The Broken (The Apostles) (17 page)

“Jason and I had a few good times,” she said with an obvious fondness for the child who had been her brother. Kate had a huge capacity for feeling, for caring. Hayden had seen it in her “Justice for All” reports and in her interaction with Smokey. And she wore those feelings for all the world to see. If Maeve were here, she’d say he could learn a lesson or two from Kate.

His hand stilled when it reached the pink dragon, which lay on the ground, a silver knife arrowed in its breast.

“The dragon never got past the gate,” he said softly.

“Not in Happily Ever After.”

Which is where this visit should end. Hayden switched out the light and shut the door on a little piece of Kate’s heart.

As they made their way down the steps, he marveled not only at her ability to express what was in her heart but at her artistic talent. He knew from his investigation into her past that she had no formal art training, but having lived years with Marissa, a trained artist, he knew good art. He also knew how that mural made him feel. He’d bought into the magic in her whimsical fairies and unicorns and celebrated the victory over the pink dragon. Kate’s fairyland went deeper; it was something that moved one’s soul.

You don’t have a soul.
Marissa’s words.

Sometimes he felt soulless, detached from mind and heart and something deeper. But he had to in his line of work. He was the team’s head guy. Hatch called him the Professor, and Parker and the rest of the team turned to him when they needed unbiased and analytical observation. He could get into the head of a criminal because he had the ability to turn off his own mind, and in order to deal with those horrors he needed some level of detachment.

With Kate more at peace than she’d been all morning, they left the house and made their way to the car when a screech sounded from under the porch.

“Look, Hayden. It’s Jason’s cat.” Two yellow eyes shifted in the shadows. Kate held out her hand and made a soft
titch
ing sound. The cat took a furtive step toward her. “She looks horrible. I wonder when she last ate.” The mangy cat, a mottled mix of orange, brown, and yellow, continued to inch forward.

A uniformed officer walked by. “Hey, there’s Ellie.” The officer made soft clicking noises toward the porch skirt. “We’ve been trying to get her for days. Here kitty, kitty.”

Jason’s cat ran into the shadows.

Chapter Eleven

Saturday, June 13, 11:30 a.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado

S
hayna Thomas’s eighty-three-year-old grandmother held out her blue-veined hand, raining dirt on her granddaughter’s casket. That old hand shook, as did her stooped shoulders as she tried to hold back tears in eyes full of heart-shredding sadness. This was one fucked-up world when a grandma had to throw clods of dirt on one of her grandbabies’ graves.

Lottie shifted in her seat in the back row of chairs next to gravesite 154-B. Eleven more of CSPD’s finest, dressed in their Sunday best, were planted at and near the Forest Lawn Cemetery, the final resting place of Shayna Thomas. Her boys had also been at the Alleluia Lutheran Church looking for Shayna Thomas’s killer.

Five days had passed since they’d found Thomas’s bloody body and five days since Lottie had sworn to find the SOB who was fucking with her town.

Right now they didn’t have much. The fingerprints on the window were run through IAFIS, the FBI’s mother of a database. No matches. She was still waiting on the DNA from the ejaculate. Contrary to all those cop shows her twelve-year-old grandson liked to watch, it took weeks, sometimes months, to get DNA results. They had that size ten shoeprint of the ugly orange- and yellow-striped shoes. And they had the woman’s orthotic shoeprint.

All that added up to a whole lot of nothing.

The mourners at the gravesite stood and sang a song about walking in the shadow of death and fearing no evil. Lottie didn’t fear the evil that had invaded her town. She despised it. She wanted to grab it by the balls and twist. Hard.

When the music died away, the mourners filed out, and Lottie met with Detective Traynor at one of the parking lot exits.

“You see anything, Hayseed?” Lottie asked.

Traynor shook his head. “We’re taking down plates, though.”

Lottie took the two-way out of her purse and radioed her other men. Nothing at the other exit. Zilch at the park across the street and the office building on the corner. Her radio squawked.

“Got a man at the gravesite,” one of her men said with a catch in his voice. “Jogger.”

A jogger in a cemetery? Pretty damned creepy. “You close enough for an ID?” Lottie asked.

There was a pause. “Yellow and orange shoes. Zebra-striped.”

Lottie hiked up her dress and sprinted past the pond with its two white swans, past the veterans’ section with its proud flags, and past a gazebo with swirly benches. A hundred yards into her sprint, the heel of her right black satin three-inch pump snapped off. She kicked off her left shoe, sending it through the air like a sleek black missile.

The center of her chest ached, and her lungs throbbed. Her fat old ass wasn’t up to this, but her heart was. She outran the pain, including the stab from a rock that sliced her instep. She reached the gravesite, where one of her officers had a man on the ground, his face pressed against the dry grass. She dropped to her knees. Grabbing him by the hair, she spun him toward her, ready to go face-to-face with evil.

But she got a shock. Evil didn’t stare at her, fear did.

*  *  *

Saturday, June 13, 6:30 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

Why weren’t people staring at her?

Kate had spent all day with Hayden, meeting and interviewing people who knew Jason. She steeled herself for pointed stares and whispered talk, but today no one blinked twice at her scars. Was it because she wore the makeup and scarf? Or was it because all of Dorado Bay was focused on another monster?

“I can’t believe Jason is the Broadcaster Butcher,” Jason’s postal carrier had said. “He was always so kind, even helped me get my truck out of the snow one day.”

Likewise, Jason’s neighbors, pastor, and coworkers didn’t give her a second look, but they had plenty to say about Jason, everything from he enjoyed taking long hikes by himself to he didn’t hang out at bars or clubs. What they didn’t say was where Jason may be hiding.

“He never strayed far from home,” Ike Iverson, Jason’s pastor, had said. “He was dedicated to his mother and his work at Hope Academy.”

Hayden, for all the dead ends, kept going with an efficient doggedness Kate had come to expect from him. She also found comfort in it. Hayden would not stop until his mission was accomplished. If she ever needed to move heaven and earth, she knew who to call.

“You’re smiling,” Hayden said.

She sat in the passenger seat of the rental car as he slipped the key into the ignition, ready to pull out of the parking lot of Pastor Iverson’s Living Waters Church. “Does my smile bother you?”

Hayden was such a serious sort, all work and no play. Even when she’d been focused on her broadcasting career, she took time off to play. She indulged her creative side with her jewelry and her adventurous side with scenic motorcycle rides. She squinted, trying to picture Hayden on her motorcycle. No. It would mess up his hair and wrinkle his suit.

“It’s an anomaly,” he explained, referring to her smile.

“And you notice anomalies?”

“I notice everything about you, Kate.”

Her heart did a stutter-step as the space between them seemed to shrink. She heard the beat of his heart, breathed in spicy cinnamon, and felt a sudden heat. Surely he felt it, too. And then she remembered who this man was. He dealt in facts, not feelings, and any sensory overload was clearly one-sided, as he hadn’t budged. Hell, he hadn’t even blinked, so intent was his gaze. The comment wasn’t a come-on, just Hayden being Hayden, the FBI profiler who sees everything.

She clicked her seatbelt in place. “One more stop today, right?”

At last Hayden blinked and cranked the ignition. “Are you sure you’re up to it? I could drop you off with Evie and Hatch and do this one on my own.”

Something soft and warm wrapped about her heart. Agent Perceptive really could be sweet, like now.

“No, let’s get it over with.” Kate was not looking forward to talking to her grandparents. The few times Kendra took Kate and Jason to her parents’ lakeside mansion, the visits were uncomfortable affairs with Kendra screaming that they abandoned her and with Oliver Conlan’s icy return that Kendra made her own bed and needed to lie in it.

A large man with tufts of white hair over his ears and a sharp nose opened the door. Kate stood in the shadow of a column but shifted to get a better look at the grandfather who had ignored her all of her life.

“I need to talk to you about Jason.” Hayden showed the old man his badge.

“We’ve already talked to the police,” said a thin woman with a platinum halo of hair and overly tight skin. And this would be the cold-shouldered grandmother. Kate wrapped her arms about her waist, surprised at the chill.

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Conlan, and I assure you my questions tonight will be brief.”

Good. Less exposure to this ice couple meant less chance of frostbite.

Her grandparents shared a long look and nodded.

“When was the last time you saw Jason?” Hayden asked.

“Three weeks ago,” Oliver Conlan said. “He stopped by to tell us goodbye.”

The skin on Kate’s arms pebbled, but Hayden didn’t flinch. “Was he going on a trip?”

Her grandmother’s shoulders sagged. “He didn’t say. He just said he wanted to see us one last time.”

“One last time? Did he say he was going away for good?”

“He didn’t say, but he was visibly upset.”

Was it that split personality concept Hayden had been toying with? Did the good, productive Jason want to say goodbye to those he loved because the evil, killing monster was taking over? But Hayden said people who suffered from this disorder could barely function.

Hayden slipped a knotted fist in his pocket. “Do you know where Jason could be right now?”

Oliver Conlan’s bushy eyebrows jerked up. “That hovel of a hunting cabin is my first guess. Jason was connected to it because it belonged to his lowlife father’s family.”

“Did he ever talk about traveling or wanting to visit certain places?”

“Never,” Ava Conlan said. “Jason seemed very content here.”

“Did he have any friends, girlfriends?”

“None,” Oliver Conlan said. “There wasn’t a good deal to like about him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m done.” He turned, and the mansion swallowed him.

Hayden thanked Ava Conlan, and they’d turned to leave when the old woman said, “Good night, Katrina.” There was a softness, an almost wistfulness to her voice.

Kate’s heart contracted and slammed against her chest, which was crazy. Why should she care about this woman who had never cared about her? She nodded at the older woman and clipped down the granite steps. Hayden’s hand once again slid to the base of her spine, holding her steady.

*  *  *

Saturday, June 13, 6:40 p.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

“Fishing’s stupid,” nine-year-old Benny Hankins said. “So is spending all day in this stinkin’ boat.” He tossed a rock into the water.

“Stop throwing rocks, pea brain. You’ll scare away the fish,” Charlie, his twelve-year-old brother, said. Charlie didn’t want to bring his kid brother out fishing, but his mom made him.
You have a good head on your shoulders. Maybe some of it will rub off on Benny.

Charlie glared at his motionless bobber. Nothing was going to change his brother. Benny got into more trouble than anyone he’d ever met. Just last week after baseball practice, Benny stole a motorboat from old lady Milburn’s dock and grounded it, ruining the blades. His stupid little brother told police he saw one of the boys from Hope Academy swimming away from the boat, but the police found Benny’s baseball mitt in the hull. His brother was a thief
and
a liar.

Benny tossed in another rock. “Ain’t no fish in this stupid part of the lake,
asshole
.”

“Watch your mouth,” Charlie said. “Of course there are fish in here. Last week Neil Parker caught a sixteen-pound mackinaw.”

Benny flapped his lips in a crude sound. “Neil Parker beat you out, didn’t he? That’s what’s ragging you, that he has a great big fish, that and the fact that BB Delinski knows it.”

“Don’t call her that.” Charlie’s hands tightened around his pole. “Her name’s Belinda.”

“But all you care about are her BBs. Big boobs.”

“Shut up.”

Benny tossed the rest of the rocks into the water. “I’m going swimming.”

“Don’t—”

His brother jumped into the lake. Stupid kid. This wasn’t the best place to swim. Too many reeds, which could get caught around the idiot’s foot.

Charlie checked his line again. Heck, no fish was going to come within a mile of his hook with Benny splashing so much. He started cranking in the line, and for the first time that day felt a tug. Charlie reeled faster. The line strained. Man, he must have a big one. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Benny climbing a rock. “Benny, get back here now or I’ll tell mom.”

“Ooooo, I’m quaking so hard my balls are gonna fall off.” The twerp dove into the water.

Charlie focused on the fish, which was really fighting him now. “Benny, get over here. Come see what I got.” He looked behind him. No blond head. No splashes, not even bubbles. “Benny,” he called as he yanked the stupid fish into the boat and threw down his pole. “I’m going to kill you if you don’t manage to get yourself killed first.”

Charlie powered up the trolling motor and aimed his skiff at the rocks. “Benny!” He slapped the oar on the water. “Come out now or you’ll be grounded for life.”

The water remained still. Had something really happened to his brother? He was a pain and a liar, but…Charlie looked at the black mounds of rocks huddled above and below the dark blue. Did Benny hit his head on a rock? Was he caught in the reeds? Charlie tore off his shirt and kicked off his shoes. He was about to jump in when a blond head popped up.