Ava listened to the detective’s theory, and though she wanted like hell not to believe it, the idea that Jewel-Anne had rebelled and fallen for Reece made a peculiar kind of sense. After all, someone had fathered Noah.
Ava answered all of the detective’s questions as best she could despite the fact that the headache building at the base of her skull had her head pounding. Denial was still a roar in her brain, as loud and bitter as a keening wind that carried with it a sharp little shard of truth. “You have to find him,” she told Snyder, suddenly desperate to face the monster. “Lester Reece. You have to find him!”
“We don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“But he has to be,” she insisted. “Don’t you see? He’s the one who kidnapped Noah!” Her voice was rising now, her desperation palpable. It all made sense. He’d come back for his boy! Even now he could have Noah locked away on the island!
“Of course . . . however, right now, though, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation,” he reminded her.
“But the killer? Couldn’t it be Lester Reece? He’s done it before and you think he’s on the island.”
“You think he killed the others?”
“I . . . I don’t know . . .” It didn’t make sense, but then what about murder did?
“You found Jewel-Anne’s body. You think Lester Reece would take the trouble to place dolls around your cousin? Slice and paint ’em up?”
Ava shook her head in mute bafflement. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“I heard that you found another doll,” he added carefully. “In a casket. Buried by the victim, kind of a way to get back at you.”
She gazed at him, aware of the dominoes starting to fall, the list of events and her own actions that made her look guilty. Standing, leaning across the desk, she said clearly and precisely, just so he got it, “I didn’t kill Jewel-Anne, Detective. Nor anyone else. I’m just trying to find my boy and I’ll swear to that on his life!”
CHAPTER 43
Feeling like a caged animal in the den with the rest of the Church family, Dern managed to hang on to his patience, but it took more than a little effort. Outside, the night was thick, impenetrable, while inside the house, a pall had settled over the residents.
More cops arrived, along with the medical examiner and the crime scene people. Even J. T. Biggs, the sheriff himself, in full uniform, showed up in the early morning hours, though he spent more time outside the house organizing the search party than inside.
While the staff and occupants of the house were called in for interviews one by one, the technicians and investigators began collecting evidence. Everyone was questioned, even Graciela, who arrived for work several hours into the interviews and was escorted into the den. Doe-eyed, she, too, waited to tell everything she knew about Jewel-Anne’s death, which she’d only heard about when Khloe had texted her earlier.
When it came to his turn, right after Wyatt Garrison, Dern was led into the dining room, offered coffee, which he declined, and was pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table from Detective Lyons. She was typing on a tablet computer, her coffee forgotten, not so much as a lipstick stain on the rim of the cup.
The interview was quick. “Just tell me what happened last night,” she instructed. Obviously the police already knew about the altercation between Jewel-Anne and Ava that had occurred the night before the murder. What they didn’t know was where Lester Reece was hiding or that Austin Dern just happened to be his half brother. Dern decided to lay all his cards on the table. First with the cops; next with Ava. He figured he owed her that much. So, after explaining about the night before and answering a few subsequent questions to his statement, he said, “You know, there’s another wrinkle here.”
“Is there? And what’s that?” Lyons asked as she typed on her keypad.
“I’m Lester Reece’s half brother.”
Her reaction was swift. She looked up sharply, her fingers quit moving, and her gaze focused hard on him.
“Is that right?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You know,” she said, her eyes narrowing a little, as if she really thought he might try to con her, “I haven’t seen any record of Reece having a sibling.”
“Then your records aren’t complete.” Dern was ready for the argument, had figured no one would believe him, and he didn’t really give a damn one way or the other; he just wanted to say it. “Here’s the short and the long of it: Reece and I have the same mother.” She glanced at her iPad. Probably checking out his facts as he gave them to her. “My mother is Reba Melinda Corliss Reece Dern McDaniels. The marriage to Reece was short. She lives in Texas. Moved around a lot. El Paso, Houston, a couple of smaller towns. She’s now living in a town called Bad Luck. Kind of appropriate.”
Her eyebrows lifted a bit as her gaze moved from the small screen to his face. “So many names. Your mother was a serial marrier?”
“You could say that.” He tried not to be rankled, to let it slide, but he’d always had a soft spot when it came to Reba.
Lyons’s eyebrows puckered together, and Dern could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. She clicked a pen as she thought. “I don’t know how we could have missed this.”
“Me, neither. But I’m just telling you straight up,” he said.
“Okay, go on.” Finally he’d caught her interest. She leaned back in her chair.
“Well, here’s the good news,” he said cautiously. “I think I can lead you to Reece.”
“Seriously?” Again the skeptic.
“Yep.”
Her smile said she didn’t believe him for a second, but she quit clicking her damned pen. “Okay, Dern, I’ll bite. That’s the good news? So what’s the bad?”
Dern said, “He ain’t gonna like it.”
“So I should have told you sooner, I guess,” Dern admitted after telling Ava that he was Lester Reece’s half brother.
“I don’t guess,” she said angrily. “I know!” Ava couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but Dern seemed dead serious as he broke the news to her in the kitchen, less than an hour after he’d finished his interviews. He’d spoken for a long time with Lyons and then spent another hour or so in the dining room talking to both cops after Lyons called Snyder in. Ava had guessed whatever he’d told them was important, but she hadn’t expected this—that Dern was Lester Reece’s damned half brother. Dear God, was everyone related to the maniac? First Noah and now Dern.
Not everyone—just the people you care about!
Ava had witnessed Lyons, obviously agitated, summon Snyder and sequester him for a while; then each detective had left the dining room and made a couple of calls, one at a time, while leaving the other to keep the interview going. Even J. T. Biggs had deigned to come up from the stable area where he was amassing the search party and had closeted himself in the dining room with the others.
Whatever Dern had told them, it had an impact.
At the time, she’d wondered, Was he a suspect? Had he told them Ava had been hell-bent on getting Jewel-Anne off the island? Or was it something else?
Ava and everyone else in the house had seen Biggs join the detectives, but no one had been able to guess why.
“What the fuck is all that about?” Jacob had asked as his cell phone jangled. “Oh, great. Mom and Dad have touched down in Seattle. This is just getting better and better.”
Ian had groaned and went looking for a cigarette break, which was finally allowed, and Trent, seeming to have aged five years in as many hours, walked into the kitchen for a cup of coffee while Virginia, Khloe, and Simon waited to talk to the cops.
Ava hadn’t said anything but had wondered what Dern had told Lyons to get the detective so riled up.
Now she knew.
But she was having a lot of trouble digesting the information.
“I don’t believe you,” Ava said, the odor of stale coffee lingering in the kitchen.
“Why would I lie?”
“God knows.”
/>
“I swear to you.”
“Great. Go ahead. Swear till you’re blue in the face.” She was tired, cranky, still shocked at having found Jewel-Anne so gruesomely killed and sick at the thought of Lester Reece being her son’s father . . . now this? After everything else?
“Ava,” he said, reaching for her, but she stepped away. “I’m telling you the truth, and trust me, I don’t like it any better than you do.”
The honesty on his face got to her. And there were other reasons to believe him as well, even though she wanted desperately to deny the obvious. Hadn’t she always thought he reminded her of someone? Hadn’t she once imagined she’d viewed Lester Reece in the rising mist, only to look again and discover she was staring at Austin Dern?
“Just listen,” he said, and as they stood near the sink, he explained about him and Reece having the same mother and her being married several times, but it was too much for her to take in after sleepless nights and the shock of Jewel-Anne’s and Evelyn McPherson’s murders. Tired to the bone, she listened but couldn’t help but wonder what other secrets this man had kept from her. Why had she trusted him, fancied herself falling in love with this stranger, this man who had no more substance than the fog rolling in from the Pacific?
Because you’re an idiot. A damned romantic fool. That’s why.
“So . . . why didn’t you tell me you were related to Reece earlier?” she asked, hurt and more than a little pissed. “Why let me go on believing that you were someone you weren’t?”
“The timing wasn’t right.”
“Oh. Great!” she said sarcastically. “Tell me, when was the timing ever going to be right?”
“Don’t know.”
“Maybe never?”
“Didn’t turn out that way, did it?”
More good news, she thought, anger sharpening her disappointment that he hadn’t confided in her before. “So . . . let me get this straight. And help me out if I get this wrong, okay?” she said as she tried to make sense of what he’d told her. “You’re saying that you’re . . . you’re Noah’s biological uncle?”
“I don’t know. That isn’t a leap I can make. You don’t really know if Noah is his son.” Leaning his hip against the counter, Dern rubbed the worn tile with one finger. “The truth is, I really don’t know Reece. At all. Don’t even know that much about him. He was raised by his father, who I never met. I’d barely even heard of the guy. My mother didn’t discuss him and preferred no one knew that she’d ever been involved with him. Believe me, Ava, I had no idea Lester Reece had a kid. I’ve never heard that. It’s just what the cops have conjectured, right? The only person who really knows is Jewel-Anne.”
“But—”
“So far it’s all just speculation.”
“Isn’t everything?” She stared at the faucet where a drop of water was forming on the spigot. “God, I’m sick of this . . . the second-guessing and not knowing and . . . all of it. Every damned thing!”
“I know.” His gaze found hers and her throat tightened. She thought he might reach for her, but he was smart enough to give her some space. Besides, though they were alone in the kitchen, the house was crawling with people.
As everyone milled around, the cops still collecting evidence or talking to each other or on phones, her family being questioned, she was still trying to understand how this—her life, her son’s disappearance—all fit together. And it didn’t. For God’s sake, how could it? Austin Dern was the half brother of one of the most heinous murderers in the state. Not to mention uncle to her son. Really? And he just happened to be hired by her husband on the QT. No way was it all coincidence. “Is that why you took this job?” she asked. “Because of Reece?” She noticed the water still dripping from the faucet and she cranked hard on the handle.
“One of the reasons. I had a suspicion that he was back on the island.”
“Why? I mean, he escaped from Sea Cliff. Why would he come back?”
“He could have run out of options. Maybe he felt safer here and thought the cops would never come back here since it was combed years before. It might be that he was drawn back because of Jewel-Anne or something else. Who knows. But the island is isolated. Has deep forests where anyone could get lost. It’s surrounded by ocean. Not all that inhabited. He could have some freedom without fear of too many people seeing him.”
“But he would be trapped here.”
“He’s trapped in his own damned skin.”
“Yeah, but anyone here who did see him would recognize him. He could get lost in a city, a big city far away. No one in Boston or Miami would know or probably even care about him.”
Dern was nodding, as if he’d already considered her arguments. “Reece could have changed his appearance. It’s been a while, but you’re right—the few sightings that there were caught my attention. And the local rumors about him. Was he like Bigfoot, or was he really here? Thought I’d find out for myself. That’s one of the reasons I came here, took the job.”
“The island’s been searched before.”
“As I said, a long time ago. I figured he probably left for a while. Who knows? But for some reason he came back, felt safe here at the very place where it all started: Sea Cliff.”
“He escaped from Sea Cliff. I’d think it would be the last place on Earth he’d want to be,” she said, keeping her voice low as Virginia seemed to hover near the door either to eavesdrop or just keep an eye on the area of the house she considered her domain.
“Exactly. That’s what any sane person would think. He could have figured he was going to use it to his advantage.”
“Pretty far-fetched.”
“Or not. I’ve been up to the hospital a couple of times. Broke in and poked around. I’ve found evidence that someone’s been hanging out there, but I haven’t explored all the buildings; there are a few places locked so tight, I wasn’t able to break in.” He frowned, the edge of his jaw sharpening. “Yet.”
Her head was pounding with bad news followed by worse. She hadn’t yet come to grips with the fact that Jewel-Anne and Dr. McPherson had been killed by the same homicidal maniac who had murdered Cheryl Reynolds, and now Dern’s announcement that he was related to the guy who could have killed them? “I can’t deal with this right now.” She started to walk away, but he grabbed the crook of her elbow.
“You don’t have a choice, Ava,” he whispered, turning her to him, his nose nearly touching hers, his gaze so intense she felt as if he could see into her soul. “There are people here who think you killed your cousin as well as two other women.”
Her insides turned to ice at the thought that not only her family, but also the police might try to make a case against her, a strong case.
Dern was the one person who believed in her. Yes, he’d lied, but who on this damned island hadn’t?
“I think Reece is behind the murders. He just can’t help himself. It’s an obsession with him. Who knows if he’s killed others while he was off the island—like you said, in other big cities—but these three women, so close together, they have to be his work.”
Snyder’s earlier question flitted through her mind. “You think Lester Reece would take the trouble to place dolls around your cousin? Slice and paint ’em up?” She said, “You know, he might not be the killer.”
“There’s that chance, yes. But if we can flush Reece out, we can find out. Maybe end all this insanity.”
That she believed. And she was tired of sitting around, letting the cops try and prove she was behind the deaths of three women. “Okay,” she said, feeling a little sizzle of electricity through her blood that she could actually do something. “Let’s find him. I’m in!”
“Wait a second.”
“I’m coming with you.”
Dern shook his head. “No.”
“What do you mean no?” She wasn’t going to be deterred. “You’ve convinced me that Lester Reece might be on the island, so let’s go find him.” She pressed her face even closer to his. “Killer or not, he
’s the only person who might have an idea where Noah is!”
“You don’t know that,” Dern said slowly.
“I don’t care! Reece is the only hope I have right now.” That thought was depressing; she couldn’t pin all her hopes on the known killer. Frustrated, she glanced out the window at the bevy of police vehicles that had been ferried to the island, all gathered near the gates of the estate, headlights on, though dawn was finally approaching. An armed posse, with Joe Biggs as their leader. Oh, Jesus. “They’ll kill Reece,” she said with sudden clarity. “They’ll kill him.” Grabbing hold of Dern’s shirt, her fingers curled into the worn fabric. “And if they do, I’ll never know what happened to Noah. Don’t you see?” Desperation cracked her voice. “He’ll be lost to me! I have to go!”
“Oh, honey . . .” Sighing, Dern folded her into his arms and held her tight. She heard the beating of his heart, felt his breath in her hair, felt weak against his strength. “Listen,” he said softly, “just hang tough. The police are only letting me go because I think I know where we can find him and because I was once a cop. Still in the reserves. I know what I’m doing. I won’t get in the way and I won’t be a liability.”
“And I would? This is my son we’re talking about, Dern! My baby.”
“And we’ll get him back. If we can.”
Tears threatened her eyes. She was so close to maybe learning something finally, locating the boy who’d been missing for so long. Her heart was cracking, but she couldn’t break down. Wouldn’t. She hated to admit it, but Dern was right. The police would never let her join them. No matter how she begged. But there was something she could do to help. Slowly she gathered her strength and made a long-overdue decision. Extricating herself from his embrace, she walked rapidly to the foyer and returned with her purse.