CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sitting in the back seat again as Bill drove across the town of Allardt, Riley kept wondering …
Just who is this Weston Bruder?
Chief Dolby had expressed a definite aversion to the father of the first victim.
She told herself that must be the reason for her own bad gut feeling about him.
She pulled up the notes that Cullen had taken when he’d interviewed the Bruder family. They were informative enough as far as they went. The Bruders were a tight-knit, old-fashioned family.
The father, Weston Bruder III, owned a local hardware store that had been founded by his great-grandfather. His wife, Bridget, was a stay-at-home mother. The twenty-five-year-old victim, Fern Bruder, had been living with her parents and two younger siblings before she’d been killed. Riley found that a little odd for a woman Fern’s age, but hardly anything to get really suspicious about. These days, lots of kids were slow to leave the nest.
In fact, Riley didn’t see any red flags in Cullen’s notes. He apparently hadn’t noticed anything odd about the father or the family.
All the same, her bad feeling grew as they arrived at the Bruders’ house and pulled into the driveway.
There was nothing outwardly sinister about the place. It was an older ranch-style house that had been added to over the years, and the medium-sized yard was immaculately kept. Even so, Riley was struck by …
What?
She wasn’t quite sure.
Perhaps it was how bland and characterless the place looked, even from outside. Absolutely nothing was out of place, which she thought made it look like some kind of facade or movie set, not a real house. Riley somehow found it hard to believe that anyone actually lived here, much less a family of five.
When they knocked on the door, they were greeted by a rather plain, slender woman in her forties. She was wearing a simple, conservative, full-sleeved dress that modestly covered her legs well below the knees, almost down to her ankles.
She looked at her visitors a bit nervously.
“Are you the FBI folks?” she asked.
Riley and her colleagues produced their badges and introduced themselves.
Riley asked, “Are you Bridget Bruder?”
The woman nodded and said, “Come on in. Weston is expecting you.”
Riley and her colleagues walked on into the small living room. She was startled to see three people standing stiffly together, almost as if posing for a family portrait.
Joining the group, Bridget said, “This is my husband, Weston. And our daughter Mia. And our son, Bobby.”
Everyone was well dressed, with Mia looking like a miniature of her mother. From reading the files, Riley remembered that the girl was in her late teens. Weston was wearing a suit and tie, and so was his nine-year-old son. They had thin, pinched, expressionless faces. Only the young boy’s features showed any sign of sadness.
As for the living room, it filled Riley with the same feeling as the outside of the house. The furniture was plain and ordinary, the carpet practical and perfectly clean, and everything seemed to be in its precise place. Decorations were few, but there were some religious paintings on the walls.
The room chilled Riley a little. It reminded her of a living room inside a dollhouse. It felt impossible to imagine that anything was ever spilled or broken or messy here. Was it really possible for a family to live like that?
Still standing stiffly, flanked by his family, Weston Bruder said, “I hope this is important. We missed our morning church service. If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be late for the next service.”
The chill Riley was feeling suddenly deepened.
The family seemed too cold to even be distraught about Fern’s death.
Riley said, “We do have some questions. But first I want to say that we are terribly sorry for your loss.”
The wife said in a solemn tone, “‘The Lord is near to those who are broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’”
It took Riley a moment to register that the woman was quoting from the Bible. Before she could think of anything to say in reply, Jenn nodded and said …
“‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’”
In near unison, all four family members said, “Amen.”
Riley looked at Jenn with surprise.
Was Jenn religious? She had never given Riley any reason to think so.
Nevertheless, Riley realized that Jenn had managed to say exactly what needed to be said under these circumstances. The family suddenly seemed much more at ease, and Weston actually invited the three agents to sit down with them.
Then he said, “We’re sad about Fern’s loss, of course. But she’d been straying away from us lately.”
“How so?” Jenn asked.
Riley decided to let Jenn take the lead asking questions. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing right now. And she certainly was showing an appropriate degree of empathy.
Bridget said, “We’d hoped she would settle down and marry and raise a family right here in Allardt. This is a good town with good people. But she was restless. She longed for big-city life. She wanted to move to Chicago. She’d been going there a lot lately by train—looking for jobs, she said.”
“What types of jobs?” Jenn asked.
“Some sort of secretarial work, I suppose,” Bridget said. “She’d learned some office and computer skills at the local community college. But she never talked to us about it, because we didn’t approve.”
With a frown, Bridget added, “Not that our feelings mattered. She was a grown woman. Her choices were up to her.”
As Riley listened, she thought she was starting to understand certain things that were being left unsaid. Both Bridget and Weston had deep family roots right here in Allardt, perhaps all the way back to frontier days. To them, the city of Chicago must seem to be a sinful and dangerous place. Even though Fern’s murder had happened nearby, they somehow blamed her attraction to the city. It seemed almost as if it hadn’t come as a surprise to them that their daughter had died a violent death.
Riley felt unsettled by another realization—that the family’s grief was blunted by their resentment that Fern wanted to leave them.
Do they think she deserved this? Riley wondered.
It was a shocking possibility.
Jenn asked, “Are you aware of a similar murder that took place near Barnwell, Illinois, just yesterday?”
A look of vague surprise crossed the family’s faces.
“No, we hadn’t heard of that,” Weston said.
Jenn said, “I won’t go into details, except to say that the victim was killed in almost exactly the same way as your daughter. Her name was Reese Fisher, and she lived in Barnwell. Is the name familiar to you?”
Bridget and Weston and their daughter shook their heads no. The boy, Bobby, sat looking sadly at the floor.
Jenn asked, “Are you sure she never mentioned anybody by that name?”
Bridget Fisher shrugged and said, “None of us knew anybody in Barnwell. I don’t know how she could have known her. Unless she met her on one of her trips to Chicago.”
Weston gave his wife a stern look. Riley sensed that she was saying more than he wanted her to.
Are they hiding something? Riley wondered.
In a slow, cautious voice, Jenn said, “Mr. and Mrs. Bruder, I have to ask you a routine question, and I’m sure you’ve been asked it already. But can you both account for your whereabouts at the time of your daughter’s murder?”
Weston Bruder straightened up in his chair.
He said, “I suppose that question is directed at me in particular.”
“Not necessarily,” Jenn said.
But of course, Riley knew that Bruder was exactly right. The woman and the daughter looked too physically slight to have carried out the murders, and the boy was out of the question.
Bridget Bruder said, “Mia and Bobby and I were at home.”
“Wasn’t it a school day?” Jenn asked.
“Yes,” Bridget said. “We home teach.”
Jenn directed her gaze directly at Weston Bruder.
In a tight voice, he said, “I was at home.”
Riley felt a sharp tingling. She knew that her colleagues felt the same.
Jenn said to the mother, “Can you confirm that your husband was at home?”
The woman seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“Yes,” she said.
A short silence fell.
Still speaking in a soft, sympathetic-sounding voice, Jenn said, “I believe we all know that that’s a lie.”