by LS Sygnet
Sins of the Father
by LS Sygnet
COPYRIGHT 2013 LS Sygnet, Smashwords Edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or paper print, without written permission from LS Sygnet.
Eriksson Series by LS Sygnet
Daddy’s Little Killer
Beneath the Cracks
Forgotten Place
The Chilling Spree
Always Watching
Sins of the Father
and coming soon, the final book, Cloaked in Blood
Dedication
For Mary, Maja, Pat, Deanna and Jenee.
You help me in ways both great and small, but all necessary.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 1
In June last year, I grabbed my purse and left the only life I’d built for myself behind. It was simple, after walking away from a bad marriage. Bad marriage had devolved to worse career. Dad always taught me to be prepared to leave anything and everything behind – if that was the only option left on the table.
I did it.
Severed what minuscule emotional threads existed.
Fled.
Out of the frying pan and all that junk.
How many clichés can run through my brain right now? Probably ten times the amount of misery since that fateful night in early June last year. Misery of my own making.
I can’t stop thinking about it.
Picture a cobra, backed into a corner, so pissed off that striking first and damn the consequences seemed like a good idea. No, that’s not true. I wasn’t thinking. Not even a little bit.
I keep seeing the moment my ex-husband died playing on an endless loop in my mind. Slow motion. A gun that was first in my pocket, brought to the scene of the crime because frankly, I didn’t trust my criminal ex-husband or any of his associates. Truly, that was the only thought in my head that night.
Damned curiosity. Fucking frustration. For two years after Rick’s arrest, I walked with a perpetual cloud of suspicion shrouding me. My colleagues no longer trusted me. Some profiler I was, right? Money launderer for the Marcos crime family sleeping beside me at night, clueless little wife.
To understand it, one would have to experience a loveless marriage that is essentially occasional co-habitation and nothing more. There were no cozy dinners, no snuggling at night and unburdening of the garbage left over from soul-shattering jobs. He lived with a ghost.
I died the day I found out that my father, the man I have idolized for my entire life would no longer be there for me every day.
But if I was a ghost in our marriage, Rick was a zombie, not alive, not really dead. He was a predator, and I was the meal he planned to devour to sustain that existence.
He called me, long after the ink on the divorce decree was dry, over two years of dust on the pages that should’ve set me free. Something in his voice intrigued me. I’d never heard it before. Desperation. Need. A soft plea that sparked such curiosity in me. How could it not lure me? I spent a decade with a man who was a complete stranger in the end.
But like Dad always said, sometimes paranoia is just good common sense. So I took a gun to the meeting, and I made sure it was on my turf.
No, we didn’t meet at Quantico. We met in a place I used to visit for peace, for solitude. For an endorphin rushing run.
And I learned what cruelty really looked like that night. His eyes were black in the moonlight that flickered in and out from behind soft clouds above.
The gun was suddenly out of my pocket. Pointed right in his face, so slowly, but without the slightest tremor in my hand. A sense of calmness, complete serenity washed over me, even though the world was no longer shades of pale-blue. It turned red and black, angry and hot, but at the same time so cold that nothing penetrated the resolve in my heart.
The black eyes filled with doubt at first. Disbelief even. A sardonic smile taunted me, but couldn’t penetrate the shell that grew around me.
“Get on your knees.” Dull, flat, resolved. That was how it felt. What it evoked from Rick was something quite different.
A flood of fear, panic so strong I could smell it, heavy with instant sweat and a sickening acrid oil that coated my nostrils. He knew.
Yet I knew nothing but the varied shades of rage and retribution. They bled together until something so dark and foreign was born within me, I lost who I always believed I was. Dad’s advice flooded into my gray matter. It all made sense, suddenly. My father was all wise, all knowing. I hadn’t lost him at all. He lived within me, and I could never let him go again.
Rick knelt before me. He tried to reason with me.
The words didn’t penetrate my armor.
He made threats, ugly confessions. He’d take me down with him. Even if I killed him, the wheels were in motion to expose my complicity in his crimes.
In an instant, it didn’t matter to me, was incomprehensible that he might’ve been bluffing. I simply pressed the barrel of the gun into the flesh behind his right ear.
His words came faster and faster. Marcos was family in more than just the business sense of the word. Sort of. Rick Hamilton exposed the fatal link, the one that would make me look one of two ways – guilty as hell or dumber than a box of rocks. Marcos’ nephew, Danny Datello was Rick’s cousin.
Don’t you remember, honey? You met him at our wedding.
One little twitch, such a slow and slight movement in the movie in my mind, and then blood, bone, brain tissue sprayed in a fine mist into the night air. Birds shrieked in grief perhaps. Even if he wasn’t fit to breathe the same air as I did, when a man dies, the world becomes less somehow.
I can still hear the sickening thud of his body hitting the dirt.
My eyes burned, not with tears of regret, but with disgust that he hadn’t suffered more, that my moment of freedom was so fleeting. I stared at the moon overhead, peeking out from behind a cloud that looked like a finger pointing downward, marking where I had achieved liberation from the past.
Now I wonder if it pointed at me in accusation.
I was not free, nor would I ever feel free again. It was the beginning of the end.
Nine months later, I’m more lost than ever. The ghost has faded to something even less tangible. I’m pretty sure that there is no Helen Eriksson anymore. Helen, perhaps. I am not an Eriksson.
&nb
sp; Not if the latest demon sent to torment me told the truth.
Last week, my new husband rescued me. Johnny Orion, one of the truly good guys in this world, stopped me from being sold into slavery by a group of men and women engaged in human trafficking.
A normal woman would cling to a guy like that. She’d hold on for dear life. But I’m barely an apparition these days. I’m vague, like the fog that drifts in patches through Darkwater Bay every night. One might believe he caught a glimpse of something tangible in the mist, but then it’s swallowed up, and he’s never quite sure.
After a brief stay on a psychiatric ward to rule out psychosis ( it was a simple delirium brought about by severe dehydration), Johnny brought me home.
I can’t get the waking image of Rick’s murder out of my head. In my heart, I believe that Johnny bought the lie I told him when he suspected the truth – that Rick’s death was a suicide, as it was finally and officially ruled by the FBI.
He loves me. He loves the beautiful lie he created and labeled who Helen really is. What I feel is a little more complicated. Yes, he rattles me on a regular basis. I can’t bear the thought of hurting him.
But I keep seeing Rick.
I might be one of those people with a black hole, a great and vast void where goodness is supposed to reside. I’ve felt guilty many times over the past few months. I’ve even experienced what I suppose is regret and remorse. Still, at the root of every feeling is nothingness. Everything is disconnected from me now.
Who am I? Have I ever known? Has my entire life been a never ending lie? A fabrication. The motions of normalcy.
Dad always said that I should find normal and sane, embrace it, live the American Dream and love it. Believe it. But always be prepared to walk away and start over.
Becoming someone else, Diana Farber, saved me nine months ago. It saved and damned me at the same time. I’m not a faithful person. I must see it to believe it. There must be logic and reason and hard evidence. Here lately, even that steadfast comfort has been stripped away. I feel that perhaps there is something to the notion of fate. Destiny. God, but I hope karma is complete bullshit.
All roads sucked me into Darkwater Bay. First, the corrupt ex-husband – and my thirst for vengeance led me here. Danny Datello used to live here. He died here. No, I didn’t kill him. Ironically, I regretted his death. In some strange way, I felt a bond with him in the end. Danny Datello might’ve been the only person on earth who truly understood the dichotomies that create people like us. Able to love, ruled by hate, thirsty for justice of our own invention.
Darkwater Bay’s criminal element bore all the layers of a rotten onion. Peel back one, and find another darker and more rancid. Now I wondered if the fetid center was my heart, my contribution to the unredeemable. I wish I could feel something. Anything. Numbness would be more than what penetrates the hard case wrapped around me. It’s a coffin, the sealed mausoleum that keeps the whole world away from my universe.
Andy Gillette kidnapped me. He planned to sell me to someone who wanted me broken. Tamed. Subservient. I snapped his neck with a well placed leg around his throat. I should feel victorious. Guilty maybe? Just like the images of Rick’s death haunt me, Gillette’s words are there too.
Martha Henderson.
The woman who kidnapped Crevan’s twin sister used that name. She was never captured. The infant was never recovered.
I haven’t stopped staring at him, as covertly as possible of course. I remembered an odd look Johnny wore once when Crevan and I were together. Sort of vague recognition. Had he seen a family resemblance? If I looked closely, would I see it too? Was it wishful thinking? Was it dreadful thinking?
Our eye coloring was similar.
He has a dimple just left of center on his chin. I do not.
There are russet highlights galore in our hair.
Then there is the pouty mouth, the full lips blessed by Mother Nature’s collagen. Check. They match.
What doesn’t fit is my ungodly height. Crevan is a mere three inches taller than me, a tad on the low-average side for men in this area of the world. I’m a pinch under five eleven. Surely if I came from this breeding ground, I would be as petite as most of the women I’ve encountered out here.
Right?
How can I find out without drawing attention to the fact that once again, I lied to Johnny when he asked me a direct question?
Had Andy Gillette said anything else to me?
No, Johnny. He didn’t tell me anything.
Not more than the fact that this would not be the first time I’d been sold. And then he threw that name out there, Martha Henderson. He knew full well that if I had investigated to my usual thorough standard, that it would point me to the missing Conall baby immediately. If I had missed the boat, it would’ve driven me nuts trying to find a way to learn who she was.
I could get a DNA sample. It should be simple enough. Maya Winslow is the closest thing to a best girlfriend that I’ve ever had. She’s the chief medical examiner in Bay County. It would be a small favor to ask. I might not even have to offer an explanation.
Crevan was in and out of my house almost as much as Johnny was. Offer him a drink. Swab the rim of the glass for DNA. Easy.
If it were true… large and new can of worms would burst open.
Crevan’s father, in my opinion, is insane. Think Jim Jones without the poison Kool-Aid. David Koresh without the compound going up in flames. Nathan Bedford Forrest with all the racism. No, scratch that. Aidan Conall is worse than a racist. He is a xenophobic jerk. Any parent who could turn his back on a child based on sexual orientation has more than a screw loose. At least that’s my view on the matter.
Speaking of fathers, Wendell Eriksson would probably be the most direct path to the truth. Irony was a father who lied, cheated, murdered and stole be the preferable gene pool. Wendell, the only father I’ve ever known, knows I killed Rick. He guided Johnny to the quickest, most effective path of protecting me from ever being a credible suspect. The added bonus was that Dad’s plan also took down the east coast branch of the Marcos family.
All roads lead back to Darkwater Bay. Does my father have a history here too? Would he tell me if I asked? Or was he telling me the truth when his plan aimed to end my relationship with Johnny and send me scurrying off into a new hiding place, far away from this city and the secrets that infected me like cancerous tentacles?
My indecision is pretty clear.
The flip side of this coin is to merely follow Dad’s advice. Plan B the whole mess, evaporate into the night and never look back.
Nothing in life is ever that simple. On the contrary.
Johnny Orion, my new husband, is also the rather boastful father of the unplanned child growing in my womb. I felt something strongly about this, before I was abducted and shackled on a ship bound for some country where slavery isn’t quite the human rights taboo it is in the United States.
I felt fear and uncertainty. Johnny helped me see the new life differently. A tiny spark of hope blossomed in my heart. I never felt anything like it before.
Resignation to my fate on The Celeste extinguished it. A child born into slavery, what kind of life would he have? Probably not any better than a child born to an incarcerated mother. If there is any justice in the world, that’s where I’ll finally land.
Until then, I’ve got the plan to run away from this life.
Problem is, something is keeping me here. I don’t know if it’s Johnny or the baby or my damned need for facts. Why probably doesn’t even matter.
Strong legs appeared in my field of vision where I lay curled on the side of the bed. I stared off at nothing, completely still, mimicking sleep without closing my eyes.
“Helen, what’s wrong?” Johnny asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
He placed a tray of soda crackers and a glass of ginger ale on the nightstand. “You haven’t said more than half a dozen words since you came home last night. I think we should listen to that psyc
hiatrist. You really need to talk to somebody about what happened to you.”
The educated woman inside agreed wholeheartedly. I wasn’t feeling quite so amenable. If there is any part of me that still lives, it’s the stubborn part, the one committed to doing things her own way, regardless of the consequences.
Instead of answering Johnny’s plea that I seek help, I closed my eyes and rolled to the middle of the bed and ignored him.
Chapter 2
Time heals all wounds. Isn’t that how the saying goes? Three days have passed since I left the hospital. I’m getting better. When I close my eyes, there is nothing. No dreams, no hauntings from faces of the deceased. It’s blissful blackness. Yet this is not an improvement.
Perhaps it was a symptom of the ambivalence I feel. Should I run? Should I stay? Will this mystery of who I really am drive me insane, or do I even care about the truth this time?
Johnny thinks I’m depressed or suffering from post traumatic stress. I overheard him talking to Dr. Schwartz, the man who told me I’m pregnant, earlier. Johnny asked if I should start taking Prozac again. Not a good idea for a pregnant woman.
I know Dr. Schwartz suggested counseling based on Johnny’s reply.
“I already asked her to talk to someone.” Brief pause. “She didn’t respond either way.”
Of all my internal debates, one matter has been settled. If I don’t snap out of this funk, at least for Johnny’s benefit, I won’t have any options. He’ll haul me back to the hospital and insist that they commit me for treatment again.
It isn’t that I don’t want to respond to him. I simply feel nothing right now.
He snuggled behind me in our bed, rather tentative at first. I recognized his touch subconsciously, the warm hand at my waist that drifted down over my hip before it smoothed back up for a gentle squeeze. His breath cascaded over my right shoulder, slow and heavy. Johnny is worried. If I could feel something, it would be guilt. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s never deserved where my decisions have taken me, taken us, really. I didn’t insist that he join me on the wild ride, though.
