KIN (23 page)

"It is."

"What are you going to do?"

Finch told him.

*

Afterward, Kaplan did not offer to see him out, so Finch left him sitting in a chair that suddenly seemed bigger, as if it had gorged itself on the man's restrained emotions, and made his way out. Before he exited the lounge, however, Kaplan mumbled something.

Finch hesitated at the doorway and looked back at him. "What?"

"I said you let me know if you need anything." Then he added, "My vampire bride hasn't drained me yet. I still have money."

Finch nodded.
And no amount of it is going to buy you back what you've lost
, he thought, but said, "Thank you," and left.

As he sat into his car, his cell phone chirped, startling him. He hated the goddamn things and had successfully avoided them all his life, but had realized the need to have one almost as soon as he'd spoken to Beau about the plan. With a sigh, he removed his hand from the car keys, reached into his inside pocket and grabbed the phone, fully expecting to see Beau's name and number displayed on the small rectangular LCD screen as he flipped it open.

But it wasn't Beau calling, and Finch felt himself go numb, a not entirely unpleasant tingling capering through him as he studied with feverish interest and a modicum of disbelief the name that flashed on the display.

Gray letters against glowing green.

He told himself to be calm,
just
be cool hoss
, and pressed the small round button to answer the call.

"Hey you," he said, immediately wincing at how forced the casual tone had sounded.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kara asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You know goddamn well what I mean. I saw you outside our house the other day. Are you stalking me or something?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Then what were you doing there?"

Excuses were appallingly slow to present themselves, so he opted for the truth. "I wanted to see Claire."

"Why?"

"To see what they'd done to her. To see how she looked."

"Who are
they?
"

"The men who did this to her."

Her sigh sounded like thunder in his ear. "There is no
they
, Finch. The
man
who did this to her is dead and buried. Don't you dare try to make us believe anything different."

"Who said I was going to?"

She laughed dryly. "Your door-to-door conspiracy meetings. Ted Craddick was here last night and we heard all about your little crusade."

Finch nodded to himself. He was not at all put out by this, had expected it in fact, and welcomed the word spreading among the families as a means of giving everyone a heads up, so his visits would not come as a cold hard slap across the face when they already had enough to worry about. He hadn't relished the thought of dispelling the illusion the police had given them, but so far they had greeted the revelation with grim resignation rather than rage. Though they were of course eager to see the true culprits held responsible for the murders, the fact remained that their children were still gone, and no amount of justice would ever return them. There were no hysterics, only silent assent at what he had proposed, or as in Kaplan's case, offers of financing.

It would work as long as no one decided the police needed to be let in on things. This was his concern now. That Kara had no love for him was painfully obvious, so she might have no bones about calling the cops to thwart him if it meant shielding her sister from further trauma. If nothing else, he had to appeal to the woman he'd known and hoped was still there beneath the hard shell she'd developed in the years since leaving him.

"Listen to me," he said. "You're not a fool. We both know that. And I'm no fool either, so don't pretend Claire hasn't talked to you about what happened to her down there. As soon as she was able she told the Sheriff they'd blamed the wrong man, that the doctor tried to
help
her get away from a bunch of lunatics. They didn't listen to her. I guess they were afraid after all their bluster and mutual glad-handing they'd look like morons. I mean, they'd managed to pin a bunch of unsolved murders on a guy who wasn't in a position to object, right? They took the easy route, and with no one left alive to corroborate her story, they just baby-talked Claire until she was out of their way. What about forensics? Did you see any reports? Me neither. The cops say anything about DNA extracted from the scene, or Claire's body? No. Someone did a thorough job of tidying things up. Case closed and the circle-jerk goes on. "

Kara was silent, which he took as a positive sign, but quickly continued just to be safe.

"A friend of mine is an investigator, sort of, and he did some digging for me. We found reports of people going missing down in Elkwood and the surrounding area going back twenty, thirty years. That was the mistake the police made. In their statements to the media they played up the part about Doctor Wellman going crazy and cutting people to bits because his wife died a sad and painful death."

"So?"

"So his wife died in '92. If he wigged out and went postal after her death, who snatched all those people for the twenty-odd years
before
that?"

"That was just a theory," Kara said. "Who's to say he wasn't dabbling in a little psychotic surgery from the moment he got his degree? You said he couldn't speak for himself now that he's dead, and you're right. He can't protest his innocence, but he can't confess his guilt either. So for all you know, maybe they did get the right man. Maybe that town has been harboring The Demon Barber of Fleet Street for thirty years. We don't know, and you sure as hell don't either. "

"Wrong."

"Oh?"

"What did Claire tell you?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"How the hell do you know? Were you there?"

"No. I wasn't. But someone else was."

She fell silent, but he could hear her breathing. Then she said, "Who?"

"There was a kid. The one who brought Claire to the hospital. He took off as soon as the orderlies tried to talk to him. I called them, got a description, then called the Sheriff down in Elkwood. The kid's name is Pete Lowell. His father died the same night all this went down. Suicide apparently, and it happened shortly after he sent his boy off to Wellman's. So explain to me why a father would send his son off to the town lunatic and then kill himself."

He could hear the shrug in her voice. "Guilt? Maybe he wanted to kill them both but didn't have the heart to pull the trigger on his boy, so sent him to—"

"C'mon, Kara," he interrupted. "You don't buy that shit, do you? If you're going to kill yourself and you want your kid to die too, are you telling me that instead of giving him sleeping pills or something quick and quiet, you send him off to be tortured and chopped to pieces by a homicidal maniac? You're reaching and you know it."

"Reach—" She scoffed. "Reaching for
what
, Finch? This is a closed case. You can spin all the theories you want and it won't change what happened down there."

He frowned. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying
it doesn't matter
."

He had his mouth open, ready to tell her what he thought of that, especially coming from someone whose sibling had survived, but she continued as if aware of how he would take what she'd said.

"It doesn't matter because what happened
happened
. Claire was raped and beaten and damn near killed. She won't ever be the same girl she was before. You lost Danny, and I can't tell you how sorry I am about that. I loved him; you know I did. But he's
gone
, Finch. He's gone and you have to let this go. It doesn't matter if that doctor did this to them, or some bunch of carnival freaks. Nothing will change the fact that it happened, and now its over."

Now it's over
. Abruptly, Finch realized he didn't know who he was talking to, didn't recognize this woman as anyone he had ever known. He had fully expected a change from the
If You're Going To Hell, I'm Ridin' Shotgun
girl he'd loved,
still
loved, but this...this was like talking to a stranger.

"Tell me what Claire said," he told her, his voice flat, and cold.

"No."

"I have a right to know."

"She hasn't told me anything."

"You're lying. Kara, I—"

"I don't want you coming by here again, Finch. I mean it. If I see your car outside or your face at our door, I'll call the cops and let them in on your little game plan, understand?"

He said nothing for a moment, felt the anger colonize him. He reached up a hand and grabbed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white as bone.

"Look...just listen to me, okay? I need your help with this, if only to let me see her, just to talk, that's all, just to—"

"Stay away from here. I'm sorry about Danny, you have to believe that. But nothing can come of this but more hurt and grief and we can't take any more of that. We can't, Finch, so don't bring it down on us."

"The Merrill family," he said, as he let his gaze rove over the austere facade of the Kaplan house, and dropped his hand to the keys.

"Goodbye, Finch."

"That's their name. Merrill. That's who did this to Claire, and Danny, and Katy, and Stu. That's who—"

A drone in his ear told him she'd hung up.

"—hurt us," he finished, then snapped the phone shut so hard it sounded like a bone breaking.

Teeth clenched, he started the car.

-20-

Despite what the boy had said earlier, after talking long into the night, Louise convinced him to stay. The later it got, the less tolerant Wayne seemed to grow. Aware that she had yet to tell him about getting fired from her job, she advised him to go to bed with a promise to follow soon after. Then she cleared the coffee table of their cups and trash and dragged it to the far wall, exposing the stained narrow space of carpet between the sofa and the TV.

All the while, Pete stared at her.

Louise sighed. "I know you're hurtin'," she told him. "But I'm not sure this is such a good idea. Do you know how dangerous this is? You're just a boy. And what if you're wrong and it really was the doctor? You might just end up hurtin' innocent folk."

"It weren't the doctor," he replied. "It weren't. That much I know for sure."

She shook her head. "Why not just go to the police? Tell them to talk to the girl. Surely if you're right, she can tell them what she knows and back you up."

"I'm guessin' she don't remember much, not after what they did to her. I'm guessin' her mind didn't let her see all of what happened, so she'd be protected, like when you have a real bad dream but soon's you wake up it starts goin' away until you can't remember it no more?"

Louise nodded, and smoothed a hand over the cushions. She felt helpless, as if of a sudden she was being given a chance to do something right but for the life of her couldn't figure out how to make it happen. All she did know was that she could not let this child go through with what he had in mind. If it turned out he was right, then he would almost certainly get himself hurt, or worse. As bad as it had been to have to live with the guilt of abandoning him, she would not survive long knowing she had let him go to his death. But what could she do?

"I'm goin' to get you some blankets. I'll be right back."

He nodded, and lowered his gaze.

He was not going to stay here just because she begged him to, of that she was certain. He owed her nothing, not after what she'd done to him. So what were the alternatives? She could alert the police, tell them what the boy had told her. But then they'd want to see him, talk to him, find out what he knew. They might take him in and try to control what became of him. Courts might become involved, the social services people. Sure, he was of age, but his slow development might be the trump card the courts used to ensure Louise was not granted guardianship. And if not that, then they would use her unstable past and unreliable present against her. She had no job, no prospects, no way of taking care of him.

So no, the police were out.

Take him to see the girl?

What would that achieve? Fueling his murderous, and quite possibly misguided fantasies could only lead to disaster in the long run. And who was to say the girl wouldn't react negatively, even violently, to his presence? If she had succeeded even a little in creating some small semblance of a life for herself after the incident, in fabricating a new world from denial and necessity, wouldn't Pete's visit cause that to come crashing down around her?

She entered the bedroom. Wayne was already asleep, or was pretending to be as he sometimes did when he didn't want to talk. He was lying on his back, one arm draped over his face, his mouth open slightly. Quietly, she reached down and gathered up the thick woolen blanket on the floor at the foot of the bed, then returned to the living room.

"I saw them once," Pete said, before she had the bedroom door fully shut behind her.