Danger Returns in Pairs (Shawn Danger Mysteries Book 2)

by Nina Post

  "Why shave them?" Shawn asked, circling in another way. "Was it your way of mourning them? Was it an apology for not stopping her?"

  "I did stop her. You should thank me, because you were next. Don't think it was because I like you. I just got tired."

  "I'll send you a card after you're in prison," Shawn said. "But you could have stopped her before she even got to Jasper. Maybe after she killed the first veteran. You've been watching her since you started your Postulancy."

  Brower drew back at hearing this.

  "You cleaned up after her, made sure you got every single one of those telltale blonde hairs, every point of spatter, whatever you found after she left the body where she killed it. She planned, she was careful, but she wasn't as good as you." Shawn paused, watching Brower's face closely. "But after you finished your novitiate year and took your simple vows, you finally felt that you had something to lose, too." A vein throbbed on Brower's forehead. "You had a home and a family and work you enjoyed. I think at first, you weren't sure, but by the time you took your second vows, you belonged. You were really a part of them."

  "So when she killed Jasper, it sickened you, but you kept protecting her, like you always have." Shawn watched Brower's face closely and could tell that he was right, that it did wear on him. "You didn't shave the veterans. You just covered for her then, cleaned up the scene, but you shaved Jasper because it was your way of mourning him, of paying your respect. And you put the note in his mouth just in case I was called in. You wanted me to look at you for it, but you also wanted me to figure it out."

  "She knew exactly when and where he ran in the morning," Shawn continued, hoping Brower would stay there and agree with him or correct him or anything that would give him answers.

  "Jasper was predictable. He ran the same path every time, so she tied a wire between two trees and made him fall. He had no defensive wounds because he couldn't believe it when he saw her, in that moment before she gave him the brotizolam. Then she took a hairpin from her collection -- her favorite pin -- and used one of her husband's old gavels to drive the pin into Jasper's brain."

  Brower flinched.

  "It must have been horrible to see. But you were loyal to her. Wanted her to keep living her good life. You moved in then you shaved him. You wrapped up the body, put it in your van, and drove him back to his house, where you put the note in his mouth and took his Zippo, because you knew I'd look for it. Am I on the right track?"

  Shawn paused a moment to see if Brower would say something.

  "Female killers are rare, and you knew I wouldn't suspect her." Shawn waited a moment, then carefully said something else. "If you had to put yourself out there as the primary suspect at the risk of everything you built for yourself here, so be it, right? You covered for her for years."

  Brower sighed and looked at the floor. Shawn moved closer.

  "She made sure she ingratiated herself with Jasper and Paul, maybe so they wouldn't be that surprised to see her. But Paul had defensive wounds. She got him to come with her, maybe because he was drunk, but he didn't quite trust her. I'm going to be honest with you, John: I haven't found Paul's kill site." And it really pissed him off. "Not yet. But she killed him somewhere between the arena and his apartment, and left him there. You protected her again -- cleaned up the site, did the shaving, cleaned the body, just like you did with Jasper, then got Paul back home and set him up for me. By then you knew I was working the case, which is why you called."

  Shawn saw flickers of reaction and nothing more. When he was at Jasper's crime scene, he said it was the work of an organized killer. But Brower was the one who contributed that. Darcy went only so far.

  "What was it like, watching her kill your friends?"

  Another flicker, but that was all he was getting.

  "You left the cigar box for me to find in the van, too. By then you must have been exhausted, trying to be Brother Benedict -- not making the other monks suspicious, keeping up with the horarium, tending to the moss and your mosaiculture -- " Brower frowned in surprise. "And trying to protect Darcy at the same time. One of the other monks even called into our tip line."

  There. The monastery was his vulnerable spot.

  "Yeah, he told us to dig in the moss garden. We found a cigar box and the four Zippos under the geranium. I don't think you planned the geranium -- I think Paul's body picked it up in your van. But were you trying to warn me when you broke into my house and left my Zippo on the bed?"

  Brower's silence stoked Shawn's anger. He gave Brower a small smile. "You know that joke about how friends help you move, but real friends help you move the body? Darcy really couldn't have asked for a better friend than you, John. I mean, you went above and beyond. You must have really loved her. But then he couldn't take it anymore. You thought the only way to stop what was happening was to kill her, so you put her in the whale and hoped, what, that no one would notice the smell?"

  Brower frowned, cocked his head. Shawn felt a nanosecond of uncertainty, but kept going.

  He decided that it was a good time to use his ace. He stepped outside for a second, then came back in. Shawn could tell by Brower's expression he thought it was the police coming to cuff him. God, he hoped this would work.

  Another man followed Shawn back into the room. "Thank you for coming, Abbot."

  Shawn relished the change of expressions on Brower's face, from surprise to mortification to resignation. Brower closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath.

  "Mr. Brower," the abbot said, and Brower recoiled at the use of his name. He was no longer Brother Benedict.

  "I am grievously distressed. I am ashamed of myself for not seeing that you were unfit to join our family."

  Shawn felt a sudden, unexpected stab of pity for John Brower. He had finally joined a stable family, then put all of it at risk to protect Darcy.

  The abbot hung his head for a moment, then met Brower's eyes. "I am ashamed for allowing you to leave the abbey on errands that enabled you to assist this woman, whom you gave shelter to in our abbey. But I am mostly ashamed that you felt you couldn't come to me and ask for help."

  Brower backed against a wall and dropped his head to stare at the floor.

  "Detective Danger told me about your family, the one that raised you," the abbot said. "They failed their responsibility to you. We also failed in our responsibility to you. No one taught your friend to not return curse for curse, but rather to bless. No one taught her to suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness. But it was not your place to shelter her from the consequences."

  Brower's breath came out unsteady, and there were probably people in the hospital's waiting area who weren't in such visible agony.

  The abbot sighed. "And now I have to return to the abbey and tell the monks who thought they were your family until death, 'Put away from among yourselves that wicked person.'"

  Brower finally came forward. "Abbot," he said in a strangled plea.

  C'mon, Brower. Shawn was on edge. He wanted a confession. What was more important, continuing to protect Darcy even after she was dead, or seeking support from the only good family he'd had? Ruining the hard-fought reputation of the friend he'd loved for nearly three decades, or disappointing the only real father he'd had?

  Shawn went over to Brower and stopped right in front of him. His old friend's jaw tensed as he returned to the wall, snail trails of tears on his face.

  "We all wanted to protect her," Shawn said. "But she needs help." He took the hairpin and the gavel, both in evidence bags, from his jacket pockets and held them up. "Was it worth your family? Ask the Darcy we used to know." He gestured at her. "Would she want this? Tell me what happened."

  Brower took a shuddering breath and stared down at the coma patient as though she were Darcy. A minute passed, then Brower nodded to Shawn.

  Shawn went out into the hall and signaled the officer, who wasted no time getting to the room. "Thank you, Abbot," Shawn said. "I know that was difficult."

  The
abbot looked shaken. "I couldn't have imagined this. When I think of -- " he closed his eyes, then turned to leave with a half-hearted gesture.

  Shawn thought of the photo of Beatrice in the abbacy. "Wait."

  The abbot paused by the door. Shawn got his wallet and pulled out the photo of Charlie that he'd taken from the magnet frame on Jasper's fridge.

  "Would you be interested in a dog for your monastery? It's a small pug. His owner was recently killed and he doesn't have a home right now. His name is Charlie."

  The abbot took the photo. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "I think I would. Can you bring him by?"

  "I'd be happy to, Abbot."

  ***

  On Saturday night, Shawn made dinner for Sarah -- baked chicken stuffed with goat cheese, with haricots verts and risotto, and then vanilla bean panna cotta, which he finally got right when he started to sprinkle the gelatin evenly over cold water, and heat mostly whole milk with the sugar and bean, and then cool the mixture in the fridge for a while before adding the 2% milk fat yogurt. The price of real vanilla beans was exorbitant, but considering the farmers had to turn them every half hour for months, it wasn't surprising.

  While he was doing this in the kitchen, trying not to trip over an inquisitive Comet, he thought about taking some time off to go on vacation with Sarah.

  Maybe he could review one of the cold cases in the department. They didn't have a full-time squad for those, and he liked to look at those when he could, reevaluate leads, submit paperwork to get evidence reanalyzed. Ashburn would be giddy with any clearance he could make, especially since they didn't have to take a hit for that homicide that year. It was like hitting a home run without ever having to swing.

  Before dinner, he opened a bottle of champagne and gave Sarah the gifts he'd been accumulating in his closet over two weeks: professional monitor headphones to plug into her Canon, a table dolly, a reasonably-priced telephoto lens, and the number of someone who could loan her even more high-end gear -- a friend of a guy in the ATF who was a friend of one of the guys Shawn knew in Burglary & Property Crimes.

  Chapter 23

  Danger Sr. leaned on his cane in front of the Moving Wall, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. They were at the American Legion Post 933 in Hatfield, a borough northwest of Philadelphia, and a long drive from Erie.

  Shawn stayed back, but to his surprise, his father lifted a hand to him, gesturing for him to come over. Sarah made a shooing gesture. Go on. She gave him a slow push and Shawn conceded. He went over and stood only a foot or so away from his father, and was immediately uncomfortable. To his greater surprise, his father started talking to him without taking his eyes off the names.

  "Can you picture it? Goddamn November birthday comes up in the draft, then bam, I'm there." His voice lowered. "It was such a radically different reality from the start, you have no idea."

  Shawn's resentment flared.

  "Dad, I -- " Shawn cut himself off. What was the point?

  "Let me say my piece. Whatever I was before, that was gone. That guy who went to Vietnam turned into something else. Had to. And then I stepped into the life of the guy I used to be. I mean, who the fuck knows how I made it out. Just a fluke." His father cleared his throat. "My own family -- my parents, my aunts and uncles -- couldn't understand. Didn't want to understand." In a lower voice, he said, "They got angry with me. Refused to talk about it. I had," his father paused, worked his mouth around. "I had so much emotion flooding through me and no one to talk to, so I just sucked it up. Kept it all inside. And it poisoned me."

  Another long pause. Shawn didn't say anything. This was the first time in Shawn's entire life his father had brought it up at all.

  "Time made it something I could carry without breaking under it. At first, it was like two combustible materials rubbing up against each other. Over the years, the two pieces kind of fused together and stopped burning all the time, got to be more like…embers. It helped a lot when I could finally stop drinking. I'm just sorry -- " His father flexed his jaw muscles. Shawn couldn't fucking believe it. His father was apologizing?

  "I'm sorry I pushed so much of it onto you. We got through by the skin of our teeth, didn't we? I know it didn't seem like it, but I wouldn't have pulled through without my family. I thought about ending it so many times. Why did I make it and not them?"

  Shawn couldn't say anything yet. He had to stare at the wall, focus on the reflection of Sarah he saw in it. Something in him was lighter and stronger, or maybe just fit in the right place again, but he was also filled with sorrow for his father. All this time, any questions he had about Vietnam were met with a brick wall, and any attempts to talk about it were brutally rejected, so moments of compassion and curiosity had always blazed into anger then curdled into cynicism. Shawn knew it was a horrible situation, and learned as he got older that the veterans who returned were met with nothing but contempt, but he never knew his father didn't have any support from his own parents.

  Shawn was quiet a minute, then said, "Remember a few months ago when you decided you wanted replacement medals?"

  "Yeah. Changed my mind about 'em, but never heard back. Why would I expect anything different?"

  "A few weeks ago, I called a congressman and asked them to help me get that done. They contacted someone at the Pentagon, and their office was able to get the medals for you."

  Shawn looked around for his mother. When she noticed, she walked over, a complicated look on her face, and gave Danger Sr. a cherry wood tray that held the replacement medals. Shawn enjoyed the image for a moment, then took Sarah to stand near a bench a comfortable distance away from his parents, but still close enough to keep an eye on them.

  "It could have been his name on that wall," Shawn said to Sarah, thinking briefly of the medical tests his father had. They didn't find anything serious, probably because they were too afraid of him.

  "But he nearly broke all of us trying to piece himself together. Here, look at this." He got out the envelope. "Jasper's friend Natasha gave me these photos Jasper left with her." He pulled out one of the photos. "I saw this one and it blew my mind. My friends, staying overnight at my house?"

  "Wasn't that one of your rules?"

  "Yeah, rule number four: Never go inside anyone else's house. I thought he was like the other fathers. And he was, sometimes. But he could also be like this." He tapped the photo. "Someone who could provide a safe harbor for my damaged friends. Some more damaged than others."

  He shook his head and chuckled. "I told the unit I would take my whole family to Disney World if we didn't stop John Brower. And now we're here. It's not Disney World, but it's something." He hadn't considered Darcy as a possibility for a second, not until the connection was too obvious to ignore. And even then he refused to see it.

  Sarah wrapped her hands around his wrists. He looked down at her slim fingers and short, neat nails. "I'm sorry about the journal," she said. "I should have given it to you as soon as you told me what happened. I screwed up."

  "Yeah, you probably should've," Shawn said, bringing her in to his chest and wrapping his arms around her. "But it turned out okay. And Ashburn gave me some jellybeans." He hesitated. "I want to talk to you about something."

  She squinted. "Uh-oh."

  "No." He grimaced and waved his hand side to side. "I want to tell you that I've been thinking of moving. But I don't want to go anywhere without you. I don't want to be without you for a day. And I know you have a great relationship with your dad. In fact, I just talked to him."

  She raised a brow. "Oh, really?"

  "I wanted to ask if he would be okay with something. But I only asked because I like him."

  "Okay with what?"

  He got down on one knee and her expression turned from teasing curiosity to stunned surprise.

  "Sarah Baio, you keep meddling in my investigations. I can't get enough of it, unless you withhold evidence, and aside from that one thing, I want you to meddle in every aspect of
my life, forever. Will you marry me?"

  Sarah laughed. "That depends."

  "On what?"

  "Can I change my name to Sarah Danger? It'll make me feel like a sexy international super spy."

  Shawn raised a brow. "There'd be a lot of paperwork, and my arm is still sore from all the butter-churning. Plus, I almost never feel like a sexy international super spy."

  "I'm a master of dispatching with paperwork," Sarah said.

  "And my family will think you're one of them. Preferably from a great distance."

  "I can handle it."

  "You also can't use the word 'danger' as much as you may be used to, because it'll seem like a bad pun."

  "I don't use that word much."

  "TSA and other government employees will look at you funny."

  "They already do."

  He picked her up by the waist. "Then just say yes already!"

  She kissed him. "I already did, dummy."

  About the Author

  Nina Post is the author of seven novels, including Danger Returns in Pairs, Danger in Cat World, Extra Credit Epidemic, The Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse, The Last Donut Shop of the Apocalypse, One Ghost Per Serving, and The Zaanics Deceit. She lives in Seattle.

  To learn more about Nina, please visit her website at http://www.ninapost.com and sign up for her newsletter at http://www.ninapost.com/newsletter/.