Where the Truth Lives

by Mia Sheridan

  “No,” Reed said. “It sounds like hope. You were looking for hope. You weren’t interested in the suffering so much as you were interested in the survival that followed.”

  She gazed at him. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, I guess it was.” Hope. That had been what she’d been so desperate to find. He’d listened to her whole story, and pulled that one word from it. And that was it, that was exactly it. She’d been searching for hope, and she’d first found it there.

  She’d never put her thoughts into words the way she just had. Never explained to anyone how she’d first begun lifting herself from the mires of trauma. One slow inch at a time, hanging by her fingernails some years, and she still had a long way to go, she recognized that, but that’s where it had begun, that first small ray of . . . yes, hope.

  They came to a bench in a small grassy area off the sidewalk and Reed gestured to it questioningly. She nodded and they both walked to where it was and sat. “Tell me more,” he said.

  She smiled. She didn’t think she’d talked this long to one person in her entire life. Much of her job was about listening and Liza was good at that. But being listened to, she realized, was a gift no one had given her in quite this way.

  “I liked immersing myself in other subjects,” she said. “School became my sole focus. Now that my basic needs were being met, I could throw all my energy into that. I excelled. My high school counselor took me under her wing. She believed in me and helped me apply to colleges. I got a full academic scholarship to UC and when I took my first psychology class, it explained things I hadn’t had words for before. Post-traumatic stress, cycles of abuse . . .” She paused for a moment. “There are still things I struggle with, you know that.” She looked off behind him for a moment, the city lights sparkling and wavering as dusk turned to night. “So much.” She met Reed’s gaze again. “Parts of me are damaged, Reed. But it helps to name them. It helps to know I’m not the only one who’s felt those things. And maybe someday, if I work hard enough, if I confront my fears, I’ll overcome them, whatever that looks like.”

  “I believe that.”

  She tilted her head, taking in his earnest expression. “You do, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I think you’re a damn good bet, Dr. Nolan,” he said quietly, his gaze not straying from hers.

  Warmth rushed through her and she was suddenly breathless. She let out a small nervous laugh that quickly died, her expression going serious. She wasn’t used to this. None of it. And she was out of her element, defenseless, and yet so happy too. Seen. It was sort of like the feeling she’d had when her high school counselor had expressed such pride in her, but more. This was Reed and her feelings for him were deep and confusing. Good and bad and all over the map. He made her feel alive and terrified, like running away and flinging herself into his arms. She broke eye contact, looking away for a moment as she got her bearings. “I’ve talked a lot. Tell me a little about you.”

  He gave her a sweet smile, leaning back on the bench and looking out at the sidewalk for a moment where a few people walked by quickly, their hands in their pockets, eyes straight ahead. “What do you want to know?”

  She thought about what he’d told her about his upbringing, how he’d found out at fourteen that his father was a serial killer. An evil man who’d victimized Reed’s birth mother. She had so many questions. Personal ones, but . . . maybe she’d somewhat earned a few personal answers. She hoped so, because she wanted so much to know about him. “You said your birth mother gave up rights to you so you could stay with the parents who had adopted you. But you didn’t meet her until you were eighteen. Did you ever resent her for not being a part of your life growing up? She could have decided that, right? To sort of . . . share you?”

  Reed put his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “I’ve thought about that and honestly? No. What she did . . . it was the best thing for me. Once I learned the truth, I was old enough to have a really solid sense of myself, you know? I think finding out earlier would have been extremely confusing, might even have shaped me in ways it didn’t have a chance to.” He shook his head. “No, what Josie did was the most selfless thing she could have done, and I’m grateful. She wrote me a letter, explaining how she knew the best way to love me was to love from afar. And I didn’t know what that truly meant until I was in her farmhouse the first time. I was eighteen, ready to go to college, when I went to meet her. Arryn, funny enough, was the one who held my hand and took me inside. There were photos, Liza. Photos my mom had sent Josie every year. They could have been tucked away in a photo album, but they weren’t. They were on her walls, as if to say to anyone who entered her home that she had four children she loved, not three.” That brought a hitch to Liza’s breath.

  Reed looked over at her, his gaze level, expression so serious that everything inside her stilled. “Love heals, Liza. Those aren’t just words. And I think acting in love doesn’t just heal others. It heals yourself. Josie healed me before I even had a chance to be damaged. Because of her, I never suffered one moment of trauma. And I believe that her choice—for me—helped her heal as well. It showed her that what my biological father did to her took away a lot, but he didn’t take her ability to love and to act with pure grace and selflessness.”

  “Wow,” Liza said, overwhelmed at the passion in his voice, the beautiful words he spoke for the woman who obviously meant so much to him. And it inspired her. She wanted to be like Josie. She wanted to believe that her father had taken a lot, but not the best of her. Maybe.

  “You should meet her,” Reed said, eyeing her, a smile tilting his lips.

  “I’d love that.”

  Reed’s smile grew wider and he raised one brow. “You know what I’d love?”

  Liza laughed. “What?”

  “To take you to dinner.” His smile slipped a bit. “Can I take you to dinner, Liza? I heard you might have some time on your hands this week.”

  Liza laughed. “Ouch. Low blow.” But she couldn’t help the smile that lit her face. “I’d love to go to dinner with you, Detective.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ransom tapped the blown-up picture of the leaf brand hanging on the board at the front of the incident room. He went over with the team what he and Reed had discussed a couple of days before, and why they’d separated the two groups of victims.

  “I did a Google search on marijuana yesterday, and what using it as a symbol might mean,” Jennifer said. “Suffice it to say, I didn’t come up with anything useful, but man, did I go down some rabbit holes. Who knew there were so many types of weed?”

  “I’d like to plead the fifth,” Ransom said.

  “Olsen, what have you got?” Reed asked of the detective who had entered the room a minute before and was still taking files from his briefcase.

  “I tracked down two of the individuals on those prescription bottles.” He looked at his notes. “Both of them admit to selling their prescribed medications to Toby Resnick for cash. And get this—both of them previously lived at the halfway house where the girl, LuAnn Bradford, who filed charges against the payday loan dude”—Olsen pointed to the picture of Clifford Schlomer on the board—“lived as well.”

  Holy shit. “Okay,” Reed said, a spark of excitement lighting in his gut. “Okay. That’s a connection. Great work, Olsen.” He walked to the boards and made a new category for the halfway house, and listed the names of the three people who had lived there. “That can’t be a coincidence. We need to get a list of past residents. See if any other names stand out.”

  “On it,” Jennifer said, making a note on the notepad in front of her. “Going back how many years do you think?”

  “Let’s ask for five,” Reed said.

  “Will we need a warrant?” she asked.

  “Let’s hope not,” Ransom answered, unwrapping a stick of beef jerky. Reed nodded in agreement. They could get one if they needed to, but it would slow them down.

  “How do you not weigh five hundred pounds?” J
ennifer asked Ransom.

  Ransom took a bite of the jerky. “All my constant brain activity burns a shitload of calories,” he answered, finishing off the stick of processed meat.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s it,” she said.

  The door opened and Reed looked up. Detective Duffy peeked in. “Phone message for Olsen.”

  Olsen stood, heading for the door to take the call.

  “Go Bucks,” Duffy said, nodding to the board.

  Reed frowned, following his gaze. “What are you talking about, Duffy?”

  “The leaf. It’s a buckeye, right? OSU?”

  “OSU . . .” Jennifer repeated, bringing her phone up and typing something in. She looked up. “The buckeye leaf does look a hell of a lot like a marijuana leaf.”

  “Man, what kind of Ohioans are you anyway? It’s the state tree.” Duffy blew a puff of air out of his lips, turned, and walked out the door.

  Well, shit.

  Reed squinted at the picture of the brand on the board. It still looked like a marijuana leaf to him, but that was the problem with making an assumption and sticking to it. Sometimes it took a fresh pair of eyes to see something new in old information or evidence. “All right,” Reed said, taking the phone Jennifer was passing around and looking at the picture of a buckeye leaf she’d found. He looked from the phone to the board and back again, comparing. “It could be,” he admitted. “But even so, what the hell does that mean?”

  “That our killer has hometown pride?” Ransom asked. They all ignored him.

  “It seems even more random than a marijuana leaf,” Jennifer noted, and Reed didn’t disagree. It still seemed more probable that it was a marijuana leaf, as there was already drug—albeit prescription medications—connections to the murder victims. But Duffy had been an important reminder not to get too attached to an assumption.

  Reed approached the board and wrote the names of the two types of leaves under the picture of the brand.

  He turned back to Jennifer and Ransom. “Okay, what else?”

  Jennifer turned a page in her notebook. “You asked me to get the information on the person who called in Toby Resnick’s murder.”

  “Right,” Reed said, picturing the man who’d been positioned on the pile of rancid trash in the alleyway.

  “It was a sanitation worker,” Jennifer said. “He just showed up on his regular shift to pick up the trash in the alley.” She flipped the page. “He didn’t recognize the victim. He called it in and left the scene as it was.”

  “Do you have his name and address?” He looked over at his partner. “It might be worth paying him a visit and interviewing him ourselves. Get as much information as possible.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ransom said.

  Jennifer ripped a sheet of paper from her pad and handed it to Reed with the name Milo Ortiz and an address below that.

  The door opened and their sergeant entered the room. His expression was grim. Reed’s heart sank. “Don’t tell me—”

  “Another victim,” he said, nodding. “This one isn’t dead though.”

  The three detectives looked back and forth between each other quickly. “Is he talking?” Ransom asked.

  The sergeant shook his head. “The doctors are saying it doesn’t look good. The guy went splat from the top of the building that houses the adult parole offices.” Reed flinched, picturing the tall, gray-stone building on Broadway Street.

  “Christ Almighty,” he murmured under his breath. Another falling victim? “He’s got the same brand?”

  “Yup,” the sergeant said, pointing at the picture of the brand stuck on the board. “That one.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “UC Medical.”

  “Any ID?”

  “Not yet, but the guy had the name of a parole officer in the building in his pocket, so the officers first on scene were headed to see him when I got the call.”

  Reed and Ransom started gathering their things. “I’ll start in on this,” Jennifer said, holding up her pad with the notes she’d taken on it. “Update me with anything.”

  “Ditto,” Ransom said as he and Reed headed for the door, Reed saying a silent prayer that this guy, whoever he was, would pull through and help them catch this bastard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Liza’s heels clicked on the tile floor as she speed-walked toward the nurses’ desk. Just before she reached it, the door on the other side opened. Her heart leapt. “Reed,” she said as he stepped through. She headed toward him. “What’s going on?”

  When he’d called her half an hour before, he’d told her only that he needed her to meet him at UC Hospital and he’d tell her more when she arrived. She couldn’t imagine what it was about, but she had a sinking feeling it wasn’t good.

  Reed took her gently by her arm and led her down the hall in the other direction from which she’d come. When they were several feet away from the nurses’ station, he stopped, looking into her eyes. His forehead furrowed as he glanced down the hall and then back to her. “We got a call a little while ago about another victim. Someone apparently jumped or was pushed off the top of a building downtown.”

  Oh God. “Like the other victims on the news,” she said, blinking at him.

  “Yes, like the other victims. These victims have a . . . mark on them. It hasn’t been released to the public, but today’s victim bears the same mark. Liza, it’s your brother.”

  For a second, her world turned sideways, and she backed up a step until her back was against the wall. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand. Julian? No, I just saw Julian. He was . . . on the land that—”

  “He had a parole officer—Anderson. The guy hadn’t called me back yet. I know he was staying on your family’s land, but we found out that he actually used your address here in Cincinnati. Maybe he didn’t know where he was going when he first got out. I’m not sure. But he had gone to the Office of Adult Parole downtown to see Anderson today. Apparently, someone interrupted him, forced him to the roof in some manner, marked him, and either made him jump or pushed him. Liza, we have no idea how he fits in to this.”

  What? “He’s dead?”

  “He’s alive, but I met with his doctor before you arrived, and there’s no brain activity. He won’t recover.” He was watching her so closely, as if trying to catch the barest flinch of her features that might clue him in to how she was taking this.

  “Okay. Okay.” Truthfully, she didn’t know what she felt. Shocked, yes. Scared, definitely. But other than those two emotions, she felt mostly numb. But she had this sense that other, more complex feelings were bubbling under the surface, ones that she didn’t want to think about at the moment. She sucked in a breath, tamping them down. For now.

  “Can I . . . see him?”

  “Yes. Of course. He’s on a ventilator. It’s breathing for him right now. I don’t want to rush you, but you have some decisions to make.”

  Decisions. She licked her lips, nodding. He paused for a moment, that grim look returning to his features and then he led her down the hall again until they reached a hospital room. He held the door open for her and when she crossed the threshold, he began to turn back toward the hall. “Wait,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “Will you come in with me? I mean, if you don’t have work to do. If I’m not keeping you from something else?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Reed followed her into the room and stood behind her as she walked slowly to the bed where her brother lay, his head and half of his face wrapped in gauze, tubes running from his body, a machine beeping methodically next to him. He looked small, smaller than he’d looked as she’d spoken to him on their family land a couple of days before. Small and . . . helpless. It felt like something was expanding in her chest, filling it, making it difficult for her to catch her breath. She walked forward, sitting in the chair next to him. She looked at her brother, no longer the monster of her nightmares, but a flesh and blood human trapped inside a broken body, the same way, she re
alized now, he’d been trapped inside a broken mind. She thought of the times she’d looked to him for help as a child, and how each time he’d turned away, or looked through her. It had hurt.

  But . . . she knew now, trauma had caused Julian to retreat inside himself. She’d tiptoed through those dark corridors too; she knew the allure of that internal refuge. But she’d also suspected—even in her deepest despair—that if she traveled too far inside, she’d never find her way back. Or if she did, it would never be the whole of her. Some part would always remain there, safe, but gone.

  As she looked at her broken brother, all she felt was sadness. Who would you have been, she wondered, if you weren’t born in hell?

  She turned her head sideways, addressing Reed. “They’re sure?” she asked. “That he won’t recover?”

  His voice came from behind her. “They’re sure.”

  She looked back at Julian, and reached out, taking his limp hand in hers, blood beneath his fingernails. His own she imagined. The internal damage to his body must be extreme. “His organs . . .”

  Reed paused. “Yes. Not everything. There’s considerable damage,” he said haltingly as though choosing his words. “But, yes.” His heart? she wondered, her gaze rising to the machine that beeped steadily next to him. Maybe someone else could use that organ in a way her brother never had.

  Liza squeezed his hand. She’d never held Julian’s hand before, not even when they were young. A pang of sadness hit her, for the little boy he never was, for the man he had never become. The brother he’d not known how to be. And yet, something inside him had wanted desperately to free her and Mady from the violence. From evil. There had been some good inside the man in front of her. Warped, but there.