Silent Scream (31 page)

“Tom never has time for lunch with me. He’s always too busy studying.”

“He has to make time for me. I’m his grandma. You’re only the uncle. Just don’t worry about me. If you stay away, maybe this’ll
blow over in a day or so.”

He sighed. “From your mouth to God’s ears, Ma.”

He’d no sooner hung up when another call came in. Olivia. Hopefully calling to tell him he’d been outed as the ball catcher
and not to tell him she was still mad and not coming back tonight for what would hopefully be stimulating conversation and
more stimulating sex. “Hello?” he answered cautiously.

“It’s Olivia. The news picked up the story about the glass ball.”

“I know. My mom just called. I had a yard full of reporters, so I’m going to the cabin. So if—when—you get done…”

“Understood,” she said stiffly and he realized she couldn’t speak freely. Still, there was a huskiness in her voice that encouraged
him. “My boss wants me to tell you not to talk to the press, but it seems like you have that covered.”

“There are a lot of things I’d like to cover,” he said, dropping his tone to a caress.

“Understood,” she said again, then cleared her throat. “I have to go.”

David hung up, then let go and grinned. Things were looking up.

• • •

Tuesday, September 21, 9:45 a.m.

Olivia pocketed her phone as she and Kane stood in line at the Deli, hoping her cheeks weren’t too red. No chance, because
Kane was grinning at her. “You shut up.”

“I didn’t say a word,” he said. “I could continue not saying a word for a pastrami.”

“I’m not supporting your pastrami habit. You already had two this morning.”

“That was hours ago,” he grumbled.

“Fine. I’ll split one with you. I’m not that hungry anyway. I had an omelet already.”

“Who made you an omelet?” His eyes narrowed. “The firefighter who you left early last night came back, huh? Come on, Liv,”
he whined. “Tell me.”

Annoyed, she looked to the front of the line. “What is taking so long this morning?”

“Avoidance has always been your go-to defense. This time of the morning Kirby’s always slow. It would go faster if he didn’t
stop to chat with everyone.”

“You don’t like him because he flirts with you,” Olivia said slyly.

Rolling his eyes, Kane looked over the crowded tables. “The interpreter isn’t here.”

“She texted me ten minutes ago. She’s looking for a parking place. Relax. You’re awfully tense today.”

“Too much coffee.” The bell on the door jingled and he turned to look. “She’s here.” Val was dressed all in black, exactly
as she had been the night before. She lifted a travel mug, indicating she had coffee and would just wait at the door. “Is
the black a uniform or a fashion statement, I wonder?” Kane murmured.

“Uniform, of sorts,” Olivia said. “It provides contrast
for her hands. Dark solids are good. Bright crazy prints, very bad.” They made it to the front of the line and Olivia spouted
her order, but the barista behind the counter didn’t respond. His gaze was locked on the television mounted in the corner,
his forehead furrowed in a frown.

“Yippee,” Olivia muttered. Channel 2’s reporter was talking about the glass ball. “Kirby.” She knocked on the counter. “Hey,
Kirby.”

The barista blinked, then turned to her. “I’m sorry, Detective. That’s some story. In fact, unless I’m wrong, that’s your
story. So what’s the sitch?”

She gave him a back-off look. “The
sitch
is a detective who really needs her coffee. Can I get two coffees and a pastrami and egg?”

Kirby looked over her shoulder to Kane. “Three in one day? I’m flattered,” he cooed, all but batting his eyes. Behind her,
Kane tensed and Olivia’s lips twitched, knowing Kirby only baited Kane because it made her partner uncomfortable.

“Just fill the order, please,” Olivia said with a sigh. She paid him, dropped her change in his tip jar and took the coffees.

“Buh-bye, Detective,” Kirby sang, waving at Kane as he grabbed the sandwich.

Kane shook his head. “Good-bye, Kirby,” he said and Olivia chuckled.

Sutherland and Kane met the woman in black as he surreptitiously turned the wheel on the microphone tuner he’d clipped to
his waist. Now he could hear them at the door.

“Sorry I’m late,” the woman said. Kane called her an interpreter. Sutherland said her black shirt provided contrast with her
hands.
That says sign language to me.

“Principal Oaks texted to say he’s ready for us,” the interpreter murmured as Olivia held open the door. “I told him we were
running late.”

The door closed behind them. Oaks, principal, interpreter…
Call me crazy, but I think they’re going to a school. For deaf kids
. And then a piece of the puzzle fell into place. He’d wondered why the girl in the condo hadn’t run before she’d been trapped.
Eric and Joel had certainly made enough noise to wake the dead.

But not the deaf. She hadn’t heard them, and she’d died. If the girl was deaf, the person who’d taken the boat may be, too.
Sutherland and Kane obviously thought so.

He smiled at the next customer. “How can I help you?”

He filled the order while glancing up at the television. He’d seen the report on the glass balls the first time it aired but
had pretended to be absorbed to keep Kane and Sutherland waiting—and chatting—a few moments longer.

So glass globes had been found at each scene.
I’ll be damned. Who’s got the nostalgic streak?
He might have guessed Joel, but Joel hadn’t been at Tomlinson’s because Joel was quite dead. Not Albert, because he never
went into the condo. Eric? Maybe, but unlikely. Nostalgia was not the boy’s style. No, it had been Mary.

She’d just changed the game. The cops may have considered environmental terrorism as a motive, but the glass ball cemented
it. Now the Feds would get involved.

A lot of things made sense now.

The FBI wouldn’t take too kindly to knowing about Eric’s plane ticket to France. Still, Albert was likely to take Eric’s fleeing
a lot more personally. He couldn’t wait until the morning rush was over so he could tell him.

As for Mary, he had a pretty good idea of what her end
game was. It would be damn entertaining. He snapped lids on the coffees for the waiting customer. “Now, you have a nice day,”
he said with a smile. “Buh-bye. Who’s next?”

Tuesday, September 21, 9:45 a.m.

Eric carefully laid out his black suit and chose a dark, sober tie. Mary had called to say that Joel’s funeral would be at
two this afternoon. He’d have just enough time for the service. He’d need to be at the airport two hours early for an international
flight.

He’d land in Paris at 9:30 tomorrow morning, local time. That would be 2:30 a.m. here in Minneapolis. If the texter had no
plans for tonight, he’d be fine. No one would miss him until he was gone. But if they were commanded to set another fire tonight
with a midnight deadline, that left two and a half hours for the texter to post the video and for the police to find him and
where he’d gone. All it would take would be a phone call and the police in Paris might be waiting for him at the gate. It
was possible, certainly. But not probable. Right now, improbability would have to be good enough, because if he did nothing,
capture and prison were guaranteed.

He’d only pack a small bag. Albert would notice things were missing if he packed too much. He had packed a few of the belongings
he wouldn’t want to end up in police hands when he became a fugitive. He’d mail the box to an uncle who had been the family
bad boy in his youth and was unlikely to turn it over to the cops.

Behind him the television news murmured and his heart skipped a beat when he heard the words that now represented his worst
fear.
Breaking news
.

“Breaking news on the two arsons we’ve been covering,” the newscaster said and Eric slowly turned to watch. Then frowned.
A glass ball?
What the hell?

He heard
SPOT
and
environmental arson
and
ongoing FBI investigations
into some guy named Preston Moss that he’d never heard of. But Joel would have. Joel read all that shit. “Joel, you fucking
idiot,” he muttered.

But it couldn’t have been Joel. He wasn’t there last night. And it couldn’t have been Albert, because he never entered the
condo.
And it wasn’t me.
Mary.
But why?

He grabbed his phone to dial her number, then stopped. Mary had left those glass balls. What if she’d left fingerprints, too?
He didn’t want any more communication between the two of them.
If they caught her, they’ll trace her to me.

He’d see her at Joel’s funeral and he’d ask her then. Unless they were caught before then. He drew a breath, closed his eyes,
and forced himself to use the logic that had ruled his life until two fucking days ago when he’d decided that once, just once,
he’d be a damn crusader.

The news reporter had said it was the signature of some radical environmental group back in the nineties. That Joel would
know about them was certainly possible. That he would want to leave something behind to honor his hippie hero, Preston Moss,
was certainly possible. That he and Mary had planned it behind his and Albert’s backs?

Totally possible
. Joel and Mary had wanted to leave a signature and Eric had refused, saying that stopping the threat to the wetlands was
enough. Albert had sided with him, and Joel and Mary had sulked.
Looks like they decided to do it anyway.

He thought of Mary’s words as she’d lit the warehouse
fuse.
This one’s for you, Joel
. That she’d continue with the signature they’d planned made perfect sense in a totally insane way. She hadn’t known about
the murders and he himself had told her Joel would have wanted Tomlinson’s place torched.

So now what? Keeping Mary un-arrested was critical to his own protection, at least until he made it to France. Then everything
would hit the fan and the three of them would be on their own. Using the texter’s disposable cell, he sent Mary a text.

Ball on news. WTF?

He hit
SEND
and waited, wondering how the hell to go about getting a fake ID. If the cops found out about them, there was no way he was
making it to France on his own passport. Unfortunately, Albert was the only one he knew unsavory enough to know people who
could get him false papers, and Albert would not be the best person to ask.

Then who? Eric pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d had a headache for days. He needed sleep, but every time he closed his
eyes he saw that face at the window.

We killed her. But we didn’t mean to.
It didn’t matter.
She’s still dead.
Visions of turning himself in taunted. But he wasn’t going to prison.
I’d rather die.

If Albert finds out I’m leaving the country, I just might
.

Tuesday, September 21, 10:30 a.m.

Steven Oaks, principal of the school for the deaf, had a fatherly face that was currently creased with worry lines. He gestured
to a table where another man waited.

“I’m stunned, Detectives,” Oaks signed and Val voiced. “To think that one of our students could be involved in the
death of that young woman. But I’ll help in whatever way possible. This is Dr. Haig. He’s our staff psychologist and knows
all the high school students. I invited him to be part of this meeting. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Olivia said and Val signed. “I want to be clear from the start, we don’t know that the young man we’re looking
for has done anything wrong. We think he escaped from the building that burned. He might be able to help us.”

That seemed to set the two men a bit more at ease.

Olivia handed Oaks a photo of Tracey Mullen. “This is the girl who died in the fire. Her name was Tracey Mullen and she lived
in Florida with her mother. Do you know her?”

Oaks studied the photo, then passed it to Haig and both shook their heads.

“She’s never been a student at our school,” Oaks signed. “I can’t help you.”

“We think Tracey came here because of the male she was with in the condo,” Olivia said. “Our best guess is that he’s got dark
hair, Caucasian, and wears a size ten shoe.”

“We have a lot of young men who could fit that description,” Haig said aloud, signing at the same time. He was hearing, Olivia
realized. “Can you give us more?”

“He wears a hearing aid, but I guess that doesn’t narrow it down much either,” Kane said. “He may have attended a Camp Longfellow
this past summer.”

Both men raised their brows. “Some of our students do attend that camp,” Oaks signed, Val’s voice quietly following. “I know
a few who did last summer, but I wouldn’t know them all. If their parents made the arrangements, we wouldn’t know about it.”

“Did you contact the camp for their roster?” Haig asked.

“That’s in process,” Kane said. “It’s off season.”

Haig sighed. “A few went on scholarship, so I had to write a recommendation for them. I have a list of those students. We
can bring them up for you to talk with first.”

“That would be great,” Olivia said. “The boy we’re talking about had a relationship with the victim. If he escaped the fire,
he might be very emotional. Can you think of any of your male students who seem overly upset recently?”

Oaks gave them an incredulous look. “This is a high school, Detective,” he signed. “They’re all overly upset, every single
day. They’re teenagers.”

“Right,” Olivia said ruefully. “This boy would be familiar with boats—rowboats, that is. And he was in the condo at about
midnight on Sunday.”

Haig considered. “Nothing’s triggering for me with the boats. But if he was in the condo on Sunday night, he’s a day student.
Versus living in the dorms,” he explained. “Residential students return from the weekend with their families on Sunday afternoon
and the dorms are locked down at ten each night. Staff do room checks. If he was in the condo at midnight, he would have been
missed.”