by David Archer
Sam thanked the judge once more and they all filed into the hallway. O’Rourke looked at Sam as they stood for a moment.
“What’s your game plan?” he asked. “You said you want to make your brother panic; how do you plan to do that?”
“Simple,” Sam said. “I’m going to tell him I’m coming after him, but not just yet. There are a couple of things I need to do first, and then we’ll be ready to draw him in.”
* * * * *
C.J. rolled west on I-70, passing through central Illinois on his way toward Denver. He was still trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to do when he got there, but it certainly involved learning more about Sam and their mother. The thought that he had a family he didn’t know existed only hours before was still rolling through his mind, and he wanted to know why.
Some part of him wondered if things might have been different if he had grown up with a twin brother. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so alone, and maybe he wouldn’t have been so angry all the time. Of course, a lot of that went back to the way his dad was when he was younger, the constant insults and abuse, but C.J. didn’t believe you could really blame all your troubles on your past. He made his own decisions since he was a teenager, including the one that led him to kill the man he thought was his father.
It was almost scary, how easy it had been. The two of them were alone in the shop that day, the usual crowd of Charlie’s buddies having found something else they wanted to do. It probably involved alcohol, just about everything they did involved alcohol in some way or another, but at least they were gone. C.J. had been cleaning up the differential out of the truck at the parts washer, getting ready to tear it down and put new gears in.
“Make sure you get all the crud out of there,” Charlie had said. “Won’t do no good to put new gears in if you don’t clean out all the metal grit. They’ll just wear out again and we’ll end up having to fix it for nothing.”
“I’ll get it all,” C.J. said. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“You ain’t?” Charlie asked. “Now, as it is, I seem to recall having to replace the torque converter on a transmission a while back. Something about you not putting it back in properly, as I recall. Remember that? That struck me as pretty stupid, what do you think?”
C.J. rolled his eyes. “Geez, Pop, that was six years ago. I was what, ten? That was the first time you ever had me put the torque converter back in the transmission, and I didn’t get it locked in right. You could have checked it, you know, make sure it was right before you put the transmission back in the car.”
Charlie’s big hand struck the back of his head before C.J. could think to move, and it knocked him into the parts washer sink. He got a face full of solvent before he was able to get his feet under him, but by then Charlie was laughing and walking away. C.J. had stood there, fuming, his fists clenched at his side as his dad got on the creeper and slid under the front wheel of the 4 x 4 truck.
There was a jack stand holding up the other side, but Charlie had just lifted this side with the floor jack. If C.J. had been the one to roll under that wheel, the old man would have kicked him in the side for such stupidity, but it wasn’t the first time C.J. had seen Charlie do so.
If that jack fell, C.J. thought to himself, an awful lot of my problems would be gone.
C.J. felt a split second of horror at the thought, then a shiver went down his spine. He looked around to confirm that no one else was in the shop. There was not anyone in sight anywhere nearby. The shop doors were closed because the weather was cool, and no one could see what was going on inside the building.
It’s now or never, he thought, and then he stopped thinking altogether. He stepped as quietly as he could toward the truck and his dad, reached out and grabbed the handle of the jack and twisted it to the left.
Charlie had taken the wheel off and set it aside so that he could get to the brake calipers, but there was one stubborn bolt that didn’t want to come out. Getting to it meant keeping a wrench on the bolt head on the outside while reaching up behind the caliper to put another wrench on the nut. There was so much junk in the way overhead that the only way to see the nut was to look up from underneath.
The jack dropped suddenly and the massive brake rotor landed in the middle of Charlie’s face. He had time for one brief scream, then his skull popped like a pecan in a nutcracker. C.J. had hurried back to the parts washer and leaned against it as he stared at what he had just done, and the reality of it hit him.
C.J. read a lot of detective novels, which was why he wanted to be a cop. He had never before considered actually committing murder, but now that the deed was done, he started thinking like an investigator.
He started to wipe his prints off the jack handle, but they would naturally be there; if it was clean, that would be more suspicious than having his fingerprints on it. He thought about what other questions an investigator might ask, what other clues they might look for, and started preparing his story even as he ran toward the phone on the wall.
“I need help,” he shouted when the 911 operator answered. “It’s my dad, a truck fell on him. Please, please, send an ambulance, please. It looks really, really bad.”
He surprised himself. He sounded absolutely panicked, just the way somebody would sound in a situation like that, and the tears streaming down his face were a bonus. Anybody who saw them right now would think he was crying out of grief and terror, but the truth was that he was crying from sheer relief. The blood pooling around his dad’s head was like a soft whisper, telling him that all of the pain, all of the abuse, all of the hatefulness was over.
It took almost ten minutes for the ambulance to arrive, but the cop on duty showed up within three. He came rushing inside and C.J. pointed at his dad, and then the patrolman ran back outside to throw up. He came just inside the building a couple minutes later and motioned for C.J. to come outside with him.
“Well, what happened?” he asked. He was obviously trying to keep from retching again.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” C.J. said. “I heard him yell and I looked around, and that’s the way he was. I—I started to try to jack it up, but I heard somebody say that you shouldn’t ever try to move someone when they been hurt. I was afraid I might make it worse.” He let out a sob suddenly and the tears flowed harder. “Is—is he dead?”
“I don’t know, C.J.,” the cop said. “We’re going to have to let the paramedics figure that out, but I don’t think there was really much you could have done for him. We’ll just wait out here until they get here, okay?”
Of course, seeing the police car in front of the building with its lights flashing, people from all over the area came hurrying over. The guy who ran the drugstore across the street actually closed up to find out what was happening, but the officer just said there had been an accident. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics had to push through a crowd to get to the front door and walk inside.
One of them came out a couple of minutes later and motioned for the cop to step inside. He did, but stayed just inside the door as the paramedic told him that Charlie Willis was undoubtedly dead.
Somebody had called C. J.’s mother and told her what happened, and she came rushing up in her little Volkswagen beetle. C. J. caught her before she could get into the building, and she clung to him and cried, even while she was trying to ask him what happened. He told her the official story, and was delighted when even more tears came from his own eyes during the telling.
The local deputy arrived moments later, and between the two cops, they were able to disperse the crowd. The paramedics came out a half hour later with Charlie’s body on the stretcher and covered with a sheet. The cop told C.J. to lock up and take his mother home, and not to reopen until the police got through investigating.
Strangely, nobody questioned C.J. about how it happened. His story was taken as truth, and no one suggested there might have been any kind of foul play. Almost half the town knew that Charlie was known for taking risks, and more tha
n one of his buddies insisted they had warned him repeatedly about getting under a vehicle that was just sitting on a jack. The coroner ruled within three days that it was an accident, and C.J. was allowed to reopen.
He spent the first several hours cleaning up, washing the thick, gooey remnants of the blood down the drain and scrubbing the floor to get rid of the stain. Then, carefully, he jacked up the truck and set another jack stand under the wheel that had fallen. He finished putting the differential together and installed, then completed the task of changing the front brake pads and called to tell the customer that the truck was ready.
“I don’t want that thing,” the man said. “I could never drive the truck again, not after what happened. Tell you what, C.J., I’ll bring you the title and you can sell it for whatever the repair bill was.”
He hung up without another word and his wife dropped off the title an hour later. C.J. put the truck up for sale and managed to get far more than the repair bill out of it, but that was almost the last money the shop ever brought in. He did occasional tuneups and oil changes, but all of the more serious work was going to one of the bigger garages in Live Oak. He and his mom kept it open for another year, but it wasn’t bringing in enough money. Not long before C.J. turned eighteen, his mother told him they were going to have to sell it.
C.J. read on the Wikipedia page that Sam’s father had also died when he was a teenager. Of course, that was probably another of those strange coincidental similarities between twins, but at least it was something they genuinely shared in common.
Or, it would have been, had the two brothers actually had each other to lean on. C.J. wanted to know why they didn’t, and the only one who could answer that question would be the woman who must have agreed with the decision to give C.J. up.
C.J. was going to meet his mother for the first time.
SIXTEEN
Steve drove Sam back to Windlass HQ so the ankle monitor could be removed, and the entire staff turned out to congratulate Sam on the dismissal of the charges. He thanked everyone, especially Ron and Jeff, and they sat down in what had formerly been Sam’s office to discuss their next moves.
“O’Rourke and Karen both have put out BOLOs on C.J.’s van,” Sam said, “and we’ve given them both his picture. I’m hoping he might get pulled over, or that someone will spot the van and they’ll be able to take him into custody without a fight, but I wouldn’t bet on it. There are two things we can count on. First, C.J. is probably every bit as smart as I am and I happen to know that I’m not stupid. Second, he’s also had quite a bit of police training. He’s going to undoubtedly be anticipating some sort of a move against him. I can’t imagine, after all the news coverage when I was arrested, that he isn’t aware of me by now.”
“I wonder what’s going through his mind,” Steve said. “If he grew up thinking he’s C.J. Willis, he probably had no more clue that he had a twin brother than you did. Less, since you at least knew that there had been a twin, even if you thought he was dead.”
“I’m sure it’s come as something of a shock,” Sam said, “that somebody who looks that much like him and has similar DNA was arrested for a crime he committed. The only possible logical conclusion is that he is my twin, but if he wasn’t aware that he was switched at birth, then this has to be a real life-changing experience.”
“Well,” Ron said, “we did as you asked and put a tap on his mother’s phone. I can tell you that he hasn’t called her since then, but we may have been too late. What’s the next step, Sam?”
“I think the smart move is for me to go and see her,” Sam said. “Could I prevail on you, Ron, to arrange one of the charter flights? I’ll reimburse you, of course.”
“Like hell you will,” Ron said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll have it set up.” He got up and left the room to make the arrangements.
“And what about your mum?” Denny asked. “Are you going to take her along?”
Sam grinned. “I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t,” he said. “Besides, it might be good to get the two women face-to-face. Have we got an official statement from May Benjamin yet?”
“Yes,” Jeff said. “Jade brought a copy from the police department just a little bit ago. It turns out you and your brother were only the first switch she pulled off. There were several others over the years, but she’s refusing to give up any more information about them unless she gets a deal to stay out of prison. The DA is probably going to give her one, just so they can start to figure out who is who.”
“I’ll need a copy of it,” Sam said. “At least it does confirm what I’m going to tell this poor woman, that the son she raised wasn’t the one she gave birth to.”
Summer put a hand on his arm. “Just remember, Sam,” she said, “you’re also going to be telling her that her son died, and she never knew it. She’s probably going to be resistant to all of it, at least at first.”
“I can imagine. This is definitely going to be a shock to her.”
Harry cleared his throat. “Sympathy is good, Sam,” he said, “but too much sympathy will give her a reason to try to live in denial. You have to be firm, even if you are trying to be sensitive to her feelings. The fact of the matter is that the man she thought of as her own child is murdering young women, and she has to accept that fact. If she doesn’t, she will never be able to survive the shock, at least not emotionally.”
“I understand that, Harry,” Sam said. “I think I can handle it.”
Jeff moved his chair close to Sam. “Let me get that monitor off you,” he said. He leaned down with a key in his hand to unlock it.
“Go for it,” Sam said. He took out his phone and called his wife.
“Hey, babe,” Indie said. “How did it go with O’Rourke?”
“Well, he was so blown away by the evidence that he dragged me and Jamison in to see the judge. The charges against me were all dismissed, baby. I’m at Windlass, and Jeff is taking off my ankle bracelet now.”
He could hear the big smile in her voice. “Oh, that’s such a relief,” she said. “So, what happens now?”
“That’s why I’m calling,” Sam said. “Is Mom still there?”
“Yeah, she’s sitting right across from me, with Carrie. Why?”
“Tell her to run home and pack an overnight bag, and then meet me back at the house as soon as she can. We’re going to Florida.”
“Florida? You’re going down to see his mother?”
“Yeah. I think that’s the next step. Tell her to be quick, because I’ll be home in about half an hour.”
“She’s already headed out the door,” Indie said with a laugh. “I’ll see you when you get here. Love you.”
Ron came into the room as Sam ended the call. “Flight’s all set,” he said. “I got lucky and there was one of the planes available at the airport right now, with a fresh crew. You can leave anytime you’re ready to go.”
“That sounds great,” Sam said. “Denny? You mind to give me and Harry a ride home?”
“Be my pleasure, mate,” Denny replied. “You sure you don’t want me to come along?”
“I think I can handle it,” Sam said, grinning. “Mom is pretty tough, she can back me up. What you can do, though, is keep an eye on my family while I’m gone. If C.J. heard the news about me being arrested, he’ll probably figure out that we must be related. Since we don’t know where he is, I want to be sure he doesn’t get to Indie or the kids.”
Denny shrugged, and then the three of them left the building. Harry got into the back while Sam climbed into the passenger side of Denny’s car and they got to Sam’s house thirty minutes later.
Grace wasn’t back yet and Kim had gone with her, so Sam told Harry and Denny to have a seat in the living room with Carrie, then grabbed Indie and took her to the bedroom for a few minutes alone with his wife. Kenzie was still playing down the street, so Indie called a short time later to ask her to come home to say goodbye to her daddy. The child came running in the door a couple minutes later.
/>
“Daddy! Where are you going?”
“Sweetheart, I have to take a trip to Florida, but I should be back sometime tomorrow. There’s a lady down there I have to go talk to. It’s really important, Kenzie.”
The little girl hugged him as she sat in his lap in the recliner, then looked him in the eye. “But you won’t get shot again, right?”
Sam’s eyes went wide. “I certainly hope not,” he said with a grin. “Grandma Grace is coming with me, so she’ll make sure nobody shoots me, okay?”
“Okay,” Kenzie said. “She can take care of you, I guess.”
Sam chuckled. “And Uncle Harry and Denny will be here to help take care of you and Mommy and Bo,” he said. “You can show Uncle Harry your latest Disney favorites. He always gets a kick out of that.”
“Indeed I do,” Harry said. “Which one is it?”
Kenzie happily shoved a DVD into the player and crawled up beside Harry on the couch. Denny and Carrie were sitting on it, as well, and Kenzie’s addition forced them to sit a little closer together. Sam noticed that neither of them seemed to be objecting.
The two grandmas reappeared ten minutes after that, and Sam picked up the bag that Indie packed for him. He was about to walk out the door when Kim caught him by the arm. He stopped and looked at her, and then he groaned.
“Let me guess,” he said, “Beauregard?”
Kim nodded. “He says to come back as quickly as you can, because your brother is more dangerous than you think he is. He knows about you, now, Sam. He knows you’re his twin brother.”
Sam shrugged. “I knew he’d figure it out sooner or later,” he said. “I was actually counting on it, to be honest. With any luck, it’ll help me draw him out to where we can catch up to him. I just need to learn as much as I can about him from the woman who raised him before I let the story out to the press.”
“Okay,” Kim said. “He just wanted me to tell you.” She glanced at Denny. “Is he going to be staying here while you’re gone?”
