The Night Shift, page 22
Inside the mansion, Ella’s mother, a distinguished and commanding figure, gives Chris a dismissive once-over, then turns to her lawyers. “I need a moment with my daughter.” Without waiting for assent, she pushes through the imposing door to what looks like a library. Ella follows her in and the door bangs shut.
Chris turns to the two lawyers. “What’s all this? A search warrant? What are they looking for?”
In a hushed tone, the older lawyer says, “They’re looking for trouble.” He hands Chris a sheaf of papers. The warrant and supporting affidavit. “And I’m afraid they just may find it.”
CHAPTER 65
ELLA
“What the hell’s going on, Mom?”
“Sit,” Phyllis says, motioning to the leather chair. The library is softly lit, but tonight it has the eerie feel of an old Hitchcock movie.
Ella lacks the energy to fight. She collapses into her father’s favorite chair.
Phyllis walks over to the bar and pours them both a drink. She seems to be searching for the words, which by itself worries Ella. It’s not like Phyllis to be at a loss for words. Her wealth has given her the confidence, no, the sense of entitlement, to say whatever comes to mind, without filter.
“They’re digging up the garden,” she says.
“Dad’s garden? What in the world…?”
Phyllis sits, takes a deep breath. “New Year’s Eve. I should’ve been there for you.”
Ella’s confused. This isn’t the time for belated apologies. Federal agents have raided the grounds.
“After what happened with your brother,” Phyllis continues, “I shut down. But your father, he got angry.”
Ella never saw him that way. Yes, Dad was different after what happened to Shane. More assertive with her mother, more independent from her. It seemed he’d finally gotten out from under Phyllis’s heavy thumb. But Ella never saw him as angry. Sad, yes. A man who cried in the dark in this very chair. And in the garden.
She has an immediate sense of dread. In the garden.
“What are they looking for?”
“He loved you so much,” Phyllis says, avoiding the question.
“What are they looking for?” Ella repeats, more urgently.
Phyllis hesitates for a moment. “When they released that boy from jail—it released something in your father. I’d never seen him like that. You were still recovering and it was just too much for your father to take.”
“What are they looking for?” Ella asks a third time, her voice quivering because she thinks she knows.
“That night, I heard him on the phone talking to the other fathers. The religious one always got your father fired up.” Her mother coughs a laugh. “Your father didn’t spend a day in church in all the years we were married, but that man with his eye-for-an-eye scripture talk…”
Ella braces for the devastating news she knows is coming.
“All I know is, the night before that boy supposedly ran off your father and some men were in the garden.”
“What men?”
Phyllis simply looks at her. “He came inside late, covered in dirt, drenched in sweat. Like he’d been—”
“Digging.” Ella’s own voice sounds hollow and distant.
“I should’ve done more. After you left for college, your father fell into another depression. He came to me, said he was going to turn himself in,” her mother says. “He couldn’t live with the guilt of what they’d done.”
Ella is having a hard time processing.
Her mother continues, “I told him it would devastate you, that you couldn’t take any more. I begged him not to turn himself in.”
“And he didn’t,” Ella says. “He took his own life.”
“He did that to protect you. He must’ve thought it was the only way to end the pain, to protect you from knowing what he’d done.”
Ella stares at her mother with disgust.
“I had no idea he would … I was desperate, Eloise. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get your father to talk to a psychiatrist, to talk to his brother. I even called that teacher you worshipped so much and asked him to try to talk some sense into your father. To explain what turning himself in would do to you.”
Ella does a double take. “You mean Mr. Steadman? He talked to Dad about—”
There’s a loud knock on the library door.
It’s an agent. The pregnant woman Ella met at Corky’s. Agent Keller. They’ve found what they were digging for. She’s not smug, she looks more sad than anything.
“Ms. Monroe, I’d like to ask you some questions,” the agent says to Ella’s mother.
This time the lawyer interjects. “Phyllis, I strongly advise you to not answer any questions. At least right now,” he adds.
“What he said,” Phyllis tells the agent.
Keller nods. “How about you, Ella?”
As she asks this, Chris walks into the library. He’s not looking well. His skin is ashen, beaded in sweat, and he winces at the light. But he manages to get out the words: “She has nothing to say.”
The agent gazes at Chris. “I know you think you’re helping, Christopher, but I don’t think you’re in the best position to—”
“It’s my brother’s body you just found in an unmarked grave, so I’m in the absolute best position to say whatever I want.” He reaches out for Ella’s hand, and she takes it. “We’re leaving.”
For a moment, Ella’s back on the sidewalk near Coney Island, the last time a man took her hand in the face of a threat. But this time she’s not the one being protected.
She’s the protector.
CHAPTER 66
KELLER
Keller and Arpeggio stand under the artificial light outside a taped-off perimeter surrounding the dig site. The FBI’s Emergency Response Team members look like space travelers in their white coveralls, orange duct tape sealing the seams between the suits and their gloves and rubber boots. Keller remembers wearing a similar getup during her forensic training in Tennessee at the Body Farm. The team has set up a grid and is slowly excavating the soil, layer by layer, sifting dirt through a large, boxlike sieve for evidence.
Skeletal remains are visible now, elevated, as the ERT slowly searches the levels below.
It’s a slow process, recovering every bone fragment, every thread of clothing, every piece of trace evidence.
“I’d love to see Rusty Whitaker’s face when he learns we found his son,” Joe Arpeggio says. “He almost got a sweetheart deal.”
Keller gives him a fleeting smile. It would be much more gratifying if the remains of a young man weren’t in that hole. If she hadn’t just faced the deceased’s brother, who’s already been through so much, or Ella, whose father was one of the men who put Vince Whitaker in that hole.
“How’d you get him to crack?” Arpeggio asks.
“Who?”
“Mandy Young’s father.”
After the meeting with Rusty, something had troubled Keller: how could the old man be so confident about the precise location of his son? Vince had eluded capture for fifteen years and was likely continually on the move. So how could Rusty be so sure? More to the point, why was he willing to condition a plea deal on the authorities finding Vince first? That’s when it dawned on Keller. Rusty could only be that certain if he knew Vince wasn’t going anywhere.
Because he was dead.
That’s when the pixels from the last three days came together. Chris’s account of the last night he saw his brother. Vince in his living room with a group of men, one of them twitchy and agitated. It reminded Keller of her meeting with Mandy Young’s father at the insurance company. His demeanor and his instant refusal to speak with them. Katie McKenzie’s father had acted the same way. Two fathers refusing to help try to catch the man accused of killing their daughters. And something Candy O’Shaughnessy’s mother said came back to her. “The fathers were all macho, you know? Like they were gonna break into the jail and beat the kid up.”
Keller had decided to cut to the chase and confront Walter Young. She’d told him that Rusty Whitaker had turned on him, that they knew the fathers had killed Vince, so his only chance for leniency was to come clean. Most people don’t realize that law enforcement can lie to suspects. And Keller had no problem with this lie. Particularly because it worked. Walter Young broke down and told her everything. About three devastated fathers deciding to take justice into their own hands. They’d arrived at the house initially to give Vince a beating. Force him to confess. But soon the young man was in the trunk of Mr. Monroe’s car, the other men following him to the estate.
They brought Vince, still alive, to the garden, where they beat him bloody, never getting the confession they wanted, the confession they needed in order to avenge their sweet daughters. Mr. McKenzie had brought a gun. According to Walter Young, they each took a shot, forging a union that would ensure that they’d all go down if any of them ever revealed the secret. The only loose end was Rusty Whitaker. He’d seen them take Vince. Mr. Monroe had made a sizable payment to Whitaker to keep him quiet. Keller suspects that when they dig into Mr. Monroe’s finances, they’ll find more than one payment to Rusty Whitaker over the years.
“It didn’t take long for him to confess,” Keller says. “Walter Young knew Rusty would turn on them. He actually seemed relieved to get it off his chest. He’s been carrying this around for fifteen years. They all carried it. Ella’s father killed himself in this very garden.”
Arpeggio nods.
Keller looks around. None of the other agents are within earshot. It’s a good time to ask Arpeggio about his relationship with the McKenzie family. She checks her phone to see if Atticus has found any connections between Arpeggio and the Dairy Creamery victims. He texted her earlier that he was chasing a lead:
Might have found something, going to check, call me when you have time.
Her calls have gone straight to Atticus’s voice mail. She considers calling again now, but decides it’s time to confront Arpeggio.
“They’ve arrested Katie McKenzie’s father.”
Arpeggio offers no reaction.
“How do you feel about that?” Keller asks.
Arpeggio narrows his eyes. “Feel about what?”
“Having your old friend’s husband arrested for murder.”
Arpeggio’s jaw pulses, a nearly imperceptible twitch of his mustache. But he says nothing. Arpeggio is a skilled interrogator who understands that it’s always the chatty who do themselves in. The quiet ones are the most likely to walk out of interrogation rooms of their own free will.
“I spoke with Katie’s mom today,” Keller says.
“I know.” Arpeggio stares into the night. Past the dig site, past the tennis courts, into the darkness.
“We also talked to Tony Grosso.” Keller waits again.
After another expansive silence, Arpeggio says, “The family had been through enough. They didn’t need the press making Katie out to be some kind of slut. She was a sweet kid; she just made a mistake.”
“And that’s why you buried the pregnancy?”
“I didn’t bury anything. I just asked Grosso to, you know, keep it out of the reports. I knew it would come out when they caught Vince Whitaker.”
“Unless they never found him.” Keller moves her eyes to the grave.
Arpeggio turns to her now, anger whitening his features.
“You were close with Katie?” Keller asks.
He sighs impatiently. “Her mom asked me to help when Katie got into trouble. I helped find the lawyer who arranged the adoption.”
“Why you?”
“Have you met her father?” Arpeggio shakes his head. “I’ll never know why she married that guy.”
“So that’s the only reason you helped hide the pregnancy?”
Arpeggio gets a confused look on his face. “Why else would I—”
“You were close with Katie…”
“Wait, you’re not suggesting … that’s disgusting. I can’t believe you’d even…”
This time it’s Keller who’s quiet.
“I was a family friend, that’s it.”
Keller checks her phone. No new messages from Atticus. She decides to bluff.
“You were close with one of the Blockbuster victims. And we found a connection between you and the Dairy Creamery victims.”
Arpeggio looks genuinely shocked. “What are you talking about? I didn’t know any of them.”
Keller regards him.
“Look, do what you’ve got to do. But I didn’t know them. And Katie was basically my niece. Her mom was my best friend’s sister, and she asked me to help with things. She was married to a controlling guy, rigid, emotionally abusive. I helped out. Coached Katie’s Little League team. Taught her to drive when she flunked out of driving school. Stuff like that. She was a kid, for Christ’s sake.”
Keller stares at Arpeggio for a long time, and she reaches a singular conclusion.
She believes him.
CHAPTER 67
ELLA
Ella tears out of the garage in a 1970 Mercedes 280SL, her father’s favorite car among his small fleet. It’s a convertible and her hair is dancing in the wind.
Chris still seems out of it. A punch-drunk expression, his body swaying with the curves that Ella’s taking too fast.
Her universe is folding. She’s in another dimension. A Twilight Zone episode. The monster she’s feared for so long was buried two hundred yards from her wing of the family home. Her father—the one who always tried the hardest to understand her—collapsed under the weight of his crime. It wasn’t about her brother’s death, the attack on Ella, or even his controlling wife. It was grief and shame for taking a life.
“Are you okay?” she says to Chris, whose world must also be spinning counterclockwise. In the past twenty-four hours, his mother and brother have both been found, their murdered bodies hidden for years.
Chris holds up some papers. “I read the search warrant. The fathers. They…” His face is colorless, expression distant, as if imagining his brother’s last moments.
“How did they find out where he was?” Ella asks.
“One of the fathers confessed,” Chris says. “The warrant says my father knew, wanted to cut a deal, but one of the fathers flipped. Told them where to find the body.” He swallows a sob. “The last time I saw my brother, he was talking with a group of men. Your dad and the others. My father was there. I thought it was a drug deal to make some cash so he could go on the run. But it wasn’t. It was an abduction. And Vince knew. In his final moments, he was trying to keep me safe.”
Ella screeches around a bend in the road, imagining her father as part of the mob that kidnapped and killed a teenage boy.
“Where are we going?” Chris asks.
Ella doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t know how to process it all. She and the broken man next to her have lived their entire adult lives in the shadow of New Year’s Eve 1999. They’re both the children of murderers.
And they both loved Vince Whitaker.
All at once, she knows where to go. She hears Phyllis’s voice: “I tried to get your father to talk to a psychiatrist, to talk to his brother. I even called that teacher you worshipped so much and asked him to try to talk some sense into your father.”
Soon, she’s in Asbury. A residential neighborhood. She pulls up in front of a modest ranch-style home.
“I need to talk to someone,” she says to Chris.
He nods, unbuckles his seat belt to go with her.
“I actually need to do this alone.” A man she’s trusted, a mentor, her support system through it all, lied to her. Knew something devastating and did nothing. And she needs to understand why.
She hands Chris the keys to the car. “You can take it. I can Uber.”
“I can wait, if that’s okay?”
She nods. She’s starting to worry about him. He’s pale, clammy. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” Chris puts his head back and closes his eyes.
Ella walks up the driveway. There’s a beat-up red convertible—a two-seater that’s seen better days—in the driveway. He has a guest, his girlfriend, maybe.
She knocks on the door. There’s movement inside, then a delay before the door opens.
“Ella?” Mr. Steadman says. He’s flustered. Maybe she interrupted him. A romantic evening, perhaps. She realizes that she’s never been inside his house.
“I’m sorry to come unannounced. But I need to talk with you about something, and I—”
She stops. A wave of electricity vibrates through her. Instantly, she’s drenched in panic sweat. It takes her brain a second to catch up with her eyes. There’s a man behind Mr. Steadman, staggering toward the door. His suit jacket and dress shirt are steeped in red.
“Run,” the man says. “Run!”
“Oh my god, what’s going—”
“Oh, Ella…” Mr. Steadman spins around and rams a fist at the man’s abdomen. When he pulls his hand away, it’s covered in blood. Ella realizes that it wasn’t Mr. Steadman’s fist, it was a knife. The man stiffens, takes in a sharp breath, and slumps to the floor.
Ella opens her mouth to scream but her voice box is paralyzed.
Steadman seizes her by the arm and yanks her inside.
CHAPTER 68
KELLER
Keller is back at the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, which is mostly empty at this hour. Atticus hasn’t returned her texts, so she imagines he’s holed up in his office, immersed in his research.
She walks down the dark hallway, her footfalls echoing, her shadow conjuring the word waddle in her mind.
She opens his office door and slaps on the lights.
Not here. Maybe he took off for the night, though it seems out of character. The kid works really hard.
She sees the empty Tupperware container on his desk, smiles as she recalls his mom bringing him dinner.
He was here, working late. Doing some additional research, it seems. The box of yearbooks they’d taken from the school sits on the floor. On his desktop, two yearbooks lie side by side, each opened to the last pages, where local businesses run advertisements. One of the yearbooks is from 1999, the other from last year.
