Broken Elements (17 page)

“She’s innocent, you know.”

“The problem I’m having is I’m not sure what I know anymore. Would you care to fill me in?”

I gave him the look I’d been practicing. He appeared unimpressed. “What do you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted, Ms. Brook. Answers.”

As that was the one thing I couldn’t give him, I actually managed to keep my mouth shut for the remainder of the drive.

Close to our destination, I guessed where he was taking me, but I still tensed as the car pulled into the camping grounds where Jeff Brown had been found, only the day before. Yellow police tape wrapped around the trees, sectioning off the site. A handful of officers remained in the area, combing the woods in search of any additional evidence. Fortunately, they were staying close to the ground and were unlikely to find any proof that a cat had recently removed a camera from the nearby trees.

Carmichael had a quick word with the officer in charge, and the cops slowly melted further into the woods.

I spotted Stephen Grant several feet away and headed to him while Carmichael cleared the area. “Officer Grant,” I said.

“Aidan! What are you doing here?”

“Not sure. Carmichael seems to think I’ll be able to tell him something.”

We shared a long look, considering all the things I wouldn’t be able to tell. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think it would be a lot easier if there weren’t so many damn secrets.”

“You can stitch that on a pillow,” I muttered.

Our conversation was brought to an abrupt halt when Carmichael summoned me over. On the ground near him, a chalk mark indicated where the latest body had been found. “Why are you showing me this?” I asked quietly.

“I told you. I want answers.”

Without any warning, Carmichael dropped one photograph after another into the outline of the body. They were all photos of Jeff. Close-ups of his terrified face, full length photos of his naked, wasted body, images of his lungs, cut open with dirt spilling from them. The fact that they were photos rather than an actual body provided no sense of distance, and my shock was not diminished in the slightest. I felt the breath leave my body as I realized Christopher had died in the same terrible way. It was one thing to know he’d died horribly, and another to see it laid at my feet in gruesome detail.

I wasn’t viewing the peaceful shell of someone who’d died in their sleep, the harmless husk that remains when the spirit leaves the body. This was a tangible, permanent reminder of Jeff’s horror. The terror he felt in his final moments was stamped on his entire body. His torso was twisted, legs crooked at an unnatural angle. One hand reached for his mouth, and the other clutched a fistful of dirt he must have pulled from his mouth in a desperate attempt to find air. His face was frozen, mouth stretched wide open. A permanent rictus of fear was drawn upon his features, which were blue from lack of oxygen. There had been no peace in his death. This man had struggled until the very end.

It was a horrifying reminder of the cruelty the killer was capable of inflicting and of how fragile we were in the face of that evil. It didn’t matter how much this poor man had fought; he could never have escaped. “Take them away, please.”

Carmichael did, and it was only when he turned away that I realized he’d been watching me the entire time, cataloging my reaction to the photos. “Do you recognize him?”

I didn’t need to look again. His face was seared onto my brain, an image I’d be able to instantly recall for years. He hadn’t looked familiar, but I mentally changed his grimace into a smile, suffused his face with blood, and pictured his eyes open and bright blue in front of the Playstation that had seen many of his waking moments. “Sera dated him for a bit,” I said dully, seeing no reason to lie.

“There’s too much evidence against her. This body and the soil… you see how it looks. This is going to trial, and she will almost certainly be convicted.”

I shook my head, refusing to believe his words. “She didn’t do it.” I didn’t know what else to say. It was the one truth of which I was absolutely certain, and I could only keep repeating it.

Carmichael stared at me, registering my shock. “Is that all you have to say?” With no warning, he held up a photo, a close-up of Jeff’s screaming mouth stuffed with soil. “Look at him. Look. Somebody held this man down to stuff soil into his lungs, but the body doesn’t have a bruise on it. The position of the body clearly indicates a struggle, but there is no torn fabric, no skin under the nails. There is absolutely no indication that anyone else was involved.”

“That’s good for Sera, right?”

He swore, the facade of the pristine agent slipping in his frustration. He wasn’t angry at me, not really, but he was still very angry. He was one of the good guys, and his inability to make sense of the horror was slowly pushing him toward the edge.

“That’s not the point. Nothing here makes sense. I don’t know how, but I know you are somehow involved in it. Ex-boyfriends turning up dead, your house firebombed—and then there’s the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of your existence except for the years you attended college. I don’t think you and Sera did this, only because I don’t see how it would be physically possible, but I do believe you know more than you’re telling me.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, lying with the truth.

“Anything! Tell me anything. Because if you don’t, there are plenty of people who will overlook everything that doesn’t make sense if it means someone can hang for these crimes. And they’re fitting Sera with the noose.”

I shook my head, not to deny him but to clear my mind of the image he was painting. I knew he was right. Humans had a long history of overlooking that which didn’t make sense in order to keep their world safe and predictable, and Sera could pay for that denial with her freedom. “I can’t… I just can’t.” It was more than I ever should have said, but I was having a hard time remembering why our secret was more important than Sera’s life. “Please don’t ask me.” I only stared at him, my eyes welling with tears, feeling weak and helpless and hating every moment I felt that way.

He watched me beg and shook his head. “Who are you protecting, Aidan?” he asked quietly. He didn’t seem to expect an answer.

He walked to his car, and I followed slowly, dreading the ride back. I didn’t need to. He drove me directly home and didn’t say a word until we pulled into the driveway. Putting the car in park, he turned toward me. “Think about why you’re doing this,” he said. “Ask yourself if it’s as important as you seem to think it is. Because I can assure you, this isn’t over yet.”

I got out of the car and watched him drive off, knowing he was right.

Chapter 16

I sat on the edge of my bed, feet firmly on the floor, phone in my hand. I had been sitting in that position for the better part of an hour and a half. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was waiting for. Maybe someone would firebomb the house again, or Mac would get upset and try to throw cars this time. Either possibility seemed preferable to the phone call I needed to make. I wasn’t ready to talk to my mother. I didn’t think I’d ever feel ready. Maybe if I waited long enough, the snowstorm might take out the cell phone towers. At the very least, my phone’s battery would run out.

I’d always been vaguely curious about who my father was, but that’s as far as it went. Not knowing his identity never bothered me. We were such a matriarchal society that it was common for fathers to be little more than a footnote in our lives. Many people on the island had no idea who their fathers were, and no stigma was attached to that lack of knowledge. The important thing was that we were elementals. All other parts of our gene pool were negligible, at best.

I had a good mother—a little distant, sure, but that was common in those who lived for many centuries. She wasn’t always focused on the here and now the way a ten-year-old might wish, but she was protective, and she always made sure I understood my powers and used them well. Growing up, I never had any issues with control, because she had helped me. I knew she loved me, which made it harder to explain why I’d spoken to her only once since that long ago night.

I’d called her when I found my house to let her know that I was okay and would be in touch. At the time, I didn’t know I was lying. I thought I’d be ready to return home in a year or two, once I understood what had happened, and a year or two is nothing to a full elemental. Her reaction wasn’t what I anticipated. She begged me to return immediately, and the panic in her voice caused such guilt that I put off calling her again, and kept putting it off as one year turned into the next. For ten years, I delayed, always knowing that I had no answers to her questions. Once a year, I would drive to Portland or Seattle to mail her birthday cards, ensuring they carried a postmark from a city hundreds of miles from my home. I didn’t want her to find me. I wasn’t sure what I feared more: that she would be disappointed in me, or that she would forgive me.

If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, I could have delayed that phone call for another decade, always telling myself that time meant little to one so long-lived as she was. I was her only child, and I knew she needed to hear from me, but it seemed my capacity for avoidance was even more powerful than a mother’s love.

But this was our only possible lead at the moment, and I needed her answer. We all did. I might be stubborn and unreasonable at times, but I wanted to believe that I wasn’t selfish. With trembling fingers, I dialed the number I still knew by heart.

Three rings later, she picked up. “Hello?” Her voice was musical, the sound of lullabies and light. Tears came unbidden, and my throat tightened so much I could barely speak the next word.

“Mother?” The word should have felt foreign on my tongue, so long had it been since I’d last spoken it. Instead, it was warm and comforting, a soft blanket settling gently around me.

“Aidan?” she asked hesitantly. The fear and doubt in her voice broke my heart.

“It’s me.” The tears that threatened from the moment she answered spilled in a relentless gush, sorrow and relief intertwined. “It’s me. I’m so sorry.”

From her end, I heard the same sobs and sniffles that I was making, and for a long time we did nothing but cry and say each others’ names. She was the first one to pull herself back together. “Where have you been?”

I told her, briefly, trying to gloss over the years I’d spent in hiding. I had the sense she wasn’t fooled in the slightest.

“And where are you now? When are you coming home?”

“Soon. I promise this time. I’ll be home soon, at least to visit. There’s just some stuff I need take care of first.”

“I’ve heard that before, Aidan,” she chided. “I’d prefer to see you now.”

“I can’t. Sera’s in some trouble, and I need to help.”

Her voice sharpened. “Sera? You’re not in Lake Tahoe, are you?”

When I admitted I was, an ominous quiet descended on the other end of the line. “Mother?” I asked, thinking we’d been disconnected.

“Yes, I’m here,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “I don’t think you should be there. Tahoe, and that Blais girl, have never exactly been good for your mental health, now have they?”

“It wasn’t the place, mother. There were other factors that led to my…”

“To your breakdown? Your Howard Hughes imitation? Your inability to be part of this family?”

The conversation was definitely heading in the wrong direction. “I… yeah. All of that. But that’s over. I’m coming home, I promise.”

“To stay?”

“Not to stay, no. Well, not right away. But I said I’d visit.”

“Soon?”

I sometimes forgot that this otherwise flexible water was still a mother, and somehow I managed to bring out all her worst, nagging impulses. Considering what I’d likely put her through, I shut up and took it. It was no less than I deserved.

“Soon, okay? As soon as I can.”

“Next week?” she pushed.

“Maybe. Yeah. I’ll try.”

The relief I heard in her voice nearly brought on another deluge of tears. “That’s good, Aidan. That’s very good news.”

I let several silent moments pass, feeling the tension slowly dissipate. “Howard Hughes?”

“
The Aviator
was on the other night. That Scorsese really is a talented young man, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he is.” I had absolutely no idea how to segue from Hollywood cinema to asking about my father. Finally, I gave up any attempt at subtlety. “The other day, someone was asking about my father, and I had no answer. I think… I realized that I wanted to have an answer.”

“Who was asking?” Yes, that was definitely a sharp tone.

“I don’t know his name,” I answered truthfully. “But that shouldn’t matter. I just want to know.”

“Is this why you called me? It wasn’t because you missed me at all. You wanted to know about him. Ten years, and you call me to learn about some long dead human?”

“No!” This definitely wasn’t going well. “I did miss you. I missed you so much. But I didn’t know… after so many years, I didn’t know how to just call up and say hi. This gave me a reason.”

“Very well.” She seemed somewhat mollified, but she didn’t volunteer any additional information.

“So… what was his name?”

“This interest sounds like more than an excuse to call me. Really, Aidan, I don’t know where this is coming from.”

“Please. Why can’t you tell me?”

“This is ridiculous. Why on earth are you being so stubborn about this? We at least know you got that from your father. Goodness knows, it didn’t come from me.” I was grateful for the phone, which hid my rather expressive eye roll. “Regardless, if you want to know, you’ll have to come home. I have a few photos here, buried in the attic somewhere, and I’m sure I can dig up his name. I’m afraid I don’t remember it off the top of my head. Perhaps if you had given me more warning.”

That was my mother, single-handedly proving that guilt trips weren’t an exclusively human trait. “I told you, Sera needs me here right now. Can you email the photos?”

“Does that involve using the computer?”

“Yes, mother. I know you have the internet on the island.”

“Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t know how to do that. If you give me your address, I can mail them to you.”

Alarm bells went off in my head. “I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know the zip code.”

“That’s unnecessary. If you get me the street address, I can look up the rest.”

“Look it up on the internet, mother?”

Through the phone line, I heard a steady tapping sound. It was the sound I had heard my entire life, just before a punishment was handed down. I pictured her on the other end, nails beating a rhythmic staccato against the kitchen table.

“Aidan, this is what will happen. You can either stay in those forsaken mountains, without the knowledge you seek, or you can return home and receive answers to all your questions. Those are the only options.”

This conversation reminded me why I had chosen to attend a university a thousand miles from my home. “Please, mother. I need this information, and I need to be here.”

“The choice is yours, daughter. I hope to see you shortly.” She hung up.

“We have to move,” I announced, flopping face down on one of the cushions in the living room. “My mother knows I’m in Tahoe. It’s only a matter of time until she finds me.”

Mac looked up sharply, understandably concerned about a full elemental instigating a family feud in his house.

“Fiona might visit? Excellent,” said Brian.

“No, not excellent. And no, she’s probably not going to visit. I don’t think. She prefers to conduct her emotional blackmail from a comfortable distance.”

“Did she tell you who your father is?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. If she did that, she’d have considerably less leverage to use against me. Vivian, is ancestral research in your wheelhouse? I don’t feel confident that she’ll tell me on her own.”

“I’ve never tried before, but if a record exists, I’m sure I can find it.”

“So, I see the family reunion was warm and fuzzy?” said Brian.

“It had its moments,” I admitted. “But you know what she’s like.”

“A force of nature, like all fulls.” I nodded. “Fine. But she is your mother, and you know she won’t be deterred from seeing you again. Why don’t you just fly up to see her? Get the information and come back.”

“Because she might trap me in the basement until I promise to never leave again?”

He laughed. “I’ll go with you as backup. Your mom always liked me. I can convince her I’m a good influence, and you’ll be fine if you leave with me.”

Vivian and Simon snorted at the idea of Brian being parent catnip, but Mac looked worried.

“I don’t think you should leave. There’s too much happening right now, and I’m sure Sera will want you at the hearing.”

“How could her presence matter more than finding these answers?” asked Brian. “Besides, it won’t take us more than a day or two. We might be back in time.” He swatted me on the ass. “Get up and get packed, water girl. You’re going home.” I groaned. It was a horrible thought, but facing my mother was still better than waiting helplessly for something to happen. Marginally better, but still.

An hour later, Brian was loading our overnight bags into his car. He was chipper and unconcerned, and I felt his mood rub off on me. It almost felt like a mini-vacation, so long as I didn’t think too much about who would be waiting for me at the other end.

“This is going to be awesome. I haven’t been to an elemental enclave in years,” he said. He gave me a quick, enthusiastic hug and finished loading the trunk. Before I could pull my own door open, a black sedan pulled to a stop in the driveway, a police car immediately behind it. Carmichael and Johnson walked straight to me, their steps measured and deliberate, but Stephen Grant hung back. He looked very uncertain, and his nervousness concerned me far more than the agents’ presence. My friends gathered on the porch, silent witnesses to whatever was about to happen.

Carmichael glanced at the bags in the trunk. “Ms. Brook, are you leaving town?”

I ran through every possible lie and found them all wanting. “Yes?”

Johnson looked at Brian, weighed his accomplice potential, and dismissed him, all in a moment. “Ms. Brook, where were you this morning between four and six a.m.?”

I had expected many things, but not this. I knew I should try to look innocent, but I couldn’t help a panicked look toward Brian. He looked as shocked as I felt. By four o’clock, we had all returned to the cabin. “I was here, in bed.”

“Any witnesses?”

“I was with her.” Brian lifted his chin, daring anyone to contradict him. “She was with me all night.”

Carmichael’s gaze never wavered from my face. He saw the surprise I quickly tried to tamp down. “Well, that’s very helpful, and I’m sure we’ll want to hear more about that. Would you join us at the station?”

Brian nodded, nothing but certainty and confidence on his face. I was torn between the strong desire to thank him and to smack him upside the head for getting involved.

“And Ms. Brook, you’re going to need more than a chivalrous friend with a dubious alibi. Another body turned up this morning at a local campsite. It was burnt to a crisp.”

I barely had time to process Johnson’s words before Stephen stood behind me, wrapping metal cuffs around my wrists. “I’m sorry about this, Aidan. I really am, but you have the right to remain silent.”

I was fingerprinted and photographed, and my personal possessions were taken and cataloged. They removed the contents of my purse, which contained a vinyl wallet with sixty-two dollars, a cheap pair of aviator sunglasses, and two disposable pens, and sealed them in a large manila envelope. I handed them my coat and clothes and changed into the orange jumpsuit.

So attired, I was led down a long fluorescent-lit industrial hallway toward my cell. I passed Sera on the way. She was sitting on her cot, slumped against the wall and staring into space, but as soon as she saw me, she leapt up and grabbed the bars.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded.

I was being hustled down the hallway and was already past her cell. “There was another body this morning.”

“Suffocated or frozen?” she asked.

“Burnt,” I yelled back. I twisted my head just enough to see her expression. She looked as horrified as I felt. On the drive to the station, I’d attempted to process this new information, and each possible explanation was more terrible than the last one.

“Tell them nothing,” she yelled to my back. “You hear me, Aidan? Tell them nothing unless I’m there.”

For a long time, that wasn’t an issue. I was dumped in my small cell at the opposite end of the jail from Sera, unable to see or hear her. I was alone, with no one in either my cell or the adjoining ones. At first, the privacy was welcome, but it wasn’t long before the company of my own thoughts became more oppressive than any cellmate could have been.