Blood And Bone (18 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“In cases of familicide, often the presence of stepchildren increases the risk of violence.”

—excerpt from
Blood and Bone
by Shayne Reynolds

“How in the hell did you ever end up married to that guy?” Des asked, slamming the car door behind him.

Heat crept into Shayne’s cheeks as she slid the key into the ignition. “It’s a long, involved story that doesn’t put me in the best light.”

The truth was, while she’d been sitting across from her ex for the past thirty minutes, she’d been asking herself the same question. God, had he always been that obnoxious, or had today been special? Maybe she shouldn’t have brought Des with her. Not that she hadn’t tried talking him out of coming, for all the good it had done.

She looked up as Travis strode purposefully in front of her car toward his silver SUV, Sandy at his side. The seven years they’d been married seemed distant, like a dream, or a movie she’d watched ages ago. He looked the same as he always had—gray suit over his football-player build, short blond hair—and yet like a complete stranger.

She glanced at Des next to her. The two men couldn’t be more dissimilar. Des, like the anti-Travis, leaned casually against the passenger seat, body lean, wearing faded jeans and another ugly shirt—this one black with a big, orange buddha on the front. His hair touched his collar, long compared to Travis’s near crew cut.

She shifted her gaze to Sandy, the woman fair and petite, a slight stretch in her sundress over her small baby bump, the only hint she was pregnant.

Perhaps Shayne wasn’t the only one looking for the complete opposite of what she’d had in their marriage.

She gripped the gearshift, and glanced behind her, but Des covered her hand with his. She turned and met his gaze.

“She’s pregnant,” he said.

Her cheeks heated, though she had no idea why his observation embarrassed her. “I told you he’d moved on to try for that family.”

“You did, I just didn’t realize you meant he’d actually succeeded.”

Please don’t ask me if I’m okay.

Instead, he squeezed her hand gently, his eyes dark with concern. “Like I said, he’s an asshole.”

Despite his words, the quiet compassion in his tone and expression caught her off guard. A lump thickened in her throat, and she nodded, unable to speak until she coughed lightly.

“I’m fine,” she told him, even though he hadn’t asked. She wished her voice didn’t rasp. “I knew about the baby. I’m okay with it.”

And that was true. So why the sudden surge of emotion? But she knew why, even if she didn’t want to acknowledge the answer. Des’s concern for her feelings touched her more than she cared to admit.

She dropped her gaze to their joined hands, but Des slipped his fingers beneath her chin and tilted her head up. His thumb traced a slight arch back and forth beneath her lower lip. Her heart stilled, and a warm shiver raced through her. He took her mouth with his, in a soft, almost-chaste kiss. The tenderness squeezed her heart.

Oh no, she couldn’t feel things like this for him. Whatever was between her and Des had no potential for growth, nowhere to go.

She pulled back. “We should go.”

He frowned, but nodded. “Okay.”

She slid her hand from his grip, backed out of the parking space, then steered from the lot onto the busy street. They drove for a while in silence, neither of them willing to bring up their next destination. Not surprising really. During the two-hour drive from Dark Water, Robert Anderson’s name was never mentioned once. And while Des had appeared nonchalant and upbeat most of the time, more than once Shayne had caught him, staring pensively out the window, as he was now, a vertical line creasing the flesh between his brows.

“We need to talk about your father,” she said, carefully.

“Anderson,” he corrected, without looking away from the rapidly passing office buildings and factories alongside the highway.

“Your decision to meet him is entirely up to you, but I need you to understand I’m following up on details for my book.”

He turned and looked at her, brows drawn tightly, eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

“I have a few questions about some information he gave me.” She hoped Anderson didn’t start with his innocence claims. They’d infuriate Des. “I also want to ask him some questions about your mother’s activities before the murders. Her first husband implied she was involved with someone else right before her death. I’m hoping I can verify if Anderson also believed she was having an affair.”

God help Shayne if Heddi discovered the angle she was following, Des thought. Heddi would have Tic on her so fast Shayne’s head would spin. And nothing he said or did would stop the woman.

All his life, Heddi had held his mother before him like paragon, a virtual saint whose life he’d ended with his mere conception. Maybe she wasn’t perfect after all. An odd weight lifted from his chest, only to slam back down as Shayne exited the highway, turning onto a narrow city street clogged with traffic.

Almost there.

Des’s stomach churned. Did he really want to go through with this? Meet the man he couldn’t even refer to as his father? He had to. There was no way in hell he was letting Shayne face Anderson alone.

She drove to a small complex of run-down garden apartments, pulled into the nearest visitor’s parking and shut down the engine. The wind whistled through unseen cracks around the windows. Outside, fat cumulus clouds swept across the sky, rapidly blotting out the blue.

Shayne turned to him. “You don’t have to come if you’re not ready for this.”

He wasn’t ready, not by a long shot. He would have been perfectly happy to go through the rest of his life never knowing the man. But he wasn’t about to wait in the car while Shayne chatted up a two-time killer. “I’m going.”

Together, they got out of the car and crossed the parking lot to a chipped concrete path that led to the front door. The chilly wind whipped around them. A reminder summer was almost over, fall on its way.

With his pulse pounding in his ears, Des pulled open the heavy steel-and-security-glass door, moving aside to let Shayne pass. They stepped into a small lobby that served the four apartments in the block—two up and two down. A mix of cooked foods mingled with the pungent stink of cat urine. Des held his breath as Shayne pressed the buzzer for Anderson’s place.

This was it. No turning back.

He looked to the security door dividing the lobby from the ground floor apartments, and wiped his damp palms on his jeans. No one came.

She hit the buzzer again.

Still no answer.

Relief slid over him, draining away the tension in his muscles. Thank God, he wasn’t home.

“Son of a bitch,” Shayne muttered. “Why would he make a point of giving me so many ways to contact him if he was going to avoid me?”

Shayne sounded distracted, like she was thinking out loud rather than asking his opinion, so Des didn’t bother replying. She moved to the security door and peered through the reinforced glass.

“That’s his apartment there, on the left,” she said.

“So? He’s not home.”

“Maybe. I have an idea.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. He followed her outside, but instead of heading to the car, she started around the side of the building.

“Where are you going?” he asked, falling into step beside her.

“I’m going around back to peek inside through his window to see if he’s there or not.”

She
couldn’t
be serious, but she was. They walked past a patio with rusted bicycles shoved between a brick wall and yellowed, plastic lawn furniture. “What if he
is
there?”

“At least I’ll know if he’s out, or trying to avoid me.”

The next patio didn’t have anything atop the uneven stones. The balcony for the apartment above created an overhang, helping protect against the wind, as Shayne made her way to the sliding-glass doors. Heavy drapes had been drawn across the window inside, leaving only a narrow gap to see through. She cupped her hands around her eyes to block out her reflection while she peered in.

“Well?” he asked.
Don’t let him be home. Don’t let him—

“I don’t see him,” she said.

Good.

Something pushed against the back of his leg.

“What the hell?” He stumbled sideways, shoving Shayne away from the door and smacking his elbow hard on the door handle. Tingling pain shot from the joint into his fingers, throbbing in time to his thudding heart.

A huge, orange tabby gazed up at him with one amber eye, the other socket empty and scarred.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He must have looked like a complete idiot. He turned to Shayne. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rubbed his elbow and looked down at the cat. “Menace.”

The tabby flicked his badly kinked tail, then proceeded to rub back and forth against Des’s legs, purring loudly. The blatant affection seemed odd from such a battle-weary animal.

Shayne bent and scratched the top of the cat’s head. “The way my luck’s running, you’ll probably give me fleas.”

“I don’t think Bigwig has fleas.” Des jerked around at the sound of the woman’s voice from nowhere. Shayne straightened.

The woman stood at the edge of the patio in a faded blue bathrobe. Her hair, the color of wet sand, stuck up on one side of her head as though she’d only just rolled out of bed. Deep lines scored her face around her eyes and mouth, becoming more pronounced with her deepening frown as her dark brown gaze moved from Des to Shayne.

“Is this your cat?” Des asked, mostly for something to say.

The woman shook her head. “Nope, a stray, but Robert’s been feeding it and taking it in at night.” Des tried to envision the man who’d blown away his mother and stepbrother caring for the mangy cat, but couldn’t. “Gave him that stupid name too.”

“It’s from
Watership Down
.” When the woman stared blankly, he added, “The book about the rabbits.”

Julia’s favorite book. When he was small, and Heddi, on one her tirades, would terrify him, his sister would read the book to him, her soft voice calming. And when he grew older and their roles reversed, he would read the book to her. God, he could probably recite the thing backwards and forwards.

The woman’s pencil-thin brows rose. “He named a cat after a rabbit?”

Des shrugged. “He was the biggest rabbit.”

“Stupid name for a cat.” The woman reached into the pocket of her bathrobe and pulled out her cigarettes. She slid one from the pack, popped it between her lips and lit the tip with a plastic lighter. “You a friend of Robert’s?”

He almost laughed aloud.
Not even close, lady.

Shayne intervened. “No, I’m a writer and he was helping me with a project. My name is Shayne Reynolds, and this Des An…Des. Are you Mr. Anderson’s neighbor?”

“That’s right.” The woman exhaled a slow stream of blue-gray smoke into the chilly air and gave Shayne the once over again. “Tina Masters.”

“Have you seen Mr. Anderson lately?”

Tina hauled hard on the cigarette, breathed deeply, then exhaled, shaking her head. “Not for a few days, I guess.”

“Is he away?”

Tina shrugged. “Truck’s still parked in the underground. If he is around, I wish he’d do something about that damned cat. He starts feeding the thing, and now it’s out here meowing all damned night.”

Des tuned out Tina’s diatribe about the cat. If his truck was there, where the hell was he? He turned to the sliding-glass door, now standing open about two inches. It must have been unlocked, then slid open when he hit his elbow.

He gripped the handle and pushed the glass wider.

“Hey,” Tina called after him, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“Door’s unlocked.” Des shoved back the heavy curtain.

Inside, the small apartment was neat and dark, the stale air tinged with a faint, putrid stink. Unease blew through him like a winter’s wind. “Des, you can’t go in there,” Shayne whispered, but she followed him inside anyway.

With the door open, Bigwig raced past them into the apartment. He grabbed for the cat, but missed. “Damn it.”

“Don’t go any farther,” Shayne said softly, perhaps picking up on that same sense of dread wrapping around him like an icy cloak. “Let’s call the cops and wait outside.”

“And tell them what exactly? That we broke into someone’s apartment and it stinks?” That smell could have been anything. Rotten food in the fridge. Garbage that hadn’t been taken out. A backed-up toilet.

Shayne started digging through her purse, probably looking for her phone. He moved deeper into the apartment. Vaguely, he noticed the newspaper folded on the coffee table. Books jammed tightly into a cheap faux-wood shelf on the far wall. Anderson’s home. His things.

The wind moaned outside, drowned out by Bigwig’s mournful meows. Absently, Des reached for Shayne’s hand, their fingers lacing together.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, softly.

He tightened his grip on her hand. “I know.” But he couldn’t stop. He had to see for himself.

They passed the kitchen. The stench was stronger, but didn’t seem to be coming from anything in the room. He pulled Shayne down a short, dark hallway. The only light spilled from the open bedroom door at the end of the hall. Through a foot-wide gap between the door and the frame, he spotted an unmade bed, clothes piled on top of the dresser and a pair of legs stretched over the floor. Bigwig rubbed against one limp, sock-clad foot.

“Shit,” Shayne hissed from beside him. She disentangled her fingers from his, and he lifted his hand to push the door open the rest of the way.

“Don’t,” Shayne said. He glanced at her, her skin unusually pale in the dim light, her phone pressed to her ear. “Don’t look.”

But he had to. He pushed the door and it swung wide. His gaze followed the denim-covered legs, to the plaid shirt over the torso, then to the mangled, bloody pulp where the man’s face should have been.

Chapter Fourteen

“Further investigation would reveal Robert Anderson was attacked from behind with a hammer, and with shocking savagery.”