Cruel Fate

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Mr. Kirkman was indeed building his own home,” Parsons said. “The caller, however, implied there was a deeper connection between you and Mr. Kirkman. He said that you met on that job and then started meeting in secret. It stood out as unusually social behavior for you and for Mr. Kirkman, which apparently led to rumors among the crew of…” She cleared her throat. “An intimate relationship.”

  “What?” Todd said. “Uh, no. On all counts. No, I did not ever meet this Kirkman guy in secret for any purpose. And no, there weren’t rumors like that. I’d have heard them. Guys don’t just whisper that behind your back. Someone’s going to say it to your face.”

  “Todd is correct,” Gabriel said. “It is indeed the sort of rumor that men—particularly in that time period and that job environment—would say aloud. What you have, Detective, is clearly an informant who wishes to cause trouble. My suggestion would be to take a closer look at Mr. Kirkman’s coworkers. Those who worked as part of his team rather than, like Todd, only incidentally.”

  “We—”

  Gabriel continued. “Whoever notified you of Mr. Kirkman’s body was aware of his connection—however tenuous—with Todd. That suggests a coworker. It also, as you must be aware, means that this informant knew where to find Mr. Kirkman’s body, which makes him a prime suspect for the murder. This person kills his coworker. Later, he sees Todd in the news and realizes they’d met on a job, that Mr. Kirkman knew a convicted serial killer. Mr. Kirkman’s murderer decides to plant an identification card. The fact it’s a social security card strengthens the work connection—someone who employed Mr. Kirkman would know that number and could create a fake card. When Todd is acquitted, the murderer decides—perhaps tired of worrying about Mr. Kirkman being discovered—to lead police to his body and inform them of the link between him and Todd.”

  “Thank you, Gabriel,” Parsons said. “You’ve solved our crime for us.”

  “Hardly,” Gabriel said, ignoring her sarcasm. “You still need to find the person who placed the anonymous tip. However, if I may speculate further, you should consider their link to the young woman found nearby. That is not coincidental. I’m sure you realize that.”

  Parsons said nothing.

  “I saw this morning that police were connecting her to several other murders,” Gabriel said. “Ones that first came to my attention in Todd’s case file. The unsolved murders of three young women. One of those was also found in the forest adjoining Mr. Kirkman’s property. Was he ever investigated for the crime?”

  Parsons turned to Todd. “Mr. Larsen—”

  “Todd, please. I’ve finally broken Gabriel of that.” He offered a faint smile.

  “All right. Todd. Is there anything you can tell us that would help clear you of these allegations?”

  “Like an alibi? When was he killed?”

  She gave a date and said, “That was the last time Mr. Kirkman was seen. He left Chicago after having drinks with several colleagues, and he didn’t return to work the next day.”

  “Well, if it was a weekday, presumably, then I’d have been at work until maybe six. After that, I’d have gone home for dinner. I might have worked more in the evening, or I could have been with Pam and Eden.”

  Gabriel cleared his throat. “It’s been twenty-five years. There is no way of determining time of death with any accuracy, so even if Todd could provide an ironclad alibi for the night of Mr. Kirkman’s disappearance, it would mean nothing.”

  “I know.” Parsons sighed and looked at her partner, who shrugged, having nothing to add.

  “There is one more thing,” she said.

  She read off a phone number. Recognition sparked in Todd’s eyes, and his mouth started to open. Then he glanced at Gabriel. “That sounds like…”

  “Your old phone number?” Parsons said.

  Todd smiled, a seemingly genuine one. “Yeah. I’m amazed I remember it.”

  “That number was found in Mr. Kirkman’s pocket. Written on the back of a business card. Your business card, Todd. Your business number was on the front, but you’d written your personal one on the back.”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. “I believe my client already admitted he’d been answering construction questions—”

  “Are you leading the witness, counselor?” Parsons asked.

  “I thought he was a suspect.”

  “Gabriel…” Parsons warned. “This crap might work with newbies, but remember who you’re speaking to.” She turned to her partner. “Take note, Jim. In saying that, Mr. Walsh was providing his client with a potential excuse for the card.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” Todd said. “I would love to see what I got for a business card. Was it a nice one?”

  Parsons’s brows knitted.

  “Sorry, Detective,” Todd said. “I don’t mean to make light. The thing is that I never had cards. That was a private joke between me and Pam. She thought I should have them, and I kept picking out cute designs with cartoon hammers and whatever. She wanted the professional-looking ones. I thought they were boring…and expensive, with embossing and foil and all that. So I never got cards. I didn’t need them, really. Not to brag, but people saw my work and looked me up.”

  “We would still like to see that card,” I said. “It might contain clues.”

  “You’re not investigating this, Liv,” Parsons said. “It’s police work.”

  “If it involves my father, I’m investigating it,” I said. “And, if Gabriel’s right, the person who accused my father might also be Mr. Kirkman’s killer. Consider it free private eye work. Save some money on your budget.”

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. The interview wound down after that, and I hoped that would be the end of it. The evidence they had was circumstantial, and Gabriel and my father had explained it away nicely. Still…

  We presumed this was a fae trying to get our attention. Alerting us to the body? That was reasonable. But calling the police? Planting that business card on Kirkman’s body? It was too much for an idle threat. Far too much.

  Fifteen

  Olivia

  Ricky had texted, wanting to stop in and discuss his talk with Ioan. I figured he didn’t have anything for me since he didn’t text until hours after he visited Ioan. I said I’d be around. Gabriel had left for the office, and I was left twiddling my thumbs, telling myself everything was okay while knowing it wasn’t.

  Todd was out back when Ricky arrived. I heard the rumble of the Harley and met him in the driveway. We went inside before exchanging more than small talk.

  “You okay?” I asked as I took his jacket.

  He shrugged, which meant no, he wasn’t. I didn’t prod. He’d speak when he was ready. Or he wouldn’t, which would mean the problem was work-related, and I couldn’t prod about that.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  He shook his head, and I took him into the kitchen where the remains of lunch still covered the counter. Cold cuts, cheeses, rolls, pickles and salads. He fixed himself a sandwich. As he was closing the roll, I said, “Going vegetarian?”

  “Hmm?”

  I pointed at the bun, with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and condiments. It took him a moment to see what I meant. Then, without a word, he piled on his usual mountain of cold cuts and carried his plate to the table.

  “Have you heard anything?” he asked. “From whoever tipped off the cops?”

  I grabbed a soda from the fridge for him and popped it open. In this state, he’d probably forget to do that and spend his meal wondering why he wasn’t getting anything from the can.

  I told him what had happened. I didn’t get farther than “The police suspected Todd,” before he snapped out of his distraction. I had his full attention for the rest.

  “Shit,” he said when I finished.

  “Yep. We’re lucky it’s Detective Parsons, or my father might be back in a jail cell right now.”

  “That’s bullshit,” he said. “Okay, yeah, I know—this is the one thing your dad actually did.
But I don’t care. Kirkman deserved the death penalty, and even if a court would have found Todd guilty, he’s served his time.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It should.” He pushed aside his plate, sandwich untouched. “Hell, Todd should be able to come right out and say, ‘Yep, I did it. I stopped a serial killer before he took any more victims, and I don’t regret it, and I served my time, so the slate is clear.’ He doesn’t deserve this. Your mother set him up before and now…”

  He trailed off.

  “For now, he’s safe,” I said. “Gabriel gave them a good alternate theory. A really good one. We also got information that will help us solve this. Whoever did it knew Kirkman worked with my father. They planted both the social security card and a fake business card. This is a fae who’s working very hard to get our attention. One who wants to make the threat as serious as possible. I underestimated them. They’re not content with threatening to link Todd to this crime. They already have. Which means they have more evidence, and that’s what they’ll threaten us with. Do what I want, or I’ll turn this over to the police.”

  Ricky said nothing.

  I continued. “Gabriel’s tracking down that lead right now. Detective Parsons wouldn’t give us much, of course, but she’s letting Gabriel see the business card and the social security one. He thinks he might also have a contact who’ll get him that anonymous tip—the recording and any associated information. Anonymous only means you don’t leave your name. There’s still data there. It’ll cost, but I’ll pay whatever it takes to get a lead on this fae bastard.”

  “Are you sure it’s a fae?”

  I was at the counter, tidying up while snacking on the leftovers. I looked over at him, a pickle slice at my lips.

  He repeated the question.

  “It has to be, doesn’t it?” I said. “Only fae can connect my father to Kirkman. The Cwˆn Annwn or the sluagh. They were both directly involved, and only they’d know where to find the body. Even if a human did, I’m only useful to fae. Same as you or Gabriel. Well, no, obviously we have other roles, but no one’s going to do this because they want to get into the Saints or they want Gabriel to take their legal case.”

  I paused. “If it was human, it’d be about money. I have that from my inheritance. But that loops back to the problem of a human finding out—both that Todd did it and where the body was buried. Even Todd himself didn’t know the last part.”

  “Someone else might have.”

  He said it quietly, as if afraid to raise the possibility. That made me stop and look at him. Ricky never hesitates to raise an idea. Gabriel or I might. We’re the kids who won’t raise our hands with a potentially stupid question. Ricky has no such qualms. He’ll put it out there with a disclaimer—“I know this might sound stupid”—but he still mentions it, as he should. Fear of looking foolish keeps us from thinking more creatively, spitballing and brainstorming our way to answers.

  So when he hesitated here, so did I. He wasn’t afraid of pushing the possibility this wasn’t fae. There was something about the question that he was reluctant to voice.

  Before I could ask, he waved for me to sit. I did.

  “Ioan says the sluagh didn’t know where he buried Kirkman,” he said. “She wasn’t there at the time, and she never asked. She was completely disinterested in Greg Kirkman and his case.”

  “He was a means to an end.”

  He nodded. “Even most of the Huntsmen didn’t know where exactly to find the body. Ioan buried it along with Wmffre.”

  “Who died as a loyal Huntsman, helping us, which means he is extremely unlikely to have ever talked about Kirkman’s burial spot.”

  “Right.”

  “That leaves Ioan, who wouldn’t talk about it. There’s absolutely no point in that.”

  Ricky said nothing.

  “You think Ioan did?” I asked.

  “No, like you said, there’s no advantage to it. But when you say that leaves him as the only person who knew…” He took a deep breath. “Ioan pointed out another possibility, and I should have come straight here after he did. I’ve been working it through, trying to prove him wrong, so I didn’t have to raise the possibility.”

  “What possibility?”

  “Someone else was there that night,” he said. “With Todd and Kirkman. Todd suspected it. You figured it out. We just…we all forgot that part.”

  “Who…?”

  I trailed off. And then I remembered.

  Sixteen

  Olivia

  I was in the prison. Not the one my father had just been released from, but one I knew equally well. Ricky had taken the afternoon off, and he was working from our place while “hanging out” with Todd—a nice way of saying he was babysitting my father.

  I waited in a private visiting room. When the door opened, I’d have loved to have been feigning interest in my cell phone as an excuse to not look up right away. But my phone was in the car. Otherwise, I’d have had to hand it in. So I sat with my hands folded on the small desk, and when my mother walked in, I had to look up.

  After my father had been acquitted, half the online comments were from people who supposedly always thought he was innocent. They could tell, just by looking at him, that he wasn’t a killer, and twenty-three years in prison hadn’t changed that. What they meant was that he didn’t look like a monster. He was a good-looking guy with an open face and an easy smile. Nothing harsh or even hard about him.

  The early photographs of my mother had gotten a very different reaction. It wasn’t a guilt-ridden expression or haunted eyes. Just the opposite. There’d been a toughness in Pamela Larsen that rubbed people the wrong way. A defiance. A self-confidence. Terribly unbecoming in a young woman. And while she was attractive enough, people had found her wanting compared to my father. He was a solid eight, and she was maybe a seven, and if the gender roles had been reversed, that would have been fine, but it didn’t seem right for guys to date downward on the scale. Believe me, I’d gotten my share of that when I’d dated Ricky.

  Now, though, Gabriel made sure that any article on Pamela’s case included an updated photo of her. A prison photo, one where she slacked her perfect posture and hid the steel in her eyes. Without those, she looked like a pleasant middle-aged woman. She’d put on thirty or forty pounds in prison, which took the edge off her figure, quite literally. It softened and rounded her, and when she gave just the right smile, a little bit shy, a little bit uncertain—and totally fake—you couldn’t believe such a woman killed anyone.

  Today, Pamela wasn’t getting a photo taken, so when she walked in, her posture was military straight, her eyes expressionless. A woman who dared you to underestimate her. When I saw my mother like this, my heart ached with wishing things could be different between us. This was a mother I could be proud of. A mother I could learn from. A mother who was everything I wanted. Yet Pamela had done things that meant we could never have that relationship, and if she’d done what I now suspected her of, this would be the last time I saw her. I would make sure of that.

  When she spotted me, those eyes softened. She smiled. Not her fake smile of harmless maternal affection. We were long past that charade. Instead, I got a smile of pride and her kind of maternal affection—fierce and unyielding and dangerous to anyone who crossed it. She looked at me the way I wanted to look at her.

  “Eden,” she said and gave me a quick embrace, the guard knowing better than to do more than clear her throat at it.

  My mother turned and nodded, and the guard retreated to her corner. Well trained. Probably well compensated. Since Pamela had become the mother of Matilda, fae courted her favor, and however much she hated their kind, she was not above using them. Any guard susceptible to bribery would find Pamela Larsen had developed a network of wealthy and influential benefactors.

  “Have you been watching the news?” I asked as we sat.

  “Considering that your father was just released from prison, I’ve decided to take a break from te
levision and newspapers.”

  “Because he’s out there, and you’re in here?”

  A flash of what seemed like genuine confusion. Then another flash, annoyance at me for being so petty. “Of course not. If the media wishes to congratulate him on his release, then I’m glad for it. He deserves that. But I’m sure there are far less congratulatory mentions of his release, and I do not need to see those.”

  I studied her expression.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  When I didn’t answer right away, she said, “Something is wrong, and it’s related to your father’s release and—shockingly—you think I’ve done something.”

  “Shockingly…because you never do anything.”

  Her expression stayed neutral. “Eden, what’s happening?”

  “Last year, I gave you a name. One Seanna passed to me.”

  She didn’t say the name. She knew better with the guard in the room. She only nodded for me to continue.

  “Someone dug into the past,” I said. “Quite literally.”

  Her brows knitted for only a second. Then she said, “He’s been…?”

  “Yes. An anonymous call led the police to him. The same call sent them to my front door this morning wanting to speak to Todd.”

  She swore under her breath. “Tylwyth Teg. It must be. Or other fae.”

  We didn’t bother to hide this part of the conversation. If the guard could overhear, she’d think she was mistaken.

  “Not Cwˆn Annwn?” I asked.

  A dismissive wave. “No. They held up their end of the deal. They’ve made mistakes, but honest ones, which they’ve rectified. You might call them fae, but they’re not. I have no issue with the Cwˆn Annwn. This is fae.”

  She sank into her thoughts for a minute. Then she went still and looked up sharply. “You think I’m the anonymous caller?”

  Before I could answer, her face darkened, eyes snapping. “I would never hurt your father like that.”

  I raised my brows. It was all I had to do. Her cheeks flushed. “We agreed on that. He insisted. You know it.”