Chapter Thirteen

“He’s not going to fire you,” Darrell told me as I drove us back to the crime scene at Gordon Brink’s house.

I hadn’t told him what happened with the sheriff, but he already knew. Everyone in the department knew, because Ajax was already spreading his version of the story. The version where I came on to him, rather than vice versa.

“Jerry’s been waiting for an opportunity to fire me for two years,” I said. “And this is it.”

Darrell shook his head. “Whatever happened with Ajax wasn’t your fault.”

I glanced across the front seat. I knew he was trying to be nice—he was always nice to me—but this was a day where I didn’t want to feel good about myself. I’d made too many mistakes, and I was paying the price.

“What makes you so sure, Darrell? Do you think I’m some kind of angel? How do you know it didn’t happen exactly like he said?”

“If you hit Ajax, he gave you a good reason to hit him. I know what he’s like. More to the point, I know you, Rebecca.”

I made the mistake of saying the first thing that popped into my head. “I’m not one of your daughters, Darrell. Don’t treat me like one.”

He shut up instantly.

I could see by the expression on his face that I’d wounded him deeply.

I know, sweetheart. You don’t have to tell me that I was being a jerk. What a stupid, graceless thing to say to this man who loved me and had helped me since I was a kid.

No, Darrell was not my father, but where was my own father? Off on the road somewhere. If I was lucky, I talked to him a couple of times a month. I’d always promised Dad that I was fine with that. I knew he was busy, but in fact, his long absences made me feel lost and alone. Not having him around made me angry, if you want the truth, so I can only guess how you feel about me. There were times when I’d desperately needed my father, times when I was hurt and crying and alone and in pain, times when I was so far down in a well that I couldn’t see blue sky, and he wasn’t there for me. I felt abandoned. Bitter. All I had from him was a poem in my head that he’d sung to me when I was a girl. But I needed more, and Darrell, more than anyone, had stood by me when my father didn’t. Here I was snappishly telling him to leave me alone.

Did I apologize for being cruel? No. I kept driving.

Finally, Darrell changed the subject, his voice cool. “Snow’s coming.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, studying the horizon over the trees. “Snow’s on the way. Probably a lot.”

He was right. Around here, we learned to read the winter sky. In another day, a blizzard would bury us. In another day, my life would take an irrevocable turn, thanks to the deep, deep snow. Of course, I had no way of knowing that, sweetheart, but as I look back, I wouldn’t have changed that day even if I could. That’s what you need to understand. Despite everything, I have no regrets.

Anyway, the snow hadn’t come yet. I just drove.

We reached the house where Gordon Brink had been killed. Erica was moving out. Boxes were packed and being loaded on a van. She oversaw the process, carefully telling the men what to put where. When she saw us, her face screwed up with annoyance, because we were interrupting her schedule. Even so, she smoothed her golden hair and told the moving men to take a break. Then she led us into the house.

“You’re leaving?” I asked when we’d taken seats in the living room, where a fire crackled in the fireplace.

“That’s right. Out with the old, in with the new. The firm is sending another partner to take over the litigation. Believe me, I can’t wait to be out of this place and get back to civilization. No offense. If you want to talk to me, you can call me in Minnesota.”

“Not Milwaukee?” I asked.

“No. I’m going back home to stay with my family for a while and decide what to do next. The last thing I want to do is go back and live in Gordon’s house again. It was always his house, not mine.”

“Of course.”

“So what do you want?” Erica asked. “I’m sorry to be brusque, but there’s snow in the forecast, and I’d like to be out of Black Wolf County today.”

“We have some follow-up questions for you, Mrs. Brink,” Darrell said. “And for Jay, too. Is he here?”

“No. He’s in school.”

I looked at her with surprise. “Isn’t he leaving with you?”

“Jay decided he’s going to stay in Black Wolf County for the rest of the school year. Who knows why? I assumed he’d jump at the chance to be out of here and back with his mother.”

“Will he stay in this house?”

“No. Norm Foltz offered to put him up at his place. He’s all packed. The movers will drop off Jay’s boxes at Norm’s house on their way out of town.” Erica glanced at her watch. “As I say, I’m in a hurry. Can we get through this quickly? What do you need from me?”

“We talked to someone who said your husband had a reputation among the women in his firm,” I told her.

Erica’s pretty jawline hardened. “A reputation?”

I didn’t know how to sugarcoat it, and I didn’t want to. “For demanding sex during job interviews.”

“Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Let me guess. Penny Ramsey. Did Penny happen to mention that her reputation is for breaking client privilege? There was one particularly egregious example in which she told a friend outside the firm an anecdote involving one of our client’s executives. Gordon made sure she kept her job, when she should have been fired. So it’s rich to have her accusing him of anything now that he’s dead and can’t defend himself.”

“Was it true about Gordon?” I asked again. “Did he have a pattern of forcing himself on other women?”

“What does that have to do with your investigation?”

Darrell interjected, “Because that kind of behavior can be a motive for murder.”

“If you think Penny Ramsey or some other woman murdered Gordon over a fling on an office sofa, then you should talk to them, not me. I don’t have anything to say about it. If that’s all you have, then you can leave right now.”

She began to get up, but Darrell stayed where he was.

“There’s something else, Mrs. Brink.”

She sat down again, looking impatient. “What?”

“You said no one other than Gordon ever went inside the cottage.”

“Yes. So?”

“Was that always true? Or did you or Jay go in there sometimes?”

“Visit the sanctum sanctorum? No. Never.”

Darrell frowned. “So can you think of any explanation for how Jay’s fingerprints got there?”

Erica stared at us. “Jay was in Gordon’s office?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. The cottage was always locked if Gordon wasn’t there.”

“Could Jay have gotten hold of a key?” Darrell asked.

“I suppose he could, but it doesn’t make any sense.” Erica stood up again and faced the fire. She was in profile, her face flushed as she realized the implications of what Darrell was saying. “My God. You think it was him. You think Jay killed him, don’t you?”

“We need some questions answered,” Darrell said. “There are things that don’t add up here.”

Erica spun around. “Jay threatened Gordon.”

“What?”

“He threatened his father.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I didn’t know about it. It happened while I was gone.”

“How did you find out?”

“I talked to his mother two days ago. She and I don’t exactly have a warm relationship, but I needed to know what she wanted me to do about Jay. He’s her son, not mine. He told me he wanted to stay here, and I didn’t care either way, but I wanted to make sure his mother was okay with it.”

“Was she?” Darrell asked.

“Apparently so. Jay told her he was finally making friends, and he didn’t want to get shuffled around in the middle of the school year again. She also told me something I didn’t know. Jay and Gordon had a huge argument while I was away in Minnesota. Jay called his mother in tears over it.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Gordon planned to send Jay back home to his mother after Christmas break.”

“And Jay wanted to stay here?”

“Yes. Which was the opposite of how things were when we got here last October. Jay hated leaving Milwaukee and his mother. Now he hated going back. I don’t know why. Maybe he simply wanted to do the opposite of whatever Gordon wanted. As I told you, those two were fire and ice. However, according to his mother, Jay got pretty extreme.”

“How so?” Darrell asked.

“Jay said if his father tried to send him home, Gordon would be sorry.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. But his mother was afraid you’d think Jay killed him. She didn’t want me to say anything about it.”

Darrell frowned. “You said Jay’s things are in boxes upstairs?”

“That’s right.”

“We’d like to search them.”

Erica waved us toward the stairs. “Be my guest.”

*

Jay didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions to bring to Norm’s house. His music, posters, books, and clothes had been squeezed into two moving boxes. Darrell took the first box and dumped the contents onto the boy’s bed.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Rebecca.” He was acting distant and professional with me, and I didn’t blame him after what I’d said. “A diary, maybe? Jay seems like the kind of kid who might keep one.”

“Is that really going to help us? I can’t see him confessing to his diary. ‘Tonight I had pizza for dinner. Also killed Dad.’ ”

Darrell shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I don’t think Jay killed him,” I said. “And neither do you.”

“That may be true, but the sheriff’s right. Jay is our only credible suspect right now, and the more we find out about his relationship with his father, the more everything points to him. Fingerprints where they shouldn’t be? Arguments and threats only a few days before Gordon was killed? No alibi? I may not be certain he’s guilty, but I’m no longer convinced he’s innocent.”

Darrell poked through the record albums and rolled-up posters, but there was nothing like a diary to be found. He dumped the next box, which was filled with books.

“Norm said Gordon thought Jay was spying on him,” I pointed out. “Maybe he was. If he was digging up dirt about Gordon or the litigation, that would explain why his fingerprints were in the office.”

“Yes, I thought about that.”

“Spying on his dad may be unethical, but it doesn’t make him a killer.”

“No,” he agreed. “No, it doesn’t. But this might.”

“What?”

Darrell pointed at a book on Jay’s bed, lying among the classics and the poetry collections that had been stacked in the boxes. I knew what the book was, because I had it on my own bookshelf. Everyone in Black Wolf County had read it.

The Ursulina Murders by Ben Malloy.

It was a blow-by-blow account of the deaths of Kip and Racer and what the beast had done to their bodies.

“For a copycat killer,” Darrell said, “this is a road map.”