Justine Davis - Operation Reunion

Maybe they could. They seemed to be very good at what they did, and he couldn’t deny he liked the idea of what they did.

He picked up the business card and looked at it for a moment. He thought of the stories he’d heard, how many people had said simply, “Someone gave me their card and told me they could help.”

He picked up the phone again. This time he dialed the number on the card. To his surprise, Quinn Foxworth himself answered.

“It’s a policy we have,” the man explained. “Each card has our own number on it. We like to maintain consistency of contact.”

“Don’t you get a lot of spam calls that way?”

“Some. Better that than make somebody who’s feeling helpless jump through the hoops of a big phone menu system.”

He heard sounds in the background, some equipment running and the familiar harsh honk of a heron passing overhead; Quinn was obviously outside.

“What if you can’t answer right then?” he asked.

“Then it rolls over to our head office. But a live person will always answer.”

“That’s in St. Louis?”

“Been doing that homework, I see.”

“Yes. Detective Saunders in Phoenix says hello, by the way, and Mrs. Louis sends her love.”

Quinn laughed. “I thought you might be thorough.”

“Yes.”

He heard the sound of a door and the background noises ended. Dane wondered where Quinn was, where he’d stepped inside.

“So have you decided we’re who we say we are and do what we say we do?” Quinn asked.

“Let’s just say I’m open to the idea.”

“Fair enough. And I’m ready to believe that you had nothing to do with Kayla’s murders.”

Dane went still. “What?”

“Your alibi was solid.”

“Yes, it was.” He’d been with five other kids and a teacher at a college prep study session at the time of death, and he’d never left or been out of sight. He had been home barely fifteen minutes when Kayla’s horrific screams from next door had sent him racing over there. “What the hell are you doing investigating me?”

“We’re working for Kayla. We’ll do whatever it takes to get her the answers she wants.”

“Even if it means wasting time on innocent people?”

“If Kayla’s right, that means the real guilty person is still out there.”

Dane couldn’t argue with that. It was something he thought about often, even if Kayla didn’t seem to.

And it was the size of that “if” that always threw him.

“Ready to tell me why you and Chad Tucker didn’t get along?”

“Hasn’t Kayla already told you?”

“I’d like your version.”

“Why?”

“We don’t build the kind of success rate we have by only listening to one side.”

“Fair enough,” Dane said. “I didn’t like him. Part of it was that in school I was one of the nerdier kids, and Chad was one of the cool guys.”

“You don’t look like much of a nerd.”

“That’s because Kayla challenged me to change that.”

“Challenged you?”

“She said we couldn’t change the fact that people judged on appearance and bought into stereotypes—except by breaking that stereotype. So I started running, lifting weights to get into shape. Found I liked it, and it cleared my head for the tech stuff. And she was right. People looked at me differently, tolerated the…geek in me because that wasn’t all I was.”

“So she’s as wise as she seems.”

“Wiser. She was fourteen at the time. Still just the girl next door, who felt like the little sister I never had.”

“But she already had a big brother.”

“Yeah,” Dane said, his tone sour. “And Chad didn’t like me either.”

“Not surprising, if you saw through him.”

Quinn really was open to the idea that Chad might not be the good guy Kayla insisted he was, Dane thought. So he’d meant it when he’d said they weren’t taking her viewpoint as the only one. Encouraged by that, he went on.

“When Kayla turned sixteen and her folks let her date, Chad kept trying to set Kayla up with his best friend, Troy Reid. I’d started to look at her differently then, and he wanted to get her away from me. Her folks went along with him—they adored Troy, he was the catch of the whole town, and they thought I was too…something. Her mom, especially.”

“But it didn’t work. Kayla stayed with you.”

“She’s incredibly…loyal.”

He stumbled over the word, remembering how he’d thrown the word at her the day he’d finally walked away.

“Were there other reasons Chad didn’t like you?”

Dane had the uncomfortable feeling Quinn already knew. What was that they told lawyers, about never asking a question you don’t already know the answer to? Hell, maybe this Quinn was a lawyer, for all he knew.

“He got into some trouble, a couple of times, right after they moved here.”

“Stole a bike, joyriding in a senior citizen’s car, breaking into a convenience store for cigarettes?”

So he did know. Dane filed that away to remember when dealing with this man.

“The bike was mine.”

“And you reported it.”

“My folks did. I didn’t care all that much by then—I’d started to drive, but it was a really good bike. And I remembered Chad asking how much it was worth.”

“And you told the police that?”

“Yes. And they tracked it down, found who he’d sold it to.” Dane jammed his fingers through his hair. “Even then he blamed somebody else. Said Rod Warren, a local punk, had put him up to it. But Chad was no angel, no matter what Kayla thinks.”

“Do you think he could have killed them?”

Dane sighed. How long had he been wrestling with that thought? How many times had be been on the verge of telling Kayla just that, only stopping himself because he couldn’t bear to see her face if he turned on her. Because that’s how she’d see it, he was sure.

In the end, he gave Quinn the answer that had always been his bottom line, even as he realized it stemmed more from his love for his own parents and an inability to relate to the idea of parental murder, than a real belief in Chad’s innocence.

“He had no reason to. They were good people. They loved him.”

“The police seem pretty certain. He was their only real suspect.”

“I know. After he ran, I don’t think they ever really focused on anyone else.”

“They’re a small department, overloaded, and they labeled the case cold fairly quickly. Not their fault—they just don’t have the manpower.”

“Kayla keeps pushing them, but…”

“They’re down to wanted posters and flyers and the occasional search of criminal databases, probably spurred by her pushing.”

“And everything is still focused on Chad.”

“Yes.”

“But Kayla’s right about the fact that there’s an innocent explanation for all the evidence,” Dane said, feeling the need to be fair despite it all. “They found cigarette butts with his DNA outside, but he always snuck out there to smoke. His fingerprints were on the den window, but that’s how he always snuck out.”

“All true.”

“But he ran,” Dane said, coming down to the final, damning fact.

“Never a good sign.” Quinn sounded completely neutral, like a man who truly hadn’t made up his mind. “If it wasn’t Chad, who do you think it could have been?”

He had spent literally years batting that one around in his mind. “The only one who ever seemed likely to me was Rod. He tried to hang with Chad, but Troy was too straight-arrow to like him, so that got in the way. For that matter, I always wondered why Troy hung with Chad—they were so different.”

“Why did Rod seem likely?”

“He scared Kayla once when she tried to stop him from some kind of twisted experiment with setting butterflies on fire. He…touched her.”