The number of agents had dwindled to only a couple, the buzz in the large room muted. Excess computer equipment had been packed into boxes and stacked along the wall, waiting for movers to carry them down the steps and load them into trucks. The case files were moving back to the sheriff’s office.
David sat at the conference table with his coffee cup in hand and the DNA results for Theo in the other. Ever since the confirmation had come in, he had been horrified how right his conclusion had been. And how wrong.
He looked at Roxanne. “Thanks for your help. We’d be waiting for months for the state labs to get all these tests done.”
She looked glumly at the board. One more child victim’s name had been filled in. Three question marks remained. “We’ll keep trying, but sometimes those identifications never happen. John Wayne Gacy killed thirty-three young men, but six of the recovered bodies were never identified. Some took years to be.”
“But the science is better today, right?”
“True, but if a kid was never reported missing, we wouldn’t have any dental records or DNA to match to. No matter how good the science gets, it’s tough to find something without data.”
David gripped the coffee cup in his hands and studied the rippling surface. “The new one is the same as the general pattern among the others?”
“Yes. He disappeared while riding his bike alone in a vacant field. It was just down from his house, so his mom felt safe. She was working two jobs and took a nap on the couch. When she woke up, he was gone. A canvass of the area didn’t turn up anything suspicious. No unusual cars, a man they had never seen before, or anything else like that.”
Lieutenant Gilman spoke up. “Knowing the connection now, we asked the investigators to go back through the notes. During a search of buildings in the area, they discovered one neighbor had what appeared to be fresh moonshine—several cases of it—though no evidence of a still. They destroyed it and let the owner off with a warning.”
David sighed. “Let me guess. A delivery from Matt?”
“A local investigator went back out to ask. The man who’d had it in a storage building is now deceased, but his son owns the farm today. Says he didn’t know anything specific about it, but he also said his dad and grandfather both swore McGregor Lightning was the best around.”
David settled the coffee cup on the table and folded his hands. “So we think he delivered the ’shine and then spotted the kid?”
“Best we can tell, he didn’t target the boy in advance, but he fit the target profile.”
“Another clue, though.”
“No reason for their detective to make a connection. The farmer clammed up when they found the ’shine, so they assumed he had a still hidden somewhere. They had bigger issues so didn’t search too hard for it. And they never suspected a delivery.”
“If only Matt’s name had come up. If only I had questioned him harder the first time around. If only I had known about the other boy Buck knew about… I’ll always wonder.”
Roxanne nodded. “Won’t we all, but ‘if onlies’ will kill you.”
David had given the same lecture to dozens of cops over the years. Don’t sweat every little mistake, because we all make them. But he didn’t think he would ever be able to go to sleep without wondering what he could have done differently.
He focused on the test results in front of him. “These are the DNA results for Theo.”
Roxanne replied. “Just as you thought, Bethany is the boy’s mother.
Gilman chimed in. “I’ve searched for surviving relatives. Bethany’s mother is dead—cancer. We did find her natural father, not that it will do any good. He is serving two consecutive life sentences in Arkansas. He robbed a convenience store, and the clerk decided to fight back. The clerk and a customer were killed. No other relatives on that side. A smattering of cousins, Bethany’s stepfather, who didn’t sound like a winner in the first place, and not much else. We don’t have much hope to find him a home on that side.”
“And certainly not on the McGregor side, either.” David drummed his fingers on the table. “This whole case. I get close, but I never quite get it right.”
Roxanne leaned forward. “Your idea to test Rick for paternity got us there, though.”
“Yeah, but grandfather? Damn it. I have to tell that kid his father is his worst nightmare.”
They sat in silence as a mover rolled a hand truck of boxes past them.
Gilman said, “I don’t get why Matt McGregor would have gotten her pregnant.”
David grimaced. “Just a theory, but I called the profilers with Roxanne, and they think it’s as good a guess as any. Buck gave us the clue.”
“What clue?”
“Nobody needed to worry, because Rick was gonna cure Matt good. Fix him once and for all. So in Rick’s screwed-up parenting, he kidnapped a prostitute for his son. Not just kidnapped her, but forced his son to have sex with her. Probably watched him to make sure he really did it. Otherwise, how would he know?”
“That is really twisted.” The paper clip Gilman was twisting snapped in his fingers. “And Rick really thought that would cure him?”
“If you have a better theory, we’re all ears. But we know Rick kidnapped her, and we know Matt impregnated her.”
Roxanne looked out the window. “Can you imagine how the dynamics of that house changed dramatically when Bethany found herself pregnant?”
David grimaced. “And even more so when Theo was born.”
Gilman piped up. “Because it’d been a long time since the McGregor house had a crying baby?”
“Not just the fact they had a baby.” David’s eyes grew sad. “A male baby. Rick may have realized that rather than curing his son, he had brought temptation right inside the house. We’ll never know for sure, but we could certainly see Rick and Matt fighting over what to do with the kid. Best guess is Rick was murdered over it. It’s as good a theory as we have. It would have taken a fairly strong trigger to both commit your first murder and for the victim to be your own father.”
“But he let Bethany live?”
“He didn’t hate her for any reason and was probably ambivalent about her. He needed her to care for and raise the boy. And remember, he didn’t directly murder her, not in the same sense as his father, but rather she died of malnutrition. Depraved indifference may qualify for murder in a courtroom, but he didn’t physically kill her in the way he killed the others.”
Gilman leaned back as if in shock. “So Bethany dies, and Matt is now all alone with his son, a little boy no one even knows about. Why go get other boys, risk getting caught, when he had what he needed at home?”
David pushed his chair back and stood up. He slammed his hands into his pockets and walked over to the window, staring down at the nearly empty street below. “Because this monster, this despicable, disgusting monster, had the slightest conscience. The kidnappings didn’t start until Theo was three or four. With Matt’s age preference, the temptation must have been powerful, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch his own son.”
Gilman shook his head. “You’re saying he beat the kid, but he wouldn’t stoop to molesting him?”
“In this monster’s mind, beatings were normal. He was beaten as a kid, right? But desires were different. He needed other outlets for that, but he knew bad things would happen if he got caught again, so he targeted boys who were all alone, defenseless, and kept them.”
“And he made Theo live with them, down in that basement.”
“Think of Matt’s life as a child. He was raised to do his father’s bidding and haul moonshine up and down cellar steps. When he was old enough to drive, he delivered the liquor and drugs and did chores around the house. Probably maintained the still, because he was making and delivering it after his father died. So now, he has his own son and raises him to take care of the new family business—the ones he brings home. He can teach them the rules. To do that, he has to live with them, but he’s also let out of the basement for other ‘chores’ like digging a grave or chopping wood.”
“Holy crap.” Gilman rested his face in his hands. “And Jaxon?”
“Just a kid like all of the others, except he and Theo were the same age. They hit it off, becoming friends, and Matt, in his own demented way, wanted his son to have a friend.”
“What a sick son of a bitch.”
“No arguments from me.” David leaned his head against the window, the cool glass calming his fraying nerves. “And now, I get to go sit down with this kid and his psychiatrist and help him understand that his tormentor was also his father.”
Roxanne walked up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “All you can do is tell him the truth.”
David turned to her. “The truth is that the day I talked to Matt McGregor, I didn’t just miss that he had kidnapped Jaxon Lathan. I missed that he had his own son locked in a dungeon. How do I live with that?”