Mariah Stewart: Last Look

Andrew’s brother Brendan was the black sheep John had referred to. He’d marked their cousin, Connor, for murder, and mistaking Connor’s brother Dylan for Connor, pulled the trigger on the wrong man and blew away a one-in-a-million guy. In Dylan, both the family and the Bureau had both lost an irreplaceable member.

But even that had not been the worst of Brendan’s sins.

Somehow, Brendan had gotten mixed up with another rogue agent and became a willing participant in a sex-slave ring kidnapping children out of Central America. When Brendan suspected their brother Grady’s wife might be catching on, he facilitated her murder as well.

Andrew still couldn’t quite believe it himself. Nor could he understand how someone you know and love-someone you have known and loved your entire life-how that person could turn into a monster right before your eyes without you seeing, without you knowing. How is it possible that none of them had recognized the evil in him? Had any of them even known him at all?

More than a year later, Andrew was still asking himself the same question. How could we have not known?

Andrew thought back to the Christmas before it all fell apart, to their cousin Aidan’s wedding, to family dinners where they’d all gathered. If there had been anything in Brendan’s behavior that might have tipped them off to the demon that dwelled within him, why hadn’t they recognized it? Try as he might, Andrew could not recall one incident that might have given it away. Brendan had always been…Brendan. Fun loving, happy-go-lucky. When had his jovial façade become a mask for something sinister?

Andrew would never know. None of them would. Brendan now lay as dead as Dylan. Because of him, the family had lost two of their beloved. Grady had been the big loser. He’d lost not only his brother and his cousin, but he’d lost the love of his life as well. After it was all over, Grady had retreated to the house in the Montana hills he’d shared with his Melissa. Other than an occasional call to their father, no one had heard from Grady in months. Andrew knew his brother would never be the same-how could he be?-nor would his father. Frank Shields had given thirty years to the Bureau, and it was mostly because of him that Andrew had decided to return to the job after his leave was over. Not to have done so would have been, in Frank’s eyes as well as in Andrew’s, cowardly. The name Shields had stood for something. Andrew knew it was up to him, and his sister, Mia, to make certain it still did.

He went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He’d have to hustle if he was going to make it into the office before rush hour traffic clogged the highways. He wished John had given him a choice about whether or not Dorsey Collins should be permitted to tag along through his investigation-silent partner or no-but as John had pointed out, he was the boss. In general, John was a damn good judge of character, which is how he’d managed to put together the best and most specialized unit within the Bureau. Well, except for Brendan, but if his own family hadn’t seen his flaws, John couldn’t be expected to.

Then again, John admitted he hadn’t even met this woman yet. So why, Andrew asked himself, would John go out on a limb to let her become part of an investigation when all the facts seemed to indicate she shouldn’t be permitted within miles of Shelter Island?

Good question. Andrew turned on the water and set it for hot. Just one more to be answered before the investigation was over.

Just one more to be added to a long list of questions: What really happened that night twenty-four years ago? Where had Shannon Randall been all that time? How did she get there? And why? Had anyone known she was still alive? If so, why didn’t that person speak up? And who killed her now, and why?

And why was John Mancini so insistent that Dorsey Collins-the daughter of the man who pushed the case to a faulty conclusion all those years ago-be permitted to work with Andrew behind the scenes in search of the answers?

Dorsey parked her rental car on the shady side of the street across from her father’s house. Matt Ranieri lived in a tidy half-brick split-level in a sprawling 1960s-era Philadelphia suburb. Back then, the neighborhood had been mostly upwardly mobile middle-class and totally Catholic. St. Patrick’s Church was two blocks to the right on this same street, and St. Francis of Assisi three blocks to the left, cleanly dividing the neighborhood into the Irish parish and the Italian parish. Over the years, members of other faiths had moved in, and the parishes had shrunk. Several years ago, the doors of the elementary school serving St. Francis had closed and the students were directed to St. Patrick’s, which had the larger building. These days, as many kids from the neighborhood attended public school as they did St. Pat’s. When the diocese consolidated the two parishes, enrollment at St. Francis had declined further. Dorsey had been in her old parish church exactly three times since she graduated from college. One wedding-hers-and two funerals, her former mother-in-law’s and her grandfather’s.

She crossed the street, toying with the house key on the chain inside her right pocket as she glanced down the empty driveway. Walking around to the back porch, she paused at the bottom of the steps to note the condition of the yard. The grass was neatly cut, the roses had been pruned, some of the shrubs cut back, and the flower gardens weeded and freshly mulched. Her dad must have been here for at least a week, she reasoned; it would have taken him that long to prune and weed and mow. She climbed the steps and unlocked the door, stepped into the stillness.

“Dad?” Even knowing he wasn’t at home, habit found her calling as she walked through the kitchen into the hall that led to the front door. “Dad?”

The downstairs windows were all tightly shut and the shades pulled down. She scooped up what appeared to be several days’ mail from the floor and skimmed through it while she carried it into the kitchen and placed it on the table. She opened the refrigerator and took out a diet soda, popped the tab, and took a few sips before closing the door. She exhaled loudly, looked around, and headed into the living room. The message light was blinking red and silent on the answering machine. Without hesitating, she hit the play button. If someone had already called her father to tell him about Shannon Randall, Dorsey wanted to know.

“Hi, Matt?” The woman’s voice, soft and tentative, played in the quiet room like music. “This is Diane.” Nervous laughter. “I guess you know that.” More laughter. “I…um…just wanted to thank you for last weekend. I had a really good time, and…um…well, I just wanted to thank you again.” Another pause. “I’d like to do it again sometime. You have my number…” The fumbling sound of the phone being returned to its cradle.

Diane?

Dorsey didn’t remember having heard about a Diane. Not that her father had to keep her up to date on his social life, but the last Dorsey had heard, he’d been dating a woman named Anna.

She sat in the overstuffed green chair near the fireplace and sipped the soda. The air was close and warm to the point of being stuffy, and would get warmer as the June sun continued to beat down on the roof. On the mantel a series of photographs paraded left to right, achingly familiar pictures of her mother, Bernadette-Bernie to all-some with Dorsey, some with Matt, the occasional shot of a smiling Bernie alone. The last photo was from their last Christmas, right before Bernie had stepped off the curb in front of the real estate office where she worked and had been struck by a car driven by an eighteen-year-old college freshman home on winter break.