by L. A. Witt
“You can spend your whole life with someone and still never know everything there is to know.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Officer May, I need you to go upstairs to Captain Hamilton’s office and let him or Detective Morris ask you questions about Blaine. I need you to go fast and tell them everything you know, because people’s lives are on the line, all right?”
He nodded, seeming grateful to have a goal. “I can do that.”
“Then go.” He walked to the elevator. I continued to the stairwell and headed down again. Andreas was already waiting by the car, and I relayed the address to him as I got in. “Backup?” I asked over his phone’s monotone directions toward South Broadway.
Andreas nodded curtly. “Hamilton insisted. They’re supposed to wait for us to go in, though.” His jaw tightened and relaxed rhythmically, a familiar sign of annoyance.
“The captain thinks Blaine’s already run?”
“He’d know enough not to stick around if he thought we were getting suspicious. Which means he could be anywhere now. He could be with Casey and Emily, and . . .” Andreas slammed his closed fist against the dashboard. I jumped a little. “He was right there in front of me! Right there, looking me in the face and telling me he wanted to help, he was concerned, he had our backs! And the whole time, the whole time, he was playing me.”
“He was playing all of us.”
“I think he’s enjoying it.” Andreas’s voice was bleak. “Watching all of us scramble for clues, leading us around by our noses. He thinks we deserve it for putting his father in jail.”
“Which is where his father deserves to be,” I said emphatically. “It doesn’t matter what Blaine’s rationale was for doing what he did, the point is he lost any moral high ground that might ever have existed when he became a fucking kidnapper.”
“Folsom was one of those ones . . . he was in kind of a gray area. How much did he really know, how bad were his crimes in light of everyone else’s? He was getting a cut, but it wasn’t a huge amount of money. Less than twenty grand. Enough to buy his wife a new car and pay off some credit cards, that’s all.”
I wasn’t about to let Andreas talk himself into feeling sorry for doing his job. “If all it took to turn Folsom into a dirty cop was a Ford Fiesta and paying off his Mastercard, then it just means that he sold himself cheap. It doesn’t make him any worthier of absolution than his dumpster fire of a son.”
Andreas actually cracked a smile. “A Fiesta? Really? That’s the first car that came to mind?”
“Folsom’s a cop, that means he’d buy cheap and reliable.” His smile grew a little bigger. “What? They’re easy to fix and you can park them anywhere!”
“I had no idea you were such a fan.”
“I’m not, I just—”
“You have reached your destination.”
Oh. So we had. We parked, got out, and found two cops waiting for us in front of number seventeen, with its new trim and rickety-looking stairs.
“There was no answer when we knocked,” one of the officers said. “The door is locked.”
“Then break it down.”
“Or—wait.” This was a bachelor pad if ever I’d seen one. Why was there a flowerpot on the little porch? Not that men couldn’t be gardeners, but this one was full of dirt and nothing else. I lifted it up and—
“Key.” I handed it over to the cop closest to the door, who opened it and immediately got out of Andreas’s way. I followed him inside.
I could already tell it was empty. Blaine probably hadn’t been here since this morning. The doors to every room were open. Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink, and laundry was overflowing the hamper. It was all completely casual, like the guy had nothing to hide. Not that I thought he’d have the kids here, but that he could live and act like he wasn’t keeping such a dangerous secret . . . it was worrying.
The last few cases we’d worked, it might not have been obvious who the perpetrator was at first, but once we knew, it had been like a light bulb going off: Oh, of course! This person is an overconfident egomaniac, that person is a narcissistic sociopath. I see it now, the darkness inside of them. I wasn’t getting that feeling now, and I didn’t like it. Blaine seemed like just . . . a guy. Just another cop, somebody who came to work and went home and had the overenthusiastic Officer May as his partner. He seemed normal. Unremarkable. It made his capacity to do what he was doing—and to taunt Andreas about it—even worse.
The four of us combed the place looking for clues, for anything unusual at all, but after half an hour, we came up empty. It just wasn’t that big a place, and there was nothing evident to tie Blaine to the kidnapping. Nothing except—
“Look,” Andreas said, pointing at a picture on the wall. I leaned close and took in the slope of the roof, the trees framing the porch, and the gravel driveway. “It’s the house.”
The house that Weyland had led us to, the house where the kids had been deposited after they were grabbed and had stayed until just a short time ago. The house where we’d missed them. There were people standing in front of it: an older man who looked vaguely familiar, a woman I didn’t know at all, and two younger men. One of them was Blaine.
We needed to find the other one.
“So.” Paula pushed a strand of hair out of her face and tapped the folder under her hands. “The house originally belonged to Rory Folsom’s parents. He inherited it six years ago and moved into it with his second wife. After he was arrested, his wife filed for divorce and put the house up for sale. A chunk of the proceeds are supposed to go into a legal defense fund for Folsom, but the house hasn’t moved yet. His wife has since moved back to Michigan, where she has family.”
“What about Blaine’s mother?” I asked.
“She’s been out of the picture for the past four years. She lives in Hawaii. It’s unlikely either of Folsom’s exes are helping with this, but we have detectives reaching out to both of them to make sure.”
“What about this guy?” Andreas pointed to the picture, where our unidentified man had his arm slung around Blaine’s shoulders.
“That’s his brother, Gary. He’s a patent lawyer with a firm here in town. He’s got a perfect record—not even a parking ticket to his name. We’re still working on tracking him down, but it’s possible he doesn’t know anything about what Blaine is doing.” Paula turned to Officer Garland. “What’s the news on the traffic cameras?”
She grimaced. “We followed Officer Blaine’s car as far as we could once he left the precinct, but our surveillance stops here.” She pointed at a red pin in the map on the wall. There was still plenty of city beyond it. “I’ll do my best to find local security cameras and track them down, but there’s a lot of ground to cover.” Too much. There was too much ground to cover. Our clock was ticking down, and we had let our prime suspect slip right through our fingers.
“What about speaking to Folsom?” Andreas demanded.
“I sent someone to question him, and he professed total ignorance of his son’s actions.”
“I want to talk to him.”
Paula shook her head. “Hamilton will never okay that.”
“I don’t give a fuck what Hamilton is okay with. Someone has to get the truth out of Folsom and that’s going to be me!”
“No.” It slipped out before I could stop it. Andreas turned to me angrily, but I found my voice and kept going before he could yell. “Folsom is in prison. It’s a good bet all of his contacts are too. His entire network from when he was a dirty cop is most likely in prison. What kind of support could he give Blaine? He has no assets, his wife is leaving him, he’s probably afraid for his life. He’s not going to be the one stirring the pot. We need the brother.”
Officer Garland frowned. “He’s a lawyer, you really think he’d help Blaine do something like this?”
“He’s a patent lawyer, not a criminal lawyer. But yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re family, and look how highly Blaine places fam
ily. He’s doing all of this because he lost his family, and he blames that on Andreas, not on the cops being fucking dirty. In his fucked-up mind, that’s probably a lot easier and makes more sense than admitting his father was a dirty cop.” I paused. “So now he’s retaliated by going after Andreas’s kids directly. Blaine wouldn’t tell his father because he doesn’t want to increase the man’s suffering, or make his circumstances worse when all of this came to light. But he’s still got his brother, and you can bet he’s going to use him.”
I didn’t meet Andreas’s eyes. I knew what he was thinking, and yeah, of course what had happened with Asher was on my mind, maybe coloring my perceptions. My own brother hadn’t confided in me, hadn’t let me in on his darkest secret, and that hurt hard enough that I felt like I was bleeding inside my chest. I would have done almost anything to keep him from doing what he’d done. What would Gary Blaine have done for his little brother? What would he be willing to do?
“We need to bring him in.”
Gary Blaine’s house was in an area not too far from the city center, a neighborhood that seemed to exemplify gentrification. There were organic pizza parlors and all-natural grocers on every corner, and you couldn’t drive more than a block without seeing another trendy coffee shop. I could barely look out the window without rolling my eyes. Good thing Darren was driving. He didn’t seem to need any help finding the address, either.
“You know this area?”
“A little. Asher and Melissa had a house out here. Vic called it their McMansion.” He sounded surprisingly level, talking about his brother. I wasn’t going to second-guess it. Whatever Darren was doing to deal was working, for now. “They sold it during the divorce, got a lot of money for it. Gary must be doing well.”
“Or his wife is.” Mrs. Gary Blaine ran a travel agency—she was out of the country right now leading a tour in Madagascar. Convenient.
“Or that,” Darren agreed. He turned right, then stopped in front of the second house down. It was typical for the area: two stories, grayscale stone siding, and a tidy little green lawn whose grass was probably genetically engineered to stay exactly two inches tall. I went to open my door, but Darren put a hand on my arm. “Let me go knock. If he’s there, you can join us.”
What he was carefully saying was that all our efforts to contact Gary Blaine so far—his cell phone, his work phone, even his boss—had come up empty. It was looking more and more like he’d gone AWOL alongside his bastard of a brother, and if that was the case . . .
Darren’s hand moved down to cover mine, gently prying my fingers out of my thigh. “I’ll be right back.”
“Yeah, go.” I watched as he walked up the tidy concrete steps to the front door and rang the doorbell. Nothing. He rang again, stepped off the porch and glanced in the window of the garage, then went around to the back.
“No lights,” he called out as he reappeared. “The back door is locked and there are no cars parked inside. I don’t think he’s here.”
I shut my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose. I was so tired of coming up empty. So fucking tired of it, and yet that was all I was getting.
“Hey.” Darren shut the door and grabbed my hand again. “We’ve already put out an APB on him, and officers are checking his office as we speak. We’re going to find him.”
I knew that Darren believed that, and for what it was worth, I believed it too. I just didn’t know if we’d find him in time to get anything useful out of him, and that was all I cared about right now. I sighed. “Let’s head back to the precinct, see if anything new has come in.” I’d take a fucking trail of bread crumbs right now if I thought they’d be useful.
We were halfway back when the captain called my cell.
“Ruffner.”
“Where are you and Corliss?”
“On our way back.”
“Good. Tell him to step on it. There’s someone here who will only speak with you.”
I straightened. To Darren, I muttered, “Drive faster.” The engine whined, and the scenery blurred a little more. “What’s going on, Captain?”
“You aware that Officer Blaine has a brother?”
My heart sped up. “Yeah. We’re actually trying to hunt him down and—”
“He’s here.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No. Turned himself in about ten minutes ago as an accomplice to Blaine.”
“We’ll be there in ten.”
“He’s waiting for you in interrogation room three.” The captain hung up.
“The brother turned himself in,” I said to Darren.
“Are you serious?” He accelerated again. We were on city streets, and we could only go so fast without drawing a uniform’s attention or flattening a pedestrian. Times like this I would’ve liked a siren on my unmarked. Not just the little magnetic bubble light—a siren that screamed Get the fuck out of my way.
“Yeah.” I drummed my fingers on the armrest. “Captain didn’t say much else. Just that the guy turned himself in, and he’ll only talk to me.”
I didn’t want to hold my breath that this was the lucky break we desperately needed, but I hoped like hell it was.
At the table in the interrogation room was a white guy in his thirties, hands cuffed in the front, and he was obviously related to Blaine. Unless there was another doppelganger brother out there, he’d been in that photo.
I hobbled into the room with Darren on my heels.
Gary glared at Darren. “I’m only talking to Detective Ruffner.”
“He’s my partner.”
Darren shut the door behind him. “I can leave if—”
“No.” Gary’s shoulders slumped, and he sagged back against the chair. “He’d be watching from there anyway.” He gave a sharp nod toward the two-way mirror.
I leaned on my crutches and watched him for tells. “Start talking.”
“I’m turning myself in,” he said shakily. “Give me a plea bargain, and I’ll tell you how to find the kids.”
The mere suggestion of negotiating with him, using my children’s whereabouts as leverage, brought a roar of fury out of me. I lunged toward him as much as I could on crutches, but Darren stopped me with a firm hand on my chest.
“Andreas.” His voice was smooth and calm, but hard-edged. “Look at me.”
I did, ready to snap his neck too if he didn’t get out of the way.
But as we held each other’s gazes, I understood.
He knows where the kids are.
I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s all we have.
He’ll get his—we need to find the kids.
Exhaling, I stood down. He kept his hand on me for a second, studying me like he wasn’t sure if I was really staying back.
“I’m good. I’m . . . Let’s . . .” I adjusted my grip on my crutches and nodded sharply toward the perp. “Let’s find out what he knows.”
Darren’s slow nod was more reassuring than anything I’d ever seen. He had this.
He let me go, moved to the table, and leaned over it, looming above Gary Blaine, and I couldn’t imagine there’d ever been so much pure, black hatred in his expression. “Here’s how it’s going to work. You tell us where the kids are. Once they’re safe and sound, we’ll discuss a deal.”
Gary narrowed his eyes. “I’m a lawyer, Detective. I know how this game is—”
“You kidnapped the children of a cop. The only leniency you’re going to get is whatever he”—Darren pointed at me—“begs the jury to give you after he tells them how you had his kids taken right in front of him. Do I make myself clear?”
Gary blanched. I didn’t blame him. Darren never struck me as intimidating, but right then, he could’ve sent me back a few steps.
“You’ve got thirty seconds to give me something I can use,” Darren hissed. “Or I will see to it—”
“Okay. Okay.” Gary put up his hands as much as he could with the cuffs on. “Look, I was in on it. I won’t lie. But my brother . . . he’s
. . .” Gary shook his head. “He took it too far.”
My stomach jumped into my throat. “Where exactly does it become too far when kidnapping and battering my kids isn’t too far?”
He cut his eyes toward me, then dropped his gaze. I regretted the question. The answer was going to come sooner or later anyway, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to know.
He stared down at his cuffed hands. “It wasn’t supposed to be a kidnapping. Howie and I, we agreed to pay someone to carjack your sons. Steal the car, shake them up—shake you up—and be done with it. And I was pissed about what happened to our dad, so yeah, I agreed to it.”
Well, that much lined up with Brando’s story. And Erin’s, for that matter.
“It was only supposed to rattle some cages.” He shot me an uneasy look. “Yours in particular. Next thing I know, we’ve got . . .” He flailed, cuffs rattling. “I knew it was too much, but didn’t know how to get out of it.”
The fact that he had information was the only thing keeping me from strangling him with his own intestines at this point. I folded my arms tightly across my chest, as much to look intimidating as to suppress the growing chill.
“What changed?” Darren asked. “How did this escalate from a carjacking to a kidnapping?”
Gary avoided our eyes. “This was Howie’s plan from the start. He knew I’d never agree to taking things that far, but he also couldn’t afford to pay the fuckers on his own.” Letting his head fall back, he sighed up at the ceiling. “He knew once things got rolling, I’d stick with him because I didn’t want to go to prison any more than he did. He’d have me by the balls.” With a bitter, almost hysterical laugh, he looked at me. “Surprise, Howie!”
I was terrified of the answer, but asked anyway: “What’s the endgame?”
Gary swallowed, shaking his head apologetically. “I don’t know. I don’t . . . I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. If he’s thought it through, he didn’t tell me. I don’t . . . I don’t have a fucking clue what he has in mind. But I do think that at this point, he knows he’s in way over his head.”
