CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Was it possible that the Tysons had killed the first two victims? While my gut embraced it, my brain threw up a stop sign. It was like saying . . . well, it was like saying Cainsville had been settled by fairies. Seemingly preposterous.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said as we slid into his car. I hadn’t asked a question. I didn’t have to. “We need to break it down.”

He started the car. When I said nothing by the first turn, he glanced at me and jerked his chin. I knew what he meant. Work this out aloud for him.

“There are a bunch of questions we’d need answered before we could seriously consider it,” I said. “Questions that we can’t get answers to, because the suspects are dead. Long dead. Where were Lisa and Marty on the night of the Mays and Perkins murders? Do they have an alibi? Any chance we can put them in the vicinity? Any chance of finding the murder weapon? That’s all gone, washed away by time. They were never suspects, so there’s no way to answer those questions now.”

A quick look. I understood that one, too. Don’t dwell on what we can’t answer.

“The big connection, then, is the so-called satanism,” I said as I took out my notebook and started writing. “We might be able to dig up something. Getting details from Imogen would help. Once we’ve come up with a list of questions for her, we can use her mother to our advantage. The woman doesn’t want anyone messing with her baby. We can convince her that there’s no way to avoid that, and compared to the police, we’re the lesser evil. Obviously, the police would still speak to her after we made our case, but I don’t think Imogen or her momma are bright enough to realize that.”

“Agreed.” Gabriel paused. “We can convince her to talk. The fact she withheld evidence and watched your parents be convicted of the murders would be important leverage.”

“Blackmail.”

“Persuasion. With an implied penalty for failure to be persuaded.”

“I’ll let you handle that,” I said. “Back to the witchcraft or whatever. That could explain why we never connected the ritual to anything else. There are elements of Druidism, but nothing that more strongly suggested an actual fae influence. If it was the Tysons who devised the ritual, it would be exactly what your experts concluded: a mishmash of elements taken from God-knows-where. If the Tysons killed the first victims, then they established the pattern, meaning the pattern itself would be meaningless. The ritual elements. The method. The locations. Even the day of the week.” I stopped writing. “But that was significant. It was my parents’ date night.”

“I would suspect Friday is a popular date night. Meaning a good time for the Tysons to find a couple.”

I nodded and made a note of that. “Wait—what about the eyewitness who ID’d my parents as the people fleeing the first crime scene? She picked them out of a lineup, right?”

“Yes, but if I recall correctly, the Tysons were roughly the same age, body type, and coloring. They didn’t resemble one another in any significant way, but if the witness spotted them from a distance, it would be close enough, particularly if the lineup was skewed. I’ll look into that further.”

“If the Tysons killed Mays and Perkins, then my parents were following their pattern. Trying to hide the crime by emulating the victims’ own crimes. Which would throw a serious wrench into any investigation.”

“It would have been an even bigger wrench if there had been any forensic evidence with the first couple. Fingerprints. DNA. I could have gotten your parents off with that. It’s reasonable doubt.”

“Just their bad luck, then, that the Tysons were good. Or lucky. Which may also explain why the Cwn Annwn took an interest. If they needed my parents to commit murders and their purview is killing killers, the Tysons would have been an ideal case. They left no clues, so they stood little chance of being caught and convicted.” I paused, thinking it through. “Chandler and Evans copycatted their murders with Jan and Pete—after my parents copied the Tysons. So the chances that someone else murdered the third pair, in yet another act of copying . . .”

“. . . is infinitesimally small.” He drove another half block before saying, “Still, does this help?”

“Does it make it easier, you mean?” I closed the notebook, my forefinger still marking the page. “Little steps, you know? Along a continuum. At one end, my parents are sadistic monsters who deserve to rot in jail. At the other, they’re innocent victims of a cruel miscarriage of justice. Finding out that they didn’t kill Jan and Peter took them a step away from the monster end. Learning they killed only four people, who were likely murderers themselves? Short of innocence, it’s the best I could have hoped for. The Huntsman was right—I wanted simple. Black or white. This isn’t anywhere near either.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I flipped open the notebook. “Still, it’s only a theory. As you’ve told me many times, I can’t get too attached to it. We have work to do.”

“True. But . . .” He idled at the light. “It’s a solid theory. Very solid. I think you should prepare yourself to accept that this is the answer. Of all the ones you could find, there’s only one better,” he said. “And we knew innocence was unlikely. This is good.”

“I know.”

“If I can prove the Tysons killed the first victims, it will throw the case wide open. With that, I should be able to set your parents free.” He met my gaze. “Is that what you want?”

“It is.”

—

We needed answers, and the quickest way to get them was to go straight to the source: my parents. Yes, that’s what they were to me. My parents. They had been for a while, even if I hadn’t realized the shift. That didn’t change what I felt for my adoptive parents. They were still Mum and Dad. But those were names for a child, and I was no longer a child. The Larsens were Todd and Pamela. My father and my mother.

My first choice was Todd. It had been when I was a child, whether I’d skinned my knee or drawn a picture—he was the one I went to. Gabriel called the prison and bullied some poor desk clerk, but Todd was still off limits. That left Pamela. Which meant this would be tougher.

I asked Gabriel to stay out this time. He agreed without hesitation. I needed to win her confidence, and I wouldn’t do that with Gabriel in tow.

In the past, when I’ve wanted something from Pamela—which is, admittedly, every time I’ve visited—I’ve gotten straight down to business. Stick before carrot. Be straight with me and then we can be mother and daughter for a while. Now I reversed the process. I talked about my life. I had a new job as a research assistant. A crappy but comfortable apartment. A cat. And a boyfriend. I was most honest about Ricky, because that’s where I could light up, let her see how happy I was, and even if “biker MBA student” wasn’t her idea of son-in-law material, she focused on the student part of that, proof that the biker half was a young man trapped in his family business, working his way out.

In my openness, I manipulated her. I accept responsibility for that.

“I know about the spina bifida,” I said finally.

She jerked back as if I’d slapped her, and I wish I could say I felt guilty. But I only leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “I know about the deal with the Cwn Annwn, and if you deny it, I’m going to walk out.”

She went very still.

“I need to ask something I don’t know. Something I only suspect. Please listen until I’m done, okay? I know this isn’t easy for you.” I locked gazes with her. “But it’s not easy for me, either.”

She pressed her lips together, as if to ensure she wouldn’t interrupt.

“I think you didn’t kill Amanda Mays and Ken Perkins. I think it was the Tysons. The Cwn Annwn needed lives as part of the deal they offered you. They chose the Tysons. They also chose Stacey Pasolini and Eddie Hilton—I don’t know why, but I’m presuming it was a similar reason. The Cwn Annwn could justify their deaths, and so you could justify their deaths. Am I correct in those assumptions?”

She said nothing. I inched forward, close enough to earn the attention of a guard before I eased back.

“I know you aren’t innocent. The fact I’m not in a wheelchair proves that. So either you stopped killers, or you murdered innocents. Which would you have me believe?”

I could see the struggle in her eyes, the muscles in her cheeks twitching. I pushed my chair back.

“Then I’ll speak to my father.”

She shot up so fast I jumped. So did the guard. Pamela froze. Then she sank back into her chair. After a deep breath, she reached out, her hand going over mine.

“Have you seen him?” she asked.

“Yes, but he doesn’t have anything to do with what I discovered. I hit the medical lead when I went searching for my records. Things kept piling up until I made the connection. Someone from the Tylwyth Teg confirmed that spina bifida is a common condition among those with their blood. Someone from the Cwn Annwn confirmed the deal they made, and then they set me on the Tysons’ trail. My father had nothing to do with any of that.”

A lie, but I could tell I pulled it off.

“He would admit to it. He wants—” She looked up. “He needs you to believe in him, Eden. He needs you to believe he’s not a killer. At heart, he isn’t. He’s just a man who would have done anything to help his little girl. Those two things collided—the gentle man and the devoted father—and one had to give. It was never going to be the father. Never.”

And there it was. The confession. I sat there, processing it, accepting it. That came more easily than I might have expected. There’d been such a slow build to this moment, so many possible answers, so many times I’d been certain the answer would be “my parents are sociopaths.” Gabriel was right—this was a good answer. Imperfect but acceptable.

“Okay,” I said. “I understand why you did it—”

I was going to say I understood even if I didn’t agree, but as soon as I said “you did it,” she flinched, and I stopped.

“It was both of you,” I said slowly. “Wasn’t it?”

A shot in the dark. But when I took it, the look on her face, guilt and more, so much more . . .

“It was him,” I whispered. “All him.”

Her head snapped up. “No. Never. It was a joint decision and a joint action. We both—”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “He did. Only him.”

“I . . .” Her mouth worked, panic filling her face as if she was trying to get the words out and couldn’t. “I . . .”

“Why are you in prison, then?” I said. “If it was my father, and only my father—”

“I couldn’t do it,” she blurted. “My nerve failed and I failed. I failed you. I wasn’t strong enough. He told me the deal, and I refused to consider it. So he did it without me knowing.”

“But you were together on those nights.”

“We . . . we didn’t have a lot of money. We wanted a house for you, and it all went into that, so on our date nights we’d just go for walks. In the forest. Your father always liked the wilderness.” Not surprising, given his bloodline. “We’d walk and then . . . we’d take some time alone.” Uh-huh. Pretty sure I knew what that meant, but I sure as hell wasn’t asking for confirmation. “Afterward, we’d fall asleep for a couple of hours, with his watch alarm set. All I remember from those nights is that I slept very well. I presume there was something in the wine. We never discussed it.”

“But you went to jail. For something you didn’t do.”

Her eyes flashed. “For something I should have done. We should have done, together. The DNA evidence was mine, Eden. I’m presuming someone planted it there. Maybe the Cwn Annwn—I never trusted them. Or maybe one of their enemies. After that, how could I claim innocence without turning him in? Turning on him? As long as we both proclaimed our innocence, there was a chance we’d both be freed. I was willing to take that chance. I still am, and I always will be.”