Buried Secrets: PAVAD: FBI Case File #0005 (PAVAD: FBI Case Files)

by Calle J. Brookes

  Every bit of color leeched out of his quietly handsome face. “Did I…did I do it?”

  Well.

  Jac leaned closer. “I don’t know. Can you tell us what happened that day?”

  “I didn’t mean to hit her that hard. And she was ok when Mom got home. I swear.”

  “Luke, we need you to slow down. Can you start at the beginning?”

  “How far back? When I told Grandma I was too sick to go to school or when I hit her in the kitchen?”

  “Let’s start at the moment you got out of bed.” Because Jac was almost convinced of one thing. A twelve-year-old boy who’d weighed approximately eighty-five pounds and had been short for his age had not buried his grandmother alive. Unless he’d had help. “What time did you wake up that morning?”

  “Late. I remember that I had to scramble to get up in case I missed the bus. Grandma was yelling. Standing at the foot of the bed, telling me how worthless I was.”

  “Was this something she did a lot of?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “She didn’t much like me, or Honey. Barely tolerated Jenny. She despised Marcie. Well, Olivia and Kayla and Marnie, now. They’re also in the process of changing their names legally, with our new first names and Beise as our last name. We’re proud of our father’s name. Mom had no right to take it from us and lie about it. We’re using the same attorney.”

  “How did she treat Monica and Lesley?”

  “Diane and Les. He refused to change his name completely. Took Meynard as his last name, but still goes by Les. Tells everyone his name is Lester. Grandma adored him and Monica—now Diane.”

  “Why?”

  “Les was born when my mother was seventeen, and Monica when Mom was nineteen. Grandma wasn’t even forty yet. She wanted to take Monica and Lesley and adopt them, raise them with her third husband. My parents said no. Grandma threw that up at them all the time. Told them that if they had given her Monica and Lesley like she’d wanted, then she would have just given them the ranch as a trade. Said that every money problem they had was because they were selfish people who hadn’t deserved the precious babies she’d wanted.”

  “And she didn’t want you and your younger sisters?”

  “No. I was born while my parents were living with my dad’s great-uncle in Denver. We weren’t as important to our grandmother.”

  “Luke, we’ve had reports that your grandmother was abusive physically, as well. Is that true?”

  Jac knew exactly what it was like to be constantly criticized by someone in your home as a child. There was nothing more damaging than that. It had taken her a long time to realize her father had been wrong. That there was nothing wrong with her, or her little sister, Natalie.

  She just hoped Luke Meynard and his siblings had learned that lesson, too.

  “Yes. A thousand times yes. Mostly me.” He lowered his voice, his eyes going to the window on the door as some of his colleagues walked by.

  Jac straightened and sent him a businesslike smile in case his coworkers were spying. “Anything you tell us right now, Luke, we’re keeping it to ourselves while we find out what happened. We know whatever happened to your grandmother happened between two thirty and five thirty that day. Where were you at two thirty?”

  He leaned back. Pulled in a deep breath. “In the living room. I wanted to watch television. My favorite show always came on at two thirty, and since I had school most days, I rarely got to watch it. But Honey wanted the TV. We were arguing. Grandma hit me hard on the head. Right here.” He pointed to a half-inch scar on his temple. “With a stainless steel spatula. The handle cut my eye. It hurt, and I was bleeding. I’m…not good with blood. It made me nauseated, and I puked in the floor. She hit me again.”

  Jac pulled in a breath at the memories in the man’s eyes. They echoed her own. She’d never forget the pain she’d felt at her own father’s hands. “What happened next?”

  “I’d had enough. I felt like I was dying from being sick. She had given all the fever medicine to the girls. Told me I was a baby for wanting medicine. That I wasn’t going to be much of a man. I remember that clearly. It was the last conversation I ever had with my grandmother.”

  “What happened next?” Clint asked matter-of-factly. “She can’t hurt you now, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Some people have no business being around kids. I grew up with one just like that myself, who used his fists and his words to destroy. Keep telling us what happened so we can figure this out.”

  “She started to hit me again and again. With the spatula. I just couldn’t take it anymore.” He leaned his head against his hands. When he looked up, his green eyes were damp. “I swung out and punched her. In the head. But I was a lot smaller than she was. She punched me back. Then I pushed her, as hard as I could. It just happened. She fell and hit her head. I ran. I just ran. I stayed out in the barn that day, until my mom came home and found me. Then Mom saw the blood, and Monica saw…and Mom and Grandma were screaming at one another. I went inside and hid. I hid under Lesley’s bed. Because Grandma always loved him best and wouldn’t look for me there because it was his space and not mine. I just hid. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened after that. I stayed there until I heard Lesley’s car pull up. I knew…I knew she wouldn’t hit me again if he was there. Lesley always made her stop hitting me. Every time. Then, my dad was home, and we were moving. I was happy. Happy I never had to see her again. I didn’t know she was dead. I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  Jac didn’t know what to say, so she just sat next to him and let him talk.

  40

  Her ribs twinged, but she was going to power through it. Miranda knew they were close to finding what they wanted. Jac had more information, including current names, for all of Luther and Pauline’s children neatly printed on the whiteboard. Jac was probably just a hair shy of a clinical obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis, but it didn’t interfere with her job performance, so it was just accepted as one of her quirks. There were a lot of quirky people in PAVAD.

  One reason Miranda thought it was such a perfect fit for her. Miranda had quirks of her own. “Let’s figure out what we’ve got. Lesley alibied out. Jon David Calligner reaffirms that Lesley was at the junkyard until five thirty, when Jon David sent him home because Lesley looked a little off his feed, as Jon David put it. We can probably safely assume he was coming down with the same virus as the rest of the Beise kids.”

  “But we’re sure Helen wasn’t still alive then?” Jac asked. “Time of death was never actually determined.”

  “It rarely is,” Miranda said. That was the kind of data Jac would focus on to the exclusion of everything else. Jac was definitely a detail kind of woman. “But Lesley swore he didn’t see her before they moved. We’ll have to collaborate that with his siblings’ statements.”

  “After we get them,” Carrie Lorcan pointed out.

  Knight loomed behind her. Well, leaning against the wall, not saying anything, much like Clint, who stood next to him. And Joel. Joel looked practically exhausted, poor guy. He’d had another drug bust in the northern corner of his county at four a.m. the night before. Drugs in Masterson were becoming more of a problem than ever.

  It was Knight who concerned her the most.

  He’d practically watched her every move since they’d met up in the dining room that morning. It had her…disconcerted. In a way she hadn’t been over a man in a long, long time.

  “I suggest we split up.” Miranda studied the names. “Max, you and Jac take Olivia. She’s a teacher at a small school, just over the state lines in Nebraska.” Miranda didn’t miss the way her friend winced at the assignment. Well, they weren’t going to figure things out between them if they weren’t given time alone to do it. A long drive into Nebraska would be a good place to start.

  “I think that would be a good idea, but why don’t I take Dr. Appell with me instead?” Max shot her a significant look. One that told Miranda that Max knew what she had been trying to do. Max was a very smart man�
��maneuvering him and Jac was going to be very tricky. “So she can see the ropes?”

  “I’ll take Monica—Diane,” Clint said. “Knight, you want to ride along with me? You and Agent Jac?” Clint liked Jac; Miranda could tell. It didn’t surprise her—Clint had a protective streak three miles wide, and Jac had that look about her that made people want to protect.

  “That leaves Carrie and me to talk to Jenny-Kayla and Marcie-Marnie.” She could handle that. Put some distance between herself and Knight.

  Miranda needed the drive today, to see the mountains and hills and fields she’d grown up loving. She just needed to put some distance between herself and Knight, too.

  Miranda needed time to think. She had to figure that man out. Somehow. He was a bigger puzzle than she ever had imagined.

  41

  “What do you want from me? This was not why I gave you my number.”

  Jim resisted the urge to curse right back. Girl always had been a witch. Just like Helen. “I’m calling to give you the heads-up. So you can warn the rest of your brothers and sisters. There’s trouble here in Masterson.”

  Jim hurriedly explained it to her, popping a third top on a beer while he did. Without thinking about it. The woman he talked to always had brought out the urge to drown his troubles in beer. This time was no different.

  By the time the call was done, Jim was steaming.

  “Handle it. Just handle it. Get rid of that cop if you have to.”

  Jim disconnected the call and threw his cell into the passenger-side window. It bounced off and landed in the floorboard. He just left it, starting the engine up again.

  Everything burned through him. Gunderson. Weatherby. That ungrateful daughter of Pauline and Luther. All of it.

  Jim just wanted to make someone pay.

  By the time he made it to Gunderson’s, he’d finished almost the whole six-pack. He hadn’t done that so quick in a long time. At least a few years or so.

  It wasn’t sitting so well on him now. He pulled over before Gunderson’s driveway and lost the contents of his stomach.

  Jim pulled the rest of the way into Gunderson’s drive and just sat for a while.

  No one was home. Gunderson’s truck was gone, of course.

  The place had that deserted feel. With all the work Gunderson still needed to do on the place, it looked like it was haunted and about ready to be condemned. Jim sat out there in his squad car, just thinking, parked at angle blocking the driveway.

  Drinking. He shouldn’t be. A part of him knew that. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be there. If Gunderson came home and saw him there, and smelled the beer, Jim’s career would be finished. Gone. Ended in an instant.

  Gunderson would arrest him on the spot.

  His own stupid fault.

  But he was so sick and tired of men like Gunderson getting things just handed to them. The ranch wasn’t the biggest, and it wasn’t in that great of shape, but it was more than Jim had. No doubt because Gunderson made twice what Jim did.

  How was that fair?

  They’d started the academy at the exact same time. Him, Gunderson. Weatherby. Those two had teamed up against him from the very beginning.

  It wasn’t right. Far from it. It wasn’t right at all.

  Jim pulled his weapon free—not his service weapon, because that would just be stupid. But the smaller pistol he’d carried in his shoulder holster for fifteen years.

  He tossed the can in his hand onto the ground next to his patrol car and took aim. There were shiny windows right there in front of him, with bright curtains on the inside.

  There were flowers in the pots on the front porch. No doubt that pansy-ass Gunderson had planted them himself. Cooing over them like a freak.

  Jim closed one eye and aimed at the first of those flowerpots as a big yellow dog came ambling up toward his car. Jim cursed, and jerked as his fingers squeezed the trigger.

  And kept squeezing, even as the dog leapt right at him.

  Then the dog was yelping and running, blood on its side.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt Gunderson’s dog. Jim did a quick U-turn. And drove off. He hadn’t meant to hurt the dog.

  Jim turned back toward the county seat and forced himself to breathe. To keep his hands steady on the wheel.

  He almost missed the big, slate blue truck with Masterson Vet Services printed on the side until they were almost on top of each other.

  He cursed and corrected, keeping his patrol car on the road by the skin of his teeth.

  Jim looked in the rearview just as a long, tall woman climbed from the driver’s seat and watched him drive away.

  The Talley girl. No doubt she’d seen him now.

  It was going to be over soon. Then maybe Helen would stop haunting him with every breath he took.

  42

  Miranda had worked with Carrie Lorcan before. The woman was good at her job, about Miranda’s age, and quiet. She reminded Miranda a good deal of her younger sister, Meyra. Carrie was on the autism spectrum, as was Meyra.

  She’d always worked well with Carrie when their paths had crossed.

  Carrie had been assigned this case—normally, she remained in St. Louis supervising her team of computer tech investigators, of which Jac was an assistant supervisor—to help get the woman she’d brought with her up to speed before turning the trainee over to Jac for a month or so. That tech—Dr. Appell—was now with Jac, learning how to integrate with a local law-enforcement agency while the opportunity was there. Joel Masterson’s chief deputy Zach Lowell was a tech junkie, same as Jac, and he’d volunteered to help with the process.

  Miranda just thought Zach had a bit of a crush on Jac, even though Max was around glaring whenever this Deputy Lowell got too close.

  “Do you think we’re getting closer?” Carrie asked quietly. She didn’t say much when they were in larger groups. Miranda understood that. Some people just did better one on one.

  “I do. The whole thing reads as a crime of the moment. No doubt a family argument gone wrong. I don’t think anything was premeditated. It’s just a matter of identifying who was where.”

  “Good.”

  “Anxious to get home?”

  “Yes. Malcolm is teething. It can give him an ear infection sometimes. And Maddie has been clingy lately. I don’t want Sebastian to get overwhelmed.”

  Miranda laughed quietly. “I don’t think there’s a Lorcan brother alive who can get overwhelmed. Those three can handle just about anything.”

  Miranda had worked with all three of the Lorcan brothers at one point or another. They were bureau legends, even more now. Three identical men, all three assigned to PAVAD, and they were very, very good at their jobs.

  So were their wives, who Miranda considered among her friends.

  “So how is Dr. Knight holding up?” Carrie asked suddenly. It surprised Miranda. Carrie normally didn’t ask questions like that.

  “Ok, I think. Why?” Miranda shot a look at the other redhead as she pulled up to the stop sign where the highway they were on merged with the one they’d need to take.

  A slightly guilty look passed through Carrie’s hazel eyes. “I’ve been asked to do a spot check on him. See how he’s doing with this team.”

  “By?” Miranda had her suspicions.

  “Director Dennis. He really wants Knight to take over this new division. He’s supposedly really good at ferreting out information about the past. Director Dennis is just afraid that the history between Dr. Knight and PAVAD, especially that with the Brockmans, will be a problem.”

  Miranda thought for a moment. “I think he’s having some struggles. I think he’s having headaches, for one thing. He mentioned it in passing before. I know bright lights can trigger them. As for his relationship with the Brockmans—I’m not about to touch that with a ten-foot pole. But…he knows his stuff. I think he’s doing ok, Care. I really do—”

  “Look out!” Carrie yelled.

  Miranda looked back at the road, just as a WSP patr
ol car swerved over the yellow line.

  She jerked the wheel to the right, sending the borrowed truck onto the shoulder. Two feet from the guardrail and the sheer drop next to it. Wreck Curve Road was the worst, most dangerous road in the county. There were said to be ghosts there, too.

  The patrol car sped off into the distance, just leaving them there. He hadn’t even slowed down.

  Miranda pulled in a deep breath and killed the engine. “You ok, Carrie?”

  The other woman gripped the handle of the door tightly, but Carrie seemed ok. “I’ve been ran off the road before, but never by a patrol car.”

  Miranda’s mind ran over what had happened in the few seconds before the truck had gone onto the shoulder. “Yeah. He was in our lane.”

  “Distracted.”

  “Did you get any identifying details?”

  “Checked the plate number when he went by. Got half. Got half.” Carrie rattled it off quickly, then took a few deep breaths.

  “We’ll check in with Clint after a while. His house is just a mile or so down that road there. He might know what squad car would be out around here this time of day. Because there was no reason that should have happened. I’m going to get out, check the truck.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  They checked as quickly as they could. Miranda had been afraid they’d popped one of the tires—it had made a nasty sound when she’d jerked it over the pavement. But they’d gotten lucky. “I think we’re good.”

  Carrie’s hand wrapped around Miranda’s arm, and she pointed. Miranda heard it before seeing it.

  A baby was crying from somewhere nearby. Loudly.