by Blake Pierce
Then with a growl of resentment he added, “I went to see Tony, and you and I both know it. You’re just trying to confuse me.”
Jeffreys shook his head and said, “I assure you, I’m not trying to confuse you. It’s just a fact—after you left the facility, you were someplace else for three hours. Then you went to your friend’s house. We need you to remember what you were during those three hours.”
Sam’s father suddenly slammed his fist on the table.
He almost shouted, “Why the hell are you asking me these questions? What did I do wrong?”
Sam was shaken by this outburst. She could barely remember her father ever losing his temper …
It’s too much for him—all this pressure and suspicion.
Her father’s face reddened, and his voice began to shake with rage …
“Do you have any idea what it’s like, whoever the hell you are? Having your own brain turn against you, I mean? And not being able to trust anybody, not even the people closest to you? No, you don’t know anything about it. Until you do, you’d better just leave me the hell alone.”
Dad started to rise from his chair. Agent Jeffreys reached over and gently took hold of his wrist.
“Please stay seated, Mr. Kuehling,” he said. “We need your help.”
Dad scowled, but he sat back down. He leaned across the table, staring daggers at Agent Jeffreys.
“You need my help? That’s a laugh! I’m the one who needs help, let me tell you! And is anybody going to help me? Fat chance of that.”
Sam’s breath was coming in gasps now.
What’s happening to him? she wondered.
Her father waved around at the interrogation room and barked, “We’re in the damned police station, aren’t we? Well, why don’t you go out in front and ask those guys there if any of them give a damn about me? Ask them the last time any of them visited me. They’ll tell you never. And that’ll be the truth.”
The look on his face really frightened Sam.
Then he said, “Hell, nobody comes to visit me anymore. My own daughter has forgotten I’m even alive.”
Sam felt as though she’d been stabbed in the heart.
That’s not true, she thought.
She visited her father as often as she possibly could. But in his confused state right now, he couldn’t seem to remember even that.
Then Dad said, “The last visitor I had at that stupid place was a goddamn mailman. Can you believe that?”
Sam’s mouth dropped open.
Mailman!
She knew it meant something, although she couldn’t yet bring what it was to mind.
Agent Jeffreys said, “The mailman?”
“Yeah,” Dad growled. “The mailman who used to deliver at my house. He came to see me. Nobody else cares about me anymore. Nobody else remembers me.”
Sam felt a tingling all over as she started to grasp the significance of what her father was saying.
She turned toward Agent Paige and said in an urgent voice …
“I’ve got to go in there. I’ve got to talk to my father. Right now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Sam waited anxiously for Agent Paige to reply. The FBI profiler was just staring back at her with an incredulous expression.
What if she says no? Sam wondered.
She just had to get into that interrogation room and talk to her father.
Sam was well aware that her request was irregular. How could a cop do a valid interview of her own parent? But she’d seen a hint of something that she needed to follow up on. And she didn’t think anybody else could do it.
When no answer came, Sam repeated her request.
“Please, Agent Paige. Let me go in there.”
Agent Paige said, “Sam, I know this is an upsetting experience for you, but—”
Sam interrupted, “If you just let me talk with him, I think you’ll soon understand.”
Agent Paige was quiet for a moment. Then, seeming to sense the urgency of Sam’s plea, she nodded her reluctant approval. Before Sam went into the interrogation room, she looked at the other people in the booth—Dominic, Agent Roston, and Chief Crane.
She said to them, “Somebody please call Hume Place and have them check their visitor log. Find out if Wylie Pembroke visited my dad. If so, find out when it was.”
Dominic’s eyes widened with surprise, and Chief Crane’s mouth dropped open.
Dominic replied, “But Wylie Pembroke …”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “But please just check.”
Without another word, Sam hurried into the interrogation room. Agent Jeffreys looked startled to see her.
She said in a shaky, pleading voice, “Agent Jeffreys, just let me talk to him for a moment. Please.”
Jeffreys hesitated and glanced toward the two-way mirror where he knew Riley was watching. When no protest came, he got up from his chair and stepped back from the table. Sam sat down in his place. She reached across the table and took her father’s hands in hers. He smiled at the sight of her face.
“Punkin, I’m so glad to see you,” he said.
“I’m glad to see you too, Dad,” Sam said, struggling not to burst into tears. “Now listen. You just said a mailman came to visit you at Hume Place.”
Dad nodded and said, “Yeah, Wylie Pembroke. You remember Wylie, don’t you? He delivered our mail in the old days when you were growing up. Hell of a nice guy.”
“Sure, I remember,” Sam said.
And indeed, she remembered Mr. Pembroke really well—a kindly, smiling man, who seldom spoke. Folks said he had become mysteriously reclusive ever since his wife had left him. Back when he’d delivered their mail, Sam had often sensed something sad, haunted, and even regretful in his silence.
She asked her father, “Can you remember—when was it that he came by to see you at Hume Place?”
Her father’s expression was changing now, as if some sort of a fog was lifting. The sight of Sam’s face seemed to be bringing him back to his lucid self.
“It was a couple of weeks ago, I’m pretty sure,” Dad said.
Sam inhaled sharply.
A couple of weeks!
She hoped that someone at Hume Place could confirm that visit.
The question was, why had such a silent, reclusive man gone to an assisted care facility to visit a retired cop—a cop he had rarely spoken to for years?
She squeezed her father’s hands and said …
“Dad, do you remember what happened to Wylie soon after you saw him?”
He stared at her for a moment, then said …
“He killed himself. He hanged himself in his own home.”
Sam nodded, and her father continued …
“He came to see me just the day before it happened. I was really shocked by the news when I heard about it. And Wylie was …”
Dad squinted in thought.
Then he said, “He was really troubled when he came to see me. He kept saying, ‘Art, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’ And, ‘Art, there’s something I’ve been keeping a secret for too long.’ And, ‘If I don’t tell you now, I’m afraid I never will.’ But he wouldn’t come out and say what he meant. Finally he just said goodbye and went away.”
Sam asked, “How did he seem when he left?”
“He suddenly seemed—well, happy, even peaceful. Like he’d settled something in his own mind once and for all.”
Sam’s father scratched his chin.
“Then the next day, when I heard the news that he’d killed himself, I thought maybe he’d just wanted to tell me what he was going to do, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. I felt guilty, because I thought maybe I should have guessed what was wrong and said something to stop him. And I couldn’t understand why he’d want to talk to me about it. But now …”
Dad’s voice faded for a moment.
Sam could tell by his eyes that he was coming to the same conclusion as she had.
“My land,” he murmured. “Wylie came to see me �
� because he wanted to confess.”
Sam inhaled sharply as he confirmed her thoughts.
She reminded herself …
Keep coaxing him.
Let him think it through himself.
He needs this.
She asked, “What did he want to confess to?”
Her father’s eyes were bright and alert now. He seemed like his old keen self again.
He gasped aloud and said, “He wanted to tell me he’d killed the Bonnetts.”
“Why do you think he wanted to tell you?” Sam asked.
Dad said, “Because he knew—everyone in town knew—that case has been eating me up inside for years. I’ve felt worse about it than anybody else—about not solving it in all this time. And he wanted to put my mind at ease at long last, and his own mind as well. But when he tried to say it, he just couldn’t. Instead, right there and then he thought of another way to deal with his pain and guilt. He’d kill himself. That’s why he seemed so peaceful when he left.”
Sam could hardly contain her joy and relief.
She said, “Dad, we just solved it. We finally solved the Bonnett murders. You and me together.”
Her father smiled broadly and said …
“We did at that, didn’t we, Punkin?”
Then Sam looked around at Agent Jeffreys, who was standing back from the table. She could tell by his smile and his twinkling eyes that he was both pleased and impressed by what he had just witnessed.
Sam, followed by Jeffreys, rushed out of the interrogation room into the adjoining booth. When she saw the eager and surprised faces of Chief Crane, Dominic, and the two female FBI agents, she exclaimed …
“Did you hear that? Did you hear what just happened?”
Chief Crane said, “I sure as hell did. Jesus, what a discovery.”
Dominic said to her, “While you were in there, I called Hume Place, and they checked the guest log. Your dad’s right. Wylie Pembroke did come to visit with him the day before he killed himself.”
Agent Paige looked especially excited. She said to Chief Crane …
“Now we need evidence. And I think we both know where we need to look for it.”
Crane nodded and said, “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
As she looked out into the earliest light of morning, Riley’s mind was flooded with confusion. She was crowded into the back seat of the FBI car with Jenn and Sam’s partner, Dominic Wolfe. Bill was driving, and Chief Crane sat beside him in the passenger seat giving directions. Sam wasn’t with them—she’d rushed off in the other car to follow a different lead. The young cop had been excited over a call from Brandon Hitt saying he thought he could clear her father, so Riley let her go meet him.
Riley and the rest of the team were headed for the apartment where the mailman, Wylie Pembroke, had killed himself. It seemed highly possible that they were about to solve the Bonnett family murders once and for all. If so, Riley knew she ought to feel happy for both Sam and her father. At long last, and with Sam’s help, Art Kuehling had achieved the redemption he had sought all these years …
And yet …
She knew that the mailman Wylie Pembroke had killed himself two weeks ago. He’d been dead since shortly before Gareth Ogden’s murder. He had definitely not killed either Ogden or Vanessa Pinker.
Riley shuddered a little as she thought …
That still leaves Art Kuehling as a possible suspect.
Art had silently acknowledged as much before they’d left the police station just now. He hadn’t asked to be taken back to Hume Place. Instead, he’d politely asked to be put into a cell so he could rest from the night’s terrible ordeal.
Riley wished with all her heart she could clear him. But she remembered how angry he’d gotten with Bill during the questioning, slamming his fist on the table and almost yelling …
“Why the hell are you asking me these questions? What did I do wrong?”
It had been shocking behavior from a man who had seemed so gentle just moments before. But did it suggest that Art was capable of murder? It was surely just as likely that his rising dementia was all that had provoked his outburst.
And then, of course, there was Amos Crites, lurking about like some sort of buzzard in search of dead flesh. Wasn’t he at least as likely a suspect as Art Kuehling? Riley wished she’d had just cause to bring Crites in for questioning. And she couldn’t help hoping that the wrong man was now sleeping in that jail cell.
They drove far away from the beach into the neighborhood where Wylie Pembroke had lived—a row of tan-colored apartment buildings that all looked exactly alike. Of course the local police had been over Pembroke’s apartment after the suicide, but they were just checking to be sure there were no signs of it being a homicide. Because the mailman had left no surviving family, and nobody had made any claims to his things, Chief Crane still had the key. They didn’t even need a warrant to search the place again.
Bill parked, and they got out of the car and headed toward a ground-floor apartment. Chief Crane unlocked the door and they went inside.
Like the exterior of the building, the smallish apartment seemed uncannily neat and disagreeably bland inside. The furniture was basic and functional. If Riley didn’t already know that Wylie had owned this place, she’d have guessed that it was a pre-furnished rental apartment. It was hard to imagine anyone deliberately surrounding himself with this kind of impersonal generic furniture.
On the way over, Chief Crane had mentioned that Wylie’s wife had left him about a decade ago and moved far way—to Minneapolis, Crane thought. Nobody knew why the marriage had fallen apart. It seemed pretty obvious to Riley that Wylie had moved into this place after the breakup.
She glanced around and saw some pictures hanging on the walls. None of them were Wylie Pembroke’s wife. Instead, they showed a young boy, smiling proudly as he held fish that he seemed to have caught. The boy was younger in some pictures, older in others. So Riley knew that the photos had been taken during the course of several years.
Riley turned to Chief Crane and said …
“Show me where Wylie Pembroke killed himself.”
Chief Crane led the group over to a bedroom doorway. He had a folder full of grim photos of the suicide scene and showed them to Riley and Bill, explaining what had happened …
“Pembroke hanged himself off this open door. He tied a noose in one end of a length of rope, and he tied the other end to this doorknob. He threw the noose over the door, climbed up onto a chair, and put his head into the noose. Then he kicked the chair out from under him.”
Chief Crane went on to tell Riley and Bill that Pembroke’s cleaning lady had found him the next morning, and he explained how he and his team had made sure that there was no evidence of foul play.
Riley trembled at an unwelcome memory—the image of a woman hanging by her neck from a cord tied to an ornate light fixture …
Marie Sayles.
A little over a year ago, Riley’s friend Marie had hanged herself. She took her own life out of despair upon realizing that a psychopath who had once tormented both her and Riley was stalking her again.
Riley could remember her frantic phone conversation with Marie as she drove to her apartment, hoping to arrive in time to save her.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Marie had said. “You’re not going to do anything. Nobody’s going to do anything. Nobody can do anything.”
Marie had said those words just before kicking a stepladder out from under herself and strangling to death.
Riley had spent months trying to put that horrible episode behind her. But the pictures of Wylie Pembroke’s dead body brought the memory back, and she found herself once again fighting back her guilt and grief.
Not now, she reminded herself sternly. You’ve got work to do.
Riley quickly pulled herself together. She told herself that Pembroke’s suicide was not at all like Marie’s. It was clear to her that he hadn’t killed himself out of fear or
desperation. He’d done so coolly and deliberately, perhaps even with relief.
She remembered what Art Kuehling had said a little while ago …
“He suddenly seemed—well, happy, even peaceful. Like he’d settled something in his own mind once and for all.”
Riley felt more and more sure that Sam and her father were right—Pembroke had killed the Bonnett family and had spent ten long years struggling with guilt and horror at his deed.
He’d finally put an end to that guilt and horror by killing himself …
And yet …
They still didn’t have hard evidence to prove that scenario.
Riley’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her cell phone buzzing. She took the phone out of her pocket and saw that she’d received a text message from Sam …
On my way to the fishing pier. Hope to find Brandon there.
Riley suppressed a sigh of annoyance. When Sam had left on her own, she’d told Riley that she was looking for Brandon, apparently thinking he could provide an alibi for her dad during the recent murders. Sam had said she expected to meet him in the diner. That didn’t seem to have worked out. The young cop had been understandably eager to find out about that. But while it was good of Sam to report where she was, it hardly mattered to Riley at the moment.
Riley told Chief Crane that she wanted to explore the rest of the apartment. She and her three companions went on into the small, nondescript kitchen, which had been kept as neat as the rest of the house. She opened up a closet and found a pegboard with a complete set of hand tools.
She felt a sudden chill as her eyes lighted on an ordinary claw hammer.
The head and the handle were encrusted with something dark.
She heard Jenn gasp and say …
“Riley, do you think … ?”
Riley didn’t reply. She put on a pair of plastic gloves that she always kept with her. Then she reached out to the hammer and touched it and …
“Oh my God,” she murmured.
She felt the same charge of hatred she’d sensed at the Bonnett’s abandoned home—the cold fury of the man who had killed the family. Her hands trembled a little as she took hold of the hammer and examined it more closely.
