Fatal Burn by Lisa Jackson
Shea lifted a shoulder. “Aaron called her, said he’d be over later but hasn’t shown up yet. Robert…Shit, who knows with Robert these days? He’s a mess.”
“Aren’t we all?”
He snorted his agreement. “I think I’ll take a break out on the porch,” he said, reaching into his front pocket for his pack of Marlboro Lights. “She”—he hitched his chin toward the open bedroom door—“will probably fall asleep if she already hasn’t.” He shook out a filter tip and jabbed it into the corner of his mouth. “There’s an older lady Mom knows from the church, Mrs. Sinclair, who’s going to come and stay with her for a couple of days. She used to be a nurse. Father Timothy arranged it, and I thought it was a good idea.” Glancing at his watch, the cigarette bobbing between his lips, he said, “She should be here soon.” He started for the stairs.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Shannon said. “I need to talk to you.” Before he could ask any questions, she walked into the darkened bedroom where her mother lay under a thick duvet despite the oppressive heat inside. The draperies were drawn, the only light coming from a table lamp near the bed.
Maureen looked small and pale in the big four-poster she’d shared with her husband for over forty years. A half-drunk glass of water, an empty tea cup and several bottles of pills sat next to a box of tissues, her Bible and her rosary. On the night table, too, was an ashtray with several cigarette butts and a half-empty pack of Salems, the brand Maureen had given up when she’d quit smoking over twenty years earlier.
Shannon’s heart dropped through the floor. Never had she seen her mother like this, so utterly devastated, not even while at her own husband’s funeral.
Maureen’s eyelids were at half-mast and her red hair, always such a source of pride with her, was mussed, unkempt.
“Hi, Mom.” Shannon walked to the bed, stepped around a wastebasket filled with crumpled tissues, sat on the edge of the mattress and took her mother’s hand in her own. “How are you doing?”
Her mother didn’t respond and Shannon’s heart broke.
“I know it’s hard.”
Still nothing.
“Mom?”
Maureen’s eyes turned toward her, but they were unfocused and rimmed with red. A bit of a smile played at the corners of lips devoid of color. “Shannon,” she whispered, her frail-looking fingers clutching hers in a death grip. “Oliver. Sweet, sweet Oliver.”
“I know, Mom, I know.”
“Why?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know. It’s senseless.”
Tears bled from the corners of Maureen’s eyes. “He’s in God’s hands now,” she said and blindly reached for her cigarettes with her free hand.
“Mom, please, you shouldn’t smoke in bed…or smoke anywhere. It won’t help.”
Her mother’s hand fell to her side, lying atop a floral duvet cover, it appeared ridiculously thin. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, her voice thick.
“Of course it does.”
“I’m just so tired,” she said.
“You should rest,” Shannon suggested, then pressed on. She had to know the truth. Even though her mother was grieving, in pain, and groggy from the sedatives. “But…Can you tell me about Dad?”
“Your father?” One eye opened and her pupil, half-dilated, seemed to sharpen.
Shannon took in a deep breath. Her fingers tightened slightly over her mother’s frail hand. “Was he the Stealth Torcher?”
“The what?” She was slipping away again, her eyelids obviously heavy.
“The arsonist?” Shannon waited, but her mother had drifted off. “Mom, why were we named what we are? Why are we…?”
“What, Shannon?” Shea’s voice, though low, seemed to boom across the room. “Are we what?”
She dropped Maureen’s hand, kissed her temple quickly and then walked to the doorway where her brother lingered. “You were eavesdropping.”
“You were asking Mom strange questions,” he charged, his expression unreadable.
She shut the bedroom door. “I said we need to talk. Let’s do it. Now.” One step ahead, she hurried down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door to the porch, the very spot where her brothers had huddled and whispered together just yesterday. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“I want you to be straight with me,” she said, in no mood for small talk.
“About what?” Cupping his hands over the end of his cigarette, he lit up.
“The Stealth Torcher. Us…our family.” As Shea stood on the porch in the shade and smoked she laid out everything Nate had told her that morning. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask a question, just listened while yellowjackets buzzed in the apple tree in the backyard and blue jays bathed in a nearby birdbath, splashing water. Finally she said, “So how much of this is true, Shea?”
He took a final drag and shot a plume of smoke from one corner of his mouth. “I don’t know what good ruining Dad’s reputation would do now.”
“You’re telling me he was the arsonist?” She’d thought she’d braced herself but when faced with the truth, she had to hold on to the rail and steady herself.
“I don’t know. I think so.” He squashed his cigarette out in the moist soil of a planter box overflowing with pink petunias.
“And our names?”
“All part of the great cosmic joke.”
“You knew?” She was aghast.
“I suspected.”
“But Ryan…?”
“Was no innocent.” He swatted at a mosquito that was buzzing near his head.
“When he died, the fires stopped.”
“Dad was scared, I think.”
“You don’t know?”
Shea shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything,” he said and looked away, over the top of the fence to the neighbor’s yard where an aboveground pool was visible, an empty air mattress floating on the surface.
“Who killed Ryan? Did Dad? And then set me up?”
Shea squeezed his eyes shut. “No.”
“You know something, Shea,” she charged. “Something that’s killing this family one member at a time. We’ve already lost Neville, haven’t we? And now his twin, not to mention Robert’s wife. Who’s next, Shea? You’re an officer of the law, for God’s sake, you have to do something!”
“I can’t,” he yelled. “Don’t you get it, Shannon? I can’t say a damned word.”
“Why?” she demanded. “People are dying and…and…” And then it hit her. As hard as if a semi had driven over her. Nate was right. Shea was involved.
Chapter 31
There was no way around it.
Shea stood on his mother’s porch, looked down at his sister and wanted to die a thousand deaths. Maybe he had already. “Okay, Shannon,” he said. Defeat rested heavily on his shoulders. “You win. You’re right. I can’t keep this up any longer…It’s just not worth it. But before we go into any details, I want my lawyer present and then after I discuss everything with him, I’ll talk to Paterno. I’m only going through this once.”
“As long as you come out with the truth,” she said. Her green eyes charged him with all kinds of unspeakable things. Funny thing was, with everything that was going on, he would have thought she would be afraid of him.
Not so, his little sister.
“Not here,” he said, looking around the home where he’d grown up, where he’d felt the clap of his father’s hand on his shoulder when he’d caught the winning touchdown for the high school football team, where he’d seen his mother’s gaze, always full of reproach when he’d come in late stinking of beer, where he’d felt the bite of his father’s belt as it cut across his buttocks when he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. There were holes in the walls, plastered over, but still visible, that were the marks of his fists when a blow he’d thrown at one of his brothers had gone astray. There was a gouge near the door where he’d broken through the chain lock when Neville had locked him out and there was a spot on the roof he thought of as his
And it had all come crashing down to this.
“Where?” she asked.
“Let’s go to Aaron’s.”
“He’s involved, too?” she asked.
But he could tell from her expression that she’d already guessed or been told most of the truth.
“To his back teeth.”
“And Robert?”
“Of course.”
She was obviously stunned, but she held up her chin and said, “Then let’s get to it, okay? If any one of you knows where Dani Settler is, I’ll—”
“There’s no need to threaten, Shannon,” he said, some of his anger returning. “I get it, okay? Let’s just do this and for the record, I don’t have any idea what happened to the kid.”
She clearly didn’t believe him, but he didn’t give a shit. He called his brothers and the lawyer. They all agreed to meet at Aaron’s house over on Fifth Street. He and Shannon waited in intense silence until Mrs. Sinclair arrived to take care of Maureen.
Thank God he didn’t have to face Father Timothy again or be reminded of how Oliver had ended up swinging from the crossbeam in the basement of St. Benedictine’s.
They drove separate cars to Aaron’s. The family lawyer, Peter Green, was just sliding out of his black Mercedes. In one hand he carried a briefcase. He looked worried as hell, his bald pate wrinkled from the eyebrows up as he pocketed his keys. Approaching Shea in front of the house, he said, “I think you’re making a big mistake.”
“Mine to make, Pete,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
Shannon waited on the walk and together they entered Aaron’s tiny house, a one-bedroom stucco bungalow built around the 1920s.
Robert and Aaron were already in back, on the patio, standing in the shade of a madrona tree, smoking and whispering. They both looked like hell.
“What’s going on?” Aaron asked, his eyes darting from Shannon to Peter and back to Shea. He drew on his cigarette as if it was his last chance in this lifetime for a hit of nicotine.
“It’s time to come clean,” Shea said, and Aaron blanched. Robert scowled. “We can’t hide it any longer.” He settled wearily into a patio chair next to a dusty table with a broken umbrella. Peter and Shannon took seats next to him. Expression tense, Aaron stood beneath the overhang of the patio. Robert sat on the top step, chain smoking and looking about as miserable as a person could. “Shannon’s figured out a lot of what’s going on,” Shea said, filling them in. “It’s time we talked to Paterno. We’ll let Pete do the talking for us, see what he can do.” He glanced back at Shannon. “You want the truth, go ahead and ask.”
“All right,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “Let’s start with the obvious. Where’s Dani Settler? Why has she been kidnapped, and who the hell is the Stealth Torcher?”
Shannon listened with growing horror as the story of her brothers unfolded. Shea began the narrative. “You were right,” he said. “Dad started this whole Stealth Torcher business. I’m not sure he would have ever owned up to it, but I was working at the Santa Lucia Fire Department at the time and noticed that whenever one of the fires attributed to the Torcher happened, Dad was missing for a while. I found some stuff in the garage, the same kind of accelerant that the Torcher had used, the fuse material. I confronted him and he explained that he’d had to do something, become a hero, so he wouldn’t lose his job. He had a lot of years in with the department, wanted a promotion so that he could retire on a bigger salary, and so he created his own scenario where he could be the hero.”
Robert closed his eyes and hung his head. Aaron avoided looking at her.
“But then someone died,” Shannon whispered.
“Yes. A woman by the name of Dolores Galvez.”
“Dad started that fire?”
Shea nodded. “Yeah.”
“Is that right, Aaron?” she asked, noting that her oldest brother’s face had turned the color of chalk.
“Dad didn’t know anyone would be in there.”
“And you all knew about this when it was happening?” Her voice rose in outrage.
Peter held up his hands. “Listen, I don’t think you need to be discussing this with anyone. You could incriminate yourselves. I’m advising you to speak to no one, only to me.”
Shannon’s fist banged against the table.
Peter jumped.
All her brothers’ heads jerked up in unison.
“My daughter is missing. Some psycho has her and it’s connected to this Stealth Torcher thing. Now if Dad was the arsonist, who’s the copy cat? One of you?”
“What?” Robert asked, blinking rapidly. “You think I could have killed Mary Beth? Oliver?” He jumped to his feet and walked to the table, pushing his face within inches of Shannon’s. “No, Shan. It’s not me!” He slapped his chest. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of, but I didn’t take your kid.”
“What about Ryan?” she asked and Robert shrank away from her. “Who killed him? Dad? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Robert, don’t,” Peter warned.
“I—I don’t know.” Robert’s eyes were round.
“Did you know that he was Blanche Johnson’s son? That she gave him up for adoption?”
“Jesus, no. I mean, I knew he was adopted, we all did, but…What does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
“I can’t!”
He looked frantically at Shea, and Shannon felt a shift in the atmosphere. Her three brothers exchanged glances.
“I’ll get us all a beer,” Aaron said.
Shannon held Shea’s gaze. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
Peter, on her other side, was slowly wagging his head side to side, trying to discourage his client, but it was too late. Shea appeared to be a man at a confessional.
“The five of us brothers talked it over and decided we could do the same thing Dad had done, but not for self-aggrandizement but to…make changes for the better.”
“You mean like Robin Hood…? Take the law into your own hands and square things up in the world? Jesus, listen to yourselves! Talk about self-aggrandizement!”
Shea’s lips flattened. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands, still stunned at the news. “What kind of changes?”
Aaron returned, deposited cans of beer in front of everyone. But the cans remained closed, except for his, which opened with a hiss. “We formed a group. And if someone had something he needed fixed, we met…in kind of a committee and someone executed the plans. Usually the one who brought it up.”
“Things that were illegal,” she guessed, her heart pumping crazily.
“Shea,” Pete cut in one more time. “I’m warning you, as your attorney, that you shouldn’t say anything else.”
“Shannon needs to know,” Shea said fervently. “There’s a kid’s life at stake.” He gazed steadily at her. “The first suggestion was to get rid of Ryan Carlyle.”
“What!” she cried.
“He killed your baby,” Aaron defended. “Then beat you up. Was fighting the divorce.”
“You murdered him?”
“Actually,” Shea said, “it was Neville’s idea.”
“Neville?” She thought back to her brother, the stronger one of the twins. Yet she couldn’t imagine him being involved in killing someone. “Are you saying that you five, including Neville and Oliver, formed what, a murder club?” She was quivering all over. There was a roar in her ears. She scooted her chair back.
Robert popped his beer and said, “We only met a few times.”
“But you killed Ryan,” she whispered, “and let me take the blame.”
“No.” Robert shook his head vehemently. “It wasn’t like that.”
“We all met that night in the forest,” Shea said, his tone steady, cutting Robert off. “We decide
“You killed him,” she repeated, appalled.
“Neville killed him,” Shea said softly. “And then found out that he couldn’t stick around, that his guilt was driving him out of his mind.”
“You know where he is?”
Shea shook his head and her other brothers showed great interest in their beer cans.
“Neville killed Ryan,” she said, “and you all knew about it. Knew the truth, even condoned it, approved it. Like you guys are God, or…or judge and jury, determining who lives and who dies.” She got up from her chair so fast that her unopened beer fell on its side and rolled across the glass tabletop. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered, then a bit of understanding hit her. “Oliver couldn’t stand it, could he? It sent him over the edge and into a mental hospital.”
“Oliver was always weak,” Shea said.
“Being sensitive isn’t the same as being weak!” Shannon couldn’t believe these killers were her brothers. “And you let me go to trial! I was arrested. And all the while you, my own overprotective brothers, set me up.”
“You would never have gone to jail,” Shea insisted. “The case was weak. You should never have been prosecuted.”
Aaron said, “We had an agreement, if the verdict went against you, we’d come forward.”
“With this cock-and-bull story that Neville did it and he’s missing?”
“Shannon—” Robert tried, but she wasn’t listening.
“This is vile and illegal and downright evil,” she hissed. “And…So…What? You started up again?”
“No!” Robert said emphatically.
“So, who’s doing it now? Who’s setting the damned fires?” she demanded. Fury snapped through her veins. “Who’s playing judge and jury and God now, killing the people closest to us? Who has my daughter? Who killed Oliver and Mary Beth and Blanche Johnson?”
Her brothers remained silent.
“Who?” she demanded again, and Shea held up a hand.