by Lisa Jackson
“Just let me talk to her. I won’t use her name.”
“I think it’s too late for that.” Rachel heard footsteps behind her and glanced over her shoulder. Harper was at the top of the stairs, peering into her office. “Look, Mercy, I’ve got to go—”
“I’ll talk to her,” Harper said and Rachel realized her daughter had been listening in the stairwell, hearing her side of the conversation. “Don’t hang up.”
“No, Harper.” Rachel was shaking her head. “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
“But I want to.”
“No.”
“God, Mom, what are you afraid of?”
Everything.
And there it was.
“I’ll call you later,” Rachel said into the phone, then cut the connection. “What do you mean, what am I afraid of? Remember last night?”
“Yeah, I do,” Harper said as she entered the room and rested a hip against the edge of Rachel’s desk. “She’s going to print the story. She has to. Don’t you think it would be better if she gets the story straight?”
“Fine, yes. Exactly. But from the police. They have a public information officer who handles this kind of thing and releases only what the police want the public to know so that their investigation isn’t compromised. That way the case is protected, as are the witnesses, people like you.”
“She isn’t the only one who called,” Harper said, folding her arms over her chest. “A reporter from a news station in Portland called me.”
No. “How did he get your number?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but obviously, it’s out there.”
CHAPTER 33
Cade took Rachel’s call as he made his way through the front lobby of the station. He wasn’t the only one working late. Voss was waiting for enhancement of the film, Kayleigh had called and said she was running down a lead on the painter’s tape, and even Donna Jean was at the desk, talking with a short middle-aged woman about a lost dog.
“Hey,” he said, thinking about Moretti’s confession and what it meant to her, the guilt she’d carried and the implications of her own father’s involvement. Richard Moretti, a doctor sworn to care for the injured, and Ned Gaston, a cop sworn to protect lives of the populace, had conspired to let her brother die and allow her to think that she’d shot and killed Luke when he might have survived. Cade wanted to talk it all out with her, but needed to do it face-to-face. For now he paused in the station’s lobby and asked, “What’s up?”
“Bruce Hollander,” she said, sounding frantic. “Luke’s biological father! He’s out of prison now and . . . and I think, no, I know I’ve seen him. Hanging around. Here. At the house!”
“What?”
“Mercedes sent me a picture of him. It was old, but with a little photoshopping, to add years, you know, I saw what he probably looks like or what he could look like now and I’m sure he’s someone I’ve seen here and in town!” She was talking faster and faster, a breathless tone in her voice.
“I think he was here the other night. I mean, I’m sure it was him. He vandalized the door, Cade. Bruce Hollander. And . . . and . . . I’ve seen him at the newspaper office and . . . and I think other places. I’ve had the feeling I’ve been followed, and a few days ago, after I visited the cemetery, a white car was following me. I didn’t say anything earlier because I was imagining things, freaking out as it was the anniversary of Luke’s death, y’know, but then I was talking to Mercy and she said she’d interviewed him and his picture is going to be in the paper, his side of the story and . . . and . . . Oh, God, do you think . . . do you think he might be involved in what happened to Annessa and Violet? Maybe Nate being missing and—”
“Whoa,” he cut in, keeping his voice calm. Steady. “Slow down a second, Rachel,” he said as he processed what she was saying about Hollander and spotting him and the white car. “I’ll come over. On my way. E-mail me the picture Mercedes is going to run in the paper.”
“Okay . . . I will. But hurry!”
“I’m on my way.” He clicked off, his thoughts spinning out. Could it be? Was Luke’s biological father a possible suspect? Could all the interest in the old crime or the anniversary of the tragedy itself have triggered him? And a white car. In his mind’s eye he pictured the white sedan with Idaho plates and the guy who was looking for his dog. As he pushed on the door to leave, he heard part of the conversation going on at the front counter as Donna Jean tried to deal with the distraught woman on the other side, and his phone pinged, indicating a message had come through. From Rachel. With a picture. His jaw tightened as he recognized the photoshopped picture: Frank Quinn, aka Bruce Hollander. And he’d met the man, now a suspect, near Rachel’s house.
He was vaguely aware of the conversation going on around him. “. . . I told you, Mrs. Sanders, we’re doing everything in our power to locate your dog.”
“It’s just that he’s so friendly, he’d go with anyone,” the woman said. Short, middle-aged, wearing a skirt and matching jacket, looking like she’d just gotten off work at an office, she was emotional, fighting tears. “Sometimes he runs off—beagles are known to do that, you know, follow their noses—but Freddy’s always come home and it’s been a week. I’ve been to the local vets and the pound and the shelters from here to Seaside and there’s just been no one who’s seen him.” She swallowed hard. “I know it’s not usual for the police, but could you please, please do something?”
Cade felt his stomach drop. “Excuse me,” he said, and stepped closer to the woman to introduce himself. “I couldn’t help but overhear that your dog is missing. A beagle, right?”
She glanced up hopefully. “Yes.”
He pulled up the picture on his phone and flipped it around so that the woman could view the screen. “Can you tell me if you’ve ever seen this man?”
She frowned thoughtfully and began to shake her head, then stopped suddenly. “You know, I may have. Does he drive a white Buick, like a LeSabre? I’m not a car nut, but my husband had one of those back in the day. A ninety-seven. Brand-new, that’s why I remember. It was a big deal for us to buy it at the time. But his was . . . stone beige metallic, yes, that’s right, that was the color. But what does this have to do with Freddy?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, hedging a little as he didn’t want to get the woman’s hopes up. “But leave your name and number with Donna here.”
“Oh, she has,” Donna said with a pasted-on smile. “Several times.”
But he barely heard her as he pushed his way out the front door and jogged to his truck. He’d call Voss on the way, have her find out from Bruce Hollander’s parole officer where he was, and once he’d made certain that Rachel and the kids were okay, he’d hunt the bastard down.
That was the easy part.
What was more difficult was eventually telling his ex-wife that her father had lied, that he’d been complicit in her brother’s death, that he hadn’t taken an iota of blame for the tragedy and had let it all fall on Rachel’s shoulders.
Until he was certain of the facts and had a talk with Ned himself, Cade decided not to burden Rachel, but eventually, the truth would come out, and then, all holy hell would break loose.
* * *
In Astoria Kayleigh had driven through McDonald’s and picked up a Diet Coke and a double cheeseburger and a small order of fries. For the moment, she was ignoring all the bad publicity about fast food and sodas. She just needed something on the run, so she was driving, sipping from the ice-packed Diet Coke, and picking at the fries when her phone rang. She swiped her fingers on her jeans and picked up the second she saw Cade’s name flash onto the screen.
“I think we’ve got a break.” From the sound of it, he, too, was driving, rushing air and traffic underlying his words.
“What?”
“We’re looking for Bruce Hollander, Luke Hollander’s father.”
“You still think there’s a connection between him and what’s happening now?” she said, tossing the
idea over in her mind again. Was it possible? Maybe. But . . .
“Sure of it. We need to check with his parole officer, find out where he lives, put out an APB on his car, a Buick LeSabre, white, circa the late 1990s. Idaho plates. And he might have a dog with him.”
“A dog?”
“Beagle.” And then Cade explained his theory, which seemed a little far-fetched, that Bruce Hollander had gotten out of prison and within months moved to Edgewater to wreak his revenge on anyone who was close to the son he’d never really known, especially anyone who might have given sworn statements that allowed Rachel, whom he blamed for killing Luke, off the hook. He was certain Hollander had vandalized Rachel’s door, been watching and possibly following her in the Buick with Idaho plates. Cade had even run into Hollander searching for his dog near Rachel’s house, and he suspected that the dog, whom he was told was named Monty, was really the missing Freddy.
“I don’t know,” she said, thinking the motive was thin. “I mean, yeah, if Rachel can ID him on the vandalism, then we can get him there. But the rest? It’s a big leap from tagging a door to murdering two people.”
“He has a record. Did time for several assaults, the last being to Luke’s mother.”
“A long time ago.”
“Once a thug, always a thug. Prison usually doesn’t help.”
“Possibly.” She paused for a stop light, took a long drink from her diet soda, and tried to piece it all together, but it was ragged, with sharp edges, not melding together in her mind.
“Let’s find him and bring him in, see what he has to say.”
“Okay. I’d like to be there,” she said as the light turned. “By the way, I got a call from the lab, on the painter’s tape.”
“You located where it was purchased?”
“No. But they found a small hair on it.”
“DNA?”
“No, that’s the kicker. They don’t think it’s human.”
“What then?”
“Still working on that. Should have an answer soon. But we can’t get too excited, yet. If it’s from a dog, it could be from one of the dogs Violet Sperry owned. I mean, that’s the most likely scenario, but who knows? Maybe we’ll catch a break. I’m on my way to the lab now. They already have samples from the Sperrys’ Cavaliers, so we should learn something.” And if the hair on the tape, not human, wasn’t from the victim’s dogs? That thought gave her a little tingle, and though she was jumping the gun a little, she sensed she was getting closer to the truth, to figuring out exactly what was going down, despite the missing pieces and jagged edges.
She switched lanes and thought there was a slim chance that the animal hair and DNA would link Freddy, aka Monty, to Hollander. It was a long shot, but worth checking out.
“Get this,” Cade said. “It turns out that Luke Hollander wasn’t dead when he was admitted to St. Augustine’s.”
“So we’re back to that again—trying to connect what happened twenty years ago to the murders now?” she asked, even though she, too, had experienced similar thoughts, that the tragedy of the past couldn’t be separated from the horror that was happening now.
“Yeah, I know, it seems a little far-fetched.”
“Try a lot far-fetched.” Then she said, “But, I get it. There’s something. . .”
“I just can’t get away from it. I think it’s all starting to link up. Ned Gaston was the first cop on the scene. Got there pronto, said he’d already been called.”
“Rachel’s dad, yeah, I remember.”
“And Luke’s stepfather.” She heard the edge of excitement in Cade’s voice, remembered it from previous crimes they’d solved together. “So it turns out he and Dr. Moretti, our missing person’s father, decided not to do everything possible to save the kid.”
“Are you kidding me?” She was shocked and eased off the gas, slowing for another red light.
“The rationale, at least Moretti’s, was that the kid was too far gone, would have been a vegetable, and Ned Gaston didn’t want his wife to have to deal with a bed-ridden, basically brain-dead son.”
“You think there’s more to it?” she asked, interested.
“I’m sure of it.”
“Then let’s find out what it is,” she said as the light turned green and she hit the gas. Finally, it seemed, they were getting somewhere.
* * *
With difficulty Rachel had tamped down her panic attack upon recognizing Bruce Hollander as the man who had been lurking around the house. But her hard-fought rationality collapsed as she heard the approach of Cade’s pickup just as the dog began whining to be let out. “Just a sec,” she said to the dog, and when her ex appeared at the back door, she flung it wide and let him fold her into his arms as Reno whined and did a happy dance at his feet.
“Apparently he’s accepted you,” she said, as she extracted herself from his embrace and made a mental note that they were divorced, with a capital D. She couldn’t let herself fall into the trap of depending upon him. Not now. Not ever. Besides, she was handling things, had put a lid on her freak-out show on her own. She could handle this. She had to.
As the door was still partially open Reno took advantage of the situation to catapult himself outside and off the porch, did tornado spins, then several laps around the yard.
“How’re the kids?” he asked, pulling the door shut, just as Harper came out of her room.
She looked like she’d been crying, her cheeks puffy, her eyes red. Spying her father, she stormed into the kitchen. “How could you?” she said, sniffing.
“How could I what?” Cade asked. “And by the way, ‘hello,’ too.”
“Don’t, Dad. Just don’t. And don’t act like you don’t know what’s happening. You know! You do. How could you get Grandpa to send Xander away?”
“Whoa, what?” Cade held up his hands, palms out, as if in surrender. “You’re blaming me?” “It’s not Xander’s fault, you know,” Harper cut in, “that I snuck out. That’s on me. And what happened to the woman. Wow, that was crazy weird! But you”—she was leveling her furious gaze at Cade— “you were the reason he had to leave! And now he’s gone and I don’t know when I’ll see him again!” She was winding up now, but Cade kept his cool.
“I didn’t know Grandpa had let him go—”
“What?” Rachel asked. This was the first she’d heard of it.
Harper focused on her father. “You’re Grandpa’s son! ” she said hopefully.
“It has nothing to do with me. Grandpa didn’t like his behavior—”
“It’s not his business!”
Cade’s eyebrows raised. “It definitely is. Exactly that. Xander worked for him, and stayed in Grandpa’s apartment rent free.”
“But you’re a cop!”
“That’s not a part of this.”
“Oooh!” She let out a hard, angry breath, but seeing she was getting nowhere with her father, Harper looked at her mother and started to plead her case. “Mom, please. It’s like I’ll never see him again!” She was working herself up to a fresh spate of tears.
“Of course you will. If you want to and he wants to,” Rachel said, weakening a bit; Harper had been through so much. “You’ll make it happen. Eugene isn’t that far away.”
“But I don’t even have a car!”
The same old argument. “We said we’d consider it when you graduate, that we would help you.”
“ ‘We’? Since when is it ‘we’ again?” she demanded, seeming horrified at the prospect of her parents standing together on anything.
“Xander’s got a car,” Cade pointed out.
“So if he came up here, he could stay with us?” Hope rose in her eyes.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Cade said.
“I agree.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed. “Well, what’s he going to do? He can’t stay with Lucas anymore. Grandpa would have a fit!”
“I’m sure he can figure something out.”
Tears threatened ag
ain. “I thought you might understand, but I guess you don’t!” With that, she turned and fled back to her room.
Rachel took a step toward her, but Cade grabbed the crook of her arm just as the door banged shut. “I need to talk to her.”
“We both do, but let her cool off and think about it,” he suggested. “Anything else is going to blow into a major fight. Now, tell me about Bruce Hollander.”
“Right. God, I’d nearly forgotten about him with all the drama. I have the information,” she said, and was one step ahead of him. At the stairs, Cade, spying Dylan in the living room watching TV, hesitated.
“Hey, bud,” he said.
“Hi.” Dylan rolled his eyes. “I heard what was going on in the kitchen and thought I’d, you know, let the storm pass.”
“Good thinking.”
“Hey,” Rachel said, “let Reno in, would you?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t move.
“Now?” Cade added.
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He actually climbed off the couch and turned off the TV before heading toward the back of the house. Rachel continued leading Cade to her office. For a few minutes she’d been caught up in her daughter’s teenaged angst, but now, the threat of Hollander returned. Full force.
In the office she rolled out her desk chair and clicked on the information she’d gathered on Hollander, including his picture before and after being photoshopped. Cade told her the department was already searching for him and how Cade himself had run into the guy who posed as someone named Frank Quinn who claimed he’d been searching for his missing dog.
“I was talking to him. Let him go,” Cade said, “even though initially I had a bad vibe from him.”
“So you were here then, and again last night?” Dear God, had it been less than twenty-four hours since Harper and Xander had found Annessa? It seemed like a lifetime. “Watching my house?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever think to tell me?”
“I figured you’d be pissed.”
“I would have been, but wouldn’t I have seen you and thought someone was watching the place, you know, casing it or me or the kids?”
