by Mayer, Dale
The look on Arnie's face was as painful to look at as the recital he had just heard.
"Arnie, what went on in your early family life to send you on this path?" Alexis knew there had to be something that happened back there. And it needed to come out. Now. How she knew, she couldn't say.
The young man spoke dismissively. "The usual. Broken home, abuse, parents both alcoholics, mother a prostitute. What's to say? It was hell."
"No, there's something else," she prodded. Pain oozed from a hidden cavity in Arnie's soul. Alexis couldn't stand it. "Something hurt you badly, and eventually sent you on this pathway to become a cop. Something inside of you needed to pay retribution or maybe…" Alexis paused, feeling her way, yet knowing the storm inside of Arnie could break with her next words. "Or maybe because you needed revenge?"
Kevin looked at her in shock. "What are you getting at, Alex?"
Needing to see something, anything else but the torment being released from his soul, she walked over to the window overlooking the sleepy street outside. Behind her, she could hear the young officer's gulps and sobs of a long held agony.
"Jesus." Kevin's ire had quickly been replaced with understanding. Alexis sensed when Arnie dropped the barrier hiding a lifetime of betrayal and pain, leaving his past wide open, exposed. She didn't want to look and Kevin could easily see the details for himself. Hell, psychics anywhere in the world could have accessed the information with Arnie transmitting so loudly.
Then he told them in words. Arnie said he had a younger brother he'd doted on until he'd died. Arnie explained he had been looking after him. They'd gone into a large mall. Arnie wanted to pilfer some candy, and left his little brother to sit on a bench just inside the store. When he came out, the younger boy was gone. He'd gone through the automatic doors to pet a puppy waiting outside. When the puppy had run, he'd followed, directly into the path of the oncoming car.
"Oh, hell." Weariness marred Kevin's features as he slumped into his chair. He walked over to Alexis. The two stood, not touching physically, but wrapped in the comforting energy of the other, while giving the other man time to adjust to his disclosure.
"Sorry." Humiliation and embarrassment colored Arnie's voice.
Alexis sighed at the sad story. "Don't apologize. We each have times when the pain is so bad, there's nothing else we can do but let it pour."
"But you need to tell us the details." Kevin's voice was still cold but now had a thread of compassion running through it.
Broken, but still willing, Arnie explained again, in detail.
Alexis waited a few minutes after he fell silent to allow him to recover a stronger grip on his self-control. "I suppose you thought if this came out, no one would let you stay here?"
"I was supposed to look after him. Keep him safe. It's all my fault."
His confession confirmed her guess. That was the problem with old abiding guilt; it ruled your actions forever. "Well, it won't. We all have demons, Arnie. Yours are more difficult than some, but no one here would judge you for it."
"He did."
Kevin spun away from the window to glare at him. "He knew?" Two quick steps took him to the front of his desk. "How could he know? Did you tell him?"
Arnie reared back away from Kevin's intensity. "Uh, no. I didn't tell him. He already knew. He scared the hell out of me."
Alexis smiled at the past tense. The young man still looked terrified, only now Kevin was the looming danger.
"Okay, I want you to start from the beginning and go over every word from every meeting. I want full descriptions with sketches of his face, and details about vehicles and locations where you've met. This guy has a pattern, and I want to know what it is." Standing with his hands on his hips, he added, "And I need someone to find a picture of Charles for him to see. Fast."
One of the senior officers came and led Arnie into a private room to take his statement. The police artist was on standby but hopefully she wouldn't be needed.
Kevin called the captain and filled him in. Finally, something had shifted.
As Alexis waited, she almost nodded off. God, she was tired. She wondered when they'd be heading home.
"I know you're tired, Alexis." He pondered the problem for a moment. "I can send an officer with you to my place or you can grab a couple of hours sleep here. We have two rooms with cots in them." He grinned at her. "Actually, we have a whole jail full of them."
"Thanks, but no thanks." Alexis considered the not-so-great options.
"Or I could have a cot brought into my office," he suggested with a raised brow.
Right on cue, Alexis yawned again. "Did we eat tonight?"
"Yeah." He reminded her. "Chinese at the lake, remember?"
She grimaced. How could she have forgotten? This day had been brutally long. "Maybe I could crash here. Are you sure I won't be in the way?" Even as she said the words, fatigue washed over her.
"Not at all."
Kevin quickly ordered a cot brought in, and grabbed up his stuff to take to another desk.
"You don't have to leave." Alexis hated to move into his space if it meant moving him out.
"Honey, I have to go talk with Arnie anyway. I need to find out everything I can before I meet with John in the morning." He walked over and tugged her gently into his warm embrace. "Lie down and sleep. This could be an all-nighter. We might need your special skills. Rest while you can."
She sent him a look of disbelief that made him laugh. "Like I can help."
"I mean it."
Even as he spoke, the door opened to admit two men carrying a small folding cot.
After the men left, she moved over to the makeshift bed and lay down. There were no blankets or pillows, but she didn't care.
"I'll rustle up a blanket or two for you. Go ahead and get some rest." He left the room.
Alexis stretched out. She did the exercises Stefan had taught her, though she was tempted to just fall asleep. It felt so damn good to be able to shut her mind off. To know that for now, she could leave everything in Kevin's capable hands.
Within minutes, she'd fallen asleep.
CHAPTER 23
Alexis slept soundly. She didn't wake up until the light crept through the blinds on the windows. Had she closed those? She couldn't remember. Another few minutes went by. She didn't want to get up, but Kevin had to be around somewhere.
"Good morning, sleepyhead. How are you feeling now?"
Kevin sat quietly at his desk. From the look of him, he'd been there all night.
"Did you get any rest last night?" Alexis rubbed her eyes, noticing she now had a blanket and a pillow. Interesting. A shower would be wonderful…but coffee would be better.
"I caught a few minutes of shut-eye in my chair somewhere between three and four. Not enough, but it will have to do for now."
Alexis shook her head. He couldn't function efficiently this way.
"Don't say it, I already know. But there have been a lot of surprises overnight, and things are starting to move very quickly."
Startled, she could only look at him. "Coffee," she pleaded in a croaking voice. "First coffee, then information."
After several slugs of dark-and-deadly harsh cop coffee, she smiled. The caffeine hadn't had a chance to hit her bloodstream, but just knowing it was on the way made her mental faculties cooperate enough to ask. "Now, what did you find out?"
"Charles is the blackmailer." He waited for her reaction.
"What? That slimy-toad-of-a-birthday-boy blackmailed Arnie?" She just couldn't get her mind wrapped around the idea. "It's not that I don't believe you, it's just hard to imagine. Does he really have the brains to pull off something like this?"
Kevin watched her, a big smirk on his face. "I thought you'd say something along those lines. You really didn't like him, did you?"
Alexis looked at him and shuddered. "What's to like?"
"Most ladies don't appear to have a problem with him."
She thought about it. "I'm not so sure about that. H
e mentioned something when I walked with him. He made it sound like the house, money and prestige, all belonged to him, and if I was nice to him, he might share."
Alexis became the target of his narrowed eyed glare. "He said what?"
From the overriding disbelief in his voice, she couldn't tell if she should feel insulted or complimented. "He said something else that was odd. Something about no other family that counts." She looked over at Kevin.
"His uncle is in a long-term care facility on life support. John keeps paying the bills because he can't stand the thought of letting his brother die." Kevin looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. "Although, from what he's said lately, he's getting ready to sign the papers to pull the plug. Something about it being time to let his brother go."
"How sad. But like I said, Charles is a toad." Imagine feeling that way about a family member? "Would Charles get any money then?" Alexis visibly shuddered at the next thought. "If he is the blackmailer, does it change the direction of your meeting with John this morning?"
He looked startled.
"Sorry." She blushed. "I didn't try to listen in on your phone conversations, but I was here in the office."
"I'd forgotten. There's a good chance Charles has been leaving the threatening notes for his own father."
She sat back and stared at Kevin. "Does he hate his father so much?" Alexis couldn't image a family willingly doing such damage to each other.
"That's something I need to discuss with John this morning." At her look of interest, he quickly interjected, "In private."
That was only fair, even if she didn't like it.
He grinned.
She shrugged dismissively. What could she say? "What's happening with Arnie now?"
That wiped the smile off Kevin's face. "He's in with the captain now. They're questioning his every move since he started here. His future is up in the air."
"That will be tough on him." Alexis stood stalwart in her defense of the young man. She knew he deserved another chance. But would he get it?
"It's not up to us any longer, so let's concentrate on what we can do something about." He stood up with a large stack of papers in his hand. "John should be here any minute."
She glanced at the watch on Kevin's wrist. "Is there a computer that I could use for a few minutes before I go to work?"
A few minutes later, she looked up in time to see John being ushered into Kevin's office. The door shut firmly behind the two of them.
Damn, she wished she were in there.
***
"Good morning, John." Kevin motioned his visitor to take the chair across from the desk. He couldn't help but look at his friend differently now.
"I presume you have something for me as you called this early morning meeting?" John replied, somewhat testily.
"I think so. That doesn't mean you will agree with me." Kevin hadn't looked forward to this meeting. But some skeletons had to be taken out of the closet for another look. "John, I'm sure you felt you had a good reason for withholding this information. But since reading this old file, I'm wondering seriously if this information doesn't all tie in with the current blackmail mess." Kevin looked directly into John's bleached white face.
"Old file?" John asked faintly. All of a sudden, all the pomposity sagged out of him and he fell back against the chair. "What old file?"
"The old file on your deceased daughter. The accidental death that reads more like a manslaughter case." He watched the expressions flit across John's face…shock, fear, horror and pain. The whole gambit raced by. Some Kevin expected, yet some he hadn't, like fear. If he were innocent, he had no reason to be afraid. He waited for John to speak.
"What does that file have to do with my blackmailer?" John's reedy voice slowly regained its former strength, obviously boosted by years of denial.
Kevin found it difficult to stare into those blank eyes. "Maybe everything," he suggested cautiously. "Someone wants you to confess something. Maybe they know about your past and suspect you to be the villain."
"I loved my daughter." He was calm, cold and unequivocal in this statement of fact.
"Be that as it may, your tormentor may have a different spin on things." He shuffled through the various papers in the open file before him. This was going to be more difficult than he'd first anticipated.
Silence.
"John?"
The two men studied each other, the breach between them widening perceptibly. It was uncomfortable, this shift from friend to interrogator, but not entirely unexpected. It didn't make the rest of the meeting easier.
"I had another reason for asking you to come in. Someone else was being blackmailed in town."
John leaned forward. "Who?"
"I can't say." Kevin hesitated. "This other person has identified his extortionist as Charles."
For the second time, the color leached from John's face. "What? This can't be. He's a good boy."
Kevin let that one pass.
"We're going to be bringing him in for questioning today." Kevin checked John over, looking for any sign these shocks had been too much. "Is there any chance Charles is also blackmailing you?"
John looked at him blindly, obviously having difficulty processing the information and what the question implied. Kevin had heard of people seeming to age upon receiving bad news, but he'd never seen it himself, until then. It was incredibly painful, for both the person in question and the observer. Kevin stood and walked over to the window, remembering Alexis slipping over here for exactly the same reason. It hurt to see such human suffering.
"Could he hate me so much?"
The frailty of his voice made Kevin wince. He turned back to face him. "Would he blame you for his sister's death?"
John shrugged in defeat. "How do I know? The subject hasn't been brought up since we lost her. I tried to make it seem like it had never happened. Otherwise, I couldn't stand it." The painful memories obviously overwhelmed the man, making it hard for him to speak. "Charles couldn't think that. I loved her – we both did."
"Was Charles close to her?"
John smiled. "Very. The difference in their ages added to that, maybe. She was his special baby sister. They played together all the time, especially in the garden. They loved the flowers. He even had his own nickname for her. Charles went to pieces when she died. He'd already lost his uncle, four years earlier… It was a lot for him to deal with. I should have gotten more help for him," John said. "But then we were all a mess at the time. He seemed to straighten out after a while." John shuffled in his chair. "Then Sandra collapsed. My marriage almost didn't make it, for the second time, and I know I lost the close bond with Charles." He brushed a shaky hand over his hair. "But for Charles to do this to me…" His head shook sadly. "I just don't believe it."
"Maybe it wasn't him, but he had the access, the hidden knowledge and the motive."
"What motive?" John turned to him in surprise. "What possible motive could there be?"
"There're any number of possibilities. He might want you to suffer for what he believes you did." Kevin waited a moment before plowing ruthlessly on. "There is no statute of limitation on murder."
That finished John. You could actually see the walls of John's foundation crumble to the ground around him.
"I swear on my mother's bible that I did not kill my little girl." Tears welled up and slowly rolled down his face. "I loved her. She was everything to me."
John appeared to be telling the truth, but Kevin didn't know what to believe. He'd seen too much in his career to be surprised by anything. Besides, what did he really know about John?
Kevin opened the file and studied the contents while John composed himself.
There had been an investigation at the time of the child's death. Her death had been ruled accidental, and the case closed. Kevin checked a couple of sheets, looking for the officer in charge at the time. This deserved a follow-up call.
"John, is there any chance, with the understanding that if her death wasn't
accidental and you weren't responsible for your daughter's death, then…could it have been Charles? Is he capable of something like this?"
John didn't look surprised at the question. In fact, he appeared resigned. "He changed when Glen had his accident. My brother didn't die, but he might as well have as he's been non-responsive since. Charles took that hard. So…I don't know. For almost twenty years, I've wondered. I don't want to believe it. Mental illness runs in the family and at one point, he needed serious help. We thought he'd improved, then he'd just stop taking his meds. It was a roller coaster ride for all of us. We had to keep a close eye on him for many months, until the doctors could straighten him out again." He stared off into the distance sadly, as if looking down the long tunnel of his own past. "I don't know anymore. The boy I knew couldn't have done it, but then he wouldn't have blackmailed anyone either."
"We have an odd case open right now. Believe me when I say I wouldn't be asking without good reason, but can you tell me what clothing your daughter was buried in?"
"Daisy? But she's buried in Redding, California." John stared at him in shock.
Kevin's heart hitched. He leaned forward to pin the hapless man in place. "Daisy? I thought her name was Marie Leanne?"
"Yes, yes it was, but Charles nicknamed her Daisy when she was just an itty-bitty toddler. The name stuck. I think the dress she had on had her name on it."
"Which name?"
"Marie. She was buried in her favorite yellow sundress, with white stockings and black shoes. I had to help pick out the clothes. Sandra was inconsolable at the time. She hadn't been herself for a long time already, but that…"
Confirmation the body Alexis found was likely that of John's daughter, although necessary for the files, hurt. The next question was going to devastate John.
