“Online.”
“Man, this just gets better and better.” He was shaking his head, turning his attention to the passenger side window, where beyond the rain-streaked glass he saw the Pacific, stretching far into the darkness, shining with the little bit of moonlight piercing the clouds.
“Look, Lucas, all I need from you is to wrap up this investigation, keep it out of the press so that the old camp sells quickly and for a good price.”
“And so you don’t spook your new in-laws? Tell me, Dad, how does Naomi feel about that?”
“I don’t see her much,” he admitted as the road turned inland and the city lights of Averille came into view.
“So, Jeremiah,” he finally said. “Just so you know. I’m going to want to talk to you officially, or at least Detective Dobbs or Garcia will. I’m off the case.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” He glared at the man who had sired him and thought he saw his father actually starting to sweat. Maybe this was the time to put the screws to him. Why not? His face was throbbing, he’d been thrown off the case, and he had no respect for the man anyway. “Sheriff Locklear isn’t going to rest until every aspect of this case is solved, so I wouldn’t be planning on heading to Montana anytime soon. She’s got four missing people to locate and so far has only found one.”
“Four?” he said. “Eleanor Brady and Monica O’Neal, right? That’s two.”
“And Dustin Peters, you remember him, right? You hired him? And then there’s the con who vanished about the same time: Waldo Grimes. I’m telling you, Locklear’s gonna leave no stone unturned and you’re a big one. Owning the camp where everything went down. She’s going to dig deep.”
His father took one hand off the wheel to scratch his chin, a nervous gesture.
Lucas couldn’t believe it, but felt the old man might actually crack and give something up. “If I were you,” he pressed, “and I was hell-bent to go to Montana or anywhere, I’d come clean. If you had anything to do with the deaths of—”
“Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jeremiah cut in. “I’ve never been involved in murder of any sort.”
Lucas snorted, felt something give in his nose again and a trickle of blood start to flow. “So you avoided one deadly sin.”
“Still an insolent pup.” They passed the WELCOME TO AVERILLE sign and a mini-market gas station, not open, the neon lights surrounding the canopy glowing red and yellow.
“Locklear’s going to find out all your secrets,” Lucas said, “and they’ll be made public. Nothing I can do about that. You’d better sell that land quick.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it . . . I . . .” He guided the SUV through a couple of side streets to turn a corner. The hotel came into view. A cop car was still positioned at each end of the street and a news van, satellite cocked, was parked at the barrier. The Hotel Averille itself was lit like a Christmas tree, all the exterior and interior windows of the third floor glowing in the night, the first floor, too, illuminated, people visible inside as the crime scene team searched for evidence, and workers of the hotel, along with a few guests, were still up and about. Only a few of the guest rooms on the second and first floors were dark, either unoccupied or their inhabitants turning in for the night despite all the commotion that had occurred.
“The press is still here,” Lucas said, hitching his chin toward the news van. “They’ll be all over you, Jeremiah. Whatever it is you’re doing, including this planned move to Montana, will be explored. Kinley Marsh, you know her, she was a camper, works for some Astoria online newspaper or something. She’s hoping to make the story go viral and national. Camp Horseshoe will be at the center of it.”
“No.”
“Looks that way.”
The Cadillac was slowing as his father thought. Even in the dark, Lucas could see by the way Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed that the wheels were turning frantically in the old man’s brain. As the Caddy got close to a barrier, a cop in rain gear waved Jeremiah off.
“This can’t happen,” Jeremiah said, pulling his SUV into an empty parking spot near the barrier, the inn only a hundred feet away. He shoved the gear shift into park but let the engine idle, the wipers swiping at the rain collecting on the windshield.
“Oh, it’s happening.”
“No.”
“Look, if you know something, anything at all about the case,” Lucas said, gambling and playing to his father’s false sense of pride, “and you want to look good, you know. Like you were helping the police rather than hindering them? That you as a responsible citizen and pillar of the community wanted to set things right, you’d be smart to spill it, right now.”
“I don’t—”
Lucas snapped. Was sick of the game-playing. He was on his old man in an instant, springing across the interior and grabbing Jeremiah by the front of his shirt. Fingers twisting in the soft fabric, he snarled. “I’ve had it. I’m beat-up and tired and pissed as hell. I don’t need any more of your bullshit lies, okay? What the fuck do you know, Jeremiah? It’s going to come out one way or another, and it’s best if you confess.”
“I have nothing to—”
“Enough!” he growled, his headache pounding, his rage exploding. “Enough lies.” He shoved his face to within an inch of his old man’s. “You know something. What the fuck is it? Tell me, or I’ll have you arrested and then you can explain that to the investors and your new little bride-to-be in wherever-the-hell fucking Montana!” His fingers were wound so tight in the fabric of his father’s shirt that they ached.
“Let go of me,” Jeremiah finally said, a forced calm in his voice.
Lucas backed off. Released his grip. Reached for the door handle. “Fine.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
Jeremiah cleared his throat. Smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt with a big hand. “There is . . . there is one thing.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s about Dustin Peters.”
“What about him?” Lucas, his blood still up, eyed the old man in the reflection of the dash lights. In the weird illumination, Jeremiah appeared older than he had been, his eyes more sunken, his cheekbones more prominent, his entire face taking on the likeness of a fleshless skull.
“I paid Peters five thousand dollars, cash money, to disappear.”
“You did what?” Lucas couldn’t believe it.
“It was a mistake,” Jeremiah admitted. “But Naomi told me about the fight you two had and I saw for myself the way that no-good was looking at your little sister. Damn, but Leah was only eleven at the time, not quite twelve, and that piece of garbage was looking at her like a starving wolf stares at a wounded lamb. It was no good, so I told him to get lost.”
“And paid him to do it? You thought that would solve the problem?”
“I hoped.”
“For the love of God, Dad! Didn’t it occur to you that he’d go after some other underage girl?”
“Not my problem. My daughter would be safe. And . . . I hoped he’d learned his lesson.”
“Where did he go?”
“Didn’t say and I didn’t ask. He disappeared and I was satisfied.” Then, as if he thought God might be listening in, added, “But David thought he saw him once, riding the rodeo circuit, well, not the big leagues, but on the B or C circuit. David wasn’t sure, mind you, but he nearly ran into a cowboy who looked like Peters. The guy caught sight of him and headed in the other direction, got lost in the crowd before David could say anything. According to the program for the rodeo, that cowboy’s name was Pete Denver, from somewhere in Colorado. As I said, small-time.”
“You never checked if Denver was Peters?”
“Nope. That was about five years ago, I think, and all of this mess was long behind us. Or so I’d thought.”
Jeremiah was unbelievable. Lucas wanted to throttle the old man. “Did you even think once that he might have had something to do with Monica’s disapp
earance?”
“I just wanted him gone.” A self-centered non-answer.
“What about Elle? What if Dustin had an inkling as to what happened to her?”
Jeremiah flinched a little at the mention of Elle, as if Lucas had hit a nerve. Geez, how many secrets had the old man buried? “What?” he demanded, intent on finding out. “You know something about Elle? About what happened to her?” The pain throbbing through his head started to recede as he focused on this piece of shit who was his father.
“I don’t know anything about her. Not really!” Jeremiah said with more vehemence than was warranted. Another nervous scratch of his fingernails under his chin. “I just know that there have been people who claim to have seen her.”
“And that’s it?” No way. He was lying straight through his porcelain-capped teeth.
Jeremiah hitched his chin to the parking lot. Again, the tell-tale avoidance. “There’s your truck.”
“What the hell do you know?”
His father leveled his gaze at his son. “Let her go, Lucas. As you did for twenty years. Before all this trouble started. Just let her go.”
“Wait a minute. Do you know where she is? What happened to her?”
“Nope.”
“You’re lying! You bastard, you know what happened.” He was across the cab again in a shot, his nose inches from his father’s, his fists clenched. “What happened, Jeremiah? What the hell happened?”
The skeletal face studied him. “I don’t know,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s best left alone.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Get out.”
“Listen to me, if you’re lying or covering up something—”
“Hey!” There was a tap on the driver’s side window and Lucas noticed the cop who had stopped them from driving closer to the hotel on the other side of the water-spattered glass.
Jeremiah rolled down the window.
“Is there a problem here?” the cop asked, peering inside.
“I was just bringing Detective Dalton to his truck.” Jeremiah added, “I’m his father.”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Lucas lied and, releasing the old man, reached for the door handle. As he stepped into the drizzle, he looked inside. “We’re not done, Jeremiah,” he promised, and slammed the door. “Not by a long shot.”
CHAPTER 39
Averille, Oregon
Now
Lucas
To Lucas’s surprise, Bernadette was still up, waiting in the lobby of the hotel. A hotel clerk was at the desk, a couple of cops still working with the crime scene as the techs finished processing the hotel.
“Thank God you’re all right,” Bernadette said, her face a mask of worry as she approached him. “I was . . . I mean, I saw part of the fight from here, but they wouldn’t let us go near, then I heard shots and the ambulance came and took you away. Detective Dobbs said you were okay, but they kept us here and confiscated our phones and I couldn’t come to the hospital and . . .” As if she realized she was rambling, she cleared her throat and flung herself into his arms.
He held her tight for a moment and kissed the top of her head before he realized others were watching them.
“. . . and I have your dog,” she finished.
Lucas released her. “Roscoe? Where is he?”
“In your Jeep, waiting, so technically I don’t have him, but I’ve snuck out and given him a treat . . . well, possibly two or three. Are you okay?” she asked, eyeing him. “Geez, you look like hell.”
“So I’ve heard.” And he couldn’t argue the fact. He’d caught his reflection in the glass of the front doors as he’d walked in, seen evidence of his black eyes, and suspected that there was probably blood crusting his nostrils. “It’s been a long day,” he admitted.
She smiled and her eyes sparked a little. “Amen to that.” To his surprise, she hugged him again and kissed his temple in a very un-Bernadette display of affection. “Okay, you do look like hell, but you’re still sexy.” Then, as if realizing she might have crossed a line, explained, “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.”
“There’s been a lot of weird stuff going on.”
“That’s the understatement of the year, or maybe the decade,” he agreed. “But at least we know what happened to Monica O’Neal and who killed her and Jo-Beth.” Scowling at the thought, he rubbed the back of his neck and was royally pissed that he and the department hadn’t figured out the twenty-year-old crime earlier and prevented another death.
The elevator door opened and Maggie Dobbs appeared. Spying Lucas, she crossed in front of the reception desk and shook her head as she stared at his face. “You look like—”
“So I’ve heard,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you be home recuperating or something? Seriously. Your face—”
“I’m fine! It’s not that bad.”
“If you say so.” She arched a disbelieving brow and glanced at Bernadette. “Did you show him the text?”
“What text?” he asked as Bernadette shook her head.
Maggie said, “The one that was sent to all of the ex-counselors including Jo-Beth.”
She was already retrieving her own phone. “I’ve got it. Nell Pachis forwarded it to me and I’ve got the lab and cell phone company already working on it.” She found the text and handed her cell to Lucas, who caught sight of the image on the screen and froze.
“What is this?” he whispered, and felt bile climb up his throat as he stared at the picture of a woman, dressed in white, in a casket, the words “YOU WILL PAY” written as the message. “Elle in a coffin?”
“That’s what we think, or what it’s supposed to look like. We don’t know yet,” Maggie said.
“You all got this?” he asked Bernadette.
“Yes.”
“Even Jo-Beth Leroy. We checked,” Maggie said as he automatically sent the picture to his own cell phone. “They came in at the same time, group text, all the counselors, but not Kinley Marsh.”
“She wasn’t a counselor,” he said.
“Precisely. Come over here and sit down before you fall down and I’ll fill you in. I don’t know about you, but I’m dead, despite the buzz from the hotel’s complimentary coffee.” To Bernadette, she said, “You too. In case I forget anything. This is, of course, off the record.”
“As I’m not on the case,” Lucas said.
“Exactly,” Maggie responded, and they exchanged a look. He knew she was going out on a limb, including him in part of the investigation, but Maggie was smart and would hold just enough back that she could deny involving him as a cop. They sat in a grouping of chairs positioned around a fireplace stacked with ceramic logs, gas flames visible.
Maggie told him about Kinley Marsh’s equipment and recordings, how they had Tyler Quade’s confession on tape, then explained that all of the counselors had gotten the same text. As she’d said, the phone company had already been contacted and was searching records to see what was the origination of the original text while the image was being enhanced at the lab, searching for clues as to its authenticity.
Lucas brought up his conversation with Jeremiah, how the old man had bribed Dustin Peters to leave the camp twenty years earlier and how David Tremaine had told his ex-stepfather that he’d seen a two-bit rodeo rider named Pete Denver who might be one and the same. “Jeremiah claims he doesn’t know where Dustin Peters went, but he did say the cowboy hailed from Boulder, Colorado. Maybe that’s how he came up with the name Denver.”
“I’ll check it out. We’re wrapping things up here,” Maggie said. “The crime scene unit is about finished and so I’m going to call it a night. We’ve asked the women who had come down here to make statements to stay on at least overnight in case we have any more questions tomorrow, er”—she looked at her watch—“later today as it turns out, but, understandably, they weren’t that crazy about staying here in the hotel.”
Lucas couldn’t blame them. “So what’s the plan, then?
”
“We offered to post deputies here, and they all agreed.”
“Reluctantly,” Bernadette said.
Maggie continued. “They’re all in one wing of the second floor, deputies on watch at both ends of the hallway, everyone’s room door to be dead-bolted. The second floor doesn’t have balconies, so we’re only concerned with securing the interior corridor.”
“You’re okay with that?” he asked Bernadette.
“Yeah, Annette and I share connecting rooms; we’ll leave the door open between.”
He wasn’t convinced. “I could stay,” he offered when he knew that he shouldn’t as he had a lot more work to do. But the thought of spending the rest of the night with Bernadette was tempting. In a quick-silver flash of memory, he remembered the nights he’d lain with her all those years ago.
Her smile was slow-spreading, as if she’d read his mind and even may have had the same thoughts. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she promised, and he let her go, watching as she rose to her feet and walked to the elevator, her butt as firm as ever in tight jeans.
“Man,” Maggie said, observing the exchange. “You’ve got it bad.” Her eyebrows arched knowingly. “That’s the trouble with a teenage crush, you know, the feelings you experienced as an adolescent never go away. They’re always there, just below the surface.”
“Sounds like the voice of experience talking.”
“Maybe, but even so, I might remind you that you don’t know her, have barely reconnected, and there’s been a lot of emotional water flowing beneath the bridge. Not that it’s any of my business.”
“Exactly,” he said, “it’s not.” Though she was echoing his own inner monologue of all the reasons not to get involved or re-involved with Bernadette. And yet... “Look, I have something I’ve got to do,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Make that the later morning.” Maggie glanced at her watch as he headed for the exit. “It’s almost two.”