Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

“It’s quitting time anyway, Phyl. You go on,” he told her.

“Why did you groan when Phyllis’s sister named names?” Annie asked after Phyl had left the room.

“Oh, well, let’s see.” The chief leaned back in his seat and looked at the ceiling. “She named the sons of the high school principal, the former chief of police, the mayor, and a county judge.”

Rick brightened. “Great. So let’s take a look at them.”

Denver was tapping his fingers on the tabletop.

“What?” Cass asked.

“They were a cocky little foursome back then. Inseparable. Practically lived at one another’s houses, went everywhere together. And always into something, the lot of them.” He closed his eyes briefly. “They were the biggest pains in my ass, frankly. Twenty-some years ago, and I still see red when I think about them.”

“Were any of them arrested back then?” Annie asked.

“With Jon Wainwright’s father the chief of police and Kenny Kelly’s father the judge?” He snickered. “What do you think?”

“What types of things were they involved in?” Annie pressed.

“Minor things. Loitering. Disturbing the peace. Starting fights after the soccer games. Speeding, underage drinking. They never were written up for anything, but they were always pulling pain-in-the-ass things that took your time and pissed people off.”

“Low-level sex offenses?” she continued. “Allegations of rape, Peeping Tom activity…?”

The chief shook his head. “Not that I know of, but if there’d been any of that stuff, Chief Wainwright would have dealt with it himself. He wouldn’t have involved us young guys in anything like that. Not if it involved his own son, or the sons of any of those other men.”

“I guess there weren’t records kept of that sort of thing.”

“Not if it involved any one of those four. All the annoying crap they pulled back then, you’ll never find a word written down.”

“What are you thinking, Annie?” Rick asked.

“Just that if you scratch hard enough, you find that kids who have grown into adults like our killer exhibited aberrant behavior at an earlier age. You don’t wake up one day and decide you like to hurt people. You’ve thought about it-fantasized about it-for a long time before you act upon it. I was just wondering what early behavior our boy may have exhibited. What fantasies he may have tried to act out. Peeping is a first step for many who graduate into more serious sex offenses. It’s a logical place to start.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there.” The chief shook his head. “I wouldn’t have been brought into that loop.”

“They were, what, high school juniors, seniors that year?” Rick asked.

Denver nodded. “Seniors.”

“Any of them college-bound that fall?”

“All of them, far as I remember.”

“So they would have been out of town by the end of the summer,” Annie said.

“When the killings here stopped,” Cass said softly.

“Do I dare ask if you know if any of these men are back in town for the reunion?”

Denver nodded. “They’re all here. All four of them. Saw them at the clambake last weekend. Spoke to each of them myself.”

“Lucy and I were there,” Cass said.

“If our killer was there, he would have seen her. Would have noticed right away how much she looks like Jenny,” the chief said.

“I guess it’s too much to ask if you know where any of these guys have been for the past twenty-six years?” Rick said.

“Oh, well, I know that Ken Kelly keeps the family summer house here in Bowers. And Jon Wainwright, I think I remember him saying he’s worked for a security company for the past, oh, I don’t know, fifteen years or so. Joey Patterson, he’d gone into the Marines for a while, don’t know what he did after that. And Billy Calhoun did tell me where he’s been living, but I don’t really remember. Someplace out west, I seem to think he said,” Denver replied. “I can start asking around.”

“We need to be subtle, Chief. At least for now. We’ll have an edge, as long as he isn’t aware that we’re closing in on his identity,” Cass pointed out. “And if we’re wrong… And we could be wrong-a lot of people would have had that bird stamp on their hand after that weekend.”

“Give me their names again.” Rick reached across the table and grabbed the pen Annie had earlier used. “I’ll call them in to Mitch, have him run the names. See if anything hits. Then, in the meantime, we can start backtracking to find out where each of these gentlemen have spent their time since they left high school.”

The breeze began to blow hard across the marsh, sending the cattails chattering and the birds seeking shelter from the coming storm. He sat on the stump of a tree that had long ago been cut down, and stared across the clearing at the bird blind that stood at the end of the wooden walk.

His eyes kept returning to the plaque that marked a memorial for the woman he had once loved with all his heart.

This is all your fault, Jenny. I’m sorry to say it, but there it is. If you hadn’t led me on the way you did-what were you thinking, leading me on like that? Did you think it was funny? A game, maybe?

His face twisted into a scowl.

You don’t play those kind of games with people who love you, Jenny. I guess I showed you that, didn’t I?

She had always been so nice to him, right from the first day. She’d talked to him like he was an old friend, like he was on her level. Never talked down to him, never made him feel like the stupid gangly kid he knew himself to be.

It always killed him to think that his father had made him volunteer at the sanctuary as a punishment for having been caught looking where he shouldn’t have been looking. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d never have gotten to know her the way he did. He’d never have fallen in love with her, or she with him…

Oh, he’d known who she was, everyone in Bowers Inlet knew Mrs. Burke. She was a knockout, for sure. Only the kids who worked with her at the sanctuary got to call her by her first name. Jenny.

“Call me Jenny,” she’d said that first day.

It had thrilled him every time he’d said her name aloud. He’d used it as frequently as possible.

He’d counted the days, Saturday to Saturday, lived for his hours working out there in the marsh, swatting mosquitoes and green-headed flies. He didn’t care. He was with her, hour after hour, every Saturday. And with every hour spent with her, his love grew until it was the most important thing in his life. Grew until he thought he’d die of it.

She wanted blinds built, he built blinds. Not one or two or three, but an entire series of them, strategically placed throughout the acres that made up the sanctuary. She’d hooked him up with a contractor who’d offered to help build the structures, and he gladly gave up his weekends to labor on something that pleased her so much.

“You’re amazing,” she’d said once, after having climbed the ladder to one of the blinds. “I can’t believe you did this. How many have you built now? Four? Five? Simply amazing. I can’t thank you enough.”

Sure you can, he remembered thinking at the time. I know how you can thank me. We both know how. And we both know you want to.

Love and lust had mixed inside him, a heady brew. She must have felt it, too. No one could feel that way about someone who didn’t feel the same about him. Of that he was certain. The feeling was way too big. It dominated everything in his life. She had to know. She had to feel exactly the same about him. It wouldn’t have been fair otherwise.

And wasn’t it meant to be? After all, the offense his father had wanted to punish him for, well, that hadn’t been much of anything, right? No one was hurt, right? No harm, no foul.