Aim to Kill (25 page)

“Do we have time?”

“We have a few minutes. Since we’re here—if you want to.”

She nodded and directed Zack to continue west, instead of turning north onto the freeway.

It surprised her how much things had changed, and how much they’d stayed the same. Everything seemed
more.
More houses, more stores, more businesses. But the streets were the same, and she had no doubt how to get home.

Home.
She’d never thought of her house as a home, not after Missy was gone.

A couple of turns later, Olivia said, “Stop.”

Zack pulled over and looked at the houses on either side of the street. “Did they build over the park or something?”

She shook her head, her chest tight, her mind thick with competing emotions. She pointed to a house directly across the street, its brick front stately even though the house wasn’t large, the white shutters freshly painted, the drapes open to bring in light.

Her mother had never opened the drapes after Missy died.

“That’s where we lived.”

To her, the house had been lifeless, large, and forbidding, cutting off warmth and light as well as love.

She stared at the modest two-story on
Eucalyptus Street
. The magnolia tree in the front, a mere sapling in her youth, had matured, its trunk thicker than her embrace, the dark chunky leaves and huge white flowers arching stiffly over the freshly mowed lawn. A grouping of three white-
trunked
birch trees gathered at the southernmost corner of the house, partially shielding a healthy clematis that had reached the top of an eight-foot trellis. Meticulously groomed rosebushes in every shade from white to peach to vibrant red lined both sides of the property line. Her father had spent at least three hours a day tending his yard.

The new owners must have appreciated that, because they kept the garden thriving.

Her heart pounded so loudly she could hear its
thump-thump
vibrating in her ears. Her vision narrowed until the beautiful garden disappeared and all she saw was the hostile face of her childhood house. The upstairs windows glaring at her, accusing her. The shut door like pursed lips. Her mother’s rage and gut-wrenching grief.

She hated coming home.

It was the house itself that terrified her. She still heard her mother’s sobs, as if the walls themselves had recorded five years of maternal agony to replay every anguished cry for her.

Olivia’s shaking hand reached for the door handle. “Let’s walk,” she said.

Zack jumped out and opened her door for her, extending his hand for support and comfort. She felt like such an invalid, an albatross. She saw the house as it was in her memory, not as it was today.

But standing there, staring, she saw that some things had changed.

There was a minivan in the driveway.

A tricycle on the front porch.

Children’s laughter flitting through open windows.

As she watched the door opened and two small children, maybe four and five, ran from the house. They giggled, the sound sliding over Olivia’s ears like an oasis in the desert.

The giggles brought back memories of
before.
Before Missy died and the world changed. When they used to run down the street to the park, laughing and teasing each other. When they planned Daddy’s birthday party or surprised Mommy with flowers. When they played with dolls and set up house.

The mother, an attractive brunette with wide hips and a smile on her lips, quickly followed her children.

“Hold it!” she called as she locked the door.

The kids stopped in their tracks, a boy and a girl. “Please can we get ice cream?”

“If you’re good at the store,” she said.

“We’ll be good! Promise!”

The mother smiled wide, hoisted a large purse over her shoulder, and slid open the minivan door. The kids scrambled into the car and she buckled them into car seats. Moments later they drove away.

“
Liv
?” Zack said softly, using his thumb to wipe away tears she hadn’t known were there.

“I’m glad the house found a family.” She squeezed his hand. “Let’s walk. The park is around the corner.”

They rounded the corner and faced the park, the memory of Missy’s abduction so vivid Olivia could feel the bruise on her face from Driscoll’s assault. It had healed before they knew for certain Missy was dead.

She walked up to the memorial plaque the city council had erected a year after Missy’s murder and ran her fingers over the recessed letters.

Melissa
Anne
St. Martin
Memorial Park
.

The rickety metal jungle gym had been replaced several times over the years. The current bright red-and-yellow play structure had three slides, a bridge, and a pole to slide down. Four separate horses were cemented into the foundation under the bark so children could gallop in place.

The trees were triple the size, in height and width.

Bark had replaced sand.

The swings were gone.

How many families who enjoyed this park knew who its namesake was? How many people remembered that a little girl had been abducted at this spot?

“Let’s sit,” Zack prompted, urging her toward a bench in the middle of the park.

Zack’s presence was comforting, like being wrapped in a down blanket in the middle of winter, snow falling all around. She’d always felt so cold, so alone, but with Zack she didn’t feel bleak, and her loneliness was fading.

“They took away the swings,” she said. “I used to love the swings. I always wanted to go higher.”

“My sister loved the swings, too. When she was a kid,” Zack said.

“How did Amy die?”

Zack didn’t say anything, and for a minute Olivia wondered if she’d overstepped an invisible barrier between them.

Then he said, “She was killed in a drug bust.”

“She was a cop, too?”

“No. She was a recovering drug addict.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Zack had never spoken about Amy to anyone. It hurt too much. But Olivia would understand, and it felt right to tell her everything.

“Mae died when Amy was fourteen. I was a rookie cop and moved back to Mae’s house as her guardian. Amy had a lot of built-up anger. I’d left the house when I was eighteen, a borderline hoodlum. I was hanging out with the wrong guys, didn’t want to go to college or get a job or really do anything except race my bike and hang out.

“When I found out about my mother, I did a lot of soul-searching and knew I didn’t want to end up like her, caring only about myself. I felt helpless to bring back the lives of the two people she killed. Alcoholism is an illness, but
dammit
, I felt she should have had more control over herself.”

Zack looked out at the kids playing, small children because it was a school day, and the mother who watched them. Neither he nor Olivia had had a “normal” childhood, but nowadays, what was “normal”? Maybe it was a feeling, the sense of being loved and cared for, more than a structured environment. He had been loved and well cared for, even without his mother.

Olivia had not.

And in many ways, neither had Amy.

“Mae and Amy butted heads constantly. Mae didn’t want Amy turning into her mother, and Amy had our mom up on this pedestal. I’d made a big mistake early on. I never told Amy what really happened with our mom; I didn’t want to hurt her. I wonder if I’d been honest at the beginning if things would have been different.”

“The
what if
scenario.” Olivia squeezed his hand. “I know that one well.”

“I finally did tell her, after she got involved with drugs. She was fifteen at the time. And I didn’t handle the situation well at all. I laid on the ultimatums pretty heavy. Something like
Get your act straight or you’ll wind up dead or in prison
.” He shook his head, his throat tight.

“You were practically a kid yourself.”

“I was an arrogant cop, and I was scared that I was going to screw up my kid sister because I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent. So I played the bad cop. I imposed strict rules and curfews. Mae was strict, but she also understood something I didn’t. She understood the value of trust and love. All I saw in Amy was a defiant kid who, if she wasn’t reined in quickly, would turn into one of the junkies I saw every day, passed out in the gutter.”

He remembered Amy at fifteen like she was standing in front of him. Spaghetti-strap tank tops, torn jeans, always smelling of pot. In less than a year, she’d turned from a good kid with almost straight A’s to a drug addict who barely passed her classes.

“Anyway, this went on for a couple of years. She’d run away. I’d track her down. Impose tougher rules. Check up on her. She hated me, and I think because I was a cop she ended up not trusting the police. Which killed her in the end.”

“What happened?”

What
had
happened? Even Zack wasn’t completely sure he understood Amy and all the events leading up to her murder.

“After high school, one of her best friends died of a drug overdose. It hit her really hard. She’d been living with some older college kids at the time and asked if she could move home. I said yes, if she lived by my rules. She was nineteen, and I believed—by her actions—that she really wanted to get out of the life she’d made.

“For a while, things were fine between us. I got her into drug counseling, and it seemed to help. She didn’t want to talk to me about anything, but she’d lost some of the anger and hostility, so I didn’t push her to talk. She started taking classes at the community college. That’s where she met Kirby.”

“The reporter?”

Zack nodded, remembering the day Amy brought Kirby home for dinner, ostensibly to meet him. Zack already had met Kirby, a cocky reporter who’d turned up at every sensitive crime scene like a bloodhound since taking over the crime beat six months previous. Kirby knew no boundaries then, and he hadn’t learned them since.

“What Amy saw in him—I don’t know.”

Maybe he did know. Kirby was attentive. He had seemed to really listen to Amy. He understood her in ways Zack never had. Maybe it was because they were closer in age; maybe because Zack still resented the choices Amy had made with her life. He had been proud of her for cleaning herself up; would he have felt the same had she still been doing drugs? Would he have still loved her?

“They saw each other for a long time. Couple years. I’d sort of grown to accept Kirby as part of our family, I guess. I mean, if Amy was home, Kirby was there. I wasn’t home much, taking overtime wherever I could get it. We had the house free and clear from Mae, but no money, so I needed to pay off my student loans and get Amy through college and pay bills.

“Then everything changed.” Changed? Was it sudden, or gradual? He didn’t know; he didn’t remember much about that time except work.

“I heard about an undercover drug operation at Amy’s college. I was worried about her, because she’d seemed preoccupied. I feared she still had friends into that scene.”

He’d never forget what he’d learned that day. When he started asking around, he was called into Chief Lewiston’s office. And told in no uncertain terms to stay out of it. The sting was a joint federal–state operation to put some big players behind bars. If it was a success, they’d be able to dry up half the drug channels into the city overnight.

“How is my sister involved?” Zack had asked.

Lewiston hadn’t wanted to tell him. But in the end, Zack learned that Amy was playing undercover cop. He told Olivia, “Amy knew everyone in the drug scene. They trusted her. We couldn’t get any of our guys close, so when one of our
narcs
on campus approached her, she said she’d help.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

Zack shook his head. “She didn’t trust me.”

“She was scared.”

“She should have been. She was playing a dangerous game. If I’d known, I would have stopped her. Or protected her. As it was, I could do neither.”

“Did she die during the sting?”

He took a deep breath, shaking his head. “The sting went off perfectly. Took down everyone they wanted. Cut off major supplies into the Pacific Northwest.

“Amy was gunned down the next morning in a drive-by shooting.”

Olivia reached for him. “Oh, Zack! That’s awful.”

“You know what the kicker is? Kirby knew all along. He knew and didn’t tell me. He claimed he loved her, but did nothing to protect her. In fact, he wrote all the follow-up stories about the sting and Amy’s murder. I can’t look at him and not think that he should have done something different. That
I
should have done something different. Not just with her playing undercover cop, but raising her.”

Olivia leaned her head on his shoulder. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a parent. To be responsible for the health and safety of another human being.”

“You don’t want kids?”