The Good Son: A Suspense Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 2)

by Dustin Stevens

  Each home had been observed, the killer learning the routines of both women enough to know the best time to strike. In the case of Ira Soto, he also determined a way to lure her out with her dog so she would come to him.

  “Somebody must have seen something,” Reed said, his voice low, just loud enough for Billie to finally lift her head from the floor. He mulled the statement, letting his mind process after hearing the words out loud, before dropping his hands from his head and turning his attention to the computer.

  “Even in a place like The Bottoms, somebody had to have seen something.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Good Son stopped outside the front door and took a deep breath, the familiar feeling of agitation that had been in his stomach all day even more pronounced as he stood with the screen door leaning against his shoulder.

  He did not want to open the door and step inside.

  He knew what waited there.

  “I know you’re out there,” a voice called from inside the house. “I heard the screen door open. Get your ass in here.”

  Feeling the dread spike again, The Good Son stepped into the kitchen, the overhead fixture throwing down a harsh light, forcing his eyes almost shut. Behind him the screen door closed with a clatter as he placed his lunch bucket on the scratched and faded laminate countertop.

  “And shut the damn door,” the voice called, sounding even more agitated without the barrier of the door to soften it, “not trying to cool the neighborhood, you know.”

  The Good Son reached out and shoved the door shut.

  Just as he did every day, he paused to collect himself before exiting the kitchen. He could not, would not, in any way let it show that the situation was starting to get to him, that anything he had done in the preceding nights was gnawing at him from within.

  That her perpetual berating had worn his nerves down to a frazzled nub.

  He had to remain steady for her.

  This was his task. He would get it done.

  “Hey,” The Good Son said, his voice low as he stepped from the kitchen into the living room.

  In the semi-darkness he could just make out his mother seated on the couch, her thin form spread out most of the length of it. She appeared to be in the same position as when he left 10 hours before, the only difference being the blanket that had once covered her was now in a heap on the floor.

  “You’re late,” she said, the two words sufficient to relay her disdain for him and his tardiness simultaneously.

  “I had to wait for a train to pass,” The Good Son said, taking an extra step into the room. He met her gaze for just a moment, knowing full well she could see through the lie, before moving to the edge of the coffee table separating them.

  The top of it was cluttered with pill bottles of every size and color, some with their tops removed, lying on their sides. Two empty water bottles and a plate with the remains of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had made for her that morning were waiting to be removed.

  “Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

  “Have you been here to make my dinner?” she replied.

  The Good Son fought the urge to close his eyes, to blow out a long sigh, to let her see how much her constant state of finding fault with everything was wearing on him.

  As much as he might want to, though, he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her fault that things had played out the way they did, her anger a direct result of the situation they were in.

  Besides, she was right. It was his job to make sure he got home in time to make dinner. His being late only confirmed the feeling that had first arisen at work that afternoon.

  He had to do better.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, collecting the plate and empty bottles from the table. “What would you like to eat?”

  It took 20 seconds and every bit of energy she could muster to turn and look back at him, her face a mix of pain and anger. A watery sheen rested over her eyes as she stared, the corners of her mouth turned down, her nostrils flaring. “At this point, I’ll take any damned thing you can bring me.”

  The Good Son considered reaching out and resting a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her in some way, but he opted against it. Instead, he took up the TV remote from the coffee table and turned the television on, the light casting a ghostly pallor over the room.

  The Good Son could now see the rest of the furniture in the room, could make out the various pictures hanging on the walls. It was all so familiar, the house he had grown up in, but in recent years had grown so unaccustomed to as well.

  Without looking at the screen, The Good Son aimed the remote and keyed in the numbers for the Food Network.

  “Do you love your mama?”

  Above everything else that had developed in recent years, those five words were what The Good Son hated most. He knew every time it was asked what she was really trying to say. Knew just as clearly there was only one response he could reasonably give.

  “More than anything,” he whispered.

  He kept his attention aimed at the television as he returned the remote to the table. Beside him he knew she was staring his way, searching for any crack in his façade, waiting for the slightest sign of weakness.

  He would give her none.

  “And you’d do anything for her, right?”

  The events of the previous week, of the previous months, should have already answered that for her. The Good Son knew it wasn’t actually a response she craved though.

  It was something much more than that.

  “Anything.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The day before, Reed was worried that McMichaels and Jacobs might hate him. Two straight days of canvassing duty, especially in their precinct, was a task nobody wanted. The neighborhoods they were now in were a far cry from the dilapidated and broken homes found closer to the river, but much of the general animosity that people felt toward law enforcement still lingered.

  To many, especially those who had been around for a while, Franklinton was a cautionary tale of what had once been a nice area. Any decline that had occurred was because the police had failed in their duties. Instead of patrolling the streets and keeping things safe, they preferred to take their bloated government salaries and eat doughnuts all day.

  Used their badges to harass honest citizens. Looked away from crime in exchange for a little money under the table.

  Reed had heard the comments so many times they didn’t even register with him anymore. Early in his partnership with Riley he had felt the need to lash back, to defend them whenever the conversation arose, but now he knew better. The people didn’t actually care that he hadn’t eaten a doughnut in years or that he rented the farmhouse he and Billie lived in, they just wanted someone to blame.

  Anything to keep from thinking they had in any way contributed to their own plight.

  Despite that, Reed couldn’t help but feel a small bit of spite in the pit of his stomach as he wound his way through the non-existent early morning traffic. Outside, the world was still dark, only a few houses having any lights visible.

  The constant jump between shifts had his body clock wrecked, feeling like he had just stepped off a direct flight from Australia and was expected to adjust perfectly upon touching down. After leaving the precinct the night before, he had toiled until well after midnight, unable to turn off his mind, wrestling with everything he knew. Every function kept perfect pace the entire time, used to being awake, finding nothing out of the norm.

  It was four hours later when his alarm clock went off that his entire being seemed to rebel.

  Another glance in the rearview mirror displayed the dark circles under his eyes and the layer of stubble spread across his face. His hair was still wet from his sprint through the shower, the humidity in the air so high it prevented it from drying completely.

  Barely 6:00 a.m., and already the day was off to a fantastic start.

  The headlights reflected off the front windows of the Washington Elementa
ry School as Reed pulled into the parking lot. Empty for the summer, the grass around it was a little taller than usual, all of it brown. The single-story building sprawled in either direction from the small central lot, the red brick mottled with small splashes of graffiti.

  The front had only two broken windows, much better than some of the other schools in the district.

  Reed parked and left the engine running, cool air blasting in through the vents as a pair of headlights approached in the distance. He waited as they grew closer, the shape leaving no doubt they belonged to a police cruiser.

  “Stay,” Reed said, getting no reaction from Billie as he climbed out and leaned against the side of his car. The blue-and white slid into the lot and parked parallel to him, both men exiting without turning off the engine.

  “Officers,” Reed said, dipping the top of his head in greeting.

  “Detective,” McMichaels said.

  “Reed,” Jacobs replied.

  “Please tell me this meeting time wasn’t some form of punishment for asking you guys to go on canvas duty the last two nights?” Reed asked.

  A pair of smiles graced the men’s features as they both matched Reed’s pose against their cruiser.

  “That would be funny, but not at all,” Jacobs said. “Hell, truth be known, we both appreciate the overtime. You know how damn tight the place has gotten about granting it lately.”

  Reed nodded. It was an election year, which always managed to put the department square under the microscope for scrutiny. During those times everything got tight, from the amount of overtime pay doled out to the brand of coffee they used in the break room.

  It was ludicrous, and an enormous pain, but something every last person on the force had grown used to over the years.

  “Yeah,” McMichaels said. “These last two days got me that much closer to a bass boat. Pretty damn easy canvas, too.”

  Under different circumstances Reed would have seized on the first part of the statement, asking what he was looking at or where he liked to fish. Instead, all he heard was the second sentence, a bit of dread kicking up within him.

  “Easy, as in nobody saw anything?” he asked.

  “Pretty much,” McMichaels said.

  “And they actually weren’t too bad,” Jacobs said. “I think with the heat they just wanted to get us on our way. Didn’t even feel up to the usual barrage of jokes and comments.”

  Reaching into the right breast pocket of his uniform, McMichaels extracted a single piece of paper folded in half. It was no more than a few inches square, one end of it with fuzzy edges, as if it had been ripped clean from a notebook.

  “Nobody heard anything or saw anybody suspicious, but a couple of folks said they saw a silver car parked around.”

  Reed took the piece of paper without looking at it. “A silver car?”

  “That’s what they said,” McMichaels replied. “Sounded like a sedan, small, older. Nobody got a plate though, not even a clean make or model.”

  “About the only thing they could agree on was that it was a honkey car,” Jacobs said, using his fingers to make air quotes. “Whatever the hell that means.”

  More than once Reed had heard the expression around The Bottoms. It was the slang way of saying the car looked like something an old white person would drive.

  It was a pretty safe assumption that Jacobs already knew that too and was just being dramatic.

  “Two damn murders in consecutive nights,” Reed said, “and all we can pull are a couple of sightings of a silver car.”

  Again, he came back to the same conclusion he had a night before. Somebody was either very good, or very, very lucky.

  “That’s it,” McMichaels said, spreading his hands wide.

  “I don’t even think this time was a case of them jerking us around,” Jacobs said. “I honestly don’t think there was any more to be found.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Once the officers were gone, their taillights disappearing down the street, Reed opened the back seat of the car. He stood off to the side and waited several minutes, resuming the same stance with his arms folded across his chest, considering what they had told him.

  Both Esther Rosen and Ira Soto lived in residential neighborhoods. There weren’t but a handful of traffic cameras in the entire jurisdiction, most of those put up in The Bottoms almost immediately succumbing to vandalism. Rather than pay to keep replacing them, the city had elected to go without, arguing that their presence caused more criminal activity than they prevented.

  Reed hadn’t necessarily agreed with that, knowing it was more bureaucratic apathy than anything, but knew he wasn’t in any position to speak out against it.

  Maybe one day, if he could somehow prove their presence would have aided an investigation or even prevented a crime from taking place, but not now. Probably not ever.

  Coupled with the lack of cameras was the demographic profile of the respective neighborhoods. Away from the dense urban center, both were filled with single family dwellings, most of the residents 40 years of age or older. Once the sun went down, there was precious little foot traffic, very few young people walking around with their cell-phones glued to their hands.

  If a crime like this had taken place in any of a dozen different suburbs in the greater Columbus area, Reed would spend the morning sifting through Facebook and Twitter postings of personal footage filmed on the scene. Instead, he was left standing in an elementary school parking lot trying to figure out what - if anything - could be done with the tiny piece of information the officers had given him.

  “You coming out?” Reed asked, glancing into the backseat.

  Billie’s only response was to thump the plastic of the backseat with her tail twice, making no effort to rise.

  “Point taken,” Reed said, pushing the door shut and climbing behind the wheel.

  Dawn fast approaching, a filmy yellow light pasted a harsh glow over everything as Reed circled away from the school. He still had some time to kill before his next appointment, his body wanting nothing more than to fill the hours with sleep, his mind knowing there was no way it would ever find him again.

  With nowhere in particular to be, he turned his sedan back to Ira Soto’s. There was no real reason beyond hoping that perhaps seeing the scene again in daylight might somehow shake something loose. Already, Billie had told him how the killer gained entry and egress, but the spot was well beyond sight of the house.

  He had to have done surveillance from somewhere closer.

  Sitting up higher behind the steering wheel, Reed hooked a right and rolled down to the closest cross street. Ahead on the corner, cutting through the thin morning light, he spotted a burst of neon. Showing yellow, red, and blue, it shined down the length of the street, announcing to anybody driving by that off-brand gas was for sale.

  Easing his foot back from the pedal, Reed drifted to the side of the road. As he got closer, the rest of the filling station came into view, a single small building with six pumps out front.

  “You don’t think?” Reed asked, his voice low, nothing more than thinking out loud as he pulled off the street and into the lot.

  The concrete block building was painted blue with large windows across the front. Plastered to the walls were posters advertising various cigarettes, while neon signs announced every known brand of beer, and even a few Reed had never heard of.

  Out front, the pumps were beginning to rust, but appeared to be functional.

  All those details barely registered with Reed. His focus went straight to the corners of the building, where a pair of small plastic cameras were aimed out over the grounds.

  From where he sat, it appeared they were positioned to keep an eye on the pumps, maybe getting a good look at the street beyond as well. It was a long shot, but it did present at least a chance that Reed could spot a silver car rolling by right after the 911 call.

  The thought of getting a look at the driver, or even a license plate, brought a surge of adrenaline as he par
ked and glanced over his shoulder. “Be right back.”

  For the first time all morning Billie let out a whine as Reed climbed out. He could barely hear the sound before it was swallowed up, an ancient air conditioner protruding from the side of the building giving off a persistent rattle.

  Passing through the front door, Reed could tell that despite its best efforts, the AC was already losing the battle against the encroaching morning heat.

  The smell of sweat and cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air.

  “Morning,” the cashier behind the counter said, a heavy-set woman in a sleeveless flannel and jeans. Her red hair was tied up in a kerchief around her head, and half a Twinkie was in her hand.

  “Morning,” Reed said, reaching into his rear pocket and extracting his badge. “Detective Reed Mattox, CPD.”

  The woman gave no reaction, merely peeling back the plastic wrap and taking another bite.

  “I noticed on my way in that you guys have a pair of cameras looking out over the gas pumps,” he said.

  The woman nodded as she chewed.

  “And I was wondering how much of the intersection they’re able to see.”

  “Not much.”

  As she spoke, crumbs fell from her mouth to the counter. She glanced down at them, brushing them to the floor and wiping her hand along the side of her jeans.

  A trickle of sweat rolled down the small of Reed’s back, a combination of the heat inside the store and his growing dislike for the cashier.

  “Well, if possible, I’d still like to take a look at the tapes from the night before last,” he said.

  “Not possible,” she replied, cramming the last bit into her mouth. She crinkled the cellophane wrapper in her hand repeatedly for effect before turning and dropping it into a wastebasket behind her.

  Again, Reed’s disdain grew. “Are they on a 24-hour loop? Have they already started taping over again?”

  “They’re not on at all,” the woman said, glancing out the window. “Never have been. If you walk out there and look, you can see there aren’t even cords attached to them. We just hung them up to try and ward off the vandals.”