Mariah Stewart - Last Look

“You think that’s it?”

“No, but it sounded like a good rationalization.”

“Look, if you’re worried, you can take off a few days and go-”

“Nope. Pop’s a big boy. Yes, I’m worried, but I’m not in constant communication with him under normal circumstances, and frankly, I don’t know that he doesn’t just take off sometimes, alone or with a friend. Maybe he’s done just that. Maybe this whole thing has played on his mind so much, he’s just gone off somewhere to work things out in his own head. I don’t know what he’s thinking. And I guess that’s what’s bothering me.”

“We could ask John to send someone to-”

“Uh-uh. The last thing he needs right now is to think the Bureau is looking for him. For whatever reason. I think I just have to let it be. For now.”

She turned her head to look out the window. “There’s the log house.”

Andrew pulled to the right and parked alongside the rustic post-and-rail fence. The small house was set back from the road, sheltered beneath a stand of live oaks.

“You think he has the file?” Dorsey got out of the car and waited for Andrew.

“It’s certainly possible. Big case-probably the biggest case of his career, file shifted around from place to place, it’s easy enough to explain how it could get misplaced.” Andrew stopped to roll up his shirtsleeves. “Make one hell of a souvenir. Bloody shirt and all.”

“Let’s go see if he has it.”

“ If he admits to having it. I’m betting he won’t.”

“That’s one bet I won’t make.”

They walked up the dirt driveway and followed a path made of cut slices of tree trunk. They knocked on the front door, but no one answered. Back behind the house, a dog began to bark.

“Maybe around back.” Andrew motioned to the right. They followed the path to its end near an open porch, where a man slept on a hammock.

Andrew cleared his throat, and the old dog on the porch rose reluctantly and made a show of barking some more.

The man jerked in his sleep and opened his eyes.

“Jeremy Brinkley?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah.” The one-time police officer ran a hand over his face as if to wipe the sleep away. “Sorry. Must have dozed. Blood pressure medication. Makes me drowsy. You Shields, the guy who called?”

“Yes.”

“You got some ID?” Brinkley was fully awake and standing.

Andrew met him halfway to the hammock and handed over his badge, which Brinkley scrutinized. He handed it back, then looked at Dorsey and said, “Yours?”

She took it from her bag and handed it over. Brinkley gave it a quick glance, then returned it.

“Too hot out here. Come on inside.” He motioned to the two agents to follow him. “Not you, Barney. You stay,” he told the dog, who then lay down in a grassy patch near the back steps.

“Water?” he offered before turning on the spigot in the narrow, dark kitchen.

“No thanks,” Dorsey and Andrew both responded at once.

Brinkley filled a large glass for himself, then gestured toward a closed door. “We’ll talk in there.”

He led them into a small room that smelled of damp wood and cats and was cooled by an ancient air conditioner. There was one armchair and a loveseat in desperate need of a slipcover. He pointed to the loveseat, and the agents sat. Brinkley took the armchair and turned it to face them.

“You said on the phone this had something to do with the Shannon Randall case.” He directed the question to Andrew. “What’s up with that after all these years?”

“Officer Brinkley-” Andrew began.

“Not Officer Brinkley anymore,” he corrected. “I’ve been retired for several years now.”

“Once law, always law,” Andrew replied.

“Hey, you’re right on about that.” Brinkley nodded. “In my heart, I’m still wearing the badge. I watch those TV shows-shit, CSI?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Never seen a case worked the way they work theirs. Not in this little town, anyway. Christ, the biggest case we ever had was the Randall case, and we didn’t even have a body. No DNA testing back then, though we could test for blood type. We had to solve every case with good old-fashioned detective work.”

“That’s still the best way,” Andrew said.

“Oh, yeah.” Brinkley nodded his enthusiasm, a broad grin on his face. “Now, Agent Shields, tell me why you’re interested in Shannon Randall after all these years.”

“Officer Brinkley-”

“Hey, it’s Jeremy.” Brinkley leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs.

“Jeremy, the story hasn’t broken yet, so I’m going to have to ask for your confidence. We’re trying to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can, before the media grabs on to it.”

Brinkley looked from one agent to the other. “What’s the big mystery? The case was solved twenty-four years ago.”

“Not exactly,” Andrew told him.

“What are you talking about? I was part of it, I was there when we picked up Eric Beale for questioning, I was there when-”

“Whose idea was it to question Beale?” Andrew interrupted.

“Chief Taylor’s,” Brinkley replied without hesitation.

“What put him on to Eric, do you remember?”

“Yeah. He was the last person seen with Shannon that night. He left town with her at least an hour after he said he’d dropped her off. Kimmie White saw them. The chief called her and the other two girls Shannon hung around with as soon as school was over to see what they knew. The other two didn’t have much to say, but Kimmie gave a statement to the chief that afternoon.”

“Did anyone else claim to have seen them leaving town?” Dorsey asked.

“No. Just Kimmie. But that was enough. It placed him with her after he said he’d let Shannon out on Montgomery Street. Showed he lied. Shot his story to shit.”

“Kimmie was credible?” Dorsey asked.

“Hell, yes. She was one of Shannon ’s best friends. They’d grown up together. Her dad’s the doctor in town, one of the deacons at the reverend’s church.” He was looking more and more perplexed. “She wouldn’t have said she’d seen them if she hadn’t.”

Brinkley warily watched them both.

“You want to tell me what this is all about? Why’s the FBI sending two agents down here to talk over an old case?”

“There’s been a bit a development,” Andrew told him.

“What kind of development?” Brinkley frowned.

“This is going to come as a bit of a shock, Jeremy, but Shannon Randall’s body was found a few weeks ago on a small island off Georgia,” Andrew told him.

“No shit? After all these years?” Brinkley’s smile returned. “But hey, that’s good, right? Now the family can have some closure, right?”

“When she was found, she’d been dead less than eight hours.”

Brinkley’s smile faded slowly as Andrew’s words began to sink in.

Finally, he said, “That just ain’t possible.”

“It’s not only possible, it’s true. Blood type, fingerprints, dental records, all matched. She’s been positively identified by one of her sisters,” Andrew assured him.

“But how the hell…” Brinkley got up and began to pace the length of the small room. “I don’t understand this. How could she have just died now?”

“The obvious answer is that she wasn’t dead then,” Dorsey stated.

“But how?” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his cutoff khakis. “I just don’t understand…”

“Twenty-four years ago, Shannon left home, apparently voluntarily, though we’re still looking into that,” Andrew explained.

“But Eric, he had that shirt with all her blood on it. He had her stuff under the seat of his car…” Brinkley was still trying to come to terms with the fact that things were not as they had seemed.