The Library: Where Life Checks Out

by Carmen DeSousa

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, but you have to swear you won’t mention my name to anyone, especially those involved, and you can’t write my name in any reports while you investigate the case. And whatever you do, don’t mention to Mrs. Davis that I spoke to you.”

  Mark narrowed his eyes, but nodded. He’d dealt with plenty of CIs over the years. “Okay. But I can’t stop the courts from issuing a court order for you to testify.”

  “Just don’t write my name on any paperwork until you make an arrest.”

  “Okay,” he acquiesced, knowing he didn’t have a choice if he wanted her to talk to him. She was obviously scared for some reason.

  Jay clasped her hands and rested them in her lap. “First of all, did Andrew Davis tell you he dated Buck’s daughter all through high school?”

  Knowing it was never smart to interrupt a witness, Mark shook his head and attempted to keep the shock off his face. No. Captain Davis had failed to mention that tidbit of information over the phone last night. The moment he’d been made aware of the victim’s ID, he should have offered that information. Mark held his gaze steady while he waited for Jay to continue.

  “Buck was in a lucrative business deal with Gregory Burke, who had just taken over his father’s business. His family was one of the wealthiest landowners in town, and he just so happened to start dating Buck’s daughter after she’d broken up with Andrew.”

  “Wait,” Mark interrupted. “Gregory Burke of the Burkes?”

  “Yes. Gregory had dated Laura Allan all through high school but broke up with her his senior year and pursued Jessica, Buck’s daughter, per his family’s insistence.”

  “That’s enough!” Mark shouted. “Who put you up to this?”

  Jay tilted her head as though confused. “Excuse me?”

  “Laura Allan is my mother-in-law to be, Andrew Davis is my boss, and I just worked the death of Gregory Burke’s son six months ago, and you’re trying to tell me you just came up with all of those names off the top of your head, and they all have connections with a murder twenty-eight years ago?” He slammed his hand against the stack of books, feeling the sting, but not caring. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that Mrs. Davis knows about all this.”

  Jay nodded. “Mrs. Davis would do anything to save her precious library, Mark.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mark slammed through the door, not concerned if anyone was on the other side. “What the fu—” He bit his tongue. Not needing to find himself suspended for insubordination, he continued but was still indignant. “What the hell is going on, Cap’n?”

  Andrew Davis calmly rose from his chair and walked around the desk without a word. He passed where Mark stood rooted in front of his desk and closed the door. He walked past Mark again and took his seat in his chair, narrowing his eyes. “Sit down, Mark,” he bit out.

  Mark didn’t want to sit, but he did as ordered. Though he didn’t sit respectfully. Instead, he plopped down onto the soft leather and crossed his arms in defiance. He couldn’t wait to hear Davis’ explanation.

  Davis steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on the desk. “What exactly is it that you think you know, Mark?”

  Mark chewed on the inside of his lip, a smile threatening, as he watched the captain attempt to belittle him with his body language. Mark uncrossed his arms and leaned back in the chair, watching as his superior mirrored his actions. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning, Cap’n?”

  Davis let out a chuckle in response.

  Tit for tat. This wasn’t going to go well, Mark realized. How would he interview the man who had taught him how to interview a suspect? His best bet was to keep quiet, he decided. Hope that Davis would want to clear his name of whatever he thought Mark had on him.

  “I see you detained a suspect this morning,” Captain said. “Didn’t have enough to arrest him, though?”

  “He wasn’t a suspect. Just a vagrant I found wandering around the library. Nevertheless, we had an interesting conversation,” Mark said, allowing Davis to assume what he wanted out of that scrap of information. Maybe he’d think Wild Bill had told him about his connection to the case.

  “Yeah. About what?”

  Mark leaned forward. “You know, Cap’n, you slipped up the morning at the library.”

  Davis leaned forward a fraction in response, but catching his automatic reaction, he busied himself with shuffling papers on his blotter. “I’m not hiding anything, Waters. Yeah, I knew Wade Buchanan, but I didn’t want to identify him without being certain.”

  “Uh-uh, Cap’n. You knew it was Wade Buchanan before we even saw him. When I asked you if I could take Ashlyn’s phone call, you said ‘the old man’, as if you’d known him personally. As though you dated his daughter at one time.” Mark inched forward another inch. “Now, do you want to talk to me, Cap’n, or do I need to start asking around?”

  Captain Davis scratched his nose for a brief second then spit out, “Margaret told me it was an old man. I didn’t kill Wade Buchanan, Mark. And until you have your facts clear, I suggest you be careful where you tread, Detective.”

  Mark released a long breath and nodded. “I’m not suggesting you killed anyone, Cap’n. But all of a sudden there are a lot of connections to you and your wife.”

  “Wild Bill tell you that? Strange that he’s been gone for years, and all of a sudden just shows up in the last six months. Hanging around my wife’s workplace.” Davis nodded as if he were thinking about the situation, wondering how much to tell. “Yeah, I’ve been keeping my eye on him. Never trusted him. Used to be a cop, but got canned for being on the take. Gambling problem. Owed a lot of debts. He was in good with the chief at the time, though. So his infractions had been overlooked a few times.”

  Mark nodded. There were always two sides to every story: the truth, and the way everyone else remembered the truth. Unfortunately, most people were revisionists. No one ever remembered all the facts of a story, only what best suited them.

  Davis sniffed and sat back again, a wide smile lifting his cheeks. “Didn’t mention that, did he? Did he also forget to mention your soon-to-be mother-in-law and your fiancée’s unborn child’s grandparents? I’d start there if I were you, Waters.” Captain Davis got up and walked to his door, resting his hand on the handle. “You’re a smart man, Mark, but I’d suggest you get your facts straight before stampeding into my office again.”

  Mark stood to his full six-four and strutted past the older man whom he’d always looked up to, but now he realized how much shorter he was. He hoped Davis’ reputation would at least stand tall through Mark’s investigation. Because captain or not, Mark wouldn’t cover for anyone who broke the law.

  Even as a young boy, Mark’s father had drilled into his head the importance of telling the truth, no matter what the situation. Even taking the video tape with Ashlyn on it from the night of Devin Burke’s death had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever done, but it had been the right thing to do, and thankfully, Captain Davis had agreed.

  Now there was no telling what would happen.

  Davis opened the door for Mark, making it clear he’d terminated their conversation, as though his comment hadn’t been a sufficient enough hint. “By the way, the city’s not fronting overtime to solve the case of a murdered homeless man, so I’ll see you on Monday morning.”

  Mark stopped in the doorway and turned to his superior. “I’m still in charge of the investigation then, I take it?” If Davis had wanted to, he could have kicked him off and put Townsend in command. Of course, he hadn’t done that to begin with, so maybe he really hadn’t known it’d been Buchanan.

  “Yep. I have no concern that you’ll find anything implicating me in the death of Wade Buchanan. Get some rest and then do the job I know you’re capable of, son.”

  Still ticked that Davis hadn’t disclosed his relationship to the victim, he made one last remark before leaving, “We do need to discuss your relationship to the victim, Cap’n.”
>
  “Monday,” Davis said with finality.

  Mark glanced at his phone for the time then made his slow way to his office on the other side of the station. Townsend was still gone, so maybe he was having some luck. Then again, on that side of town, Tim may have wandered into a seedy men’s club looking for witnesses and then decided to begin his Friday night festivities earlier than usual.

  Mark mentally dissected the information he had, wondering how it all connected. He stopped cold. His father would have investigated the Buchanan case. He headed straight to the records room, hoping he was correct. Granted, if anything implicated Captain Davis, he’d probably already had it shredded eons ago, but it was a start.

  Mark signed out the file and then made a beeline to his car. He knew where to get any information that wasn’t in the file: his mother’s house. His father had kept duplicates of every file he’d ever worked, and since Mark worked at the same police station, he’d requested that his mother just store them in the basement.

  Since it was still early, and he knew his mother would have barely taken time to eat breakfast, let alone lunch, he sent her a quick text to let her know he was on his way with her favorite. He wished she’d want something fancier, but a meal deal at Taco Bell was the extent of his mother’s excursions.

  His mother sent back a quick, “Yay!” She was the youngest fifty-year-old woman he knew. She’d only been in her early twenties when she’d met his father, but his father hadn’t looked his age. Although he was almost two decades her senior, they’d enjoyed everything together. It saddened Mark that his mother had been widowed so young, but she never seemed to want to date anyone after his father had been murdered. Of course, at the time, his death had been suspected to be a suicide, so the idea that he’d been unhappy in their marriage had always plagued her.

  Mark had only found out in the last year that his father had been murdered. He shook the thoughts from his head. He hated thinking about the woman who’d killed his father, leaving his mother widowed. Hated that he had to find out the way he had. He’d meant to visit her in prison, but he still wasn’t sure if he could face her.

  After going through the drive-thru, Mark headed to his mother’s house, a three-story English Tudor in one of the quietest and safest neighborhoods in Edenbury. On a third of an acre and more than forty-eight hundred square feet, the house was entirely too large for his mother. But she had a clear deed, and his father’s military pension and social security were more than enough to sustain the lavish house she’d begged his father to buy when she was pregnant with Mark. Her rationale for wanting the house, she’d told Mark, was not because of its size, but because she thought it looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  With its original woodwork and stained glass, Mark had to admit it did have a storybook appearance, but it wasn’t a cottage by any means. Unlike most homes built in the early nineteen hundreds, his mother’s house boasted bedrooms that were up to three hundred square feet. The den that she’d turned into her home office was twenty-foot long by twenty-foot wide and looked out over a redwood deck surrounded by lush green landscaping.

  Mark parked his police cruiser outside the three-car garage and climbed the outside steps that led to the kitchen. He knocked to let her know he was there, but then used his key so she wouldn’t have to get up, even though he knew she would anyway. After she did one more thing on her computer, that is.

  The temperature in the house still felt comfortable, but in the next few months, the kitchen and den would be the only warm rooms by way of small furnaces.

  Mark stepped off the rustic tile in the kitchen onto gleaming hardwood floors in the hallway. His mother had always kept them beautiful. He knocked on the wood frame that bordered the entrance to his mother’s in-home office and then shook the Taco Bell bag. “Lunchtime, Mom.”

  Cheryl Lynn, as his father had always called her, looked up from behind her laptop and flashed him a smile, but then quickly started typing again. “Hang on a second, sweetheart. Let me just finish this tweet.”

  She spoke her typed words aloud as she attempted to fit everything she wanted to say into a 140-character message. He’d created a monster when he introduced her to the online world. Not only did his mother spend all day promoting her business, she now spent hours socializing with people around the world about whatever caught her fancy.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about her being lonely. Rarely did he come by the house and not find her chatting away—and laughing—which made him feel great, so he was happy with the monster he’d created.

  His mother smacked down the cover on the laptop and got up from behind her desk. Mark closed the distance and allowed her to wrap her arms around him first and then he enfolded her completely in a tight embrace.

  Cheryl Lynn leaned back and stared up at him from her five-four, one hundred and thirty pound frame. “I have the best son in the world. Thank you, Mark.” She took the bag from his hand and peered inside. “Perfect. Let’s go out on the deck. It’s too gorgeous to stay inside.” She peeked up at him again. “Are you sure you aren’t still growing?”

  Mark squeezed his arm around her shoulders. “No, Mom. I think you’re getting shorter.” He laughed.

  She laughed too, but then grimaced. “That’s probably true. Where’re Ash and my grandbaby?”

  Mark loved that about his mother. She knew the baby wasn’t his, but she’d never asked questions and had already accepted Ashlyn and her son as her family.

  He pulled out a chair for his mother. “Ashlyn went to Erie to spend a few days at her grandmother’s place. You know how she loves the property there.”

  “I do. She’s always telling me as soon as she has the baby she wants to tackle my overgrown forest.” His mother narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t her mother living there, though?”

  Mark pulled in a deep breath, appreciating the scent of jasmine, but then let it out with a sigh. Evidently, Ashlyn and his mother had spoken more than he knew. “Yeah. I hate her being gone, but I guess it’s a good thing. From what I understand, they made a breakthrough in their relationship.”

  His mother patted his hand. “That’s good, Mark. I can see that her being away is causing you stress, but don’t give Ashlyn a hard time. I’d tell you to stop worrying, but that would never happen. So instead, I’m going to tell you to give Ashlyn her space. She’s been through a lot, but she loves you.”

  “I know, Mom. Thank you. I’m trying.”

  “You’ve always carried the world on your shoulders, Mark, but Ashlyn’s a smart, independent woman. Be a strong shoulder for her, but don’t smother her.”

  Mark raised his hands. “Have I done something that I should know about?”

  “No, but I know you. You’re just like your father.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Not at all, sweetheart. You possess all the wonderful qualities your father had and even more.”

  Mark cocked his head. “Such as?”

  “You talk,” his mother responded immediately. “Your father held everything inside and tried to handle all situations on his own. Maybe if he’d told someone what he suspected, he’d still be alive.”

  Mark reached for his mother’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She smiled. “See… What do you have to be sorry for? You were a child.”

  Mark chuckled. “I don’t know. I’m just sorry that you’ve been alone for so long.”

  She unwrapped her burrito, squeezed two packets of sauce inside, then deftly wrapped it again. “I’m not alone, Mark. I happen to have the best son in the world.”

  He smiled. “Thank you, Mom.”

  “Thank you for lunch.” She took a bite and then gazed out at her yard.

  Mark decided to wait until after lunch to bring up looking at his father’s files. It was too nice sitting quietly with his mother. Something he needed to do more often.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Once again, Mark found himself in the library. He blindly lumbered
his way up the stairs, using his hands to guide him until his eyes adjusted. At the end of the same aisle where he’d spoken to Jay the previous day, a long table held what resembled a panel of judges, or maybe it was a line-up of suspects. The room was dark and misty, but he recognized each of the four faces. Mrs. Davis; Captain Davis; his soon-to-be mother-in-law, Laura; and Gregory Burke all sat behind the rectangular table.

  Each of the persons involved in his case had a hardback book on the desk in front of them. Because of the tattered and worn condition of the novels—the spines barely held together—Mark couldn’t make out any of the titles.

  “Do you know who’s responsible, Mark?” Jay’s cool breath saturated the tiny hairs on the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. Her slender hands moved down his arms, lifting them. He froze, not sure what she wanted or what secrets she possessed.

  Why was he dreaming about Jay? He realized he was dreaming. Knew these four people hadn’t just positioned themselves in front of him, offering to confess their connections to the deceased.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Jay? How are you involved?”

  “I’m afraid,” she whispered.

  Mark turned around, his immediate reaction to protect the innocent. He’d always defended others; even in school he’d protected smaller students from bullies. “Why are you afraid?”

  Jay’s golden eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Because you won’t believe me.”

  Mark stepped forward to comfort Jay, but then a loud bang behind him shook the books on the surrounding shelves. He wheeled to see Laura Allan banging her gavel against the book in front of her. “I told Ashlyn you were no good for her.”

  “But I—”

  Davis slammed his gavel next, cutting off Mark’s defense. “You’re a lousy detective, Waters. Why are you wasting time with a librarian instead of chasing down real leads?”

  “I’m not with Jay—”

  Mrs. Davis whacked down her gavel directly after her husband’s remark. “Have you found out who killed that old man, Markey? Why are you wasting your time talking to her?”