by Dale Mayer
“So what? Everybody who went through that damn school had trust funds.”
“And,” he said, “you have siblings. A brother and a sister.”
Yale glared at him. “And?”
“And,” he said, slowly reaching for the information seemingly buried in the recesses of his brain, “your brother is a mess. Didn’t he get into a spot of trouble a while back?”
“So? He’s the black sheep in the family. My sister is also a highly regarded doctor,” he said. “She’s the good side of the family. I didn’t go either way, just stayed there in the same place and did nothing.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not,” Simon said quietly. “It sounds to me like you’ve made a lot of decisions on the dark side that you’re trying to avoid getting caught up in.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“That remains to be seen.”
Just then, Yale’s phone rang. Swearing, but the gun never wavering, he pulled out his phone, looked down at it, and held it up to his ear, shaking his head. “Yes, we’re leaving,” Yale said into the phone. “Yes, I know. The cops were at your place. I’ll get to you in a few minutes.” With that, he hung up.
“And that just confirms it,” Simon said. “Because I already know the police were after the owner of that blue truck,” he said.
“So what? It’s got nothing to do with me,” he said.
“Were you the one who conveniently stole the vehicle the other night?”
His eyebrows shot up, and he chuckled. “You don’t know anything. You’re just fishing now.”
“All right, put away that damn gun,” Simon said, “and get the fuck out of here.”
“I’d get lost if I thought I could,” he said. “But the fact that you recognized the truck, that’s a problem.”
“Hardly,” Simon said, growing irritated. “I figured your good buddy, the owner of that blue truck, he was out looking for children.”
“That’s an awful lot of figuring you’re doing,” he said.
“It is,” he said. But, instead of taking a step back, he took a step forward.
“Stop right there,” Yale said. His phone rang again, so he looked down, then swore. “I told you that I’m on the way. … Right, I know. I know.” He put away his phone and said to Simon, “I need you to disappear.”
“I can do that,” Simon said readily.
“No,” he said, “like forever.”
Simon’s eyebrows shot up. “Why is that?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I think that’s pretty obvious by now.”
“That’s how you got into school, you know?”
“I got into that school on a scholarship,” he said.
“And because of your foster father,” he snapped.
At the words foster father, Simon stared at him. “I don’t remember anything about my foster father.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, “because he was a wealthy man. I suspect your trust fund should have been equal to mine. But mine is dried up, after a series of bad business decisions. Wish I could pay the lawyers to handle them.”
“Go back to the part about my foster father for a moment,” Simon said, taking a step closer. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Everybody knew who he was and that you were born on the wrong side of the blanket. To a barmaid. He said the stories made it around town without too much trouble, especially for everybody in the school. Everybody was supposed to keep it a secret, and, as such, everybody soon knew everything.”
“I was only in the damn school for one year.”
“But we all knew who you were. Your foster father was Josh Cameron,” he said. “A businessman. A banker and a married man too.”
“What’s this got to do with anything?” Simon said, completely confused.
“That’s the thing. You don’t get it. Because your mother dumped you in with my family. Your foster father was my father. He bought you off your mother. Your foster father—my father—was a pedophile,” he said, with a broken laugh. “And you were one of his victims.”
“One of his victims?”
Yale nodded slowly. “He abused the rest of us,” he said. “I don’t really know how the hell you were rescued, but nobody else was.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes,” Yale said. “Thus the trust funds, remember? For us—not you of course. He disappeared a long time ago and was declared legally dead after seven years. Sometime after he put you in the hospital. Of course we might have had a hand in his disappearance.”
That statement made Simon pause. “But your last name is different.”
Yale gave him a one-arm shrug. “We didn’t want the old man’s curse on us too. When that came out, and he promptly disappeared, looking guilty as hell, we all changed our last names.”
“I didn’t know anything about this,” Simon said, staring at Yale in shock. “After all this time …”
“I was of two minds, whether I should say anything or not, but you didn’t seem to know or to care.”
“Oh, I care,” Simon said in a harsh voice. “I just can’t believe that nobody said anything to me in all this time.”
“You were so young. I was really surprised when you showed up at that school.”
“And you’re what? Eight years older than I am?”
“When you were rescued, you were only six and I was fourteen,” he said. “I was just coming out of it because, as long as you were there, I wasn’t abused.”
“And your brother and sister?”
“Same thing. As long as our dad had a pet, we were safe.”
Simon’s stomach churned at the term. “So you never told anyone, and you never helped me?”
Yale winced. “I stayed friends with you,” he said. “I always wanted to tell you how and why, but I never could.”
“What about your brother? And your sister?”
“My sister is okay,” he said. “She helps my brother.”
“Your pedophile brother? Who owns that blue truck you are driving?”
“Yes,” he said. “But he’s been clean for a long time.”
Simon glanced at the blue truck, then at Yale, and said, “So you and him are abusing the kids?”
“Neither of us,” he said in outrage.
But Simon no longer believed him. “I don’t think that’s quite true,” he said. “I’m pretty damn sure he’s either supplying the kids to you, or you’re paying him for the kids.”
“Oh, well, since you can’t tell anyone after I kill you …” He shrugged. “After you’ve been abused, it’s hard to relate to the world around you,” he said. “I can relate to the little kids. So he supplies them for me.”
“Where?”
“My place,” Yale said. “That’s another reason why I have to leave. They are searching my brother’s place right now, and they’ll find my place next.” Abruptly he raised the gun and fired.
Simon swore as the bullet tore through the top of his shoulder, slamming him against a brick wall. He heard footsteps as Yale walked closer, and Simon knew it would be a killing shot. He gasped in pain and waited for just the right moment. When Yale came close enough, Simon hooked the back of Yale’s knee with his foot, then bolted upright and swung around, landing a hard right fist. The gun fired again and once more, but Yale was already on the way down. Simon kicked the gun free and stomped on his wrist, hard. With his left foot holding Yale’s wrist, Simon slammed his right knee hard into Yale’s gut and held him down.
Incongruously the yellow ball always in Simon’s pocket rolled free to land on the sidewalk beside Yale.
Yale laughed uncontrollably. “Oh my God, how appropriate. It was yours, you know? I kept it all this time.”
Simon responded by jamming his knee deeper in Yale’s gut, as he stared at the man he no longer knew. To even think the ball had been a memento of his nightmare at Yale’s father’s hand and that Yale had even wanted to kee
p it …
Looking up at him, Yale gasped. “Just shoot me,” he said. “I don’t dare get caught.”
“Seems like you should have been caught a long time ago,” Simon said bitterly. “It wouldn’t have taken anything to get the help you needed. Your sister was right there.”
“She’s always been there, but she knows more about what we do than any of us. She’s been trying to help us through it, trying to get us to understand what we’re doing.”
“Is she really though? If two of you are pedophiles, are you sure she isn’t one too?”
Yale laughed. “It’s our only connection to her. It’s the only connection we have to our past and our history. We do whatever we can to keep her. She’s tried to walk away from us many times, but we know how to keep her.”
“What do you mean?” Simon asked.
“Curiosity. Professional curiosity,” he said, with a chilling voice. “As long as we can keep her engaged, we’re part of her life. And that’s what we need. What we desperately need. She is the only family we have. The only family we’ve ever had.”
“So she knows what you do?” Simon asked him, his stomach wrenching in disgust.
“She knows it and questions us constantly on it.”
“How many?”
Yale shook his head. “No clue,” he said.
“Hazard a guess,” Simon said.
“Too many,” he said sadly. “I’ve known this day would come, but I didn’t know when.”
“So why didn’t you get out early?” he asked.
“Because you’re right. I’m a terrible cheater, and I need money,” he said. “I don’t have a job, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep the house. And anything I do that separates me from my brother takes me away from what I really love.”
“Children,” he said.
Yale nodded. “I never abused them, you know?” he said. “I loved them. I just wanted to keep them. My brother couldn’t do anything but abuse them. But he wouldn’t call it abuse either. He would say he loved them.”
“And that little dead girl I found?”
“You found her? She was my China Doll after I got her from the pedo that kidnapped her, but I think it was my brother’s idea to snatch her after he became obsessed with her,” he said, “but she was sick right from the beginning. I knew that she didn’t belong to this world. There was just something very ethereal about her. Still, I held her for a long time, and then my brother took her. He wanted her bad to replace Jason. His beloved pet of so long. He kept that boy for six months, and, after he lost him, he was so depressed that I got worried. He had my little girl only a short time before somehow he broke her neck, but I don’t think he meant to. Still she wasn’t meant for this world. I miss her terribly.”
“You’re sick,” Simon said, staring at Yale, a banked rage inside him. He wanted to blow him apart, but he still had to get information.
“I am sick,” he said. “I’m so very sick. I’m just so tired of it all.”
“Tired of what?”
“The lies, the deceit, the struggle,” he said. He looked up at Simon. “Kill me, please. Just kill me.”
But Simon shook his head. He got up off him, slowly twisted, then rolled him over and pulled his hands behind his back, biting back a groan at his own pain. “You’re not getting out of this that easy.” And he bent down, looking for something to tie Yale’s hands with, when his phone rang. He swore when he realized who it was. “I’m at Hemlock and Broadway area,” he said, “and I have one of your two pedophiles.”
“What?” she roared.
“I don’t have time to talk, please come,” he snapped.
“Be there in five,” she snapped back.
Simon told Yale, “The cops are on the way.”
Yale started to cry. Deep sobs.
“What the hell?” Simon said, sitting atop Yale’s back to keep him here. “What did you know about my biological father?”
“Not a whole lot other than your mother said he was a useless drunk,” he said. “I do know that you were born to a tavern girl, and she was a nightmare. She ended up selling you to my father for barely any money. You were a toddler at the time.”
Simon just stared at him.
“You better take your money back, or the cops will wonder where I got it from.”
Simon looked down at his ex-friend and lifted the money from his pocket, realizing that part was true. He shoved it inside his own jacket pocket, glaring. “Goddammit, Yale.”
“What do you want me to say, Simon? I stayed friends with you because I was part of that whole mess,” he said, “caught between guilt and hatred. I don’t know which was worse.”
“You could have asked for help to get away anytime,” he snapped.
“Maybe I didn’t want to get away,” he said. “Maybe I just want to die.”
“And how the hell will you manage that?” he said. “It’s not that easy to commit suicide while you’re in prison.”
“I figured that, if I told you the truth,” he said, “you’d kill me.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “And the cops aren’t either.”
“It would be easier if you did.”
“Not happening.”
“Damn it,” Yale said, starting to get angry.
“Whatever,” Simon said. “You have to pay the penalty, just like everybody else.” It wasn’t long before he heard sirens, and, as he turned, Kate raced toward him. At least one other and possibly a second vehicle were coming in too. He couldn’t see them yet. He nodded at the gun by his side. “The gun is his. He was trying to figure out what to do with me, when I took him out.”
“And you’re bleeding,” she snapped.
“It’s just a scratch,” he lied, refusing to give in to the pain. “If you take this asshole from me, I can clean it up.”
“Well, what the hell?” she said, looking down at the man on the ground. “We’ve got cops out looking to pick up your brother, by the way.”
Stunned, Yale looked up at her. “What?”
“We’ve got you. We’ll have your brother soon. Now the question is, what we can do about your sister. We’re picking her up right now too.”
At that, Yale started to laugh, but there was a bitterness to it. “You can’t do anything,” he said. “She’s a doctor. It’s client confidentiality. She’s known what we’ve done and what we are all along,” he said. “She’s the same, just that she lives it through us and not through deeds of her own.”
“Which makes a lot of difference but not enough,” Kate said, staring at him in disgust.
“Maybe,” he said, “but you won’t pin anything on her. She’s too smart.”
“That’s not my problem right now.” Kate stood him up, putting handcuffs on him. “What I want to be sure of is that we’ve got you too.”
“It won’t matter,” Yale said. “He’s dead already.”
She stopped, staring at him in shock. “Who’s dead?”
He just shrugged, but Simon knew. He walked round to face Yale, reached out, and clenched Yale’s neck. “He’s talking about Leonard. Tell me where he is. You know that that little boy is Caitlin’s nephew.”
Yale looked at him in surprise and then nodded. “I figured you wouldn’t care. I mean you hate the whole family.”
“That little boy didn’t do anything to anybody. Things would go a lot easier on you if you help the police find that little boy.”
“If you’re here, and my brother has been picked up, it’s already too late.”
“Has he done all the killing for you?”
Yale looked at him, pleading with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t want them to die,” he said. “I just wanted to love them.”
“Address,” Kate barked. As she led him over to the police car, she asked again. “What’s the address?”
Yale shrugged.
Simon said, “Don’t do this, Yale. Tell us.”
He gave the address and said, “In the basement.”
&n
bsp; She nodded, and two cops grabbed him. “Get him downtown. We’re heading over to the address he gave us.” Simon raced to her side. She looked at him and said, “I can’t let you come.”
“No way in hell I’m not coming,” he said, and he got in the back seat of her cruiser, wincing at the pull on his shoulder. But, if he said anything, it would just be more ammunition to stop him from coming. Whoever the other cop was got into the passenger side, and she tore off.
The cop just looked at her. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“Fine,” she said. “You push him out of the car.”
He gave a snort and settled back.
Simon knew he didn’t belong here, but he wanted an end to it. All of it.
“I didn’t know, Kate,” Simon said. “I didn’t know.”
“Know what?” she asked him, looking at him through the rearview mirror.
“That Yale was a pedophile and right in the middle of this,” he said, his voice soft. “I didn’t know.”
Chapter 26
Kate believed Simon, but she didn’t know about her partner. But anybody who’d been abused as a child would understand how absolutely unacceptable it was to be around anybody who thought it was okay to do the same. She turned onto the street where the address was. “Whose house is this anyway?”
“It’s Yale’s,” Rodney said. “The siblings all got one from the trust fund.”
Simon snorted. Yale had never been short of money.
“How come the sister lives in a big fancy house like this,” Kate asked, “and the brother Yale does too. But that one called York doesn’t?”
“They had to sell his to pay for his legal defense, when he got caught as a pedophile,” Rodney said, reading the note off his phone. “That makes sense. The other two never got caught, so they still hold their own assets.”
She pulled up front and shut off the headlights. It was dark out. “You stay in the vehicle,” she said to Simon, behind her. He just nodded. She glared. “I mean it. We’re here with guns, and, with a child in danger, we’re not checking too closely who it is we’re firing on.”
He just gave her the same blank look back.
Frustrated, she hopped out and closed the door quietly. She looked over at Rodney. “Did you call for backup?”
