“All right?”
Tucker’s quiet voice jerked Elliot back to awareness. Elliot smiled. “Hey,” he said, and reached out to warmly clasp the hand Tucker offered.
It was late Saturday afternoon. He had returned from dropping Sheba off at Nobb’s Organic Farm to find Tucker alone and sleeping peacefully in his hospital room. He had settled himself in a chair by the window and was trying to figure how Connie Foster fit in to all that had happened over the past week.
Even taking Corian’s hypnotic effect on women into account, Connie Foster did not fit the profile. Corian liked them young and pretty and pliable. That was not Foster. She didn’t fit any profile, as far as Elliot could tell. But she was clearly part of it.
Whatever it was, it seemed likely Todd Rice had stumbled into the middle of it and paid the price. No wonder Foster had tried to kill Sheba. The dog was running around a crime scene with a tag carrying the victim’s phone number—direct links didn’t get more direct than that.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Tucker said.
“What, me worry?”
Tucker offered a tired grin and squeezed Elliot’s hand back.
According to the doctors there was, thankfully, not much wrong with Tucker that rest, fluids and nourishment wouldn’t put right within a few days. They had insisted on keeping Tucker overnight despite his strenuous objections. Having lost that battle, Tucker had fallen into a deep, deep sleep. He seemed more like himself now. There was color in his face and his eyes had lost that glazed look.
“I just want to go home,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been gone for years.”
Yes, it felt like a lifetime. Elliot said, “The doctor said probably tomorrow. They’re playing it safe. That’s a good thing.”
“Being home would be a better thing.” Tucker’s eyes closed. He said, “I keep thinking I’m dreaming this part.”
Elliot’s throat closed up. He hung on to his self-control, though it wasn’t easy.
He thought Tucker was sleeping again, but then Tucker said, “What is it that no one wants to tell me?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
Tucker opened his eyes. “It doesn’t have to wait. Tell me. I want to know.”
And Elliot wanted to tell him, but he was not taking any chances with Tucker. Instead, he asked, “Why did you lie about coming back Sunday evening?”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me you would be back Sunday. You told Montgomery you wouldn’t be back at work until Tuesday.”
Tucker gave a quiet groan, but his expression was sheepish rather than pained.
“What?” Elliot didn’t want to press Tucker, but this discrepancy had been one of the things that had gnawed at him.
“I’ve never lied to you. I was coming back Sunday. I was looking forward to that dinner. Believe me, I dreamed about that dinner for days.”
“But then why’d you lie to Montgomery?”
“It wasn’t—” Tucker stopped. Drew a deep breath. “We’ve had so little time together. You don’t have to go in until late on Mondays, so I thought it would be a nice surprise if I took the extra day off and we could spend most of it together.”
Elliot closed his eyes, gave a disbelieving laugh. For Christ’s sake. The agony that half-truth had caused.
Tucker said, “What did you think was going on? Why would you think—Did you really believe I was lying to you?”
“No.” Elliot said, “I admit at first I didn’t know what to think. I was shocked. I was...”
“Worried?” Tucker was smiling faintly. He looked a little sympathetic and a lot smug. “Heartbroken?”
“Something like that.” Elliot shrugged. “You’ve kept things from me before. I thought maybe it was something like that.”
Tucker stopped smiling. He was silent. He said finally, “But we talked about that and I agreed that I wouldn’t keep things from you, even if I thought they might hurt you.”
“We did, yeah.”
“But you still thought—”
“Tucker, I can’t explain to you what I felt or thought. It wasn’t a logical process. It felt like I was in a daze. It was like—it was like the bottom fell out of the fucking world.”
“Hey.” Tucker’s voice was soft. “Don’t do that.”
Elliot shook his head. Wiped impatiently at his eyes with his free hand.
Tucker sat up, disconnecting a few electrodes, and tried to pull Elliot onto the hospital bed, which was pretty awkward, and a concerned nurse popped in to check what the heck was going on. Tucker waved her off and then kissed Elliot.
It was an energetic kiss for a man who had been through what Tucker had. His lips were warm and his arms were reassuringly tight. He whispered something soft and mostly inarticulate against Elliot’s ear, and Elliot told himself he would never take this for granted again.
Anyway, it was stupid getting emotional because everything was fine now. He was just a little short on sleep. A lot short on sleep. They both were. The last thing he wanted to do was—to borrow from Roland—lay a guilt trip on Tucker, especially since none of this had been Tucker’s fault.
They were quiet for a time.
Tucker said finally, reflectively, “You’re a very good arguer, Elliot. So sometimes I like to get my own thoughts, my own argument in order before I try to take you on. That’s all. I’m not going to keep anything from you. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to change my travel arrangements. I’m not going to plan a surprise birthday party—”
That got a laugh out of Elliot and he raised his head to find Tucker’s mouth again.
* * *
Tucker was having his mostly liquid dinner when Elliot told him he was going to run a few errands.
Tucker stopped scowling over his lime Jell-O long enough to glance up. “You’re coming back though, right?”
“Yep. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll save you some Jell-O.”
“Really not necessary.”
“Or you could bring me back a couple of burgers.”
Elliot’s grin was commiserating. “Probably not. Not until your doctor gives you the thumbs-up.”
“It’s not like I was starving. I did have a loaf of dried bread to eat.”
“Now you’re milking it.”
“Mmm. Milk,” Tucker murmured. He winked.
Elliot was smiling to himself as he stepped into the elevator.
* * *
Ellen Haysbert still lived in the house where Andrew Corian had grown up. That either showed guts or a lack of healthy self-preservation.
The house was an ordinary, nondescript suburban home painted a rather drab mint green. The yard was mostly dead. Sun-bleached sunflower chimes hung from the front porch. The front room lights shone behind beige draperies.
Elliot knocked on the front door screen.
A dog began to bark in a high, yappy voice. After a few seconds, he heard the door being unlocked.
It went on for a while—there seemed to be several locks to unfasten. Now, here was someone who probably lived in fear of a family reunion.
At last the door swung open and Haysbert stood framed in the doorway. She was dressed in a pink housecoat and pink slippers. Her shoulder-length hair was thin and wispy and white. She wore ugly thick, round glasses.
“Yes?” She peered nervously through the screen door.
“Mrs. Haysbert, I’m Elliot Mills. We spoke on the phone the other night.” He honestly couldn’t remember which night it had been. It seemed long ago, given the events of that day.
She sucked in a sharp breath, but then said nothing—did nothing. She simply stood there, peeping out at him. The dog, one of those off-white walking dusters, sniffed energetically at the bottom of the screen.
“May I come in?” Elliot asked.
After a moment, she unlocked the screen and stepped back.
Elliot pushed the screen open and stepped inside. The dog transferred the sniffing to his ankles, trotting close behind as Elliot followed Haysbert into the living room. The house smelled of air freshener and disinfectant.
The TV was on, tuned to Chopped.
“I don’t know what you want,” Haysbert said. She looked around the room as though the surroundings were unfamiliar, as though she wasn’t sure how she had arrived there. “I told you everything.”
“Well, no,” Elliot said. “You actually didn’t tell me anything.”
“There isn’t anything to tell!”
He wasn’t buying it. She had let him inside the house. He hadn’t broken down the door. He said gently, “There must be something you want to say. From what I can tell, you and your husband were treated pretty unfairly by the media.”
That seemed to hit a chord.
Her face worked and she cried, “That’s true! It wasn’t fair what they said. Everyone wanted to believe that we did something to Andrew that turned him into a monster. That it was somehow our fault. But we didn’t. We never harmed those boys. Never.” She stopped.
Elliot pretended he hadn’t caught that telltale boys. Plural. He said, “People don’t like to believe that someone could be born like that.”
Haysbert said harshly, “No, they’d rather believe my husband molested children and that I turned a blind eye.”
“I’m sorry,” Elliot said. “I know the situation grew ugly after your connection to Corian was revealed. I’ve seen some of the news footage.”
“It killed Odell. The things people said to us. People who had known us for years. Harm Andrew? Do you want to know the truth? We were afraid of him. We were all afraid of him. Even when he was a small boy, he was...not kind. Not...reasonable. And we did try. We kept him. The other families didn’t. Wouldn’t. But we did. We tried.”
“Corian was placed with other foster families before he came to you?”
“Yes. He was with three families before he came to us. Three. They couldn’t take it. None of them could take it.”
“Why did you keep him?”
“Because it was the right thing to do!” she burst out. “Because he had been abandoned so many times. Starting with his own mother. No, starting with his own father. We believed that with love and patience we could make a difference. We truly believed that.” She put a hand to her forehead as though the memories hurt. “We were so wrong. When he ran away, it was a relief. It was the best thing that ever happened to us. The only thing we worried about was that he might come back.”
She stared at Elliot. The round glasses made her look like a small, bewildered owl.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You can’t know what that’s like. To be afraid of a child. And then to have people blame us. Believe that we did something to him. He killed Odell’s tortoise. It was sixty years old. He killed the hamsters. He killed our cat.”
He believed her. There was something genuine about her horror as she recalled that period.
“Did you try to get him into therapy?”
She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. “We did! The therapist was afraid of him.”
“Weren’t you concerned for the other kids?” Elliot asked.
“Yes! Of course!” She bit her lip.
Again, he let it pass. “Did he ever try to get in contact with you after he left home?”
“No. Never.”
“Did he stay in contact with the other foster parents?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m sure he wouldn’t have tried. They didn’t want him.”
“What about the other kids? What about your other kids? Did he try to make contact with them?”
She didn’t answer.
Elliot nodded at the framed photos on the top of the TV cabinet. “May I?”
He didn’t wait for her permission, going over and studying the framed portraits. Several early photographs of Odell and Ellen in their flower-child days. Several school pics of little boys with bad hair and braces and glasses—at that age kids all looked pretty much the same.
“He’s not there,” Ellen said behind him.
No, he wasn’t. Corian had been chopped right out of a couple of family groupings, and cut-outs of stars and flowers and religious symbols had been pasted into his place. That was a little...peculiar. Though maybe less peculiar than leaving a serial killer—or even his jagged outline—in the family portraits. Hard to say.
The two remaining children—both boys—were close in age, but did not look much alike beyond those shining eyes and gummy grins. One child had clearly been of Haysbert ancestry. The other...that dimple and those green eyes looked vaguely familiar.
“Who’s this?” Elliot asked.
“K-Krayle.”
“No. The other boy.”
Elliot glanced at Ellen. Behind the glasses, her eyes were frightened.
“It won’t be hard to find out,” Elliot warned her. Granted, it had been hard so far. Harder than it should have been. She wouldn’t know that though.
He continued his slow, careful scanning of the photo gallery. The Krayle kid dropped out of the family photos midway through high school. With him went a lot of the sparkle in Ellen and Odell’s eyes. The other boy, the one with the green eyes and the dimple, continued on. The chin firmed, the jaw hardened, the smile grew more assured.
She said stubbornly, “He’s not part of it. He doesn’t deserve to be dragged in.”
He was sorry for her. Truly sorry. But there just wasn’t time for sympathy now. He gave her his most forbidding look. “Ellen, I’m not looking to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve hurting. But I’m going to get that name one way or the other.”
Her face quivered, but then hardened into martyr-like resolve.
Well, there were really only two possibilities left, and given the difference in their ages...
“That’s Caleb, isn’t it?” Elliot said.
Ellen’s eyes went wide. Her throat jumped as she swallowed. She didn’t say a word.
She didn’t have to. He’d found the photo he was looking for. Graduation Day at the police academy.
No wonder no one had noticed what Corian had been up to all those years. The Sculptor’s foster brother had been Black Diamond Police Chief Caleb Woll.