“The first time she found them in Dad’s safe. That was eleven years ago, a year after Simon ‘died.’ She found the pictures and some drawings Simon had made from them. My mother rarely cried, but she cried about those pictures. I found her that way.”
“And you saw the pictures.”
“Only a glimpse. Enough to suspect at least some of them were real. But my father came home then and was so angry. He had to admit he’d had them for a year. I said we should turn them over to the police, but my father refused. He said it would be bad for the family name and Simon was already dead, so what was the point?”
Luke was frowning. “The point? Like, the victims? That was the point.”
“Of course it was. But when I tried to take the pictures to the police, we got into it.” Daniel clenched his hands into fists, remembering. “I almost hit him. I was so mad.”
“So what did you do?” Luke asked quietly.
“I left the house to cool down, but when I came back, my father had burned the photos in the fireplace. They were gone.”
“Obviously not gone.” Luke pointed to the envelope.
“He must’ve had copies somewhere else. I was… stunned. My mother was telling me it was for the best and my father was standing looking so smug and superior. I lost it. I hit him. Knocked him down. We had a terrible fight. I was on my way out the front door when Susannah came in the back. She’d missed the reason for the fight and I didn’t want her to know. She was only seventeen. Turned out she knew more than I thought. If we’d talked then…” Daniel thought of the seventeen bodies Simon had left behind in Philadelphia. “Who knows what we might have averted?”
“Did you tell anyone?”
Daniel shrugged, disgusted with himself. “Tell them what? I had no proof and it was my word against that of a judge. My sister hadn’t seen any of it and my mother would never have crossed my father. So I said nothing and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“So you left home and never came back.”
“Not until I got the call from the Dutton sheriff two weeks ago that they were missing. It was the same day I found out my mother had cancer. I just wanted to see her once more, but she’d already been dead for two months.” Killed by Simon.
“So how did you get these pictures now?”
“This past Thanksgiving my parents found out Simon was still alive.”
“Because the blackmailer up in Philly had contacted your father.”
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Wow, that really was some article.”
“Got that off the Internet. Your family’s hot news, boy.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Wonderful. Well, Dad and Mother went up to Philly to find Simon. Mother wanted to bring him home, certain he’d been some amnesia victim or something. Dad wanted to reinforce his blackmail, so he took the pictures with him to Philly. Eventually Mother realized Dad was never going to let her see Simon.”
“Simon would have told her that your father had known all along that he was alive.”
“Exactly. Then Dad disappeared. He must have found Simon because Simon killed him and buried him in a deserted field with all his other victims. Simon contacted my mother and she was planning to meet him. She knew she could be walking into a trap but she didn’t care.”
“Because she was dying of cancer and had nothing more to lose.”
“Yes. She opened a mailbox for me at one of those mailbox stores. Inside the box were these pictures. She’d left them in the event Simon did kill her.”
“You said Ciccotelli up in Philly had copies. Does he know you kept the originals?”
“No. I made the copies I gave him.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “You copied these at a regular copy machine?”
“No,” Daniel scoffed. “After I found the pictures at the mailbox store, I bought a copier-scanner. I had a few hours before Susannah arrived from New York, so I went back to my hotel room, set the scanner up to my laptop, and made the copies there.”
“You set up a scanner all by yourself?”
“I’m not completely inept,” Daniel said dryly. “The guy in the store showed me how.” He looked back at the picture of Alicia’s assault. “I’ve had nightmares about these girls for years. Since I got the pictures back a week ago, I’ve been memorizing their faces. I promised myself that I’d find out what part Simon had in getting these pictures, then I’d find the girls and tell them Simon was dead. I never dreamed the first ID would be dumped in my lap this way.”
“So you didn’t know Alicia Tremaine at all?”
“No. She was five years younger than me, so I never would have known her at school and I was away at college when she was murdered.”
“And none of these guys in the pictures are Simon?”
“No. All the men have both their legs. Simon was an amputee. Plus Simon was a good bit taller than any of these guys. I haven’t seen any tattoos or any other identifying features or marks on any of the pictures.”
“But now you have one of the victims’ names, which is more than you had before.”
“True. Now I’m wondering if I should tell Chase about the pictures.” Chase Wharton was Daniel’s CO. “If I do, he could take the Arcadia case away from me, along with any investigation of these pictures. I really want to solve both of these cases. I need to.”
“It’s atonement,” Luke murmured and Daniel nodded.
“Yes.”
Luke lifted a brow. “You’re assuming no one was ever arrested for Alicia’s murder.”
Daniel straightened abruptly. “Can you check?”
Luke was already typing into the laptop. “Police arrested Gary Fulmore a few hours after they found Alicia’s body.” He typed again, his keystrokes rapid. “Gary Fulmore was found guilty of sexual assault and murder in the second degree the following January.”
“It’s January now,” Daniel said. “Coincidence?”
Luke shrugged. “That’s what you need to find out. Look, Danny, it’s pretty cut-and-dried that Simon didn’t kill that woman in Arcadia. He’s been dead himself a week.”
“And this time I watched him die myself,” Daniel said grimly. In fact, I helped. And he was glad that he had. He’d done the world a service in ensuring Simon was dead.
Luke’s eyes flickered in sympathy. “And they caught the man who murdered Alicia. Who knows, maybe this is Fulmore.” He pointed to the rapist in the picture. “And most important, you aren’t solving the murder of Alicia Tremaine. You’re solving the murder of the woman in the Arcadia ditch. If it was me, I wouldn’t mention the pictures just yet.”
Viewed logically, Luke’s argument made perfect sense. Or maybe he just needed it to. Either way, Daniel blew out a sigh that was mostly relief. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
Luke raised a brow. “For this, you owe me a lot more than one.”
Daniel looked down at Riley, who hadn’t moved a muscle the entire time. “I took your dog and saved your sex life. That’s good for one hell of a lot, Papa.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault that Denise wouldn’t live with Brandi’s dog.”
“Which Brandi only got because of you.”
“Brandi thought a detective should have a bloodhound.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Clearly Brandi’s assets were not in her brain.”
Luke grinned. “Nope. But in her defense, my apartment has a weight limit. A bloodhound would have been too big. We settled on Riley there.”
“I should have given him back to you when Denise split,” Daniel grumbled.
“Which was two years and six girlfriends ago,” Luke pointed out. “I think you’ve developed an attachment to good old Riley.”
Which of course Daniel had. “All I know is you’d better not be feeding him any more of your mama’s food or you will get him back. Then you’ll be praying that your next girlfriend likes basset hounds and that your mama likes your girlfriend.”
Luke’s revolving door of girlfriends was a constant source of angst for poor Mama Papa. Most of them she didn’t care for, but she had never given up hoping Luke would settle down with one of them and give her grandchildren.