by Scott, R. J.
Family. The more he had researched the more his
gut told him that his mother had run for a reason. Senator Thomas Bullen really did appear squeaky clean, and there was nothing concrete tying the other two brothers to anything worse than conjecture and hearsay.
Some said the Bullen brothers had Albany tight in
their grip and made their money in many ways that weren't considered entirely legal. There was nothing in the way of
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convictions for any of the three brothers, in fact their donations to charity and their solid image as businessmen belied any of the rumors that circled them.
Police murder reports, details of aborted drug raids, and then Manny stopped the slideshow on one particularly gruesome image. A car perched in a terrifyingly steep angle near the bottom of what appeared to be a ravine. The photo was part of a news report detailing the loss of life of Emma Bullen and her son Robert. Manny focused in on the picture and Beckett found he couldn't look away.
"Manny—" Kayden warned.
Beckett assumed Kayden was warning Manny not
to show such a visual reminder of what had killed his mother. Silently he thanked the other man for the thought but he was twenty-one now and he had to face this.
"It's fine," Beckett lied, "I've seen it before. Austin had a copy and it's in the newspaper archives. It's the first thing I looked up when I found out who I really was." He paused as he recalled the details. "The whole thing just says that Emma Bullen, my mom, lost control on a bend and the car smashed through a guardrail. It burst into flames on impact but the report assures the reader both her and I would have been dead before the car burned." He wanted to add something flippant but nothing came to mind.
Grabbing another chair he turned it the same way as
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Kayden's and mimicked the other man's position.
"I'm sorry," Kayden offered.
He wouldn't look at him. Beckett didn't have time to wonder why. "I was four," he continued. "I don't remember the accident. Or my real mom. What else is in the files?"
Changing the subject would be good. He never imagined it would be a good thing to have blurry eyesight but tears pricked behind his eyelids and made his throat tighten with emotion.
"Move it on, Manny," Kayden said. The next photo was more of the same police reports.
"Our analysts are fine-tooth-combing every article and its relevance. But this one here is a separate photo so it sticks out as quite interesting. I have software clearing up the image but to be fair it's a grainy shot to start and this isn't the movies. I can't make visible what isn't even there in the first place. With close inspection though, I'm thinking this here," he pointed at a shadowy figure in the middle,
"seems like Senator Bullen at first glance. We checked the photo against others of a similar quality that were ascribed to him in newspaper reports. They match with a probability of ninety-seven point four percent. We're guessing the busty blonde on her knees isn't his wife."
Kayden peered up at the photos. "What is this?
Footage from a street camera or something?"
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"Something like that. Certainly not the best quality.
Still, I've seen worse used in blackmail situations which is probably what this is. Unless, of course, his own brother was having the senator tracked." Manny shrugged.
"What about the other files?" Beckett considered that a reasonable question and Manny looked at him
thoughtfully.
"This is where we are struggling. They don't appear to mean anything. I broke the code easily enough but there are just pages after pages of codes. Could mean anything; off shore deposits, payoffs, black accounts. I'm running them through every length of code I have, legal and mostly illegal, but without context it's difficult to crack."
"How long will it take?"
"Certainly longer than a typical episode of a cop drama," Manny deadpanned. "This isn't television you know, these things take time."
"You'll upload the results when—"
"As usual."
Beckett remained half watching the photos as they
faded in and out on the big screen as the other two talked.
So many loose threads there. Police reports? Why would Gregory and Alastair have copies of police reports? Unless of course that was what they used to hold over Headley to ensure he was more than willing to shoot Elisabeth Costain.
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One caught his eye and he leaned over to touch the screen to back up and then pause on the picture of a young
woman. It was an old report and the details were difficult to make out. Not least because his eyes were tired and his vision blurring. He looked for a zoom option and finding it he focused in on the photo and the name. Helena Watson didn't sound familiar, but the picture? The woman under the bruises with dark hair scraped back from her face? He stared intently past the blood and the cuts and the swelling around her cheekbones and her split lip. Beckett's heart fell.
He knew this woman. The talking had stopped and both Kayden and Manny were looking at the same picture.
"What is it, Beck?" Warmth suffused him. Although he couldn't be sure whether it was the possibility of a break they had here or whether it was because Kayden had
shortened his name to Beck again. He pulled himself back to what had caused him to stop. The dates matched. It was certainly possible it was her.
"That's my mom."
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CHAPTER 8
Silence.
"Seriously, I'm pretty sure it's my mom… I had a clearer photo of her in my wallet but I left that back at the house along with my chain." Self consciously he rubbed his thumb over the wrist of his broken arm where the chain would normally wrap. It helped him think. "Can we get a photo from somewhere to check it against?"
"If we had a photo I could run a facial match,"
Manny said quickly.
"So for some reason my mom was arrested, or no, wait, this isn't an arrest record, this is a domestic abuse call.
With the names changed. Did Gregory do this to her?"
Beckett stopped.
"We'll find out," Kayden reassured him.
"Hello?" The voice came from yet another screen.
Austin Mitchell, in suit and tie, looked confused as he peered into the camera and fiddled with settings.
"Sir," Beckett immediately moved so he could see and be seen. A smile filled with affection softened Austin's tired features.
"Beckett. I am so very pleased you are safe."
"Me too," Beckett answered unnecessarily.
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"We have a few questions if you could spare us the time?" Kayden interrupted the pleased-to-see-you-alives.
All business, he listed briefly what they needed; a photo of Emma Bullen to scan, a key that would match the one
Beckett had, and most of all information on the accident, on what he knew—on anything.
Manny added. "And we need a code of some sort
for the box alongside the keys, Beckett has his half but there must be something you have as well."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Austin looked
drawn and Beckett suddenly realized he didn't want the older man spilling his guts with an audience.
"Could you give us some time alone," Beckett said gently. Manny didn't argue, he just stood and left the room.
Kayden hovered uncertainly for a few seconds but then he too left the room pulling the door s
hut behind him. Austin sighed but he didn't hesitate to begin his explanations.
"I had great affection for your mother. Maybe I should have told you when you first came to visit me, but I was selfish. If no one else knew then they couldn't take what I felt for her. Does that make any sense to you?"
Beckett shrugged. He was trying to feel compassion
but the level-headed side of him just wanted information that would make sense of all of this. He thought back to the day he had visited Austin after the man had contacted
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Beckett on the day of his birthday. Handing him the parcel, all Austin had said to him was that he had been entrusted to ensure Beckett received the bequest. Clearly there had been more.
"Emma was special, you know?" Austin stopped and slumped back slightly from the monitor his end.
"Okay," Beckett said encouragingly.
"I worked for her with my father. Her parents, your grandparents, left her a small amount of money that I helped to administer with my father. It was part of my apprenticeship when I was at University and I was smitten.
Your mom was beautiful, with brown eyes and long dark hair. You have a look of her about you." The last he said with a fond smile.
Beckett nodded. He saw some of his mother in
himself as much as he saw some of his biological father.
"She was kind to a young man finding his way in the world, hell I was only twenty-three; certainly not brave enough to take on the man she was marrying in any kind of fight for her. You have to understand she was in love with Gregory Bullen. He was the dangerous type and could have any one he wanted. Girls seem to like the bad guys."
"He's dead," Beckett interrupted.
Austin nodded. "I saw in the papers. Some nonsense about an accidental shooting and the senator being
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distraught with it coming so close to the death of his aide."
There was sarcasm dripping from every word.
"Don't believe a word my uncle says. There's
nothing I saw that links him to anything wrong but I have met him on five or so occasions and I don't like him."
Beckett shuddered at the memory of the press conference that his uncle wanted them to have about the return of Robert Bullen, the missing nephew. Gregory had nixed that immediately; said he wanted Beckett kept quiet. It wasn't the only time Beckett saw Gregory and Thomas Bullen at odds with each other.
Austin nodded and then changed the subject. "Your mom approached me some three years or so after your
birth. We would meet annually to discuss her small estate and the way it was tied to any children she had. Every visit she grew more insistent that every penny of hers, although she never touched it and it wasn't much, would go to her children when they reached twenty-five, else to charity and not to her husband. I didn't question that even if it wasn't any more than a few thousand dollars. Very often amongst the wealthier of our clients there are agreements in place to avoid tax and she had married into a very rich family.
Anyway…" He paused as if collecting his thoughts.
Beckett didn't interrupt. He remembered Austin
telling him there was no money from his mom's estate. It
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hadn't meant anything in the grand scheme of things. He had just found out who his biological parents were. That was shock enough.
"So, you were, I guess, three when she visited me. I remember she was dropped off and I remember that she bought you with her. You carried this teddy bear that was almost the same size as you and you sat next to her. A very serious little boy. She said little. We discussed the weather and the usual things and then she encouraged you to sit in the corner and play with LEGOs and we talked quietly.
There were things she said. She was furious, not scared, never scared. She had found things out inside the family that she had hidden away so that she could keep you safe.
Leverage she called it."
"What had she found?"
"I don't know. She never said. But she had brought the means for you to one day find out if you wanted to."
"What did she have with her?"
"You and your teddy you had with you. The two
letters. One for me to safe-keep and one for you to receive on your twenty-first birthday."
A shiver ran down Beckett's spine. Connecting his
mom to the two events, the leaving of the letter and him opening it, made him close his eyes in the overwhelming size of the connection.
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"She said I was only to tell you about the other letter if you came to me wanting help. She told me I wasn't to do anything with the letter to you if she remained alive. I didn't know what she meant but when I asked her she said she hoped your life would be quiet and that you would never need to see the letter because she would find some way of getting her and you away from Gregory Bullen."
"She didn't."
"No," Austin bowed his head and his shoulders slumped. "She called me. Asked me to help. She was terrified, said someone was trying to kill her and that the same person was hurting her and you. I was to meet her here and when she arrived she gave me you and then she left. She said she had to go back to get other things that she had found but that I had to take you away immediately. She never made it home. She had died in the car accident. I had friends of friends in Seattle. The Jamieson family. They took you in. I paid over her estate to a charity, all above board. The rest is history."
"I was never in the car."
"No," Austin said softly.
"Who hurt her, Austin?"
"I don't know. She wouldn't tell me. I would love to say I knew but I don't. I just know that whatever she left for you was her way of giving you your own leverage against a
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family that had her trapped. There was nothing in the letter she left for me, no evidence or anything. What was in your letter?"
"Just a note about hiding a key in my old bedroom behind carving and a note suggesting you had the other key. Turns out the two keys together open a safety deposit box, so they say here."
"Oh my God." Austin inhaled sharply. "She didn't?
I thought it meant nothing. I have the key and my part of the code." He seemed to be in mild shock, leaning back in his chair and placing a hand over his chest. "Do you know what she put in there?"
Beckett sighed. "I wish I knew. Can you hold up a photo for the technician here to do a screen capture? There are police reports of a young woman who had been abused.
I think it was her. Manny, the tech guy, wants to try and match photos."
Austin hung his head, "I thought that might be
happening. Believe me, Beckett." He lifted his gaze and even across the Internet Beckett could see the sadness in the other man's face. "I told her she should get away, call the cops. She just said the cops weren't to be trusted. Said they looked after the Bullen family. She was so damn loyal to that man she was married to."
Beckett had to change the conversation. He couldn't
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handle thinking about his mom being so trapped that she couldn't leave a man who hurt her like the police photos showed. Beckett was sure it was her under the blood. "Do you have a photo of my mom? The one you gave me is
back at the mansion in the mountains. I didn't get to take anything with me when they extricated me." Apart from a bloody torn letter and that key.
"I do. Wait here a minute." Austin disappeared from the screen and then came back a few seco
nds later with a photo that he held up to the screen. Beckett looked for a way to capture the image but one-handed and with this blinding headache he couldn't see a way of doing it.
He opened the door and called for Manny to come
back in the room and in seconds the Sanctuary team had a program running facial matching on the police report and the photo Austin had.
No one was surprised when the photo of the
beautiful dark haired woman matched the battered and bruised police photo in the abuse file.
Least of all Beckett.
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CHAPTER 9
The place was quiet.
Manny had gone to pick up the key and code from
Austin who said it was for the best. Austin apparently wanted nothing to do with old mysteries. Beckett didn't argue. The Bullen family had fingers in every pie and a small town lawyer involved in this mess was the last thing Beckett wanted.
Kayden was off God knows where doing God
knows what, mumbling something about feeling trapped and tired as he walked away.
Beckett felt trapped. He was just as exhausted with
the whole situation—an emotional basket case, unsettled, his mind full of tumbling thoughts. He curled up on the huge sofa. Talking to Austin had made him think hard on a few questions he had. He knew now how, as a four-year-old, he had managed to escape a wrecked burning car. He hadn't actually been in the damn thing. Why did he have no memory of any of that day? Surely something as traumatic as being ripped away from his mother would have left some kind of scar? The questions had only occurred to him when he was listening to Austin's voice and remembering the image of the car. When he had visited Austin before it had
