by Jordan Dane
I’d broken down to tell her after I nearly got myself killed in Alaska because of my ‘lone wolf’ syndrome. I realized I had to tell someone and that somebody turned out to be Lucinda, the woman I loved.
“Detective Barry, this is SSA Townsend, FBI. Give him your full cooperation.” Lieutenant Waters introduced me to the lead in charge of Bram’s case. Some politics were worth playing.
After the detective gave me the case file and I read it, I asked to see the kid, but not face-to-face yet. I wanted to study Bram Cross from the observation room, through the two-way mirror. After the detective agreed, I asked for all recordings to be stopped, camera and audio.
“Go in whenever you’re ready. Come see me when you’re done,” Detective Barry said.
I walked a fine line between law enforcement and my personal friendship with Jax Malloy, but I had no intention of making things worse for a seventeen-year-old kid already on the skids.
Alone in the dark observation room, I gazed at Bram for the first time.
The kid looked defeated and exhausted with dark circles under his eyes as he slouched in an interrogation room chair. He had a baby face under his tousled long dark hair. Most women would want to mother him.
Although Bram’s circumstances at age twelve were far more catastrophic, the kid would have no idea how much we had in common—a secret about me that I could never tell him. I’d lost both my parents in a car accident—a horrific tragedy that I’d foreseen in a dream before I fully understood my ‘gift.’ If my superiors at the FBI found out I relied on a psychic gift to solve my cases, I would lose all my credibility and become a laughing stock within the bureau.
But I knew how devastating a shattered family could be on a kid.
The way my parents died drove a bigger wedge between me and my only sister, Sarah. I became an easy target. I didn’t understand my sister’s need to hate me. I let it happen for her sake, but by that time, my psychic dreams had turned into nightmares and grown worse. The death of my mother—my only champion in our family—had pushed me over a line, because I had no one left to tell, no one who wouldn’t judge me. I quit talking about how I dreamed. That part of my life got buried, deep.
I suspected Bram knew firsthand what ‘buried deep’ meant.
My nightmares became my payback for being the center—and the reason—for my fragmented family. I thought my sister would reach out to me in time, but as the years went by, I’d lost hope that would ever happen. Eventually she did, while I recuperated in a hospital in Alaska after I almost died at the hands of a serial killer, but my relationship with Sarah has never been the same.
Yes, I had a lot in common with Bram Cross, but he’d never hear it from me.
After I’d seen enough, I entered the interrogation room and Bram Cross changed like a chameleon. His expression turned grim and he sat up in his chair, ready for a fight. I’m sure I looked like another suit to him, somebody wanting him to talk.
“Is Jax Malloy here? I told the other cops. I’m not saying anything until I see Jax.”
“He’s coming. He lands in two hours.”
I pulled out the chair across from him and extended my hand. When the kid didn’t take it, I figured it would be best to dispense with my credentials. I needed to connect with him on a personal level.
“My name is Ryker Townsend, FBI. Jax Malloy called me about you. I consider him a friend.”
“Well, he’s more than that to me.” The kid crossed his arms and slouched deeper into his chair. “How do I know he really sent you? You could be here to get me to talk.”
“So far, that plan is working.”
Bram rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. Not many appreciated my humor.
“Jax Malloy. He’s thirty-two, tall with dark hair and brown eyes,” I rattled off things I knew about the Dallas fire fighter, anything that popped into my head. “He lives on a ranch that he inherited from his grandparents. He’s a former rodeo rider and worked on oil rigs in the gulf before he got recruited by Smokey the Bear to fight fires. He married Skye Chandler and they have a black lab, named Rodeo. Stop me when I start sounding legit.”
“Keep going. You’re with the FBI. You can do background checks. Tell me something about him that wouldn’t be public record.”
“You mean things like he’s got a third nut sack? Things like that?”
The kid’s face flinched. He almost smiled.
“Yeah, exactly like that.”
I pulled out my cell and punched Malloy’s phone from speed dial. I hit the speaker button and set it down on the interrogation table between us. It rang three times before Jax answered with an unconventional greeting.
“He didn’t talk to you. That’s why you’re calling, right?”
I raised an eyebrow at the kid who sat up in his seat and leaned his elbows on the table, staring at the phone as if he had Aladdin’s lamp in front of him and could conjure a genie.
“I owe you five bucks, Townsend.”
I smiled at Bram and nodded.
“Quit being an ass and talk to my friend, Bram. He’s doing me a solid by meeting with you. We need him, okay?”
“Uh, yeah, okay. I didn’t know. I was being careful.”
“That’s smart, but talk to Ryker as if he’s me—only not as pretty or cut,” Malloy said.
I grimaced and said, “Hey, I work out.”
This time Bram smiled, for real.
“I’m flying to D.C. as we speak,” Jax said. “I’ll see you when I get there. I promise.”
Bram’s eyes welled with tears and his lower lip trembled. He fought the emotion and lost. I saw traces of that twelve-year-old boy in the throes of a terror no human being should know.
“Th-thanks, Jax. I—”
“I know, Bram. See you soon, buddy. We’re family.”
A tear slid down Bram’s cheek and he didn’t wipe it away. I took that as a good sign he might let me in.
“Thanks, Malloy,” I said and ended the call.
When I fixed my gaze on the kid, he took a deep breath and nodded.
“Now…tell me everything.”
“I know how this is going to sound, but I’m serious,” Bram stared into my eyes and didn’t waver. He had my attention.
“It’s been five years since…that night, but I finally remember something.”
Bram’s voice cracked and his gaze shifted to the table as if he was in a trance, but he kept talking. The room blanked out for me. He had me riveted, waiting for what he would say.
“My mother didn’t do it. I know that now. She didn’t, I swear. Somebody else was there. I think I saw something new, a shadow. It was real.”
Five years ago, when Bram Cross had been only twelve, he’d survived the horror of his mother butchering his little brother Benny and sister Lily and shooting him before she turned the gun on herself and ended her shame. Bram had been so traumatized, he’d lost much of his memory, but he’d survived after more than one surgery and a lengthy hospital stay.
The kid had been robbed of his innocence and all sense of safety. His mind had been virtually wiped clean of any good memories, with only dark terrors from one night left behind.
“How do you know she didn’t do it? What’s changed?” I asked.
“Something on that dead homeless guy triggered it. As soon as I smelled it, I flashed back to that night. I was there.”
Jax had been a first responder, as firemen often are at many crime scenes, and he’d protected Bram and tended to his wounds. He’d stayed with him and held him, even visited him many times at the hospital when the kid didn’t have family left. It took time for Bram to heal physically and Jax never wavered in his support.
The police ruled his case a murder-suicide and shut it down without a full investigation—and Bram got shuffled off to social workers.
“What did you smell?”
Fresh tears filled his eyes.
“That’s just it. I can’t remember. I only know what I saw. It came and went. It remind
ed me that we weren’t alone. My mother…didn’t do it. She couldn’t have.”
Bram let it all go and I kept my silence, studying him.
“After I smelled it, I dropped to the ground and I must’ve passed out. My whole body shook and I couldn’t stop it. God, what’s happening to me?” Panic etched lines on his face and he raised his voice. “I swear, I’m not making this up, just to get out of this…whatever it is. I didn’t kill the guy last night. My friend Josh Atwood did, but it was self-defense.”
“Okay. I can help with that, but I want to hear more about what happened to you. Let’s take it one step at a time.” I kept my voice low and steady, to calm him.
Did I believe him?
I struggled with my innate cynicism as law enforcement. Was the kid capable of faking a lifelong trauma? Had he figured out an insanity defense? I forced my mind to explore those dark corridors of skepticism, but in the end I had to trust my gut.
In his present predicament, a self-defense plea would have forensics to explore, like the presence of gunshot residue. If Bram didn’t fire the weapon, GSR would not be present on his hands or clothes. By comparison, with a five-year-old murder-suicide case where the police would’ve been dismissive of alternative theories and lax on processing evidence in a rush to close the case, I would have less than nothing to go on.
All I would have is a scent trigger that Bram couldn’t remember and the shadowy, uncharted depths of a kid’s broken mind.
“Look at me.” When he kept his head down, I grabbed his hands to root him in the present and held on until he raised his chin.
I did believe him.
“You’ve been through a trauma no kid should ever face. Your mind is still dealing with it. Believe me, I understand, but I need you to trust me. I’ll help you get to the bottom of what happened with your mother, but first I need you to tell me everything about last night.”
When I let go of his hands, Bram wiped the tears from his face and moaned, a pitiful sound that rose from his belly as if he were releasing demons. He told me about Josh and the gun and the derelict that attempted to rob them.
With my eidetic memory, I didn’t need to take notes. Bram even shared more about Jax and how they’d met the night his family died.
Over the years, Malloy stayed in touch with Bram and had acted as a surrogate big brother, even after the kid went into foster care and became a ward of the state, but Bram had lost everything. He had to start over with virtually nothing to build on, not even his memories or a mother’s love. Jax said they’d lost touch, but I knew—neither time nor distance had broken their bond.
I had to help this kid—and not only for Jax Malloy.
“I’ll see what I can do, Bram. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you. I mean it.”
After I left him, I stopped to see Detective Barry in the bullpen and asked for a front row seat to the autopsy of the deceased homeless man. I had to understand what Bram might’ve smelled. A plan started to percolate in my brain. I’d have to recreate that night in such vivid detail, and with such unfaltering accuracy, I could put him back there—at the worst moment of his young life.
That grave yet vital endeavor had the potential of releasing Bram from the torture of his past—or causing greater damage to his psyche.
I didn’t share any of my impressions with Detective Barry, not before I talked to Jax. We needed a game plan that centered on Bram and what had happened last night, the reason he’d been incarcerated. It sounded like self-defense, but the kid could use a corroborating witness, like his so-called friend who’d ditched him.
After I left MPD’s Seventh District Station, I called my computer genius and communications liaison for my FBI team, Sinead Royce, to have her do a background check on Josh Atwood and his family, to determine if his father had a gun permit for a .38. I also asked for any information she could dig up on Bram’s mother and the case notes out of Dallas. Sinead would have digging to do. Those files would probably be archived as a closed case and would take time to retrieve, but I suspected it would be the key to unlocking Bram’s damaged memory.
If the kid was right, someone else had been present on the night his family had been terrorized, a cold blooded butcher who had annihilated an entire family. I had to unlock what Bram had buried deep—and pray the dead would find me.
Chapter 3
Metropolitan Police Department, D.C.
Seventh District Station – Alabama Avenue
4:30 p.m.
Jax Malloy hadn’t checked bags with the airline. Once the plane had landed, he texted Ryker a message from his phone and grabbed a taxi, heading for the police station where the kid had been jailed. He couldn’t wait to lay eyes on Bram Cross.
After Detective Barry spoke to him, he ushered Jax to the closed door of an interrogation room and assured him their meeting would not be recorded in any way. Jax nodded and thanked the man, and when the detective opened the door, Jax saw the kid for the first time in years.
He’d grown taller and had turned into a handsome young man, but Jax could also see the tragic twelve-year-old, steeped in trouble and wounded at his mother’s hand. Bram had broken his heart five years ago and things hadn’t changed.
When the kid didn’t get up and stayed in his seat, Jax followed his lead and pulled out a chair to sit down, across from him. A table stood between them.
“How are you holding up? Have you talked to an attorney?”
“No. They said I could get one, court appointed for free at my arraignment, but I’m not sure what that means.”
Bram said arraignment would take place in two days. Detectives were still gathering evidence.
“I saw one of those free attorneys when they booked me. The guy looked like he had only one suit…and it stank.”
Jax smiled.
“I’ll ask Ryker. He knows D.C. Maybe he can recommend someone with better hygiene.”
Bram nodded and chewed the inside of his lip with his head down.
“Sorry I lost touch,” the kid said. “I didn’t mean to, but—”
“Why did you leave Dallas?”
Bram grimaced and he avoided eye contact.
“My last foster family in Texas kicked me out and reported me as a runaway. They fostered more kids than they could handle to get more checks. They scammed Child Protective Services. When I threatened to report them, they had enough and voted me off Grifter Island.”
“Where did you go?”
“I headed for New York City, but D.C. was as far as I got. I came to see the Lincoln Memorial. When I found someone who let me crash on his floor sometimes, I stayed.”
“Is that Josh, the guy who brought the gun and came to score meth?”
“Josh Atwood, yeah. I told your friend, Ryker, about him.”
He lowered his chin and nodded as he picked at his thumbnail.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t turn into anything. You were good to me. I don’t know why I left Dallas without coming to you.”
His face flushed red.
Jax had a suspicion that Bram had difficulty making healthy decisions because he punished himself for surviving. A person with strong self-esteem would have a hard time understanding the scorched soul of a kid whose life would be stuck in a never-ending nightmare. He had no faith or energy to nurture a different outcome.
At seventeen, he’d given up.
“I’m meeting Ryker later. We’ll figure something out. I’m not going back until we get you out of here.”
Bram looked up with glassy eyes.
“Maybe I’m where I belong. What’s the difference between jail and being forced to stay with people who hate me…who only see me as a paycheck?”
The hurt and the pain in his words tore through Jax’s heart. He couldn’t argue with his version of reality and he didn’t know what to say that would make him feel better. Only one thing left to do.
“Stand up.”
Jax stood and waited for Bram to do the same. When he did, Jax wal
ked around the table and held his arms open. The kid fought the impulse, but not for long. He collapsed into Malloy’s chest and held on. Jax whispered things he’d said to him years ago, reassurances laced with strong hands and a loving embrace.
Jax needed the hug, too.
“I’m here now. You’re going to be okay,” he said. “I love you, Bram. I never stopped.”
The kid’s body shuddered with sobs when he let go. Jax would hold him for as long as he needed. He doubted Bram had been touched in a very long time.
***
Denson Liquor Bar – F Street
Washington, D.C.
8:00 p.m.
Ryker Townsend
Denson DC had a below-ground entrance, across the street from a fire station. I thought the location would make Jax Malloy feel at home. My only risk would be if sirens blared, he might run out the door, ready to climb on the first hook and ladder racing to a fire.
The dim lighting and elegant furnishings of the trendy urban bar gave us the illusion of privacy. We ordered a selection of their appetizers, from herb roasted Shiitake mushrooms with sea salt to a meat board selection, served with rustic bread, pickled vegetables and violet mustard.
We caught up on our lives and ignored the elephant between us until we were done eating. I let Malloy break the ice to bring up the kid when he was ready to talk about him.
“What do you think of Bram’s chances?” Jax asked. “The way he tells it, it sounds like self-defense, but that depends if his friend Josh Atwood comes clean. He used his father’s gun.”
I nodded and took another sip of my second microbrew.
“There are definite angles to investigate, to get a clearer picture of what happened. I asked the detective in charge if they’d run GSR tests on Bram at the time of his arrest. He admitted they found no gunshot residue on his hands or clothes. We’re already a step ahead.”
Jax smiled at the good news.
“Plus, if Josh Atwood had to fight for his life, he’d have bruises or cuts from the machete,” I said. “And if we found the gun in his possession, ballistics and fingerprints and GSR would put Josh at the scene and support Bram’s side of the story.”
