Speak No Evil (7 page)

Was he?

Nick had a flash of a memory, the kind that comes and goes quickly but where you remember every detail. Steve had been eleven, he’d been eight. They’d been coming home in the rain late one afternoon, certain their mom would skin them alive. She’d warned them about the weather, said it would rain, but they’d believed the blue skies—what they saw with their eyes—instead of the four decades of wisdom packaged in their mom.

Nick could almost feel the cold rain on his face.

A car skidded around the corner, splashing them. Steve swore, using words only their father said in frustration or anger. If Mom was around, she would have washed his mouth out with soap.

Nick had said the f-word once. One taste of Ivory soap cured him forever. To this day, he’d never bought Ivory soap—he still smelled it, tasted it.

They started jogging as their wet clothes made them shiver.

A movement in the bushes as they rounded the corner had made Nick stop.

“What?” Steve asked.

“What was that?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

Nick looked around carefully. He had seen . . . something. What was it? A cat? A squirrel?

“Nick, it’s cold and Mom is going to go through the roof when she sees us. Let’s get home.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He approached the roadside shrubbery cautiously. Parted the branches.

It was Belle. Belle the Beagle, Mrs. Racine’s dog. Mrs. Racine lived on the corner, down the street from the Thomas house. She’d never have let Belle out in the front yard, but the dog was notorious for digging under his pen. Nick and Steve had brought her home on many occasions. Twice the dog had followed them to school. She was annoying in her eagerness to please everyone.

Now, Belle lay on the side of the road, dying.

For a minute, Nick and Steve stood there stunned. Stared at the bloodied animal. One leg was completely smashed. The other obscenely crooked. Her pant was rapid and shallow, her little tongue hanging out. She only had one working eye; the other was so covered in blood and dirt that Nick wasn’t sure it was even there.

The brothers knelt in the mud and Steve gathered Belle into his arms.

“We need to take her to the vet,” Nick said, his voice shaking with barely restrained sobs.

“She’s not going to live, Nick.” Steve looked at him, his own eyes bright with tears. “Who would do this to her? How could somebody be so cruel?”

Though Nick was the younger brother, he found himself consoling Steve. They sat on the ground, their jeans soaked with mud and water and now the blood of a little dog who had never hurt anyone but lay dying in their laps. Silently, they petted the animal. It seemed like forever, but only minutes passed before Belle succumbed to her injuries.

Steve carried Belle the two blocks to Mrs. Racine’s house. Tears sliding down their cheeks, they silently handed the dead dog to the old woman. She broke down sobbing.

“Nick? Earth to Nick?”

Nick shook his head, looked at his brother, saw the pain of a young boy who comforted a broken dog until she died. The Steve Nick had known could never have killed a woman. He couldn’t picture it, couldn’t even think it.

But was his judgment impaired? Did he see only the good in Steve? Was there a streak of evil, of vengeance, of anger? Hidden until something set him off? Would he recognize a killer in his own brother?

“You didn’t hear a word I said.” Steve was irritated.

Nick pulled up the words he’d heard in the back of his mind. “You argued with Angie about a guy she was dating.”

“A
drug dealer
she was dating.”

“You think her murder is related to this guy?”

“
Masterson,
” Steve spit out. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine who would hurt Angie.”

“But the police think you did it.”

Nick could see why. Ex-boyfriend, restraining order, claimed to be home—alone—at the time of the murder. Oh, yeah, Nick would be all over Steve, too.

“How was she killed?” he asked.

“I don’t exactly know. The police didn’t say much, and the newspaper was short on details—she was apparently suffocated.”

“Suffocated?” Nick glanced at the door of Steve’s apartment and saw Carina Kincaid standing next to the uniform, her face blank, her eyes watchful. “Let me see what I can find out. Why don’t you go for a walk? Give me a few minutes with the detectives.”

Steve noticeably relaxed. “Thanks, Nick. Really, I appreciate your coming down here and helping.” He paused. “You up for it?”

Steve was referring to his health. “I’m fine,” he said automatically.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the detective follow Steve’s path down the stairs and around the apartment building until she could no longer see him. Her eyes then fixed on him. He approached her; she met him halfway.

“Detective Kincaid,” he said with a nod, extending his hand.

“Sheriff.” She shook his offered hand firmly, her skin soft except for pronounced calluses on her fingers—from time at the gun range. Her sharp, dark eyes didn’t miss anything.

“Call me Nick.”

“Thanks. I’m Carina. Sorry about what happened in the apartment.”

“You followed your instincts.”

“You didn’t look like a threat. I just saw the gun and . . . ” She shrugged and gave him a self-deprecating grin, making what could have been an awkward situation comfortable.

“What are you looking for?” He nodded toward the apartment.

“Your brother offered to let us come in and check out his computer.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Your brother made some statements about how much time he spent reading the victim’s online journal. We want to verify the information.”

“What happened?”

“What did your brother tell you?”

“That his ex-girlfriend was murdered—suffocated—and she had filed a restraining order against him a few weeks ago because they’d had an argument.”

Carina nodded. “A restraining order that your brother repeatedly violated, including the night Angie Vance disappeared.”

“What about her current boyfriend?” asked Nick.

“He’s out of town and we have a BOLO on him.”

Nick raised his eyebrow. “Her current boyfriend has conveniently left town? Before or after the murder?”

“I can’t discuss the details of the investigation with you, Sheriff. I’m talking to you as a law enforcement courtesy, but you have no authority here.” While her tone was cordial, she was trying to shut the investigative door in his face.

Okay, play nice and she’ll give up more, Nick thought. “What happened to the victim? Steve didn’t know the details.”

Carina mumbled something, sounded like a sarcastic
that’s what he says
in Spanish, but she spoke so fast Nick wasn’t quite sure he caught every word. But the tone and attitude were clear: she believed his brother was guilty.

“The victim was raped and suffocated in a triple layering of garbage bags, then left on a public beach. She was found early yesterday morning.”

Raped.

Nick pushed back the memories that threatened to return. They usually stayed at bay until he was alone, but the faint echo of a scream reverberated in his head. He was acutely aware of Carina watching him. He swallowed and said, “Any similar crimes?”

She stared at him. “I know how to do my job, Sheriff.”

“I wasn’t implying that you didn’t. I was just asking a question.”

She paused, assessing him. Whatever she saw, she must have deemed him trustworthy enough to share some tidbits. “Nothing in the area, but we’ve tapped into the FBI database to see if there’s a hit. I’m covering all the bases. I’m going to catch Angie’s killer.”

“Was there any unusual damage to the victim’s body? Something not related to her manner of death or rape? Something that might point to a repeat offender?”

“You’re suggesting serial killer.”

He gave a short nod.

She looked like she wanted to say more but stopped herself. “We’re looking into all possibilities, like I said.”

So there
was
something else. Probably a very specific mutilation, perhaps a message on or near the body. Something that only the killer would know about.

Nick assessed Carina Kincaid as a competent, focused detective who wanted to catch the killer because that was her job. Maybe if he understood her better, learned why she’d become a cop, if he could get her to trust him. Perhaps they could find a way to work together.

Some cops did it for the job, some for the power, but more often than not, Nick had learned that most people became cops for one of two reasons: family on the job, or because they had a personal reason for seeking justice.

Carina’s partner exited Steve’s apartment and walked over to them.

“We got what we need?” Carina asked.

“More or less,” Hooper said. “Patrick’s in there writing out a tag so we can take the computer.”

Nick’s instincts buzzed. “Why?”

“We need to spend more time on the machine. To verify your brother’s statement.”

They wouldn’t take the machine unless they’d found something either incriminating or that contradicted what Steve had told them earlier.

“You don’t have a warrant,” Nick said cautiously. The best avenue would be to befriend the detectives; barring that, he had to protect his brother.

But so help him, if Steve was guilty . . . no. He wasn’t a rapist. Not the kid who cried over a dying dog. Not the man who earned two congressional medals during Desert Storm. His brother, who’d always been there for Nick growing up, protected him against bullies because he’d been a runt until he hit puberty.

“Are you going to make this difficult? We can get a warrant,” Carina said. “Your brother is cooperating because he says he wants to help.”

“I want information.”

“You are not only out of your jurisdiction, you are related to our prime—” she caught herself, “a potential witness.”

“I have experience in these types of cases,” Nick said.

“What type would that be?”

“Serial killers.”

Hooper interjected, “I think it’s in the best interest of your brother that we do everything by the book.”

“It’s in the best interest of justice to do everything to stop this killer,” Nick said. “I know my brother and he’s not a rapist.”

They assessed him, skeptical. Neither trusted him, but what did he expect?

“If Steve is guilty,” he said, “I’ll be the one to throw away the key. Blood is thick, but not thick enough to protect a killer.”

Carina said, “I’d suggest that you find out
exactly
what your brother was doing every minute of Friday night and early Saturday morning, and find out exactly what he read on Angie’s Vance’s not-so-anonymous online journal. Maybe if we get the truth, we can stop wasting time looking at him.

“But,” she continued, “your brother hasn’t been completely honest with us, and that only adds to our suspicions.”

“I’ll find the truth.”

“And if you don’t like it?”

“You can arrest him.”

NINE

N
ICK FOUND
S
TEVE
sitting on the beach watching the waves come in.

It was late afternoon, but it was still warm enough that they didn’t need jackets. Unlike Montana in February, Nick thought. There was snow on the ground, and when he’d left this morning it had been clear and forty degrees, though they were expecting another storm to hit by tomorrow.

Steve had told Nick he hated the snow and rain. He’d settled in San Diego when he went on disability because of the weather and the proximity to other veterans—San Diego County had one of the largest veteran communities in the country. Steve felt more at home here than anywhere else.

There was something sad about that. Nick and Steve had each settled in a
place
they felt was home, but without a family to
make
it home.

They sat side by side without talking as the minutes ticked by. Nick hadn’t been to the coast since the last time he’d visited Steve. He found the rhythm of the ocean soothing, comforting. The anger he had walked across the sand with—anger at his brother for the situation and at himself for considering that Steve might be guilty—dissipated.

“What’d they take?”

“Your computer.”

“They were there a long time.”

“You told them they could search your apartment.”

“And see? They didn’t find anything because I’m innocent.”

Steve jumped up and started walking down the beach. Nick followed him.

“She was raped,” he said.

“Shit.” Steve paused in stride. “I didn’t do it, Nick. You have to believe me.”

“I want to help you, Steve. But you need to be completely honest with me.”

“What do you want from me, Nick? I told you everything I know.
I didn’t kill Angie.
” Steve stomped off again, and Nick trailed at a distance to give his brother time to cool off and think about the situation.

The differences between Nick and his brother didn’t elude him. Steve thrived here among the hordes of people, on the edge of a major city, where he couldn’t possibly know even a small fraction of the population by name. So anonymous, it made Nick uneasy, coming from a town where he could engage in a conversation with a stranger and learn that they had more than one mutual acquaintance.

Even now, in the middle of a murder investigation where he was a suspect, Steve waved to people he recognized, smiled, acknowledged peers. Like he was on stage, always on show. It was the old Steve coupled with a Steve he didn’t really know, and that bothered Nick.

Just how much had Steve changed since he left Montana?

Nick caught up with Steve and asked, “What do they want with your computer?”

“I don’t know. I guess to see where I’ve been, what I’ve done online. It’s actually really easy to track e-mail and Internet traffic. It should be a piece of cake for the police.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do they want to know where you’ve been online, what e-mails you sent? Why is
your
computer important to them?”

Steve paused. “Angie had an anonymous online journal. It was . . . irresponsible. I told her to tone it down, but she didn’t listen. I know that journal had something to do with her murder. I guess the police just want to make sure I didn’t say something incriminating online or threaten her or something. Or maybe they are looking for something like that to pin Angie’s murder on me, but
I didn’t do it.
And they’re not going to find anything that said I did.”

Steve sounded defiant, and Nick’s uneasiness grew. The police had mentioned the website. Nothing in detail. “I need to look at this journal.”

Steve shook his head. “There’s no reason for you to.”

“Dammit Steve!” Nick stopped walking. His brother turned around and glared at him. “You have to take this seriously,” Nick said. “Your ex-girlfriend was murdered. The police are looking at
you.
You have motive and no real alibi.”

“I had no motive to kill Angie! Whose side are you on?”

“I want to be on your side. I really do. But look at the facts. Angie was eighteen years old. You’re old enough to be her father. That’s—” Nick cut off what he was about to say, something that would be impossible to take back.

Instead, he softened his tone. “What’s going on with you, Steve? You’re not working, you’ve been going to school long enough to earn three degrees, and you’re dating college girls. You’re just shy of forty and your girlfriends can’t even legally drink!”

“Why are you judging me? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you
know
me?”

“I thought I did.” Nick hated the direction this conversation had taken, but he had no choice. The truth demanded that he push Steve.

“I don’t make it a habit dating girls at the college. Angie was the only one. It—I understand what you’re saying. Really. And you didn’t know Angie. She was different. She needed me. We hit it off.”

Nick wasn’t certain he fully believed Steve, but why would he lie?

“Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

Steve clenched his fists. “Do you think I did that to Angie?”

“No.” But Nick had waited a beat before answering, and Steve seized on it, his jaw tight but his eyes filled with hurt.

“You think I’m capable of that type of cruelty? That I could
rape
a woman? You think that of me? You really don’t know me.” Steve stared at the ocean, his eyes watery. “You don’t know me at all.”

“That’s not what I said—” Nick began, but Steve cut him off.

“I thought you were here to help me, Nick. I was wrong. I didn’t think I had to prove to my own brother that I’m innocent. Maybe you’re right, maybe I do need a lawyer. Because if my own flesh and blood believes me capable of murder, it’s no wonder the fucking police are trying to hang me.”

“That’s not how it works—”

Steve shook his head, waved his arm toward his apartment building up the beach. “Why don’t you go join your buddies who turned my apartment upside down? Skewer me because I’m the easiest to blame. And let Angie’s killer walk the streets free. Because the truth doesn’t mean anything, does it? As long as you guys have someone to throw in jail, the truth doesn’t matter.”

Steve turned and walked up the beach, back toward the apartment. Nick watched him, perplexed. What was that about? He replayed the conversation and didn’t see what he’d said to set off his brother. But the pressure of a police investigation, the stress of being a suspect, of having the police in your home, asking personal, embarrassing questions . . . maybe it had just gotten to Steve.

Steve had asked Nick for help and the only way Nick could do that was if he knew all the facts.

Nick understood why the police suspected his brother. Older man, much younger woman dumps him. Restraining order. There was more to that story than Steve let on. And Nick had to see Angie’s website to know exactly what the police had on his brother. And hope that Steve trusted him enough to be completely honest once his temper cooled down.

Steve jumped into a small, sporty car and drove off. Nick started back up the beach, noticed that the police vehicles were gone. He hoped the apartment door was unlocked. If not, he knew a few tricks. Hunger and weariness ate at him. It had been a long day and he needed to get off his feet. Or rather his knees. Walking on the beach had not been a wise move. He wanted his pain pills, but refused to give in to the need.

Nick slowly crossed the beach and opened the rental car, unzipped his shaving kit, and poured two prescription-strength Motrin into his hand. He swallowed them with the now cold coffee he’d picked up at the airport after he’d flown in, hours before, wincing at the foul taste.

Grabbing his bag, he started toward Steve’s apartment again. Grinding pain in his knees and ankles forced him to walk slowly.

He counted twenty-four stairs. There were twenty-two stairs in his house in Bozeman. He could have moved his bedroom downstairs to the guest room, but he had refused. It would have meant he’d been defeated by the pain, defeated by his mistakes, defeated by a killer.

He could do this.

One.

He put his right foot on the first stair, and pulled his left foot to stair two. Okay. The pain was minimal, but he had known it would be. His right knee hadn’t been as damaged as his left.

Bracing for the electric jolt he knew would come, he pulled his right leg up to the second stair.

His vision blurred and he took a deep breath.

He did four more stairs in the same fashion, trying to pick up the pace, until it became obvious that he wouldn’t make it, not like this. He swung the bag in his right hand to build momentum, then tossed it up the stairs, praying it would make it to the landing and not roll all the way down. It made it, barely.

He grabbed both railings and used them as crutches, putting more pressure on his right knee than he should, but relieving his left leg. He reached the top and sank down on the landing to catch his breath and wonder again what he was doing. Could he even catch the bad guys anymore?

Inevitably when he was in pain, self-pity took hold.

That’s it, Sheriff. Get off your ass.

Nick hauled himself up and shuffled across the balcony to Steve’s apartment. The door was locked, but not bolted, and Nick easily popped the old lock.

When Nick opened the door, he was surrounded by a bright, orange glow. It took a moment to realize the light came from the setting sun shining through the large, sliding-glass windows that made up the back wall of the apartment. The sun rested on the ocean in front of him, bleeding into the sea, the water sparkling like bursts of firecrackers.

Spectacular.

For a brief moment Nick forgot everything that troubled him. Before him the vast ocean unrolled endlessly, the sun illuminating everything in sight. The orange turned red as the sun rapidly sank lower, with finally just the tip visible on the calm water.

For a minute, a far too short time, Nick felt as peaceful as the glassy sea.

The sun disappeared. And while the colors were still vibrant, Nick saw that the ocean wasn’t as calm as he’d thought. Its waves crashed on the shore, the night claiming its time.

The mess of the police investigation brought home the reason he was here in the first place. He reluctantly turned from the view and dropped his bag by the door.

On the wall next to the door was a framed photograph of a former president of the United States handing a much younger Steve a commendation. Nick remembered that day nearly fifteen years ago. It had been before their parents died, shortly after he’d joined the police academy. Nick was idealistic and eager, and still thought he could convince his dad that he was just as heroic as Steve. That he, too, would have risked his life and saved those kids.

But Paul Thomas had only had faith in one of his sons, something Nick had never understood, and with his father ten years in the grave, he would never get the answers.

The one thing Nick could figure was that Steve had followed in their father’s footsteps. That he joined the army and moved up in the ranks. That he, too, had earned a Purple Heart. They had war stories to share, political discussions, a love of history.

Nick simply had a driving urge to right wrongs, and becoming a lawyer had seemed the perfect answer, until that day he knew he was destined to be a cop.

Some cops became cops because of tragedy, but Nick became a cop because of hope. He’d been at the police academy for a workshop on juvenile crime and gangs. One of the speakers was a kid, Jesse Souter, who’d grown up with a drug-addict mother and a petty thief of a father. Jesse’s time spent in and out of foster homes coincided with his parents’ prison stints. It was no wonder the kid had turned to crime.

But one day a Missoula beat cop had arrested Jesse for shoplifting a six-pack of beer and beef jerky. The five-dollar crime was a turning point. The cop befriended and guided Jesse, and showed him his own potential. Jesse grew up and became a cop himself.

He could have so easily gone the other way.

It was the hope that these kids could be helped, that all they needed was guidance and an example, that changed Nick’s career choice. He enrolled in the police academy the next day and never looked back, never doubted his decision. He couldn’t point to a Jesse during his tenure as a cop, but he knew he’d helped a few lost sheep find the right path. And that had been enough.

Looking around Steve’s apartment and the general mess left by the police, he thought that maybe he
should
have become a lawyer instead. Right now Steve needed a lawyer more than another cop.

Steve’s natural tidiness was still evident through the disturbance. Steve used the dining area as his office, and the empty place where his computer had sat looked particularly barren.

Along the walls of both the dining area and adjacent living room were framed articles. Dozens of them. Nick limped along, glancing at the headlines.
Local soldier saves three dozen children. Sergeant
Thomas brings fellow soldier to safety. Two presidential commendations for Thomas. Congressional Medal of Honor for saving schoolchildren.

And more. All the articles had pictures of Steve in uniform, all taken more than a dozen years ago.

Staring at the history of Steve lining the walls, he couldn’t help but wonder what Steve had really been doing for the past fourteen years since he left the military. He had no real job but collected a decent pension. He’d been going to college part-time for nearly ten years, dating a girl half his age, and getting wrapped up in a murder investigation.

The thought of Steve raping a woman made Nick physically ill. He wanted to stand by his brother, but if it were true Nick would walk away. He wouldn’t be able to look at the brother he’d long admired, long respected, and see in his face a rapist. A man no better than the Butcher.

Nick had told the two detectives the truth: if Steve was guilty, he would turn him in himself.

As Nick looked at the framed awards, the commendations under a spotlight, the newspaper articles and photographs, Nick wondered if he really knew his brother.