Without Sin (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  Missy stayed down in the lobby to talk to me.

  “Jon looks okay. But how’s he really doing?” I asked.

  She considered for a long moment. “He’s okay, I think. He’s sad, but…he’s coping okay. We have him talking to a counselor.”

  “And how are you?”

  She considered again. “I’ve been better. I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. To tell you the truth, Owen, I didn’t even really like him anymore. But I’m sorry he’s dead.”

  I nodded slowly. I understood why she didn’t like him. Even after they separated, theirs had been a strained relationship. But I understood why she was sorry, too. “He was a good guy.”

  She didn’t respond to that.

  “I miss him. We didn’t talk much, but I still miss him. Does that make sense?”

  “Of course it does, sweetie. He was your brother. You loved him.”

  I fought for a moment with my voice. It wanted to choke up. I didn’t want it to. In the end, I won. “Those kids, they needed him. Megan’s trying, but…”

  “She’s a bitch,” she declared matter-of-factly. “And that’s me being polite. Bringing that woman to his funeral? You know we had our differences. You know how I felt about him. But I would never – never – let someone who hurt him like she did show up like that.”

  “He’d forgiven her, I guess.”

  She shook her head. “He’d forgiven himself, Owen. It had nothing to do with her. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ It was about him, and what he’d done.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I heard his conversation with Jon. I’m telling you. He kept emphasizing that it was the duty of a Christian to forgive.”

  “Isn’t it?” I asked.

  She stared at me. “Forgiveness isn’t a clean slate, Owen. You don’t get to hurt people and just go back to things being normal.”

  “I know, Missy. I didn’t mean –”

  “Well he did.”

  I said nothing for a moment. Then, I nodded. “He was an idealist. He didn’t always realize – well, that intent didn’t matter as much as impact. He was a good guy, and he thought that was enough.”

  She shook her head, an ironic smile on her lips. She said nothing.

  “What?”

  She studied me for a moment and shook her head again. “Forget it.”

  “Come on, Missy. Don’t be like that. If I pissed you off, tell me.”

  “You didn’t, Owen.”

  “Then what?”

  She let out a long breath. “Honestly, it’s probably not the time.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Okay. You keep saying Andy was a good guy. I get it. He was your brother. You loved him. But he wasn’t a good guy, Owen. Good guys don’t try to kill their wives. They don’t try to kill their children.”

  Her words stunned me. I was silent for a full three seconds.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said finally.

  “Oh Owen.”

  “It was,” I insisted. “He was messed up, with the drinking and everything.”

  “So was Roxanne. Does that make what she did okay?”

  “Jesus. I didn’t say it was okay. I just mean, he changed.”

  “She changed. Is she a good woman?”

  “Of course not.”

  She nodded, as if I’d settled the matter. “Exactly.”

  “It’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Because…because it didn’t take years for Andy to stop. He stopped on his own.”

  “He stopped because Jon and I left. Your grandmother stopped too, when CPS took you away. Abusers don’t get a medal because they stop abusing when their victims are out of reach.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing.”

  I shook my head. “She spent years torturing us. Years.”

  “And what the hell do you think it was like living with him?”

  I swallowed my anger. I could remember the Missy from back then. A shell of the woman sitting in front of me now, a hollowed-out specter. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it was hell for you too. I don’t mean to downplay it, Missy.”

  “But you are anyway, Owen. That’s my point.” She said it softly, gently. But with absolute certainty.

  “I’m not. It’s just he threatened you and Jon. I know it – it came close. I know there’s no excuse for any of that. But he didn’t actually do it. She did. That’s the difference.”

  “He tried to. Owen, we were half a foot away from death. If the axle hadn’t caught, or if he’d steered a little to the left – we’d all have died.”

  “But he didn’t,” I said. “He made mistakes. He did awful things. But he was still a good guy.”

  She laughed, a low, exasperated sound. “And if he did? If he killed me and Jon? Would you still say he’s a good guy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So trying to kill us, wanting to kill us is okay, as long as he fucked up actually doing it?”

  “He wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “He wouldn’t have been in his right mind if he killed us, either.”

  I had no answer to that. We sat in silence for half a minute.

  Then she spoke again, and her tone was soft and sad. “You don’t have kids, Owen. But if you did, maybe you’d understand.”

  “I understand, Missy.”

  “You don’t. You don’t know what it is to have your little boy terrified his dad is going to kill him. Afraid to get in a car.

  “You don’t know what it’s like when he has a panic attack when he sees a gun. Which he did, by the way. The first time he saw Toby holding a gun. He thought he was going to kill himself. The way Andrew had threatened to kill himself.”

  She laid a hand on my arm and squeezed gently. “I know you loved him. But a good guy doesn’t try to kill his family. He doesn’t take out a gun and threaten people. He doesn’t threaten to kill himself in front of his bawling son.”

  “He was messed up,” I repeated, weakly, doggedly.

  “So were you. But I know you, Owen. You would never do that. You grew up in the same hell as he did. But you would never do that to anyone. Because you – you are a good guy.”

  The dreams came back that night. I saw the footage again, as clearly as I’d seen it the first time. The sandstone building, with a wood and metal add-on. The fire. The women and kids. People throwing themselves out of upper story windows to avoid a worse fate. The death.

  So much death.

  I slept until my alarm went off, but I woke exhausted. I met Missy and the family for breakfast. They were heading out after that. She hugged me and said, “I’m sorry, honey. I should have kept that to myself.”

  I told her it was alright. I told her that maybe she was right. I didn’t know.

  But I did know that Andy hadn’t deserved to be killed. I knew Angela Martinez, and Mason Anderson, and Terri Lange and the Dandridge kids didn’t deserve to die. I knew Charlene Fleming didn’t deserve to die.

  So whether my brother was a good man or not, I was going to find the guy who killed him. I was going to find the guy who killed all of them.

  I kept that part to myself, though. The meal went well, and everyone seemed relaxed. I didn’t want to ruin it by giving her something to worry about.

  So they came, they ate, and they left.

  I headed home. It was just after ten in the morning on Saturday. I’d made very little progress on the case these last days, but that was going to change. I was going to dive back into it, and figure it out.

  Except when I pulled into the yard, there was a truck in my driveway. An F-150, maybe a decade and a half old. It had a few dings and scratches, but it looked to be in alright condition. I didn’t recognize it.

  As I pulled further into the yard, though, I saw a vehicle I did recognize: a Charger that had seen better days.
One of the cars from the employee lot at Hotrods on Hemlock.

  Travis’s guys were waiting for me. Problem.

  I parked the SUV beside the truck. I saw two guys, leaning lazily against the hood of the Charger. I didn’t recognize either of them specifically, but they fit the mold of Travis’s employees: big, beefy, and not necessarily the sharpest tools in the shed.

  I got out. They stood up.

  “Help you?” I asked.

  One of the guys nodded. “You Jason Rathe?”

  “Nope. Who are you?”

  “Owen Day?”

  “Who are you?”

  “We represent Trav.”

  “I gathered,” I said.

  One of the guys reached for his pocket. He smirked as I tensed. “Relax, buddy.” He pulled out an envelope and waved it by way of demonstration.

  “Travis looked into the thing you mentioned, when you stopped by the other day.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you were right. There was a – misunderstanding.”

  The guy with the envelope stepped forward. “Trav’s real sorry about that.” He took three more steps, until he was in front of the F-150. He set the envelope on the hood and tapped it with his forefinger. “The offending party realized the error of his ways. So he personally funded a replacement for Jason’s truck.”

  The other guy said, “Clean truck, clean title. Full working order. You’ll find everything to your satisfaction.”

  “It should be a significant upgrade from the prior model. For the inconvenience and trouble.”

  I eyed them suspiciously. “That’s very generous.”

  “Generosity’s got nothing to do with it. Trav’s a man of his word. He said your business was concluded. Now, I think you’ll agree, it’s concluded?”

  I nodded slowly. “Provided everything is clear, and the ‘misunderstandings’ end, yes.”

  “They’re done.”

  “Very done.”

  “Okay. Well, convey my thanks to Travis, then.”

  The one guy nodded. The other gestured to the truck. “Keys are in it.”

  “Have a good day, Mr. Day. Let’s not meet again.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I called Jason and told him about the truck. We agreed the first thing to do would be to get someone to look it over before using it. It was a little too Hollywood to think the truck would explode as soon as we turned the key.

  On the other hand, well, stranger things had happened.

  Jason said he knew a guy who could recommend a guy. He said he’d take care of it. I said the keys and title were in the glovebox.

  Then I went back to my investigation boards. I’d just started to arrange them the way I wanted when there was a knock at the door.

  I found Detective Clark outside. She had news for me: good news, and an update on the autopsy. She asked which I wanted first.

  I said the autopsy results. She nodded and handed over papers. “It’s all in there. But the long and short of it is, your brother struggled with someone, and they hit him, hard, in the temple. After that, he was bound. Some kind of cuffs, based on the marks on the wrists. Then, sometime later, they cut his throat. He died of the cut, but the head wound probably would have killed him too.”

  I glanced over the pages. Her summary had been accurate. There were bruises to the left side of his face and body, and a cut on the right side of his face.

  “Someone got him into the car first,” I said. “Passenger seat. He must have figured out something was wrong once he was in the vehicle. He tried to get out. They struggled. The other guy hit him in the head, on the left side. His head bounced off the window, or the door. Thus the damage to the right side.”

  She nodded. “Yes. His fingernails had been scrubbed, postmortem.”

  “What?”

  “Someone was making sure he didn’t have any DNA evidence underneath them. Which further suggests he got into the car willingly. The killer wasn’t wearing gloves and protective gear at the time, so when they struggled, Andy came into contact with his skin. Or, he was afraid he did.”

  It made sense. Otherwise, what would be the point of scrubbing the nails? I nodded and folded the paperwork and put it in my pocket. “And the good news?”

  “We found Wyatt Wagley’s fingerprints in your house. His prints are in the system already. This isn’t the first time he’s done this kind of thing.”

  “Where?” I asked. The obvious places had all come up negative.

  She smiled. “The toilet handle. Two prints, one full and one a partial. Full forefinger, partial middle finger. Both on the right hand.”

  “You mean, he broke into my house and used my toilet?”

  She nodded. “He was careful everywhere. Wore gloves when he touched the boards, the window, everything. But he must have taken them off to pee.”

  “Son-of-a…”

  “I’ve got a guy picking him up now.”

  “Good.”

  “It’ll be a misdemeanor. He didn’t take anything, so it’s not burglary. But we’ll hold him for as long as we can.”

  Which was the best I could hope for, in the circumstance. So yes, I would be pressing charges.

  “There’s one other thing,” she said. “Maybe good news.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ve been working with the FBI.”

  “I thought that wasn’t good news?”

  She smiled at that. “It’s not good news if they take the case over. At least, from my perspective. Lost time, lost perspective. But they’re assisting. And they’ve been very helpful, actually.

  “That gun I told you about? The one our killer used on Lange?”

  “I remember.”

  “There’s a couple of ways it could have got up here. Personal transfer is basically a dead-end for us. No way to know who had it or who got it, unless one of the parties walks in and confesses. Which obviously isn’t likely to happen.

  “But the FBI has been working with the ATF. There’s basically a pipeline of crime guns, working their way northward. There’s a few names that have come up more than once, but they’ve never been able to nail them on anything.”

  “But they’re places to start?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. Some of those guys cooperate when the stakes are right, some don’t. Some of them are completely off the books, but some of them operate just on the legal side of the line. They see no evil, they ask no questions. But they’ll cooperate in a case like this. All with plausible deniability, of course.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who is on the list?”

  She smiled. “You suppose correctly.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  “Speaking of worth a try…I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who burned that truck?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, who do you think burned it?”

  “I have no idea, Detective. But I’m not worried.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Call it a hunch: whoever this is, they’ve gotten it out of their system.”

  She harrumphed, and said she hoped I was right. I said I did too, but I was pretty confident in my hunch. She shook her head and started to say something else.

  Then her phone rang. Her face fell. “I have to take this.”

  She did, stepping toward the door. She lingered in the vestibule for about thirty seconds, nodding. “Uh huh. Where’s that? Right. On my way.”

  Then she hung up and glanced at me. “They just found number six.”

  “Another body?”

  She nodded. “One of ours.” In answer to my blank expression, she explained, “Patrol officer.”

  The cop was a rookie, a young kid called Cooper. James Ryan Cooper. It was his first year on the job. He was twenty-three years old.

  And he’d been shot, twice in the chest and once in the head. An execution, on a park bench.

  He’d been off duty at the time of his death. He was wearing athletic cloth
es, presumably running the trail from his apartment, down Market Street, and by the river district. He did that, on his days off. He had a twenty-three year old’s energy and drive.

  And there were lots of parks and benches along the way. He’d died facing the water, on a semi-private bench. From the trail, he looked like he was just resting. Early morning hikers and runners had passed him by.

  Then a couple of kids had ventured closer. They wanted to fish from that spot. Apparently, it was a good place to fish.

  The rest followed predictably enough. One of the kids had a phone. He called the 9-1-1. Dispatch called Clark. Ambulances and cop cars showed up. Then the media followed.

  The kid with the cellphone had taken pictures. He posted them online. Not of the cop, but of the note. The media picked them up.

  It was a stamped page, like most of the others. But it was just the beginning of a nursery rhyme.

  This little piggy went to market…

  Retired police captain David Dorn was next. He was shot in his living room, at point blank range. Another execution.

  His wife came home from work Monday afternoon and found him in his armchair, the television still on, a half full cup of coffee on the end table: a hole in the center of his forehead, and a note in his lap.

  This little piggy stayed home…

  The case took on a new tenor now. It had been bad enough when civilians were being carted off and killed. But someone was coming for cops now.

  Someone had killed a police captain in his own home.

  The guy was unstoppable. He was a maniac; deranged; a psychopath. That’s what excitable people in suits said on the television. That’s what Wyatt Wagley said, after his release. Although his commentary included an analysis on the estimated size of the killer’s testicles. Apparently, they ran somewhere between huge and gargantuan.

  However it was described, whoever did the describing, everyone seemed to be in agreement: this was a giant middle finger to the cops. The killer thought he was invincible. He was just taunting the cops now.

  The line by line use of the rhyme, the reference to pigs, the sheer audacity of the killings: it was all meant to keep them on their toes. To terrify them. To taunt them. And to terrify the city in turn.

  That’s what the smart people said, and what the stupid people said too. Everyone seemed to agree. The television psychologists, the kind who would talk about diagnoses before they’d ever met the patient, speculated that the early killings had been a proving ground to himself as much as to the city.