by Jan Burke
Tadeo kept calling, “Jenny?” in a loud voice as he made his way back to the cruiser. He hurried back with a blanket and wrapped it around the kid as best he could. Mason didn’t even moan. He thought of starting the car up and turning on the heater, and reached for the keys, but they weren’t in the ignition.
He played the flashlight around again but didn’t see them. A horrible thought occurred to Tadeo. He felt a renewed sense of urgency now and found a button on the dash that released the trunk.
He rushed back, half afraid he’d find the little girl’s body there. Instead, he saw an odd and disturbing set of objects. Bloodstained shoes and clothing, fitting the description of what Mason Fletcher had last been seen wearing. A metal object of some kind — a trophy? — that looked as if it was matted with tissue, blood, and hair. He hadn’t seen any blood on the young man when he wrapped him in the blanket.
What he saw confused him. He closed the trunk. He noticed, for the first time, that footprints other than his own were in the soft, damp earth. They were near the trunk and led up from the ditch and on to the dirt drive. He saw a cigarette stub there. He didn’t touch it.
He went back and looked at the boy’s socks. They were clean, even on the underside.
He shook himself. He wasn’t a detective. This was not his job. And when the detectives arrived, they’d be pissed off at him if he started spouting theories. He’d already learned that lesson the hard way. “This is what put you up here in the cold, zurramato,” he muttered to himself. He cheered up a little at the thought that even the captain of homicide wouldn’t handle this one. The crime began in Las Piernas’s jurisdiction, which meant the LPPD would be in charge of the investigation.
So Tadeo tried to keep his mind from forming theories and began calling the girl’s name again, and looking in the nearby brush for any sign of her. The more he thought about what he’d seen so far, the less optimistic he felt about her fate, and the louder he shouted in defiance of his own fears for her. Someone opened a window in a nearby cabin and yelled, “Shut the fuck up, asshole! People are trying to sleep!”
Cabron. He considered going up there and making sure that stupid ass didn’t get any sleep, just to vent some of his own frustration, but he was distracted by the sound of approaching vehicles and the red flashing beacon of the ambulance.
I found one of them, he thought fiercely. At least I found one of them. He wondered if anyone would care about that, or if they would feel — just as he did — too worried about the little girl to find it much of a victory.
Three months and seventeen days.
CHAPTER 6
Fourteen Months Later
Tuesday, July 16
3:20 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
CALEB had learned to stop asking himself if it could get any worse. It could. It did.
In just a moment, it would get worse again.
The jury had reached a verdict, they had been told, and now everyone but the jury had crowded back into the courtroom. His brother — Mason Delacroix Fletcher, the defendant — and the attorneys and the judge had taken their places. The jury would come in soon, and this nightmare would enter its next phase.
Caleb sat to the left of his mother in the hot and stuffy courtroom. She swayed against him, leaned her head against his shoulder. He was easily a head taller than her. He worried that she might feel faint, and put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. She trembled. He felt her quiver, grow still, quiver again, felt the fear course through her in strange, arrhythmic waves. He reached across with his left hand and took her right, as if somehow he could shield her from the watching eyes, the cameras. Her hand was ice cold. She held so tightly to him, he thought she might break his fingers.
She was not a weak woman. Elisa Delacroix Fletcher had surprised those who had seemingly watched her every move over the last year. Maybe they didn’t understand what it took for a teenaged mother to raise a child alone, as she had Mason until she met Caleb’s dad. No one who was weak could survive what she did before she turned twenty-one.
Maybe the television commentators had expected his mother to be unable to go on after losing a husband and daughter under such horrible circumstances. Perhaps her appearance had fooled them — she was pale and almost waiflike — but anyone in her family could have told them there was determination and courage to be seen on a closer look. Trouble was, there were too few members of her family left. Her parents didn’t count, Caleb decided, refusing to acknowledge Grandmother Delacroix’s attempt to catch his eye. Unforgivably, they sat on the other side of the courtroom. They had never looked upon Mason as anything but a source of shame, which in turn made Caleb feel ashamed of being related to them.
Nelson Fletcher sat there, too, behind the Delacroixes and next to Caleb’s other grandfather, Graydon Fletcher. A dozen of Richard Fletcher’s other foster siblings were in attendance as well, “aunts” and “uncles” Caleb barely knew. A few of them had attended throughout the trial.
What a jumbled-up family they all were, anyway, he thought. Caleb’s father hadn’t been related by blood to Uncle Nelson or any of the others. Richard and Nelson had grown up together in a foster home, two of twenty-one children taken under the wing of the famously selfless Fletchers.
Caleb stole a glance at Grandfather Fletcher. The old man was impeccably dressed, as always. Caleb was not especially close to him, but he still felt admiration for him.
Caleb’s family hadn’t visited Grandfather Fletcher more than once or twice after his grandmother died, and not at all in recent years. Although he thought he understood the reasons his dad had wanted to be independent of the family’s influence — his dad thought they got into one another’s business way too much, and were kind of like a cult — Caleb felt bad about that distance now. They didn’t know Mason, so why should they doubt his guilt?
As if he had felt Caleb’s attention, Grandfather Fletcher turned and looked at him, and gave a little nod in his direction.
Caleb nodded back, wishing that somehow there had been no need for people to feel that they must take sides. If Grandfather Fletcher believed whatever Uncle Nelson told him about Mason, Caleb couldn’t blame him for that.
The press loved to talk about the “tragic irony,” of course. A man who was an orphan gets a lucky break and grows up in a great foster home. Becomes a successful graphic artist. Marries a woman who is struggling as a young single mother. Adopts her five-year-old boy. Loves and cares for him, and has two other children with her. And the ungrateful boy he adopted, Mason, returns his loving care by allegedly murdering him and his youngest child. Little Jenny.
If there was one word members of the press didn’t mean when they said it, that word was allegedly. But Caleb didn’t believe any of the charges against Mason. Mason might have argued a lot with his dad, but he loved him. And he would never, ever harm Jenny. Mason said that he could not remember anything between a party with some friends the night before the murder and waking up in the hospital almost two days later. His friends vouched for him, and said he had not been drinking, but they had, and admitted their own recollections of the evening weren’t all that clear. Caleb believed someone had set his brother up, but who — and why?
At first, Caleb had considered calling Detective Harriman about it. But Caleb didn’t really have any ideas to offer the police, and couldn’t explain away the evidence in any satisfactory way. DNA evidence. A bottle of scotch taken from his father’s office. A trophy his father had won in a design competition — the murder weapon.
Caleb and his mom had a great many other worries by then, too. The relief of Mason being found, the fear that he would die in those first chancy hours after he was discovered, the growing terror over Jenny, the shock of Mason’s arrest — all compounded their grief over his father’s death. The many arrangements to be made in the wake of his father’s death occupied them as well.
His dad’s business had become almost immediately worthless, since it depended entirely on his father’s
talents. Fortunately, there was insurance coverage that allowed outstanding debts to be settled and the return of fees on contracts that would now never be completed. Nothing to speak of was left in assets.
Richard Fletcher’s personal life insurance policy and other investments were intended to pay off the house and studio mortgages, and to leave enough for the rest of the family to live on for a couple of years — or would have, if it had not been necessary to hire a criminal defense attorney.
Caleb didn’t believe that Mason would ever hurt his father or Jenny, but his reasons for believing Mason was being framed went beyond brotherly faith. When Caleb mentioned them to Mason’s attorney, though, the man shuddered and asked him to please not talk to anyone else about his brother’s “former” drug and alcohol problems. When Caleb said that he thought the attorney should talk to Detective Harriman, he got a long lecture about the police not being their friends, and was strictly forbidden from having any contact with the detective.
Caleb didn’t like the attorney his mother had chosen, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. The man seemed to make an honest effort at defending Mason, which wasn’t easy, given the prosecution’s case.
Two clients, partners in a firm that had hired Richard Fletcher, testified that the day before Richard’s death they had overheard Mason Fletcher in a violent argument with the victim.
His mom wanted to testify that Richard Fletcher obviously hadn’t thought much of this argument, because he hadn’t mentioned it to her that evening, their last together. But the defense attorney decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to put her on the stand, fearing other questions about Mason the prosecutor might ask.
She had been strong throughout the ordeal of this trial. Most of the time, anyway. She had a bad moment when the prosecution showed the jury the oversized photographs of the fatal damage done to Richard Fletcher. Another when they showed the photographs of Jenny Fletcher — alive and well in those photos, three years old then, almost four. A reminder that none of them knew if she was alive or dead. He refused to believe she was dead, no matter what the prosecutors said. She was just five now — her birthdays had been terrible, grief-filled days for Caleb, Mason, and their mother. Did Jenny miss them?
That was the most innocent question he could ask himself about Jenny.
He thought about the less innocent ones all the same, and knew the prosecutors’ insistence that Jenny was dead had undermined his mother’s hope. Even when they had shown the photos of Jenny, though, his mother had summoned her courage and managed to regain her composure.
She was falling apart now.
THE jury came in and was seated. They avoided looking at his brother.
They reached the moment when Mason was asked to stand.
Caleb’s mom was looking at the jury, but Caleb was watching Mason. Mason Delacroix Fletcher. Mason Delacroix, the prosecutors insisted on calling him, even though Caleb’s father had adopted him.
Mason stood next to his attorney, just beyond Caleb’s reach, pale and stone still, and Caleb supposed the reporters would say that as the verdict was read, the defendant showed no emotion. But Caleb could see that he was scared, as scared as he had ever been. Caleb was scared, too.
The judge was talking to the jury foreman, but Caleb already knew what the verdict would be. Caleb thought Mason and his mother knew, too.
Caleb couldn’t hear the words, not over the part of his mind that wanted to reach Mason, to tell him he would always believe in his innocence, that he would keep fighting for him.
He knew that even his mother didn’t believe in that innocence, not completely. He knew the things the police and prosecutors said made her uneasy. Maybe Uncle Nelson’s certainty of Mason’s guilt, and the certainty of her parents, had damaged her faith in Mason more than Caleb knew.
Her parents had wanted her to give Mason up for adoption, all those years ago, but she had refused.
She didn’t abandon him now, either. She sat here dutifully every day, and paid for the defense lawyer out of her already strained resources, and never breathed a word of the doubts she felt about Mason’s innocence to anyone but Caleb, who steadfastly argued that being a problem child didn’t make Mason a murderer.
Caleb could tell that for all the trouble between his mother and Mason, she was hoping for the impossible now, hoping that when the verdict was read, the foreman would say, “Not guilty.”
But that wasn’t what he said, of course. Caleb’s mother made a sound, low and harsh, as if the air was being forced from her lungs by a blow, then half-fainted against him.
Even as he caught her, Caleb looked up at his brother, who turned and gave him a soft smile. Cameras flashed, and the guards pulled Mason away.
CHAPTER 7
Tuesday, July 16
4:12 P.M.
LAS PIERNAS
NELSON FLETCHER didn’t like publicity, but he understood the need to give the jackals of the press a little snack, something to tide them over until some other wounded animal came along and drew their attention. His siblings would make sure their father was able to get away from here, but now, on the courthouse steps, at a bank of microphones, Nelson must take this task on.
He would also try to keep the media away from Caleb and Elisa as long as possible. He was proud of Caleb, who had handled himself well in there. To Nelson’s surprise, Detective Harriman had been there, and helped Caleb get his mother away without letting anyone shove a microphone at her. If he hadn’t known her so well, Nelson would have suspected that Elisa’s fainting was a ploy, but she wasn’t the type to do something like that. He worried, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. Caleb would watch over her.
He carefully unfolded his prepared statement. “I’m sure you can understand that this is an extremely difficult time for the family—” he began, but was interrupted by a shouting reporter.
“Did your brother ever express fears about his adopted son?”
He had told himself that he wouldn’t let them distract him from reading the statement, but this question was one he would not let pass. “Richard always referred to Mason as his son. And that wasn’t a matter of hiding anything — we’ve never hidden the fact that Richard and I were adopted together and raised as brothers. I do not believe having the same biological parents could have possibly made us any closer, allowed us to love each other more, made me miss him any more than I do now….” He paused, took a shaky breath, and went on. “Richard Fletcher was a genius. A bright and creative and kind man. A good man. My brother.”
He paused again, pinched the bridge of his nose, set his thumbs hard into his tear ducts. “I see how loyal Caleb is to his own brother, Mason, and I think that would have made Richard very proud. While I believe that the jury made the right decision, I… I am not happy about this. Nothing makes this a happy occasion. I understand completely why Caleb and his mother stood by Mason. Just as I had to stand up for Richard and for Jenny, who could not speak for themselves….”
He drew another breath.
“This family is my family. That’s all I have to say.”
More shouts followed, but he didn’t respond to them.
HE hardly remembered the drive home. He left another pack of reporters at the gates of the exclusive community where he lived. He pulled into his garage, turned the car off, hit the automatic garage-door control, and waited until the automatic light overhead clicked off.
He sat in the darkness and remembered.
RICHARD , the youngest of the boys, was crying. When Graydon Fletcher came into the bedroom, he was pleased to see that Nelson was trying to comfort the four-year-old.
“He had a bad dream, Daddy,” Nelson said.
“You’re a good boy to take care of him. I’ll sit with him now. You go on back to bed.”
“Mommy!” Richard cried. Nelson wished he could help him.
“Mommy’s asleep right now, Richard.”
“Not her! I want my real mommy.”
“She�
�s in heaven, Richard. You know that. But we love you and we’ll take care of you and keep you safe.”
The sobbing went on for a while, then subsided.
“Can you sleep now?”
Richard shook his head.
“Would you like to play with one of your puzzles for a little while? Would that help you feel sleepy again?”
The boy nodded.
“That’s a good boy. Put your slippers and robe on. Come on, let’s play the math game.”
“Yes, please!” Richard eagerly searched for his slippers and, with a little help, donned his robe. He glanced at Nelson. “Can Nelson play, too?”
“Oh, I suppose he can miss a little sleep tonight. Sure.”
While Nelson put on his own robe and slippers, Richard looked up at his adoptive father and raised his arms. The man lifted him and carried him easily. Nelson knew that Richard wouldn’t have wanted to be carried if he hadn’t still felt frightened.
“Ready?”
“Yes!”
“Such a bright little boy.” Their father smiled as he looked back at the sleeping figures in the other beds, then reached down and ruffled Nelson’s hair. “All my boys are bright little boys.”
NELSON rubbed his hands over his face and then opened the car door. The dome light went on, and the motion detector in the garage quickly snapped the overhead on as well.
He thought of Elisa. Should he call her?
No, he decided. Be patient.
TWO
FIVE YEARS AFTER THE MURDER OF RICHARD FLETCHER
CHAPTER 8
Sunday, April 23
8:15 A.M.
LAS PIERNAS
THE rain was ruining someone’s weekend, no doubt, but I didn’t mind it at all. I was pleased to be where I was — in bed next to my husband, warm and cozy. We had been awakened by a thunderclap just after dawn, but apparently our houseguest, Ethan Shire, had slept through it, giving us a couple of unexpected hours of privacy.
