I took out the note Sinnerman left for me in the park and folded it so she couldn’t see the words.
“By any chance did the paper he wrote on look like this?”
Her eyes scanned it and then expanded to the point that I no longer needed a verbal answer.
“Where did you get that? Do you know my grandson—do you know where he is?”
I pressed harder.
“Is this the paper?” I said.
“Yes.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen your grandson?”
She tapped one of her fingers over her lips and then said, “I don’t know. He left.”
“How long ago?” I said.
“It’s been years now, about two decades.”
“Do you have any idea where he went?”
A tear oozed from her eye and splashed down on her wrist. She took her index finger and cocked her head to the side and dabbed the wet spot with it.
“Decklan set aside a big chunk of money for my grandson that he was entitled to when he turned eighteen. The day after he took out his inheritance, he left town, and I’ve never seen him since.”
“Have you tried to get in touch with him—to find him?”
She nodded.
“And?” I said.
“I have no idea where he is. Have you ever tried to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
I had and what I’d learned was that no matter how hard someone tried to hide, there was always a trail.
“Couldn’t you track him through his bank account, credit cards, that type of thing?” I said.
“He cashed it out.”
“All of it?” I said.
“Every penny.”
I had the feeling there was a lot more to the story, and I wasn’t about to leave before I found out what it was.
“Why did your grandson want to leave so bad?” I said.
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. Even after all this time…it’s just too hard.”
It was time for the sympathy vote, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her about my suspicions.
“You asked me before why I was here,” I said.
She nodded.
“I’m looking for your grandson.”
“Why?”
“I think he knew my sister,” I said. “In fact, I believe he might have been the last one to see her alive.”
Giovanni and Decklan appeared at the door.
“What are you two talking about?” Decklan said.
I gave Giovanni the I-need-more-time look and hoped he grasped my meaning. He did.
“I’d love to see the rest of this magnificent house,” he said to Decklan.
Decklan’s house paled in comparison to Giovanni’s, but Decklan took the bait, which was all that mattered. When they were safely out of sight, Decklan’s mother grabbed my arm.
“Is your sister—”
“Yes,” I said.
“How long ago did she pass away?”
“A few years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” I said. “I hope you can see now why I need to find him.”
“How are you so sure the man you’re looking for is my grandson?”
“Because he wrote me a note on that piece of paper I showed you, and I believe his mother’s art studio was the only place around that used it.”
“I see.”
“What made him leave?” I said.
She sighed and then breathed in and exhaled with force, like she was prepared to give a long speech.
“Decklan had a hard time after Laurel left. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat. All he thought about was her. And you need to understand that every time he looked at my grandson, he saw Laurel staring back at him. It pained him to even talk to the child. At first, he just distanced himself from him, but after a while, just to have him around was more than he could bear.”
“So he ignored him—his own son?”
She hung her head like she’d just been disgraced in public.
“He sent him away.”
“Where, at what age?”
“To an all-boy school about three months after his mother left, and when he came back, he was like a different person.”
“In what way?” I said.
“He had fits of rage and night terrors. He’d wake up at all hours and scream for his mother. This went on for years. He was so angry.”
“How did Decklan react?”
“He didn’t know what to do. I’m sure he loved the boy, but you have to understand, he’s never had a high tolerance for that type of behavior.”
That type of behavior? I couldn’t believe she’d uttered those words. The child lost his mother. How could his father expect anything less?
“And he was violent,” she said. “The older he got, the worse it was, and it escalated to the point that he went after Decklan one night with a knife.”
“Was he hurt?” I said.
She shook her head.
“It was more rage than anything. He thought his father hated him, and by then—well, he pretty much assumed his mother felt the same way too. All those years and he never heard a word from her. But the night he got physical with the knife—well, that was the last straw for Decklan.”
“How old was your grandson when this all happened?” I said.
“Sixteen. Decklan gave him some money and said he’d pay for him to have a place of his own and all of his expenses, on one condition.”
“Which was?”
“He left and never came back.”
The entire story was unreal, and I felt like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. I couldn’t believe a father could do that to his own son.
“And did he—leave I mean?”
She nodded.
“I kept in touch with him and visited him at the place his father set up for him, and I begged Decklan to take him back. He needed his father. But both of them were too proud to even speak to the other. And that’s how I lost him.”
“What happened to his hand?” I said.
“Burned himself on the stove when he was a little boy. He used to light things on fire over the burner. When I asked him about it he said he liked to watch things melt down into ash. It drove his father crazy, but he still did it whenever he wasn’t around. And then one day it got out of control, and when he tried to put it out, he lit his own hand on fire.”
“Where was Decklan during all this?”
“I’m embarrassed to say the boy was home alone, but I didn’t live here then. He called 9-1-1 himself and was taken to the hospital. By the time Decklan arrived, child services had arrived. I thought they would take him, and I was relieved when they didn’t. Sometimes I wonder if he might have been better off if they did.”
I went to close the photo album and return it to its rightful place when I noticed a pocket attached to the back cover. A picture protruded from it. I pulled it out and stared into the face of a young, brunette woman.
“That’s her,” the woman said.
“Laurel?” I said.
She nodded.
Laurel looked a lot like Sinnerman’s victims. Dark hair, dark eyes, slender, same age group—I was astonished.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me,” I said.
“I don’t know how any of this helps you, but if you do find my Samuel, will you tell him how much I’ve missed him all these years? It would mean everything to me if I could see him again.”
There were a couple of things that stood out most in our conversation. Sinnerman strangled his victims with most of his force applied with his right hand. The left was weak and made strange looking imprints on the bodies. The burns from the stove made sense. And then there was the comment about him being able to shoot at a target with impeccable accuracy.
I thanked her again and then asked if I could use the restroom before I left. I’d seen what appeared to be the corner of a notebook stowed away under the dust ruffle of the bed. Once she exited the bedroom I went back in, snatched it and plunged it into my bag. As I left the room, I looked back at the picture of the child with the fish on the dresser, but I no longer saw an innocent little boy—I saw the face of a killer.