“Quite literally. The mother couldn’t cope. She killed herself. The brother and sister were taken into separate foster care. The sister was ten—she became a tearaway and later died of a drug-fuelled overdose. Guess who her supplier and pimp was?”
Silk swore. “Shit. Jimmy Hansson?”
“Jackpot. Tina Seager was used up and addicted to heroin by some gangbanger. The brother, eight at the time of the original incident, Julian Seager, fared better and eventually dropped off the grid.”
“All this,” Silk breathed. “All this because Freddie Knott needed to use a blade.”
“Every single one of our actions has untold consequences through time. We’d all do better to remember that.”
Cat’s in the cradle, Silk thought. The man who verbally abused his child eventually lives to see his son shouting at his granddaughter. The man who has no time for his child ends up watching from afar through heartbroken eyes. The man who has time only for his own feelings becomes bitter, lonely and angry; childless.
“Fast-forward to a more recent time,” Brewster was saying. “And we still have no record of Julian Seager. I can think of a few explanations, but only one that works for us.”
“His foster family changed his name,” Silk said assuredly.
“Give that man a prize. Now, how soon can you be outside the station?”
“Why?”
“Wanna go see his foster parents?”
“They’re in LA?”
“Of course they are. It’s not a stretch, and they had more than a few kids. Ninety five percent of this whole case is a child and consequence born of LA.”
Silk was the same. “I’m here now.”
“Thought you might be.”
*
Brewster picked him up in her own personal vehicle. It was a brown Impala with a heavy brake pedal, something she called the ‘shitmobile’, and the only thing she’d claimed from her destroyed relationship. Brewster drove them out of the center, weaving through the traffic and alternately making him sweat as she didn’t apply enough pressure to the brake pedal and then making him surge forward toward the windscreen as she applied too much.
“Soon as this thing breaks down,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m walking away. No tow. No repair. I’ll just grab the closest transport.”
“Sounds,” Silk shot forward again, “like a plan.”
She brought the shitmobile to a thundering stop outside a dilapidated house among a row of other dilapidated houses. The streets were deserted, no kids ran playing. The neighborhood wasn’t safe. Locked doors, barred windows and flashing house alarms revealed the area. The only vehicles around were low-slung Oldsmobiles and blacked-out SUVs.
Silk looked over at her. “Leave it open. Maybe it’ll get stolen.”
Brewster snorted. “Don’t be a dick.” She climbed out onto the sidewalk, leaving the car unlocked anyway, and strode purposefully up the drive. Silk trailed her. With badge in hand she knocked hard and waited.
At last, a blurry female face appeared behind a screen, a set of bars, and an inner door with a vision panel. Even from here they could tell the hair was gray and straggly, the face slack.
“Police, ma’am,” Brewster said before she could speak, flashing the badge. “Could we have a moment?”
It sounded like a dozen chains were unhooked, a dozen locks opened. Then the woman cracked the door an inch. “Yeeesss?”
“Could we come in? We have a couple of questions about your boys.”
“All right, all right. Wait there.”
More noise, the sound of something heavy scraping, then the door opened. Brewster and Silk pushed through. Silk spied a heavy wooden box to the side of the jamb.
“Extra insurance.” The old woman coughed. “You can never have enough around here.”
Silk nodded. Brewster took the chance to head into the little living room, taking a careful inventory. The place smelled of unwashed socks and ointment. Piles of clothes sat on the floor and on the arms of the shabby sofa.
“Do you live here alone, ma’am?”
“I do now. My husband left me at sixty five. Found himself some fresh. Go figure.”
“I believe you were once registered as foster parents.”
“That’s right. What’s this about, young lady?”
Silk wanted to say, “How did you treat your foster kids, ma’am? Did you treat them right?” He stayed silent.
“Julian Seager. Do you remember him? He would have come to you as an eight-year-old boy some time ago.”
“Of course I remember him, young lady. Jeez, how many kids do you think we had?”
“Sorry. Did he seem . . . well balanced . . . to you?”
“You kiddin’ me? That boy lost both his parents in a few months. Dad to a car accident and mom to suicide. Later he learned his sister died on heroin. Kid was a goddamn handful.”
Silk stared sidelong at her. “Handful?”
Brewster stepped in front of him. “Tell me, ma’am, what happened to him?”
“Well he joined the goddamn Army. Came of age, didn’t have time for the folks what raised him. Upped and left, he did, and took all the benefits with him. Not a goddamn care.”
Silk breathed deep; in and out through nose and mouth. The regimen helped somewhat.
“Did you change his name?”
“Of course we did. The goddamn Seagers were all over the goddamn news for a while. All dying like that. We thought it best for the kid.”
The kid. Silk’s head hurt.
Brewster kept it together nicely. “And what name did you give him?”
“Well ours a’course. Toft. Called him Jason Toft.”
Silk shook his head as Brewster turned to ask the silent question. The name meant nothing to him. Brewster held his gaze for a second though. “Jason Toft is on the list we got from child services. He’s Julian Seager.”
To the woman she said, “Did you ever hear from Jason again?”
“Not from him, from the goddamn Army. He never changed his home address details. Letter came through, what—” she paused to think, “—maybe a year ago. Jason was kicked out, something about striking a commanding officer. Discharged, they say.”
“On what grounds?” Brewster wondered. “Can we see the letter?”
“Binned the goddamn thing. Why would I wanna keep it?”
Brewster turned way, making a call. Silk didn’t dare let himself look the old woman in the eye. Still, he had to wonder how many young lives she had helped ruin. The walls were full of old pictures. He edged over, conscious of her eyes on him.
Brewster spoke into the phone. “Toft. Jason Toft. Get me a workup on him now. Urgent. Discharged from the Army.” She reeled off the address. “Old residence.”
The old woman tried to smile at her. “What’s this all about, young lady? My boy in trouble?”
“Your boy?” Silk hissed. “Your boy? Jesus.”
Brewster’s next words warmed his heart though. “Fuck Rosenthal. This could be the break in the case. Please, Hector, just do it for me.”
She hung up and nodded at Silk. The old woman left the room to make them a cup of something they were never going to drink. It helped lessen the tension. Brewster put an arm around Silk’s waist, pulling him close.
“Hang in there, tiger. My gut feels like we’re getting somewhere.”
Silk let the touch set off sparks all over his body. It helped grind down the wall of hate this woman, this foster parent, had built within him. He glared at the pictures on the wall without really seeing them. The old woman returned and placed the cups carefully on a sideboard. Brewster asked a couple of background questions just to pass the time.
At last, her cell rang.
Brewster listened without speaking for a full five minutes, never taking her eyes off Silk. This time when she hung up her eyes were speculative.
“Jason Toft struck his commanding officer. Beat him down to within an inch of his life. This event transpired, it seems, aft
er his patrol were ambushed near Basra. The soldiers were attacked by a huge group of men wielding knives. Toft was the only survivor.”
Silk sighed. “That’s the trigger. He puts his past behind him and finds a new home, a good home at last—the Army—only to have the past repeat itself. Shaken, disturbed, mentally dazed, he has an altercation with his boss, gets kicked out of another home and turns the entire blame on the event that started it all. Full circle.”
“Makes a plan.” Brewster nods. “Takes his time. Tracks down the old members of the gang. The only reason he doesn’t get to you is because you also dropped off the grid.”
“But he expects the murders to draw me out,” Silk said. “And they have.”
“But who is he? Where is he? It seemed at one point that he had inside knowledge of the case. Knew where not to hide and when to run. All this for revenge.”
“The Seagers are the key,” Silk said.
“You still haven’t told me how you first came to that conclusion.”
“Later. When you’re not a cop.”
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“Not so much as I felt a week ago, believe me. Goddamn it, if Rosenthal had done his job right he could’ve connected the dots. He could have saved Tanya.”
“He did connect the dots,” Brewster said quietly. “You know that.”
Silk put it to the back of his mind. It would have to wait for a better day. “But we still have no idea who Jason Toft actually is, right?”
“Right.”
Then his eyes focused on the picture and the answer swam into view before him. It was all suddenly crystal clear. The picture on the old lady’s wall had been hanging there for years, but it was the answer to everything.
“Susie,” he said aloud and pointed. “Oh, fuck.”
“Language!” the old woman said. “You’re in my house now.” Shades of old.
Brewster stared hard. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
Silk frowned as he figured it out. “This picture of your son, Jason Toft. He’s what? Fifteen?”
“Yes. That picture was taken a little while before he left us.”
“And he’d be . . . twenty seven now,” Silk mused. “Twelve years.” He turned to Brewster. “It fits. It’s him.”
Brewster’s phone rang before they could do anything. She put it on speakerphone, already sure of what they’d say. “We got a hit. Good work, Brewster. Jason Toft works at the burger stand across the street. Bastard has been listening in to our chatter all along.”
And giving extras to fat fucks like Reggie Rosenthal, Silk thought. Making them linger and talk more.
“He’s been planning this for a year,” Brewster said. “And he’s a clever bastard. Be careful. Have you sent a team?”
“Yeah. Stand’s empty.”
“Call the bomb squad.”
“Shit. Yeah. Good call.”
Brewster pocketed her phone. “C’mon, tiger. We’re heading back to my place.”
36
Silk waited patiently as Brewster ran around in a tidying flurry. From the moment they had stepped over her threshold she had been talking non-stop, hastily dragging a half-dozen empty bottles off to the kitchen, trying hard to keep them hidden and not to let them clink, then running around the room picking up pieces of her discarded gym kit, even down to the white panties that Silk fought not to think about, all the while jabbering about the case. To have come so far, to have gotten so close, she wanted the full glory for this one and wasn’t about to let Reggie the Rhino share the limelight.
“Drink?” she called at last from the kitchen. “I don’t have much.”
Silk resisted a frown and said, “Water’s fine.”
“You sure? I have a killer coffee maker. Takes these fuckin’ pods like some space-age kinda contraption.”
Silk had heard of them. “Oh, all right. Let’s wild side it.”
“Need the goddamn caffeine, man. That’s all. Still hard to believe this Seager guy’s been planted so close to the station all this time with the entire task force searching for him.”
Silk found an empty chair, not as easy as it sounded in Brewster’s fully-functional living room. “I guess he could have poisoned them at any time.”
“Shit, that’s cheery.”
“I try.”
Brewster came in with the hot drinks. Silk noticed she had let her hair down, black locks framing a face that crinkled nicely with experience lines but still held a depth of beauty that took his breath away. When she smiled he stared.
“I have to call this in,” she said. “I mean everything. The task force should concentrate every ounce of its manpower on finding Seager-cum-Toft.”
Silk nodded, sipping from the small cup. “Hopefully they’ll just have to stroll across the road and pick him up.”
“Yeah. Well, here goes nothin’.” She paused with the phone to her ear. “You know, Adam, I know people have died along the way, but I’m sure glad he didn’t find you first. And I’m even happier that I did.”
“Me too.” Silk fought off the pangs of guilt, the surefire knowledge that in Jenny he’d found exactly what Tanya Jazz had found in Roley—the dependable mother/father figure that they’d so long craved for and missed, and he stared hard into Brewster’s eyes. “Me too.”
37
The killer watched the two figures through the undraped front window of the cop’s little house. Having finally learned Adam Silk’s identity from the loose, onion-smeared lips of that fat cop Rosenthal and, happily, how the role model of all aspiring cops everywhere hoped to God that the ‘fuckin serial psycho got to that living excuse for a dead prick, Silk, the one Brewster was probably fuckin’, the killer had managed to tail the lady cop until she led him straight to his final target. It hadn’t been hard. At that time they’d still been in the dark, questing for tidbits. Now they knew his identity but he was still a step ahead.
This kill wouldn’t take long.
He was rightfully wary of Silk. The guy knew he was coming and looked capable. But he also looked vulnerable, more so when the lady cop gave him the eye. All good news for the killer. Her screams would bring Adam Silk, his final kill, crashing to his knees.
The killer checked his watch.
It was time.
Carefully, he crept forward. Memories of that black childhood event came flooding back into his head, so many that he had to pause and kneel with his forehead pressed to the cool grass. His dad standing up to the gang of young muggers, getting cut and bleeding, crawling away, and then his mom screaming at them until they ran off. Seeing his father curled like a baby. Seeing his father cry. Those memories seared his soul like a branding iron, and left more than just a mark. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad; it was what came later. The long nights when his father changed, becoming like a wraith. Confidence destroyed, dignity dissolved in front of his entire family, the man never recovered. It was a long fall into stupor, but a fall nonetheless. And then came the night of his death, the alcohol-fuelled car accident that killed him. His mom finally falling apart. She had held it together for so long, fighting for their father’s identity and soul. But then . . . she had hit the end of the tunnel. Hard. Dead within three months.
How could four secure, stable lives shatter so fast?
The killer lifted his head. The killer. It was how he thought of himself now. There was no other name. No identity. And nothing beyond this night. For him, this was the end of the line. The final swansong.
He stole forward again, more able to fight off visions of the years he’d spent in foster care. They weren’t too bad, but they had robust rules, and one of them was that he was never allowed to contact his sister. It was only after she was gone that his foster mother revealed the events surrounding her death.
The Army saved him. But not now. They’d proved they were not the family he’d once accepted them to be. They had disowned him; cast him out alone into the world.
And now the world would pay.
&nbs
p; Finish paying, he thought. The whole thing would end now.
38
Trent frowned hard as bullets slammed through the walls. At least one scraped inches past his head but he had more important things on his mind. Radford had found Maisie Miller inside the next room, and Collins was trapped at the top of the stairwell. Davic’s men were advancing along the upstairs corridor and also up the stairs toward Collins. The FBI agent had nowhere to go. Trent was pinned behind the door that led back down to the interior parking garage.
For now.
He set his eye to a bullet hole as the firing died down. The scene outside the door was fluid and frantic. Davic’s force was at least a dozen strong. Men peeled left and right. Collins rose with her hands in the air. Men pushed her from behind, another group. She gave up her weapon, standing tall, her face stony. Other men smashed at the door that led to the room Radford had entered. How the hell was he going to save them both? Trent stepped back as more men charged at his own door.
Shit. He had to save his own ass first.
He backed away as the door crunched. A single wooden panel splintered. Trent didn’t fire for fear of hitting Collins. He backed down the stairs, feeling the garage space open up at his back. When the men broke down the door he fired up at an angle, catching the first of them in the knees. He collapsed, and the next man fell over him, losing his weapon. Trent turned as more men advanced and jumped off the stairs out into empty space.
Seconds passed, and then his booted feet crunched into the roof of the Ferrari.
*
Claire Collins cursed inwardly, but stayed quiet. She had also heard Radford’s surprised outburst and knew he needed time to get their mission objective to safety. Davic’s goons hadn’t killed her straight away, which meant they needed information. She would keep them busy as long as she could.
Collins was no stranger to action and danger. The FBI had sent her into some pretty stern situations and she had talked or fought her way out of 100 percent of them. It was her unflinching focus that kept her at the top of the game, on the edge where she needed to be. To maintain that focus, she’d found a need to blow the tension away almost every night, usually by hitting a club or bar, which also helped to send her into a dreamless stupor instead of dwelling.
The Disavowed Book 2 - In Harm's Way Page 16
