Cold Case Tracker, page 6
Still, his eyes were looking everywhere except her face. Uneasiness grew in the pit of her stomach. There was something else bothering him. Something else was troubling his mind, but he wouldn’t say it.
She stopped and turned to him.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
Jackson stopped and blew out a long breath.
“I chased him down to the waterfront,” he said. He started walking again and so did she. “When I got there, he was pushing a small speedboat out into the water. It’s so shallow there that he had to get out a ways before he dropped the motor so that he wouldn’t destroy it on the rocks. I identified myself as a police officer. I also pulled my weapon, which was a dicey move, because honestly it would’ve been a pretty tricky shot from that distance, especially in the darkness.”
“And?” Amy pressed.
“And he shouted that if I fired that gun, I’d never find out what happened to Gemma.”
Amy’s whole body jolted as if her heart had suddenly stopped. She stumbled forward a step and felt Jackson’s hand quickly take her arm and hold her up.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” Amy shook him off. “You’re saying the man who attacked me in the bookstore and who broke into the cottage knows where Gemma is and what happened to her? Does that mean he kidnapped her? Did he kill her?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said, “and we can’t jump to conclusions.”
Maybe not. But that still didn’t explain the odd shift in Jackson’s tone. Something had happened between the time he’d dropped her off in the camper and returned. Whatever it was had shaken him.
“He did have a heavy accent like you said,” Jackson added. “But it sounded more Irish to me. Either way, I think it’s probably fake. Thankfully, I have two colleagues coming up tomorrow to provide extra hands on this case. Constable Caleb Perry, who you talked to on the phone, and also Constable Blake Murphy. Sorry, I confirmed it after you’d gone to bed for the night and forgot to mention it earlier in all the excitement.”
They got to the cottage. Jackson stretched his hand over the doorknob. Then he hesitated. “I think I should stay in the living room for the rest of the night. If that’s okay with you. I don’t want to run the risk of that guy coming back. Hudson can stay on the porch.”
“Hudson can camp out in the living room with you,” Amy said quickly. She ran her hand over the back of the K-9’s neck. “We made peace back in the camper. Hudson and I are good now.”
And for some reason, right now, I might actually trust him more than you. At least I know he’s not hiding anything from me.
Jackson nodded. “Sounds good.”
He opened the door and switched on the light. Finally, she could see the full contours of his face. It was still a little puffy, but his skin had mostly recovered from the bear spray. Dark shadows lined his eyes. He looked tired and worried, like he’d aged a decade since they’d said good-night.
“Hudson and I are just going to do a quick check of the place to make sure all the doors and windows are locked, so we don’t have any unwanted visitors,” he said. “We’ll be back in a second.”
He signaled Hudson to his side and turned as if he was about to head to the second floor.
Amy grabbed his arm. He looked back.
“I’m choosing to trust you,” she said. “I believe you’re a good guy and if you’re keeping something from me it has to be for a good reason. But I can tell you’re hiding something. There’s something else on your mind—something you’re not telling me. My ex told me enough lies to last a lifetime and I can’t take any more now. So please, tell me what happened, Jackson. Why do you seem so shaken?”
* * *
He knew I was Gemma’s brother, Jackson thought as he searched Amy’s deep and earnest gaze. Which means, somehow, he knows more about this whole situation than I do. And he knows more about me than you. What does that even mean?
Jackson wished he could open up and talk to Amy about it. About all of it. But unfortunately, he’d made a rash and foolish decision the day before that had put him in a stupid situation. And now the last thing he wanted to do was upset Amy any more than she already was. What if she kicked him out of the cottage in the middle of the night and the masked intruder came back? What if she got attacked again and hurt—or worse—because of his mistake?
He could forgive himself—mostly—for the rash decision in the moment. But that call was getting harder to defend with every passing hour. It was like he’d drunk something corrosive, mistakenly believing it would be the best medicine, and ever since he felt it eating away his insides.
Amy was still standing in front of him, looking at him expectantly.
“The masked man told me that he knew who I was,” Jackson said, dancing as close to the truth as he could. “That really rattled me. Maybe that means he knows I’ve been looking into the case. Or maybe he somehow saw my badge. I don’t know. But I didn’t want to worry you. Because, for all I know, he was lying to me and doesn’t have any idea where Gemma is.”
“But he knows about her,” Amy said. “He knows she’s missing and you’re looking for her.”
Jackson nodded.
“But he didn’t say anything specific about where she was, what happened to her or even if she’s still alive?” Amy pressed.
“No,” Jackson said.
Still, she searched his face for a long moment as if trying to decipher a deeper truth hidden behind his eyes. He’d tell her that he was Gemma’s brother tomorrow when Caleb and Blake were there for backup. Then it wouldn’t matter if she hated him, because at least she’d be safe.
He was the one who’d drunk the poison. He could live with it eating him up inside until then.
Amy waited in the living room while Jackson and Hudson did a thorough check of the cottage. But aside from a few drawers he could tell had been opened and books he could tell had been moved, nothing was amiss.
When he got back to the living room, he found Amy had laid out a mountain of blankets and pillows on one end of the couch for him, and another blanket on the floor in front of the couch for Hudson. The dog promptly walked over to his new bed and curled up into a ball.
Amy was in the kitchen, eating crackers with peanut butter and boiling water.
“I’m making peppermint tea,” she said. “If you’d like some. There’s some of Gemma’s regular tea in the cupboard too. I just haven’t been able to handle caffeine since getting pregnant.”
“Have you got any instant coffee?” he asked.
She glanced in the cupboard. “Yeah, we’ve got some of that too.” She pulled out an orange container and shook it. “It sounds pretty dry and granular.”
“Good by me,” he said. “If you can dump about an inch into a mug, and add some hot water and a spoon, I’ll take it from there.”
A smile crossed her face, and there was something about it that seemed to light up the furthest corners of his exhausted core. “Deal.”
He rekindled the fire in the wood-burning stove while Amy put the crackers away and made them hot drinks. A few moments later, they sat in comfortable silence in the living room, in the same chairs they’d been in that evening. Amy and Jackson sipped their respective drinks and glanced at each other over the tops of their mugs. Neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to try to head back to bed and turn in for the night.
“How are your eyes feeling?” she asked.
“Still a bit dry and sore,” he said. “But they’ve mostly recovered.”
“Sorry again about that,” she said.
“It’s really no big deal—”
“Yeah, it is,” Amy cut him off. “At least it is to me. I really appreciate the fact you’re being so awesome about it.”
“But you were totally justified in spraying me in the face like that,” Jackson said. “You were startled and defending yourself.”
“I don’t know how to explain what I mean.” She ran a hand through her hair. “But the fact you’re right doesn’t stop people from yelling at you. I was a waitress and customers yelled at me all the time for things that weren’t even a little bit my fault. Not a lot of people are as understanding as you are or as willing to let things just roll off their backs.”
Her earnest hazel eyes met his. He held her gaze, and for a long moment neither of them said anything.
“Well, I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger,” he said, finally. “And I know what it’s like to want to be forgiven. So, I try not to give anyone a hard time when they mess up. Again, not that I think you did anything wrong.”
But he couldn’t let himself go down that train of thought. She didn’t know that he was Gemma’s brother or that she’d once rejected his apology.
“You mentioned that some people have a temper,” he said, changing the subject to a safer one. “And as much as I hate to ask you this, I need to find out more about Paul. Did your ex have a bad temper?”
“I think so,” Amy said. “Not that I ever saw him yell, but he was pretty particular about having things the way he wanted. I never saw him do anything violent, though.”
“Is there any way he could be behind what’s happened to Gemma?”
“Well, he’s not the intruder,” Amy said.
“How can you be sure?”
She sighed. “Look, I know the previous police accused me of not being totally honest, but I have nothing to hide. Just stuff I’m embarrassed by and don’t like talking about.” Amy rolled her eyes. “To start with, our intruder is about a foot taller than Paul. Also, Paul was a liar and a cheat, but he’s not that athletic. Which is ironic, because he always claimed he came from a long line of men who’d served in the military. He loved showing off his grandfather’s Second World War medals. They were really impressive ones with wings and crowns and everything.”
“Okay,” Jackson said. “But what if he hired someone to get revenge on you? Or revenge on Gemma for taking you in? It’s not unheard of for a man to leave his wife and then turn around and try to punish her for moving on with her life.”
Amy set her mug down on the coffee table with a thump.
“First off, I’ll concede that Gemma did spend a lot of time trying to dig into Paul’s identity and his various shenanigans after I moved up here,” Amy said. “She had this investigative drive, like she’d missed her calling to be a detective or something. She’s always been into unsolved mysteries and cold cases. All the dog-eared fiction books in this place are Ajay’s and all the true crime ones are hers.”
Very true. He’d often thought it was a shame Gemma hadn’t gotten into law enforcement. She had an incredibly acute mind. But she’d also always been too independent to even consider it. Not to mention, Gemma felt the police had been too hard on him when he’d been younger—plus they’d botched it when a friend of hers had vanished in college.
“Then we got an email from someone claiming to be Paul’s team of powerful lawyers,” Amy continued.
“Really?” Jackson leaned forward. “What did it say?”
“It said that Paul wasn’t the father of my child,” Amy said, “that he wanted nothing to do with me and that he was taking a restraining order out against both me and Gemma.”
“Wow.” Jackson blew out a hard breath. “What a jerk.”
Among other worse terms he resisted the urge to use.
“Yeah,” Amy said. “Gemma suspected he’d written the letter himself and pretended to be his own lawyers. Which might be true, but it gave me the closure I needed. I got an annulment, and I asked Gemma to stop looking into Paul because it wasn’t good for my stress level. I didn’t need to know anything more, and I already felt terrible enough for ever getting involved with him.”
Okay, but that didn’t mean Gemma had actually stopped digging.
“I’m glad she looked into Paul for a while,” Amy went on. “There’s a lot of stuff that I only know about because of her.”
“Like what?” Jackson pressed.
“He told me his name was Paul Keebles,” Amy said. “He told me that he was incredibly wealthy, worked in real estate and lived in California. He said he was never married, no kids, and that his grandfather was a military veteran. Also, he claimed he visited Niagara Falls at least once a month on business.”
“What kind of business?” Jackson asked.
“He said he had an important business contact up here,” Amy said, “and they were doing some real estate deals. But I never met him and for all I know he had other women he was visiting in Niagara Falls.”
She spread her hands as if laying out the information she had.
“Gemma found out that he doesn’t work in real estate or live in California,” Amy said. “He has two other wives in different states, at least one fiancée and multiple children. He goes by several different names, including Paul Brown, Paul Keane, Paul Kent and Stanley Paul. His only career seems to be catfishing women, stealing small amounts of money and valuables from them, and moving on. Gross low-level stuff.”
Jackson could feel heat building at the back of his neck. He took a calming breath.
How can anyone treat people that way?
“Did you try contacting these other women and warning them?” he asked, gently.
“Gemma did, and I think that’s partly what sparked that letter from his lawyers.”
She ran the back of her hand over her eyes, as if trying to wipe away unseen tears.
“Paul doesn’t care about me!” Her voice rose and quivered with what sounded like anger. “He doesn’t care about anyone. He discards people. He dumps wives, leaves children and moves on. I wasn’t special to him. All I ever was to him was a little blip in a long string of cons.”
Jackson winced. There was a pain in his chest that felt so sharp it was like he’d been shot.
“So, I really don’t think he’d hire some Australian slash Irish professional thief to go after me now,” Amy added. “Because I’m no threat to him and there’s nothing I have that he wants. But if you think it’ll help in the investigation, I’m happy to tell the whole messy story about me and Paul.” She pulled her long honey brown hair back into a ponytail and tied it with an elastic that she’d produced from somewhere he didn’t see. “Well, maybe ‘happy’ is the wrong word. But I’m willing to tell you everything that happened, if you think it’ll help.”
“At the very least it will help me eliminate him as a suspect,” Jackson said.
He set his mug down and leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, as Amy told the story about how Paul had wooed her, tricked her into spontaneously eloping with him, then robbed her and abandoned her. Her voice was matter-of-fact, and more angry than sad. But as she talked, the pain in his core continued to grow until it felt like his entire body ached for her and what she’d gone through.
“When I first realized he’d left, my immediate instinct was to just try calling him over and over again,” Amy said. “Which is ridiculous considering my number had been blocked, my bank account had been drained and every valuable gift he’d ever given me was gone. I was a total mess when Gemma came to get me. I don’t know where I’d be without her.”
Jackson silently thanked God that his sister had been there for Amy.
“Gemma insisted I call the cops,” Amy said. “But there wasn’t much they could do considering he was an American citizen and most of the stuff he’d taken were gifts he’d given me.”
“Which I’m sure didn’t do much to help the fact Gemma doesn’t trust cops,” Jackson said.
Amy glanced at him sharply. “How did you know Gemma doesn’t trust cops?”
Right. Because he wasn’t Gemma’s brother. He was a stranger. But he was so exhausted and caught up in Amy’s story, he’d momentarily forgotten his cover.
“You know that a few years ago, one of Gemma’s college roommates disappeared near Manitoulin Island?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Amy nodded. “Her name was Louise Roch. She’d been on a boat, and they believed she went overboard, but they never found her body.”
“Well, Gemma apparently was really frustrated with how the police handled it,” Jackson said. “She tried to contact the press and sent a lot of letters to different law enforcement agencies.”
All of that was true, and he hoped she’d believe that any cop who was looking into Gemma’s disappearance would’ve uncovered it.
“For all we know, Gemma’s disappearance now could be connected to that cold case,” Jackson said. “Not that law enforcement has found any evidence of that.”
Amy nodded again. Then she picked up her mug and took another sip, even though he suspected the tea might be cold.
“Well, now you know the whole story about Paul,” Amy said. “At least as far as I know it.”
He wanted to envelop Amy in his arms. He wanted to hug her like she’d hugged him back at the camper, tell her that he was so sorry someone had treated her that way and that he’d do everything in his power to make sure no one ever hurt her again. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her posture, and leaned even further back against the sofa, rooted there by the knowledge that he had no right to hug her. She didn’t know who he was, she didn’t like the guy he’d been when he was younger, and she’d dislike him even more in a few hours when she found out the truth.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
She nodded, yawning, then said she was still planning on waking up early and getting to the bookstore to see about getting the power back on.
Jackson stood as she got up, took her mug and offered to tidy up the dishes.
He tracked her with his eyes as she slowly walked up the spiral staircase and down the hallway to the bedroom that had once been his. The door closed and the lock clicked. But still he stood there for a long moment staring at the closed door and wishing he knew what to say to take her pain away. Then finally he let out a long breath and started tidying the kitchen.
