Vanished in the Night (18 page)

Lyle had never thought of himself as conceited, but he’d known what he looked like and who he was. He’d been tall and handsome and athletic then. He was still a strong man with a good build. Back then, he’d also had the kiss of youth on him. Kids loved him. Why
wouldn’t they? You could take one look at Lyle Burton back then and know he was a winner. Strong, smart, and handsome. It was a lethal combination.

Literally so, for Max Shelden.

But the kids at the Sierra School for Boys weren’t like the kids he was used to working with at the local elementary schools and Head Start programs. These were angry boys, sneaky boys, lying boys. It hadn’t taken long to realize that no one was going to hero-worship him there. Or if they did, it would be a facade behind which to hide duplicitous behavior.

You couldn’t trust those boys farther than you could throw them. The only people you could trust were the other teachers and the guards. It came down to “us” versus “them” pretty damn quickly, and you could only trust someone from the “us” camp.

Lyle couldn’t remember exactly when things had gotten out of hand. He honestly wasn’t sure where the line that they had crossed was until they were obviously so past any line that any decent society would draw. It had started pretty simply. A boy had stolen food from the kitchen. All they’d wanted was for him to confess, and then they would have meted out some punishment—extra KP duty, maybe cleaning the toilets.

But the little shit wouldn’t cop to it. He kept denying and denying. They’d separated him from the rest of the boys, left him alone for a while to think. He
still wouldn’t give in. They’d turned out the lights and left him alone in the dark. Still nothing. Then things had gotten rough. Lyle wasn’t sure who’d taken the first swing. It wasn’t him, but it had seemed so right when it happened.

Three grown men on one fourteen-year-old boy. By the time they’d been through with him, he would have confessed to assassinating Kennedy. It had been immensely satisfying.

Trouble was, it hadn’t stopped there. After a while they’d stopped asking questions and gone immediately for the belts. Why waste time? The little shits weren’t going to tell you a damn thing without some encouragement. The only thing they understood was a smack upside the head and a boot to the ass.

There had been no repercussions, either. Aaron Joiner was too old to notice what was going on right under his nose. He had left the running of the school up to his staff. And most of the parents were so glad to be rid of their juvenile delinquents that they barely wrote, much less visited. Lyle and his colleagues realized pretty early on that there was no one to stop them. The kids figured it out pretty damn soon after that.

It had been exciting to be that powerful. Sexually exciting. Lyle had felt the blood rush to his groin as some punk kid groveled on the floor in front of him, begging for mercy. And he wasn’t the only one who
felt it; he’d seen the flushed faces, the heavy breathing, the telltale bulges.

There hadn’t been many outlets for that kind of thing up at the Sierra School. They were too isolated. The town—what there was of it—was miles away on dark, twisting country roads, and there was no guarantee of finding a willing woman once you got there. It hadn’t taken long before some of the men were satisfying those urges in the most convenient way possible.

Lyle hadn’t known at first. The boys didn’t tell; they were too ashamed, too broken to say what had happened to them. And the men weren’t bragging about it; they knew it was wrong. Lyle had figured it out eventually, though.

And he hadn’t done a goddamn thing to stop it.

At the time, it had seemed like the little shits deserved it. They behaved like animals. They were treated like animals.

Now it made him sick.

He wasn’t sure how Max Shelden had gotten so deeply underneath his skin. Maybe it was the way the other boys automatically looked up to him. He’d been a natural leader.

It had been the role that Lyle had assumed he would play and it irked him that this boy had usurped his place. The fact that the boy had less than zero respect for authority didn’t make it any easier.

At some point, Max had become the focal point of Lyle’s frustration. It had all culminated one horrible night that ended with the boy dead, and blood on Lyle’s hands that he could never, ever wash off.

Lyle had tried to bury the man he’d become that night with Max Shelden’s bones. He guarded against the violent tendencies that he now knew existed so very close under his skin. He stayed away from confrontation. He stayed away from direct contact with clients, heading instead for the administrative duties that he luckily had a knack for.

He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror now, and then down at his hands. It was as if Max Shelden was back, taunting him into more and more despicable acts.

Bui it wasn’t his fault. These people were pushing him past his limits; he would never behave like this otherwise. He hadn’t behaved like this for twenty years. He had been careful. So very, very careful.

And he was going to stay careful. He had way too much to lose.

He washed up, put a smile on his face, and went in to dinner.

13

It was late when Zach and Frank pulled into Sacramento. Zach was dog tired but wired from the road. Frank had fallen asleep near Auburn and snored the rest of the way into Sac. Zach had nudged Frank awake in front of his house and dropped him off there.

He’d thought about going home to his apartment, but the last thing he wanted was to have Veronica Osborne find out from a newspaper or radio broadcast that they’d discovered her brother’s real burial place. He didn’t think the media had wind of it yet, but even up in sleepy little Blairsden, they’d catch on soon enough. There were a hell of a lot of people driving up that narrow road into the woods. People were bound to notice.

Zach drove by Veronica’s condo to see if the lights
were on. They weren’t, and her Honda wasn’t parked in its reserved spot. He did a quick tour of the parking lot to see if she’d parked it somewhere else, but didn’t see it.

Where else could she be? A friend’s house? The hospital?

The last one would be easy to check; it wasn’t that far out of his way to his house. He wished he had a better reason to try to see her, something that didn’t involve the death of one of her relatives.

He found her car in the employee parking lot of the hospital and shook his head. She shouldn’t be at work, but he understood the impulse. It was better to keep busy; it was too hard to dwell in the valley of grief.

He remembered the night they’d come to tell them about his father. His mother had scrubbed the house from top to bottom that night, not that it had needed it.

He hadn’t known what to do. He’d been twelve, too old to cry on the couch with his sisters, and too young to figure out a plan of action on his own. For a while he’d followed his mother around, trying to help her, but she had been too lost in her own grief to see him.

Finally he’d gone into his room, put on headphones, and blasted Kiss as loud as he could. He’d stayed that way all night, blocking out everything with the angriest music he could find. It had set the tone for the next few years of his life. It hadn’t been good times for any of them. Not for years and years.

He parked the Crown Vic near the emergency entrance and sat for a few minutes, letting his head loll back on the seat. He closed his eyes experimentally, but they popped back open. It was probably just as well. He didn’t look forward to the images from that school popping up in his dreams, and they undoubtedly would. Some people had done some very bad things up there.

He got out of the car and headed into the emergency room to find Veronica.

“Veronica, earth to Veronica.” Tina tapped her on the shoulder and she damn near jumped out of her scrubs.

“What?” she snapped.

“Go home.” Her friend stood before her, arms crossed over her chest. “Do it for me. Do it for the patients. You’re going to kill somebody tonight.”

“I’m just a little tired.”

“You shouldn’t be here. If Nurse Ratchet wasn’t such a rat bastard, she would have sent you home the second she heard about what happened to you today.” Tina’s eyes narrowed.

Nothing had happened to Veronica that day. Something had happened to her father. Since she didn’t know when she’d be able to have a memorial service or whatever, it made sense to save her time off for that.

She hadn’t counted on her brain turning into tapioca pudding.

She never had managed to get to sleep. It had become double unlikely after she’d stumbled across the bank statements with the big cash deposits. Who would have paid them that much cash? And for what?

She had the bank statements in her bag now. All day long, she’d battled over whether to take them to McKnight and Rodriguez. She knew she had to do it, but it felt like such a huge betrayal. Of what, though? Of her father’s sainted memory? Hardly. As for her mother, she wondered if her mother had ever known anything about it.

“Go home,” Tina repeated. “Now. I already called Monica; she’s going to come in and cover for you.”

Veronica dropped her head. She was tired now. Maybe she’d finally be able to sleep. “Okay. I’m going.”

“Praise Jesus.” Tina leaned on the nurses’ station and gave Veronica an appraising look. “Should I get someone to drive you home?”

She must look even worse than she felt. “No.”

Tina’s brow creased. “Do you want me to come over after I finish my shift?”

That offer was more tempting, but Veronica knew Tina had her own life to live. “I’m fine.”

“And how come you didn’t call me?” Tina wasn’t moving, even though call bells were starting to buzz.

“What could you have done? There was nothing for anyone to do at that point. He was dead. He was going to stay dead.”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I could have done some of those things that best friends do for each other. You know, comfort each other? Make each other cups of tea? Pour large slugs of whiskey into the cups of tea?” Tina’s arms stayed folded. “I might even have given you a hug.” Tina wasn’t of the sweet, maternal school of nursing, she was more of a tough-love kind of girl.

The reasoning that had seemed so solid this morning was starting to seem shakier and shakier. If she’d called Tina this morning, she wouldn’t be carrying around bank statements and feeling like they might explode inside her purse any moment.

So she’d go home, get a little sleep, and then head to the police station to turn over the bank statements. That seemed like much more solid reasoning.

“But now you’ve missed your opportunity. I probably won’t hug you until you get married.” Tina sighed and uncrossed her arms.

Veronica gave her a rueful smile. “That could be an awfully long time, given how unspectacular my dating life is.”

“Perhaps it just got a little more spectacular,” Tina said, looking over Veronica’s shoulder.

Zach McKnight was striding into the emergency room, looking like he’d slept about as much as Veronica had.

She was sitting at the nurses’ station, a coworker in classic lecture pose in front of her, feet spread and arms crossed. Veronica was in classic acquiescent pose, nodding. The coworker spotted him first. It was the same nurse she’d been working with the night he’d come to return Max’s photo. Her name was something that started with a T. Terry? No. Tina. They both turned to stare at him as he walked up to the desk.

“It’s awfully late,” Tina said. “Are you off duty, Sergeant?”

“I suppose I am, technically.”

“But you’re never really off duty, right?” Tina gave him a smile.

Zach smiled back. “I imagine it’s kind of the same for you.”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. If the kid down the street falls off his bike, I’m called for a consult. If somebody’s mother’s heart is beating too fast or too slow, I’m called for my opinion. It keeps things interesting.”

“That it does.” Zach turned to Veronica. “Do you have a few minutes?”

“She has quite a few. I’m sending her home. She shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Tina answered.

Veronica smiled at her friend. “Maybe you’d like to come with me and answer any other questions Sergeant McKnight has?”

“Don’t push me. I just might,” Tina said. Her pager went off and she glanced at the number. “I’ve got to go. Get out of here, Veronica. I mean it.” Then she was gone.

An awkward silence stretched between them and Veronica said, “She thinks I’m worthless tonight. She might be right. I guess I should have stayed home.”

Zach generally didn’t have trouble talking to women; he’d grown up in a house full of them. He knew the rhythms of their speech and the give-and-take of their motions and he knew how to fit into their dance. He felt inexplicably tongue-tied right now, though. “It’s hard to know what to do. Nothing seems right.”

Her brown eyes flew open. “Exactly! That’s exactly what it’s like. I had no idea what to do with myself. Which reminds me, I have something to show you.”

“Maybe you ought to let me tell you what I came here to tell you first.”
Maybe you’ll fall into my arms and let me comfort you.
That seemed like a nice idea. Not the part where he gave her devastating news, but the part where he could be her shelter in the storm.
The idea was so appealing, it took him a few seconds to realize she was saying something to him.

“We might as well walk out to my car. I’ll just be in the way here now that Monica’s shown up.”

He nodded and followed her to the door of the locker room, then waited while she retrieved her purse and jacket.

“So what do you have to tell me that brought you over here?” she asked as they stepped out into the night.

The air was crisp and cool, with the hint of a scent of rain on the breeze. Zach watched it lift her hair for a moment and resisted the urge to smooth it back for her. “There’s no easy way to say this. I’m pretty sure we found where your brother was originally buried.”

She stopped. “So he wasn’t in that construction site the whole time, waiting to be dug up and found.”