A Reason to Believe

by Diana Copland

  Kiernan followed the direction of Matt’s gaze. “Do you think they’ll come after your family?”

  “I have no idea, but I do know this—when Ed said they were on the inside, he wasn’t kidding. I have no idea how high up this goes, but at the very least, they’re watching the computer systems. And inside those systems is every bit of information they need to track me down. My home address, my banking info, the license plate number on this car. Everything.” He reached across and grabbed his hand. “I can’t keep you safe anymore.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Look, I appreciate your faith in me,” Matt said, more exasperated than flattered, “but let’s face facts. The smart thing to do would be for you to get the hell out of town as quickly as you can, and for me to try to get someone to listen to reason about Preston.”

  Kiernan’s blue eyes flashed. “Oh, you think that’s going to work, do you? Branson isn’t going to immediately can your ass for continuing to look into Abby’s murder when you were specifically told not to? And you think anyone is likely to believe you, when you’re out because the department shrink put you out?”

  “Probably not. But it isn’t safe, Kiernan. And I don’t want anything to happen to you!” As he said the words aloud, Matt realized just how true they were. He wasn’t sure what his time with Kiernan would lead to, but the idea of his actually being hurt made the cold outside seem like nothing compared to the chill it caused to fill his chest.

  Kiernan’s face softened, but he still shook his head slowly. “I won’t leave. I won’t leave you to face this alone. I won’t leave Abby in the lurch.” His wide eyes were solemn. “It goes against everything I believe in. So we need to come up with another plan. Okay?”

  Matt looked into the resolved expression and exhaled raggedly. “You’re out of your mind, you know that, right?”

  Kiernan smiled. “So I’ve been told. Repeatedly. What comes next?”

  “Well, all signs point to Preston. We just don’t have any solid evidence connecting him with the crime, or any reason he might have for murdering a six-year-old girl.”

  “Still, we’ve got the watch, and the candy.”

  “But it’s circumstantial. We can’t prove anything.” His lips twisted. “Other than a kid who was waiting tables for a catering company who saw a distinctive, expensive watch.”

  “And the butterscotch candies,” Kiernan persisted.

  “Our only witness to the candy is dead.”

  “I know, I know, she can’t testify. So, what you’re telling me is we need evidence. Where would we be most likely to find some? He didn’t leave anything at the crime scene.”

  “If I was on the job, and he was considered a viable suspect, the first step would be to convince a judge to give us a search warrant. But there isn’t a judge in this town who would consider him a suspect. They think they have their man. We’re tilting at windmills.”

  “I like windmills, and the analogy comparing us to Don Quixote isn’t necessarily far off the mark. Marching into hell for a heavenly cause, Matthew.” Kiernan’s smile faded into a thoughtful expression. “The watch would most likely be at his house, huh?”

  “Or on his wrist. And the only way to be sure would be to search his residence. But I’m not on the job. Anything else would be breaking and entering.”

  “Which is a very bad idea for a cop who wants his job back.”

  “Which is a very bad idea for anyone who doesn’t want to be arrested.”

  Kiernan slumped back against the passenger door. “Of course, first things first. You’d have to know where the sick bastard lives.”

  Matt’s thoughts raced. If he went any further down this road, there would be no turning back. He could lose everything. Not just his job, but his pension, his house, everything he’d worked for. However, if he was fired, which he was no doubt going to be, all those things would be in jeopardy anyway.

  And if he did nothing, the prick would get away with the cold-blooded murder of a little kid.

  He put the Bronco into reverse.

  “I know where the sick bastard lives,” he said, and enjoyed the delight that filled Kiernan’s face.

  * * *

  “Looks like someone is having a party,” Kiernan commented.

  Matt navigated the narrow street, cars parked bumper to bumper down each side. He grimaced, wondering what they would do if it was Preston.

  It wasn’t. The last house before they arrived at the top of the steep street was awash with festive lights, and they could see a crowd of well-dressed people through the massive windows. At the end of the street, Preston’s low-slung modern house was mostly dark.

  “This may work to our advantage.” Matt maneuvered around a Mini Cooper and pulled the SUV in next to a sturdy guardrail. He killed the lights and the motor. “I had no idea what I was going to do about the Bronco if the street was deserted.”

  “Yeah, that’s not a problem. Is that it?” Kiernan asked, studying the house perched at the very end of the curving street.

  “That’s it.”

  It was a geometric series of levels and angles clinging to the edge of the sheer drop-off. Stark, almost Erector-set-like lines of staggered roof were heavy with snow. It looked like broken slabs of pavement, stacked like fallen cards. Light fixtures on white columns flanked the curving drive, throwing a bluish glow on the ground. The rest of the yard was lost in shadow. There were lights on inside, but they seemed to be deep within the expansive dwelling. None of the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows across the front of the facade were lit.

  “Well, that’s just god-awful ugly.”

  “Unfortunately, having money doesn’t automatically guarantee you have taste.” Matt peered through the darkness. He recalled Brad joking that it looked like a poorly designed STD clinic, and smiled faintly.

  “Okay, so now what?”

  Matt saw a shadow on a wall deep inside, movement in what might have been a kitchen or family room. “There’s someone moving around inside. We can’t risk anything right now.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “We wait.”

  “For what?”

  Matt got comfortable in his bucket seat. “Until whoever that is leaves.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “Then we come back tomorrow. And we keep coming back until no one is here.”

  “Like a stakeout?”

  “Exactly like a stakeout.”

  Kiernan grinned in delight. “How cool is that?”

  “Yeah, sounds like fun now. Wait until we’ve sat here for six hours, we’re frozen solid and our asses are numb.”

  After that, they lapsed into silence. The Bronco was cooling rapidly, but Matt was able to study the layout. For a house that size it was relatively close to the street, necessitated by the canyon beyond, no doubt. The drive and street in front had been plowed, which should simplify things. He cataloged in his mind what they should look for once they got inside. The Rolex, obviously, but what else? Some sort of covering for shoes, surgical gloves, butterscotch candies? Stashing the duct tape and Ketamine in the neighbor’s shed was one way to get rid of evidence. But what else was there? Something to tie him to Marc and Karen Reynolds and their daughter, but what?

  Happy inebriated guests in dressy outfits left the house down the road, some slipping comically on the ice as they passed. They were loud and full of liquid cheer, but thankfully they didn’t seem to notice the two men sitting in the white Bronco. The silence in the vehicle was weighted, and the cold grew more and more uncomfortable.

  Kiernan shifted restlessly. “How long have we been here?”

  Matt glanced at his watch. “About forty-five minutes.”

  “Feels longer.”

  Matt hadn’t seen any movement inside the house for a while. He contempla
ted trying to break in through the back but decided against it; he could see the small sign from one of the local home security companies just next to the garage. The last thing he needed was to trip the alarm, then try to explain to some uniform what he’d been doing, or to come face to face with the ADA himself. Crossing his arms, he sank a bit lower in his seat, his eyes fixed on the house.

  Kiernan shifted beside him and his shoulder pressed against Matt’s when he leaned closer. “So, I suppose making out to pass the time is frowned on during stakeouts.”

  Matt snorted out a laugh. “You could say that, yeah. Besides, most of the detectives in our department are overweight, balding and married.”

  “Clearly a deterrent.”

  Matt chuckled. “Yeah.”

  Quiet returned, and Matt found the solid weight against his shoulder comforting. He’d sat more than one stakeout with Brad. Initially, his presence in the front of the car had created enough unresolved sexual tension to cut with a knife, but once they were a couple, he’d found it comfortable. There was a similarity to the way he felt with Kiernan’s weight against his arm, and the comparison wasn’t lost on him.

  Giggling, a young couple passed on the driver’s side, the young woman blonde and leggy in a very short, sparkly silver skirt. Her date was tall and dark haired and held onto her arm to make sure she didn’t fall. She slipped and gasped, and then giggled again, caressing her companion’s thigh as he unlocked the shiny sports car parked in front of them.

  “He’s going to get lucky,” Kiernan murmured, his tone amused.

  “Or she’s going to pass out.”

  They were so busy watching the young man trying to maneuver his drunken date into the car they didn’t immediately notice the garage door on the house across the street start to lift. When Kiernan did, he gripped Matt’s arm hard and pointed. “Look.”

  The door slid slowly up. Headlights set on bright washed the street in stark, unforgiving light, and the couple in front of them planted themselves against their vehicle as a sleek car roared from the garage and flew past them in a spray of wet snow.

  “Son of a bitch,” the young man said. “Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

  But the car was already weaving its way down the hilly road, the red taillights growing smaller in the distance.

  “That was the silver Mercedes,” Matt said. “The one that passed us leaving Karen Reynolds’ house.”

  “Looks like Preston is in a hurry, doesn’t it?”

  The garage door slid closed, then it immediately started to open again.

  “What the hell…” Matt straightened in his seat, watching as the door retraced its movements, sliding open and then remaining that way. He stared, waiting for someone to enter the garage from a door in the middle of the back wall, but no one did. “This could not be that easy,” he muttered, looking at the meticulously neat garage.

  “He was in a bit of a rush,” Kiernan said, his voice brimming with thinly veiled excitement. “And maybe,” he went on, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, “we’ve been given a little spiritual intervention.”

  Matt searched the brightly lit space, a chill skirting over his shoulders. “Abby?”

  “I don’t see her,” Kiernan said. “But I can sense something.”

  “Okay.” Matt wondered fleetingly when such an announcement had ceased to seem weird, but decided it didn’t bear thinking about at the moment.

  They watched the garage, and they waited. The couple in front of them managed to get into their car and leave, and the square of white light from the open garage door continued to spill into the street. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. Finally, Matt unfastened his seat belt and Kiernan did the same.

  “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to ask you to stay in the car?”

  Kiernan sent him a narrowed-eyed look rife with exasperation.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay, fine. But you’ll do as I tell you, when I tell you. Got it?”

  “Whatever you say, Officer.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go break in to someone’s house!” He grinned impishly. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that.”

  “I’m not screwing around here, Kiernan,” Matt said sharply. “We don’t know what’s in there, who’s in there. I think it was Preston in the car, but the windows were tinted dark enough I can’t be sure. He could still be in that house. We could trigger an alarm set for the door, which means we’d have to make a run for it. Whatever happens, you need to stick close to me and let me take the lead, you got it?”

  Kiernan nodded solemnly, even though his eyes gleamed with excitement.

  “I wish that light wasn’t on,” Matt muttered. “It’s going to be like being onstage.”

  Almost as soon as the words passed his lips, the light went out, plunging the open garage, the driveway and the street into darkness.

  Matt jerked in surprise. “Okay. That’s just fucking creepy.”

  “That’s fortuitous,” Kiernan said, amusement making his voice tremble. “I think that wasn’t so much divine intervention as a timer.”

  “Yeah, I like that version better.”

  Kiernan chuckled as they climbed out of the car.

  The temperature had dropped and it was a brutal slap in the face. Kiernan hissed, tucking his hands under his arms. Matt paused to make certain there weren’t any stray partygoers in the street and then crossed, Kiernan close behind. When they got to the columns flanking the drive, Matt ducked low and quickly cut around. Kiernan followed, almost silent behind him.

  They pressed themselves against the house, and Matt inched his way toward the open garage door. Before he entered, he glanced back at Kiernan, who was close against his side.

  “You stay here,” he whispered firmly.

  “But…”

  “No but’s. You said you’d do what I told you. You will not go in there until I determine the house is empty. Now, duck down over there.” He gestured to some tall bushes that flanked the door. “I’ll come back and get you when I know it’s clear.”

  Kiernan obviously wasn’t happy about it if the set of his mouth was anything to judge by, but he didn’t argue. Matt waited long enough to see him secret himself behind the shrub, then moved cautiously through the darkened garage. When he arrived at the door into the house, he unfastened the leather strap holding his revolver in place and pulled it out of the holster. Holding it near his head, he reached for the doorknob, steeling himself for the blare of an alarm. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat.

  It was almost anticlimactic when the door clicked and eased open into silence. It didn’t even squeak.

  Matt stepped into the dim interior, closing the door silently behind him. To his left was a large formal living room. Light spilled into it through a doorway, throwing deep shadows across an enormous sectional and a huge, dark fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling corner windows showed a breathtaking view of the city below, and a black grand piano sat in the corner, its lid propped open.

  He moved stealthily on nearly silent feet and did a walk through, slowly, cautiously, searching for shadows, listening for footsteps. He moved carefully from room to room, gun extended and finger on the trigger, but the main floor was empty. A set of stairs led to a finished basement, but it was one huge open space without a single door into another room, nowhere for someone to hide, no furnishings.

  He holstered his gun when he arrived back upstairs.

  He leaned around the garage doorframe and found Kiernan where he’d left him, still crouched behind the bushes. “It’s all clear.”

  Kiernan jerked slightly and glared up at him. “Good. I’m freezing my fucking nubs off.”

  Matt snorted softly as Kiernan slipped into the dark garage. “You do realize it’s impossible to actually freeze your nubs off, right
?”

  “So you say. My nubs would beg to differ.”

  They’d taken only a few steps when Kiernan caught Matt’s hand, causing his heart to leap into his throat. Kiernan gestured toward the other side of the door with his head. “The molding.”

  A piece of wide rubber molding that had been used as insulation around the garage door had come loose and was hanging, swinging slightly, in front of the door sensor. Anything blocking the sensor would cause the door to re-open.

  “Fortuitous.” Matt opened the door and stepped into the dim quiet of the house. He heard the soft shuffle of footsteps as Kiernan followed him, and the muted clicking sound as he pulled the door closed.

  Matt caught Kiernan’s eye and pointed at a square glass coffee table with chrome fittings sitting in front of the sofa. On it was a cut-crystal candy dish, filled to the brim with small hard candies wrapped in golden cellophane.

  Kiernan nodded in acknowledgement. Then Matt spotted a laptop computer beside the dish, top open. The screen was dark. He crossed silently to the sectional. Leaning over the table, he touched the mouse pad with a gloved finger, and the screen burst to life.

  Pictured was the master sign-in page for the police department’s search engine. Matt exhaled in a rush. He’d been fairly certain it had been Preston, but this provided confirmation. He felt Kiernan lean over his shoulder, heard the quiet sound he made when he saw the screen.

  “It is him, then,” he murmured. “There’s no mistake.”

  Matt nodded. “Yeah, it’s him.”

  “Which means he knows you were doing a search on his mother.”

  “Yeah. We need to do this and get out of here before he comes back. Come on.”

  Moving with new determination, Matt walked quietly through the immaculate, almost painfully modern kitchen, all black granite and stainless steel. He passed a shadowy bathroom and turned into another room, this one with heavy dark furniture and an enormous flat-screen television on the wall. “We’ll start here.”