by J. J. Cagney
Arlen brought his wife’s hand to his cheek. “Yeah, Reenie. I don’t think he’s stopped. It’s too strong an urge.”
“Sick one,” she said.
He breathed long and slow, keeping his blood pressure in mind, like he’d promised. “That’s why I gotta see this through.”
“No, Arlen,” Irene said, her voice and face calm and full of an understanding he probably didn’t deserve. “You do this work because it’s your life’s calling. But I’m still making you go to Florida next month.”
“You got it.”
She kissed him—a short perfunctory kiss that said she understood where his mind was at and didn’t plan to interrupt him. “Find that man, Arlen. I want you to enjoy your retirement.”
Arlen pulled the journal and his plate of lasagna to the edge of his desk. He dug into both—he planned to find Jonathan’s killer because he wanted to enjoy his retirement, too.
18 Danielle
After dropping the boys off at school the next morning, Danielle drove by her mother’s house. She wandered through the room, cataloging anything that was out of place. She paused in the doorway to her mother’s room. The mess—clothes strewn around the room and spilling from the dresser—she’d never seen anything like it.
She called Chief Hardesty. “Someone’s been here,” she gasped. “At my mom’s. Her room exploded.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What?” Danielle squealed.
“Your father stopped by last night. Spent a couple of hours there. I bet he’ll come by again today some time. I got a guy staking out the place.”
“Why?” Danielle asked. She glanced around the room again, still shocked by the disorder.
“My guess?” Hardesty rumbled. “Your father’s looking for the journals.”
“But . . .” No further words came out of Danielle’s mouth.
The front door opened, then closed. Danielle gripped the phone in her hand. “Someone’s here,” Danielle whispered.
“I got a guy outside, Danielle. You keep your phone on, in your purse or pocket, and you yell if you need something.” Hardesty’s voice held an edge. “I’ll have him inside pronto.”
“O-okay,” Danielle stuttered. She shoved her phone into her pocket and whirled toward the open door just as her father appeared in the hall.
They stared at each other.
“That’s quite a mess you’ve made in there, Danielle. Or did your mother do that?”
Danielle opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what to say. Finally, she snapped, “I didn’t do this!”
Hank shook his head, his brown hair feathered with gray, thinning and showing his pink scalp beneath in spots. “Nancy was such a disaster.”
“Why are you here?” Danielle asked, her voice as stiff as her shoulders.
Hank crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you?”
Danielle’s breathing hitched. She dropped her gaze, her mind spinning, trying to latch on to anything that would seem plausible. Nancy’s favorite pink press caught Danielle’s eye. The one she’d worn to Danielle’s wedding lay strewn and crumpled on the floor. Not at all like Nancy’s normal, meticulous habits.
“I came by to get the dress she’s going to be cremated in,” Danielle said. “She wanted the pink one.” Danielle pointed at it.
“Well, get it then. I’m sure you have other things to do.” Hank’s gaze roved the room, never settling on any one object long. “I never should have let you stay with her.”
Danielle bit her tongue, trying to consider the best course of action. “Why did you?” she asked finally, long after the silence had turned awkward.
Hank shrugged but something dark shifted across his face. “She was your mother. I was busy working. It’s not like you could have come to live with me.”
“Right,” Danielle said. They stared at each other. Hank shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. Danielle bent down and picked up the dress. She went to the closet and found the matching shoes. After a moment of hesitation, she moved across the cluttered hardwoods and opened her mother’s mahogany bureau. She pulled out a bra, underpants and a pair of nylons. Hank watched her the whole time. Danielle’s skin tingled and burned as if she’d rolled in poison ivy.
“Did you find it?” she blurted, unable to take the silence any longer.
Hank’s brows drew together. “Find what?”
Danielle shrugged as she stepped out of her mother’s room, edging around her father toward the stairs. “Whatever you were looking for?”
Hank stared at her for a long moment, much as a hawk targets and studies its prey. “This is the first chance I’ve had to stop by.”
“Sure. Of course.” At the top of the stairs, Danielle turned back, trying to ignore her thundering heart and stay calm. She clutched her mother’s items to her chest. “Remember, Mom’s memorial service is on Tuesday.”
Hank’s eyes met hers, his focused, lit with something that looked an awful lot like annoyance. “Got it.”
Once Danielle reached the bottom of the steps, holding the handrail for support because her legs turned rubbery and unsupportive the longer her father eyed her back, she turned away.
“See ya,” Danielle said, beating a hasty retreat to her minivan.
She settled into the car seat and locked her car doors—a smart precaution in the Dallas area, but more to do with the weird interplay with her father.
“What the hell was that?” she whispered.
“Danielle!”
She fumbled to pull her phone from her back pocket. “Chief?”
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She blew out a breath. “Yeah. But that was . . . surreal.”
“I wish he were responsible,” Hardesty growled.
“You sure he wasn’t?” Danielle asked, her teeth chattering.
“He checked out clean,” Chief Hardesty said, his voice a low rumble of irritation.
“My mom didn’t trust him,” Danielle muttered. She glanced up and saw her father looking down at her from the second-story window. “He’s watching me. Hold on.” Danielle pulled out into the street, the back of her neck prickling.
“I don’t either. No man that cheats on his wife is an upstanding man.” Chief Hardesty cleared his throat and spoke in a softer voice. “Sorry, Danielle. That’s your father.”
She snorted. As if she wasn’t aware of the duplicity that was Hank Foster. “True enough, though he quit being one before I can really remember.”
“In case you don’t know from the investigation then,” Hardesty rumbled, “no one saw him for a couple of hours, but his office was in our tallest building—fourth story. He would have had to get to the ground from the outside. No visible piping, no fire escape. In dress shoes. FBI ruled him out pretty quick based on that.”
He stopped, let the words sink in. “If that weren’t enough, his secretary came forward, admitted to extramarital activities. Sealed the alibi airtight. Your dad didn’t want to hurt your mama more with that. So, we hushed it up.”
Danielle knew that from her mother’s journal. The police—or the busybodies of the small town—hadn’t hushed it up very well. Or maybe Nancy had always known. Danielle considered that possibility. She knew so little of her parents’ lives before moving to Dallas, she couldn’t say what her mother would have done with the knowledge of Hank’s infidelity. Not then, when she was a stay-at-home mom with a degree in literature.
Times were different then, fewer women worked, especially in small towns.
“What do you think?” Danielle asked, pulling her thoughts from the past she couldn’t change.
Hardesty made a humming noise deep in his throat. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty-nine years of law enforcement, it’s not to speculate.”
19 Arlen
Arlen reread the words on the photocopied page. So few but crucial to the investigation.
Rusty Reynold had a truck matching the description of the blue Chevy that picke
d up Jonny. The man who bought it paid cash—$600. He wore a straw cowboy hat pulled low over his forehead. Rusty couldn’t remember his eye color. Rusty couldn’t remember his height—taller than Rusty’s about five-seven. Big man, Rusty said. Called himself Hunter.
The next page was a photocopy of two old snapshots: One was the truck on a lot, looking old and worn out then. The sign above it read “Rusty’s Trucks.” Guy wasn’t original but at least Arlen had a place to start looking. The second photo was the truck as they’d found it two weeks later in a creek bed in southern Oklahoma, about three hours north of Mansfield.
This detail was one of the pieces Arlen needed to move the stalled investigation forward. Thank you, Nancy.
Why hadn’t she come to him when she’d discovered this?
Arlen reread the words again. Hunter. Arlen curled his lip. That better not be a pun. Because the man who killed Jonathan Foster was a goddamn butcher. Stalking a child wasn’t hunting—it was murder.
Big guy. Hank Foster was a big man. About six feet. He’d thickened through the middle with age. So had Arlen. But even back when the Fosters lived in Mansfield, Hank was bulky with muscle. A “big man” described him well.
Was that why Nancy hesitated to call Arlen?
He couldn’t say. And half the community was made up of big men. That’s what happened in ranch land—the men spent hours out-of-doors doing manual labor. They built muscle that eventually broke down as they slowed with age.
Arlen dialed the phone number written on a Post-It stuck to the back of the second picture.
Disconnected. Of course.
Arlen dialed his secretary. “Hey, Jan. Can you get some information for me on a now-defunct business? It was called Rusty’s Trucks.”
“Sure, boss. Where was it at?”
Arlen flipped back through the scant information Nancy had provided and his stomach sank. “No idea.”
Jan made a noncommittal sound.
“I know. It’s not much to go on. But . . .” Arlen narrowed his eyes as he considered possibilities, the details from Jonathan Foster’s case percolating through his mind. “Let’s say Texas and Oklahoma for now. If that doesn’t pan out, head east into Louisiana.”
“All right,” Jan said with a lot less enthusiasm. “Anything else?”
Arlen stared down at the other name on the page. Hunter.
“This’d be back in the early 80’s.” Arlen studied the picture, bending his nose close to the image. “You know what? Stick to Texas.” The license plate behind the man in the photo had an old, 1960s-esque Texas-style license plate. “Yeah, Texas. That’s all I got for now. Thanks, Jan.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Arlen hung up the phone, his momentary sense of euphoria withering much like a popped balloon.
“Shit. Shit!” Arlen scrubbed his hands over his face, the name reverberating through his head. He asked the million-dollar question: “Who in the Sam Hill is Hunter?”
20 Hunter
The itch grew—as it always did between kills. Years now since the ten-year-old with baby-smooth skin and great big brown eyes.
Each thrust of the knife brought profound release—relief from the hunger building in him. That dirty urge to touch.
Wrong. Touching boys was wrong.
Only the knife sliding out of their bodies reduced the need. Made it bearable again. For a time.
He stared out at the dark night, battling his growing desire.
“You sick freak,” his dad had spat at him years before. When he’d caught Hunter with the other boy behind the bleachers. “No son of mine takes up with faggots.”
The beating Hunter had endured damn near killed him. His father wanted to, Hunter knew it. Kill the sick freak who liked faggots.
Before his tours through Vietnam, sloshing through the muddy, insect-infested rice paddies to prove, always to prove to his father he was a man.
A real man.
He groaned, the urge to touch, to fondle would not be denied much longer.
Over four years.
His palms itched, so did his fingertips. To touch or to kill.
Killing boys so he could be a man.
He’d waited too long. Much too long to see the soft skin separated by lacerations. Bloody and like . . . like meat with the same pungent smell.
Then, finally, the urge to touch dissipated. Gone just as his father tried to pound the yearning out of him all those years before.
Gone because Hunter wasn’t a sick freak after all.
He was a man. A man his father could be proud to call son.
21 Danielle
The next morning, Danielle set two heavy grocery bags on the floor and clicked the button on the answering machine, looking for the pad she normally kept right next to the phone. The pen was in its place, but the small, green sheaves of paper were not. Danielle stopped searching as a voice filled the room, the words gripped her heart, bruising in their intensity.
“Danielle, this is Trevor Dresden.”
A pause ensued like she was supposed to know him. She did. Of course she did. Bastard, Nancy had called him. Her mother’s last word an epithet toward this man.
“I just heard about your mother. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know until your father told me. She meant a great deal to me.”
Another pause, longer. Danielle squeezed the pen as she tried to swallow past the lump in her throat, heard him doing the same.
“I . . . if there’s anything I can do. I mean that. Anything. Call anytime.”
The faint digital hum kicked in as Danielle stared at the machine. She found a piece of notebook paper and wrote down the number. She scratched absently at the back of her neck as she stared at her neat script.
Trevor. He was there, the day Jonathan died.
She copied the message to her phone’s voice recording software and forwarded the file to Chief Hardesty. He called her back within the hour.
“Before we get to Trevor, I wanted to get you up to speed on what I found out.” The chief outlined her mother’s journal entry and the phone calls he’d made.
“So we know it’s a big guy who wore a straw cowboy hat and could drive a standard transmission. Not much but more than we had to go on before.”
“Okay,” Danielle said, nonplussed. The information was scant. “So, about Trevor. Him calling me now, out of the blue. Does this have to do with meeting my father yesterday?” Danielle asked.
“Couldn’t say for sure,” Hardesty said, his voice meditative. “But if I had to guess, yes. It’s your father’s newest strategy: butter you up with the young, attractive guy.”
“But I don’t know Trevor, not really, and it’s not like I really want to.”
“But would you be willing to meet him?” he asked.
“Why?” Danielle asked, her heart racing.
“Your mother thought he knew more about Jonathan’s murder. I don’t know. Maybe he could tell you something.”
“If he’s involved . . . is this dangerous?” Danielle asked, her voice rising.
“I don’t think so. I told you, the guy who bought the truck was an adult—big.”
“But . . . but it could be?”
“I supposed. Any investigation has inherent risks, Danielle. If it’d make you feel better, meet him down here, in Mansfield. Say you’re going to visit your brother’s grave or something. I’ll have a couple of my guys in the restaurant with you. They can tail you to the place and all the way home again.”
Danielle considered the possibility. “You think it’ll help? Me talking to Trevor?”
“I think we can gather more information, try to put the pieces together and hopefully stop the person from killing again.”
Again Danielle paused, mulled over the possibilities. “I need to tell Garrett.”
“Of course,” Chief Hardesty said. “I’m through about ten of the journals now. So far I got diddly. With Trevor reaching out to you . . . well, I feel like it’s an option we should take.”
“You’re sure Trevor didn’t hurt Jonathan? I mean, he was a kid then. And the guy who bought the truck . . . he seems to be our main suspect right now, right?” She tried to regulate her breathing, tried to stay calm as a million thoughts raced through her mind.
Chief Hardesty remained silent for so long Danielle pulled the phone from her ear to make sure it was still connected. The numbers clicked forward, stating the call was ongoing, so she placed the phone back to her ear.
Hardesty began to speak.
“You want me to tell you that’s true, but I don’t have answers, Danielle. I got a truck that went by about the time Jonathan went missing. We looked into that one and ran into dead ends. Paid for in cash, unregistered. No clue who sold it or who even bought it. One of the two witnesses to see it was Trevor Dresden, who admitted to getting into a fight with Jonathan just before they supposedly split ways.”
“What are you telling me?” Danielle asked. Somehow, she knew she wouldn’t like it.
Hardesty paused for a long moment. “Look, I’m pretty certain we’re looking for a grown man.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Remember I told you about the DNA we had? How we ran it?” Hardesty asked.
Danielle’s breath stuttered. “Yes.”
“What I didn’t tell you is that some of the samples that came from Jonathan’s clothes, under his nails, belonged to Trevor Dresden.”
22 Danielle
Her fingers trembled as she dialed Trevor’s number. Trevor’s DNA under her brother’s nails . . . Chief Hardesty’s statement did not reassure her.
Nor did the fact that Trevor now worked for her father. She was still creeped out by their exchange the day before—by the mess Hank had made of her mother’s belongings.
She didn’t know what she expected but it wasn’t the deep, firm voice that answered the phone. She stumbled, almost hanging up, before she croaked his name.
