Hard Truth

21

“Mitch, I can’t believe you really think Fritz killed all those boys.” The police car carrying Fritz Keeler had not yet made the turn onto Callen Road before Lorna had dialed Mitch’s number. “There’s no way he could be guilty of this.”

“Lorna, calm down.” Mitch did his best to soothe her. “And it doesn’t matter what I think, or, frankly, what you think. What matters is the evidence. And we found a hell of a lot of evidence in that house.” He hesitated a moment before adding, “Lorna, we found a trunk filled with items. In his attic.”

“What kind of items?”

“Things that I believe he took from his victims. A key ring, a couple of driver’s licenses. A belt buckle. Personal items that represent souvenirs of his kills. Several of the remains found in the field had bits of masking tape clinging to the clothes. We found tape in the trunk in the Keeler attic, and I’d bet my next promotion it will match the tape we found on the victims. Plus rope, a shovel. Everything one might need to tie up and bury a-”

“God, I just can’t believe it.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “He brought me roses… he swore he had nothing to do with this.”

“I doubt he’d be confessing right about now. And maybe he was looking for an ally. Maybe he figured you for a supporter.”

“You met him, you talked to him. You really think he’s capable of these terrible murders?”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is the evidence that was found in his house.”

“Stop talking like a textbook and tell me what your gut says,” she shot back. “Isn’t that what you always ask T.J.? ‘What does your gut say?’ ”

Mitch was silent for a moment, then replied, “My gut never talked to me quite the way T.J.’s talks to him. But for the record, between you and me, going only on my personal impression of the man, I never would have pegged Fritz Keeler for this.”

Lorna hung up the phone and paced, trying to sort it all out. She was out of her league and she knew it. Finding such evidence in the Keeler home was pretty conclusive, and yet she couldn’t reconcile what she knew of Fritz with a ruthless killer.

Though, what had she known of Fritz? Did she really know him at all?

All she knew at the moment was that she probably wouldn’t have made a good cop. How did one keep one’s personal feelings from influencing an investigation? She didn’t know if she ever could.

She called T.J. and left a message on his voice mail, and then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she called Regan and left a message for her as well. She tried to work for a while but was too distracted. She wondered if Fritz had a lawyer, wondered if the search of his house was legal. She’d seen something on TV once about a search that had been declared unlawful because the police had looked inside dresser drawers to find evidence, and the owner of the property had testified that he had given permission for the cops to “look around,” which the judge had deemed to mean items that were in plain sight. Maybe a lawyer would know.

Then again, if Fritz was in fact a killer, why would she want to help him?

Her cell phone rang and she jumped on it. She looked at the call number.

“T.J.,” she said, relieved.

“Hey, are you all right? Your message sounded a bit jumbled. Want to run through all this for me again?”

She did.

“Does it sound right to you?” she asked after she’d related the events of the entire afternoon. “Did you think it was Fritz?”

“Well, like Mitch said, you have to look at the evidence,” he said carefully. “But no. I didn’t have that feeling about him. On the surface, he does seem to fit the…”

When he paused, Lorna said, “You can say it, T.J. He seems to fit the profile.”

“I hate to fall back on that. Profiles can be misleading. You can get way too wrapped up in all that; you can miss other key information if you let yourself believe too much in your own fiction.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that profiling isn’t an exact science, but a lot of people think it is. A profile is only as good as the person compiling it, and it’s not something that’s written on stone tablets. At best, it’s a guide. At worst, it can blind you to the truth.”

“If you were to work up a profile on this killer, would you have come up with Fritz?”

He fell silent for a long moment.

“Maybe not.” He thought for another few seconds. “Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I felt all along that the killer was obsessed with hiding, not just hiding his crimes, but hiding who and what he really is.” He paused, then added, “If I were to guess, I think the killer picked up these boys, had sex with them, and then killed them. I think he’s been repressing his homosexuality for a long time.”

“Refusing to admit even to himself that he’s gay.”

“Exactly. I think the killer is someone who fought long and hard against his feelings, and when he finally gave in to what he wanted, he had to get rid of the evidence. He killed his partners.”

“Like a black widow.”

“Sort of. But he wants to keep them close to him, he doesn’t want to part with them. So he keeps something of them, then buries them someplace nearby. It’s enough for him to know that his victims are right there, right down the road.”

“If your theory is right, then Fritz can’t be the killer. Fritz hasn’t repressed the fact that he’s gay. He’s kept it under wraps here at home, in deference to his family’s wishes, but he doesn’t deny it and he’s had a relationship with the same man for many years. Does that sound like someone who’s repressed enough to behave the way you just described?”

“No,” T.J. admitted. “When did Fritz discuss this with you?”

“Earlier today. After Mitch questioned him. He brought me some roses from his garden.” She bit her bottom lip, thinking, then said, “You don’t think he made that up to throw me off, do you?”

“Not unless he thinks like a cop. And he might. Someone who kills over a long period of time has learned how to be cagey. Manipulative. Perhaps he’s good at it. There’s always the possibility that Fritz is actually a really good manipulator.”

She sighed heavily. “Maybe so. Maybe I just don’t know him at all.”

“Look, I’m a little tied up right now, but as soon as I can break free, I’ll head on up there and you and I can talk this through. I’ll see you in a while.”

Lorna hung up and tried to go back to work, but it was futile. Something was nagging at the back of her brain, and she couldn’t keep her mind on the numbers until she remembered what it was. It had to do with her brother. And the reason why he left home as soon as he could, and never came back.

She logged off her computer and went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and went out the back door. Her mother always said she did some of her best thinking while she was weeding. Lorna figured it was worth a try. Besides, if she was going to scatter the last of her mother’s ashes in the garden, as she’d promised, it had better be cleaned up a bit.

She found her gardening gloves on the ground near the gate, where she’d dropped them a few days earlier. She pulled them on and started to work on the nearest of the beds. She weeded through the lilies and around the herbs, all the while trying to put her finger on whatever it was that had been eluding her.

She was halfway through the mint when it came to her.

She stripped off her gloves and tucked them through the pickets on the fence, then took her phone from her pocket and dialed Rob’s number. When he didn’t answer, she left a message on his voice mail.

“Robbie, it’s Lorna. I need you to call me as soon as you get this. It’s about what happened to you, years ago, when you were… honey, I don’t even know how old you were when it happened, but I’m pretty sure something did. I’m talking about Fritz Keeler, Rob. Please give me a call. We need to talk about it.”

She hung up and slipped her cell phone into the pocket of her jeans and resumed weeding. She wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have left the message; it might upset her brother too much to listen to it. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything at all. And there was a chance she was wrong. Maybe Robbie hadn’t been molested as a boy, maybe there were other reasons why he’d stayed away from home for so long, why he’d sounded relieved when she told him the police were narrowing the suspects to the individuals who’d been around both nights the Eagan kids had disappeared. Could be there was some other explanation, and she’d stuck her foot in it, big-time.

She continued to fret, and even thought of calling back and asking him to ignore the message. Right. As if he could, once he’d listened to it.

The sound of tires on the gravel out front drew her attention to the drive. She walked around the front of the house and watched an unfamiliar car park near the walk. The driver’s door opened, and Mike Keeler got out.

“Hey, Mike,” she called to him, and felt suddenly tongue-tied. What do you say to a man whose brother has been picked up on suspicion of being a serial killer?

“Hi, Lorna.” He walked toward her. “I just heard about what happened here today, and I wanted to stop over and tell you how sorry I am that you got pulled into the middle of it. And how embarrassed I am about… well, you know. Everything.”

“I wish I could think of something to say to you, Mike. But I can’t. And I can’t believe that Fritz is guilty.”

“I can’t believe it, either, but, well, you’re his friend, and I’m his brother. Maybe we’re prejudiced, you and I. And the police or the FBI must have some pretty strong evidence, to have taken him to the station in the back of a cop car like that. I heard all about it. I was at the store when they took him in, and of course, they had to drive right past the Quik Stop.” He paused. “I heard they took some stuff out of the attic, but I don’t know what. Did Walker mention, when he was here, what they found?”

“No, but I did hear from the FBI agent who interviewed Fritz at the house this morning. Mitch Peyton is a friend, and he knows that Fritz and I are friends. He said there were a number of items in a trunk. Things that belonged to the victims.”

“Is that legal, do you think? To go into someone’s house like that, and just take stuff?”

“It is, I suppose, depending if the owner gave permission for the search. There may be some specifics, some technicalities I don’t know about, but I think if you give permission, they can search.”

“Well, I guess that’s that, then, isn’t it?” Mike shook his head slowly. “My poor mother must be tossing in her grave right now.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I can’t believe this has been going on all these years and I didn’t even have a clue.”

“People who have something like that to hide get pretty good at keeping it hidden after awhile. Or so I’m told.”

“But all these years… all those boys he hurt. All those families… God knows how many. It makes me sick just to think about it.”

“It makes me sick, too.” She swallowed hard. “Mike, he might have molested my brother, Rob, at some point.”

“What?”

“I think the reason Rob left home as soon as he graduated from high school, and never came back, is because something happened to him here. I can’t think of anything else that would have traumatized him so.”

“Did he tell you that Fritz…?” Mike asked slowly.

“No. I called him earlier to discuss it with him, but I had to leave a message.”

“You left him voice mail asking him if my brother molested him?”

“Yeah. That might not have been a good thing, huh?” She grimaced. “I’ve been questioning whether I should have done it since the second I hung up. Think it was a mistake?”

“The biggest mistake you ever made.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“You should have kept it to yourself, Lorna. Whatever it was you thought might have happened to your brother, you just should have left it alone.”

In her pocket, her phone began to ring.

“Don’t answer it,” Mike told her.

She took the phone from her pocket and glanced at the number. “It’s Rob.”

“Don’t. Answer. It.” He reached for the phone and took it from her hand, tossed it into the grass.

She stared at him for a long time, as it all began to sink in.

“You,” she said softly. “It was you. Not Fritz.”

“Hell of a time to figure it out, when none of your law buddies are here. Sorry, Lorna, but you are now officially a liability.” He took her by the arm, not forcefully, but firmly, and turned her in the direction of the barn.

Behind her, in the grass, her cell phone began to ring again.

Was it Rob calling back? T.J.? Regan?

It occurred to her that she would probably never know. There was no way Mike was going to let her live, knowing what she now knew.

“You’re forgetting, Rob knows it’s you, not Fritz.” She struggled to break free, and he tightened his hold on her arm. “If something happens to me, he’ll know, and he’ll tell.”

Mike’s laughter was harsh and loud.

“First, they’re going to have to find you. And that might take some time. Second, Rob’s not telling anyone anything. Ever. I made sure of that years ago.” He was still laughing as he dragged her into the barn. “Yeah, I tried out your brother. And he should have ended up like the rest of them, in the back woods. But he got away from me. Imagine that? That skinny little runt. Well, I told him what I’d do if he ever-I mean ever-told anyone what I’d done. Obviously, he never did, if you’re just figuring it out now.”

“What did you threaten him with?”

“I told him I’d kill everyone in his family.”

“I can’t imagine he’d have believed you had that kind of power.”

“Oh, he believed it.” He laughed again. “Your father made certain of that.”

“What does my father have to do with this?”

“He made me look like the most powerful man in the world.” He leaned down and whispered, “He died two days later.”

Lorna felt as if the wind had been knocked from her lungs.

“He died of a heart attack.”

“Yeah. Pretty good timing, wouldn’t you say?” Mike pushed her through the barn door and took the gun from his pocket. “Unfortunately, I can’t rely on lightning striking again, so I’m going to have to make my own luck.”

“You killed Jason.”

“Stupid-shit Jason, yeah, I killed him.” He shook his head. “Who would have thought he’d be up at that hour of the morning? And with his mother, no less? Damned bad luck on his part, looking out the window when he did.”

“He saw you with someone.”

“Unfortunately, yes, he did.” Mike spoke calmly, as if they were discussing the weather. “He came running out of that house, yelling at me, and what the hell else could I do? I dropped what I was carrying and let him chase me into the field, away from the house. I didn’t need a witness.”

“He saw you with one of your victims.”

“Well, the sky didn’t open and drop them into the woods, Lorna. They had to get there somehow.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I was carrying someone. And yes, he was already dead when Jason came out the back of the house. He saw me, saw what I had from the window, and came running outside yelling something about his sister. I guess he figured I’d killed his sister, too.”

“Did you?”

“No. Oh, I would have, I wanted to. She saw me the night she disappeared. She was running across the field and we all but smacked into each other. How ’bout those Eagan kids, eh? Always around at the wrong time.” He shook his head. “I grabbed at her-had her, too, but she managed to get away from me and she ran like hell.”

“Ran where?”

“Beats the shit out of me. Don’t think I didn’t try to find her. Searched for hours, but it was as if the earth opened up and swallowed her whole. I couldn’t track her, and the next thing I knew, she’d officially disappeared. I didn’t have a decent night’s sleep, I can tell you that, until I realized she wasn’t coming back.”

“Then where did she go?” Lorna’s brows knit together. “If you didn’t kill her, where has she been all these years?”

“I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. All I know is that the gods were smiling on me that night, because wherever she went, she obviously didn’t tell anyone what she saw.”

“You really think the gods had anything to do with that?”

He gestured at her with the gun. “Walk. Straight back.”

He was leading her to the door to the wine cellar.

“I don’t understand how you got those boys out here. I mean, you couldn’t very well pick them up on your bike and ride to the woods with a body over the handlebars.”

“Very funny.” He looked amused. “Actually, I used my mother’s car. She’d be sound asleep every night by nine, I’d be out of the house and cruising down the road by ten.”

“And Fritz didn’t notice? He didn’t care that you were taking the car and driving around without a license?”

“He was my brother, why would he tell? Besides, everyone around here drove before they had a license. It’s farm country. Everyone does it. The local cops would stop me once in a while, slap me on the wrist, and that would be that. Outside of town, I was never stopped. I’ve always been a good driver, never gave them a reason to pull me over. Didn’t speed, stopped at the stop signs, never jumped a light.” He grinned. “My driving record is perfect.”

“Where did Fritz think you were going, all those nights?”

“I always told him I had a hot date. I was pretty popular with the girls, maybe you remember.” He smirked.

Her face flushed, recalling her own crush on him, then realized the absurdity. He’s holding a gun on me, he’s going to kill me, and I’m embarrassed to remember that I used to have a crush on him.

“You would drive to the Purple Pheasant to pick up your victims.”

“It was the perfect feeding ground. They never checked ID. Actually, they welcomed the young boys. The younger the better.”

“The owner. You killed him, too.”

Mike nodded thoughtfully. “He was one sharp dude. He knew the guys who’d disappeared had all been in his club. It took him awhile, but eventually he realized he’d seen them all with me. If I’d been a little older, maybe I’d have been a little smarter. As it was, hey, I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old. I didn’t hunt often, but when I did, I hunted well.”

Lorna fought the urge to throw up.

He stopped at the door to the wine cellar.

“Open it. And turn the light on.”

She did as she was told.

“Down the steps,” he commanded.

She started taking them slowly, trying to think of how to distract him. There was only one way in or out, and that was by the steps they now descended. She eyed the barrels that lined the room and wondered if it would be possible to use them offensively. She didn’t think she could move quickly enough to roll them before he got off a shot.

Okay, Uncle Will, if you’re really still around, now would be a good time to show yourself.

“Keep moving. Back there, through that doorway.”

He pointed to the tasting room.

She might have a chance after all.

“Where’s the light switch?” He felt inside the doorway, first on the left side, then the right.

“It’s on the opposite end of the room,” she told him. “All the way back.”

“Go turn it on.”

“Sure.” She stepped into the windowless room and tried to remember where she’d left the candles. She dropped to her knees and crouched behind one of the two upholstered chairs, and held her breath, and let the darkness swallow her whole.

“Hey, Lorna,” Mike called from the doorway, and she heard him start to follow her into the room. “Turn on the lights.”

She knelt still as a stone. If he wanted her, he was going to have to find her in the dark. She had the advantage of knowing where the furniture was. Her only chance was to circle around him, without him seeing her, and make it to the door. If she could get that far, she’d slip outside the room and bolt the door behind her, locking him inside.

If she could get as far as the door.

“Damn you.” He kicked at something on the floor and it bounced off the wall. “Damn you…”

In the dark, his breathing was erratic with rage and seemed to come from all sides at once. The room wasn’t large enough for her to make a clean break for the door. The most she could hope for was to draw him farther in. She moved stealthily to the left, knowing that even as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, so did his.

“Honest to God, Lorna, I was going to make this easy for you. Shit!” He cursed loudly as he tripped over a chair. “Damn you! I’d planned one clean shot to the head. But now, I swear, when I get my hands on you, you’re going to beg me for that one bullet.”

A little farther to the left. Inch by inch, trying to stay within the shadow of the chairs.

“Bitch.”

He shot the gun into the room and the sound momentarily paralyzed her. He fired twice more and she began to shake all over. She held both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out. She was too frightened to move now-even if she could make it to the door, her legs wouldn’t support her to take her there.

It occurred to her for the first time that she wasn’t going to get out of the cellar alive.

Another shot, this one closer.

“I’ve got plenty more, Lorna. I can stand here and shoot at you all day.”

“Gonna be hard to do that with a bullet in your brain.” T.J.’s voice from the doorway was steady, but there was no mistaking the intent.

“Well, hey, Mr. PI. Nice of you to stop by.”

“Drop the gun, Mike. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

Mike responded with a shot to the doorway.

“Sooner or later, you’re going to run out. I won’t,” T.J. told him calmly.

“You forget, PI,” Mike’s breath was ragged, “I’ve got something you want in here.”

“If you had her, you’d have killed her already. So unless you were talking to a corpse a few seconds ago, I’d say you don’t have her.”

“She’s in here, I’m in here. You’re out there.” Mike laughed. “She moves, she’s a dead woman. How do you figure you’re going to get her out?”

“I shoot you. She walks past your body on the way to the door.”

“You can’t shoot what you can’t see.”

A shot rang out and Mike shrieked. His gun hit the floor. Lorna screamed and backed into the wall, falling off her feet. T.J. came into the room and stepped over the moaning man and picked up the gun.

“Lorna?” T.J. said softly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m over here.” She struggled to get to her feet and he was there, reaching down to help her.

His arms closed around her and tightened. “Are you all right?” he repeated.

She nodded shakily.

“How could you see him? How did you know where to shoot?” she asked as he led her out of the dark room and into the light.

“Night goggles.” He slipped them off over his head with one hand. “A favorite of PIs everywhere.”

“I thought you told Mitch you got rid of all your toys.”

“Almost all.”

“Is he going to die?”

“No. But he won’t be writing any letters home for a while.” He handed her his cell phone. “Go outside and call Mitch. There’s no signal down here. I tried calling him when I realized you were in the wine cellar, but I couldn’t get a signal.”

She stumbled and he caught her.

“Maybe you’d better sit down for a minute.” He turned a barrel on its side and guided her to it, but she shook her head.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It was just so… I was so…”

She couldn’t find the words.

“Hey, I’ve been shot at a time or two myself. It’s not fun. Maybe one of the scariest things that can happen, and if you’re not used to being around guns, and you’ve never been shot at before, it’s a pretty scary experience.”

“It was so loud.” She covered her ears, remembering. “I swear, I’m usually not very wimpy.”

“It is loud, and when you’re that close to it, yeah, it’s real tough on the ears.” He brushed the hair back from her face. “I don’t think you’re wimpy at all. I think you were damned smart to lure him in there. You gave yourself a fighting chance. If you hadn’t done that, you’d be dead right now.”

“If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I would be dead right now. I didn’t think I was going to get out of there alive.”

“You did just fine.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks, then leaned over and kissed her. “You did just fine.”

She nodded. “I’ll call Mitch. You keep an eye on Mike.”

Lorna made it to the steps and held on to the railing while she climbed up to the barn. She walked across the wooden floor and out through the door and resisted the urge to pinch herself. Five minutes ago, she’d been certain that her life was going to end. She’d never faced that kind of challenge, never known that kind of fear. Yet she’d still managed to outsmart Mike, long enough for help to arrive.

All in all, it could have been worse.

She was alive, the bad guy lay bleeding on the tasting room floor, and the cool guy had not only saved her, but he’d kissed her as well. She leaned back against the barn door and dialed Mitch’s number.

Yeah, she thought as she listened to the phone ring, all in all, it could have been a hell of a lot worse.