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Runs Deeper

Page 15

by R. D. Brady


  “I was just going to do that.” Gomez stood up.

  Sullivan stood as well. “I’ll join you. She can’t still be mad.”

  The two of them headed toward the captain’s office. A sense of excitement tingled through Gomez. Finally, after all these years, he was going to be able to bring Steve Kane to justice.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Dover, Maine

  Steve hadn’t wanted to let Bess out of his sight, so he brought her down the stairs to be closer to them. She hadn’t woken when he’d picked her up out of her bed and carried her down. He tucked her bunny in next to her and pulled the blankets over both of them. Declan and Russ had given her the bunny when they’d come to the hospital to meet her for the first time. Bess had barely been without it since then. As a baby, she loved to suck on its ears. As a toddler, she’d dragged it behind her wherever she went. Now it was her constant companion when she was at home.

  In the kitchen, the smell of lasagna wafted out toward him. Steve had made it for dinner last night. Now Julie was reheating it, along with some garlic bread. He didn’t think any of them were hungry, but eating was normal, and by unspoken agreement, they were all striving for normal.

  Declan walked in from the hallway off the living room. “She wake up?”

  Steve shook his head as he stood, stretching to alleviate the ache in his back. “No. She sleeps pretty heavy for the first few hours.” He nodded to the papers clutched in Declan’s hand. “That everything?”

  Declan shook his head. “No. It’s just the first batch. I’m still printing more. I thought we could get started with this.”

  Julie walked in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “How do you want to do this?”

  “Let’s start with the people who’ve been released. We’ll pull them out and go through them first.”

  “You think that’s how he got out?” Julie asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure that it’s him.”

  Steve frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Declan sighed. “Jack’s the best-known serial killer the world’s seen in the last decade at least. Eventually he’ll rival Ted Bundy in popularity.”

  Julie reared back. “Popularity?”

  “One of the strangest aspects of serial killers is the fans they seem to pick up. Jack regularly got fan letters at prison; most were from women. He got dozens of them each week.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Julie said.

  “I agree. But some people are fascinated by serial killers. It’s possible that Jack’s still at Auburn. That maybe he switched identities with someone else to remain there and hasn’t been released yet. And that this isn’t the work of Jack but a copycat, someone trying to emulate him or even get his attention.”

  “Do you think that’s what’s going on?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t know. But we can’t rule anything out at this point. All we know for sure is that Jack is not where he’s supposed to be. But hopefully in these papers, we’ll find the answer.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It was a long night. Steve’s eyes were blurry with fatigue, but he kept going over the files in front of him. He’d curled up on the couch with Bess for a little bit before carrying her upstairs to his and Julie’s room. Julie joined them soon after, Bess tucked in between them. Steve had tried to sleep, but his mind had refused to shut off, so after an hour of tossing and turning, he’d headed back downstairs. An hour later, Declan silently joined him, diving right back into the files.

  The sun had just appeared on the horizon when Declan’s phone beeped. He glanced at it before standing and heading to the front door.

  “Declan?”

  Declan smiled at him over his shoulder. “Reinforcements have arrived.”

  Declan disappeared into the living room, and a few moments later Steve heard the front door open and close, followed by the low murmur of voices. Declan reappeared in the doorway, with Reggie and Nevaeh in tow.

  Steve got up awkwardly, his legs having fallen asleep a while ago. “Hey, what are you guys up to?”

  Reggie held up a container of coffee from the coffee house and a paper bag. “We brought sustenance.”

  Nevaeh gestured to the messenger bag slung over her shoulder. “I printed out the rest of those files from Auburn. They’ve accounted for everyone in the prison. Jack’s not there.”

  Steve looked behind them into the living room with a frown. “Where’s Trey?” Trey was Reggie and Nevaeh’s one-year-old son.

  “We dropped him off at Robert’s house. Robert promised to shoot dead anyone who attempted to come in. And those dogs of his will eat anyone that gets by Robert.” Robert had four well-trained German shepherds. Trey couldn’t be in a safer place.

  “Or Shelley,” Nevaeh added. Shelley, Robert’s wife, was a former Marine. She and Reggie had become close as a result of that connection. Now Shelley and Robert were Trey’s unofficial grandparents.

  Reggie placed the container of coffee on the counter and then started pulling bagels out of the bag and putting them on a plate. Cream cheese followed. “Okay. Who needs a bagel?”

  It had been a long morning, but they had a list of twenty possibilities before Nevaeh and Reggie had to leave for work. Steve was told to take the day off.

  Each individual on the list was one of Jack’s followers. Each of them was around the same height, give or take an inch, and had the same basic build and coloring. Half of them had been released, and the other half were due to be released within the next few months. Steve hoped that Jack was one of the ones still in prison. But he knew his brother was too smart for that.

  Now Steve sat at the kitchen table with his laptop on. He brought up the last sermon that Jack had done at the prison. He muted it and zoomed in on Jack. This Jack moved his hands too much, and his hands were wrong. They were beefier then Jack’s were. His grandmother had always said that Jack had the hands of a piano player.

  Steve had noticed the increase in hand movements at the time, but he’d just thought it was a development from prison. It never occurred to him that it was because the man he was looking at was not his brother. Now that he was looking critically at the imposter, he could see the differences, the differences that he had simply written off. The man hunched over more than Jack did, and he did this weird thing with his head where he shifted from side to side quickly.

  Jack had been like an expert magician. He’d given people what they expected to see, and as a result, all of them had disregarded the things that didn’t line up.

  They had all underestimated him. The Bureau of Prisons was still underestimating him. They were digging in their feet, insisting that there was no way Jack Kane, the notorious serial killer, could possibly have escaped their prison.

  But Steve knew the likelihood was all but certain. His brother had proven over and over again that he did not think the way normal people did. He could anticipate how people were going to react. He acted in ways to get specific reactions. No, Jack was long gone from New York.

  And if Declan was right, he was already in Dover.

  “I’ve got him.” Declan strode into the kitchen, holding a file.

  Steve reached out his hand. “You’re sure?”

  Declan handed him the file. “I’m sure. His name’s Michael Foster. Same height, same eye color, same cellblock. He was located two cells down from Jack. He was one of Jack’s first followers.”

  Steve flipped open the file. A picture of Michael Foster was attached with a paperclip on the left-hand side. It did look like Jack. The man’s hair was a little curlier, and his nose and lips were a little fleshier, but they could definitely pass for brothers. In fact, he looked more like Jack than Steve did.

  Declan poured himself some more coffee before he joined Steve at the table. Steve flipped through the file, seeing a slew of arrests dating back twenty years. Michael Foster had been in and out of juvie a dozen times before beginning an adult criminal career that started with break
ing and entering and made it all the way up to involuntary manslaughter.

  “With a record like this, how’s this guy out?”

  Declan shrugged. “A bunch of the sentences were done concurrently, so he did time for multiple crimes at the same time. And I’m not quite sure how he managed to plea his last crime down to involuntary manslaughter, but his time was up with good behavior about two months ago.”

  “You’re sure this is the guy that replaced Jack?”

  Declan leaned over and flipped through the file to a page at the back, which had a picture of a man. It was from the medical file. All of the bruises and scars on an inmate were indicated. He pointed to the bottom left.

  Jagged scar from a cut.

  “Apparently when Michael was sixteen, he escaped out a window of the grocery story he was stealing from and caught his calf on the windowsill. He ended up with a deep cut. That was how he was caught: seeking medical attention.” Declan took a sip of coffee. “I had them check the guy at Southport. He has the same wound. It’s him.”

  “Then it’s true. Jack’s out.” Steve wanted Declan to deny it. To tell Steve that there was a chance that he was wrong, that there was some way that the monster had not been let out of the cage.

  But Declan’s words removed that hope.

  “There’s no doubt. He’s out.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Albany, New York

  The captain was still furious. While she supported Gomez’s efforts to get to the bottom of the Hodgkins murder, that did not include heading to Maine without notifying the resident law enforcement. And apparently the chief had called the captain and given her an earful on Gomez’s approach, particularly trying to question Steve Kane about deaths where they didn’t have jurisdiction.

  And the captain was not over her anger yet. The deaths in Dover changed nothing in her opinion because they were not linked to Keith Hodgkins’s death. Until they were linked or something broke in the Hodgkins case more directly tying Steve Kane to the case, they were forbidden from going anywhere near Dover.

  Gomez pushed away the last form and rubbed his eyes. He’d been assigned to paperwork hell after he’d returned. And the captain had doubled it after he’d requested to go back to Dover. He was practically seeing double now. He knew he’d overstepped, but he was just so sure that Kane was the one behind the Hodgkins murder and all the others. To think anyone else would be behind it was just lunacy. It was Occam’s razor. If you heard hoof beats, it was most likely a horse, not a zebra.

  Steve Kane was most definitely the horse. It was stupid to look for anyone else. His personal attorney had failed him, and then he’d gone away for over ten years. The jury foreman had failed him and found him guilty. Gomez had found three more people that had died suspicious deaths, all of them somehow related to Steve Kane. It was a trail of breadcrumbs leading right back to Kane.

  And the truth was, no one really knew what happened during the storm at Millners Kill. Sure, Jack Kane had gone after Julie Granger. But the grandmother could have been done by either of the Kane boys. Maybe Jack was the serial killer in the family with the need to kill. But that didn’t mean that Steve wasn’t focused on killing those who’d done him wrong somewhere along the way.

  He knew that crime ran in families, although it tended to be more of a nurture factor than a nature one. And serial killers did sometimes work with partners, though they were usually of the opposite sex and not a family member. But still, why couldn’t anyone else see what he could see so clearly? How many dead bodies would it take before they saw Steve Kane for who he really was?

  He brought up the email from O’Rourke again, even though he practically had the thing memorized.

  He quickly scanned the two cases and then went back and read them more carefully. The murders had occurred the day after he and Sullivan had left Dover. Two victims, both female. Both killed in the middle of a brutal storm.

  Just like Millners Kill.

  He sent the email to print just as his desk phone rang. He grabbed the receiver distractedly as the ancient printer in the corner of the room slowly came to life. “Gomez.”

  “Tom. Brad Sykes.” Brad Sykes was the criminalist. The ME had forwarded him the evidence from the Hodgkins scene with a rush request.

  “Hey, Brad, what’s going on?” The first sheet was slowly making its way into the output tray. Once again, he wondered how they were supposed to get anything done with this Stone Age equipment.

  “Well, I managed to rush through those hairs you found on the Hodgkins case.”

  All of a sudden Brad had his complete attention. “So is it Kane?”

  “It’s one of them.”

  Gomez frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Sykes sighed. “It’s actually not that easy to get DNA from hair. When DNA is not inside a living cell, it breaks down pretty quickly. Hair’s not alive.”

  “But you said it matched.”

  “I said it matches one of them. What the hair does have is mitochondrial DNA. But that DNA is passed down from mother to child. So it will be the same for both Jack Kane and Steve Kane.”

  Gomez smiled. I knew it. “Well, Jack Kane is locked up, which only leaves Steve Kane, so that’s all I need. How quick can you get those results to me?”

  “I still have to write up the official report, but I knew you’d want this. Give me a couple of hours.”

  Gomez’s mind raced, trying to figure out all of the angles for his next step. “I might have my captain give you a call. Will that be all right?”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem.” Brad’s voice took on a tentative tone. “You think that Steve Kane was actually responsible for those murders? That they got it wrong about Jack Kane?”

  Gomez’s voice held no uncertainty. “No. Jack Kane is a killer. But so is Steve Kane. And it’s my job to make sure that he doesn’t get a chance to hurt anyone else.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Steve was going a little stir crazy. It had been a day since they’d found Laura. There’d been no other incidents. It almost seemed like it had never happened. There’d been no sightings of Jack or anyone else new in town except a reporter. Reggie had called to give him a heads-up that he’d been asking questions at the lumberyard. Steve had looked him up online and recognized him as the guy who’d stopped him in the showroom. He hadn’t tried to contact Steve again, but Steve knew it was only a matter of time.

  He stepped over to the front window, pushing back the blue curtains. The snow was really piling up outside. They hadn’t been able to go outside for any amount of time the last few days. Luckily there had been no major medical issues that required Julie’s attention. She wanted to be right next to Bess at all times. Housebound, Bess hadn’t lost any of her energy, but there was only so much TV he could let the girl watch. Julie hadn’t been able to bring herself to go back to the clinic. After hearing what had happened at the clinic, the firehouse offered their back room for emergencies and clinic visits. Plus, two of the EMTs had offered to stand in for Laura if Julie needed help. So Julie was having people come to the fire department.

  The firehouse had also opened up a kind of mini kid center, so after a lot of conversations and Declan and Russ’s promise that they’d be there as well as two deputies, Julie had taken Bess with her when she left this morning. A couple of the other folks at the firehouse were bringing their kids in, so Bess would have some people to distract her.

  Steve wanted something to distract him as well, but a firehouse full of kids would not be it. He was feeling self-conscious and out of sorts. It was like his skin wasn’t quite fitting right. He’d planned on working on the upstairs bathroom. There was a leak under the sink, which he figured would take the morning to sort out.

  But it had been an easy fix, and now he was struggling to find something to do. He couldn’t exactly investigate what happened to Laura. They were relying on the New York police to track down Foster, but so far they hadn’t even been able to reach his parole office
r. But if those cops were anything like Gomez and Sullivan, he didn’t think they’d be rushing to find him.

  He’d tried reading a book but couldn’t focus. So now he was stuck kind of twiddling his thumbs as he wandered the house. He thought of going to the lumberyard, but Reggie had shut it down for a few days because of the weather.

  His cell phone rang, and he grabbed it eagerly. “Hey, Reggie.”

  Reggie’s deep chuckle came across the line. “Bored?”

  Steve sighed. “I’m not sure if it’s boredom or what, but I just feel like my skin’s crawling.”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling the same way. Listen, have you spoken with Rory since he went back to school?”

  Steve frowned. Rory Tilden had worked at the lumberyard for the last eight years. He was a senior at the University of Maine. Before he’d left, he manned the front desk on weekends, and during the week he did just about whatever was needed. Reggie had hired him when he was only a freshman in high school, off the books. Rory and his mom needed the money, and she couldn’t work. She had MS and was in a wheelchair.

  Steve had never met Rory’s mom, and Steve had the feeling that there might have been a bit of alcohol abuse there as well, although Rory had never said anything specifically. But he was a devoted son. He took care of her and had been doing so for years. In all the time he’d been in Dover, he’d never heard of her coming to town. Before Rory had left for school, he always took her a few towns over to her sister’s.

  “No. Isn’t he coming home in a few weeks?”

  “Yeah, they have some sort of break or something. But his mom’s birthday is this weekend. I’m worried he might come back this weekend. And that maybe he might swing by town to check on the house or something.”

  Steve moved over to the window, pulling back the curtain. The snow was still coming down, although not as hard as the last few days. But if it kept up at its current rate, they’d have another good few inches by the end of the day. “You sure? The snow will probably keep him away.”

 

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