Because he had dreams, as well. A nagging nightmare in particular that he couldn’t seem to shake. He, too, would like to change that final day. But even more, David wished he could undo one particular scene with his oldest daughter. The one that had put unalterable events into motion.
In his dream, he relived those moments over and over, trying to edit the conversation that had changed everything between them. Sometimes Kelsey ran into his arms and called him Daddy like she had when she was a little girl. She’d lose that snarky teen tone and the too-knowing attitude. He’d gotten very good over the years at revisionist history.
Some of the time, he almost believed his own fabrication.
Special Agent Mark Foster
November 9
6:45 p.m.
“I appreciate you coming in.” Mark showed Dane Starkey into the room. The man to whom Brian DeVries claimed to have lost a bet was slightly built, with slicked-back, thinning dark hair, a sharp nose, and receding chin. The truculence stamped on his expression gave him an unfortunate resemblance to a belligerent ferret.
“It’s not like I had much choice.” He grabbed a chair from the conference table, the legs scraping as he pulled it out enough to sink into.
“On the contrary,” Mark said smoothly. “We discussed several options.”
“And all of them sucked.” The man’s head swiveled as he examined the space. Mark had chosen a conference area rather than an interview room in the BCI’s main office in London. “But this was better than you coming to my workplace. Or my house. Still not sure why we couldn’t have done this on the phone.”
“Because then I couldn’t show you these.” Mark flipped open the folder in front of him and took out copies of Brian DeVries’s financial transactions with the man. He pushed them across the table. “Brian DeVries paid you a lot of money over the last three years. I want to know why.”
Not even a flicker of surprise. So DeVries had warned him. Mark had cautioned him against it but wasn’t surprised to find the man hadn’t listened. He hadn’t yet shown a propensity for following directions. Which just made Mark more determined to discover what they were concealing.
“I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”
“It’s been a long day.” He slipped out of his suit coat and folded it over the back of his chair, watching the man’s gaze go from the gun in his shoulder harness to the shield clipped to his belt. Leisurely he took his seat. Loosened his tie. “Can’t say I’m at my most patient after putting in twelve hours. So I’m only going to ask you one more time to explain those cash payments DeVries made to you.”
Starkey moistened his lips. Picked up the sheets and studied them more carefully. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. It was a bet. A stupid game we bet on. We’d both had a few, and one thing led to another . . . the stakes got pretty high. I felt bad about Brian losing, so I let him pay it off over three years.”
“What game?”
“Ah . . .” Perspiration dotted the man’s upper lip. “I don’t really recall.”
“You won a fifteen-thousand-dollar bet, and you don’t remember what game?” Skepticism dripped from Mark’s words. “Try again.”
“Well, let me think. I guess it was the Bengals and the Vikings. Three seasons ago.”
“And his memory clears.” Mark smiled humorlessly. “When and where did you two first meet?”
“At a farewell party. A friend of a friend.”
“Here’s how this is going to go, Dane. The more you lie to me, the more I’m going to think you have something to hide.” He raised a hand to silence the man’s objection. “The more I think you’re concealing something, the more I’m going to wonder what it is. That will get my imagination going. And I’m going to start imagining, hey, maybe this guy is lying because he had something to do with the kidnapping of Brian DeVries’s daughter.”
“That’s bullshit!” Starkey shot out of his chair.
“Is it?” Mark reached for the water pitcher sitting on the table between them and poured himself a glass. Drank. “I don’t think so. You guys being such good buddies and all, you probably know all about his family. Maybe met them.”
The man was sweating in earnest now. “No. I haven’t. I mean, I barely even know Brian.”
“Well enough to meet up for drinks, though, right? Alone? Because I’m not hearing you mention others who witnessed this fifteen-thousand-dollar bet. Sit down.” Mark waited for him to comply before saying, “Where were you the evening of October 30?”
“Man, I don’t know, but I wasn’t anywhere near Saxon Falls.”
“Dane.” Mark leaned forward. “I’ve already got investigators on you. They’re sniffing around your job, your family, your friends . . . everyone’s going to know that BCI is asking questions about you. Pretty soon, they’ll begin asking why. They’ll start looking at you differently. Because if we’re interested in you, there’s probably reason, right? And we’re going to find out exactly what you’re lying about, and then, because you forced me to waste manpower on your lying ass, I’m going to nail you to the wall for doing whatever it is that you don’t want to tell me you did.”
Starkey slumped back in his chair. “Fucking DeVries. And he comes out of this smelling like a rose, right? Walks away clean, just like always.”
“When did he walk away? What did he walk away from?”
The man looked away, stubbornly silent.
“That’s a whole lot of pent-up hostility you have against the man. Makes me consider whether it’s enough to drive you to kidnap his daughter.”
“I’m not the one that likes little girls, okay? You ask DeVries about that, why don’t you?”
Adrenaline spiked. If Starkey had evidence to back up his claim, it could be a critical turning point. There was a reason investigators always first looked at the parents in cases like this. But DeVries had passed a background check prior to getting a job in law enforcement. If Starkey was telling the truth, how the hell had that happened? “I’ll do that. But right now, I’m asking you. Why did DeVries pay you fifteen thousand dollars?”
“He owed a hell of a lot more.” The man punctuated his words with a fist to the table. “He should have gone to juvie, the perverted little prick. My cousin was twelve. Twelve fucking years old when he molested her.”
Everything inside him quieted. Twelve years old. Two years younger than Whitney DeVries. “And how old was he?”
A sulky shrug. “I don’t know. Fifteen? Got it all swept under the rug. Went to counseling, but he sure didn’t get sent away. Then I hear he’s a cop now? There ought to be a damn law about that.”
Paraphilia often started in the teen years. Mark thought quickly. If DeVries had a juvie record that had been sealed, possibly even expunged after a number of years, it wouldn’t have shown up on a background check. Smaller police forces didn’t use polygraph tests, so DeVries wouldn’t have had to worry about trying to pass one en route to landing a job with the sheriff’s office.
“So you decided to blackmail him.”