Chain Reaction (10 page)

‘We should talk inside, Mrs Matthews.’

The woman doubled over as if Lucinda had punched her in the stomach. A high-pitched keening rose from her throat. A man ran down the half-flight of stairs. ‘Barb, Barb,’ he said, then turned to Lucinda. ‘What did you do to her?’

Barb sucked in a breath and tried to speak. ‘They, they – oh, Jeff.’ She spun toward her husband and wrapped her arms around his waist.

‘Sir, Mr Matthews, sir?’ Lucinda said.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped.

‘Could I please come in? I need to talk to you and Mrs Matthews.’

‘What did you tell Barb? What did you say to upset her? And where is my son?’

‘Sir, that’s what I want to talk to you about,’ Lucinda said.

‘May I see your badge?’ he asked.

Lucinda pulled it out and held it up.

‘Homicide? Someone murdered my son?’

‘Sir, may I please—’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Neither one of us has had much sleep. Please come in. We’ll go up to the living room.’

Lucinda followed up the steps. The couple huddled together in the middle of the sofa. Lucinda took a chair a short distance away. On the mantelpiece was an assortment of photos of their son at all ages of his life. There was no doubt in her mind that the discovery in the woods was Todd Matthews. ‘I am sorry to say that we believe we found your son’s body this morning.’

‘He was murdered, Barb,’ Jeff said.

‘Sir, we don’t know that. We are treating it as a suspicious death,’ Lucinda said.

‘Maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s someone else. Just ’cause we reported him missing doesn’t mean it’s him,’ Barb said, her voice getting more shrill with each word.

‘Ma’am, I do have a photo I can show you to confirm his identity.’

‘Ohmigod! I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t look at a dead child. Any dead child. And if it’s – if it’s …’ Barb said before breaking down in sobs.

‘Is it gruesome? A lot of blood? Or …’ Jeff said before stalling out.

‘No, Mr Matthews,’ Lucinda said. ‘In fact, I thought he looked very peaceful.’

‘OK,’ he said, inhaling deep and holding the breath in his chest for a moment before releasing it in a quivering sigh. ‘I’ll look at it,’ he said.

As Lucinda pulled out her cell, Jeff pressed his wife’s head to his chest in a protective gesture. Lucinda held up the photo.

Jeff gasped. ‘Yes. Yes. That’s Todd,’ he said and turned his head away. ‘But he just looks like he’s sleeping.’

‘Yes, sir. That’s one of the reasons that we do not think it is a homicide. We saw no injuries on him.’

‘What’s the other reason?’ Jeff asked.

‘In one hand, he had a water bottle. In the other, he held a plastic prescription container labeled OxyContin. The name on it was Barbara Matthews.’

Barb jerked her head up. ‘OxyContin? That’s from a while back – after my accident.’

‘I thought you threw them away, Barb,’ Jeff said. He turned to Lucinda. ‘She only took one of them and it really knocked her for a loop. She got another painkiller from the doctor and didn’t take any more.’ He spun his head back to his wife. ‘I thought you were going to throw them out.’

‘Well, I was going to,’ Barb said, ‘but then I thought, what if the pain gets too bad? What if I need them? And then I forgot about them.’

‘And now our son is dead,’ Jeff said as he rose to his feet and began pacing the room. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t throw them out.’

‘Mr Matthews, excuse me,’ Lucinda interrupted. ‘This is not helpful. Please sit down. I really need to ask you a few questions.’

For a moment, Jeff looked as if he was going to ignore her. Then he slid on to the sofa as far from his wife as possible.

‘When did you last see Todd?’ Lucinda asked.

‘We already told that missing persons detective,’ Jeff snapped.

‘Please, bear with me, Mr Matthews—’

‘Saturday night,’ Barb said. ‘A little bit after midnight when he got back from the Walking Dog.’

‘The Walking Dog, Barb? I thought we decided that he shouldn’t be going to seedy hang-outs like that.’

‘It’s not seedy, Jeff. And that’s why he didn’t ask you. You are too rigid.’

‘Yeah, your permissiveness was the right thing, wasn’t it? You let him do what he wanted and now my son is dead.’

‘He’s my son, too,’ Barb shrieked.

Lucinda stood, holding out her hands, ‘Please, please, I need your help. Todd needs your help.’

They both looked down at the floor.

‘Now, did you hear from him after that at any time?’

Barb and Jeff’s heads popped up. They looked at each other as a bright flush rose in their faces. Jeff hung his head back down. Barb jutted out her chin and said, ‘Yes. He called our landline when we went down to the police station at two a.m. Sunday night or Monday morning, whatever. Anyway, we went to report him missing and missed his call.’

‘Did he leave a message?’ Lucinda asked.

‘Yes,’ Barb said with a nod.

‘Did you give the tape to the missing persons detective?’

‘No,’ Barb said. She turned a withering glance on Jeff. ‘My husband did not think that would be a good idea. I foolishly listened to him.’

‘Mr Matthews, why did you think that?’ Lucinda asked.

Jeff did not look up and did not respond.

With a deep sigh, Barb rose to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You should listen to it. It’s on our computer.’

Barb led Lucinda into a small, neat office with a computer workstation on one wall and a long work table on the opposite one. Barb woke up the computer and punched a telephone icon. She scrolled to a message received at two seventeen a.m. and opened the file.

She pressed the audio start button and Todd’s voice came out of the speakers, sounding slow and a little slurred. ‘Mom, Dad, just wanted to let you know I love you. You don’t need to worry about me anymore. And you don’t have to stay together for the sake of the kid.’ He chuckled without humor. ‘Go ahead and split up. You should have done it years ago. With me gone, there’s no need to try to fake it.’ The call clicked off.

Barb appeared to shrink as she listened. If a human being could melt at will, Lucinda was certain that Barb would have done so right before her eyes.

‘I shouldn’t have listened to him,’ she said and shuddered. ‘I wanted to cut a copy to a disk and take it back to the station right away. But Jeff said it wouldn’t look good – it would reflect badly on us. He said it would just prove that he ran away and the cops would stop looking for him. Oh God, I wish I hadn’t listened to him.’ Barb sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

Lucinda laid a hand on her shoulder and let her sob. When Barb raised her tear-ravaged face, she said, ‘Maybe if I’d gone back to the police, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe he could have been found and his life saved. I said that we needed to do something – something was wrong, I said. He doesn’t sound right. Jeff said, “He’s just been drinking – all teenagers do that at one time or another. When he sleeps it off, he’ll be crawling back here, promising never to do that again.” And I had my doubts, but I didn’t push. I should have. I will never be able to forgive myself for that.’

Lucinda kneeled beside her. ‘I have a couple more questions, Mrs Matthews.’

‘Yes, please, whatever you need,’ Barb said. A slight tremor in her speech made each word seem as fragile as spider web.

‘Did Todd have his own car?’

‘Oh, no. He’s only fifteen,’ she said, her voice cracking. She sucked in a sob and looked Lucinda in the eye.

‘How did he get to the Walking Dog on Saturday night?’ Lucinda asked.

‘A friend picked him up.’

‘Do you know who?’

‘I’m sorry, no. All I know is that he was driving a red pick-up truck,’ Barb said.

Lucinda’s heart raced. ‘Are you sure of the color?’

‘Oh, yes. He stopped right under the streetlight.’

‘Did he come home in the same vehicle?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him until he came up the steps.’

‘And the last time you saw him? You didn’t see him in the morning?’

‘No. He was still asleep when I went for a walk in the park and he was gone by the time I returned. But Jeff saw him that morning.’

‘I’d better go talk to him, then,’ Lucinda said as she rose. She extended a hand to Barb who grabbed it and pulled herself upright.

Returning to the living room, Lucinda saw Jeff sitting where she’d left him. He looked up and she saw tears in his eyes. ‘Did you see Todd Sunday morning?’

‘Yes. He came into the kitchen, guzzled a glass of orange juice, slammed a banana in his mouth and mumbled, “See you later, Daddio,” through the food. I almost told him not to talk with his mouth full but I didn’t want to start another quarrel.’

‘Where did he go?’ Lucinda asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Jeff shrugged.

‘How did he get there?’

‘Somebody picked him up.’

‘Do you know who that was?’

‘No. I asked if he was going somewhere with David and he said, “Nah, but I’ll catch up with him later.”’

David? There was a Todd on the list of friends she’d gotten from the parents of David Baynes. Lucinda’s heart pounded hard. ‘David who?’

‘Umm, umm, can’t remember.’

‘Baynes,’ Barb said. Lucinda turned and saw her leaning against a wall, her arms crossed tightly across her chest.

Lucinda struggled to keep her voice calm and smooth. ‘David Baynes who lived over on Guinevere?’

‘Yes,’ Barb said. ‘Wait a minute. You said “lived”? Has something happened to David, too?’

Lucinda nodded, ‘Yes, but I am not at liberty to discuss that at this time.’ She turned back to Jeff. ‘Did you see the vehicle that picked up David?’

‘Sure. A Ford pick-up. Looked new.’

‘The color?’

‘Red. Bright red. What we woulda called candy apple red when I was a kid.’

Lucinda felt as if she had a coiled rattlesnake inside of her chest. ‘Did you get the license plate number?’

‘No,’ Jeff said, hanging his head. ‘I’m sorry, no.’

After expressing her condolences and saying goodbye, Lucinda walked away from the home. Her ears were ringing from her speeding thoughts. She felt as if she were about to explode. There was a connection to the high school explosion. The captain would have to let her follow it through and find out exactly where it led.

C
harley didn’t know what to think anymore. Her whole world had been turned upside down and shaken hard. She didn’t know men did things like that to girls. She had a vague idea of what men and women did together from her health and personal hygiene class last semester – but that was something grown-ups did with each other. She never thought a man could do anything like that to a little girl. But she knew Amber wasn’t lying. And it made all those warnings about strangers make more sense.

Before homeroom, she’d found Amber sobbing in the girls’ room, locked inside a booth. It took a while for Charley to convince her schoolmate to unlatch the lock. Amber said, ‘It hurts so bad and I’m still bleeding.’

Charley asked what happened and almost wished she’d never heard the answer. The sickening details about what the boyfriend of Amber’s mother did to her poured out in strangled sentences broken up by sobs. It made Charley feel light-headed and nauseous. What was forced on Amber shouldn’t be done to anyone. Why would any man want to do that?

The teacher had scolded Charley when she slipped into her first-period English class fifteen minutes after the bell. Now that the period was almost over, she felt relief. She’d paid no attention to anything that had been said. She only hoped she’d make it a few more minutes without Mrs Hanna calling on her for anything.

All Charley could think about was how to help Amber. She did not want her friend to go back home. But Amber had sworn Charley to secrecy so Charley couldn’t tell anyone. Amber said, ‘He told me if I said anything to anybody, he would kill my little brother.’ When Charley tried to get her to go see the school nurse, Amber would not even consider it.

Amber was in Charley’s third-period algebra class. She had to think of a plan before then. She had to get Amber away from that man.

At that moment, the teacher looked in her direction. ‘What do you think about their decision, Charley? Should they have given up or kept trying?’

Charley tried not to look as stupid as she felt. ‘Gee, Mrs Hanna, I just think the whole thing has me confused.’

‘That’s understandable, Charley. Anyone in class have any thoughts they want to share?’

Not one hand went in the air and no one made a sound.

‘OK, then,’ Mrs Hanna said, ‘I want you all to read the story again tonight and be prepared to share your ideas with the class tomorrow. I will expect everyone to have something to offer to the group.’

Charley couldn’t believe faking it had been that easy.

A
s soon as Jake pressed the button on the receiver, he heard, ‘We got a hot lead. I’m heading out to follow up with observation of the suspects.’

‘Connelly?’ Jake asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thought you’d want to come along to eyeball them.’

‘What’ve you got?’

‘Suspected Muslim extremists who weren’t where they were supposed to be on the Sunday morning the high school blew,’ Connelly said.

‘Muslim extremists? Why would they target a school when it was supposed to be empty?’

‘You got mush for brains, Lovett? Terrorists blow things up. Who else would we be looking for?’

‘What about David Baynes?’

‘He was a suicide bomber, of course, recruited by the terrorists. Listen, you coming along? I’ll be there in five. Meet me outside. If you’re not there, I’m not coming to look for you,’ Connelly said and clicked off from the call.

It didn’t quite fit together for Jake. Don’t suicide bombers go into crowded places? Don’t terrorists want to cause as many deaths as possible? And why would they pick a white middle-class kid to carry out their mission?

Shaking his head, Jake left his desk and walked outside to wait for Connelly. A black SUV screeched tires as it pulled into the parking lot and came to halt beside him two minutes later. Jake couldn’t see through the heavily tinted windows but when the passenger door popped open, he knew it must be his ride.