CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
The rain picked up, drumming a steady beat on the vehicle. Bree drove to Ally Swanson’s address, parked, and braced herself.
Exhaling long and hard, Matt reached for the door handle. “I hate this.”
“Me too.” Bree stepped out into the rain. The house was a neat rancher. The shutters could use fresh paint, but purple and white pansies had been planted in the front flower beds.
“Seems early for flowers. Won’t they die in the cold?” Matt asked.
“Pansies are very resilient.” After a deep breath, Bree knocked. Heavy footsteps approached.
The tall man who opened the door staggered when he saw Bree. She introduced herself and Matt. “You’re Ally Swanson’s father?”
He nodded. “I’m Tony Swanson.”
Like middle-of-the-night phone calls, a uniformed officer on your doorstep never brought good news.
“Can we come inside, Mr. Swanson?” Bree asked gently.
He nodded and stepped backward. Bree and Matt entered a worn but tidy living room. They steered Mr. Swanson to a couch. His knees gave out and he sat down hard.
Bree sat in a chair across from him. “Mr. Swanson, we’re here about Ally.”
His eyes went lifeless. “She’s dead.”
Bree nodded. “Yes. We’re very sorry for your loss. Mr. Flynn and I are investigating Ally’s case.”
Mr. Swanson’s head snapped up. Something dawned in his eyes. “She was one of the girls found in the woods? I saw it on the news.”
There was no way to soften the blow. Bree said, “Yes.”
“Someone killed her.” The disbelief in his voice broke Bree’s heart. Her throat closed with grief for a few seconds.
“We’re going to find out what happened,” Matt said.
But Mr. Swanson didn’t seem to be listening. “Three girls. He killed three girls. He killed my Ally.” His voice broke. “Who would do such a thing? She never hurt anyone except herself.”
Matt got up and disappeared through a doorway. Bree heard a cabinet door bang and a faucet run. Matt returned with a glass of water that he pressed into the man’s hands. Mr. Swanson drank like a robot. Then he dangled the glass between his knees and slumped forward over it.
Bree recovered. “Is Mrs. Swanson home?”
Mr. Swanson’s eyes closed for a breath. When he opened them, they were full of tears. “My wife died two years ago. Cancer.” His gaze shifted to a photo on the end table. A high school–age Mr. Swanson wore a football uniform. A tiny teenage girl stood next to him. She was dressed in a red-and-white cheerleading uniform. Their arms were slung around each other’s shoulders, their eyes bright with promise.
“We weren’t the whole cliché. I was no quarterback. Barely made second-string running back. But Angela, she was a star. The flier—the girl that got tossed way up in the air. Every time I watched her twist and flip, I’d have to hold my breath until her team caught her. People don’t know how dangerous cheerleading is—especially back then.” He paused for a trembling breath. His gaze shifted to another photo. The happy little family hugged and smiled behind a birthday cake sporting ten candles. “Ally looked so much like her mother.”
“When was the last time you saw your daughter?” Bree asked.
“A little more than two weeks ago. We had a fight. This is all my fault. I was a shitty father.” His next breath sounded painful. “After my wife died, I lost hope. I lost me. She’d fought cancer for years. The end was brutal. Cancer is a thief. It robs you of your life long before it kills you. It’s a soul-sucking disease that drains the happiness from your entire family and leaves them nothing more than empty shells. After Angela died, I started drinking. I went through her prescriptions one by one. Anything to dull the pain of losing her, of living without her. She was my light, and my future looked like a grave-deep hole.” He paused, shame shining through his pain. “I was so selfish in my grief. I couldn’t even help my daughter with her own. I was here, but she was still alone. What kind of father checks out when their child needs them?”
Bree and Matt shared a sad look.
Mr. Swanson continued. “Six months ago, I mixed the wrong pills with too much booze. Almost died. Kind of wanted to. But my brother, Heath, he wasn’t having any of it. He took me straight from the hospital and put me into rehab. Once I detoxed, I realized what I’d done to Ally. I’d failed her when she’d needed me the most.” He stared down at the water glass. “But I’d been buried so deep in my own depression, I couldn’t see anything else.” He set the glass on the coffee table. “I’ve been sober since I got out of rehab. But the damage was done. I was home all of ten minutes to learn that Ally was using drugs and alcohol too. Maybe she was more like me than her mother. That’s what we fought about a couple of weeks ago. I joined a grief support group, in addition to AA. I tried to take her to meetings with me. I told her she needed to get clean, to heal from her grief.” He flushed. “She told me to go fuck myself. Actually, she yelled it. Then she packed her bags and walked out the door.” He shuddered. “I wasn’t surprised that she chose addiction over me. Until I was sober, I did the same thing.”
“You don’t know where she went?” Matt asked.
Mr. Swanson shook his head. “I tried to call her. She blocked me. I prayed she’d come back. But she’s an adult. I can’t make her.” He also couldn’t stop using present tense.
He’d have no grounds to report her missing either. She’d left willingly. An adult was free to come and go as they pleased.
Bree took out her notepad and pen. “Did Ally have friends?”
“She had some in high school. Lately?” He shrugged. “The only friend I know she kept in contact with is Jana Rynski. I don’t know her number, but she lives in an apartment on Greenwood Avenue. I assumed that’s where Ally went when she moved out.”
“Did Ally have a boyfriend?” Bree asked.
“She liked girls, not boys,” Mr. Swanson said. “But she and Jana had been best friends since grade school. I don’t think there was anything romantic between them.”
“How about a girlfriend then?” Matt asked.
Mr. Swanson shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Did Ally have a job?” Bree asked.
Mr. Swanson’s voice sounded robotic. “She wasn’t very reliable. She worked on and off as a maid at the Shady Acres Motel. They’re desperate for help and tolerated her spotty attendance.”
Shady Acres was known for the nefarious activities of its clientele.
“What do you do?” Matt asked.
“Nothing. I had to quit my job to care for my wife.”
“May we see Ally’s room?” Bree stood.
He didn’t lift his head. “Top of the steps. First door on the right. But she took most of her stuff with her.”
Matt and Bree left the man to grieve alone. Viewing a dead child’s room always felt like an intrusion into parents’ grief. But it couldn’t be helped.
They stopped in the doorway. The room was both empty and messy. Dirty glasses and plates crowded the dresser, along with white cup rings, crumbs, and mysterious sticky patches. A bottle of black nail polish spilled across the beige carpet. Makeup covered the nightstand.
“Are all teenagers this sloppy?” Matt asked.
“Luke isn’t, but I don’t think he’s typical.” Bree suspected Kayla would be messier.
Technically, Ally was an adult, but her bedroom held on to her childhood. Teen vampire books and Stephen King novels shared space with Charlotte’s Web. A row of Breyer horses topped the shelving unit. Posters of K-pop girl bands covered the wall. A string of lights had been mounted to the headboard. Polaroid photos hung from the wire by clips. A girl with dirty-blonde hair was in most of the pictures with Ally. Jana?
“Would you video the room?” she asked.
“Yes.” Matt used his cell phone to take several videos. Then he donned gloves, and they began opening drawers.
“Looks like she took most of her clothes,” he said.
Bree pulled gloves and an evidence bag from her pocket. She took her own pictures of the light string and Polaroids before unclipping the photos and sliding them into the bag. She went to the small closet, which stood open and empty, except for hangers and a few discarded shirts on the floor. A doll stared at Bree with blank eyes from the top shelf.
Matt dropped to his knees, opened the flashlight app on his phone, and looked under the bed.
“Anything?” Bree asked.
“Just dust.” He sneezed, then stood and wiped at his face.
Bree moved to the opposite side of the bed. Together, they lifted the mattress. But it didn’t seem as if Ally had left much behind. Matt removed the drawers to check behind and under them. Bree pulled down a few books to look for hiding places. Ironically, it was the Bible that had been hollowed out. “Whatever she hid in here is gone.” She sniffed. “But it smells like weed.” She methodically looked inside every remaining book but found nothing.
Matt sat down at the small white desk. “Two empty prescription bottles.” He tilted his head. “Both opioids prescribed to her mother.”
“She was definitely hitting up Mom’s leftovers.” Bree turned in a circle.
A footstep caught her attention. She spun around. Mr. Swanson stood in the hall.
His gaze swept around the room. “I haven’t even opened her door since she left. I couldn’t face my failure. I abandoned her without ever leaving the house.”
“Is this Jana?” Bree showed Mr. Swanson a picture.
“Yes,” he confirmed, then asked in a whisper, “How did Ally die?”
Bree debated how much to tell him and decided he needed to know anything she was willing to tell the media that evening. “She was strangled.”
He made a keening sound, then pressed a knuckle to his lips.
She had no words to soothe him. “Can we call someone for you? A friend or family?”
He blinked hard, as if holding back tears. “I alienated most of those. I was a selfish bastard.”
“Your brother?” Matt asked.
Mr. Swanson sighed. “He’s done enough for me, and he’s had enough of me.”
He didn’t ask for more details about Ally’s death, and Bree didn’t offer any. More details would come out over time—it couldn’t be helped—but there was only so much a person could take at once.
Bree hated to ask the last question, but she had to. “Did you know Ally was pregnant?”
Mr. Swanson’s head snapped up. “That can’t be. Like I said, Ally liked girls, not boys. She never showed any interest in boys.”
Bree shot a glance at Matt, who lifted one eyebrow.
“She was pregnant?” Mr. Swanson leaned on the doorframe, confusion blurring his grief.
Bree nodded. “About three months.”
He bowed his head into one hand. “I didn’t know.”
There were no words of comfort.
“Where is Ally now?” Mr. Swanson’s voice was a hoarse rasp.
“She’s with the medical examiner,” Bree said, her voice as rough as sandpaper in her throat. “She took care of my sister. I know she’s taking care of Ally just as well.”
Mr. Swanson looked up. The bleakness in his eyes was achingly familiar. “How do I get her ... back?”
“Call the medical examiner’s office.” Bree took her notepad from her pocket, wrote down the number, and handed it to him.
“Do you have a sponsor?” Matt asked. He’d dealt with a close friend who struggled with addiction.
Mr. Swanson nodded.
“Call him now,” Matt said, his voice firm.
Mr. Swanson stepped away, pulling his phone from his pocket. A minute later, the sound of his sobbing cracked Bree’s heart wide open. But she put the echo of her own grief aside and turned back to the job. She couldn’t save Ally. Maybe she could save someone else.
They finished their search, left the bedroom, and found Mr. Swanson in the living room, sitting in the same place as when they’d delivered the terrible news. He stared straight ahead, his face swollen, his shoulders stooped. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years since they arrived. Bree followed his gaze to the wall, where school photos displayed Ally’s progression from kindergarten to high school. From pigtails and freckles to braces and acne. In the third-from-the-last picture, Bree thought it would have been sophomore or junior year, Ally had turned from awkward adolescent to pretty teenager. But the shine disappeared in the next one. Had her mother’s health declined that year? In the final photo, Ally looked brittle and bitter. Her mother had died.
Mr. Swanson swiped a hand under his nose. “I got sober too late. I failed her. It’s my fault. Her death is on my hands.”
Bree touched his arm. “No, sir. Her killer is responsible for her death, and we will do everything possible to find him and get justice for Ally.”
“What good is justice? It won’t bring Ally back.” Mr. Swanson’s voice was disturbingly devoid of emotion.
Someone knocked on the door. Matt rose to open it for a man of about sixty. The sponsor, Bree assumed.
Mr. Swanson grabbed Bree’s forearm. “Stop him before he takes someone else’s baby.”
“I promise you I will do everything in my power to find him.” Bree’s years in homicide had taught her not to make promises to victims’ families. Some cases were never solved. Others took decades. But she made a vow in her own heart.
She would find this killer.
But would he murder again before she could?
He’d already killed three women on her watch.