Playing Dead

by Allison Brennan

  The vic wore jeans, sneakers, and a lined jacket. Under the jacket appeared to be a turtleneck. No one in the Valley had been wearing turtlenecks since early March.

  The vic was the same general size and build as Oliver Maddox. Mitch’s preliminary conversations with the Davis Police Department shortly after the earthquake had given him little—the detective assigned to the missing person case said there had been no physical evidence of foul play. Mitch would have followed up with friends, teachers, neighbors—except that he’d been pulled from the case.

  Oliver Maddox had gone missing in late January—about the same time that Tom O’Brien had been moved from a safe area of San Quentin into the general prison population.

  Mitch didn’t buy into the coincidence. Maddox had probably been working on something related to O’Brien’s conviction, but the only person who knew what was the fugitive himself. Still, how both events connected eluded him.

  When Mitch looked inside the car, he was certain he had a homicide on his hands. The car was in neutral.

  He photographed the interior, the control panel, and the buckled seat belt. He mentally walked through different scenarios, including suicide, but kept coming back to murder.

  Mitch decided to leave the body in the vehicle, suspecting that the corpse would fall apart if they tried to extract it. They had special waterproof body bags for the floaters that could be sealed to prevent evidence loss. He pulled plastic evidence bags from his equipment belt and strapped them to what remained of the vic’s hands and head to prevent not only trace evidence but body parts from washing away when the vehicle was raised.

  Mitch and Young bagged as much loose evidence in the Explorer as they could for fear it would disappear or disintegrate. Then Mitch caught Young’s eye and pointed upstream to indicate where he was heading to search for potential evidence. He used his underwater light to illuminate the depths.

  The bridge pillars were only forty or so feet from where the vehicle had come to rest. Mitch pictured the damage on the passenger side and inspected the left side of the pillars extensively. There was no evidence that the vehicle had collided with the pillars either above or below the surface, but with the rise and fall of the water level, paint chips would have been rubbed away. Still Mitch took a lot of pictures—perhaps a collision expert could match up the unique marks on the door with these pillars.

  Cars submerged quickly in water, but not instantaneously. Inside air needed to be displaced, and the current of the river would move the vehicle as it filled with water. Maybe a minute or two. Still, forty feet from the bridge, windows down, Mitch figured the car had gone in relatively close to the bridge. Most likely not more than a hundred feet upstream, probably less. If they could pinpoint the entry point, they could use the known water currents from January to estimate what day the vehicle had gone in.

  He surfaced and floated. Though there would be seasonal variations, and in a storm the current would be completely different, today was clear, windless, and gave him a good sense of the natural flow of the river.

  It was a hunch, but Mitch suspected that the Explorer had gone in approximately eighty feet from the resting spot. He swam upstream, draining his energy. Agent Duncan saw him, but didn’t approach. Mitch wasn’t surprised.

  He hadn’t made a lot of friends in the two years he’d been with the Sacramento regional FBI office. Everyone knew that he and Supervisory Special Agent Megan Elliott used to be married. It wasn’t like he had announced it, but Meg insisted that everything be on the up-and-up when Mitch came on board.

  It was no one’s damn business, as far as Mitch was concerned. They’d made a mistake, it was over, no one needed to know anything more. But Meg insisted that someone would find out anyway, and then it could make both of their jobs more difficult, especially since they were both on the violent crime squad.

  He still had respect for Meg. Hell, Mitch liked her a lot. They’d met at Quantico, become good friends because of common interests, and ended up in Kosovo together four years later, digging through mass graves as part of a national evidence response team. When they returned to America six weeks later, they both felt out of touch with everyday concerns. The weight of Kosovo tormented them, and they turned to each other for solace. They were two busy people with the same career and they thought that marriage was the answer to loneliness.

  They were wrong. The marriage officially ended three years later.

  Mitch pulled himself out of the water and sat on a rock at the edge of the river, looking for the most likely point of entry. The killer would want an easy place to push the car into the river. Mitch looked up. This was a curve, but the river meandered in at this point, not out. If the Explorer went in at this spot, it was coming from Isleton. Had Maddox come down here to meet with someone?

  According to the locals, there was good fishing in this part of the river. A small restaurant and tackle shop was nestled on the road next to the bridge. Potential witnesses might have seen the car go under. But Mitch sensed that this killer wasn’t stupid. No, the car went in at night. Cloudy or moonless or stormy. Minimal traffic. No witnesses.

  There was no perfect murder. If they couldn’t find physical evidence here or in the vehicle, they would officially identify the victim and go from there. Retrace his final days. But Mitch didn’t intend to wait for identification. He’d start his investigation presupposing it was Maddox.

  He motioned to Special Agent Duncan who was not so discreetly staring at him from across the inlet. What did he expect? He’d probably had more face-to-face time with the Office of Professional Responsibility than any active agent. And since the last visit was only three months ago when he returned from Montana after tracking down two fugitives, he was lucky to still have a job.

  But what was he supposed to do, sit on his hands? Even though he’d been given a direct order not to cross state lines to follow the fugitives, he’d done it anyway. Under the same circumstances, he’d do it again. He was good at his job, he had to act. Sitting around playing bureaucratic games and shuffling paper from one desk to another wasn’t in his job description.

  Mitch understood his primary flaw: He had a hard time following orders he disagreed with. He’d had the same problem in the military. His issues with authority stemmed from his conflicts with his dad, a bigwig prosecutor who had seemed all-powerful and righteous while Mitch was growing up. Only when it was too late for Mitch to change his path did he learn the cold truth about his father.

  When Duncan was within hearing distance, Mitch said, “Go over this area again. The turnout, the dock. The guy’s been under for a while, look for any sign of new growth—it might indicate the spot he entered the water. Talk to the owners of the tackle shop and restaurant. Find out how often this dock is used, and specifically about any regulars—people who come out and fish at least once a week. I’m sure there’re a few. There may be a witness who doesn’t even realize it.”

  Mitch didn’t think so. Probably nobody but his killer had seen what happened the night Oliver Maddox went into the river. But Mitch had to cover all the bases.

  He went back under, letting water wrap around him, as he slowly swam back to the Explorer’s resting place.

  What were you doing that got you killed, Oliver?

  FOUR

  “Tom?” Her voice sounded far away. “We’re here, Tom.”

  He hadn’t been sleeping, but he’d been trapped so far in the past Tom hadn’t realized they had already arrived back at the motel.

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s go in.” Nelia’s voice was quiet and lyrical. It calmed him, grounded him, like nothing else could.

  My angel.

  She’d saved him, physically and emotionally. He didn’t deserve her, but he wasn’t about to give her up. He drank in her trust, her support, her faith in him as if she were wine to the dying man.

  It was quiet and they walked to the room together. Nelia had checked in two days ago, paying up front for a week. He’d hidden in the truck
, sneaking into the room when it was clear. Acting like the fugitive he was; hating every minute of it. Without Nelia, her truck, her money, her faith, he wouldn’t have survived this long. Coming back to Sacramento to prove his innocence would have been suicide. But Nelia was his eyes and ears. While it still wasn’t easy, with her it was definitely safer than if he’d traveled alone. She bought the food, she reserved the motel, she drove.

  His angel.

  They walked in and Tom went immediately to the bathroom. He wasn’t being fair to Nelia, but he needed to run his head under cold water and think.

  The earthquake seemed so long ago. He’d run because—no use lying to himself—he ran because he was a dead man. At the end of January, he’d had five months before his date with the executioner. His appeals had been denied, over and over. Oliver Maddox had given him cautious optimism, then disappeared. Tom’s thin thread of hope had been severed.

  When the quake struck, others ran as well. Cold-blooded killers. Tom had to do something to stop them.

  So he had pursued them. He was one of them, after all. They trusted him as much as they trusted anyone. And he ended up capturing seven of the bastards before catching up with Doherty and Chapman in Idaho. He’d been cocky. Cocky because he’d done a damn good job and saved lives. He felt like a cop again. He felt like he was doing something positive after fifteen years behind bars.

  It had been three and a half months since that bastard Aaron Doherty had shot him in the stomach and left him for dead in the middle of a snowbank in Idaho. Tom had played that situation wrong—he’d thought he needed to watch Chapman more closely, that he was the more dangerous of the two. Misjudging that psycho had almost killed Tom.

  He would have died if Nelia hadn’t found him in the snowbank along the frontage road.

  It had been touch and go for a while. For over three months, Nelia nursed him back to health. He rubbed the gnarled scar on his stomach. It was still touch and go; the bullet remained in his body. For the past two weeks, he’d been having periodic sharp pains. But it wasn’t like he could go to the doctor.

  Nelia hadn’t asked questions, at least not at first. She wasn’t scared of his blood or his story; she was simply a sad and beautiful woman. And last week when he said he was leaving to find his daughter and prove his innocence, she had simply said, “I’m coming with you.”

  Tom O’Brien couldn’t die knowing Claire believed he’d killed her mother. He would find a way to convince her of the truth she’d been too young and emotional to accept when she was fourteen.

  Having Nelia, a stranger, believe him gave him the strength to make a stand. He knew he might die in pursuit of the truth. He’d accepted that fate when his last appeal had been denied. He was already a dead man. He had nothing else to lose.

  He left the bathroom and his eyes rested on Nelia. Seated at the small Formica table in the corner, she was drinking coffee. When she saw Tom, she poured him a cup from the thermos she had earlier filled at a nearby coffee shop. She pulled muffins from the bag. “You didn’t want to eat before, but you need your strength,” she told him.

  Sitting across from her, he took her hand. She stared at him, brown eyes sad and worried. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said, voice cracking. He cleared his throat and sipped warm coffee to swallow the emotion.

  She shrugged and glanced down. She hadn’t told him everything about her past, but he knew she’d lost her son twelve years ago. He’d been murdered. She hadn’t shared any other details, but even sharing those few had been like ripping open her heart.

  Her loss had sent her into a self-imposed exile. It was why she lived alone in the woods, but didn’t explain why she’d helped him, or why she believed him. She’d tell him in her own time.

  “Claire is—” What could he say? “—not what I expected.”

  “She is who she is. You can’t expect that the horrible things that happened in the past wouldn’t affect her.”

  “No, but I—I wanted her to be . . . open. She was cold. She’s believed all this time I’m guilty. She was angry and scared. Scared of her own father! I love her more than anyone, and she—”

  “Tom.”

  He caught her eye. Nelia never raised her voice, but her tone commanded his attention.

  “You can’t expect to change her mind during one surprise confrontation. Give her a little time.”

  “Unless she turns me in to the cops.”

  “Do you think she will?”

  Did he? “I really don’t know.” He bit back his fearful frustration. “I need her help.”

  “I can look for Oliver Maddox,” Nelia offered, not for the first time.

  “Claire has the resources and training to do this. You’ve already risked too much for me.”

  “You saved me as much as I saved you, Tom. My cabin in Idaho was as much a prison to me as San Quentin was for you. You freed me. I’m not leaving you now. Not until we find out what happened to your wife.”

  “Nelia, tell me the truth. How did you find me?”

  “I told you. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I went to investigate, found you.”

  “But you were hours away from home. And you never leave, or so you told me. Why that day? Where were you going?”

  “Back home.”

  “From where?”

  He knew all about how she’d found him—she’d stopped for gas, the snow was coming down harder, she feared she wouldn’t make it back to her cabin before her road became impassable, even with four-wheel drive. She saw what she thought was an angel, did a double take, and saw him lying in a ditch. He’d crawled out, trying to make it to the road, but passed out.

  But she’d never told him why she was three hours from home, or why she was driving in the storm, or where she was coming from.

  “On the anniversary of my son’s murder I visit his grave. In San Diego,” she whispered. “For the last twelve years. I’ve never told anyone.”

  “No one? Not your family?” She spoke to her mother every Sunday afternoon. It was a formal, one-sided conversation, with Nelia cutting it off after ten minutes.

  “My ex-husband knows. He found me at Justin’s grave the third year I went.” She looked down at their clasped hands. “I swore him to secrecy. He owed me. Like Lydia, he was having an affair. But unlike you, I knew about it and didn’t care. I didn’t love him. Never had. We married because of Justin . . . and we divorced when we no longer had him.” Her voice cracked. “I want you to reclaim your daughter, Tom.”

  “Nelia.” He kissed her hand, squeezed it. “I couldn’t have made it this far without you. I’m going to make Claire listen. I didn’t have time to tell her everything Oliver told me. I need to go to her house and—”

  “Her house? That’s not a good idea. You said yourself you saw one of the FBI agents in her neighborhood yesterday.”

  Mitch Bianchi. He’d been at the Starbucks kitty-corner to Claire’s house yesterday morning. Tom had considered approaching him. After all, Tom had saved the FBI agent’s life during the raid on Blackie Goethe’s gang.

  But he’d decided against it. He needed more information before talking to anyone in law enforcement, even Bianchi.

  “Tom? Let me go to Claire.”

  “I don’t want anyone, even Claire, knowing you’re helping me. You may not care, but I won’t let you risk anything more than you already have. Please. I don’t want to worry about you, too.”

  “I need to do something!”

  “You can. Talk this out with me as I write a letter to Claire. Help me find a way to convince her in writing what I failed to get across today in words.”

  FIVE

  Claire was certain that Oliver Maddox was some piein-the-sky liberal public defender wannabe who’d encouraged her father’s hopes of getting away with murder.

  What she should do is contact the FBI and inform them her father had made contact. Or maybe phone Bill and Dave Kamanski. They’d know what to do. Both cops, they had told her more
than once that all she had to do was call if she needed anything.

  She didn’t want to drag them into it. The Kamanskis had been her only family since her father’s arrest. Dave was the big brother she never had, and Bill . . . she had often wished he was her father. Because she hated the real one who was sitting on death row.

  Actually, she didn’t hate him, and that’s why she felt so miserable much of the time. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to hit him, yell at him, throw things at him for killing her mom, for ruining their lives. Making her sit through a public trial for weeks, through his sentencing. It had been the worst time of her life. From the minute she saw her mother’s dead body, and knew her dad had shot her, to when he was sentenced to die, it had been hell.

  Guilt twisted in Claire’s heart. She’d spent more time over the last fifteen years trying to hate her father for his crimes than mourning her mother’s death. She’d been so angry with her mom about the affair, furious that she could be so selfish as to hurt the family. And then she was gone. Claire never had the chance to talk with, argue with, love, or hate her mother. It was so much easier to focus on the trial and hating her dad than it was to focus on the pain and guilt over her mother’s murder and remembering every fight, every disagreement she and her mother had shared. She wanted to go back and tell her mother she loved her.

  A part of Claire wanted Maddox to be right. She had believed for so long that her father was a killer, but she never stopped loving him, even when she wanted so much to hate. It had made his crimes that much harder to accept, and transformed her love into confusion and misery.

  The only really good thing in her life right now was Mitch Bianchi. She’d been moving from guy to guy for so long without any commitment that having someone sort of steady was nice. More than nice. He was the sexiest, safest guy she’d ever dated. A writer, perfect. She didn’t want to think about her long history with other underachieving men. She shrugged it off whenever Dave Kamanski teased her about the “dumb blonds” she dated: good-looking men who didn’t tax themselves mentally, often not holding down regular or “normal” jobs.