Stonebrook Cottage (29 page)

Henry shook his head. "No way."

"Sorry, kid. That's the way it's going to be."

Henry fumed but didn't argue. Lillian scooted up onto her knees and sat down with a plop, dangling her feet over the side of the platform. Kara shuddered at the thought of the two of them hauling wood and nails and junk up there, the plunge to the gravel pit just one wrong step away.

"You'll be all right walking back on your own?" Sam asked her.

"Of course. This is Connecticut. No lions, no tigers, not many bears and just one kind of rattlesnake."

He didn't even come close to smiling. "You've known all along Walter Harrison followed Henry and Lillian to Texas."

"I knew they
thought
someone followed them. I didn't know if it was for real, and I sure as hell didn't know it was Wally."

"I could have checked out their story. Jack could have followed up—" But he bit off a sigh. "We'll go there later. You'll be all right?"

She refused to give in to the quiver of fear she felt and tilted her head back, nodding. "I'll carry a stick and remember my self-defense lessons. You keep the gun." She forced a smile. "You might need it with those two."

"Kara—"

"I can shoot a target," she said quickly, "not a real person. I don't have your experience or training."

His eyes sparked. "A Galway admitting to a weakness?"

She almost smiled. "Who says it's a weakness?"

"Be careful." He touched her lips, then started up the rickety ladder. "I'm coming up. You two try knocking me out of this tree, it'll just piss me off."

They didn't protest, and no rocks fell on his head. Kara started through the low undergrowth along the edge of the pit, stopping partway down the hill to call Hatch on his cell phone. "We found the kids. They're fine. I'll be there in a few minutes." She hesitated. "I need to talk to Allyson."

"Henry and Lillian aren't with you?"

"They're with Sam. Look, I can't tramp through the woods and talk at the same time. I'll break my fool neck. Billie's at the cottage—she'll want to know the kids are safe. See you soon."

He sputtered, but Kara disconnected, continuing down the hill. She thought of Pete Jericho's body sprawled at the bottom of the gravel pit and kept her eyes open for the biggest stick she could find.

* * *

The tree house held Sam's weight—not because of its quality construction but because Henry and Lillian didn't weigh as much as a pair of gnats. They seemed impressed by his mobility and agility in getting up there and swinging over to them. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the platform closest to the gravel pit.

Lillian gazed at him thoughtfully. "Are you an Indian?"

"Why do you ask? Because I can climb a tree?"

She giggled, no sign she and her brother had just run off in a blind panic. "Henry and I were just wondering. I have a friend at school whose father's Narraganset. He's awesome. My friend's name is Brook. Isn't that a pretty name?"

"My father is Cherokee," Sam said, surprising himself. "He's a painter. I've never known him."

"Is he dead?" Henry asked. He was standing, leaning casually against a branch, close to the oak's trunk, no indication he was aware of the gaping hole of the gravel pit to his left.

Sam shook his head. "He and my mother were divorced before I was born. He moved to New Mexico, and she never told him about me."

"My dad's dead." Lillian was matter-of-fact, neither cavalier nor morose. "I don't remember him. Henry does, a little."

Her brother's brow furrowed as he thought a moment. "I remember riding on his back when we went swimming."

"Your mother's never remarried," Sam said, neutral.

Lillian sighed heavily, dramatically. "I think she wants to marry Pete, but she's worried about us."

"Lillian!" Henry groaned in disgust. "It's a secret." He turned to Sam, speaking gravely. "Mom doesn't think we know."

"I won't say anything unless I have no choice," Sam said. "Kids always know more than the adults around them think they do. I'll bet nobody realizes what all you know about Walter Harrison. Did you think he was from Texas?"

"We didn't know. We never saw him before, not until he followed us around at the dude ranch." Henry looked at his fingers, a white, bloodless scrape along the side of one hand, probably from scrambling up the oak. "I saw him first. I didn't want to scare Lillian, but I had to warn her. Then she saw him, too."

"Sometimes he wore disguises," she added.

Sam pictured these two kids, mourning their friend, isolated at a Texas dude ranch thousands of miles from home. "You didn't say anything to your counselors—"

"Kara asked us that, too," Henry said. "No, we were too scared."

"Because you'd seen Governor Parisi drown from up here?"

They both nodded, saying nothing more.

Sam suspected there was more, suspected Kara did as well, but he could see how frightened and troubled these kids were, how difficult it was to get them to talk. "You're sure it was Walter Harrison in Texas?"

"Yes! We
saw
him." Lillian managed to be defensive, excited and indignant, all at once. "He parked in front of Aunt Kara's next-door neighbor's house. We saw him get out. He was smoking a cigarette."

"It was the same guy," Henry said calmly.

"When did you see him at Kara's house? Do you remember the time?"

Henry glanced down at him in that Prince of Wales way he had. "We looked out the window when you were there and saw him. I wasn't going to say anything, but after you left, Lillian went and got Aunt Kara."

"Kara saw him?"

"Only his car. He drove away while we were watching."

Sam kept his reaction to himself. He was right there, on Kara's porch, and her two godchildren were in her bedroom scared out of their minds, the man who'd followed them from the ranch a few yards from Sam's car. If he'd known, he could have acted that night.

But Kara didn't realize that her runaways believed they had a man following them until after Sam left. It was only a small point in her favor, because when she found out and saw how terrified Henry and Lillian were, she smuggled them over to Kevin and Eva Dun-ning's, then to San Antonio and on to Boston and Stone-brook Cottage.

It wasn't what he'd have done, Sam thought.

He got out his cell phone. "If I can get through from up here, I'd like to make a call to Jack Galway, Kara's brother. He's another Texas Ranger."

"We know," Lillian said. "We met him a long time ago."

Sam wondered what a long time ago was to an eleven-year-old. He dialed Jack's number in San Antonio.

"What's up?" Jack asked.

"I need you to check on a retired Bluefield, Connecticut, cop by the name of Walter Harrison— find out if he's been in Texas in the last week or so. Probably flew into Austin, maybe San Antonio. He could have stayed somewhere near the Stockwell kids' dude ranch."

Jack was silent a moment. "Where are you?"

"You don't want to know," Sam said. "Harrison probably also rented a car."

"That's all I'm getting?"

"For now. I'll get back to you when I have more."

"My sister?"

"Like I told your mother-in-law, up to her ass in the lion's mouth. I think that's the way she's used to living. I'm doing what I can."

"I'm catching a flight in the morning," his lieutenant said and disconnected before Sam could try to argue with him.

He stretched out his legs along the edge of the platform. "You have a nice view from up here. One pair of binoculars between you?"

"I have my own," Lillian said, "but I dropped them and lost them."

"That's too bad."

She seemed to think so, too. "Big Mike taught us how to recognize bluebirds. Do you know they're related to robins?"

"I'm learning a lot about bluebirds," Sam said.

"Big Mike said they like mealworms." Lillian made a face. "That is so gross."

Henry shared her distaste. "He tried to get Grandma to feed mealworms to her bluebirds, but she said no."

"She has bluebirds?"

"Uh-huh." Lillian nodded vigorously. "Big Mike got her to put up boxes, and two bluebirds built a nest and had babies this spring. They were so fun to watch."

"
Two
sets of babies," her brother said.

She sighed. "Grandma says she can't get worked up about bluebirds."

"I'll bet your friend, Governor Parisi, was excited about them," Sam said.

"Oh,
yes.
" Lillian beamed, then her eyes filled with tears that she bravely blinked back. "I miss him so, so much."

Sam nodded. "I know you do."

Neither child spoke, and Sam realized there was no need to have them confirm or deny what they all now knew. Henry and Lillian Stockwell, ages twelve and eleven, saw their friend fight for his life from their tree house.

"After the accident on the Fourth of July, it must have been pretty scary out here that day." Sam kept his tone calm and neutral. "But you saw someone else, too, didn't you? Someone besides Governor Parisi and the state troopers who pulled him out of the water."

Lillian gasped. "How did you know?"

But her brother dropped down beside her and shoved her by the shoulder. "Shut up, Lillian! Don't say anything."

Sam glanced down at the gravel pit, the vertical drop deadly, Henry and Lillian's initial reason, he thought, for not telling anyone about their little project. Maybe it was why they'd picked this tree, because they knew it was dangerous and the preoccupied adults in their lives wouldn't approve.

"You haven't told anyone who you saw, not even your Aunt Kara." He kept his gaze leveled on the gravel pit, not on the two kids. He didn't want them to make any assumptions about what he was thinking because of how he looked at them, a wrong gesture, a leap of logic on their part. He needed them, simply, to tell him what they saw that day. "That's a big burden. I'd like to share it. I don't know anyone from Connecticut except you two—I can be objective. I won't jump to any conclusions."

Lillian whispered to her brother, "We should tell him."

"He's not a lawyer," Henry said. "Aunt Kara says he can't arrest anybody outside of Texas, but he'll tell the police—"

"What if we're wrong? What if Uncle Hatch—"

"Lillian!"

She started to cry, and Sam shifted, saw that Henry was close to tears himself. "Hey, you two." His voice was gentle, more so than he expected. "Relax. I left my thumbscrews in Texas."

Lillian tried to smile, wiping her tears with her forearm. "I don't know what a thumbscrew is."

Sam smiled. "I don't know if I do, either. Look, you don't have to tell me anything. We can sit here and wait for Kara to call or come back and fetch us, or you can tell me where you want to go, and I'll take you there."

Henry sniffled, sitting on the platform with his back to Sam, his feet hanging over the edge. He kicked out one leg and put his sneakered toe on a high, skinny branch. "Uncle Hatch and Big Mike were fighting. I saw them through my binoculars. They weren't punching each other, but they were really mad. They were out by the pool."

"I saw them, too," Lillian said quietly.

"Did they fight often that you know of?" Sam asked.

"All the time," Henry said, "but not like this. Uncle Hatch thumped Big Mike on the chest. I thought one of his security guards would come out and tell Uncle Hatch to leave, but nothing happened."

"But Big Mike never touched Hatch?"

Henry shook his head. Lillian, her ashen face smeared with tears and dirt, fastened her big blue eyes on Sam. "Uncle Hatch stomped off. He was still mad. I could tell."

"At first we thought it was funny," her brother admitted.

"Because you were up here spying on them—"

"Yeah."

"How long before you saw Governor Parisi in the pool?"

"I don't know," Henry said, his back still to Sam. "We ate snacks and stuff. Then I heard something down on the hill, and I got my binoculars. I thought it was just a deer—it might have been a deer."

"This was
before
Governor Parisi was in the water?"

Henry nodded. "I saw him a couple of minutes later. He was already in the water. I was still looking for the deer, so I didn't see how he fell in."

"Henry screamed," Lillian said, "and I was so scared I almost fell, but I looked in my binoculars, and I—I— I saw—" She couldn't say it.

Sam brushed a knuckle over a fat tear on her cheek. "It's okay, kiddo. You can cry."

"Mom doesn't like us to cry," Henry said stiffly. "She says it makes her cry, too."

"Is that what she said, or is that what you think?"

The boy turned his face toward Sam, tears dripping down his cheeks and off his jaw onto his shirt. "I know it."

Sam nodded. "When you saw Governor Parisi in the pool, did you climb down and run to help him?"

"We didn't have our cell phones," Lillian said, as if all kids carried cell phones up to their tree houses. "We couldn't call 911, so we ran as fast as we could—"

"The security guards were already there when we got to the bottom of the hill." Henry reached up with both hands, grabbed a thick branch above his head and pulled himself easily to his feet. Then he wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. His eyes were puffy, but he seemed calmer, less defiant. "They didn't see us. We stayed in the woods."

"It was really, really hot," Lillian said, "and there were
millions
of mosquitoes."

Sam pulled one knee up to his chest, picturing these two kids on that hot summer day. "So you decided not to stick around. You didn't see him fall. The state troopers were dealing with the situation. There wasn't anything you could do."

"We didn't want to be in the way," Lillian said.

"And you didn't want to have to talk to the police and have everybody tramp up here and find out about your tree house. You were afraid you'd get into trouble." Sam leaned back against the tree trunk. "I understand what you were thinking. What happened on your way back up here?"

Lillian was blinking rapidly, uncertain of what she should say. "It wasn't an accident," she whispered. "What happened to Big Mike—it wasn't an accident. Somebody pushed him. That's what we heard in the woods. It wasn't a stupid deer."