“So you’re telling me that Frank was crazy? That he had paranoid delusions?” When Brandy turned back to him, Vince saw that tears were pooling in her eyes.
Vince’s features softened. “I’m afraid so. I’m so sorry.”
Brandy nodded and turned around. She reached into her purse and extracted a tissue. She dabbed her eyes. Her voice was shaky, yet remained strong, vigilant. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about this for… the last four, five years now. Why wouldn’t you speak to me?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Vince murmured softly. “I didn’t want you to… think less of your husband. I was… hoping you would simply… ac-cept what happened, accept the evidence the police found at the crime scene and just go on.”
Brandy nodded, her shoulders quaking with the intensity of her quiet sobbing. Vince let her stand there and sob; he could tell she needed to cry, that she needed to get it out. It was probably hard for her to comprehend that her husband had never truly changed his low-life ways, that he’d never received psychological counseling, that he’d allowed his problems to simmer and fester for years until he began making shit up until he began to believe his mother had been a deranged Satanist.
“I’m sorry,” Brandy said, her back still turned to him. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time like this and bugged you…”
“It’s okay,” Vince said. He stepped toward her and touched her shoulder gently.
She turned around, her eyes red. She wouldn’t look up at him. She looked too embarrassed. “Did Frank ever tell you about his real father?” Brandy said, sniffing.”
“No,” Vince said, curious. “He didn’t. What about him?”
Brandy wiped her eyes. “He told me his father was driven insane by his mother. He said one of the reasons he was contacting you was… to find out what happened to his father. And that… he thought that by doing that, he could help you too.”
“Help me?”
“Like I said, he never told me specifics. I just… kind of put two and two together.”
“I see,” Vince said. Playing dumb with this woman was proving to be beneficial. Until now, they had no idea what Frank had told her about his childhood. “His natural father suffered from similar delusions, then?”
“I don’t know what really happened to Frank’s dad. He only told me bits and pieces over the years. At first, he wouldn’t tell me anything about his parents. Every time I asked, he would clam up. The most he would say was that his father left the family when he was three and that his mom and stepfather were abusive toward him. Before he… well, before he sent the kids and me back east, he revealed a little more. He told me his father saw his mother do some really awful things and was driven insane by it. That’s the reason his father left. I… I never believed it, tried to get him to tell me more specifics, but he clammed up, said he’d already told me too much.”
“Uh huh,” Vince said, nodding for her to go on.
“I speculated that perhaps the real story behind it was that his father simply disappeared. Maybe he had his own drug and alcohol problems. I reached out to Frank’s Aunt, and she admitted to us that Frank’s dad turned up twenty years or so later, basically a homeless drunk. She wouldn’t tell me much else. I can… a conspiracy theorist would say that the reason he’d become an alcoholic was because he’d been driven to drink by the horrible things he’d seen. But I don’t buy that.”
“You don’t?” Vince looked at her, his gaze gentle, caring.
“No. I can’t believe that.” Brandy had gained her composure. She clutched her small purse in her hands, facing Vince as they stood by the large plate-glass windows. “If mental illness is hereditary… and I believe it is… I have to think that Frank had developed this theory himself. His Aunt won’t tell me what drove his father to drink, and I think she was a bit embarrassed to talk about it. I can see why now.”
“Why’s that?” Vince asked.
“Isn’t obvious? Like father, like son.”
Vince patted her shoulder again, lending some semblance of support to the still-grieving woman. “Again, I’m sorry.”
Brandy sighed. “It’s just… trying to wrap my head around this… why Frank would do this… has driven me crazy.”
“I can’t even imagine what you’ve had to go through,” Frank said.
“Did you know that the police in Pennsylvania got in touch with me?”
“No, I didn’t. What for?” Vince was aware of the criminal investigation over the gun battle in the parking lot of the Family Cupboard Restaurant in Lititz, Pennsylvania. A similarity in Frank’s appearance and the description of one of the gunmen wanted in the Pennsylvania shooting was made. The three men who’d ambushed them were connected to an apocalyptic Christian cult based out of Missouri—a group that had since been destroyed by The Children of the Night shortly after Vince’s re-baptism into the Dark Father’s fold, although he wasn’t going to tell Brandy that.
“They said he looked like a murder suspect,” she said. “The composite drawing looked kinda like him, but… Frank had cut his hair a day or two before his murder. Were you with him when he did that?”
“I was,” Vince admitted it. “I actually cut it for him. He asked me to.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You cut it? In your home?”
“Yes.”
Once again, Brandy Black had that look about her; sharp, penetrating, as if trying to see past the lies Vince was feeding her. Vince didn’t drop his gaze.
Brandy reached into her purse and extracted a tissue. She wiped her eyes with it and then wadded it up, stuffing it in her purse. “I’m sorry Mr. Walters. It’s just… I’ve tried so hard to get to the bottom of Frank’s death that I simply didn’t want to believe what the police told me… that they found traces of drugs in his system. It’s just hard to believe that he would have…”
“Backslid like that?”
Brandy nodded. “Yes.”
Vince stepped forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. He began to lead her away from his desk toward the door to his office. He was gentle, and if he was forceful Brandy didn’t notice. She went willingly. “I’m sorry I’ve avoided you but, as I said, I didn’t want you to think less of Frank. Whatever problems he had… they were too strong for him.”
Brandy nodded, her face screwing up again, and Vince could tell she was struggling not to cry. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him for comfort. “He was a brave man,” he said, his voice soothing. “He was trying to beat whatever demons he had in his past but they were too strong for him. They overwhelmed him. I’m sorry.”
Brandy nodded and sighed. She looked up at him with red, watery eyes. “Thank you.”
Vince offered her a smile and grasped the doorknob to the double oak doors that led out to the lobby of his office. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and composing herself. She grasped her purse. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Vince opened the door for her. “How are you and the kids by the way? You’re still on the east coast, right?”
Brandy stepped through the double doors and put her sunglasses on. She paused in the lobby, facing him. “Yes. We’re in Maine, at the house Frank set us up in before all this happened. We’re doing fine. My mother and I sold our agency, and I’ve got some money from Frank’s literary estate. We’re doing okay.”
“Good. If you need anything be sure to give me a call. Even if it’s just to talk.”
“Thank you,” Brandy said. “I will.”
“Take care of yourself, Brandy,” Vince said, touching her hand in a farewell gesture.
He watched her exit the lobby, not even paying attention to Barbara as the younger woman walked past to the elevator. Vince stepped back into his office and closed the doors behind him, pausing briefly as he rested his back against them.