by Kylie Brant
Miguel said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
The man gave them a shrewd look. “Why the interest in these people? Aldeen is locked up, and these others . . . I haven’t seen or heard from them since they stopped working for me.”
“It’s been in the news.” Cady managed to keep her excitement from sounding in her voice. “Several days ago, Samuel Aldeen escaped from the facility where he was being held.”
Cisco recoiled. “The evil man who preyed on children?” At their nods, he did a quick sign of the cross. “Then I will pray he is caught soon. Before he hurts anyone else.” Something across the room caught his eye then. “I must get back to the kitchen. Please, if you need more, send Bella to collect me. I am happy to be of service.”
“You have been,” Cady assured him. “Thank you.”
He gathered up the scrapbooks he’d brought and rose, looking far more troubled than he’d been when he’d first stopped at their table.
They sat in silence for a moment, Miguel appearing as stunned as Cady was. “So this explains the link between Sutton and Aldeen. They have a history together as well.”
“Sutton was in prison himself when Aldeen was sentenced,” she mused. “He wouldn’t have been allowed to get in touch with him. But their mutual acquaintance Preston could. Maybe Aldeen was already planning his escape when he sought a transfer to Fristol.”
“Looks like it.” Miguel took a drink from his water glass. “But an initial contact between Sutton and Aldeen had to come from someone else. How did Sutton know to hack Selma Lewis’s phone line so he could learn what it was Aldeen wanted him to do?”
“Maybe Joe Bush delivered a message for him.” Conjecture was all they had at this point, since Bush was dead. “Someone had to, in order to get the ball rolling. And Aurora Pullman has to figure in Aldeen’s interest in Eryn.” Cady thought for a moment. “Aurora still used her maiden name. You don’t think . . . Sutton couldn’t be Eryn’s father, could he?” Her next thought was almost too awful to contemplate. “Or even . . . Aldeen?”
Miguel drummed his fingers on the table in thought. “God, I hope not, for her sake. Twenty-one years ago? Or maybe closer to twenty-two? I’d have to check the file. I thought Aldeen’s address around that time was somewhere in South Carolina.”
He was right. Cady remembered now. It didn’t mean Aldeen couldn’t have traveled to Charlotte to see an old friend. According to their research, he’d been a trust fund baby with a spotty employment history. With the man’s lack of relatives, it’d been hard to pin down where and how he’d spent his time.
“I did a deep dive into Sutton’s past today,” Miguel was saying. “All of his arrests took place in Charlotte or the surrounding metro area, so maybe he never left the area. But there were no employment records for at least two years before his last arrest. And even then he gave no permanent address.” He caught the waitress’s gaze and gestured her over. “How do you feel about a meat-lover’s pizza?” Miguel asked.
“Enthusiastic.”
He ordered that, with a side of garlic bread. After Bella hurried away, he picked up on his earlier thread. “I discovered Sutton’s mother is dead now, and there was no father on record. Grandparents are deceased, and Sutton was an only child. The only relative I could find was an uncle in Alaska, who said he hadn’t seen Sutton since he was about ten. There were no cousins.”
Cady felt a flare of frustration. With Preston in the hospital and Pullman dead, they were running out of leads on the man. “What about cellmates?”
“Way ahead of you. Three are still locked up, and all of the rest live out of state.”
“College? High school?”
“Apparently, Sutton and his mother bounced around the state a lot. I found some online yearbooks with him pictured. I’d started making calls to some former classmates of the school he graduated from before I headed here.”
“Maybe Aurora’s brother knew him.” Given Eryn’s age when she’d moved from Charlotte, it was unlikely she’d remember the man. Did the Pullman business interests extend this far east? Cady used her cell to do a search and waited impatiently for several results to start filling the page. None of the resulting hits mentioned any business interests in Charlotte. She continued reading until the garlic bread arrived. Each of them put a piece on their plate, but she continued skimming articles as she ate.
Cady clicked on a sensationalized-looking headline about Aurora Pullman’s death and scanned the story. Her throat went tight.
“Aurora was stabbed to death by her nine-year-old daughter.” There was a fist-size knot in her chest. A spreading pressure. Ryder had said only that the girl had killed her mother. He hadn’t hinted at the details. She wondered what Eryn remembered about the incident. Cady’s memory of the scene with her father was grainy and incomplete. She’d only been four at the time. She couldn’t be sure whether the memories were hers or what she’d been told. Or whether they were a by-product of the news articles she’d read when she’d gotten old enough to do the research herself.
Her gaze lifted to Miguel’s. His expression was impassive, but that didn’t mean he was unfamiliar with her background. It’d be in her personnel file. And the gossip was too juicy not to share, regardless of their profession.
“We need to talk to the Pullmans again. William might have known about Sutton’s relationship with his sister. Maybe the two men even met.” She reached for another piece of bread.
Seeming unimpressed with her suggestion, he snagged another slice of bread too. “Waste of time, probably. He’s a few years older than she would have been. If you asked me about anybody who dated any of my sisters, I wouldn’t have a clue.”
Cady lifted a shoulder, unable to shake some of the details in the stories she’d read. A psychotic break, the mental health professionals had called Eryn’s dissociative amnesia of her mother’s death. What had that been like for the child, she wondered sickly, whose only explanation of the life-altering event came from what others told her? She could imagine too well. The similarities to Cady’s own experiences were haunting.
Noting Miguel’s gaze on her, she picked up the bread on her plate. “You may be right about Pullman, but it’s still worth checking out. I could swing by there tonight on my way home and fill you in tomorrow morning. I called the hospital on the way here. They still aren’t allowing anyone to question Preston.”
Miguel’s face lit up when the steaming pizza was set on the table. “You were pretty busy for someone who was on leave today.”
“On leave, not dead.” She immediately regretted her choice of words. A few yards closer to Preston’s vehicle and things could have ended differently. Her cuts, bruises, and aches could have been lost limbs. Or worse. Cady slid a piece of pizza onto her plate. Her partner, never shy about such things, took two.
“CMPD still has a guard outside Preston’s hospital door, but it’ll be tomorrow or the next day before we can talk to her. Word from the bomb squad is the device was crude and wired to the ignition. Probably homemade.”
Her brows rose. “Since she hadn’t made it to the car, are they thinking remote start or cell phone detonator?” Preston had been closer to the vehicle than Cady had been, but not inside it.
“The working premise is she had the fob in her hand and started the engine remotely. Detectives also recovered a piece of what they think might have been a GPS tracking device.”
“Which explains how Sutton made sure she was doing exactly what she’d agreed to.” Pizza forgotten for the moment, Cady considered the information. A GPS tracking device and an IED that wasn’t remotely triggered. Both meant the person responsible didn’t have to be in the area when the bomb went off. He just had to be able to locate the vehicle and wire it. The spot where Preston had parked the car would have afforded him some degree of privacy, especially if he’d done it at night.
“I talked to Julie Neve, since she’d said they’d bought her the vehicle,” Miguel was saying between bites. “She conf
irmed it had a remote start.”
“It ended up saving Preston’s life.”
His face was grim. “From the sounds of things, she’s got a rough road ahead of her. At least two surgeries, not to mention skin grafts for the burns.”
And the medical implications, Cady reflected when they fell into silence as they ate, didn’t take into consideration the legal ramifications for the woman’s part in Samuel Aldeen’s escape.
An hour later Cady and Miguel parted. When she got to her vehicle, she put in a call to William Pullman. She was anxious to question him about David Sutton, if not tonight, then tomorrow morning. She didn’t doubt that she could wrangle an invitation to stop by.
When motivated, she could be very persuasive.
Three hours later, William Pullman held the door open for Cady and stared. “Good heavens,” he said faintly. “I hope you haven’t been in an accident.” As if belatedly recalling his manners, he ushered her down the hallway toward the office she’d been in yesterday.
“Something like that. But I’m fine. I won’t take up much of your time.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.” He waved her to the chair she sat in yesterday. “It’s my son’s bedtime. We have our ritual.” Rather than sitting next to her, he took a seat behind the desk again. “After you left yesterday the sheriff searched the property. Although I didn’t think it was necessary, he’s posted deputies on the road in front until he has a better idea of the escaped prisoner’s plans.”
She’d spoken to the men before continuing up the drive to the estate. “It may prove to be unneeded, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.” She took out her cell and found the pictures she’d taken of the photos Cisco had shown them earlier and got up to show each of them to William. “We found another individual I’m hoping you could provide some background on.”
Shock flickered across his face as she swiped through each of the images.
“Good Lord. Where would you have gotten that picture of my sister?”
She provided a quick explanation, ending with, “Do you recognize the man with her in the photos?”
William shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The restaurant was in Charlotte, you say? Aurora went to UNC Charlotte. Well, we both did, but I was seven years ahead of her. I was back home by the time she attended. I really know very little about her college life or her friends from back then.”
Disappointment slammed into her. Coming here was likely another dead end, as Miguel had predicted. “You don’t know any students she graduated high school with who might have also gone to UNC?”
“I’m afraid not. My sister and I grew closer when she returned home, but she wasn’t one to share confidences about her college days, even then.”
“Perhaps other members of the family might know more.”
“I doubt it.” He looked in the direction of the grandfather clock situated beside the door. “Rosalyn and I didn’t marry until a couple years after Aurora’s death. And Eryn, of course, would have been much too young.”
“As long as I’m here, could I talk to her again?” Cady smiled easily. “You’re probably right, but one never knows what might jog loose a memory.”
He hesitated, clearly reluctant. “Eryn goes to bed fairly early. Her medication makes her sleepy. But I can go check her room.”
“Thank you.” He left the room and she prepared to wait. But when she heard voices in the hallway, Cady got up and went to the door.
“Why were you coming out of our suite?” William was addressing Eryn.
“Jaxson wanted me to look at a picture he’d painted today. I bought him a book of paint by numbers when I went to town yesterday.”
“Yes, well . . .” William looked over his shoulder. Caught sight of Cady standing there. “Deputy US Marshal Maddix is back again. I don’t think you can help her, but if you feel up to it . . .”
Eryn never took her gaze off Cady as she trailed behind her uncle. “What happened to your face?”
“Eryn,” her uncle said, his voice pained. “Please remember your manners.”
“It’s fine.” Cady smiled at the young woman as she dropped into the chair beside her. “There was an . . . accident yesterday. I look like the walking wounded, but I’m okay.” At least she would be, she hoped. Soon. “We found a picture today of your mother with someone we recognized.”
“May I see it?” Eryn’s voice was as polite as a schoolgirl’s.
“Of course.” Cady brought up the photos she’d taken again and handed her cell to the young woman. Eryn took the phone from her and stared at the first picture intently.
“She looks . . . happy.”
Her comment struck something inside Cady. “You don’t remember her that way?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes she was.” She handed the phone back to Cady. “When was the picture taken?”
“Twenty-three years ago. She would have been attending college in Charlotte at the time.”
“Do you know the name of the man beside her?”
Cady nodded. “His name is David Sutton. Does he look familiar? Do you recall your mother ever mentioning his name?”
“I already told you,” William said impatiently, “Eryn would be too young to recall.”
As if to validate his assertion, she shook her head. “I don’t remember meeting any of Mama’s friends. Oh.” The hand resting motionless on her lap twitched, the fingers curling into her palm. “I met someone in the grocery store in Asheville yesterday when we went shopping. She said she knew Mama from college.” Her voice was flat. As interested as she’d seemed in the picture Cady had shown her, meeting with her mother’s friend hadn’t elicited the same pleasure.
“Did she give you her name?”
“Madeline Grayson Carson. She said she and Mama had been college roommates. That she and some friends had gotten together with her monthly . . . before.”
Before she’d been murdered. Cady couldn’t help but feel a dart of pity for the young woman. “You’ve been helpful, thank you.” She rose, her gaze going to William’s. There was a frozen look on his face, as if he’d gone somewhere else. Thoughts of his sister probably summoned a host of painful memories.
Eryn surprised her by asking, “Will you come back and tell me . . . if you find out anything about my mother?”
William frowned. “Deputy US Marshal Maddix’s job does not entail . . .”
But the entreaty in the young woman’s eyes tugged at something inside Cady. Something impossible to ignore.
“I was a kid,” Eryn said. “I only have a few years of memories of her. I gather snippets. Of what people say. How they mention her. But it’s hard too. I want to know more, but facing the past is like getting a chance to pet a dragon. Who wouldn’t be tempted to get near enough to see one? But there’s always a chance if you get too close, it could devour you whole.”
The dog’s ferocious barking brought Cady instantly awake. Struggling to sit up in bed, she reached for her weapon in the drawer of the bedside table. The dog threw itself at her bedroom window, barking and growling wildly.
She stifled a groan of pain as she rolled from the bed and joined the canine at the window. “What is it, buddy? What do you see?” With her free hand, she lifted aside the curtain, studying the scene outside the window.
A blanket of black shrouded the property. Not a sliver of moon provided illumination. The dog turned suddenly and raced out of the room, never letting up its yelping.
Cady followed it to the front entry. She donned a coat and boots as quickly as her protesting limbs would allow before unlocking the door. The animal tore down the steps in front of her. Her heart rapped rapidly as she trailed it around the corner of the house to see the dog snarling and jumping toward the roof of the doghouse.
Hands steadying her weapon, Cady ran closer until she could see the small shadow crouched there, growling and hissing.
The adrenaline that had shot through her veins only moments earlier dissipated. “Congratulations, pal.”
She lowered the weapon and used her free hand to grab the dog’s collar. Yanked him away. “You’ve saved us all from a villainous raccoon.”
The dog continued barking and lunging as she led it away. A crunching sound could be heard behind them. Realization dawned. Cady hadn’t considered that leaving the dog’s food outside was going to attract other creatures as well. So would the warmth of the doggie Taj Mahal. Tomorrow she’d find something to block off its entrance each night when she brought the dog inside. With the food dish.
Her bare legs chilled quickly in the cool night air. But since they were already outside, she did a perimeter check of the yard. The dog paused to sniff a few times but alerted at nothing else. It was as good a barometer as any for gauging whether a two-legged pest had been out here.
Satisfied, Cady waited while the dog relieved himself, and then they went back into the house. She resecured the door. Habit had her checking the rooms, flipping on the light to the spare bedroom where the pots and pans still lined the floor beneath the window. She made sure it was locked before returning to the kitchen, where the dog was lapping up water as though it had fought off a battalion of masked marauders. She smirked, thinking of the coon. Maybe in tall doggy tales of exaggeration, it had.
The animal lifted its head and looked at her. It was likely her imagination that its eyes were filled with pride.
“Yeah, my hero,” she told it, amused. “Were you warning me of danger or just pissed off the raccoon was eating your food?” The canine shook itself and then, circling the nearby dog bed three times, sank down on it. Settled its head on its paws and looked up at her. With effort, Cady sank to her haunches, stroking its head. “Is that your name? Hero? As good as any, I guess.” She should follow the dog’s lead and go back to bed. But she was wide awake now. She had a feeling any attempts at slumber would be futile.
She set the gun on the floor and carefully sat down next to the animal, still stroking it. Better to remain awake than to suffer from another nightmare like she’d had this morning. Cady let her head rest against the wall. She could go weeks without experiencing the recurring dream. Almost getting blown up yesterday would have been enough to trigger it.
