Alone (A Bone Secrets Novel) (19 page)

“Maybe a trusted parent told them their mother was dead,” speculated Michael. “Have you seen your mother’s death certificate?”

Her brain shot into jet speed as she froze. She’d never seen a death certificate. She’d never doubted her adoptive parents’ word. Victoria couldn’t speak.

Awareness flowed in Michael’s gaze as he took in her silence. “I’m sorry. My nature is to question everything. Doesn’t matter the source. If I hear it from one person, I need to have it verified by two other people or sources.”

“My parents wouldn’t lie to me,” Victoria choked out. But her mind was racing in circles.
Would her parents lie to her? Parents lie to children all the time.

“I know what you mean,” said Trinity. “My mother and grandmother told me my birth father was dead. When I was placed with Katy, I had her look into it. He wasn’t dead. He was in prison and had signed off all rights. After a lot of time with my therapist, I made the decision not to get to know him. He didn’t seem like the type of person I wanted influencing my life.”

Katy wrapped an arm around the girl and gave her a warm hug. Trinity rested her head on Katy’s shoulder for a brief second, her eyes sad.

Trinity may have made her decision, Victoria thought, but obviously it was a hard one. It must haunt her daily.

Now will I always wonder? Did my parents lie to me? Could my birth parents still be alive?

Her thoughts must have been plain on her face, because Seth spoke.

“We’ll help you find out.”

“Thank you,” Victoria said. A bit of guilt prickled at her, because she doubted the people who’d raised her. Both had passed away more than a decade ago, but she still thanked them every day for giving her a good upbringing.

“It’s okay to wonder,” Trinity said. “You’re human.”

“It’s not that,” said Victoria. “It’s making me doubt everything my adoptive parents told me. And that doesn’t sit well with me. They were good people.” She felt a tear run from the corner of her eye. She wiped at it. Her defenses were crumbling. And she couldn’t blame it on a single slow glass of wine. “Oregon has a law that anyone over twenty-one can request their original birth certificate with their birth parents’ names on it. In adoptions, the
original birth certificates are sealed. I requested mine a few years back.” She took a long shaky breath. “But the state said they have no record of mine. My parents had died by then, so I had no one to ask about it. I’ve just gone on with the identity they built for me. All I know is my adoption was arranged through a tiny church that my parents attended for a while in Seaport, near the coast.”

“Ah, shit. I’m sorry, Victoria,” Michael said, dismay clouding his face. “Have you contacted the church to ask for their personal records?”

She noticed he didn’t call her “Vicki,” the nickname he used to poke at her. That was truly a heartfelt apology from Michael Brody. She didn’t know who she was. She had no record of who her birth parents were. The state couldn’t find a record of her adoption, and she’d taken her adoptive parents at their word. “No,” she whispered.
Why hadn’t she? She’d thought about doing it but never followed through. Was she scared they’d have no record either?

Seth transferred her hand into his other one and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close on the couch. Victoria didn’t fight it. In fact, she wanted to lay her head on his shoulder like Trinity had done with Katy. A huge wave of emotions bubbled up in her throat. Embarrassment at crying in front of six people, doubt about her parents, confusion over Seth, relief that Lacey and Trinity were okay, anger over the break-in.

If anyone deserved a second glass of wine, she did.

Mason rubbed at the back of his neck.
Holy shit, they’d been lucky.

Gunfire in a large crowd rarely ended well. But everyone was breathing a sigh of relief that the gunman had been tackled and arrested immediately by the police present. His department wasn’t handling the case. The shooter was probably lucky that the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office had him. Judging by Ray’s scowl, he would have slowly torn off the young punk’s limbs.

Ray pounded on his keyboard, probably imagining it was the face of the teen who was presently being grilled by the county police.

What had the kid been thinking?

One of the county detectives had told Mason that the teen’s friends were the ones who’d initially disarmed him. They didn’t know if the kid actually intended to shoot someone or just show off. It didn’t matter to Mason. An event that big would guarantee that several people were carrying concealed. In addition to the fifty officers who were present, Mason guessed there were another twenty handgun carriers in the crowd. Legitimate, law-abiding citizens. He had no beef with them. He fully respected the public’s right to arm themselves. But not a stupid teenager’s rights, who pulled out a gun in the middle of a crowd.

“You’re shaking your head,” Ray said from his desk.

“Fucking idiot.”

“You’re reading my mind.”

“It could have been a disaster. One on the news for the next two weeks.”

Ray snorted. “No point in worrying about what could have happened.” His desk phone rang and he picked it up. “Lusco.”

Mason directed his focus back to the Forest Park girls. They were getting nowhere fast. Lorenzo Cavallo’s death and the theft at the ME’s office had to be related to the original case, but forensics was still processing the evidence and so far hadn’t found any obvious leads. Rory Gibbs would be in tomorrow to talk to them about the girls from his English class, but Mason didn’t have high hopes for the interview.

What were they missing?

Maybe they should take another look at the cult theory. But there weren’t any underground whispers. Usually if a group is involved, someone starts talking. There’d been one freak who’d come forward, saying it was related to an invisible spacecraft passing by the earth. He’d meant to catch a ride that night, but had drank too much to remember to kill himself. Now he’d
missed his ride and they wouldn’t be back for another fifty years. Mason had read the statement and nearly rolled on the floor. God bless the cop who’d taken it and managed to write it up without inserting a single ounce of sarcasm.

He still snickered about it at odd moments.

He knew cults thrived. They didn’t have to be large. They just needed a group of impressionable people and a charismatic leader. There was a mansion on several acres outside of one of the hick towns on the edge of the Portland tri-county area. Mason had heard the rumors of the large number of people living there. Locals were nosy and gossipy, saying that the people never left the estate, kept to themselves, and had all their supplies trucked in.

The rumors grew so large that the local sheriff finally paid a friendly visit. He’d found an old couple who simply kept to themselves. No masses of live-ins. No orgies or drugs. Two old people who’d decided to build themselves a fabulous home. And rescue cats. But they didn’t put them up for adoption. They kept them all. The place was crawling with cats. Supplies were trucked in. Mainly cat litter and cat food. A small group of staff received room and board to care for the cats. Mason liked cats. Just not that many cats.

He wondered if the mansion smelled.

He shuffled the papers on his desk, glancing at the clock. Nearly 9
P.M.
He was hitting that wall of uselessness where his mind wandered and nothing got done. Time to leave for the night. Things had slowed to a stall on the girls. The search for the girls’ cell phones had turned up nothing. The cell phone carriers were all cooperating. But the girls’ phones had stopped sending signals before they died. Someone had the forethought to remove the batteries. Last locations were all near Forest Park. Ray had run a comparison on the text and cell numbers from the
different carriers, looking for common numbers. The girls had called and texted each other, but there didn’t seem to be another common number that was unaccounted for.

How had they communicated with the organizer?

Mason had a mental image of the organizer as a tall thin man, walking away from the circle of unmoving girls; their shoes, phones, and purses in his bag.

Two girls had home landlines. No common calls.

Their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and what-the-fuck-other social media accounts had been searched. No flags were found outside of the girls all being “friends.” Some of the girls had more than a thousand friends, which blew Mason’s mind. Ray informed him that teens often didn’t actually know their “friends.” They just gobbled up friend invitations from friends of their friends, trying to build an impressive number.

An ego boost. That was a concept Mason understood.

Ray had also pointed out that most social media messages could easily be deleted. But would all six girls be consistent with their deletions? Somewhere there had to be a digital footprint left by one of the girls that would point to their killer.

The computer forensics guys were searching the home computers and laptops for evidence, but they didn’t expect results for at least another week. The amount of data had to be overwhelming.

The remaining public memorial services had been canceled. No one wanted a repeat of today. The community couldn’t mourn when they were checking the stranger next to them to see if he carried a weapon. The tragedy of the day had escalated to a whole new level. Because of some punk teen.

Ray hung up his phone. “That was Clackamas County. They haven’t been able to talk much to the kid they arrested. They’re waiting on his lawyer.”

Mason sighed. “He’s said nothing?”

“Nothing. But his buddy is talking.”

That got Mason’s attention. “And?”

“The kid with the gun is Kyle Carey. He went to school with Glory McCarthy. His buddy says Kyle was interested in McCarthy, but the two had never connected.”

“Interested? Like he had a crush on her?”

“Yeah, that’s the impression I got. Anyway, the friend saw Kyle pull the gun out of his coat during the service. That’s when the scuffle started. He’d told him to put it away and the other kid refused. Other people around Kyle argued with him, too, but Kyle wouldn’t listen. So the friend tried to wrestle it away.”

“Aw, shit. Seriously?”

“That’s when the shot was fired.”

“Christ, that could have killed someone!”

“The friend thinks his own finger was on the trigger when the gun was fired. County says he’s pretty shook up that he’ll receive the blame for the shot being fired.”

“That’s why you don’t grab at someone’s gun in a crowd.” Mason shook his head. The kid had good intentions, but sometimes the best intentions don’t work out the way you want. Sometimes someone dies. “Did the friend say why Kyle had a gun?”

Ray frowned. “That’s where it gets a bit odd. The friend—his name is Jason—thinks Kyle brought it, hoping to figure out the person responsible for Glory’s death.”

“What? Kyle knows something that we don’t?”
Who on earth did Kyle expect to see?

“Jason said Kyle got really agitated when he spotted a girl at the service. That’s when words were exchanged and the gun came out.”

“This sounds more like an argument over another girl instead of Kyle wanting to shoot whoever he thinks killed Glory McCarthy.”

Ray nodded and he gave a grim smile. “Ready for the twist?”

“Ah fuck, another one?”

“Kyle got agitated when he spotted Trinity Viders.”

Mason was silent as his mind did laps trying to catch up to Ray’s statement. “Our Trinity? The girl with Victoria Peres?”

Ray nodded. “That’s the one.”

“She was at the service?”

“According to this Jason kid.”

Mason stared at Ray. “Think Trinity might have more to tell us?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“What the hell happened?” The old man tried not to shout on the phone.

The reports of the shooting were all over the late-night news. He stared at his TV, a graphic of the memorial service overlaid with a gun hung behind the newscaster’s left shoulder. The female newscaster frowned as she related the story, her disapproval ringing in her tone.
… a teenager pulled out a gun in the middle of a packed crowd saying farewell to Glory McCarthy…