Start with Chapter 1
CHAPTER 10
January 9, 1979
Grandma.” Jenny clasped her arms around Jessica Wallace.
Dean’s mom smiled and clasped back and then lifted her granddaughter off the porch a couple of inches and swung her back and forth. “Jenny, it’s so wonderful to see you again.” She winked at Dean standing on the sidewalk beside the porch, his hands in his pockets.
His mom seemed younger than her age by a decade, betrayed only by her quickly graying hair. Her dark brown eyes could be mistaken for black in the right light. Thin, tall, yet strong, Jessica was a Zion native. She worked part time at Willows Realty but spent most of her days reading, gardening, and “tending the home”—her phrase. When she had had three boys in the home, life had been different for her. Days of packing lunches, making dinners, seeing them off, volumes of laundry. To Dean’s eyes, she did not miss those days, but she had never really gotten over the death of Nolan, the youngest of the Wallace boys. He had died in an ambush outside a village Dean could not remember the name of anymore. A mortar shell exploded in a tree above him. The wound was invisible, so fine was the splinter that killed him. Dean had thrown his Purple Heart into Monroe Lake when he found out. His mom had sprouted a sadness that never seemed to leave her. Her every smile tinged with mortality.
“We’ve got some fun things to do today, my sweet,” said Jessica. “Now let’s get in from this cold.”
Dean leaned over and kissed his mom on the cheek. “Thanks. I’ll see you this evening.”
“No thanks needed.”
As his mom and daughter walked into the house, Dean retreated to the warmth of the car. At the station, Laura told him to go into the chief’s office. He was on the phone and wanted Dean in there. She grimaced, cluing him in on the chief’s mood.
Dean rapped twice on his dad’s door before cracking it open. Eric waved him in when he saw Dean and then gestured for him to close the door.
“Yes, I know,” said his dad.
The chief’s office was paneled with wood from floor to ceiling. The wood beginning to curl outward at the base. Carpet was long ago abandoned in the station because any heavy rain storm could send a torrent of water down the outside steps, so the floor was a light tan linoleum with darker dots and splotches to provide variety.
Eric paced back and forth behind his industrial desk, gray metal with a black highly varnished wood top. Photographs in small frames leaned on their easels. His three sons on a fishing trip in 1958. A snapshot of Eric and Jessica on Coney Island. A family vignette near Niagara Falls—the Canadian side. On the wall behind him, an official portrait of Eric with the mayor. Dean’s official Marine photograph with his Purple Heart citation. Nolan’s official Marine photograph. Only that one image from 1958, though, of Tony, the middle of the three.
Their father had always been an overwhelming presence in their lives. Chief of Police for many years of their youth, they lived not unlike many a preacher’s child. Obedience, doing the right thing, all of that was presumed. It hardened Eric too—always being the chief. Never off.
“Look,” Eric waved for Dean to sit in the chair across from the desk,” this is my city’s jurisdiction. I’ve got a former NYPD detective here. We’ll handle it ourselves. I’ve already told the sheriff it was on city land.” The chief, whose fist pressed down on the top of his desk, shook his head at the voice on the other end and then bit his upper lip. “Look here, colonel, this is my jurisdiction. I don’t want and don’t need your help. Capiche? Mmm. Yes, a good day to you too, sir.” Eric shrugged the phone’s handset from his ear, tossed it lightly with his shoulder, and caught the shoulder rest attached to it, setting the handset in the cradle in one smooth motion. “How the hell did the state police find out about Billy?”
Dean grunted. “The news? The bullet Doc Cotton sent to the lab in Albany?”
“They say it’s a homicide.”
“It is.”
“Why did I find out this morning?”
“Because I found out late last night and had Jenny.”
“You should’ve called.” Eric paced behind his desk, looking down at the floor.
“Okay.” Dean rubbed the leather padding on the right arm of the chair he was sitting in.
“And now the state police want to come in and take it over.”
Dean nodded. “I don’t think that’s a bad idea. They’ve got—”
“I don’t care if it’s the best damned idea since sliced bread. It’s not their case. It’s not their jurisdiction. It’s mine. And it’s your case.”
Dean held up his hands. “Fine. But they’ve got more—”
“Zip it. I’ve already pissed off the colonel, so I ain’t going back groveling for his help now.”
Dean crossed his arms.
“So tell me. What’s next?”
“We talk to the people we know Billy talked to before he disappeared. When Jeremy talked to them back a few days ago, he approached it like a missing person’s case, which is what it was. So we go back now. We talk to them like what it is: murder. That usually shakes up the scenery. We’ve also got what we think are steps going north. Killer could have crossed into Canada. So I want to call the provincial police up there. I know someone there. It probably won’t lead anywhere, but you never know.”
“Good. Do it.”
Dean stood up. “One thing, one of Billy’s friends I’m talking to is Alex Smith.”
“Henry’s boy?”
“Yep.”
“Just talking though.”
“Right now, yes.”
“You think he’s involved?”
“At this stage, anyone could be involved. But, no, I have no reason right now to think he is. But you know what he’s like. He’ll raise a stink to his dad, probably. Just wanted you to know.”
“I never liked that prick.”
Dean nodded and left, not sure if his dad was referring to Henry or Alex.
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