The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  I took a deep breath. Read over my notes, though I’m not sure I needed them. Or really saw them. Life wasn’t always easy. The way wasn’t always clear.

  Sometimes there were no right and wrong answers. Or even palatable ones.

  And that was part of the process of living, too. Living with the untenable, the inexplicable. Living with the fact that sometimes life just didn’t make sense.

  And the attorney on the other end of the line didn’t need to hear any of that.

  “So, when you win, what do you like about it?” I asked her.

  “Being good enough to win.”

  “Why?”

  “So I know that when people rely on me, their trust isn’t misplaced. In most cases, my clients’ lives are at stake. I have to know that if I take their cases, I’m capable of giving them their best chance.”

  I could relate to that.

  “So what about this case? Did the win feel good?”

  “I felt like I did my job.”

  Unresolved.

  “And if you had it to do over again, would you still take the case?”

  “If I knew only what I knew then?”

  “Of course. Unless you’ve got some kind of crystal ball that’s going to help you see the future.”

  “Nope. If I had that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

  Out of the mouths of babes. And defense attorneys.

  “So would you still take the case?”

  “Yes.”

  “And knowing that doesn’t help at all, does it?”

  “No.”

  “What will?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have some technique for figuring out if I’ve lost sight of the bigger picture in my quest to do my job well?”

  “Yeah.” I doodled on my shoe some more.

  “What is it?”

  “Listen.”

  Silence fell between us. And then Erin said, “Okay, I’m listening. What is it?”

  “That was it. Listen. Listen to your instincts. To the things that keep you awake at night. You’re on the right track. You’re looking at yourself, trying to be honest with yourself. Your conscience is talking to you. Listen to it and you’ll have your answers.” I could’ve talked to her in abstract terms—about cognitive dissonance or the gain loss theory of interpersonal attraction.

  Instead, I’d gone with my gut.

  “So you think, because I’m struggling, it’s my conscience telling me that I’ve lost sight of what matters?”

  “No. I think you’re struggling because it’s time for a self-assessment. For whatever reason. Either you need a change, or a confirmation that you’re right where you need and want to be. Either way, if you listen carefully, you’ll have your answer.”

  “And peace again?”

  “That’s the idea.” I slid off the desk. I wasn’t going to be home much earlier than I would’ve been if I’d skated.

  Good thing Maggie hadn’t been counting on me. Obviously I still had some distance to go with this mothering business.

  Hopefully the relevant instincts would be kicking in anytime now.

  “Can I ask you something?” Erin’s curious tone caught my attention.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you struggle, too?”

  Uh-uh. I was the helper. The questioner. The prober. It was my role in life. My purpose.

  “I’m human,” I said, because Erin expected an answer.

  “So you do struggle?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  And if she asked me about what, I was going to have to be honest and tell her I had to get home to Maggie.

  “Thanks.” Erin sounded better. Less tense. And I smiled again. From the inside out. “No problem.”

  “You have a way of making everything seem manageable.”

  I hoped so. That was my job.

  “Everything generally is manageable once we can see what’s really there. Because then we can figure out what to do about it.”

  “So…what do I owe you?”

  “How about another phone call sometime. Just to stay in touch?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Giving her my cell number, I hung up and made a beeline for the door. If the phone rang again I was absolutely not going to answer it.

  2

  No one answered his knock at the door. Another man might have tried a second time. Rick Thomas spun on the heel of his canvas work boot, casing the yard around him—the back fence, gravel parking areas, the government-issue four-wheeler that hadn’t moved, as far as Rick knew, since before he’d rolled into town the year before.

  Nothing appeared to be out of place. In Rick’s world, that was usually more indicative of a problem than something obviously out of place would’ve been.

  Taking a step backward, flattening himself against the wall of the building, right next to the door, he listened. His nostrils flared as he inhaled, smelling the air around him. No gunpowder residue. No formaldehyde, incense or rotting. Still, his hair stood on end and he wished he had his .357 Magnum strapped beneath his flannel shirt.

  Until his mind’s eye played out the scene for him—some sane, rational part of him showing him what he was doing.

  “Stupid-ass fool,” he muttered. He was a construction worker—a handyman, an odd-jobs guy who owned a modest business in a small town on the craggy shores of Lake Michigan. He’d gone to the Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security office just outside Temple at seven o’clock in the morning to continue his remodeling build-out, converting a closet into a second bathroom and adding two offices and additional storage space. He was there because the bulk of his work came from referrals and, in a town as small as Temple, he’d have raised eyebrows if he’d turned down the offer of a job this size.

  He was not there because of any interest, past or present, in national security.

  Construction workers didn’t need to keep their backs to the wall. Or .357 Magnums strapped to their chests.

  Rick had been on the job a week. Had the bathroom nearly finished—assuming there were no floods or spurts when he actually turned on the water.

  He rapped on the back door a second time. EMA officer Charles Cook had the six-to-two shift. He’d be on his third cup of coffee by now—cursing because the automatic brew system had a maximum production capacity of four cups—and he’d have half the paper read. In another ten minutes, at exactly seven-fifteen, he’d be pouring his fourth and last cup of coffee for the day and flicking on his computer.

  He’d be humming “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” as he waited for the state-of-the-art machine to boot up. And by eleven, he’d be asking Rick what he wanted for lunch.

  Rather than packing his own meal, Charles hired a runner to bring food out from town every weekday at eleven-fifteen.

  People were creatures of habit. Routine. Which made them predictable. Vulnerable to manipulation. Easy prey.

  All someone had to do was pay attention.

  Where was Charles? His vehicle, a midnight-blue Expedition, gleamed in the early-morning sun in its usual spot at the corner of the building.

  Reaching for the back door to the building, Rick might have rattled the handle—if he’d come from a different life. Instead, he turned it slowly, quietly, expecting the nearly immediate catch of the lock preventing his entrance. He frowned when the knob continued to turn.

  Charles took his Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security position seriously. Very seriously. Locked doors were as important to him as the air he breathed.

  Rick didn’t just assume things were okay. Not ever. In his experience, they generally weren’t. Not if you looked deeply enough.

  Releasing the latch without making a sound, Rick closed the door, leaving it unsecured, and moved silently along the hallway to the front of the building—and the desk Charles and the other agents used when they were on duty.

  He knew something was wrong before he made it five feet down the hall. The coffeepot was half-full.

 
He rounded the corner. Took in the perimeter of the front office. And stopped, staring down at the floor.

  Right in the middle, flat on his back, Charles lay in a pool of blood.

  The forty-five-year-old’s eyes were wide open. With a blank gaze aimed straight at him.

  Erin Morgan was in the Ludwig County sheriff’s office at seven-thirty Thursday morning, seeking information on the overnight arrest of one of her clients, when a call came in from the local Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security. Because the modest station consisted of one front room with four desks, including the dispatch desk, Erin couldn’t help overhearing.

  “I’m at the Ludwig County EMA office and need an ambulance,” the voice said, clearly audible over the speaker phone.

  Glancing at the list on the wall beside Josie Winthrop, Erin picked up a second phone and dialed Len Majors, the EMT on call, so the other woman wouldn’t have to put her caller on hold to do so.

  She’d been around the station often enough to know procedure.

  “Okay, sir, I’m sending one now.” Josie nodded at Erin. “What’s going on there?”

  “A man is dead.”

  Standing, Erin counted the rings on her end. There’d only been one other murder since she’d moved to Temple almost five years before.

  And that had been a domestic dispute.

  “Are you in danger, sir?” Josie was asking.

  “No, I’ve secured the area, I’m here alone.”

  “Yeah?” Len’s gruff voice sounded in Erin’s ear, and she moved away to talk in private. Quickly giving the man the information she had, Erin hung up, returning her full attention to Josie’s conversation.

  The other woman had put the caller on hold while she alerted squad cars to head out to the scene.

  “Sir?” she was asking.

  “Yeah. I’m here.” There was something…unsettling…about the man’s calm. He was with a dead man, and there wasn’t so much as a tremor in his voice.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rick Thomas.”

  “Okay, Rick, what happened?” Josie asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the voice said. “I’m doing some renovations here and arrived today as I always do, just after seven. The back door was unlocked and I came in and found Charles on the floor.”

  “Did you touch him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “His eyes are wide open, sightless and he hasn’t blinked. There’s a substantial pool of blood. He’s not breathing.”

  As a defense attorney, Erin knew, at least by reputation, pretty near everyone in the area who’d had a run-in with the law.

  She’d never heard of Rick Thomas.

  She hadn’t met Charles Cook, either, but she knew who he was. He’d never been married and, after Noah’s death, a couple of people had suggested that Erin get to know him.

  “Okay, Rick, officers are on their way. I’d like you to stay on the phone with me until they get there.”

  Just in case whoever had killed Charles was still in the area, Erin surmised.

  Or because Josie wanted to make certain that Rick Thomas didn’t flee the scene. A manhunt would take more time than Temple officers had to spare.

  “Of course.” The man didn’t seem any more bothered by Josie’s request than he’d been by what had happened that morning.

  “Is anything noticeably out of place?” Josie asked, mostly, Erin figured, to keep the guy talking.

  “No.”

  “Any sign of a weapon?”

  “No. Whoever did this got him from behind, though. And they didn’t use a gun. There’s no sign of injury on the front of his body. No exit wound. No bullet holes on the premises. No smell of gunpowder. No sign of a struggle, either. Looks like he stood and then abruptly fell.”

  “Maybe he passed out and hit his head.”

  “The blood pool is lower down.”

  Sirens sounded and Rick Thomas, announcing that help had arrived, rang off.

  And although Erin found the arrest report she’d been seeking without a problem, she couldn’t get her morning visit to the police station, or the voice of the man who’d called in a crime, out of her mind.

  Idle hands weren’t good for him. Rick had learned that lesson the hard way—when he was about three.

  If he didn’t keep busy, he could get into trouble. If he didn’t choose his actions deliberately, tragedy could occur.

  And so, facing a full day without work, he made the most obvious deliberate choice, climbed into his year-old black pickup truck—the first vehicle he’d ever owned—and headed toward Ludington and the beachside care facility where he spent much of his nonworking time. With a whole day free, opportunity abounded.

  And Rick knew just what to do.

  October was a bit cold out on the lake but they had coveralls. Boat rentals were cheaper—especially since it was a weekday. And Steve loved to fish. Which was why the fishing gear was always stowed in the locked box in the back of Rick’s truck.

  He stopped for bait on the way in rather than waiting to get it at the boat dock because Steve had a tendency to get impatient when he got excited. Before ten o’clock that Thursday morning, Rick was walking toward the group of residents on the beach behind Lakeside Family Care.

  At six feet and a couple of inches, with dark hair and brown eyes, Steve was a handsome guy.

  “Ricky! Ricky!” The childish call in the deep male voice was jarring—even after more than two decades of hearing it. When they were little, Steve’s differences hadn’t seemed so devastating. It was only later, after they’d gone through puberty and beyond, when Rick found himself caring for the slightly older man as though Steve was still the five-year-old who’d fallen from the roof of his house, that Rick had fully understood the devastating ramifications of a three-year-old’s quest for a flying disk made out of cardboard. A homemade attempt to create a Frisbee.

  “Ricky!” Steve was upon him. “Hi! We’re walking on the beach. You wanna come, too?”

  “Hey, sport.” Rick pulled Steve in for a hug, letting the man clutch him for as long as he liked. Sometimes it would be five minutes or more.

  Today, in his excitement, Steve released him almost immediately, grabbing Rick’s hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Rick kept a tight hold on Steve’s hand. “How about we go fishing instead?” he asked. Redirecting Steve was something that came naturally now. It hadn’t always been that way.

  “Fishing? Me and you? Right now?”

  “Yeah. You want to?”

  Glancing back toward the beach, Steve frowned. “Am I allowed?”

  “Yep.”

  “Just me and you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay!” Steve tugged at his hand. “Come on! Let’s go! Before someone else catches ’em all.”

  Meeting Jill’s eye, Rick waved. Jill, the forty-year-old social services director at Lakeside, waved back. They were good to go.

  Having already signed Steve out for the day, Rick hurried to the truck. There was nothing like time alone in a boat with Steve, on waters that were older and wiser and stronger than any man could ever hope to be, to wipe out a lifetime’s worth of visions. Of dead men. And regrets.

  “I swear, Ms. Morgan, I didn’t lift a hand to that woman. I would never do a thing like that.”

  “She says you smacked her in the head,” Erin read from the report as she sat with her client, Clyde Sanderson, in one of the two holding rooms at the county jail down the street from her office.

  “More like tryin’ to catch her,” Clyde said, his blue eyes weary and filled with disillusion. “She come at me with both arms flailin’, accusin’ me of havin’ a fling with some woman. I stepped back and she tripped on a corner of that dad-blamed rug she insisted we had to have.”

  Erin believed him. “And the smack in the head?”

  “I didn’t do it! The mantel did. And it would’ve been a lot worse if I had
n’t caught her. Probably would’ve busted her head wide-open at the rate she was comin’ at me.”

  Good. Just what she’d needed to know. A bruise from a mantel would appear very different from one administered by a hand. Which meant she should have Clyde out by dinnertime.

  “Give me a couple of hours and I’ll see what I can do,” she said, standing. “We might get quicker results if we agree to a restraining order. Do you have any objection to that?”

  “Against me? What for? I didn’t do anythin’.”

  “I know that, Clyde, but part of the problem is it’s her word versus yours. Even if the other side believes us, which I suspect they will, they’ll still want assurance that Laura Jane is protected.”

  “It’s wrong, Ms. Morgan, just plain wrong that the woman can lie and create all this mess and then I have to pay for it.”

  “I know. I agree. We can fight this thing and probably win. But that’ll take weeks. I want you out of here today so you can look after your mom, and you don’t have any trouble at work. And to save you the court costs.”

  Her services were gratis.

  Clyde had once been Noah’s Little League coach.

  “Yeah, but what happens if I have this restraining order and then she comes after me, just to get me arrested for bein’ around her? That’s Laura Jane for you. She’d hound me until I was right back in here.”

  “Not if we ask for an order against her, too.”

  “Will they do that?”

  “I think so. If we ask for it.”

  “Oh, Ms. Morgan, I’d be so grateful if you could. I didn’t think they’d do that, restrain a woman from goin’ near a man. I’d sure be glad if they would. I just wanna get on with it, ya know? To have some peace.”

  “I know you do.”

  The sixty-year-old man was one of the gentlest souls Erin had ever met. Like Noah had been.