CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

 

Monday - Two weeks later – April 26

 

Jack stood in the dining area of his house and slowly looked around with disbelief. From the windows in the living room, past the dining area, and through the vacant kitchen to the back door, everything was gone. Curtains and blinds, carpets and linoleum, cabinets and appliances, and the bloodstained dining table. Even Rybak’s bloody halo on the dining room wall had been removed.

He went upstairs and found all the rooms had been gutted too, right down to the fixtures for bathroom appliances.

Gone.

All of it.

What the hell had happened since he’d last been here with his Beretta?

When he hit the foot of the stairs, he found Ray standing in the open doorway, the stained glass of which had been repaired and refitted.

“I wanted to get here before you,” Ray said without apology.

“What’s this all about?” Jack forced himself to remain calm, in spite of his racing heart.

“Are you angry?”

“Confused. Care to explain?”

“Come on.” Jack followed Ray into the living room to stand before the window. “I called in some favors and had the place gutted.”

“I can see that. Why?”

“This house is like a boat anchor around your neck, amigo.” Jack grunted then opened his mouth to speak, but Ray continued, “Let me finish. By clearing out the place, it should give you some breathing space. I know you planned to have the house gutted, but something always comes up. Now you have a clean palette to work from. Restore, sell, or leave it as is and board up the windows. Whatever you decide, there’s nothing left to stand in your way from moving forward with your life.”

Move forward with his life? Jack still didn’t know what Li had done with Leah. Until he knew, how could he move forward with anything?

He gazed through the rooms, once filled with furnishings and family. The house now seemed to yawn with space.

He tried imagining new floors and repainted walls, furniture and new appliances, but all he saw was Leah, Zoë, and Trax, their laughter and love. Anything he did in the house would never replace those memories.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Ray added, “but the place is ready when you are.”

Jack slowly turned toward his friend. “Thanks, Ray,” he sincerely said. “And no, I’m not angry. I appreciate everything you’ve done. Let me know how much I owe—”

Ray put up his hand, telling Jack his friend wasn’t taking his money.

Thumbing over his shoulder, Ray said, “I’ve got some garden tools out in the truck. It’s such a nice day, I thought we could tame the weeds in the backyard. If you’re up to it.”

Jack took a last look around, still not believing what he was seeing, then nodded. “After nearly two weeks in the hospital, I’m ready for a good workout.”

 

A couple hours into the job, Jack straightened his spine and leaned on the hoe he’d been using to clear the last patch of weeds near the ramshackle shed. Using the back of his hand, he wiped away the sweat from his eyes and inhaled deeply. It was a nice feeling, being able to breathe normally again. Agreeing to cardio therapy while in the hospital, to rebuild his strength and lung capacity, made weeding much easier.

He glanced across the yard and grimaced. Leah’s beloved garden had been taken over by Mother Nature. Where once Leah had planted herbs and vegetables between colorful flowers, weeds had taken over and made the house look as abandoned as Jack had left it four years earlier.

Jack was grateful for everything Ray had done for him, despite all their arguing. Gutting the house was a big thing, but Ray also knew the yard needed to be put in order too. And today had been a great day for the task.

He gazed over at Ray, who was raking the last of the small piles into the larger one. There were no words to express how much Jack appreciated having such a good friend. Hermanos de otra madre—brothers from another mother, Ray always said. He wasn’t wrong.

Jack looked around at their handiwork. The only color in the yard came from a big echium in one corner with its large springtime dark-purple cones reaching for the sun. A California lilac covered in large green leaves and fist-size lavender blossoms had pushed itself up and over the shed in the opposite corner. Jack hated the idea of cutting it back, but the shed was falling apart, and he couldn’t remove it without pruning the lilac.

“Ready for a break?” Ray asked, pulling Jack out of his thoughts.

“More than ready.”

Ray propped the rake against the porch rails. “I have a cooler in the truck with some beers on ice. Be right back.”

In the few minutes Ray was gone, Jack placed the hoe beside Ray’s rake and sat on one of the porch steps in the shade, dragging his fingers through his sweaty hair. If he’d known he’d be working in the yard, he would have brought a cap.

Ray appeared then with a small cooler and set it beside Jack then sat on the next step down. Jack opened the cooler and pulled out two beers from the icy water before handing one to Ray.

“Thanks. I needed this.” Jack popped open the can and took a long slug.

Ray did the same, then said, “I think we made great progress. Not much left to do but take away the debris.”

Jack pointed his can toward the shed. “I want to take it down while we’re at it, before it falls down on its own.” Ray nodded his agreement.

The two men sat in companionable silence, but it wasn’t long before Jack caught a look on his friend’s face he recognized well.

“Something’s on your mind,” he said.

Without looking over, Ray replied, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know the look. For fuck’s sake, whatever you have to say, just say it.”

Ray threw back the last of the beer and cracked open another one, but held onto it. “This is unofficial. Completely off the books.”

“And?”

“We questioned Li.”

Those three simple words hit Jack in the chest like he’d been shot again and choked off his air. Finally, he said, “We who?”

“Special Agent Carter let Haniford and me sit in with her at FBI headquarters.”

“Tell me you asked him about Leah.” Even to himself, it sounded like he was begging. He was.

“He only agreed with what went down that night because it was off the record, but he couldn’t tell me anything about Leah.”

Jack sat forward on the step and stared at his friend. “What does that mean? I feel there’s a but coming.”

“Remember when I said those men would have been looking for you that night? If Li sent Rybak and Armstrong to your house, they would have been looking for the money from you.”

Jack nodded. “I never borrowed money from him. So what . . . did he send them to a random address, and it just happened to be my house?”

“He gave them the right address.”

Jack screwed up his face. “What the fuck are you talking about? Those assholes killed my daughter and kidnapped my wife!” he all but shouted.

Ray turned to face Jack, his gaze intent as he spoke. “Jack. It was the right family. Just not your family. It wasn’t Zoë or Leah. There was another family in this house before you bought it.”

“What?” Jack growled.

“We went through property records. It appears the house had been on the market for an unusually long time. Haniford and I agree, they probably couldn’t sell the place because no one wanted to buy a house where murders had taken place. Then you came along, and they never disclosed the full facts to you and Leah.”

Jack took the deepest breaths his damaged body would allow, trying to process what his friend had just said. He continued staring at Ray as the implications sunk in, looking for some sign this was a joke, but there wasn’t a hint of humor on his friend’s face.

“Who was it?” Jack finally asked.

“Hannah Caplan and her daughter, Jenny. John Caplan had been out that night—” He let the last go unsaid then quietly added, “This was a full two years before you bought the house.”

Not my family.

This information rained down on Jack like fire. How could he have been so wrong? He recalled his talk with Armstrong. Everything the junkie had told him shouted it had been his family, right down to the dog, even though he couldn’t justify his own role in it all. He’d never borrowed money from anyone but the bank, and he certainly would have been home that time of night unless he was on a case.

He scrubbed a hand across his face, trying to make sense of it all, but there was no sense to make. It wasn’t his family. It had all gone down long before he and Leah had bought the house. It had never been disclosed about the murders; he would have remembered. And during renovations, there hadn’t been any evidence of blood. He recalled though how he’d mentioned to Leah how the subfloors had been in such good condition. Had they been new? He made a mental note to check out the floors when he went back inside.

“You okay, Jack?”

Was he? In this moment, Jack didn’t know anything.

He slammed his beer down, shot off the step and stomped across the yard to the shed. Anger boiled through him and poured from his skin. The shed needed to come down and his anger would make light work of it. He heard Ray rush up behind him as he threw the first kick. The door swung on its rusty hinges and fell to the side.

“Jack. Take it easy. I know this must be hard, but I couldn’t keep it from you.”

Jack glanced at Ray. “I’m fine,” he spat. “I just want to get the yard done.” He grabbed the shed door and tore it from its remaining hinge and threw it across the yard.

“Let’s cut back this triffid. It’ll be easier getting at the shed,” Ray suggested.

Jack stepped to the side and fisted one of the branches, twisted and pulled it free of the bush. He repeated the action until the plant hung in tatters and broken branches were scattered on the ground.

“Come on, Jack. Do you want to end up back in the hospital?”

“Help or get out of my way,” Jack grumbled.

Ray moved in front of Jack and stood in the doorway. “Take a beat.”

He went inside and started handing Jack things stored on the old shelves—paint cans, old containers of fertilizer, rusty tools, stacks of plastic pots . . . Jack threw them into a fresh pile beside the lilac branches.

When Ray emerged, Jack pushed past him and started dismantling the old structure. It didn’t take much effort. Shelves easily popped off their brackets, the decaying roof was pulled down with little effort, and with a few well-aimed shoves, the walls tumbled to the ground.

Jack stood back, panting hard and gasping for air. His chest hurt with the effort. He dropped his hands onto his knees and took slow, deep breaths to calm himself.

The shed could have been ten times larger, and he still would have been just as pissed off as he still was now. Nothing would change the reality of what Ray told him. It wasn’t his family. Li knew nothing about Leah. And likely, Rybak’s I’m sorry note was probably because he’d killed little Jenny Caplan and her pet, and he could no longer live with himself. He went back to the scene of the crime—the now abandoned house—to make what he probably saw as reparations.

“You okay, ese?” Ray asked after giving Jack time to cool his jets.

He shook the sweat out of his hair before straightening. “How am I supposed to feel after that? It wasn’t my family. I can’t do anything about it.”

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” Ray asked.

“Can you turn back time so I can take my head out of my ass and realize weeks ago Armstrong wasn’t talking about my family?”

“Wish I could. For both of us.” Ray huffed lightly. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out sooner. It seemed too good to be true.”

“Too easy, right?” Jack grumbled low in his chest. It hadn’t been his family, and now he was catapulted backward and forced to go back to his own investigation to find those responsible for destroying his family.

“Now what?”

“It’ll take a minute to process, but you know what Haniford says. It is—”

“What it is,” Ray finished.

Jack turned his gaze west. “It’ll be dark in a couple hours. Let’s get this shit into your truck so we can drop it at recycling on the way home.”

 

An hour later, weeds, bits of shed, and the remains of the lilac were in the back of Ray’s truck, tarp and rope securing everything down safely.

Jack grabbed a shovel on the way through the yard and used the tip to start lifting the shed’s old brick flooring. He placed the bricks in an old bucket which Ray took out to the truck, then returned with the empty container.

When the last of the bricks had been removed, Jack used the hoe to cut back weeds creeping up around breaks in the shed walls.

Jack pushed the hoe through the compact soil, but it suddenly stopped. He tried pushing it through again, but it refused to move past the obstacle.

He bent over and dug his fingers through the soil to remove the offending item, but it wouldn’t come free, so he got down on his knees and buried his fingers in the soil.

“What’s up?” Ray asked.

“Fucking rocks, I reckon.”

Just then, his phone started ringing in his back pocket, but he ignored it.

“You wanna get that?”

“If it’s important, they’ll call back. I want to get this rock out of the ground. It’s the last thing we need to do before we can get the hell out of here. After this, there’s no reason to ever come back here again.” Reality kicked Jack in the chest.

He pushed the soil away and a large, round stone appeared. He pushed more soil away to expose the stone.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again.

“Motherfucker!” Jack cursed.

Ray was at Jack’s side instantly. “What’s wrong?”

Jack moved huge scoops of soil away from the stone. He scraped more furiously, like a dog digging sand at the beach. Soil flew out behind him until the stone was fully revealed.

The phone kept ringing, but he barely noticed it.

“Holy Mother of God,” Ray said under his breath, crossing himself.

Jack fell back on his haunches, speechless.

Before him in the hole he’d just created was a perfectly formed human skull.