Bad Moon (Kat Campbell Mysteries)

by Ritter, Todd

  It didn’t work out that way. Jennifer Clark came with them.

  She had started dating a young man in the army named Craig Brewster. They saw each other infrequently, with Craig burning through weekend passes just to visit her. But it was enough time to get engaged and definitely enough time for her to get pregnant, which she confessed to Maggie on Christmas Eve.

  Jennifer was scared. Of what her parents would do. Of how the world would treat a shamed woman. According to Ken, Eric’s mother came up with the solution—Jennifer could have the baby in Florida and put it up for adoption. That way no one in Perry Hollow would ever know.

  She agreed, and the three of them moved to the Keys. Craig joined them that March, when he was honorably discharged from the military. It was cramped in that small house on the beach. Work was scarce and money was tight. But when Ken talked about it, there was a sad nostalgia in his voice that Eric had never heard before. It was the tone of a man recalling the happiest time of his life.

  The happiness didn’t last.

  As the weeks passed and Jennifer’s stomach extended, she began to have doubts about giving up her baby. She also had doubts about Craig, who didn’t seem eager to make an honest woman out of her. There were fights, which echoed in the tiny house all through the night and into the dawn.

  “We heard every word,” Ken said. “Your mother and I would lay in bed and swear to each other we would never fight like that. Little did we know that, eventually, we would. Only worse.”

  June rolled around, bringing hurricane season with it. As one lashed the island, Jennifer Clark’s unborn child decided it was time to greet the world. There was no hospital on the island; nor was there access to one. The hurricane had closed all routes to the mainland. Jennifer Clark had to give birth at home, with Maggie serving as terrified midwife.

  Listening to his father, Eric closed his eyes and let his writer’s imagination take over. He pictured lightning casting incandescent flashes across the room where Jennifer lay in a sweat-soaked bed. His mother had boiled water, because that’s what they did in the movies, although she didn’t know why. Both girls—even though married or pregnant, they weren’t yet women—wept with fear as Jennifer grunted through another contraction and Maggie wiped her brow. The wind didn’t shake the house so much as push it.

  Eric then imagined his father and Craig Brewster in another room. Pacing. Not talking. Craig maybe stepping outside to feel the rain sting his face while he wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. Then it was back to more pacing and not talking until, through the paper-thin walls that were peeling paint because of the humidity, an infant’s wail broke through the sounds of the storm.

  Once the baby was born, Eric’s parents left Jennifer and Craig alone. The goal was to let them make a decision—keep the baby and raise it together or put it up for adoption and go their separate ways. By the time the sun rose over a storm-battered island, Jennifer had told Craig that she wanted to be a wife and mother. He told her that he had reenlisted in the army and was heading back to base in a few hours.

  “Craig left without even holding the baby,” Ken said. “And Jenny, well, she was devastated. The morning after Craig left, she was out of bed. Your mother told her she needed her rest, but Jenny insisted on going outside. She wanted to dip her toes in the ocean, she said. That was all. Just go to the beach and think.”

  Jennifer gave Maggie a long hug and a peck on the cheek before she left. It was the last time Eric’s mother ever saw her.

  No one knows what really happened in the roiling ocean. There were no witnesses, no random passersby who saw Jennifer walk into the water and slip beneath the waves. It could have been an accident. It could have been suicide. All Ken knew was that her body washed ashore a day later, which is all that really mattered.

  Between her disappearance and discovery, Maggie cared for the still-unnamed baby as if he had emerged from her womb. She bathed him, fed him, and made makeshift diapers out of bedsheets, using sewing skills she had picked up in home economics classes. When the police came around to talk about Jennifer, they asked Maggie who the child belonged to.

  “Your mother told them he was ours,” Ken said.

  Maggie didn’t discuss the decision with him. She didn’t even warn him it was coming. Instead, she calmly told the police the partial truth—that the infant had been born during the full thrust of the hurricane and that Jennifer’s disappearance prevented them from going to the nearest hospital when the storm had passed. She didn’t feel the need to mention Craig Brewster, currently on his way to Fort Rucker in Alabama, or the true identity of the infant’s mother.

  The police easily accepted that explanation and even drove them to the hospital, where the baby got a checkup. On the birth certificate, Ken and Maggie Olmstead were listed as his parents. When it came time to pick a name, they chose Charles, in honor of Ken’s grandfather.

  “The only time we talked about it,” he said, “was when we got back from the hospital. Your mother swore it was the right thing to do. She said Jennifer would have wanted us, and not some strangers, to raise the boy. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I was afraid someone would realize what we had done.”

  They passed the first test when Mort and Ruth Clark flew down to Florida to cremate their daughter and scatter her ashes into the sea. Maggie told them the same story she gave the police. When they saw the newborn in her arms, they said he looked just like her.

  The second test came a few weeks later, when they decided to return to Perry Hollow. They moved in with Maggie’s parents, who were stunned to learn about their new grandchild.

  “We told them we kept it a secret because there were complications and we weren’t sure if the baby would survive,” Ken said. “Who knows if they believed us. But they never asked about it again.”

  Soon Maggie’s parents moved out, leaving them the house. Charlie grew up across the street from his true grandparents and Maggie eventually got pregnant for real, giving birth to Eric.

  “The rest,” Ken said, “you know about.”

  Finished at last, he stood and stretched, the cracking of his joints filling the silent dining room. Then he headed to the front door, where he had kicked off his boots the night before. The sound of him slipping them on prompted Eric to speak.

  “But I don’t know the rest,” he said, confronting Ken by the door. “There are a lot of gaps to your story.”

  “I told you my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  When Ken headed upstairs, Eric doggedly tailed him to his mother’s bedroom. “What about Craig Brewster? Did you ever hear from him again?”

  “Only once,” Ken said. “The day after Jennifer was found, I called his base to give him the news. When he asked about the baby, I told him the truth. He said we were doing the right thing.”

  He picked up his denim jacket, which had been tossed onto the floor the previous night. He stuffed a hand into the pockets, digging for his keys. Now that he had spilled all the family’s secrets, he was preparing to leave again, even though he had no place to go and Eric still had another day’s worth of unanswered questions.

  “Why didn’t you tell the police you weren’t Charlie’s real father? Surely, Craig would have been the prime suspect if you had.”

  “Craig wanted nothing to do with him, that’s why. When I told him we had Charlie, he vowed never to bother us.”

  His father edged into the hallway, Eric right behind him. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t come and take Charlie. I can’t believe you just assumed he was innocent.”

  “Charlie died,” Ken said. “He walked to the creek, fell in, and went over the falls. End of story.”

  “Walked to the creek? I thought he rode his bike.”

  Ken tried to cover his mistake. “That’s what I meant to say.”

  Eric’s mind began to race—a dizzying spin that brought back everything he knew about Charlie’s disappearance and his father’s role in it. The fact that he never told the police about
not being Charlie’s birth father. The way he asked Kat’s dad to stop investigating the incident. The way he just admitted he knew Charlie had walked to the falls, even though his bike was found at the base of it. All this led to a conclusion that made Eric sick deep down in the pit of his stomach.

  He noted their location in the hall, right in front of Charlie’s dust-filled bedroom. The door was still open. The key remained in the lock.

  He took a step, forcing his father to take one backward. After another step, Ken was standing in the doorway of Charlie’s room. One more, and he was inside.

  “What are you doing?” Ken asked.

  Eric lunged for the doorknob. Soon the door was closed and he was fumbling with the key. The knob twisted in his hand—his father turning it on the other side. Eric held it steady and turned the key.

  Ken was now locked inside.

  “For Christ’s sake, Eric, let me out!”

  The door shimmied as his father jerked the handle. Eric leaned against it, listening to his father’s angry huffs on the other side.

  “I’m not going to let you out,” he said. “Not until you tell me what you did with Charlie.”

  *

  Nick sat in the waiting area outside the emergency room, watching TV. On the screen, he saw a pockmarked expanse of gray surrounded by a sky as dark as death. Accompanying the visual was the voice of a news anchor who sounded as awestruck as Nick felt.

  “You are looking at a live picture from the surface of the moon,” he said. “Just minutes ago, the three Chinese astronauts who blasted off early Wednesday touched down in the Sea of Tranquility. They plan to exit their lunar module in an hour or so for the first moon walk in almost thirty-nine years.”

  Somewhere in the depths of the hospital, a medical team was trying to keep Craig Brewster alive. Outside the hospital, some of the cops who had been at Camp Crescent milled about the parking lot, smoking, laughing, and generally shooting the shit. The rest of them were still at the camp, looking for clues about what Craig might have done with the other boys.

  The only person near Nick was a fresh-faced nurse sitting behind the checkin desk and reading a tattered paperback. Nick couldn’t help but notice the name of the author—Eric Olmstead. He chuckled when he saw it, prompting a sweet smile from the nurse. Nick could tell she thought he was cute. He chalked it up to the cane. Women seemed to love men with a weakness.

  Nick pulled out his phone and dialed Kat’s number. He immediately got her voice mail. He had tried calling her once on the way to the hospital and again after he arrived. Both times he had left messages. Kat’s failure to call him back was worrisome.

  The nurse piped up. “You can’t use cell phones in here.”

  Nick tucked the phone back into his jacket. “Sorry. My bad.”

  He was about to turn back to the TV and those unreal images of the moon, when Tony Vasquez emerged from the hospital’s inner sanctum. As a member of the state police, he was allowed to go back there. Nick was not.

  “Craig’s still critical,” Tony told him. “Completely unresponsive. We’re not going to be able to question him for at least a day or so.”

  “When you do,” Nick said, “ask him why he decided to use me for target practice.”

  “I’d rather find out what he did with the bodies of those kids.”

  Nick nodded in agreement. “You’re right. That’s a better question.”

  The automatic doors leading outside slid open as a man entered the emergency room. He wore the gray, oil-stained uniform of an auto mechanic. In his early fifties, he looked wan and worried as he made a beeline to the checkin desk.

  “I’m here to see about my father,” he said. “I was told he had a heart attack.”

  Nick and Tony both stood. At the desk, the nurse asked, “Patient’s name?”

  “Craig Brewster.”

  They approached the man quickly from behind. He was stating his name—“Kevin Brewster”—when Nick tapped him on the shoulder.

  The man turned around, confused. He had a pale face, small nose, ears that jutted from the sides of his head. His eyes were sad. His smile was slightly lopsided. It was a face Nick had seen before, only in black-and-white and printed on newspaper.

  And although its owner had just said he was Kevin Brewster, Nick knew without a doubt that he was standing face-to-face with Charlie Olmstead.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tony asked the questions. The man who called himself Kevin Brewster answered them. Nick’s job was to listen.

  “What is your name?”

  “Kevin Brewster.”

  “Was that the name you were born with?”

  “I want to know what happened to my father.”

  The three of them were in an examination room just off the waiting area. Kevin sat on the examination table, hands in his lap, legs swinging beneath him. Tony paced the room as he tossed out his queries. Nick was in the corner, scribbling everything down on a prescription pad he had flirted from the hands of the nurse at the checkin desk.

  “He had a massive heart attack,” Tony said. “He’s in ICU as we speak.”

  “Will he survive?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not right now.”

  “But soon?”

  “If you answer some questions,” Tony said. “Now, is Kevin Brewster the name you were born with?”

  “No.” A slight hesitation. “I once was known as Charlie.”

  “Charlie Olmstead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When did Charlie become Kevin?”

  “The night I met my real father.”

  Nick halted his pen, leaving a skid mark of ink across the page. “Maggie and Ken Olmstead weren’t your parents?”

  Kevin shook his head. “Craig Brewster is my father. He said the Olmsteads stole me when I was a baby.”

  “Who was your mother?” It was Tony, whose stern gaze in Nick’s direction indicated that he’d be the only one asking questions.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Brewster never told you?”

  “He said she died. That was all.”

  “When was this? Right after he abducted you?”

  “He didn’t abduct me. I went willingly.”

  “Willingly?”

  “Yes.”

  What Kevin told them—and what Nick furiously wrote down—was that on July 20, 1969, he went to Sunset Falls. On his way back to the house, a man in the street stopped him.

  “He told me his name. He then said he was my real father.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Not at first. But he showed me a photograph. It was of him on a beach. He was with a woman and the Olmsteads. He told me the woman was my mother and that she died soon after giving birth to me. Then he said Mr. and Mrs. Olmstead stole me. That’s when I started to think he was telling me the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I looked nothing like them. But I looked like the woman in the photo. The woman I was told was my real mother.”

  “So you left with him? Just like that?”

  “No.”

  “Then he took you by force?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Kevin snapped. “He asked me if I believed him. I said maybe. He asked if I wanted to spend some time with him to see if it was true. Again, I said maybe.”

  While Tony seemed content to let the man formerly known as Charlie Olmstead draw out the story, Nick was getting impatient. “Tell us why you left with him.”

  “He said the Olmsteads didn’t want me anymore.”

  “And you bought this?” Nick asked.

  Kevin glanced in his direction. “I know it’s hard to understand. But imagine you were in my shoes—a ten-year-old boy in a family that was falling apart. Ken and Maggie Olmstead were fighting all the time. There was a baby. I’ve forgotten his name, I’m afraid to say.”

  “Eric,” Nick said.

  “That’s right,” Kevin said wi
th a fond smile. “Eric. I knew that Ken and Maggie seemed on the verge of divorce and that the baby was caught in the middle. I remember being worried about him.”

  “What about you?” Tony asked.

  “I seemed not to matter. I spent a lot of time outside, playing alone or bothering the neighbors. They didn’t seem to miss me. So when my father—my real father—said the Olmsteads didn’t want me, it had the ring of truth.”

  “So you left with him that night?” It was Tony, back to being the sole interrogator.

  “I did, but only after he said the Olmsteads knew that I’d be with him.”

  “Did you realize he was lying?”

  “No. Was he? I never found out.”

  “Where did he take you that night?”

  “To some land he owned in the woods. Next to a lake. It was beautiful there. He had built a cabin and we slept in sleeping bags on the floor. He asked me about my likes and dislikes. What I dreamed of becoming. How I was doing in school. We talked the entire night. In the morning, he asked me if I wanted to stay another night.”

  “Did you ask about the Olmsteads?”

  “I did. He told me I had their permission to stay the entire week if I wanted to. I told him I did.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “We fished a lot. We roasted marshmallows and he told me ghost stories. And we worked. He told me he was in the process of building a camp on that land and that he’d appreciate my help. We cleared brush. We built more cabins. It was hard work, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed being with my real dad. So when the week was over, he said the Olmsteads allowed me to stay another week. And then another. Then he said they wanted me to stay the rest of the summer.”

  “Didn’t you miss them?” It was Nick again. He knew he was pissing Tony off, but he just couldn’t help it. “They did raise you, after all.”

  “At first I did. In the back of my mind, I always thought they’d eventually come to the camp and get me. When they didn’t, I actually got angry. It was proof that my father was right and that they didn’t want me anymore. So I stayed.”

  “But what about school?” Tony asked. “Didn’t you think about going back in the fall?”