Cade wanted to see Grant’s father first when they got to Boston, so they left the chopper at a local airport and rented a car to drive out to the prison. It took them almost three hours to get there from Boston and when the guard informed Grant’s father who was there to see him, the old man refused the visit. It was already after sundown by the time they got back to Dorchester so they ate dinner at an Italian restaurant in Grant’s old neighborhood and headed to the mausoleum he used to live in. To Cade and Marcus’s credit, neither of them acted like there was anything odd about Grant owning a house worth about five million dollars. They spent the rest of that evening having a few beers and discussing their plans for the following day. Grant was pissed off at himself for forgetting to call Rosa earlier. By the time he called, Billy answered, saying she and Ariana were already asleep. As far as he was concerned, the whole day was a bust.
The next morning, they headed out early and Marcus dropped Cade and Grant off at the jail where Duke was being held and took the rental car to go and meet with the investigating officer that had arrested Duke for Becker’s murder. Grant got the same knot in his stomach as he went through all the checks and sally ports on his way into the jail as he always did. That wasn’t even as bad as the prison, but he hated them both. He’d seen the inside of way too many of them in his life and not once had he been the one on the wrong side of the bars. When they made it at last to the visiting room, Duke was already there in his orange jumpsuit, waiting for them.
“Little brother.”
Touching wasn’t allowed between visitors and inmates so Grant just gave his brother a nod and said hello as he and Cade took a seat.
“Cade, this is my brother, Duke Patrick. Duke, this is my boss, Cade Travers.”
“Nice to meet you,” Duke said. “I appreciate you helping out with this.”
“Well, Grant’s not just my employee, he’s a good friend. We don’t have a lot of time so forgive me if I’m blunt here. I have a list of questions I’d like to ask you. Remember that we’re here to help you, Duke, so we need you to be completely honest with us.”
Duke looked at Grant and smiled. “Did my little bro tell you I have problems with the truth?”
“Knock it off, Duke. I didn’t tell him anything. He’s telling you what we tell everyone. So pay attention, okay?”
Duke sat up and sarcastically saluted Grant. He was embarrassed for Cade to see the relationship that he had with his brother. He knew that even calling it a “relationship” was playing fast and loose with the term. Every exchange the two brothers had in at least a decade had been in a facility similar to the one they were in now, or in a courtroom. It didn’t really make for a “relationship.”
“I want to know about the day that Grant was pushed out the window.”
Duke looked surprised. He glanced at Grant and Grant nodded at him. “Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning. Tell me about the day leading up to that event,” Cade said.
“The morning was pretty normal, I guess. The cook fixed breakfast and the maid served it to us when we went downstairs. After breakfast Grant went back to his room, to read or something. He read a lot back then.” Duke rolled his eyes. “I went outside and shot my bow and arrow for a while. I had some haystacks set up out by the stables. I was out there when I heard the alarm start going off. I dropped the bow and arrows and ran back up to the house. I went to the safe room. Cook and the maid were there, but Grant wasn’t. I yelled at them, asked why they didn’t go get him. The cook was this old guy that smelled like fish. I never could stand him. Anyways, he said, ‘Your brother knows the rules. He’ll be down.’ The thing that worried me was that once we locked the safe room, my dad was the only one that would be able to unlock it so I ignored the stupid cook and I went to get him.”
“Why were you in your room?”
Cade and Duke both looked at Grant.
“What?”
“You stuck your head through the bathroom door that was between our rooms and told me to get to the safe room, but you had to pass my room to get to your room and to get to the bathroom. So why did you stop in your room?”
Duke looked like he was thinking about that. “I don’t know.”
“Duke…”
“No seriously, bro, I don’t remember. Maybe there was something I wanted to take down to the safe room with me. Man, you know my memory is not what it used to be.”
“So what did you do after you told Grant to get down to the safe room?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Shit, Duke! Do you want our help or not?”
“Look around you, Grant. You think I want to die in a place like this? You think I want to go down as a child murderer? I don’t fucking know what happened between the time I told you to get to the safe room and the time Mom and Dad got home and found you outside that window. The next thing I remember is Dad unlocking that door. He was asking me why I didn’t make sure you got to the safe room. I remember feeling dazed and groggy and then things started happening fast after that. The police showed up and then an ambulance and…”
“Wait, the police got there before the ambulance?” Cade asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, that I do remember because the detective was pissed that no one had called an ambulance yet.”
“So the police were responding to the alarm?”
“I guess so. I’m not sure. After the ambulance got there and they took Grant to the hospital, they split us all up and talked to everyone. They let Mom and Dad go to the hospital and they took me to the police station.”
“The day the detectives talked to me in the hospital they said the maid was on the phone with the alarm company when I fell or was pushed.”
“She wasn’t on the phone when I came in the house. She was in the safe room with the cook, that much I remember,” Duke said, his brows knitted together, trying to focus on his memory.
“They didn’t mention the cook to me either. Was he in the safe room when dad let you guys out?”
“I don’t know…I’m sorry, Grant. I know my memory losses are pissing you off but you want me to be honest and I’m being honest. I don’t remember.”
“Okay,” Grant said as calmly as he could. “Okay…I’m not upset with you. Did you tell the police that cook and the maid were in the safe room when you got there?”
Duke shook his head and looked distressed as he said, “No. We weren’t supposed to talk about the safe room, so I didn’t tell them anything about it at all. At first, I just told them I was downstairs when you were pushed. But then after a while when I decided to just say fuck it and confess to the whole thing, there was really no reason to mention the safe room because I was supposed to be upstairs trying to kill you.”
“Okay,” Cade said, “Let’s fast forward to Becker’s murder. Where were you that day?”
“I was in the house. I was in my room. I heard a crash and a scream and I ran out to see what was going on. The staff had already called 911 and someone was calling his parents. I just kept looking at him, remembering that day when Grant was lying outside that window…I thought Grant was dead that day and when the ambulance got there and they pronounced that kid dead I had an anxiety attack. When the police got there, I was shaking and sweating and gasping for breath. I looked guilty as hell and as soon as his asshole father drove up, he jumped out of the car and started pointing fingers at me. But this time I’m not fourteen years old and I’m not having any memory problems. I don’t know who pushed that kid, but it wasn’t me.”
“When they took you down to the station the day they arrested you for Grant’s assault, did they give you a drug test?”
Once again, Duke looked like he was trying to remember something and then he nodded. “Yeah, they asked me if I was on drugs and I said no, but they made me pee in a cup anyways.”
“Did they tell you what the results were?”
He shook his head. “No, and I never thought to ask.”
“Your attorney should have asked for that.”
“He may have. That attorney was court-appointed because by that time Mom and Dad had bailed and I was a ward of the state. He didn’t give a shit.”
A buzzer rang out in the room and the correctional officer at the desk announced that there were five minutes left for visiting. Cade waved one of the officers over and said, “Can I let him write some names down for me?”
“Go ahead,” the officer said, handing Duke a pen.
Cade took out a notepad and said, “I need your attorney’s name. I need the name of the cook and the maid from your childhood as well and a timeline of the last time you remember seeing either of them.”
Duke wrote the attorney’s name down and then looked up at Grant. “What was that smelly cook’s name?”
“Victor…Vince…hell, I don’t know. Something with a V.”
“The maid’s name was Bethany Sanders. I remember that because she used to answer the phone with her full name. She’d say, ‘This is the Patrick home, Bethany Sanders speaking,’” Duke said, mimicking a high-pitched voice. He wrote that down and then said, “I think it was about ten o’clock when I went out to shoot my bow and arrow. I was out there for about an hour before the alarm started going off so I’d say it was around eleven a.m. when I saw them in the safe room. I was there about five minutes before I went up to get Grant and then…the next time I remember looking at the time was the clock in the police car. It was two o’clock.”
“Two? Was that on the way to the station, after they interviewed everyone?”
“No, it was when they first put me in there. They made me sit there while they talked to everyone else.”
“Damn, so Grant was lying outside that window for three hours?”
“I guess so. Kid had a hell of a will to live.”
Grant chuckled as the next buzzer went off and he stood up. “Still do.”
“Hey,” Duke said as Cade got to his feet too. “I appreciate this.”
Cade gave him a nod and Grant sighed. “I know you do. But when this is over Duke…no more, okay? No more trouble.”
“No more, brother. I’m ready to grow up now.”
Grant controlled his facial expression as much as he could on that note, said goodbye to his brother, and followed Cade outside through all the bells and whistles once more. Marcus had returned and was waiting in the parking lot.
“So what do you think?”
“I think that someone did a pretty shitty investigation into your assault. I want to talk to this detective and I want to see a copy of that police report and the court records from your brother’s trial.”
“I’m sorry that my brother is such a pain in the ass to deal with.”
Cade smiled as he pulled open the passenger door to the rental car that Marcus was waiting in and said, “Boy, I’ll be surprised if the day ever comes that I meet a person with a normal family. I don’t have one of my own and I stopped apologizing for it a long time ago.”
“So how’d it go?” Marcus asked when they got in the car.
“Gave us a lot of food for thought,” Cade told him. “How was your meeting?”
“Short. The detective got a call about twenty minutes into it. According to him, Duke was acting suspicious when they got there and then when Becker’s father came home and started pointing fingers, they had to check into it. They took Duke in for questioning and he just kept saying he was in his room and nowhere near the attic. He also said he’d never hurt a kid. One of the officers was old enough to remember what happened with your family, Grant, and that was just another nail in your brother’s coffin. The detective readily admitted to me that they didn’t look into anyone else. Your brother was there, his fingerprints were in the attic, supposedly there is priceless art missing and if history is to be believed, he’s committed the same crime before…you just happened to live through it.”
“I have to admit,” Grant said, “If it were me doing the investigating, I might have thought the exact same way.”
Marcus nodded at him sadly in the rearview mirror and then looked at Cade. “Where to, boss?”
Cade was looking at something on his phone. “Let’s go see the detective that handled Grant’s assault first.” Cade put the phone down in the center console with the GPS talking them through the directions to the detective’s home.
“Should we call him first?” Grant asked. “Maybe give him a head’s up?”
“Nah,” Cade said, “I like surprises better. He might want to meet us somewhere and I’d really like to see where this guy lives.”
Grant picked up the phone and looked at it. This was why Cade was his hero. The retired cop and father of five children, grandfather of six lived very close to the same neighborhood that Grant had grown up in. He lived on the outskirts of Dorchester and before they even got there, Grant knew they would arrive at a house that a retired Boston detective shouldn’t be able to afford.