by Lisa Regan
The world returned to me in increments, and Linnea waited with me. The sounds of the television, of cars driving past outside, muffled noises from TK’s room became clear again, as if someone had merely turned up the volume. My body parts switched on one by one, reactivating and announcing themselves by sensations. I felt my feet first. They were cold. Then the aching in my fingers and the soreness of my red-rimmed eyes. Gently, nausea rocked me back and forth.
“Come here,” Linnea said. She pulled me into her arms, pressing my head against her bony shoulder.
“He’s gone,” I mumbled.
Linnea stroked my hair. “I know, baby,” she whispered. “I know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
KASSIDY
October 6th
Fat white clouds rolled across the Portland sky, shrouding everything in gray as the last mournful notes of TAPS faded into the distance. The entire service was held graveside. There hadn’t been a viewing, although I wouldn’t have gone to it if there had been. I was too ashamed to stand in the receiving line and look Jory’s wife in the face.
There were almost two hundred people. The only sounds were the rustling of bodies as people leaned on each other for support and pressed tissues to their eyes, trying futilely to stem the flow of tears. An occasional sob erupted from the throng of people gathered around the gravesite. The civilians—friends and family members—wept openly. Half of Jory’s colleagues were in uniforms—a sea of blue. The other half wore suits. All of them stood ramrod straight, steely-eyed and stoic, daring the grief to come closer, to take them in. Only their eyes, dark and full with unspoken pain and unshed tears, hinted at the true depth of their sadness.
Linnea and I blended in easily with them, although I could not stop the tears from streaming silently down my cheeks. Linnea supplied me with tissues from her pockets as we hung back on the fringe of the crowd. Remy Caldwell passed by me, but we didn’t acknowledge each other. Later, after the service was over and Jory’s casket had been lowered into the ground, I spotted Remy talking to Jory’s wife.
I didn’t even know her name. I had never wanted to know. I hadn’t known anything about his real life—the names or faces of his loved ones and friends or even what he was really like. I had known a different, private man. It seemed alien that I was carrying his child.
Watching Remy Caldwell comfort Jory’s grieving widow, I realized I hadn’t known Jory at all. What would I tell his child about him? Fresh tears blurred my vision. I gripped Linnea’s arm and slipped on a pair of sunglasses.
“Be cool,” Linnea said under her breath.
Jory’s widow spoke quietly to Remy, her arms clutching the folded American flag that had topped Jory’s casket. The widow was thin and not at all what I had expected, although I hadn’t spent much time envisioning her. She had auburn hair and freckles. Her face was pale, in stark contrast to her red-rimmed glassy eyes. Mostly she looked stunned, like she didn’t understand what was happening. It was as if even after watching her husband’s body lowered into the ground, she still did not really know what was going on. She searched the faces around her, as if looking for someone to make sense of things, to explain. How could this happen? What did it mean?
A short, stocky man crept up behind her and slipped an arm around her waist. She leaned into him, and his hand slid down to just above the curve of her buttocks. It had the familiarity of a lovers’ embrace.
“Well she didn’t waste any time,” Linnea muttered under her breath.
The widow’s words caught in the air—fragments of what she was saying—like stray leaves tumbling through the cemetery. “—hadn’t seen him in weeks.”
Remy nodded. “I’ll bring the rest of his stuff to your place,” he said.
My knees felt rubbery. My stomach growled loudly. Linnea glanced at my belly. “Are you kidding me? You ate a pound of bacon before we left the hotel—at least.”
I shook my head and gave her arm a squeeze. “Just get me out of here,” I mumbled.
Fifteen minutes later, I stood on Route 26, looking at tire tracks while Linnea paced along the shoulder of the road. The accident had happened just over the crest of a hill. The road was heavily wooded on either side. The nearest house was at least a quarter mile down the hill. I knew that Portland’s Accident Investigation Division had already questioned the homeowner, but he hadn’t seen anything. Occasionally, a cluster of cars passed by, but mostly the stretch of road was deserted.
“What are you looking for?” Linnea asked.
“I don’t know. I just know that something isn’t right. You don’t just crash into a tree for no reason.”
“You do if you’re about to hit an elk. Remy told me they think that’s what happened—he may have come up on a group of them crossing the road and had nowhere to go.”
We had, in fact, seen a handful of elk on the side of the road on our way out there but still, I wasn’t buying the elk theory. I shook my head vehemently. “No. He would have had time to stop.”
Linnea glanced back behind us. “Not if he was coming over the crest of the hill going over forty miles an hour, Kass. Look at the tracks. He tried to stop.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Stop trying to make sense of this. It doesn’t make sense. Something is not right.”
Linnea sighed. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. It never does when we lose someone—”
“Don’t give me the grief talk!”
As I moved onto the shoulder with her, she touched my forearm. “Hey, I’m just saying don’t turn this into more than it is—sometimes accidents just happen.”
I pushed her away. She followed me as I descended from the shoulder of the road to the mangled tree that had caused Jory’s death. My heels sunk into the soft earth, and the unruly grass tickled my ankles. Remnants of the Ford Taurus Jory had been driving lay on the ground around the tree. Its large trunk was splintered and streaked with black paint. I knew from the accident report that there was no rear-end damage to his car—nothing to suggest someone hit him from behind to cause the accident. I also knew that he hadn’t hit the tree head on—the point of impact was the driver’s side door.
I glanced back toward the road and tried to picture it. Jory traveling over the crest of the hill, a herd of elk crossing, him slamming on the brakes, losing control of the car. I imagined him jerking the wheel as he approached the tree. Why would he turn the car so that the driver’s side was exposed to the tree?
Again I shook my head. “No. This isn’t right. I don’t see how he could have lost control of the car. Look how far we are from the road. He should have had plenty of time to stop or at least to slow down. He should have tried to avoid hitting a tree, but instead he turned into it.”
Linnea folded her arms across her middle. “Okay,” she said. “Then what happened?”
I spent a few more minutes studying the area around the tree, trying to put it together in my mind. What had caused him to lose control of the car, to turn the wrong way?
Before I could answer Linnea, my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and answered.
“I’m at the gas station,” TK said without preamble.
My heart thumped. TK had offered to look into Jory’s death. He must have known that I wouldn’t be able to let it go so easily. I had hardly seen him the last three days as he worked the Megan Wilkins case and Jory’s death simultaneously. He was a good friend, a good investigator.
Since Jory had been driving a department car, his travels were documented by GPS. Remy had told us that he had stopped at a gas station on Route 26 after leaving my hotel. “And?” I prompted.
“The surveillance shows him pumping gas, talking on his phone. Then he walks out of the frame. He leaves his car there at the pump and walks toward the road. He’s gone for about a minute, and then he comes back.”
“You can’t see
what he’s doing?”
“No. The camera only overlooks the pumps,” TK explained. “He walked toward the street, but there’s nothing there and on the other side of the road is just houses. I canvassed those, but no one remembers seeing anything.”
“Are you there with the manager? Find out which cashier was working that day,” I said. “If it was a woman, she’ll remember Jory.” Women always do, I almost added. “Maybe she’ll remember what he was doing when he walked out of the parking lot.”
“I’m on it,” TK said and hung up.
I dropped the phone back into my pocket and stared at the tree again. I stared until my body felt cold and stiff and my feet were freezing. There were no answers there. Finally, Linnea gripped my arm and led me slowly back to our vehicle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WYATT
October 6th
Wyatt woke to the sound of dogs barking. He staggered from his couch and parted the curtains at the front window of his house. It was just a neighbor’s dogs barking at a passing jogger. He plopped back onto the couch and rubbed his temples. He had been dreaming of blood again. Lately, that was all he dreamed about—the blood. He saw their faces now. It had been twenty years, and he still had few memories of that night. He knew what it had looked like when the beast was finished—his parents’ bodies laid open side by side in the bed. Their faces were streaked with blood. Their mouths hung open, and his mother’s head was turned just slightly toward his father, as if she’d looked to him for saving before the knife found her.
Wyatt remembered the dark wood paneling in their bedroom made darker by splatters of blood. The sheets tangled among their legs, tie-dyed and shredded. They had been so still—all stiff and quiet, asleep with their eyes open in their bed of carnage. He remembered the sensation of waking up as if he’d simply been asleep on his feet at the foot of their bed, bloody knife in hand.
He was asleep, then he wasn’t. He wasn’t there and then he was.
He remembered everything that came after—telling his sister to hide in the basement, calling the police, jail cells, judges, lawyers, the trial, juvy. But he had never been able to remember the act—how he’d done it, the looks on their faces, the sounds they’d made. Lately though, his dreams allowed him glimpses. At least he assumed that’s what they were. He had no way of knowing whether the images were real or just his tortured imagination extrapolating on details he’d found out after the killings.
He tried to blink away the image of his mother’s bloody face, her mouth an O shape, blood bubbling out of it. He blinked again and he was standing in the dark outside Kassidy Bishop’s house. He was well concealed in his usual spot.
“What the hell?” he muttered. He looked down at himself. He was still in the sweatpants and black tee-shirt he’d been wearing when he had dozed on his couch. He patted himself down to see if he had brought his cell phone at least. He hadn’t.
“Shit.” How long had he been there? He clenched his fists open and closed. Her house looked dark. She likely wasn’t home from Portland yet. He turned his head toward her driveway to see if was still empty. White hot pain shot from his shoulder blades into his neck, exploding across the base of his skull. He gasped and clutched the back of his neck. Ever since he’d woken to find Jory Ralston’s wallet in his hotel room, his neck and back were killing him. It had taken him less than a day to find out Jory Ralston had perished in a car accident. Based on the agony he was in, Wyatt could only surmise that he’d been involved in the accident, although his rental car was unscathed, and there were no witnesses or any indication in the police report that a man had fled the scene of the accident.
Wyatt had no idea what had happened.
Now Kassidy would be raising her child alone. He hadn’t fully digested it yet—her having Ralston’s child. It seemed so improbable. She wasn’t showing. Other than the pregnancy tests and the vomit in her trash the last several weeks, one wouldn’t even know that she was pregnant. He wished he could talk to her about it. Why a child? Why now? Obviously, she’d been in love with Ralston. Wyatt grimaced. He flashed to the two of them outside her hotel in Portland. The look of adoration on her face. The words that Wyatt was certain she’d never said to a man before. I love you. Wyatt blinked again to put it out of his mind. He sighed. That was behind him now. Ralston was dead. There was no sense upsetting himself over it.
At the moment, other things were more pressing—like his plan which was going straight to hell.
He needed help.
He returned home and booked a flight to New York City. He hated to do it. He hated going there almost as much as he hated going to New Jersey. Even though the person he needed to see lived near Central Park—the only part of New York City he could tolerate—Wyatt still did not want to go. It was filthy and closed in, filled with throngs of dirty, rushing people everywhere you turned. He always felt like he couldn’t breathe when he was there.
He used a prepaid cell phone. Dustin DeMeo answered on the third ring. “There are three things I cannot resist.”
“Women, wine and winged creatures,” Wyatt answered.
Dustin laughed. “Ah, my good friend—what are they calling you these days?”
“George,” Wyatt said. “George Harbison.”
“What can I do for you, George?”
Wyatt hadn’t spoken to Dustin DeMeo in four years and yet Dustin got right to the point. That was what Wyatt loved about him. “I need some medication,” Wyatt said.
“What kind?”
“Painkillers, anti-inflams and, uh, I need some Klonopin.”
“What?” Dustin’s tone changed abruptly. Now would come the questions.
“Klonopin. I need Klonopin. I’ve been losing time again,” Wyatt muttered.
“How much time?”
“Enough. Look, I need those meds. Can you get them or not?”
There was a long silence punctuated by a heavy sigh. “Yeah, but you know where you have to come to get them, right?”
“I’ll be there in twenty-four hours.”
“Fine. George?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this like the Chicago incident?”
Wyatt closed his eyes. “No,” he said. “It’s worse.”
“Holy shit, George.”
“I’ll be there in twenty-four hours,” Wyatt repeated.
Wyatt had met Dustin DeMeo when they were both sixteen. They’d been incarcerated together in a juvenile detention center. Their birthdays were a week apart. When they were eighteen, they were turned back into the world with nothing but their wits and the clothes on their backs.
Dusty had taken Wyatt under his wing once they were released from juvy. Dustin was the only guy Wyatt had met in juvy who wasn’t there for a violent crime. Dustin had hacked not just his local school’s computers, but the computer systems of the surrounding five districts. He was a master forger and a pathological liar. At fifteen, he’d wreaked havoc with an entire county of teachers and administrators. Every student in the county had straight As. Those stunts had gotten him in trouble. Embezzling $40,000.00 from the retirement funds of three local teachers had landed him in juvenile detention.
After juvy, the two of them had lived in New York City and Philadelphia. Dusty had given Wyatt some basic lessons in forgery, lying, stealing and embezzling. He’d mentored Wyatt in creating new identities. He’d gotten Wyatt into Drexel University using forged paperwork. Wyatt could have lived in the lap of luxury using what Dusty had taught him—stealing and defrauding people—but he preferred to make an honest living. He’d taken the degree he’d earned under an assumed name and started his own business developing software programs and selling them to the government. While few things Wyatt did were technically legal, he did earn his living instead of stealing it from other people.
Dustin DeMeo was the closest thi
ng Wyatt had to a friend, and he was the only living person who knew Wyatt’s true identity. They’d kept each other’s secrets for almost twenty years. Dustin’s voice interrupted thoughts of their shared history. “I assume you’re still obsessed with that FBI agent.”
“That’s inconsequential,” Wyatt said.
The receiver of the phone erupted with Dusty’s raucous laughter. “You really do need that Klonopin, my friend, because you are delusional.”
Wyatt resisted the urge to tell Dusty where to go. He needed those meds. His sanity and his work depended on them. The Klonopin wouldn’t stop the beast from taking over, but it would keep his anxiety level down and lessen the chance of him losing time. He gritted his teeth. “Just get me what I need,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
KASSIDY
October 6th
The mood at the Portland Homicide Unit was somber, to say the least. In addition to being a stellar detective, Jory had been well liked by his colleagues. Many of them had congregated at the bar after his funeral to drown their grief in alcohol and celebrate his life by telling stories about him. TK and I had been invited, but we had declined. I smelled beer on Remy Caldwell’s breath, but I didn’t say anything. If I could, I’d drink myself stupid for a week. I thought suddenly of the last hours I had spent with Jory and felt dizzy. I sat in a chair in front of Remy’s desk, across from him. TK stood beside me, one of his feet tapping against the floor. He had definitely had too much coffee that morning.
Remy stared at us, the deep circles under his eyes intensifying as he grimaced. “Jory died of injuries sustained in the accident. There was no foul play in that sense. But we are treating his death as suspicious. It is under investigation,” he said.
