“Where’s the safe exactly?”
“The room with his wife and son’s things. It’s not much of a safe, just a small fireproof box. I figure his marriage license is in there, negatives of their wedding photos, that kind of thing.”
“We’ve got time today to make the drive, or I can give this information to one of the officers now at the scene.”
“They would keep whatever they find in the safe as evidence.”
“Probably.”
“If we go check it out ourselves?”
“Paul can probably finesse things to let us take what belongs to you.”
“Make a call. Let’s go see if this is his safe combination.”
Matthew slowed as they neared the Hennessey and Vine property. An officer was parked just inside the entrance road. Shannon tipped Matthew’s ball cap down over her face. He showed his credentials to the officer, was given admittance since he’d already cleared things through Paul. He drove onto the property and stopped at the house with the swing set in the side yard. Numerous vehicles were parked in various places, from both the FBI and the state police. None were at this house. Paul had made certain the way would be cleared for them.
“Let’s not linger,” Shannon requested, her voice tight.
“Ten minutes,” Matthew reassured. They would check the numbers and then be on their way.
Shannon retrieved a house key from behind a horseshoe nailed to a window flower box, opened the front door. She headed straight up the stairs. Matthew followed her, looking around with interest. He’d come back to this house, this property, at a later date without Shannon to get a longer look at what was here.
She disappeared into the front bedroom. Matthew stopped in the doorway. Going by the layer of dust on the furniture, the room didn’t appear to have been touched in some time. A line of perfume bottles sat on the dresser. Several dresses and blouses hung in the closet; shoeboxes had been stacked haphazardly at the bottom.
Shannon knelt down on the floor and began pulling out the shoeboxes, one by one. “Here it is.” The fireproof safe was almond in color, looked to be at least a decade or more in age. She slid the box over so she could read the dial for the combination. She tried the numbers starting clockwise, then counterclockwise, but the box wouldn’t open.
Matthew thought about his own home safe. “For the second number, try spinning the dial all the way around, then come to stop on the number.”
She tried it counterclockwise with the additional turn and the safe opened.
Shannon lifted out a manila envelope, opened it. “It’s more of my camera photo cards,” she confirmed, handing the envelope up to him. “What do you want me to do with the rest of the contents?” She flipped through some of the papers. “His marriage certificate, death certificates—about what I expected.”
“Leave the safe open on the bed for the cops to deal with,” Matthew said. He was dumping out smaller envelopes from the large one she’d handed him. “There’s a note here that says, ‘Shannon, also check the shoeboxes. Flynn’.” Matthew handed it to her.
She looked at the note. “Huh.” She began opening the shoeboxes she’d moved, glancing in each one. She went back to the closet and pulled out more shoeboxes. “More photo cards.” She held the lid off to one side. “I kept more photographs than I remember.”
“Check them all,” Matthew suggested.
She handed him the shoebox and went back to looking through the rest. Matthew thumbed through the small manila envelopes, doing a count of the first inch and multiplying by what he could see. There were three rows, stacked two levels deep. “How many photos do you think you stashed away?”
“I had a goal to take half a million photographs, but most I deleted. I don’t know how many got stored.”
He let that sink in, then reached over to rest his hand on her shoulder. “I’m certain some of these are going to be worth a few dollars. The second item on your personal list could be coming true, Shannon.”
“I hope so.” She found one more shoebox of memory cards. She checked the last box and stood. “That’s it. Those two boxes and the envelope. I didn’t realize Flynn was putting all the memory cards in one spot. I thought he was storing them around in various places for me.”
“That library note wasn’t done recently. He had this place marked out for you after his wife’s things were stored here. He probably figured the family would leave this room alone, and he was right.”
She nodded. “Well, this is what I came for, Matthew. Let’s head out.”
“You’re nervous here.”
“Her things. Taylor’s. There are too many reminders of the friends I lost.”
Matthew would have responded, but his attention was caught by something else. “Are those your early diaries?” he asked, pointing to the lower shelf of a bookcase.
Shannon looked over, and she inhaled sharply. “Mine, some of his wife’s,” she whispered. “We both kept journals. I can’t believe he kept them here.”
He picked up a box, emptied the clothes neatly packed into it onto the bedspread, stacked the journals into the box. “He may have moved them back here recently for you to find,” Matthew guessed. “Maybe retrieved and returned the bulk of the photo memory cards to the two shoeboxes as well.” He picked up the box of journals, looked around the room for anything else that might have been left for her to find, saw a woman’s wedding rings next to a picture of Flynn, his wife and his son, added that photo to the box and slid the rings into his pocket. “We’ll give these to Flynn the next time we see him.”
“Thanks, Matthew.”
He glanced over at her.
“For assuming we’ll see him again and be able to have that conversation.” Her eyes looked wet with unshed tears.
He hoped for her sake they could have that next conversation. “Flynn strikes me as being a survivor, same as you.”
“He was a pretty good survival coach, if you want the truth.” She wiped her eyes, then picked up the two shoeboxes. He followed her down the stairs, stored the items in the back seat of the car, waited for her to relock the house and return the key to its place.
He tried to figure out her mood as they left the property. Clearly relieved to be away, but still caught by a raw grief this place had revived. “I’ll help you start loading those memory cards onto a laptop tonight so you can get a look at your photos,” he offered as a distraction.
“Sure. That would be nice.”
“Shannon . . . talk to me.”
“Just memories. Flynn’s wife was a nice woman. I miss her.”
He put a hand over hers. “She would have been happy for you, for the way this is turning out.”
Shannon glanced over, tried to smile. “She would have been.”
27
Matthew could hear Shannon singing softly along with the radio as she dealt with her windblown hair in Becky’s bathroom. She had a beautiful voice, something he noticed when they’d attended church. It was nice to hear her singing again.
Shannon’s biggest concern was that the investigation into what had happened to her would lead back to evidence that would put her mother in jail. Matthew was holding information in his pocket that could do just that. He went into his bedroom, pulled back one of his daughter’s tapestries, opened his private safe, and put the envelope from Flynn inside it. He closed the safe door and spun the dial. If he opened that envelope, if he knew the details of what had happened, saw what proof backed up the statement Flynn had made, he would potentially trigger the one thing Shannon feared.
Shannon had to survive this. That was his bottom line. He personally could live with her mother facing prosecution and jail time. He could live with scuttling Jeffery’s campaign for governor with the timing of this. But Shannon could not.
If she took a blow so severe she couldn’t recover from it, where she regretted returning to her family, where she absorbed the fallout of the truth as her responsibility, her doing, her fault—that was the line he couldn’t see things cross. Sha
nnon could only absorb so much at a time. She couldn’t handle this news right now.
Three days. He was going to wait three days.
He was already withholding the Colorado address where Shannon was to have been delivered, along with the news about Flynn’s cabin. He was now in possession of all Shannon’s diaries and had no plans to pass them on before she determined he should do so. Delaying a decision about this latest bombshell in the envelope was an act of grace toward Shannon and one more serious infraction of his agreement to share what he knew with Paul on a timely basis.
But he had an even more serious problem. If Flynn’s statement was credible, the possibility that Shannon’s mother could take her own life if the news came out was a very real risk, regardless of whether the authorities became involved in the matter. He’d have to figure out some way to mitigate that peril. It was now over a week since Shannon had returned to Chicago, and so far her mother hadn’t made a rash step.
Shannon had felt loved those first sixteen years of her life—that was what puzzled Matthew the most about this news. He needed to meet Shannon’s mom. Who was she? What had she done, and why? Had it been a loving mother making an unbelievable mistake? Or a selfish, cold woman who didn’t love her daughter, who had used her to address a financial problem? All Matthew knew about the woman was what others had told him, comments Jeffery had made, what Shannon had mentioned. None of it made sense; the puzzle pieces didn’t fit together. For Shannon’s sake he would get to the bottom of it, and as carefully as he could.
There were no good solutions in front of him, but there were several decisions that had to be made, and Matthew mentally ran down the list, settling matters in his mind as to where to start, what he would do.
The envelope was going to wait. During the next three days, Paul hopefully would arrest George Jacoby, removing the most serious threat to Shannon’s security. She’d meet with her parents, and he’d get an impression of how her mother was with her. Jeffery would make the news of Shannon’s return public. Three days would give him time to read the majority of the recovered diaries, and afterward he would know, and not be guessing, about Shannon’s missing years.
Shannon needed her brother. She needed her father, if that relationship could be salvaged. That had to be a priority. He would make sure Shannon was never alone with her mother, that there couldn’t be a whispered plea or confession that sent Shannon careening into an abyss.
When he knew Shannon’s past as best he could grasp it, when he had met her mother, he would then deal with that envelope and do what could be done to check its veracity.
Then he would tell Shannon what the envelope revealed before he shared its contents with Paul. That decision surprised him, but it felt right. Her welfare would drive the decisions he made. Shannon could handle hard truths, but not all at once. No matter how else this played out, he was determined to make sure that inner core of strength of hers didn’t break from stresses beyond her limit.
God, don’t let me fail Shannon now. A simple prayer, a simple statement, but it was the mission he was determined to accomplish. He listened to the faint sound of her singing. She was happy. He wanted . . . needed her to have more hours like this. They were the best gift he could give her.
He looked at the time. Dinner. Confirm his friends with the Boston PD were in place to watch the cemetery for the evening. Then call Paul and figure out how to say without sounding like an idiot, By the way, did I mention we ran into Flynn earlier today?
Tomorrow morning he’d convince Shannon to get on a plane with him for an hour-and-forty-minute flight back to Chicago, convince her that anything under two hours was like a bad dream that would be swiftly over. He’d read another of her diaries during the flight.
He dealt often in difficult lists, but this one was nearly crushing him with its potential for bad outcomes. He needed a couple of aspirins. The headache that had appeared wasn’t easing off. The photographs could be a good distraction for Shannon. He could use that for this evening. He’d start there.
Matthew sorted through the two shoeboxes of photo memory cards. Since an important priority on Shannon’s personal list was to establish a career as a photographer, reviewing the images would certainly give her a starting place. Simply sizing up the scope of the project would itself take some time, keep her occupied on a worthwhile endeavor. He found the extra laptop he kept around, set it up on the dining room table. He chose a random sample of the envelopes and began loading the memory cards to ensure the software and directories were set up properly.
Shannon joined him as the sixth card finished transferring to the hard drive. She leaned over his shoulder to look at a photo he’d clicked on to open full screen—a beautiful beach scene.
“An excellent image, Shannon. These first cards have over three hundred images each, and by my rough count there are well over a thousand cards. You could have as many as three hundred thousand images here. I’ve been randomly opening a variety of dates. They’re reading fine.”
“A lot are duplicates. Driftwood. Sunsets. Interesting waves.”
He changed the screen to six similar images of the beach tiled across it. “You’re going to have a difficult time choosing just one or two. They’re all lovely.”
She smiled at the compliment. “I think I took some good photographs,” she agreed.
He got up from his seat, motioned her into it. “Spend an hour loading memory cards, sorting out images, selecting favorites. I think you’ve got a good basis for your dream to have a career as a photographer right here. Even if you set aside more than half of these, you’ll end up with a hundred thousand images to work with. You should have someone look at these, give you a professional opinion on their value.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Let’s take them back to Chicago and show them to Ellie Dance.”
“Doesn’t she handle art, not photographs?”
“She’s an expert on artistic images and their worth. You’ve met her and liked her. She’ll be kind in what she says. And if she doesn’t feel qualified to give you an opinion, she’ll no doubt know someone who can.” He understood her hesitation—this was a core dream for her. “Choose fifty images spread across these cards as representative of your work. When we’re back in Chicago, we’ll stop at that camera shop and get them printed as eight-by-tens. It’s better to know, Shannon. Time isn’t going to change the verdict. Being a photographer is one of your dreams, and this one strikes me as easier than getting your GED. Certainly quicker than getting married.”
He got her to laugh. She looked at the images on the screen, clicked to the next ones. “You’re right, Matthew, this is a big dream,” she admitted softly. “Every time I clicked the shutter, I hoped I was storing away something for my future. I don’t want to fail.”
He put both hands on her shoulders, kneaded at the tension he could feel. “You haven’t failed. I like what I see. Take a small chance, show Ellie your work, see what she has to say.”
Shannon tabbed through the loaded images. “What time is our flight to Chicago?”
He gently squeezed her shoulders as she silently accepted his plan and then stepped back, letting her get to work. “Nine a.m. It will put us comfortably back at the apartment by noon. Your parents will be at Jeffery’s for dinner. I told him we’d plan to come out around seven, stay an hour. If you’re comfortable with how that goes, you can meet again as a family Sunday afternoon.”
“When is Jeffery making the public announcement?”
“He’s scheduled a press conference for Monday at ten a.m.” Matthew glanced at the time. “I’m going to go call Paul now, tell him about Flynn, get an update from him on how things have progressed. Then we’ll have dinner. That work for you?”
“Yes. I’d like those steaks you set out—medium well works for me,” she mentioned, “and a heaping salad. I can do the salad if you can take care of grilling the steaks.”
“Perfect.”
Matthew took hi
s phone and a cold soda out to the back patio, settled in for a long conversation, called Paul.
“Good to hear from you, Matthew. Was Shannon able to locate what she thought might be there at the property?”
“She retrieved two shoeboxes’ worth of camera memory cards, and I’m now in possession of all her diaries.”
“That’s excellent news.”
“Paul, we had a face-to-face with Flynn today.”
A long silence met his statement. “You did have an interesting day,” Paul said slowly. “When and where?”
Matthew briefed him. “Sorry it played out this way. I was making choices as it unfolded, none of them ideal. I chose to give Shannon the delay she wanted.”
“Leah got out, that’s a huge win. I can see the big picture. Keeping Shannon’s trust. Gaining help toward arresting the most violent man in the family. Locating those ledgers. I’m not thrilled at the time gap, but I would have made the same call.”
“Not being a cop made today easier,” Matthew admitted. “And I’ll tell you up front, I’m sitting on other news about Flynn, nothing that I think changes your outcome but still rather big truths.”
“Shannon?”
“Uh-huh. I think I’ve seen the full picture with her, only to discover an entire new fissure opens up. Let me get through reading the journals. When I’m done with them, hopefully I’ll be past the surprises.” He wasn’t looking forward to those hours of reading, but it had to be done. “What’s the property out here look like? I saw a lot of cops working the site.”
“No graves so far. Some good leads on aliases they might be traveling under. A lot of paper to sort through. Photo albums. We’ll be out there for weeks figuring it out.” Paul shifted the topic. “Give me the name of the guy the Coast Guard is holding again.”
“All I have is a first name, Peter. I assume it’s Peter Jacoby, but who knows what alias he gave the Coast Guard. The boat was listing—Flynn’s doing—and Peter deliberately scuttled the boat rather than have her boarded.”