“Maybe they changed it to give the kid a fresh start, something like that.”
She gave him the number and he placed the call. The line rang until a young male voice answered. He identified himself as twenty-year-old Alex Garris when prompted. Mike said who he was, then asked, “Are your parents home, Alex?”
“They went out to a dinner. My dad has this thing with work.”
“Okay. Could you have him give me a call?”
“Sure.”
“Got something to write with?” Mike relayed the number, thought a moment. “Can I ask you one question? Can you confirm something for me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is your brother Trevor Garris?”
“Yes… Yeah, he is.”
“Okay. Thank you. Do you know if he had a different name when your parents adopted him?”
The young man shouted to someone else. “Toby! Did Trevor have a different name when Mom and Dad adopted him?” There was a muffled reply, then Alex came back to Mike, “Could be. We kind of… that was when me and Toby were little. He had another name, though, yeah, maybe.”
“Thank you, Alex. Be sure to have your father or mother give me a call, okay?”
“Yes, sir. I will.”
Mike hung up, pressed a thumb to his lip.
Lena was expectant. “So?”
“I don’t know. I mean, look, like I said, it’s just thinking. I could eat crow. I hope I do. But if there’s nothing there, then we’re back to zero.”
Her brows drew together in a tight scowl. “We’re not at zero – we have this whole thing. We have the DEA here. We have one of these guys – maybe more than one of them, a lookout, an assailant – possibly killing Harriet because of this farm in Gloversville they wanted.”
“Yeah, okay, but where’s Pritchard? His bail reduction just got denied and he’s still looking at a year for the assault. Why isn’t Chapman bailing him out?”
“Because for all they know he’s still a suspect in a murder investigation and they want nothing more to do with him. Or when he couldn’t wrest the property from Harriet, either he had her killed, or they did it, and now they’ve turned their backs on him.”
“I think Pritchard was nobody to them before any of this happened – before Harriet was murdered. I think he tried to get involved in this thing, tried shoehorning his way back into the will to get the farm and have something to offer them, something closer to this ethanol plant, Truenol. But it didn’t happen. So he’s still nobody to them. He was arguing with Petrov the other night, running his mouth about his sister because he’s impotent… angry…”
“So then that’s why he killed her, or like you said, had her killed,” Lena said. “He blames her for preventing him from getting in with this group. He finds some piece of shit who’s disturbed enough to do it for cash. Maybe one of these biker guys. Mike this is—” She bit off the sentence, exasperated.
He touched her arm. “We got Dmitri Petrov ready to flip on the whole meth thing. The guy ran up a fucking tree. He’s scared of these guys, Caruthers and Bates and all of them. He wants protection and he’s going to talk.”
Her gaze drifted, then she shut her eyes. “Mike, I want to be with you on this. But we’ve been looking at adults with an axe to grind, maybe a drug operation with collateral damage.” She looked at him. “You’re talking about a ten-year-old kid who was abused, a victim of his parents’ drug dealings.”
“Exactly. Ten years old – it’s not like he was three or four and has no memory of them. Or even six, like Tommy Caruthers, who seems to have come through alright. He’s hardwired. Kristen wasn’t much older when Molly died.”
“But he’s been marred by what they did,” Lena said, getting louder. “Brain damage? For that you blame your parents. Right? Or, again, you’re pissed at the cops who busted them, or the judge who put your mother in rehab.”
Mike said, “You know, the other night, when we had our thing, you asked me about my father, and I started thinking about when I’d go down, live with him in the summer. There was this kid from the neighborhood, Neil Johnson, I’d play basketball with him. Real angry kid, rotten home life, mother was never around – her drugs of choice were coke, crack. Anyway, she’d leave Neil and his brothers and sisters alone for days in their stiflingly hot little third-floor walk-up in Brooklyn. She’d come home every once in a while and pass out, and the kids – Neil – he’d stroke her hair, rub her feet, get her some water, and eventually they were taken from her. Neil went downhill pretty fast. He was violent, he did a stint in juvie and by eighteen was at Rikers.”
“Okay…”
“Here’s the thing, though – you could never say anything bad about his mother. Ever. He’d kill you for it – or he’d try to. He loved her no matter what. So, he took it out on the system. And now here’s this other kid, John Durie. He gets taken from his mother at ten years old by Child Protective Services, and she goes off and O.D.s in a bathtub. You know… I think it’s just human nature. You love your parents, even when they’re the worst thing.”
She pulled away from him and started back to her desk. Mike watched her. “You pissed at me or something?”
“No, Mike. Getting you a tissue – you’re bleeding.”
Mike touched his neck, saw blood on his fingertips. From chasing Petrov through the woods, no doubt. She handed him the tissue and he dabbed at the blood.
“You’ve got leaves in your hair,” she said. “Look at your pants, your hands are all cut, your nails look like you clawed your way out of a grave.”
They’d drawn together again in the middle of her office. A train of motorcycles rumbled past outside.
“It’s this,” Mike said. “It’s Durie, it’s Trevor Garris… or I don’t know what.”
* * *
Bobbi sat staring at the wall, sitting at a table with Rachel and two guys she didn’t know. The guys were part of a group; some of them played darts and laughed over the loud music, too drunk to hit the board. Rachel was telling the two of them about hikers finding the body of Corina Lavoie, then Lennox disappearing the next day.
Bobbi didn’t want to listen to anymore, so she got up and headed for the bathroom.
Just before she stepped in, someone walked into the bar, and she waited, hoping maybe it was Connor, but it wasn’t.
She closed herself in a bathroom stall, sat down on the toilet, pulled out her phone, and opened her text messages. Nothing from Connor. She’d blown it. Or was she playing some stupid game with him? He comes on with charm and confidence and she panics. Tells him she needs to think about it, needs some space, and he gets upset and backs off. Then she can’t stop thinking about him. Pathetic. Not who she’d planned to be. She’d planned to be straight-up. No games. And right now she wanted him; right or wrong, she wanted him, and so she started dabbing with her thumbs.
She finished peeing, cleaned up at the sink, and her phone vibrated on the porcelain.
Connor:
Yeah we’re still at JJ’s. U going to be out long?
She dried her hands, quickly typed back:
Not sure. Can’t drink since I’m on call. Who are you with?
Too long, kind of invasive. She erased it, tried again:
Not sure. You?
She sent it and waited. Someone else came in and Bobbi offered a quick smile, began to feel awkward just standing there as the woman closed the door to a stall.
Her phone jiggled. Connor wrote:
Maybe just one more. Not often i get a break.
She thought of a response, typed it out, heart fluttering:
Well, maybe I can help with that.