting. I could tell it bothered him. I think he suspected it was someone at the office.”
“Did he have reason to think that?” Sully asked.
Will shrugged one shoulder. “Happened at work, didn’t it?”
“I don’t think a police report was filed at the time,” Dez said. “Why not?”
“He said it wasn’t a big deal.” Will lifted his chin. “I think it really was, though—to him, anyway. This white supremacist was in town at the time, and it brought out the worst in the closet racists. I think a couple of people at work might have made some comments to Tim. The spray paint incident would have come in the midst of that. I figured he didn’t report it because he didn’t want to rock the boat any further than it had been. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Given all that, if someone really did kill Tim, you should consider one of those yahoos. If they hated him enough to call him out and vandalize his car, maybe they hated him enough to kill him.”
Will had given them another avenue to explore, as well as another name: Quinton Therrien.
Quinton now sat as head of accounting—Tim’s old job. Lachlan called as Dez and Sully were driving away from the construction site, debating how best to confront Quinton.
“Where are you two at?” Lachlan asked through the car’s speaker system.
“Just finished talking to Will Pembroke,” Dez said, then provided his boss with a rundown of their recent activities and conversations.
“Interesting,” Lachlan said at the end of it.
“Question now is what to do with it,” Dez said. “I can’t see this Therrien guy being happy to speak with us.”
“Let me worry about that part,” Lachlan said. “I can be very persuasive. As for this theory of Will’s—insinuating Therrien might be behind Tim’s death—where’s the motive exactly? I mean, vandalism is one thing. We’re talking about kidnapping, confinement, forcing liquor down a guy’s throat and deliberate murder. Quite the stretch, even for a racist asshole. We’d need some sort of motive, and a good one.”
“We might have one,” Dez said. “After Will told us about Therrien, he said the guy was in the running for the same management job as Tim. Tim got it, and Therrien made a stink about it, claiming Tim was only promoted because the company was trying to get more minorities into upper-level positions. It’s possible bad feelings could have been made worse because of what was going on in the community at the time. If Therrien was looking for justification for his ill will, or even payback against Tim, he would have found it pretty easily. Then there’s the fact Therrien was promoted to Tim’s job after Tim’s supposed suicide.”
Lachlan was quiet a moment, and Dez gave him the time to allow his gears to spin. “Okay,” Lachlan said at last. “Good work. As for me, I’ve been having a chat with the coroner. He pulled the file for me on the QT and checked the pathologist’s report. Seems we were on to something. Injuries were noted in some detail, but no tissue samples were test
ed. As no one was considering the possibility of this being a homicide, no request was sent to the pathologist to delve any deeper. A tissue sample from the location of the initial blow could have proven Tim had received a significant injury some time prior to his death.”
“Is there a chance of a second post-mortem?”
“Nope. Cremated. We’ve got what we’ve got, boys. And what we’ve got at the moment might be a man with a huge skeleton in his closet. We need to talk to him. I’ll call over, make the arrangements. Desmond, I’d like you to come with me when I head over there. Therrien will have a lot to lose. You’ll be some significant disincentive if he decides to try to turn me into another victim.”
“Ten-four,” Dez said.
“What do you want me to do?” Sully asked.
“Try to get in to talk to O’Keefe again,” Lachlan said. “See if you can persuade him to discuss Therrien and any bad blood between him and Whitebear at the time of the promotion. If he tries to throw up any roadblocks, let me know. We’ll be in the same building, so I can swing by his office after our chat with Therrien, see what I can get out of him.”
“Meet you over there?” Dez asked.
“Trust me to drive now, do you?” Lachlan’s voice held a smile.
“Much as I ever did,” Dez said. “Just coming to terms with the fact there’s no point arguing.”
15
“I really don’t have time for this today, so make it quick.”
Quinton Therrien’s first words to Dez and Lachlan said plenty about how this conversation was likely to go.
Dez let Lachlan field that one. “As I said on the phone, someone reported a missing teenager to us. Kind of a big deal, wouldn’t you say?”
Quinton didn’t say anything, which Dez took as a win. As the accounting manager turned to lead the way into his office, Dez raised a brow at Lachlan. The missing teen in question had, after all, been located safe and sound.