The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

  Then Jack had spoken to Vicki from the airport while killing time before boarding his plane. She had sounded different from three mornings ago—she seemed flat again. Clouded. He had hoped it was just the effect of the phone, but it still seemed different from talking with her yesterday. Perhaps he just fabricated it, his mind falling back into established tones. Or maybe she was just having a bad day, or a bad hour. He would hope for this transience. But, in a rare insightful moment, he wondered if the depressed flavor of his conversation with Vicki contributed to his desire to go talk to Randall rather than head home after his plane landed.

  He refocused on the project in front of him. He could not readily articulate any other unanswered questions at the moment. He moved his attention back to the list of possible motives and stared at the next blank line for several minutes. He tried to conjure up other reasons for Aiden and Wendy to attack Tina Langenbahn and Sara Gardner. Finally he wrote, “To confuse us.”

  42

  Heath Reilly wanted this neighborhood to look familiar, but it didn’t. Branches from an ancient oak slouched over telephone wires in the front yard of a deep-red Cape Cod home across the street. A fire hydrant caked with layer upon layer of bright yellow paint decorated the front yard of an adjacent house. Three concrete steps, cracked along the front and sides, led to up to the front porch of another neighbor’s home, replete with rattan chairs and a worn wooden porch swing in dire need of staining. Surely this had looked very similar twenty-five years ago, but Reilly couldn’t quite place any of it in his memory. He was much younger then, he reassured himself, and didn’t pay quite the same attention to detail then that he does now.

  Reilly had just taken Corinne to the airport. She wanted to have some time at home tonight to prep for her coverage of Randall Franklin’s trial tomorrow. Little work on the Piper case remained for him tonight. He and Rita had spent a couple of hours trying to track down Sioban Meloy and ask her about her relationships with Aiden Dolan and Tina Langenbahn, but she wasn’t home and she didn’t answer her cell. She was due for work tomorrow as a barista at a local coffee shop, so they would talk to her then. Jeff Pine went home to go to evening church with his family. Camilla and Amanda wanted to spend the evening going through more video, the thought of which bored Reilly to tears. He promised he would catch up with them a little later to review interview transcripts.

  So Reilly came straight from Logan Airport here to Dana’s house to have dinner. The same home where he had spent nearly two years as a child, yet he barely recognized it or its surroundings.

  He had looked forward to this, to seeing his old stomping grounds. Now, standing here in this strangely unfamiliar place, he began to regret accepting Dana’s offer. He realized it was his fault that she extended the invitation in the first place. Over dinner the other night, he commented several times how much he would like to see the house. He practically obligated her to have him over. He would much rather have come with Corinne at his side. She could buffer any uncomfortable feelings from his past; one look at her and he could find solace in his invigorating present and promising future. However, at this point, he wasn’t sure which was more unsettling: the fear that memories of a largely unpleasant childhood would resurface, or the shame of not remembering much of anything from this ostensibly formative portion of his life.

  The scent of warm peanut butter cookies broke him out of his contemplative trance. He instantly recognized it as Faye Dellahunt’s recipe, and this olfactory memory triggered a handful of others to follow. He could picture the white-cabinet kitchen, the antiquated gas stove, and the faded linoleum under his feet. He began to feel better about coming. He was capable of conjuring images from his past, and not all of them were distasteful.

  As he traversed the front sidewalk, he noticed a rather large, professionally designed sign in the front window. “Family Connections” it read in large letters, followed by “Seven days a week, by appointment only” in smaller font underneath. Reilly found the logo in the upper corner unelaborate, yet poignant. Two larger, simple figures—circles for heads, a rectangle for one presumptively male body and a rhombus for the female’s—held hands with a smaller, childlike figure in the middle. The male was colored blue and the female yellow; the child bore the color orange. Not only did the bright orange make the child the centerpiece of the artwork, but Reilly also surmised that the colors implied something more: the child did not descend directly from these parents, otherwise it should have been painted green, the natural combination of blue and yellow.

  He mounted the front porch via the sturdy wooden steps in the middle and rang the doorbell. Dana answered after a brief delay.

  “Heath, I’m so glad you decided to come,” Dana announced as she welcomed him inside.

  He entered the nicely appointed living room and looked around. His transient enthusiasm dissipated quickly as no aspect of this room registered with him.

  “Look familiar?” she asked.

  Reilly paused, soaking up his environs. Should I admit that I have no recollection of this particular room, or should I fake it? What if she had renovated sufficiently that she wouldn’t expect me to recognize it? In his personal life, stating the socially acceptable response generally trumped the truth for him, but here he didn’t know which answer would constitute the former.

  “Um, no, not really,” he said while forcing a smile. He went with the truth—often a scary fallback plan.

  “Well, that’s ‘cause you shouldn’t, silly,” Dana responded, giving him a one-handed shove on his shoulder. Even though it shifted him back on his heels, Reilly welcomed this playful act of a sibling.

  “I totally redid this room. Dad used to have that shit-brown BarcaLounger in this corner facing the TV, over in that corner.” She pointed in various directions in the room, assuming Reilly faithfully followed her description of the layout.

  “Oh, yeah,” Reilly lied believably.

  “I use this for my business.” Dana gestured toward the neatly positioned chairs and love seat off to one side of the room. A coffee table sat in the center of them with several binders stacked neatly on top. In the other corner was a large oak desk with a computer monitor on top. “Come on in here.” She led him through open French doors—which would presumably be closed during business meetings—into the dining room, which connected the living room to the kitchen.

  Once in the room, Reilly recognized the old mahogany table and matching chairs. The hutch fashioned in the same style leaned against the right wall, and a large, ornate wooden cross hung on the opposite wall.

  “We used to go to church a lot, didn’t we?” Reilly asked.

  “Oh, my God, are you kidding? Faye and Richard never missed! Every Sunday, every Holy Day of Obligation, every holiday—religious or secular—and most other days thrown in too.”

  “I had kind of forgotten that until just now.” Perhaps the image of the cross had cajoled Reilly into telling the truth this time. It felt OK.

  “Smell those cookies?” Dana wondered.

  “Now that I could not forget,” Reilly admitted. He followed her into the kitchen where about two dozen cookies lined up on a cooling rack.

  “Want to have one before dinner?”

  “I do. Is that allowed?”

  Dana looked around over each shoulder. “Last I checked it was just you and me here, so…you’re goddamned right it’s allowed.” She grabbed a napkin out of the ceramic napkin holder on the counter, proudly plopped a cookie on top, and handed it to Reilly. She picked up a second cookie for herself and took a large bite. “Still warm,” she said through a full mouth.

  He took a deep whiff of the cookie as he leaned back on the counter. He took a bite of his and recalled just how good those cookies were. She nailed Faye’s old recipe. “Wow.”

  They both enjoyed their cookies in silence for a moment. Reilly surveyed the room. Dana finished her cookie when Reilly had just one bite left. “You’ve redone the kitchen too,” he said, admiring the modern, stainless steel a
ppliances.

  “I did, thanks for noticing. It was sorely needed.” She opened the refrigerator and began to pull out some supplies for dinner. She pointed at a stockpot on the stovetop. “I made some chowder and was going to whip up some fancy grilled cheese sandwiches to go with it. Sound OK?”

  “Sounds great.” Reilly replied. “Can I help?”

  “Nope. Just make yourself at home.” Dana looked him in the eye with a smile.

  Reilly nodded and meandered around the kitchen, trying to find something to talk about.

  “How is your case going?” Dana asked as she sliced a tomato.

  “Great,” Reilly answered as he examined a collection of animal-themed magnets tacked to the side of the fridge. “We got him.”

  Dana stopped slicing and looked up at him. “You did?”

  “Yep. Made our arrests this afternoon.” He began examining a shelf of framed photographs under a row of cabinets. He didn’t mind talking about the case, but he knew he couldn’t go into any details. It would be easier to find something else to talk about rather than deflect questions. “The baby-daddy of one of the victims and his new girlfriend.”

  “Huh,” Dana replied as she turned her attention back to the tomatoes. “Good for you. That didn’t take long.”

  “That’s what happens when you get the Fuckin’ Best Investigators.”

  Dana glared up from the cutting board.

  Reilly met her gaze and felt embarrassed. “Pardon my French. Sorry. Inside joke. ‘FBI.’ Get it?”

  Dana nodded and chuckled. “I get it.”

  Reilly pointed at a yellowed photo in a silver frame. “I remember this picture!”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. This is when Richard got promoted or something, right?”

  “He made lieutenant.”

  “Right. That was right before I got here, I think.”

  Dana looked to the ceiling, performing some mental calculations. “That’s probably about right. He injured his back only a couple years later—while you were here, before I got here—and had to take a disability retirement from the force. That always ate at his pride, I think. That he had to retire.”

  “And Faye was a teacher, right?”

  “Music teacher, yep.”

  “Oh, yeah! She had that funky room in the basement where she kept all her instruments!”

  “Still there!” Dana exclaimed.

  A smattering of memories filtered into Reilly’s mind. “I remember hiding in there once, and she got so mad at me,” he said wistfully.

  “Oh, me too! I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so pissed!” Dana agreed. “She put a lock on it after that so I couldn’t go in!”

  Reilly chuckled as he went back to perusing the pictures. He found himself enjoying this experience. So much of his childhood had escaped him that when he could recover something—especially memories as pleasant as these—it filled him with melancholy. He savored the remembrances, but they could remind him of how much of a normal life he had lost because of his shitty mother. His eyes settled on a photo of Dana up to her ankles in a deep blue ocean. “Where’s this?”

  Dana looked up from her sandwich making. “Venezuela.”

  “Oh, wow. I’ve never been.”

  “I went just the once, and I loved it.” Dana’s hand paused mid-chop, suspending her knife about one inch above the cutting board. It looked as though a wave of nostalgia had overcome Dana just as it had Reilly moments before. “I’ll get back there. Soon, I hope,” she prophesied.

  “Good for you. You should,” Reilly replied with genuine admiration. “Who would run your business here? You have a trusted Number One?”

  Dana looked at him sideways. “Don’t you mean Number Two?”

  “Number One. It’s a Star Trek reference. Next Generation? Sorry. Totally nerdy.”

  “You think?” Dana did not try to hide her sarcasm.

  “Anyway…do you?”

  “Nope. It’s just me—no employees.” She opened her palms up to reveal the building blocks of a rather complex sandwich on the countertop in front of her. “You OK with bacon, tomato, and spinach on your grilled cheese?”

  “Sure,” he answered. “That is fancy.”

  “As promised,” she affirmed.

  “As promised,” he repeated, feeling very at ease in this house and in her company. He decided that he was glad he came.

  43

  Jack and his prison guard escort walked side-by-side down the drab gray corridor. Neither said a word, and neither felt compelled to.

  Jack had sat in his car at the airport and called home. He had talked to Jonah before Vicki put him to bed, and he had apologized to Vicki for needing to make one stop before going home. She had accepted without resistance, which Jack had found odd yet relieving.

  As he and the guard arrived at the outer security door to the visitation area, the guard put a hand out toward Jack. “We have to wait here until the other visitor is done,” he explained.

  Other visitor? Jack thought, with an equally quizzical look on his face, but he didn’t vocalize his query. He doubted that this brusque guard was interested in explaining much of anything to Jack. Who would be visiting—or even allowed to visit—on a Sunday evening?

  Just as he turned his attention away from the reinforced door to their right to ponder this, the lock on the door disengaged and the guard on the inside opened it. As she passed through the threshold, Corinne O’Loughlin looked nearly as surprised to see Jack as he was to see her.

  “Hello, Jack,” she said nonchalantly.

  “How did you get in here on a Sunday?” he responded, barely trying to hide the accusation in his tone. He had grown to like Corinne in their interactions over the last few years, and his appreciation for her talents ballooned throughout this collaboration on their book. Yet he didn’t much like the thought of her surreptitiously discussing things with Randall Franklin, especially the night before his trial began. Jack had more to hide from Corinne than Randall did; both he and Randall knew that.

  “I’ve got friends,” she replied, a wry, arrogant smile on her face.

  Jack, less than amused, retorted, “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Heath tells me that you got your guy in Boston. The Piper?”

  Jack scratched the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Maybe? Sounds like you have some doubts?”

  “How’s Randall doing?” Jack changed the subject, as if he hadn’t even heard her question.

  Corinne noticed the diversion, and she let it go for now. She shrugged, “OK.”

  “We should find a time in the next week to sit down and go over this last chapter,” Jack suggested.

  “The last chapter is reserved for the trial. I’ll be there every day, taking notes—“

  “Right, no,” Jack interrupted. “I meant the last one we finished. Before the trial.”

  Corinne nodded in understanding. “Yes, we should. Along those lines…” She walked directly toward Jack, forcing him to turn to the side and back up, following her to the opposite side of the corridor. “Please excuse us for a moment,” she said to the guards, who had struck up their own quiet conversation.

  The guard who had accompanied Jack eyed him, seeking his approval of this sidebar. Jack waved an authoritative hand and nodded.

  Corinne began, “I’m missing a piece. It may not be important at all, but I’m wondering…” She settled in closer to Jack and spoke in a low tone. “In the swimming pool…what happened when you walked over to that corner?”

  “The corner?” Jack feigned confusion.

  “You walked off screen at Randall’s instruction, toward the back corner of the swimming pool. The sound cuts out for most of the next sixty seconds or so, so we can’t tell what, if anything, you’re saying to each other. Forensic reports describe two empty milk crates stacked on one another in that corner. What happened back there for that minute of silence? What was in—or on—those crates?”

  “It’s…” Jac
k started, wanting to say “private,” but he realized that this word would reveal too much of the truth. Both “A long story” and “complicated” beg for further explanation. Even if this bought Jack some time for them to discuss at some point in the future, he would still have to conjure up something—something of some depth and detail to merit the moniker “a long story.”

  “It was a photo of Vicki and Jonah, bound and gagged, prior to being drugged.” He settled on this, an adequate lie he quickly decided, especially in the heat of the moment.

  “Huh. That must’ve been creepy.”

  Jack nodded. “Surely Randall’s intention.”

  “Has that been logged in as evidence, then?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. I destroyed it.” He put on an unashamed air, as if he truly had disintegrated the picture without regret, despite his obligation as an investigator to turn it in. “I couldn’t stand the thought of Vicki having to see that during the trial. Or ever, quite frankly.”

  “I get that.” Corinne nodded, enlightened. She seemed satisfied, as if Jack’s disregard for legal protocol somehow made her happy. “I’ll just skim over that part,” she acquiesced.

  “That would be good. Thanks. Thanks for understanding.”

  She nodded and patted his chest. “Have fun in there. He’s in a playful mood,” she said as she walked past him. “You coming with me, Bob?” she asked the guard in the corridor, punching up the guard’s name. Jack inferred this was her way of showing how she had befriended the guard, thus answering his previous question of how she had gained entry to the prison during off hours.