David sipped a cup of mediocre coffee and scanned the notes on the whiteboards in the task-force room. Roxanne summarized the latest lab results. “Two more victims identified, both within the same two-hundred-mile radius that appeared to be Matthew McGregor’s hunting ground. That brings us to ten of the fourteen young boys’ bodies identified. Four to go.”
He leaned back in the chair and sighed. The feeling of missed opportunities gripped him again. “If only I had figured out it was Matt McGregor back then. I can’t believe I looked him in the eyes and didn’t figure it out.”
“And how would you have figured that out back then?”
“I knew he was messing with little boys.”
“Boy. Singular. You knew he had touched one kid when he was a teenager. You didn’t even know the details because no one ever made a report about it. You just followed up on it because you heard about it. You knew nothing else, and yet you checked on him. And at the same time, how many other convicted molesters did you talk to? A dozen? Two dozen?”
“But all those boys…”
She placed her hand on the stack of folders indicating Matt McGregor’s victims. “Crossing state lines, keeping his abductions spread months apart, never doing anything dramatic. Each case, on its own, appears to be a situation of a child wandering off and becoming lost or a victim of a parental dispute. Even those considered abductions were never connected.”
David shook his head. “Wattsville sits on a state line. Thanks to the interstate, he could reach seven different states in two hours or less. What I know about the guy says he wasn’t particularly smart. I think he just ran on pure instinct and was lucky.” He pulled his legal pad toward him. “Which brings me to the thing that’s still keeping me up all night. I’ve been trying to figure out why Jaxon and Theo were allowed to mature into teenagers. In fact, if Theo’s story about the hiker is accurate, and all the forensics say it is, then Jaxon, aka Kevin, would have kept living except for violating the rules. All of the other boys died much younger.”
“Just luck, maybe, though I don’t know if that’s good luck or bad.”
“I think it’s more than that. All the other boys had one other thing in common. They were all either older or younger than Jaxon and Theo. Only those two are the same age. And they were near instant friends from the time Jaxon arrived, and their bond only grew over the years.”
Roxanne nodded. “Right. We think they were allowed to live so long because they were friends.”
“But see, I’m beginning to think that’s not quite right. I read and reread the psychiatrist’s reports last night. I don’t think they lived so long because they were friends. I think Jaxon lived so long because he was Theo’s friend.”
Roxanne sat back in her chair and chewed her pen. “That would have made Theo more important to Matthew than Jaxon.”
“Exactly. It clicked for me when I noticed an interesting anomaly in our interviews with Theo, when he describes the fear the various boys felt about being summoned upstairs.”
“Of course. That must have been awful. The things that pervert did to them.”
“Exactly, except his description is always in third person. They felt this. He felt that. He never says ‘I.’” David flipped to a highlighted section in a pad of notes. “The psychiatrist working with him thinks he doesn’t use ‘I’ because he was never the target. He never describes being touched. Not one single time. Dr. Sorenson thinks he may never have been molested.”
“Maybe he just buried the memories.”
David nodded. “Certainly possible, but isn’t it strange that he doesn’t have a problem remembering all the other horrible things that happened? He often describes being summoned upstairs, but he always seemed to assume Matt had some task for him to do so he didn’t feel the same fears. Awful, heinous tasks like burying bodies or washing blood out of the van, true, but he also never mentions any other boy ever being invited outside to do tasks like he did.”
“Was Jaxon the same way?”
“I wish that were true, but no. Theo remembers clearly consoling Jaxon after molestation episodes. They were less frequent as he was older, and especially if other, younger victims were with them at a given time, but Jaxon was not spared.”
“So Theo wasn’t molested. And Jaxon, who was molested, was allowed to live longer because he was friends with Theo. What makes Theo so special?” Roxanne started and sat up. “You’re not suggesting—”
The sheriff nodded. “Bethany Ann Andrews. The prostitute.”
“You think she’s Theo’s mother?”
“It fits and would explain why Theo can’t remember a before. Maybe he didn’t have a before. Rick meets a prostitute and maybe falls for her, or maybe he pays her to move in with him, or maybe he does kidnap her—who knows? He was seen picking her up in Knoxville. If Theo is the same age as Jaxon—and we all think he is because the timing is about right—Rick McGregor gets Bethany Ann pregnant and has a third son, Theo.”
“So you think Matt and Theo are half brothers?”
“And a half brother to Mark. Same father. Three different mothers.” David leaned back in his chair. “So I started thinking, maybe Matt killed his father precisely because Bethany was pregnant. Or maybe after the child was born. Either way, now he needs to keep her around to raise the kid. By the time she died, he had grown attached.”
“So attached he left the kid in a basement and beat him.”
“I didn’t say he was normal.”
Roxanne tsked. “That poor kid. Can you imagine the horror of finding out that maniac is your brother?”
David leaned back in his chair. “We’ll know soon enough. Get your lab to test his DNA against Rick’s and Bethany’s. Since it’s a simple yes-or-no question, we’ll have an answer quick.”