Family Murders: A Thriller Read online

  Angela cracked an eye. The door was still whole. It was just sitting there. That, at least, seemed reassuring. She made herself walk forward, clutching the cordless handset like some kind of club. In the end she did it just like ripping off a band-aid. One quick motion, one jerk of her arm, and the door was open. Clothes. Shoes. Boxes.

  Nothing. For what felt like the hundredth time, Angela felt tension melt down through her toes and into the floor below. She wasn't sure she could keep doing this, ratcheting herself up only to bottom out.

  "Frank, there's nothing in the closet. I think we're okay."

  "What about the bed?" he asked.

  It turned out she couldn't keep doing it after all. With a grunt she turned and charged the bed. The idea that Julie could right this second be sitting eight inches over his head was too much. Without thinking, Angela stuck her head into the dark space. She didn't find anything this time either.

  "We're fine, Frank. There's no one here."

  "OK, good. Sorry about that. Old habits, I guess."

  Angela's annoyance at taking direction faded. "That's alright. It was the right thing to do. How long until someone gets here?"

  "It's only been a few minutes."

  "Feels like longer. Feels like things are stretching out over here."

  They both sat in silence for what felt like a while. Angela was sure now that her perception of time was being distorted, sure that it was really only seconds.

  "Just talk to me," she said. "You keep talking and you'll keep me talking. That will keep me from thinking."

  "What should we talk about?"

  "Why did you call me?"

  "I think you picked the wrong subject."

  "It's about him, right?" Cooper didn't say anything. "I know it. I can hear it in the way you're breathing. One way or another, you called about him. Who is he?"

  "I don't know who he is. I did call about the case, but it was about the locket," Cooper said.

  "The locket he tried to bury in my back yard?"

  "Yeah. I had a couple people take a look at it. Found out a couple of things."

  "Like what?"

  "Well, the bag. The plastic bag it was in? It was heat sealed. One of our evidence techs says the way it was done was pretty fancy in and of itself. Anyone can melt plastic together, but normally that weakens it. The point of a professional heat sealer is just that—it makes a good seal. They can tell a little bit about the quality of the seal. How good it is, how expensive the machine is."

  "And?"

  "And it's pretty high quality. He says the sealing marks indicate it's not an industrial machine, so it must be a one designed for home use."

  "And you can figure out who owns one of these machines?"

  "Um, no, there's no way to find that out. We'd have to call all the companies, collate all the customer lists, and then what? Visit them all? They could be all over the country."

  Angela stayed quiet.

  "I don't want you to think…I want to help," Cooper said, "but we're a small department. I know this guy is harassing you. Starting now we can have someone keep an eye on the house." He paused. "But as far as finding the sealer, the department is only going to give that kind of treatment to a real red ball. A manhunt or something."

  "So you called to tell me you can't find the guy."

  "Not exactly. My point is, the bag was sealed when you found it. There were no rips or holes."

  "No."

  "That's because the plastic was thicker than someone might normally use. Tough, durable. This guy went to a lot of trouble to protect the locket from the elements." He paused as though this spoke volumes, begging the question.

  "But?" Angela asked.

  "But there's dirt in the locket."

  "Dirt?"

  "Yeah, dirt, in the grooves and in the etching. If there's dirt in the locket, it must have come from before he tried to bury it, from wherever this guy was when he sealed the bag up. Either where he lives or where he works. Something. But he cared about the thing, enough to take care of it at least, and he handled it a lot, at least it would seem so from the way dirt was ground down into all the cracks. He practically fondled the thing."

  "But it couldn't just be dirt from being buried."

  "No, the bag was sealed. You said it yourself, when that hole filled with water it popped right to the surface. It was filled with trapped air. And if it's airtight, well, then it's definitely dirt-tight too. The dirt came from wherever it was before."

  "And dirt's going to help you find someone," Angela said skeptically.

  "Believe or not, yeah. People expect something like fingerprints in every crime, but they're pretty rare. Most things you touch won't show a print, and most times you touch something smooth like glass you smear your own print away. But dirt—dirt gets everywhere. It adheres to shoes and clothes and under fingernails."

  "But dirt's dirt."

  "Not really. It's a geology thing, but most dirt is pretty unique. With some expertise and copies of the county geological survey, it can be linked to some pretty specific locations. That's what we're going to try to do."

  "That sounds like a lot of resources. The resources you said the department can't waste."

  "Well," he said, "it's no manhunt, that's for sure. It may be a bit of a job, but it's a job that can be accomplished by one person."

  "One person?"

  "Yeah. Me. God knows, I've got the time."

  "Thank you, Frank. Really. I know you're taking a personal interest in us."

  "If you don't mind me saying, I like you Angela. But more importantly, and not to make light of your situation, I like a good brain teaser. I don't have to do much thinking here in semi-retirement. Come to find I miss it at least a bit. I'll find out what I can."

  The sound of crunching gravel came from the driveway. Angela took her back off the door and walked over to peer out the window. A black and white sedan was pulling to a stop in front of the house.

  "Frank, the squad car is here."

  "That's good. See? Everything's going to be fine."

  "What was the second thing?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You said you found out a couple of things. What was the other one?"

  "We can finish up right how if you want. I've probably taken up too much of your time."

  "Right now, I need you to keep talking."

  "Look, I don't want to upset you, but I'm not just looking into this case as some kind of favor. There's more to it than that," he said. "We know where the locket came from."

  "Wait, now you know where he is?"

  "It's not that." Cooper paused, seemed to be collecting his thoughts. "You had a weird story, Angela. I told people here at the station about it. Showed a bunch of them the locket too. One of the cops, one who's been here a while, he recognized it. It's something that went missing." He paused again. "We think it might be a piece of evidence in another crime, one that happened about ten years ago."

  "What kind of crime?"

  "That's not important. What is important is seeing if we can connect this locket with someone. It's important that we find, er, Gabe."

  Angela felt some bile rising in her throat. She liked the older detective too, but this was too much. "I'm being harassed, threatened, and you told me there was nothing the police could do. But now you're going to try to solve some ten year old crime instead? I'm here, right now! I need help, right now, and you're trying to close out some ten year old burglary?"

  "I'm afraid we really do have a responsibility to investigate this."

  Angela was shouting now. "Just help me, Frank! Why are you possibly doing anything else?"

  "Because it wasn't a burglary. It was a murder."

  That shocked her into silence.

  "And when we get information about a murder, we have to run it down. I'm going to help you, Angela. I just want you to understand—we have to do this too."

  "Did they catch him?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Did they catch t
he person who did it?"

  "I think that would be an upsetting subject. We don't need to get into it."

  "Do you think I know something about it?" she asked.

  "Not at all. I just want you to understand what's going on."

  "Who was murdered?" Angela took a deep breath. "And did they catch whoever did it?"

  "Yes and no," Cooper said.

  "Jesus, just tell me."

  "Someone was arrested, yes."

  "And what happened to him? It's a him, right?"

  "Yeah, it's a him."

  "And?"

  "And the trial didn't go well."

  "I've never been at a trial, Frank. What does that mean?"

  "It means a not guilty verdict."

  "But he did it?"

  "Well, the police who worked the case thought so. The district attorney who took the case thought so too, and that means a lot. DA's don't like to lose—bad politics. I've seen plenty of cases where it was a sure thing the guy did it but the evidence was weak, and the DA would let the person walk. No trial, no nothing. The evidence was weak in this case, but, ah, I guess the DA must of felt pretty strongly about it."

  Angela thought for a moment, then asked another question. "What does that mean? Why did he go out on a limb for this case?"

  "Well, he had his reasons. I spent the last few hours reading the file, and most of everyone's time was spent looking for something. Something that should have been there but wasn't. Kind of a Sherlock Holmes thing, you know? The dog that didn't bark and all that."

  "What was missing?"

  "A locket," Cooper said.

  "My locket."

  "Yes."

  Angela thought about it. She sat on the edge of the bed, cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear, picked Julie up and sat her on her lap.

  "But it's not my locket, Frank. Something like that, the ownership speaks for itself. Can't you figure out who's in those pictures inside?"

  "We know who they are. They're brother and sister. The boy is the one who went on trial."

  "And the girl?"

  Cooper hesitated. "The girl?"

  "The little girl, what about her?"

  "It's a terrible thing, Angela. The little girl is the one who was murdered."

  Thursday, October 11th, 1990

  7

  Thursday, downtown in the big city. It was the lazy late afternoon time when the streets are deserted—after all the lunch-goers have finished up, but before office workers start ducking out early trying to beat the rush hour. For about ninety minutes, the world seems abandoned.

  Angela paused at the base of the worn stone steps, pulled her coat closer around her neck, and turned in a full three hundred and sixty degree circle. She did it slowly, reaching out not only with her eyes but with her instincts, probing each alleyway, searching and hunting for the barest hint of pink.

  Nothing. No one. There was no place to hide, no crowd to blend into. Angela decided she was, at least for the moment, alone. Being alone meant being safe. She turned and ascended the steps to the library.

  Inside it was warm. She wandered left, then right, looking for the right desk and the right librarian, mentally checking all her steps along the way.

  Julie had been invited to a sleepover with a new friend. It was good news, and unexpected. As bubbly as she was in the Gray house, outside of it Julie was quiet, even shy. She didn't make friends easily, so a new friend was always welcome. More importantly, she had never been to this friends house before—it wasn't part of any routine. Angela had driven Julie over herself, and had seen almost no other cars on the trip. The ones she did see were all headed in the other direction.

  All in all, she was fairly certain that, as of this moment, no one could know exactly where Julie was. The difficulty had come in persuading herself to accept a simple truth that she'd internalized long ago as a very young and very scared little girl: sometimes kids are safer far, far away from their parents.

  With Julie safe, she'd headed for the nearest big city. It only took a few hours of research for her to realize that local journalism wasn't reliable. Even worse, it wasn't archived. At their local library, ten year old copies of the local paper existed only in hard copy, box after box of them stored in a damp basement. The boxes were only loosely chronological, stacked in order until space ran out, and then stacked again somewhere else. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no index or cross-referencing, and no way to find articles by subject or byline.

  She had quickly given up. Seeing the look of defeat on Angela's face as she came out of the basement, the local librarian had offered a piece of advice and an explanation involving the press wire and the idea that the same stories are printed in bigger papers, papers with a more progressive attitude toward archiving yesterday's news.

  All of which had lead her here, to the nearest city anyone would venture to call big. The story she was looking for had itself been big on a local level; it hadn't been big enough to get any kind of national coverage, but it had been big enough to draw in reporters on assignment from the surrounding area. Angela was sure she would find what she was looking for. She could feel it.

  Detective Cooper had ended their phone call soon after realizing he had said too much. Angela thought he really did care about her, that he was only looking our for her best interests. He thought the idea of a little girl, so close to Julie's age, murdered, would terrify her.

  And he was right—she was terrified. But so much of the fear she had felt at that moment was the fiery desire for safety, to survive. This was much colder. She was resolved. One way or another, there had to be an answer about what was going on, about what it all meant. And she was going to find it, with or without the help of the police.

  Cooper had only yielded one more small detail before hanging up, but it was the most important one of all, a name. It made the search so much easier. Angela approached a librarian sitting at a desk set back behind the stacks.

  "Excuse me, I'm trying to find a group of old newspaper articles all pertaining to one subject."

  "What's the subject?"

  "A murder. From ten years ago. November 1980."

  "Do you know the name of the victim?"

  "Gabrielle Fallows."

  After that it was easy. News doesn't stay current forever. Stories have waves of popularity, so nearly all the articles were grouped around the time of the murder and arrest, and then again around the time of the trial. They were on microfilm, but the librarian was more than happy to pull the appropriate rolls and set Angela up at a reader in a back corner.

  At this time of day the library was nearly as empty as the streets outside, so there was no one to hear her gasp when she saw his face. It had only taken a few twists of the knob and there he was, much younger, but already in possession of that lean and handsome face.

  "Gabe," Angela said under her breath.

  There was no question he was the boy in the locket, but he looked so different now. It was the eyes, she thought. In the newspaper picture he was being pushed toward the open back door of a boxy sedan. There was a caption underneath: Eric Fallows, the primary suspect in the rape and murder of his younger sister, Gabby Fallows.

  "Jesus Christ." Whatever she had expected—an accident, negligence, coincidence—an incestuous pedophile sex murder wasn't it. Somehow she had thought the locket and its owner would be just the first clue in a long line of clues, part of a chain. But here was the connection, immediate and plain as day.

  Eric Fallows. Gabe had never seemed like the right name, but this explanation was far worse than she could have ever imagined. Masculinizing and taking his own dead sister's name, the seven-year-old sister he had raped and murdered, seemed inexplicably sick. The thought of Julie sitting alone with him on a soccer field made her want to throw up.

  The coverage was extensive. She had never heard of the case, but she wasn't from here. This was Ted's home town. They'd met while Angela was still in college and had moved back after Julie was born. Ted though
t a small town was the right place to grow up. He'd never mentioned anything about this, but ten years ago would have been just around the time he had left himself. It was good he'd held back—knowing it now was hard enough.

  For just a second, it seemed like enough. This was what she'd come for, to confirm or deny the lead that dropped into her gut every time she conjured up his smiling face. And here it was: confirmation. He was everything she thought he could be and more. Much, much more.

  "I could leave now," she thought, and almost did.

  Instead, she started reading. She read for a very long time.

  8

  November 11th, 1980, was a Tuesday. At just before four in the afternoon a call to 911 was placed by a person, later determined to be eighteen-year-old Eric Fallows, reporting the discovery of a body. Even then the town was small, and with nothing so big as a child murder to attend to, having not seen a murder in the previous ten years, the police—all of them—came as quickly as they could.

  They found Eric Fallows covered in blood and catatonic, cradling his sister's body and sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of his house. In early stories the details of the actual crime were sketchy, presumably the result of a small town's police force attempting to preserve the dignity of its citizens. It was reported that some veteran officers refused or were unable to approach Eric on the porch in his condition. Some threw up.

  Eric was sent to the hospital, riding in an ambulance along with his sister's body. He started talking during the ride, insisting that he be taken to the police station so he could tell them who killed his sister. Officers met him at the hospital's front door, then took him to the station. Despite their strong advice that Eric wait until they got there to tell his story, both patrolmen heard it twice during the car ride. Eric was starting in on a third telling as they arrived. Once in an interview room he repeated the same story again and again—for detectives, for lawyers, into microphones, to anyone who asked, for anyone who would listen. He would repeat it for the last time at his trial.