Death Falls (16 page)

Through it all, he slowly repaired his relationship with his mother. It took some time—years, actually—but it was worth it. She forgave him. He forgave her. And when she needed him in the last weeks of her life, he was there.

After her death, he was still there, trying to fulfill her last wish. With Kat’s help, to boot. Eric moved past his mother’s grave to the patch of grass next to it. Kneeling, he saw the grave marker Kat discovered earlier that morning. He placed an open hand on the ground in front of it. Something was under there. There had to be.

Running his palm over the grass, Eric’s thoughts drifted to his other neighbor. He hadn’t told Kat about seeing Glenn Stewart burying something during the night. He didn’t want to sound like his mother, spouting another conspiracy theory to a doubting cop. Plus, since Kat had literally caught him with his pants down, it was the last thing on his mind that morning. But now that it was back in his thoughts, he realized his neighbor had no earthly reason to be out in the middle of a storm that bad, shovel in hand. It seemed especially strange when Eric considered how much of a recluse Mr. Stewart was.

The only reason he could think of was that circumstances beyond his control had forced Glenn to go outside. After all, he had seen them heading to the falls the previous day. He most likely heard them, too, talking about Charlie, about his disappearance, about what could have happened all those years ago.

Despite having made a fortune writing about them, Eric wasn’t a big believer in suspicion or conspiracies. He generally took people at face value, unlike Mitch Gracey, whose motto was “Never believe anything you hear.” It had appeared in the first Gracey mystery and ultimately became a line in all of them. Fans would be disappointed if it didn’t.

Yet when he thought about his neighbors, Gracey’s worldview started to make sense. Clearly, Becky Santangelo hadn’t given them the whole truth. She was hiding more than just her gray hair and crow’s-feet. Eric now suspected Mr. Stewart was covering something up as well. Evidence of some sort, perhaps. Maybe something he had kept all those years, for reasons unknown. But now that he knew Kat and Nick were digging into his brother’s disappearance, he had to get rid of it.

Eric stood and placed a hand on his mother’s headstone.

Like Glenn Stewart the night before, he bowed his head.

Then he vowed to find out everything his neighbors were hiding.

Tony Vasquez moved too damn fast. Nick could barely keep up with him as they walked the perimeter of the park across the street from the Kepner household. Gripping his cane so tightly his knuckles were white, he tried his best. But each step Tony took required two from him just to cover the same amount of ground.

“Can you slow down a little?”

Instead, Tony came to a complete stop. “A year ago, it was me trying to keep up with you.”

“A year ago, I also had a real knee.”

Lieutenant Vasquez—Nick still felt weird just thinking it—resumed walking, although at a slower pace. For that, Nick was grateful. Adding to his gratitude was the fact that Tony was sharing information with him, which Nick knew was against the rules under the Gloria Ambrose regime.

“Sorry if I’m going too fast,” he said. “But we’re short on time here.”

“Why?”

“You’ve seen the news. You know what’s happening tomorrow. Gloria is worried that whoever took those boys will strike again.”

“And you?” Nick asked.

“I think it’s better to be safe than sorry. So that’s why I’m here.”

“What did you find out from Sophie Kepner?”

“Mrs. Kepner—a nice woman, by the way; very helpful—was home the day Dennis disappeared. It was mid-November, chilly but sunny. Dennis came home from school and said he wanted to run out to the park to play with some friends. Sophie Kepner told me she wasn’t going to let him. She knew he had homework and thought he should do that before going outside. Dennis told her he didn’t have any, which turned out to be a lie.”

According to Tony, it was a lie that cost the boy his life. His mother relented and Dennis hurried outside. From the living-room window, Sophie Kepner watched him cross the street and enter the park.

“It was the last time she ever saw him,” Tony said.

They were at the gazebo, on their way to the duck pond. Nick looked to the street, taking in a reverse view from the one he had seen when he first arrived. He saw his car parked at the curb and the Kepner household. A few doors down, the woman with the baby still sat on the stoop, watching the morning slowly transform into afternoon.

“Around what time did all of this occur?”

“Three thirty,” Tony said. “Maybe a little after.”

“Did anyone see Dennis after that?”

“The police report was pretty thorough. They asked everyone up and down the block. Only his mother saw Dennis enter the park. No one saw him leave.”

Tony had already looked at the police file on Dennis Kepner. Of course. By this point, the new lieutenant probably had copies of all the reports about all of the boys. Nick really was playing catch-up.

“What else did the report say?”

“That in 1990, one Maggie Olmstead of Perry Hollow contacted the Fairmount police department. She claimed the Dennis Kepner case was related to one involving her son.”

At least Nick now had confirmation that Maggie did tell the police about her suspicions. Since he and Tony were still looking into it, clearly nothing had been done.

“I guess they didn’t believe her,” he said.

“Not really. They did some poking around. Called Perry Hollow PD. Tried to talk to the chief.”

“Kat’s father?”

Tony shook his head. “He had just died. There was no chief at the time, which is apparently another reason this slipped through the cracks. Perry Hollow PD was in disarray. All the Fairmount guys learned was that the Charlie Olmstead case had been ruled an accident years ago. With the Kepner boy, they suspected from the beginning that abduction was involved.”

Which, as far as Nick knew, was different from the cases involving the other boys. He thought of the waterfalls, unfriendly forests, and abandoned mines police assumed had swallowed them. “Why did they think that?

“They searched every inch of this park and found nothing.” Tony raised his arms and swept them outward. “And there’s not a hell of a lot to search. They also brought in bloodhounds, which lost the boy’s scent as soon as they entered the park.”

Nick looked to his left, where the duck pond sat. It was small—about the size of a hotel swimming pool—and probably not very deep. Still, he had to ask, “Did they dredge the pond?”

“If you count stepping in there with waders on and kicking around, then yeah, they dredged the pond.”

“Did anyone consider that maybe he just ran away from home?” Nick asked.

“I asked Sophie Kepner that same thing. She said Dennis was as happy as a ten-year-old could be. He had friends. He was doing fine at school. There was no household strife he was dealing with.”

“So no reason to flee his happy home?”

“None,” Tony said. “Plus, we both know runaways are usually older. Midteens and beyond. The kid was just ten. And runaways also take things with them. Clothes. Money. Personal items they can’t live without. According to Mrs. Kepner, the only thing missing from Dennis’s room were the clothes he was wearing and a model rocket.”

“A rocket?”

“The police report described it as wrought iron, painted white, about four inches tall. Dennis had scratched his name on the side with his father’s pocketknife. One of the boy’s teachers told police he had brought it to school that day, on account of
Apollo 12
landing on the moon. She said Dennis had it with him when they watched the moon walk on TV in the school auditorium. It usually sat on his nightstand, which is why Mrs. Kepner later noticed it was missing.”

“What does she think happened to it?”

“That Dennis took it with him into the park. And it disappeared. Just like him.”

Hearing this prompted another question from Nick, although one not directly related to Dennis Kepner. “One thing I’m not clear about is why you’re telling me all of this.”

Tony stopped again. He looked at Nick, eyes slowly drifting to the cane he no doubt had chipped in money to buy.

“Because you got a raw deal, Nick. Everyone knows it. And you’re the best investigator I know. So your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.”

“Does that mean I’m once again working with the state police?”

“Unofficially, yes,” Tony said. “Officially, no. Because Gloria would kill me, even though you did the right thing by telling us what was going on. We owe you. Big-time.”

Nick should have told him that calling Gloria Ambrose had been Kat’s idea, but he didn’t want to spoil Tony’s generous mood. “When did the police give up on the Kepner case?”

“They never really did. You know how it goes.”

Yes, Nick knew how it went. Cops looked for days, which turned into weeks, which eventually became months. They vowed to keep looking. They promised families they wouldn’t stop. But time moves on and man’s inhumanity to man marches in lockstep along with it. More crimes take precedence. More murders occur. Time continues to tick by. Before long, decades have passed and an unsolved mystery remains just that.

“So what’s next on your agenda?” Nick asked Tony.

“I’m going to Lasher Mill State Park. It’s about fifteen minutes out of town.”

“I know,” Nick said. “It’s my next stop, too.”

The park, where Noah Pierce vanished more than fourteen months after Dennis Kepner, made him curious. It was February when Noah disappeared and, according to the newspaper article about him, snowy. He knew the boy, a native of Florida, wanted to play in the snow. But his grandparents lived in Fairmount, which because of its close proximity also had snow. So why the unnecessary trip?

“What was the park’s appeal? I mean, it was most likely too cold for hiking.”

“For hiking, yes,” Tony said. “But not for sledding.”

Nick didn’t need to ask how Tony knew this. Looking at the police report on the Pierce boy was the only way.

They had reached the part of the path that dove directly through the pines. From the way the trees’ branches intertwined, it looked more like a tunnel than an open-air walkway. Adding to the tunnel effect was the way the path curved slightly to the left. Standing at the entrance, Nick couldn’t see the exit on the other side.

He and Tony headed into the thick of it. The lower branches of the pines reached out and brushed their legs. Nick swatted them away with his cane.

“Did the file on Dennis Kepner mention these trees?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “It mentioned how a couple of officers were on their hands and knees sifting through pine needles.”

“So these were around in 1969?”

“Unless it was raining pine needles, then I guess they were. Why?”

Nick told him about losing sight of the woman with the dog earlier as she walked the very same path. “From the Kepner side of the street, this section of the park is a visual dead zone.”

“I wonder,” Tony said, “how it looks from the other side.”

He veered off the path, cutting through the thicket on the right. The land there was slanted, rising until it was about three feet higher than the path. Nick followed, even though he knew he was going to get whacked in the face by a branch.

He was wrong. He was whacked in the face by two branches.

The second one came as Tony burst out of the trees. Nick did the same, although since he had sap in his eyes, he really wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.

“Nick! Watch out!”

Tony’s shout came from behind him. Approaching from the left was the unmistakable blare of a car horn. Nick jerked his head in the direction of the noise, seeing a UPS truck about ten feet away. He felt a tug on his collar as Tony yanked him backward.

Looking down, Nick saw that as soon as the trees ended, the street began. There was no grass berm or sidewalk. Just a length of street lined with row houses on the other side.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” It was the UPS driver, who had stopped the van in front of them. “You could have gotten killed.”

Nick raised a hand to signal he was okay. “Sorry about that. My fault.”

Looking up at the truck, he noticed how it temporarily blocked out the row houses across the street. He assumed the vehicle also did the same thing for anyone watching from those homes. He couldn’t see them. They couldn’t see him. And if he climbed into that truck right now, he was all but certain that anyone on the other side of it couldn’t see him leave.

“Hey, Tony,” he said. “I think I know how Dennis Kepner vanished.”

When Kat knocked on Glenn Stewart’s door, she didn’t expect an answer. Which was good, considering she didn’t get one. Had it been someone else’s house, she would have assumed no one was home. But since it was the town’s recluse she was dealing with, she knew Glenn was there.

Only he wasn’t responding, not even when she pounded on the door a second time and called out, “Mr. Stewart? This is the police. I need to talk to you.”

Once again, she got the same haunted sensation as the day before. Dead-end streets always felt a little abandoned, but on this one the feeling was especially acute. She wondered, not for the first time, if it was Glenn Stewart’s presence that made it this way or the other way around. Perhaps he only became reclusive because the lonely cul-de-sac demanded it.

She knocked one more time, knowing it was fruitless, and stepped off the porch. Moving backward toward the street, she craned her neck to look up at the rickety house Glenn called home. Its absurd height and proud dilapidation made Kat think of the Addams Family. Only they would have had more fun with the place. A guillotine in the front yard. A cauldron of boiling oil on the roof, ready to drop on unwelcome visitors. Mr. Stewart was content to just let it rot.

Kat waded into the knee-high weeds that made up the house’s yard. Her presence stirred up the army of animals living within it. A rabbit sprinted out of hiding and took shelter underneath the porch. Late-summer grasshoppers leaped from the blades and descended a few feet away. A garter snake, fattened by all the available bounty, slithered toward the woods that ran along the edge of the yard.