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Early the following morning first thing, Frank got the welcome call from Myrtle with the good news that Ryan, and his friends, had been found alive and were coming home in the next three days. Frank got all the juicy details from her and was astounded at the tale of the men’s’ daring escape and rescue. Myrtle was planning a party when the men came home. She’d let Frank and Abigail know the date and time. Then Myrtle hung up. She had more telephone calls to make, she said.
“I’m so happy Ryan, Jim and Pete are all okay,” Abigail declared, with a big smile, when Frank gave her and Nick the news at the breakfast table. “That’s quite a scary experience they’ve lived through. I bet Ryan doesn’t want to go anywhere out of country again for a while.” She’d laughed.
“Probably not,” Nick had weighed in. “I wouldn’t. Not after that nightmare. Violent kidnapper terrorists in the dark continent. I’d stay in America, nice and safe.” He then gulped down his breakfast like usual, said goodbye to them, grabbed his guitar case, and headed out into the day. He had another band practice with the guys and couldn’t be late. Frank thought he now looked the part of a rock musician with his long hair, earring in one ear, and hippie looking clothes. He was a fine young man, though. Well-behaved and thoughtful towards others. Everyone liked him. He was graduating in December with high honors. He and Abby had done a good job raising and loving him, too. Just like with their Laura. They were so proud of both of them.
*****
FRANK WAITED UNTIL Nick and Abby had left the house before he got into his truck and drove back to Fairfield. He fretted over what Abby would say if she found out what he was doing. If she discovered he was searching for Joel’s killer against her wishes, she’d be furious, no doubt. Somehow, though, he couldn’t stop himself from continuing his investigation. He had to find, he was going to find, that lime green Pinto and the man who had driven it.
Ten years past was a long time ago. Who would still be driving a junky Pinto after all these years? Or who would remember it? He’d already had his ex-homicide partner and friend, Sam Cato, do him a favor and run a thorough check through the Illinois DMV data base looking for any registrations or licenses assigned to Pintos between the years nineteen-eighty and the present but so many vehicles had come up, even in a hundred mile radius of Fairfield, there was no way he could track them all down. Of course, the DMV never recorded the color of the vehicles, which made the search so much harder.
It was last night as he laid in bed beside a sleeping Abby, his mind refusing to shut off and give him sleep, he’d had an idea. When he’d been driving through Fairfield he’d noticed a string of those old neighborhood greasy-spoon or truck stop restaurants. The kind the townsfolk would go to for the best biscuits and gravy, homemade chicken and dumplings and the latest town gossip. Fairfield had many diners, similar to Stella’s Diner, within its city limits. He’d learned, in his years as a detective, a person could gather information about what was happening or had happened in a town from the locals; especially the older ones who’d lived there all or most of their lives. Those people knew their neighbors, the town’s history, and the stories of the people who lived there. Those people would know what he needed to learn.
Frank decided to patronize several of those local diners, scoff down a couple of meals, and strike up some friendly conversations with the locals. If he were lucky he’d get a lead on who might have owned or been driving an old beater Pinto with a dented rear fender a decade before. Someone might remember. It was worth a trip.
“What do you have planned for the day, honey?” he asked Abigail as he buttered his toast. He was eating light so he’d have room for more later. Good thing he was a die-hard fan of truck stop fare, especially the greasy entrees like cheeseburgers or barbequed hot wings. They weren’t good for his heart or his waist, but he did like the food.
“I’m going out to the Theiss house again to launch another painting.” Abigail was munching on a donut, her head lowered as she sketched in her drawing notebook. She had an untouched cup of coffee in front of her. She glanced up. “I know, don’t traipse around the weed overgrown yard and don’t go inside. I won’t.”
Abigail bowed her head again and avoided his gaze, acting as if she were intent on what she was doing. He knew better. She was pushing back against his overprotectiveness. A minute later, as if she were trying to appease him, she stated, “I’ll be done with the house by the end of the week. Two more visits. That’s all. I’ll have enough prep work, photos, sketches and paintings to finish the series by then.”
“Good.” His tension had been mitigated by her answer. He knew enough to let the subject drop. She disliked it when he tried to control her and only accepted when he did because she understood he was doing it out of love.
Nick had already taken off for band practice and the emptiness around them felt strange. The house was at its best when there was noise and life filling the place. He practically liked it when Nick was playing and singing up in his room. The music floated all through the cabin.
Abigail adroitly changed the topic of conversation. “I talked to Laura right before you came down. She’s enjoying her internship immensely. And I think,” she hesitated, “she has a boyfriend.”
“What? Laura has a boyfriend? Who?”
“From what I gleaned from our talk, he’s someone who works at the art gallery with her in purchasing. An artist like her. He graduated last year from her art college. Name is Tommy. It’s nothing serious, so far, or so she says. They’re only dating. They go out dancing and to movies together. She’s having a ball. I’m happy for her.” Abigail smiled up at him. Pleased that their daughter was having a good time as well as accomplishing her life’s dream.
“At her age she should be having a good time. She’s young.”
“And what are you up to today, husband?”
Frank felt a stab of guilt. He thought of telling Abigail what he was doing, actively hunting for Joel’s possible killer and the lead he was following, but couldn’t bring himself to ruin her mood. Truth was, he was afraid she’d convince him to stop and he didn’t want to. He couldn’t, not now. He had this feeling he was on the right track.
“Most likely doing some research for my new book.” It wasn’t an out and out lie because there were always snippets of his investigation he could use for his work in progress. Possibly he’d have his book’s main character travel through a small town a lot like Fairfield and stop at a quirky greasy spoon. He’d highlight some of the townspeople’s banter. His stops today could be fodder for those verbal exchanges. As a novelist he often used pieces of real life, snatches of real conversations he had with real people, for his fiction. He it did all the time. It was one of the things his readers told him they liked about his books. He wrote about everyday people.
After Abigail was gone, Frank got in his truck and drove to Fairfield beneath a cloudy sky, his radio set to an oldies station. It was still hot as blazes outside, but at least the clouds kept the temperature below a hundred degrees. The cooling overcast wouldn’t last. That morning the weatherman had warned of another advancing heat wave, when the clouds lifted, worse than the one they’d already had. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.
At the first greasy spoon, a tiny trailer shaped eatery with the name Tiny’s Diner, Frank had breakfast, two eggs, bacon and toast. Tiny’s sat on the edge of town under a grove of shade trees. When he drove up the parking lot was packed. Over his meal he had amiable conversations with a number of other customers dining at the tables around him; any who looked old enough to perhaps have the information he was searching for. Old timers. He told them he was a writer who was doing research for his new book set in a small city. It worked every time. People tended to open up to a writer and rarely noticed that some of his questions were a little odd.
His cover story was he was searching for an old acquaintance he was basing a character on. Frank made sure not to ever say his acquaintance’s name and no one asked for it. All he said was the man was someone, an old friend, he’d lost track of who lived in Fairfield but whose address he had long forgotten, having never actually been to the man’s house himself. The locals he talked to didn’t seem to think a writer looking for someone whose name he couldn’t recall, or the fact he didn’t know where the man lived, was peculiar. Then he’d casually mention the man used to drive an old green Pinto with a smashed rear fender. He’d chuckle and say, “I remember it was the most hideous lime green color, too. And he’s probably still driving that old hooptie. He was so tight with his money. Not that he ever had much to begin with.”
No one he spoke to in Tiny’s Diner knew anyone who drove or had driven an old lime green Pinto so he went on to the next cafe where he had a light lunch. Again, none of the people he spoke to had any knowledge of his old friend with the Pinto.
It was near the end of the afternoon as he was sitting in a cramped niche of a restaurant forcing himself to eat another meal–by then he was so full he only pretended to eat the sandwich on the plate before him, nibbling on the edges–that he hit pay dirt. There was an elderly man wearing a worn ball cap, white hair sticking out from beneath it, thick glasses with a piece of masking tape in the center, slumped in his chair. He was sitting alone at a corner table, his eyes dancing from one customer to another. Looking for someone to engage with. Near him there was a metal framed walker up against the wall. The old man looked like a talker, so Frank sat down at the table nearest him.
The old guy was a talker all right. Frank wasn’t seated more than five minutes, had put in his order, and as he waited for his food, looking around, before the other man locked gazes and initiated a chat with him. Once Frank said he was a writer, the man had opened up and scooted his chair closer. Frank could tell the old codger was lonely. It was in his eyes, his eagerness to make a connection to anyone who would respond. He said his name was Otto Baker and he’d lived in Fairfield all his life. All ninety years of it. Once, in his younger days, he’d owned and managed a gas station, he’d long since sold, and he knew everyone.
As Frank drank his coffee, and played at eating the sandwich, he got what he’d been trolling for all day. He’d trotted out the fake story, the unlikely details and omissions of which Otto also didn’t seem to have any problems with, mentioned the green Pinto and was excited when Otto eagerly snatched the bait.
“Ah, the man you’re looking for used to drive a beat up old green Pinto, huh?”
“Yeah,” Frank replied with a smirk, “and it was the most atrocious shade of green, a sort of lime color, I’ve ever seen. Last time I saw it the car had a busted rear fender. Probably still does. My old friend never cared what his transportation looked like. As long as it got him where he wanted to go.” He laughed. Just a friendly guy looking for someone he used to know.
The old man pondered Frank’s words, trying to make a connection to something in his memory, and abruptly blurted out, “Hmm, I remember that Pinto. Yep, I do. Having owned a gas station I saw a lot of cars over the years come in and out. Not many old Pinto’s around here, never has been, so I do remember that ugly green one with the damaged fender, though this was a while ago. I haven’t seen that Pinto for a long time. Then again the chap who drove it didn’t always live here. He was a wanderer, as you must know, and he came and went a lot over the years. What a loser. He was a friend’s son. The friend lived on a farm outside of town a ways.”
“Is that friend still living there?”
“That friend, Jed Cartwright, died a handful of years ago but his no-good son, if I recollect rightly Avery is his name, scurried back here after his father’s passing and is still squatting rent-free in his dad’s house. He’s let the place fall into a complete ruin, too. It’s all weeds and corroded broken down trashy junk. There are a bunch of old wrecked cars rusting in the backyard and, I’d also bet, in the garage.”
Frank had to keep up the act. “Avery...yeah, now I remember. That was his name. Darn it,” he snapped his fingers, “how could I have forgotten that? He was a strange character, for sure. That’s why I want to see and talk to him for my book.”
The elderly man’s eyes behind the thick lens zeroed in on Frank. His wrinkled hands shook as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips. Conceivably Parkinson’s or something like it. Old age wasn’t kind. “That’s putting it mildly. According to my late friend, the boy has had a problem with drugs his lifelong. Spent some time in prison for assault, too, as I recall, and other crimes. His absence and his wrongdoings broke his daddy’s heart and, in the end, I believe that’s what killed my old friend, not his bad ticker.”
Frank couldn’t believe his luck and was almost afraid to hope for anything more, but pressed on. “Oh, my, I never knew Avery,” and here he took the man’s name as if he’d always known it, “turned into such a criminal. Oh, my. When I knew him, sure, he was reckless but not a criminal in any way. Or at least that I ever saw.” He took a chance, the final clue grabbed for, and asked, “Where is this farm?”
Without skipping a beat the old gentleman gave him what he wanted. “It’s not far from here. Address number eight Swallows Road. It’s an eyesore all right. The house, a light-colored brick one with a rock garden in the front and two huge trees, is pretty run down. There’s also a boat scrapped in the front yard. Jed used to take it down to the lake to fish years ago before his bad health made that impossible. You can’t miss the house, not with that landlocked boat in front.”
Frank wrapped up his visit with the old gentleman, paid his tab, left a tip, and slipped out of the restaurant. He couldn’t believe how lucky he’d been to get the information he’d needed after only a couple of greasy spoons and half a day of chatting up the locals. He keyed the address he’d been given into his GPS and soon found himself cruising by the run down farm...with the boat in the front yard.
This was where things were going to get tricky. If it still existed, he had to find that Pinto. Old man Otto had said the place was home to a parking lot of derelict vehicles and junk. Otto had also said he hadn’t seen the car anywhere on the road for a very long time. It crossed Frank’s mind that Avery might have stashed the car somewhere on the farm, if he no longer drove it or it wasn’t drivable anymore, or he might have scrapped it. If the car no longer existed that would make things harder. Then again, if it was still around the Pinto could be anywhere on Avery’s property. So Frank would have to search for it.
*****
FRANK PARKED THE TRUCK far enough down the street so it couldn’t be seen from the house and, after pulling his holstered pistol from the glove compartment and snapping it onto his belt under his shirt, he covertly hiked to the farm, hiding behind anything that gave him cover. He took note of the vehicle in the driveway. An older model Ford truck. A faded blue. Another piece of junk by the looks of it, but one that apparently still ran.
Stealthily making his way around to the rear of the structures on the property, his eyes on the doors and windows of the house for sight of anyone watching, he searched through the abandoned junkyard around him crammed with old appliances in different stages of disintegration and surrounded by piles of sticks, limbs and wood. There were discarded vehicles: a rusted out Chevy, a grime-encrusted station wagon with flattened tires that had seen much better days. No Pinto, though.
He stared up at the garage as it loomed before him. As the rest of the property, the garage was a neglected building that leaned too far to one side. The wood was warped and weathered. It appeared as if it could collapse at any minute.
Cautiously, he fought his way through the crowded together trees, the debris and the weeds to the garage. The windows were coated with aged filth and the interior was nothing but a solid gray. Using his fingers to wipe away a circle of grime on the dirty window; cupping his hands around his eyes so he could see inside better, he peeked in. He still couldn’t see a thing. Too dark. Sneaking around the building, he was surprised to discover the side door unlocked, though it stuck midway, something keeping it from opening fully. He squeezed in.
He carried a pen sized flashlight in his pocket and, once inside, he brought it out and switched it on. Directing the small beam of light into the darkness around him, he gasped when it exposed an old Pinto partly covered in a dirty tarp. Yanking the tarp away from the rear fender he noticed the fender was badly dented, the tail light broken. The Pinto was green. A lime green. He’d found the car. There was no doubt in his mind it was the Pinto the woman cashier at the Quick Trip had described as having followed Joel’s car down the rainy road and away from the station that night.
But how to connect it and its owner, Avery Cartwright, to Joel’s disappearance and possible murder was his dilemma. There was no absolute proof whatsoever to tie one with the other. Then an idea came to him.
Leaving the garage, he strolled to the front door of the house; knocked and waited for someone to answer. He didn’t have to wait long. An unkempt man somewhere in his forties opened the door. The man was in a torn and dirty T-shirt and loose fitting jeans. He looked as if he hadn’t had a bath in weeks and smelled like it, too. A short man, he was bone thin, with a scraggly beard and watery blue eyes that had a craziness shining deep inside them. The man’s left eye kept twitching, the hand not on the door jerked at his side. Frank had seen many like him. Drugs. Lots of drugs. That or the man was a mental case. Could be both.
“So, what the hell do you want?” the man demanded in a hoarse voice, looking around Frank to see if Frank was alone. “I don’t cotton to salespeople pestering me at my home. So you better just get the hell off my land.” The man’s teeth, when he talked, were bad, and his eyes shifted from left to right, continuing to check out the vicinity around Frank.
“I’m not a salesman. Are you Avery Cartwright?”
“So what if I am. Who’s asking?”
“My name is Frank Lester. I’m with the police department and I would like to ask you a few questions.” Frank bent the truth a little. Since he worked as a consultant for Sheriff Mearl in Spookie, he was way out of his jurisdiction, but the man in front of him didn’t know that. “Can I come in?”
“Questions about what?” Instantly the man’s attitude became sly, wary, though still as openly hostile. His eyes had formed into slits. His mouth a tight line.
“Let me come inside and I’ll tell you.”
“Show me your badge, Officer. You got a warrant? What do want me for anyway?”
Boy, that sounded like a guilty man.
Frank pulled out his old badge and, fingers covering part of it because it was from Chicago, he waved it in front of the other man’s face for a fraction of a second but shoved it back into his pocket before Avery could zero in on it. “No warrant. I only want to talk to you, that’s all. A nice friendly conversation. But,” Frank let a soft threat enter his voice, “if you don’t want to answer my questions now, here, I could get a warrant and you could come and answer them at the police station.”
Avery paused before surrendering, which to Frank was the sign of a weak man. “Nah, come on in. Make it quick, though. I got stuff to do.” Reluctantly, the man stood aside and allowed Frank to enter.
“Ah, you have a job to get to?” Frank was fairly sure what the answer would be to that question.
“Nah, I’m unemployed at the moment. In between jobs. You know how it is?”
That figured.
Frank wasn’t surprised the inside of the house turned out to be as messy as the outside, worse. It was pure old country squalor. He expected to see a couple of rabid racoons or squirrels come rocketing out from under the heaps of soiled clothes, and piled up trash everywhere, and attack him. Frank had the urge to cover his nose but fought it. There was no place clean enough to sit, so Frank didn’t. He continued to stand in the doorway.
In the meantime, the man who owned the house was glaring at him, his regard becoming more suspicious as time went by. He waved a hand at Frank. “What do you want to ask me? Make it quick, I don’t have all day.”
Frank knew he had to be smart if his plan was to work, so he was careful what he said next and how he said it. He would be taking a chance, yet it was the only way to get the information he needed from Avery.
“I’ve been investigating a crime that happened, oh, about ten years ago or so here in Fairfield. It’s a cold case the police department is hoping to lay to rest and close the books on.”
“A decade old crime?” Avery snapped. “What has that got to do with me?”
“It concerned a neighbor of yours, Joel Sutton–maybe you remember him–who disappeared after leaving the local Quick Trip. Well, he went missing first, for years, and then his corpse was found in his car out in the woods not far from here.”
Frank’s reason for being there seemed to instantly unnerve the man. It stopped him from responding immediately. Frank could almost see the mind behind the blood-shot eyes trying to work out how to answer the cop in front of him–or what lie to use. Frank had interrogated enough guilty people to recognize the veiled guilt in Avery Cartwright’s reactions.
“You knew Joel Sutton, didn’t you? You remember him?”
“Why would you think I knew him? I don’t remember him because I didn’t know him,” Avery said in an irritated voice. The man’s manner had become icy. Subtly threatening. Frank had faced many a cornered felon who exhibited the same angry defiance. The man was sweating. Avery was lying.
Frank’s right hand discreetly moved to rest against the gun clipped at his waist beneath his shirt. He’d be ready to pull his weapon if he had to protect himself.
“That’s odd. The cashier, a woman named Phyliss, who had been working that night at the Quick Trip, and knew Joel well, told me she remembered you being in the store, speaking with Joel. After he left, she said she saw you, driving an old green Pinto with a smashed rear fender, tail his car out onto the highway and follow him down the road. She identified your Pinto–”
The other man furiously cut Frank short. “That wasn’t me. That wasn’t my Pinto. I never owned a green Pinto with a smashed rear fender. I rarely ever went to that Quick Trip. And I don’t know no Phyliss, neither. If you’re trying to pin this thing on me, you’ve got the wrong boy. Wasn’t me.”
Now Frank was sure the man was lying. It was in his nervousness, his eyes. Avery began to inch away from Frank. He had put his right hand into the top of his jeans.
Careful, careful. Does he have a gun on him? He might.
Frank continued to push. “You never owned a lime green Pinto with a dented fender? Really? Then whose green Pinto is that out in the garage back there?”
“What Pinto?”
“The one I discovered under a tarp in your garage.”
That’s when Avery’s attention went to Frank’s right hand, which was poised at Frank’s waist. The other man must have suspected Frank might have had a gun on him as well. Frank being a cop and all. The two men’s eyes met and Frank recognized the fear in Avery’s. He had him.
Frank took a chance, and with a sterner tone in his voice, he pressured, “It was you that night at the Quick Trip who followed Joel Sutton out of the store and it was you who followed his car down the highway? You robbed him, didn’t you?”
Frank went on. “Maybe, you didn’t mean to kill him, right? Just take his money? You’re not really a killer, are you? You can tell me what happened. I’ll understand.”
Avery scowled at him. Frank could practically hear the man’s mind ticking along trying to come up with a plausible excuse, a believable lie. Then the man’s expression became one of weary capitulation. He knew he’d been caught. No way out. Frank was familiar with that look, too.
“That’s right. I’m no killer,” Avery stuttered, his face draining to a sick pallor. “Yeah, it was me that night who drove out behind him. Okay, I did follow him. I kind of hit his car. I didn’t mean to. He slowed down too quickly. It was so rainy, foggy, after all. And...I had been unwell so my brain was fuzzy to begin with. He pulled over on the side of the road to see his car’s damage. I stopped, too. We got into a kind of a...disagreement.”
“He didn’t want to give you his wallet without a fight, huh?”
The glare Avery sent Frank was deadly. Caught. The man’s hand was trembling again. “Maybe. I lost my head. I was strung out, sick, drunk on top of it; didn’t know what I was doing.”
“So...in the unexpected shuffle you...accidently...fatally hurt him? Then you had to hide your crime?”
Avery’s eyes were now desperate. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard with the car jack. I didn’t mean to kill him...you have to believe me. I didn’t know what I was doing, you see. It was an accident!”
“Then why didn’t you call the police, report the death, and tell them that?”
“Well...there was the car jack with, uh, the blood on it.”
Frank couldn’t help it. He winced.
“And I had these priors,” Avery’s ugly voice droned on. “Drugs, you know. Me and the local police were not, are not, friendly, by any stretch.”
“So that’s why you plunged his car, his dead body inside, into the wood’s ravine? To hide evidence of what you’d done?” Frank thought of Abby and what she’d gone through waiting for a husband, a dead husband, to come home for two long years. A husband who would never come home because of this sad excuse for a human being before him. He couldn’t help it, but his anger must have shown. “Murder.”
And that did it. Frank identified the panic, the uncertainty, as it drained the other man’s face. Avery realized in that moment he’d been tricked into confessing a crime he’d probably been running and hiding from for almost a decade. A look spread over the other man’s countenance Frank had also seen many times in his police career. Yet, he wasn’t prepared for what occurred next, so it caught him off guard.
Avery jumped at him, knocked him aside so violently Frank fell to the floor in the doorway; just long enough for the murderer to rush past, through the kitchen, and out the rear door. Frank never had a chance to pull his gun. It had all happened too fast.
Avery was on the run.
As Frank struggled to his feet, though, he felt the familiar dizziness grab at him. Then a dull ache throbbed in his chest and took his breath away for a heartbeat or two. Ignoring the discomfort, he shook off the pain and took off after Avery, chasing him through the dingy kitchen and out the open rear door into the backyard.
Coming around the house, Frank caught a glimpse of Avery scrambling into the truck that had been parked in the driveway. With a noisy spray of gravel and dirt, the truck roared backward out of the driveway and took off down the country road.
Frank, knowing he had to catch Avery or the man would disappear to parts unknown, sprinted for his truck, ignoring the growing pain in his chest, and drove after him. He was far behind before he even started, so he raced to catch up. Good thing there was only one main road going in and out of town. Then there was Avery’s truck in front of him.
He attempted to dig his cell phone out of his pocket so he could call the local police for help, back-up, but he was going too fast and the road was so winding, the phone slipped out of his fingers and scooted away to hide and taunt him from beneath the seat.
“Damn.” There was nothing to do for it. He couldn’t risk stopping to find the phone and he couldn’t slow down, either. He’d lose Avery for sure. He had to keep going.
The wild pursuit was at extremely high speeds. Avery’s driving was erratic. The man’s truck rattled and bumped down the country road, careening off the pavement and onto the shoulders many times before returning to it. Once or twice Frank was afraid Avery’s truck would go off into the trees or into a ditch. It didn’t. Frank kept his vehicle close behind his quarry.
For Frank, heart beating madly in his chest and producing a steady ache, it was like going back in time to when he’d been a cop high-speed chasing the bad guys. It was exhilarating; it was scary as hell. His chest continued to hurt. He should stop. Pull over. Catch his breath and allow his heart to steady. But he couldn’t. Avery would escape and there was no way he was going to let the man escape. No way. “Getting too old for this,” he muttered under his breath as he pushed down harder on the accelerator and his truck surged forward.
The chase didn’t last long. Avery was a terrible driver or, perhaps, he was unwell or on drugs. The two vehicles raced along the narrow country road that wound through the woods on the outside of town. Their speed increased with every mile as they moved upwards, higher and higher.
This is not going to end well. I should stop. I should....
It was on a sharp curve with deep wooded gorges on both sides that Avery lost control of his truck. Frank watched in horror as the Ford, unable to make the curve ahead at the top of the hill, suddenly veered off and plunged into the chasm on its right; vanishing into a black hole on the side of the road.
Frank brought his truck to a screeching stop, jumped out, and hurried to the edge of the chasm. Looked over. He got there just in time to see Avery’s truck hit the far distant bottom of the tree-filled gorge, explode and burst into flames.
For a second, Frank mulled over trying to get down to the burning truck and see if he could pull Avery from it. If he could save him. But the burning vehicle was too far down and the decline was too steep for him to even attempt descending. There was nothing he could do but watch and say a prayer for Avery. There was no doubt the man inside the vehicle below could not have made it out alive. Avery Cartwright was dead. As dead as Joel.
It wasn’t the way he’d planned on the investigation ending, but, at least, Frank knew the man burning in the truck below had been the one who’d robbed and killed, either by accident as Avery had claimed, or on purpose, Abigail’s husband a decade ago. A wave of guilt washed over him. Avery Cartwright was dead now because of him. He hadn’t intended for the man to try to escape, crash and die, but then karma, fate, was a fickle and cruel mistress. Avery had been Joel’s killer. He’d gotten what he deserved. Frank still felt badly for what had happened and his unintentional part in it. A life was precious, even one as reprehensible as Avery’s.
Frank walked back to his vehicle, located his cell phone on the floor under the seat, and called Chief Alex Dunham to report the accident. Then he’d drive back to the police station, tell Dunham everything and let him and his officers deal with the wreck, disposal of the remains, help him fill out the paperwork; close the case on Joel Sutton’s murder. Later, when he got home, he would have to find a way to tell Abby what had happened. He just prayed she wouldn’t be too upset at him for doing what she hadn’t wanted him to do, which had been to search for and find Joel’s murderer and then accidently cause the man’s death.
The ache in his chest had subsided. The dizziness had evaporated. So he convinced himself it had been an unusually acute panic attack because of the circumstances. Stuffing down too much food too quickly at too many queasy spoon restaurants. Cornering a potential killer. Participating in a death defying high speed chase. Adrenalin spike off the charts. No wonder why his chest had ached. Silencing the inner voice sending off alarms, he told himself he was fine.
A little shaky, he drove to the Fairfield police station.
Before he drove away, after he’d been interviewed and the paperwork had been completed, Chief Dunham made the comment, “When you left the other day I reread the police report on Joel Sutton’s body’s discovery eight years ago in his car in that gorge. Funny thing, you know, Avery’s truck crashed and burnt practically in the same spot or close to it where Joel’s had crashed and been found. Only a quarter mile past it, I’d say, no more. Talk about poetic justice. Strange, huh?”
“Yeah, strange.” But, on second thought, Frank didn’t believe it was that strange after all. Fate sometimes had an ironic way of claiming its justice. Avery had killed Joel and he’d ended up dead almost in the same place. It’d taken ten years, but Avery had finally paid for the crime he’d so heartlessly committed against Joel Sutton.
*****
ABIGAIL WAS BEGINNING to worry about Frank. It was nearly dark and he still wasn’t home, which wasn’t like him. He hadn’t left her a note saying where he was going, which also wasn’t like him. She’d called him three times and left messages. He hadn’t answered any of them.
The heat of the day had dissipated and she breathed in the cooler evening air. Her thoughts were clicking off the domestic chores she’d completed that day, the concentrated work she’d accomplished earlier on the Theiss house paintings at her kitchen table, and what she was going to do the following day. She was going to return to 707 Suncrest to initiate another painting. The place was beckoning her and she could no longer stay away. Her fingers itched to draw and paint. If it hadn’t been so gloomy, swirling shadows dancing around everywhere, she might have driven over there that very minute. Looking out the kitchen window, she knew it was too dark already. If it had been an hour earlier, she could have gone.
She had an epiphany. Tomorrow she could paint a rendition of the so-called haunted house in the dusk of the day with smudgy shadows crowding around it, the evening sun a pale ghost in the sky behind the structure, and a diffusion of that soft golden light only found as the day was dying. Early twilight. Fireflies twinkling all around the house and in the trees. What a painting that would make. She could already envision it in her mind. That’s when she made the decision to visit the Theiss house tomorrow right before dusk instead of early in the morning. She wanted that twilight version more than another daylight one. So far she’d finished three paintings of 707 Suncrest in the sunlight and one in a storm. It was time to get one cloaked in the shroud of pre-night.
Nick wasn’t home from band practice yet, so she was alone with the dogs and Snowball. She sat rocking on the front porch, her eyes glued to the end of the driveway. Her whole body tingled with a growing dread. Frank, where are you? Why haven’t you called me back? Why haven’t you answered my calls and messages? Come home. Come. Home.
Since she’d spent the day shopping and doing household chores, she was pleasantly weary. Snowball was snuggled in her lap, sleeping. Earlier she’d let the dogs out to run free around the house, but had corralled them in the fenced in backyard. They were whining, barking, waiting for Frank to come home, too.
Where was he?
She tried telephoning him again, but just as the call went through his truck drove into the driveway. About time. She cut the call off.
“Waiting up for me, huh?” He came up on the porch and dropped into the chair beside her.
“Where have you been, Frank?” There was enough radiance left in the dwindling day for her to see the exhaustion, the reluctance of what he had to tell her, on his face.
“Frank?”
He leaned over, kissed her gently, and took her hand in his. “I have a story to tell you. I want you to just sit here beside me and let me tell it to you. All of it. Don’t say anything until I’m done. Please?”
She was scared. There was something in his manner that told her whatever he had to say was something she wouldn’t like hearing. “What’s wrong? What has happened?”
“Until I’m done,” he whispered once more, squeezing her hand.
She dipped her head in a calculated nod.
Then, as they sat on the porch and night fell over them, she listened to what he needed to tell her. His story was something she could never have guessed. It utterly stunned her.
When he was finished, he’d told her everything, she lowered her head into her hands and softly cried. Not for what Frank had done, following the leads that Bracco had had in his dossier when she’d asked him not to, not for discovering that someone had actually murdered Joel; not for Avery Cartwright’s due punishment and death–but for the memories and love she’d once had for her first husband. Her tears were also for the memory of the pain she’d gone through when Joel had gone missing and when his dead body had been found. She wept for the brutal and lonely way she now knew Joel had died; for times past. Love lost.
“You took a terrible chance, Frank,” she whispered, a touch of anger flaring and just as swiftly dwindling away. She was just so grateful he was okay. Unhurt. That was all that mattered now. “You could have been killed at Cartwright’s hands or during that car chase. You could have left me a widow.” Again.
“I wasn’t killed. I’m fine.” He slid his chair closer to hers, turned sideways in it, and put his arms around her.
She leaned against his shoulder, not saying anything else for a time, allowing her tears to subside. There were so many questions swirling around in her head she didn’t know which one to ask first. After all this time to learn that Joel had been murdered. It hadn’t been an accident. And now...the man who’d killed him was also dead. It was almost more than she could grasp. The mystery of her first husband’s death, after all this time, had been solved.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said gently, “for going behind your back. It all went down so fast. I never thought I’d find the answers so quickly. Then what came after just happened.”
She sighed against his shoulder, tilted her head up and murmured, “Kind of ironic, don’t you think, that Joel’s killer ended up not far from where Joel had been found?”
“I thought so, too. More than ironic.”
“So the past has come full circle now,” she said, trying to hide the sudden melancholy she felt. A man, murderer or not, had died after all. Two deaths where there had once been just one.
“It has. But the good thing is, perhaps now you can finally put Joel’s death to rest...put it behind you...forever.”
Her eyes still on him in the dim light of the porch, she again nodded. She realized, for the first time since Joel had gone missing and been found deceased in that woodsy ravine, the burden had been lifted from her heart and soul. After all these years.
And, it occurred to her, there was an extra bonus with the unexpected turn of events. Avery Cartwright was dead. So there’d be no arrest. No media circus to ruin their lives. No trial to rehash all the horrible memories of the past for her. That was a blessing in itself.
As if he’d been reading her mind, he said, “I never intended to be the death of Avery Cartwright. I’m sorry for it. But, on the other hand, there won’t be a trial. You won’t have to relive his crime and Joel’s death. Sit in a courtroom and look at the man responsible for it.”
“That is true. I’m grateful for that. And thank you for solving Joel’s murder. The dreams I still have of him might stop now. He has his justice.”
“He has his justice.”
Frank pulled her from the chair, holding her tightly against him, he kissed her. Out in the space beyond the porch the night insects and frogs were singing. Their music was sweet. The fog had moved in and was hiding the rest of the world. She thought: I’m really tired. It’s time to go in. Time to rest.
“Let’s go in,” Frank said. “It’s been a day. I could sure use a cup of our famous coffee. Do you have a pot ready?”
“You know I do.”
The two of them went in the cabin and left the night music, the fog, the day and the world behind them.