Janet nodded. “I haven’t called the Ryans yet. Thought it might be premature. And, anyway, I figured you’d want to do it — you’re the one who’s bonded with the family.”
“I’ll call ‘em,” Cutter said, returning the nod. “I’ll make it clear our guy is at least technically just a suspect. But they have a right to get themselves a good night’s sleep for a change.”
Janet was frowning. “Uh, Chief — before you make that call?”
“Yeah?”
She gave him a steely look. “There’s something else you may wish to share with them.”
“Oh?” Cutter said.
Roy was on one side of Richie’s bed and Helen on the other, the father in pajamas, the mother in a modest dressing gown. Famous faces from TV and comic books stared down approvingly at the little family as the mother tucked the boy in. A cowboy lamp on the bedside stand was on, but the overhead light was off. The child still had the stethoscope around his neck, draped outside his covers.
The boy looked from one parent to the other. “Where are you gonna sleep tonight, Mom?”
“In the bedroom next door, just like last night.”
“Dad, is that where you’ll be?”
Roy repressed a smile and said, “Mind your own business, pal. Better give me that thing.”
“The stethoscope, you mean? I’m not done with it yet.” He started listening to his mother’s heartbeat and she looked at him with a you-little-scamp expression.
“The stethoscope,” Roy said, wiggling a finger. “Come on now. You might roll over on it and hurt yourself.”
Richie didn’t seem to hear that. “Mom, are you gonna sleep with Dad tonight, like you used to?”
She was trying not to smile. “Your father’s right, Richard. That’s none of your concern.”
Listening through the stethoscope again, the boy grinned. “Jeez, your heart’s beating fast, Mom!”
She flushed and gave Roy a look. “I wish you’d quit letting him play with that damn thing.”
“Language,” Richie said.
“Give me that thing!” Roy stripped the device off his son’s head and set it on the bedside stand.
“You say ‘thing’ a lot,” Richie said.
“I suppose so,” his father said. “What about it?”
“Sometimes you say ‘thing’ and I don’t know what you mean. Lately I hear you and Mom talking about some ‘thing’ outside and you get real serious. Like it’s a scary thing. What scary thing are you talking about?”
“The flu,” his mother said, almost snapping.
“Oh. You call my friend upstairs a ‘thing,’ too.”
“That’s different,” Roy said.
The boy sat up. “Dad, when your heart beats? That means you’re alive. Right?”
“Of course.”
Richie pointed to the ceiling. “Well, my friend’s heart beats. So it means he must be alive.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“It does so! And it’s beating louder and faster, too.”
Roy sat on the edge of the bed and Richie leaned back into his pillow, his mother tucking him back in better.
“Son,” Roy said, “I’m glad you have a good imagination. But I’m afraid I haven’t done you any favors, not getting your uncle’s gift out of here sooner. That’s a mummy, an Aztec mummy who lived hundreds of years ago. I want you to stay away from it until I can get it out of here, which I intend to do tomorrow.”
“But, Dad...”
“He belongs in a museum, where people can look at him and learn something about life a long time ago.”
“So he’s not a ‘thing’ — he’s a ‘he.’”
“He was a he — now he’s a dead person. D — E — A — D, son. He’s not a plaything, and not something to play pretend with. It’s really disrespectful, Richie, though I know you don’t mean to be. It’s our fault, really.”
“But he’s my friend, Dad. And his heart is beating!”
“That’s enough of that,” Roy said, stern but not scolding. “Now, get to sleep.”
“Dad...”
Helen was at the doorway now. “Let it drop, Richard. We’ll see you in the morning.”
In the hall, Helen rolled her eyes and said, “You’re right — that boy does have quite the imagination.”
“Most so-called ‘normal’ kids,” Roy said, “don’t have imaginations that creative.”
“No, and that’s a good sign where Richard’s concerned. But an inability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality? That isn’t.”
The phone rang downstairs.
“I’ll get it,” Roy said.
“Come back,” she said, “and we’ll pick this up here.” She slipped into the guest room.
Not a romantic send-off, but at least an invitation of sorts...
In the library, Roy answered the phone and it was Chief Cutter.
“We got him,” Cutter said. “We’ve got his ass in custody.”
Relief flooded through Roy. “You sound positive.”
“Well, he hasn’t been charged yet, but he’s being interrogated right now. I’m going to join in.”
Cutter brought Roy up to speed on the events of the evening.
“He’s technically still just a suspect,” the chief wrapped up, “but it’s hard to imagine any two people fitting our killer’s bizarre characteristics.”
Roy’s whole body seemed to relax. “Well, that’s great. Wonderful. But I’d prefer it if, for the time being, you’d keep your people on hand here.”
“Absolutely. Roy, they’ll maintain their patrol until I pull them off, which I won’t do without your blessing. We won’t let our guard down, I promise you... but you can rest assured that we have him.”
“Fantastic.”
“And,” Cutter said, the tone of his voice shifting into a different gear, “we’ve found the final piece of our puzzle, I think... or at least Detective Hodges has. She’s been going over your father’s files as medical examiner. Seems ten years and a few months ago, he presided over the inquest into the death of one Julia Miller, a death he ruled accidental. The woman died after a fall down the stairs.”
Roy frowned at the phone. “Who the hell is Julia Miller? And how does that relate to our ‘puzzle,’ Blake?”
“She worked for the Lees in Timber Lake. Live-in help. A domestic, supposedly, but really she was a registered nurse, and you don’t pay that kind of money for dusting and dishes. Janet called Chief Sturgis and asked if he knew anything about it. He apologized for not mentioning any of this earlier. But everything he had about it came strictly from rumors — there was never a police investigation of any kind.”
“Investigation into what?”
“The Miller woman’s death. Gossip was there’d been an affair with Efram and some said wife Rosemary may have given her competition a push. Another rumor was that Julia Miller was blackmailing the Lees. Still other talk said the Miller girl had threatened to go to the papers or the police about something.”
Roy settled into a chair by the phone, trying to absorb all this. “And nothing was ever done about any of it?”
“No. Just small-town rumor mill stuff, and at that point the Lees were still very respectable pillars of the community. But it’s not hard to imagine a scenario or two, based upon what little we know.”
Roy grunted a wry laugh. “You mean, like social butterfly Rosemary did shove her husband’s lover down the stairs?”
“A real possibility. But what about Julia being a more compassionate nurse than her successor, Loretta Dornan? Someone who treated Dennis better than his grandparents, and who threatened... whether for blackmail or humanitarian purposes... to expose not only the existence of their grandson but the escalating cruelty of his captivity.”