Every Fear

by Rick Mofina

  “I’m Jason Wade from the Mirror. Can I talk to you, sir?”

  Lou Rifkin stared at him as a female paramedic tended to his hands.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Rifkin’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. His eyes were large and turned to the ruins, as if he were still searching the fire when he said, “I did my best to save them. I did everything.”

  A shadow crossed Jason’s notepad and he met the stone-cold face of a uniformed Seattle police officer with Rifkin’s witness statement affixed to his clipboard. He eyed Jason’s press tag.

  “You step back, we’re not done here.”

  “Sure.”

  Moving away, he spotted Grace Garner’s unmarked Chevrolet Malibu among the police vehicles. Then he saw her among the plainclothes detectives, huddled in front of the house comparing notes. He leaned against a fire truck and she acknowledged him with a subtle nod. After the detectives had dispersed, she approached him.

  “You’re fast,” she said, watching as more crime scene investigators in white jumpsuits entered the house.

  “Is it true? This is the van and you’ve got two victims?”

  “It’s definitely the van.”

  “And the victims inside? One is Dylan Colson, right?”

  She looked at Jason with his pen poised over his notebook.

  “We have no confirmation on the identity, or number of victims.”

  He closed his notebook, took stock of who might overhear, then lowered his voice.

  “Does this story end here?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can you say who lives here?”

  “I can’t confirm that yet. It appears to be a rental and the people here kept pretty much to themselves.”

  “Well, what can you tell me?”

  “Not much.”

  Disappointment settled on his face.

  “Grace, I’ve gone through hell already holding a story on this case. I’ve cooperated and worked with you. I think you owe me.”

  “I owe you? Dammit, Jason. Look”—she nodded to the yellow tarp aftermath—”it’s going to take time before we can process that van to confirm who died. At this point, we only have one witness account. And it’s shaky at best. We honestly don’t know much at this stage. Have you ever seen the corpse of a fire victim? You can’t even distinguish gender at first. So give me a break. This isn’t all about you.”

  He ran his hand across his face and stared at the yellow tarp trying not to dwell on the fact Dylan Colson’s little corpse—or whatever remained of him—was under it.

  “Spangler’s leaning on me, I’m sorry.”

  “Grace.” Dupree was holding up shoe covers and latex gloves. “They need you inside.”

  “I have to go.”

  Kay Cataldo met Grace at the front door. After Grace slipped on shoe covers and gloves, Cataldo led her through the house.

  “Please walk in my steps,” Cataldo said, quickly recapping the preliminary inventory. “We checked after the responding officers and it appears there are no other victims. The house is empty. But we’ve found something critical.”

  Grace took stock of the place as they came to the stairs.

  “Up here.”

  Cataldo led her to a bedroom and a desk with a laptop computer. Next to it, there was a single sheet of paper, already sealed in a clear evidence bag. The page was a computer printout.

  TO WHOEVER FINDS THIS:

  I am sorry for all of the pain I caused. I have asked God to show me the answer and I have decided to go to Heaven with my baby.

  Please do not hate me,

  Nadine Getch

  53

  By the strobe of emergency lights, Grace Garner cursed God in a secluded corner of the yard, where she had gone to be alone to study her notebook and the words she’d copied from the suicide letter.

  “I have decided to go to Heaven with my baby. Please do not hate me, Nadine Getch.”

  Grace flipped to a color printout of Nadine’s Washington State driver’s license. The address came up as a P.O. box in Seattle. Her date of birth put her at thirty-two years old. Two bottomless black wells of sorrow stared from her face.

  Grace reviewed Nadine’s license status. It came back clear. They had run her information through the Washington and National Crime Information Centers.

  No hits.

  They tried the WASIS, Washington State Patrol’s Identification System. Nothing. They checked for any outstanding warrants or summonses for Nadine Getch. Nothing came back.

  No fingerprints on file, no criminal record.

  They still had more local, state, and out-of-state agencies to check. And they still needed to positively confirm who died in the fire. An autopsy would take time. Maybe dental records to match the remains. Was Nadine Getch even a true name? Grace wondered, coming back to who else was lying out there under the smoldering ash.

  Dylan Cohort.

  Why kill a baby? Why, goddammit? Why?

  She searched the stars for the answer, battling her sense of utter defeat. She’d lost this one. But why? Why? It just couldn’t end like this.

  It could.

  And it does, she told herself. It just does. That’s how things work in this world. Grace knew that firsthand. Amid the lights, the drone of fire trucks, the funereal, smoky air of crime scene work, she was hurled back through her life, to the truth.

  The truth of that awful day. The reason Roger Briscoe came to Mr. Lorten’s English class with a gun and plans to kill everyone.

  The firecracker pop. Screams. Terror. Panic. Grace approached him, not afraid because she knew the truth as she inched close enough to look into his eyes.

  “Roger, please put the gun down.”

  “No.”

  “Please. Why are you doing this?”

  “You know why, Grace.”

  She did.

  The night before, after she’d broken it off with him, he told her that she would live to regret it.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Wait and see. And remember, it’ll be all your fault, Grace.”

  After it happened, the counselors had absolved her of guilt. But she could never forgive herself. She was haunted by her failure, the same sickening sense of failure that overwhelmed her now as she stared at Nadine’s picture and the ashes, the evidence of another defeat.

  I’m so sorry.

  Her cell phone rang. The number came up for Perelli, her partner.

  “How’re you doing, Grace?”

  She hesitated to catch her breath.

  “Fine.”

  The silence that followed screamed her lie. But they let it pass until Perelli said, “You know, we’ve got to tell the Colsons now, brace them for the worst before word gets out.”

  “I know. I’ll leave for the hospital soon, like in ten.”

  “You did good work, Grace. Don’t forget that. We were getting close.”

  “It doesn’t mean much now.”

  “I know it’s small consolation, but your reluctance to suspect Lee played out. But he did meet Beth, that’s why his poly was inconclusive.”

  “The towing company found something?”

  “Just got it confirmed. They went nonstop through old records, like you’d quietly requested, and they found some kind of note going back some seven months. Turns out Lee had serviced Bannon’s Toyota. Explains his fingerprints on her car.”

  “What about the envelope with his home address and the notation about payment?”

  “She mailed a cash payment later. It was confirmed by a note the shop found, that Lee brought in cash she’d mailed to his home.”

  “So what’s the connection to Nadine here?”

  “We’re still working on it, but it has to be through Beth.”

  “Well, none of it means jack shit now, does it, Dom?”

  “Stay focused, Grace. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we don’t. But we never, ever, surrender.”

  “I’ll remember that when they
bury the baby.”

  “Grace, you listen to me and stay focused.”

  “Thanks, Dom.”

  David Tanaka and Al Sprung from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office were working with the CSI people and two investigators from the Arson Unit, photographing and picking over the charred remains of the blaze where it had cooled. On her way to see them, Grace saw Jason trot to the crime scene tape and wave her over.

  “Grace,” he said, paging through his notes, “I just talked to Lou Rifkin’s wife before they took him to the hospital.”

  “This’ll have to wait.”

  “No listen, everyone knows that at the time of the abduction in Ballard, witnesses reported seeing a woman and a man.”

  “So? That went out in the alert the other day.”

  “Ellie Rifkin told me just now that she’s pretty sure a woman and man rented the house. The Madison place, she called it.”

  “You got a question?”

  “Your victims, are they male and female?”

  “We don’t know. And we’re well aware of the suspect descriptions from before. We put them out, remember? We’re trying to confirm a few things. It takes time.”

  “What’s that?” Jason’s pen pointed to Grace’s clipboard and the page with Nadine Getch’s driver’s license and photo.

  Several tense moments passed with Grace staring into Jason’s face before she came to a decision. What the hell. She pulled him aside between a fire truck and a marked Seattle patrol car.

  “I’m going to show you something, but you cannot print any names without confirming with me first.”

  “What is it?”

  “Swear.”

  “I swear! What is it?”

  She showed him Nadine Getch’s information.

  “Who is she?”

  “We think she’s the one who took Dylan and we think—” Grace glanced around as firefighters hauled equipment to the garage. “We think she killed Dylan in a murder-suicide.”

  Jason stopped writing.

  “The baby’s dead?”

  “All indications are pointing to a murder-suicide here.”

  “Christ. Oh no. I have to call it in.”

  Her hand moved fast, stopping his from reaching his cell phone. “Jason, you just swore that you’d wait until I confirmed with you.”

  “All right, yeah, what about Maria Colson, Beth Bannon, and Lee?”

  “Maria Colson has recovered.”

  “Recovered? When?”

  “Look, there are a lot of loose ends and we’re working on them. I gave you this name so that you can dig into her background on the QT. It’s most likely an alias. Still, do not publish anything until you talk to me first, got it?”

  “Detective Garner?”

  Kay Cataldo, a surgical mask under her chin, was approaching carrying a brown paper bag and a sheet of paper, which Grace signed after receiving the bag.

  “What’s that?” Jason asked. It was the size of a small grocery bag, the top folded closed. “What’s in there?” he asked, walking alongside Grace to her car.

  “I can’t release that information.”

  “Grace?”

  After getting behind the wheel, she placed the bag carefully, almost reverently, on the floor of the passenger side.

  “Is it evidence?”

  She nodded, then turned her ignition.

  “Something I have to show Lee and Maria Colson.”

  She drove off, leaving Jason guessing about the contents. He watched the taillights of her Malibu until they vanished.

  Then he pulled his attention to the crime scene investigators working on the human remains covered by the yellow tarp in the middle of the blackened ruins.

  The death flag.

  54

  Of all the things she faced as a detective, telling parents their child was dead was the duty Grace hated most.

  A piece of her died every time she did it. For despite all of her training, all of the grief counseling courses she’d taken, it never got easier. Each case was different. Sometimes people collapsed in her arms, or punched walls, or screamed.

  Or just stood there in numbed silence.

  And what Grace was going to do now, had to do now, broke all of the rules. But on her way to the hospital, over her cell phone, her sergeant assured her that it had to be done.

  “I think it’s cruel, Stan. It’s bad enough that we failed them.”

  “It’s hard, but it’s critical at this stage of the case for identification purposes. CSI says there’s not much to go on.”

  Dawn was breaking when Grace arrived at Swedish in Ballard. Perelli met her at the emergency entrance.

  “Lee’s with the chaplain and Dr. Binder in the chapel.”

  The early morning light colored the stained glass as Grace and Perelli entered. Seeing them, Lee Colson stood. He embodied exhaustion and anguish as his mouth began forcing out words no father should ever have to speak.

  “Is my son dead?”

  The chapel’s hanging wall fountain gurgled for several long moments as Grace steeled herself.

  “Lee, there was a fire involving a vehicle that we have confirmed as the van used in Dylan’s abduction. We have indications that two people were killed in that fire.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “You have to listen to me carefully. We have no confirmation on the identities of the victims. We believe one is an adult—”

  “And the other one?”

  “The other appears to be a small child. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this way.”

  White flashed in Lee’s mind, blinding him. He saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing but the blood hammering in his ears. He’d been bracing for his wife’s death.

  And now his son’s.

  How much more was he supposed to take? A raw, deep-pitched, agonized groan filled the chapel and was swallowed by the sound of the flowing water.

  “Lee, listen to me, we don’t have all the answers yet and until we know everything, we can’t be sure of anything. You have to brace yourself for the worst but be strong for Maria.”

  Lee buried his face in his hands and stayed that way for a long time. As the water bubbled, the chaplain, doctor, and detectives sat in respectful silence while Lee gasped for air.

  “How long before you know?”

  “Everyone is doing all they can as quickly as they can, but we have to do it right.”

  “Who did this?”

  Grace exchanged glances with the others as she placed Nadine Getch’s driver’s license photo in Lee’s hand.

  “Do you recognize this woman?”

  Grace scrutinized his reaction, trying to read his body language. His breathing quickened, flaring his nostrils as he glared at Nadine.

  “No. Maybe yes. Dammit, I don’t know.”

  “Take it easy, Lee. Take it easy. Do you know where you met her? Can you tell us anything about her?”

  As Lee shook his head, his face tightened, his breathing quickened.

  “She did this! This woman murdered my son! Who is this stupid bitch? She better be dead, because I’ll fucking kill her!”

  The photo fell to the floor as Lee Colson broke down.

  It was a long time before he pulled himself together, at least to the extent that he could accompany Grace and the others to the elevator where they ascended to his wife’s room.

  They would tell Maria Colson the worst thing in her life.

  With the elevator humming like a dark chorus, Grace adjusted her grip on the brown paper bag and swallowed.

  Maria Colson was alert, pacing next to her bed. She looked at the people who’d entered her room, including Special Agent Kirk Dupree. Her hopeful, fear-filled eyes searched for a sign of her baby.

  “Did you find him? Is he okay?”

  “Maria,” Lee said, “something’s happened.”

  “I heard the nurses talking about finding Dylan. It was on the news. Then they said that my TV’s broken. No one knows anything. Tell me they found
him, Lee.”

  Her words carried hope but in her heart, Maria knew when Lee sat on the bed. He took her hands. His were big, callused from his hard work, and they were trembling.

  “We have to prepare for the worst.”

  Struggling to understand, she began shaking her head.

  “Maria, they found the van. There was a fire and they think two people are dead inside. A woman and a—and—and oh honey, I’m so sorry—our baby boy…”

  “No. Lee. Oh no! No!”

  Maria’s mouth went dry, and her scream ripped into the hearts of everyone who heard it. Lee’s strong arms held her so tightly they kept her from falling off of the earth.

  Dr. Binder exchanged glances with a nurse. Little could be done for Maria now. A sedative could be administered, but despite Binder’s protests, the Seattle Homicide Unit had to do something more. Lee held her for several minutes before Grace stepped forward.

  “Maria”—she adjusted the table that reached over the bed—“do you recognize this woman?” Grace put Nadine Getch’s photo on the table.

  Maria nodded and sobbed into Lee’s chest. “She’s the one who took him.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’ll never forget her face and the tattoo and her hand.”

  Grace looked at Dupree and Perelli.

  “Do you know her? Have you ever seen her before?”

  Maria shook her head.

  “It’s my fault! I’m a bad mother. I never should have left Dylan outside the store.”

  “No, Maria,” the chaplain said. “You must not blame yourself.”

  Grace placed the paper bag on the table.

  “Forgive me for doing this, but we’re trying to confirm things.” Grace swallowed. “We believe the fire was deliberately set. There was an explosion. It caused a great deal more damage than there usually is in a fire of this nature.”

  Grace glanced around the room at the others who knew that damage was a euphemism. Grace cleared her throat. “What I want you to know is that it may take a long time to confirm identifications. Do you understand?”

  The Colsons stared at the bag, then at Grace, who was tugging on latex gloves.