“Alex Millar must have said something to upset you, Noah. I understand that. But unless you tell me what it was, I don’t know how to help you. And if that Millar kid goes and messes with your head again, and you lash out again, they’re going to need to take action. If they kick you out of school, then what?”
“I don’t care.”
Blake’s hands firmed on the wheel. Noah sat beside him, three boxes of fresh pizza stacked on his lap. Lucy stretched out on the backseat. He’d taken his son on his errand run after their school meeting, reluctant to leave him home alone. The bed of his pickup was loaded with the paint and the rest of the supplies he needed to continue his renovations on the Crabby Jack. It was getting dark. Rain beating down harder now, the pizza scent mingling with the smell of wet dog.
Blake drew up to a T-junction at the coast road, wipers clacking. He felt so goddamn alone right now. No manual for this shit. His thoughts turned again to his dad and Geoff, and how he himself had tried to protect his older brother against his father’s machismo frustration with his artsy son who’d had zero taste for the marina life. Bull Sutton had been driven by old Victorian attitudes probably beaten into him by his own dad. He’d always been quick to resort to the physical, be it to reprimand, or fix something with his bare hands. Bull could have done with the softening touch of his wife, and in retrospect, Blake suspected his mom’s death had been incredibly rough on his father.
But he’d have learned nothing from his own childhood if he hadn’t learned that bullying his boy into line was not going to work. He needed to earn Noah’s love. To do it he must stay calm, receptive, open. Kind. Patient. He inhaled deeply, fighting his urge to drive directly to Millar’s garage.
He glanced at the three pizza boxes on Noah’s lap, then at the clock on the dash. On impulse he turned left instead of right, heading up toward the southwestern subdivision that ran along the forest fringe.
“Where are we going?” Noah said, suddenly sitting up straighter.
“You going to talk to me, now?”
But Noah turned his head to glare out the rain-streaked window.
Blake punched on the radio to fill the void. A music jingle sounded, and the program cut to the host.
… this is KCYJ-FM, your eyes and ears, the voice of the coast. And in today’s town buzz, a little bird tells us that our own Shelter Bay celebrity, Meg Brogan, has returned to take up the gauntlet laid down on air several weeks ago by Seattle-based Evening Show host Stamos Stathakis, who challenged her to write the Sherry Brogan story. Her arrival has rekindled an interest in the old murder, and the Coast Gazette tweeted this morning that its lead reporter is working up a feature on the old crime that once shattered this town …
Shit. She was already stirring things up.
Noah looked at the radio, then up at his father, a subtle shift in his energy. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” he said.
“You going to talk to me yet?”
Sullen, Noah turned away again.
Blake wheeled into the last street and drove along the row of houses that pushed up against the woods. “I’m going to see if an old friend is home.” He hesitated, then thought it might be good for Noah. “She used to know your mother. They were in the same class at school.”
Noah scratched at the sticker on top of the pizza box. “What’s her name?”
“Meg Brogan.”
Noah’s eyes flicked up.
“She had a really rough time as a kid growing up here in Shelter Bay. She lost her mom, like you, when she was young.” He slowed as they neared the Brogan house. “Her sister and father died, too.”
“How did they all die?”
Bingo. He’d found a window in. Blake went for it, figuring a degree of honesty was the best policy in regards to a story that was clearly going to be at the top of the local news. He cleared his throat. “Her sister, Sherry … she was attacked by a bad guy—”
“A bad guy killed her?”
“Yup, then her dad, who was really angry, went after the bad guy. And—” Shit, why did I start this … “And he shot him.”
“Dead?”
“Yup.”
Noah stared at Blake, his mouth open, intrigue lighting his eyes. “Was that who they were talking about on the radio—Meg Brogan, and her sister, Sherry?”
Blake stole a glance at his son. Then he said, “Yes.”
“And you knew Meg at school, too, as well as Mom?”
“I knew her most of my life. From when I was even younger than you.”
“Did you go out with her?”
Where’d that question come from?
He cleared his throat. “I did. She was my very good friend. In lots of ways. She used to spend a lot of time at the marina with me and your uncle Geoff.” Blake turned into the Brogan driveway. The gates that had been chained shut for so long stood open wide. The house brooded under heavy trees in the mist and rain. He stared at the lurid graffiti as he drove slowly in.
“What about Mom?”
“Meg was long before your mother, champ. Meg left Shelter Bay almost the day she graduated from school.”
“Why?”
“To get on with the rest of her life.”
He pulled in behind Meg’s camper, along the side of the house that was mostly in darkness. The front living room windows were still boarded up. A rush of anxiety, and something darker, trickier, chased through Blake, as if taking a step with his son into the old Brogan house might be crossing a point of no return. Was there such a thing, if a person had free will? He turned off the ignition.
Noah was staring at the side wall, which had been tagged with red spray paint. “Who wrote that stuff?”
“Vandals. The house has been standing empty for a long time. It happens.”
Noah looked at him. A small link had re-formed between the two of them. Blake said a silent prayer of thanks, and took a deep breath. “You okay sharing some of that pizza, bud?”
TRANSCRIPT: Part I of recorded interview, TYSON MACK
Date: 8/12/1993
Duration: 41 minutes
Location: Chillmook County Sheriff’s Office
Conducted: Sheriff Ike Kovacs and Detective Jim Ibsen
Present: Lee Albies, defense counsel
Meg scanned quickly through the transcript preamble, paused, and pulled the lamp closer to the document. It was prematurely dark inside the living room with the boarded-up windows. She read more slowly.
TM: I told you, I brought her home. Sherry was fine when I brought her home.
SK: Home? Like, to her door?
TM: Um, no. Almost home. I—
SK: You did, or didn’t bring her home? Which is it now?
TM: I dropped her at the far end of the street, at the trailhead to the path that runs along the forest, behind the last row of houses on Forest Lane. She was fine. She was laughing.
JI: This is Detective Jim Ibsen, badge ID 439, entering the room.
SK: Why on the forest path? Why not outside her house?
TM: She didn’t want her parents, her father, to see me with her.
SK: And why would that be?
TM: She … um …
SK: Because you have a bad rep with women, Mack, is that why? Because Jack Brogan knows your type?
LA: My client can’t speak to Jack Brogan’s state of mind.
TM: It’s not like that—
LA: Ty, you don’t have to answer that.
SK: What is it like, then?
LA: Ty—
TM: I dropped her off! She was fine. It was all consensual, fun. I went home. She was fine.
SK: We going to find your DNA on her, Mack? Under her nails? In those condoms? Did you strangle Sherry Brogan after you fucked her, or while you fucked her? We going to find your semen inside her body, Mack? That pretty girl Sherry all twisted and dead in the dunes. What did she say to upset you?
LA: Sheriff, that’s enough. Unless you’re going to charge him, we’re outta here. Ty?
TM: I did not hurt Sherry. I’d never hurt a woman. We had sex, yeah. It was … energetic intercourse, so yeah, you will find my DNA. She wanted it. She went with me because that’s what she wanted!
LA: Ty?
SK: And you know what a woman wants, do you, boy? Was it good sex, was she a good one, Mack? Got a little too rough, maybe? Got out of hand, maybe? You had to put her in her place? Did she say no at any time?
JI: Lee Albies and Tyson Mack are leaving the room.
SK: Cat got your tongue, boy?!
JI: Kovacs, easy. Give it time. We’ll get him. We will.
Meg inhaled, and looked up from the transcript. She was losing track of time. She’d been reading all through the previous night, falling asleep only briefly atop the papers. Dirty mugs littered the table. The room smelled of stale coffee. From her mother’s journal she’d deduced that her mom had secured most of these documents as copies from Tyson Mack’s defense counsel, Lee Albies, a top Portland criminal lawyer who’d scaled back her law practice when she’d relocated to Chillmook County to begin her segue into retirement. In Chillmook she’d volunteered part-time with a public defender consortium.
She’d taken on Tyson Mack’s case as part of a long-standing personal crusade against what she perceived as class prejudice in the justice system. Tyson Mack was disenfranchised and being made a scapegoat, in her opinion. He’d been the son of an illegal alien mother who was deported when he was three, after which he’d been “raised” by Keevan Mack, an alcoholic father with a history of aggression and an attempted sexual assault conviction under his own belt.
There was everything in these boxes from police interrogation transcripts to witness statements, Sherry’s autopsy report, and crime scene photos—which Meg had not managed to psychologically brave up to yet, not after her first glimpse of a stark black-and-white image of her sister’s naked body spread-eagled in mud. She’d placed those reports in a separate folder, which she’d work up to later.
Meg had also found that Lee Albies still had an address and phone number listed in Chillmook, the large town a few miles down the coast that gave the county its name. The old lawyer had just risen to the top of her interview list.
A vehicle sounded outside and a car door slammed. Meg’s head jerked up, her pulse quickening. Lack of sleep, this reading material, too much coffee, was making her twitchy. She pushed back her chair and moved quickly to the window in the kitchen and peered out. A pickup, black, was parked behind her camper. Shit.
She glanced at the dining room table through the open-plan kitchen archway. The papers were spread out all over the place.
Knocking sounded on the door.
Anxiety speared through Meg. She hurried to the front door, hesitated. No peephole.
No one is going to welcome it. Or you, because of it …be careful, Meg …
She opened the door a crack.
“Blake?”
“Hey.” A grin dimpled his rugged face. A familiar sense of kinship punched through Meg. It was instantly undercut by leeriness.
“What are you doing here? What do you want?”
His grin faded. “You look like shit, Meg—what’s happening?”
Her hand went to her hair. It was swept up in a wild topknot, tendrils spiraling loose all over the place. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, over the top of which she’d thrown one of her dad’s oversize sweaters. She’d found it in his closet. Her mother had kept it all as it was, as though she’d been awaiting Jack Brogan’s return from prison. And when Meg had seen the old sweater, the memories had crushed her. She’d taken it from the closet and buried her nose in it, inhaling the long-forgotten scent of her father, swallowed by memories of being a little girl in his arms, riding high on his shoulders, being tossed in the air, him building her tree house and tending to her scraped knees.
She drew the ends of the sweater tightly across her chest.
“I’m fine. Just busy.”
Blake’s gaze went over her shoulder, into the dark and dusty house.
“I’ve got new windows and the power-washer guys coming tomorrow,” she said, trying to appear normal. “What are you doing here, Blake?”
Then around the side of the house appeared a young boy with pale blond hair, thin face, skinny arms loaded with pizza boxes. The scent of the food slammed her in the stomach. She hadn’t eaten all day. Had she eaten yesterday? She needed to buy some food for the fridge—she was starving.
The boy stared up at Meg. Green eyes. “Hi,” he said.
She brushed her hair back from her brow, self-conscious suddenly. “Hey,” she said to the boy, then her gaze shot in question to Blake.
“What are you doing in the dark, Meg?” He pushed past her, into her house.
“Wait.” She grabbed his arm.
He stilled.
“Just … wait here a minute, please.” She scurried into the living room and began scooping up the whirlwind of papers. He didn’t wait. He came in and stood in the archway, eyeing her as she tried to hurriedly plug all the documents back into their respective folders.
“Just one sec, okay?” She got everything back into the boxes, and opened the wall safe. He watched as she placed the boxes and journal in there and closed the door. She locked the safe.
“There.” She forced a smile and dusted her hands off on her jeans, her heart beating unnaturally fast. The kid stood next to Blake, still holding the pizza boxes, still staring with his limpid green eyes.
“You okay?” Blake said.
“I’m fine.”
“So, can we come in now? Thought you might be hungry.” He gestured to the boy with the pizza boxes standing at his side.
“Sure.” She flicked on all the lights she could find, and blinked against the sudden brightness, her eyes gritty and raw, feeling like a mole startled out into daylight.
“This is Noah. My son. Noah, this is Meg Brogan.”
Meg froze. She turned slowly around. Her gaze lit on the kid. She stared, seeing him anew—why had her brain not jumped to this conclusion instantly? Why had her mind been resisting the obvious? He even looked like Allison, had her pale coloring. Her eyes lifted slowly, met Blake’s. He was watching her intently.
“I … didn’t know you had a son.” She cleared her throat. “Good Lord. Hey, Noah—nice to meet you.”
“Go put those in the kitchen, Noah,” Blake said to his boy. The kid turned, and headed off into the kitchen.
“You look a wreck, Meg,” he said softly, coming close. Into her living room, her space. Her heart beat harder, faster. She gave an embarrassed laugh, pushed more loose tendrils back off her brow.
“I … I guess I should have expected it, that you had children. I’ve been self-absorbed. I … is he the only one, or do you have more?”
“Just Noah,” he said, his eyes holding hers, a strange sort of energy, visceral, rolling off him in waves.
She swallowed, her thumb beginning to absently fiddle with her engagement ring. “He looks like her, like Allison. Like I remember her looking. But he has your eyes.”
“What were you hiding? Putting in the safe?”
Noah returned before she could answer. The kid regarded Meg intently. Her cheeks warmed and she pulled her sweater closer across her chest.
“You knew my mom,” Noah said.
Meg shot another questioning glance at Blake. He offered no guidance. “I … yes, I did, indeed. Allison was in my class. I haven’t seen her for a long time, though. Is she coming over tonight?”
“She’s dead.”
Meg sat opposite Blake at the dining room table, Noah to her right, munching his pizza. It was surreal, the three of them in this dusty, boarded-up house, eating by the glow of lamps. She glanced at Blake’s wedding band again. And he noticed her doing it. He met her eyes in silence.
So, he was a widower. Why did she feel that changed everything? Why did she feel a wild kind of hope? She got up abruptly. “I’m going to make some tea.”
>
In the kitchen, she put the kettle on, and stood staring out the kitchen window into the dark while she waited for the water to boil. Her own sorry reflection stared back, marred by worms of water wriggling down the pane. She glanced at her cell phone lying on the counter. It had beeped earlier. A message from Jonah to call him. She had not returned his call. Blake came in behind her, carrying plates. He set them in the sink.
“I left Noah watching TV. Hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“I’m surprised cable is still connected. I bet they’ve been debiting Irene’s account since she left here. I must check.”
“Dishwasher?” He held up the plates.
“It’s broken.” Yet another thing on the fix-it list.
He ran water into the sink.
“What happened to Allison?” she asked, dropping a tea bag into her mother’s pot—Tara had always loved her tea. It was a habit she’d acquired from her Irish mother.
“Breast cancer. It’s just over a year now that she’s been gone.”
“I had no idea,” she said quietly.
“Of course you didn’t.” He squirted dish soap into the running water.
“I’m so sorry, Blake.”
He didn’t look at her. He scraped the leftovers off the plates, and put the dishes into the warm soapy suds. Meg watched the movement of his big hands. Capable, strong hands. Hands that had once touched her.
“He’s gorgeous,” she said softly. “He really does look just like her.”
He snorted softly and placed a clean dish in the drying rack.
“First your dad, then Allison so soon after, it … it must be rough. You. Noah.”
“We’re coping. We got a plan.” He cast her a glance, smiled, but she could see that it didn’t quite reach into his eyes, or fan out those crinkles.
“Is that why you quit the army?”
“Yes.”
He said no more. She weighed him, trying to read between the lines. And inside her belly a desire started to build, to know more, everything about him. But at the same time she felt she had no right to any part of his life. She was the one who’d left. She had her own plans with Jonah. None of them included Shelter Bay.
In the Waning Light Page 10
