Serena Mckee's Back In Town

by Marie Ferrarella

  To keep from going crazy, she enumerated the ways in her mind. One, Dan Olson had been her father’s best friend, even despite her mother’s strong objections. Two, he’d been the one to arrive first on the scene the night of the murders and he’d been the one to take her aside, comforting her. Looking out for her until the other squad cars arrived. Three, it was he who had conducted the investigation, combing the area, according to the newspaper accounts, for evidence of some other party having been here that night.

  And four, he’d been the one to finally report that there wasn’t anyone else involved.

  He was as much a part of this as she was. As her parents had been.

  Uncle Dan.

  And then, she remembered something. Remembered that her father had once told her that Dan’s middle name was Samuel and that he had favored being called Sam as a kid because he’d thought it made people think of Samson. Sam. Daniel Samuel Olson. D.S.O. The initials she’d seen at the bottom of the report in her parents’ file. A big, looping S like the one in the signature.

  Like pieces of a puzzle being dumped out of a tray, memories came tumbling back to her chaotically. Sinking down on the sofa, she stared at the love letters as she struggled to make some order out of the confusion in her brain.

  Dan had been first on the scene. She vaguely remembered that he had arrived so quickly in response to her call, she thought he had to have been riding a lightning bolt.

  Looking utterly grief-stricken himself, Dan had placed his arm around her and led her away to another room. Her room. Yet the scent of her father’s cologne had seemed to cling to her. She’d thought she was getting hysterical, imagining things. But looking back, even after all this time, she swore that the scent had been there, had been real.

  Because it had been on the sweater, she realized suddenly. Uncle Dan’s sweater.

  Her eyes flew open. In her mind, she could see it perfectly. Dan had been wearing a sweater over his shirt, on the hottest night of the year.

  A blue sweater.

  Like her father’s favorite sweater.

  Why? Why would he be wearing a sweater, unless... Unless it was to hide something? Blood. Unless it was to hide blood.

  At the same moment that excitement telegraphed itself through her, Serena thought she was going to be sick. She pressed her fingers to her mouth as the horror of what she was thinking sank in. Dan Olson. Her father’s best friend, the man she’d grown up thinking of as Uncle Dan, had been her mother’s lover.

  Like scattered colored blocks in an animated videotape, the pieces came scrambling together with a vengeance, fitting themselves into a recognizable whole.

  Her nightmare wasn’t a nightmare. It was a memory. The memory of that night. She’d been asleep when she heard the sounds. A gunshot, and then her father’s voice, calling her mother’s name. Breathlessly, from a distance, as if he were running. Running to his wife, not from her.

  Which meant he hadn’t been there when the shot was fired.

  Olson had arrived almost immediately, only moments after she dragged herself over to her mother’s telephone and called the police, fighting not to faint. He’d said something about being off duty while in the vicinity and hearing the call over the radio.

  What if Olson hadn’t been in the vicinity? What if he’d been there, in her house, in her mother’s room, to begin with?

  What if he had killed her?

  Handling the investigation would have given him ample opportunity to bury any incriminating evidence. And if his prints were found on the scene, there was a ready explanation for that. He was heading the investigation—and he’d been Jon McKee’s friend. What more reason than that was necessary?

  Dan Olson had killed her parents and then placed the blame on her father.

  Tears stung her eyes as the sick feeling in her stomach increased.

  She had to get hold of herself. Had to find Cameron. He had to know. Serena rushed to the telephone. She pressed 911 even before she had the receiver against her ear.

  There was only dead air. Breaking the connection, she waited for the dial tone to return before she began again.

  There was none. The phone was dead.

  He wasn’t going to crawl, Cameron promised himself firmly. He didn’t care what happened, he wasn’t going to crawl.

  He’d told her that he loved her. Showed her that he loved her. The next move, if there was going to be one, was up to Serena.

  So why wasn’t she moving, damn it?

  She hadn’t even tried to call him. Except for two calls for Martinez, one of them personal, the phone in his car had been silent all damn day.

  Where the hell was she?

  Martinez had recognized the signs early in the day. The signs of a man caught like a mackerel, twisting in the wind. He shook his head, laughing and not having the decency or the delicacy to keep it to himself.

  “That’s what happens when you let a woman get under your skin, Reed. Everything goes haywire.” Martinez snorted in glee. As far as he knew, this was a first for his partner.

  Cameron gave him a murderous look, but Martinez didn’t have the sense to back off.

  “You should talk, you’re married,” Cameron grumbled, turning the car down a street and heading back to the station.

  “Yeah, I should talk,” Martinez agreed. He jerked a thumb at himself. “I know. Why do you think I’m . hooked on the Net?”

  Not computer talk again. Not now. Cameron swore he was going to strangle his partner if he startled babbling about that.

  “Because—” Cameron clenched his teeth “—underneath that badge, you’re just a computer freak. A nerd.”

  “Hey, no need to call anyone names. And I’m not, anyway. I just do it to unload my energy.” Leaning back against the seat, Martinez elaborated on his philosophy. “Beats taking it out on Dana—or the civilians. Get yourself a hobby, man, and you’ll feel a whole lot better.”

  The only way he was going to feel better was if Serena called. “I have a hobby,” Cameron said darkly. “Tuning you out.”

  Martinez acted as if Cameron had actually given him an bona fide answer. “Naw, you need something more constructive than that.” He turned the air-conditioning up a notch, then another. “Man, this has been one hell of a long shift. Must be the heat. It feels like it’s seeping right through the damn car. ’Magine what it must’ve been like a hundred years ago, without air-conditioning?” He snorted. “No wonder everybody shot at everybody else in Tombstone. Tempers get real short in weather like this.”

  He got no argument from Cameron there. They had just spent the past two hours intervening in a domestic dispute that had all the earmarks of potentially turning violent. Cameron vaguely remembered that the week he made love with Serena the first time, there’d been a record-breaking heat wave gripping the Southland.

  Was that what had happened? Had her father returned to confront her mother about a lover and allowed a temper already stripped bare to get the better of his common sense?

  Sounded more than likely. If that was what happened, it was something that Serena was going to have to learn how to live with.

  Damn it, he upbraided himself, turning into the police station’s parking lot, he had to stop thinking about her all the time. Serena certainly wasn’t stewing about him. If she was, she would have called him by now.

  He’d been tempted to call dispatch just to check whether there were any overlooked messages for him, but that would have given Martinez too much pleasure. A man had to draw the line somewhere.

  “Want to get a cold beer after we sign out?” Martinez grinned at him as he unbuckled his seat belt. “Or do you want to go home to her and grovel?”

  Cameron knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to march into that house, sweep her into his arms and tell her she was going to give up this damn soul-wrenching search of hers right now. And, after that, that she was coming with him.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Cameron fixed Martinez with a tolerant
look. “Just for that, smart guy, you’re paying for the first three rounds.”

  Serena replaced the telephone. Maybe the phone line wasn’t down—maybe it was just that particular phone. She was letting her own thoughts spook her. Like a child. Like the child-woman she’d been.

  Determined to hold herself together, to remain coherent, Serena hurried out of the living room to find another telephone.

  And ran straight into Dan Olson.

  Just the way she had that night, she realized with a jolting shock, her breath backing up in her lungs.

  And just the way he had that night. Olson placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her. He even looked concerned.

  “Serena, what’s the matter? You’re shaking.”

  It was eleven years ago all over again. Except that this time, she knew.

  Shrugging off Olson’s hands, Serena raised her chin in a defiant challenge. “How did you get in? I’ve got a security system.”

  “Oh, that.” He passed off the minor inconvenience. “I rang,” he said, “but you didn’t answer, so I overrode the system. I’m the one who taught Art everything he knows.” Olson tried to reach out to her, but let his hands drop casually when she backed away. “I came because you left a message for Reed that you found something. Letters you think might make us reopen the case.” He looked around. “Where are they?”

  His tone was affable, his smile kind. He looked no different from the way he usually did.

  Lies, all lies, Serena thought angrily. All this time, everything he’d conveyed, his entire life, had been nothing but a lie.

  “I put them in the safe-deposit box at the bank for safekeeping,” she said quickly.

  Olson didn’t believe her. “You didn’t go to the bank, Serena. You’ve been here, waiting for Reed to call back, reading the letters.” He tried his best not to sound anxious. “Find anything in them?”

  “No.” Serena held her breath, no longer knowing what the man in front of her was capable of.

  He saw his answer in her eyes. “You did, didn’t you? God, I never thought she was sentimental enough to keep them.” Olson let out a long breath. Part of him was almost relieved. The weight of the lie he was carrying around had gotten heavier with time. When he looked at her again, it was with resignation. “You know, don’t you?”

  There was no more use in pretending. Suddenly, outrage broke free, drenching her.

  “Why?” she shouted at him. “Why did you do that to my father? He loved you like a brother.” Angry tears clung to her lashes like jewels. “He always said everyone should have a friend like you.” She spit the last out accusingly.

  “I was a good friend,” Olson insisted with feeling. “None of this was supposed to happen. None of it. Your mother—” He ran a hand over his face, at a loss. “How do I explain?”

  And he desperately wanted to explain this to Serena, to make her understand that he was just as much of a victim here as her father had been. More, because he’d gone on living with the memory. With the pain and the guilt.

  “Carolyn cast a spell over me, Serena,” he said helplessly. “I couldn’t think, couldn’t work. All I wanted was her. And she knew it. I resisted as long as I could. Hell, I even put in for a transfer to Bakersfield to get away from her. She was my best friend’s wife, and I didn’t want this to happen.” His mouth hardened as he remembered what he had tried so hard to forget all these years. The evening he’d ceased being his own man. “But she came to me the night before I was supposed to leave. Came to me and said she wanted me. Just like that. She wanted me.”

  He couldn’t make himself look at Serena, afraid of what he would see in her face. “That every time your father was with her, she pretended it was me. I believed her. I wanted to believe her.” The laugh that was torn from his throat was wretched. “I guess she seduced me.

  “From that night on, I couldn’t get free of her. And she knew it. So she toyed with me, let me make plans, irresponsible, insane plans. And then she told me she was tired of me. That at least Jon had money.” His heart twisted at the memory of her words. “I didn’t have anything worthwhile enough to sustain her interest.”

  Now he did look at Serena. Because he wanted her to understand. And to forgive him, the way he couldn’t really forgive himself.

  “I came here that night to plead with her one more time to go away with me. That was when she told me she was planning to reconcile with Jon. She taunted me, and I don’t know, I guess I just snapped. I hit her.” There was shame in his eyes. “I’d never raised my hand to a woman before, but she made me so completely insane, I lost my head.

  “The next thing I knew, she pulled a gun out of her nightstand drawer and said she was going to kill me. I yanked it out of her hands before she had a chance to get off a shot. I was going to put it away, I really was, but she kept on taunting me, saying that I was pathetic, that even when we made love, she was laughing at me. I must have blanked out.”

  Serena listened in silent horror, seeing it all happen just the way Olson described it. She pressed a hand to her stomach as it churned and lurched.

  “When I came to,” he continued, his voice mechanical as he tried to distance himself from his actions, knowing he never would, “I heard the gun firing, saw the gun in my hand, saw your mother falling in front of me like a broken doll. That was when your father burst into the room.” That had been the worst moment of all, he thought. Seeing Jon. “I’d never seen him look like that before. The rage, the fury in his face. I think your mother must have told him about us. It would have been like her.”

  He was weary now, so weary, but once started, the story just continued to flow from his lips.

  “Your father grabbed the gun, I grabbed him. It all happened so fast.” Sobs throbbed in his throat as Olson went on. “Somehow, the muzzle of the gun got jammed against his chin. That was when it went off.”

  For a second, he closed his eyes, fighting for control. He had to get it out, all of it. Had to finally purge himself.

  “I ran into your father’s room and wiped the blood off my face, stuffed my shirt under the mattress and put on one of his sweaters to cover up anything I might have missed. I knew I had only seconds before you found me. When you walked into me, you were too dazed to realize I was coming out of your father’s room.

  “I came back for the shirt later and destroyed it.” It had been almost too easy. “No one noticed anything out of the ordinary. I was just the investigating detective, poking around the scene, looking for clues.”

  Serena couldn’t swallow. Tears were choking her throat. “And Edda?” she asked hoarsely.

  He had little remorse there. “Edda found out, somehow. She was blackmailing me. She ‘retired’ in style, on money I was paying her. Everyone thought I was just being a decent guy, supplementing her pension.” The irony of it still amazed him. “And then she found out she was dying. Cancer. When you came back, I think her conscience got the better of her. She saw telling you as a way of cleaning her slate.”

  She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. “And so you killed her.”

  He hated the look he saw in her eyes. Serena was like a daughter to him. And Edda had been a meanspirited, grasping old woman. He couldn’t bear Serena’s censure over this.

  “I only hurried up the inevitable. The doctors gave her less than two months. Why should she destroy my life before she died?”

  He was frightening her. She had to get away from him. Somehow, she had to keep him talking until she could find a way to escape. “You did that yourself eleven years ago.”

  He wasn’t going to take the blame alone. Not completely. “No, your mother did it.” If he could go back and change things, he would. But he couldn’t. He at least wanted Serena to hear how it had happened. “God help me, your mother turned me into some kind of a creature. I didn’t even like her.”

  No one had liked her mother, and yet her death had been a crime of passion. Nothing made any sense. “What are you going to do about me?”r />
  He touched her hair. She looked so much like Carolyn. With one main difference. She was good. “I tried to make you leave, Serena. As soon as I knew you were back, I knew why, and I tried to scare you away. But you wouldn’t go. You had Carolyn’s backbone and Jon’s morals.” He took a breath, making his decision. “You have a choice, Serena. You can leave, right now, tonight, and never come back.”

  She stared at Olson, not knowing if she could believe him. Wondering if he believed himself. “You’d let me go?”

  Slowly, he nodded. He’d never wanted to hurt her. “If you gave me your word, yes.”

  They both knew that she couldn’t turn her back on this. She might today, this minute, out of fear, but not forever. “And if I don’t?”

  Anguish and impatience came into his eyes. He put his hand to the service revolver he wore, then dropped it. “Serena, don’t make me talk about that. I don’t want to hurt anybody else. What I did that night has been haunting me ever since.”

  It might have helped her to believe that. But she couldn’t. Everything indicated otherwise. “Not enough to keep you from going on with your life,” she pointed out. “From becoming police chief. Or wanting to become the mayor.”

  A man could make a fundamental mistake and still not be evil. “I’m a damn good police chief, and I would have made a damn good mayor, as well,” he insisted, struggling not to become agitated. “I care about people, Serena. What happened with your mother was just temporary insanity.”

  Serena saw a flicker of a shadow in the doorway behind Olson, and her heart leaped. The next moment, Cameron was there, his finger to his lips. He signaled to her to keep Olson talking as he crept up behind him, his gun raised, ready.

  “What if there’s another case of temporary insanity?” Serena demanded hotly. She had to keep him from turning around, from shooting Cameron. Fear put words into her mouth. “Who else are you going to betray then? Who else are you going to kill?”

  “You’re not going to keep quiet, are you?” Olson knew what he had to do to save his reputation, and his heart ached.