Chapter 54 #2
“Aw, shit,” Saul sighed. He walked over to the nearest one and touched it.
Over his shoulder, he said, “I swear it’s safe.
The electrician told me it wasn’t a fire hazard.
Everything’s tied off. I can call someone else though, if you want, get them out here on an emergency call or something.
Son of a bitch. I really can’t have this place burning down. ”
Gretchen said, “Mr. Vought, we’re not here to discuss the legality or the safety of the renovation you’re doing. I’m more interested in why you think the Holt children thought you were dead for the past twenty years.”
Reluctantly, he turned from the sconce, his concern over the integrity of the wiring morphing into anger. “You’re here to ask me about something that went down all the way back then? I told you, whatever that boy said about me, he’s lying.”
“Griffin hasn’t accused you of anything,” Josie told him. He hadn’t had a chance to since they’d left him on the floor of the visitation room.
After learning about Saul and his past, Josie had called Reina Torres to confirm some of the things Griffin had revealed.
She had been a lot more forthcoming, especially knowing her cooperation would help her brother avoid murder charges.
“His sister, on the other hand, said that one night you forced her mother to put on a wedding dress because you were going to make her elope. Elope or you’d kill the children, I believe she said. ”
Saul shook his head vigorously, working the rag over the now-shiny surface of the knob. “I said no such thing. Those kids were always trouble. I don’t know why you’re asking me about ancient history, but you can’t believe nothing them kids tell you.”
“Reina said that the elopement never happened. Instead, Liora returned alone, covered in blood.”
The crimson bride.
“She told them you had died in a car accident.” Gretchen rocked back and forth over a creaky floorboard. “Then they all lived happily ever after. Well, until recently.”
Saul’s prison intake information noted a handful of tattoos but also several scars on his scalp, forehead, and around his eyes. From where Josie stood, she could see them but just barely. “Liora did a number on you,” she said. “Didn’t she? What’d she use? Baseball bat? Tree branch?”
“Tire iron?” Gretchen put in.
“Don’t know what you’re going on about,” Saul said as the sconces nearest Josie flickered again. Cursing under his breath, he set the doorknob and rag onto the floor and strode to the nearest open junction box, quickly checking the tape wrapped around each wire nut.
“Liora beat you up pretty bad,” Josie continued. “Thought she’d left you for dead. But you were just licking your wounds, weren’t you?”
Satisfied the wires were safe, he picked up his knob and rag once more, the movements of his hands hard and rhythmic. “Liora was always crazy as hell. Those kids thought I was so bad, but I was only trying to keep her in check. I could have gone to the police, you know.”
“You never once considered going to the police,” Gretchen said.
Saul faced her and tapped the side of his head where a thin scar peeked from beneath his thinning hair, long and faded. “She tried to kill me. I could have put her in jail as soon as my buddy found me and took me to the hospital.”
“If you had gone to the police, then you wouldn’t have been able to get the revenge you were plotting,” Josie pointed out. “Or the business, which is what you were after in the first place.”
Even as she said the words, she knew they weren’t entirely true.
Not given what he’d done to Reina. Saul had wanted the business, but only so he could live a cushier life.
He could have taken the place of Liora’s husband and basked in the profits the garden center brought in each year without having to do much at all.
It was already a well-managed operation by that time.
What he really wanted was access to Liora’s teenage daughter.
She had a sudden flash of Haven Barnes’s injuries.
The bruises, the broken finger, its bone slashing through skin.
He’d killed her mother first to have more time with her.
Haven’s body showed no signs of sexual assault but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried.
The girl had fought hard enough to stop him but at the cost of her own life.
A deep chasm of sadness yawned open in the pit of Josie’s stomach.
In it somewhere swirled a profound admiration for the girl.
Dead or not, the fight mattered. Josie needed to believe that.
Questions about Cassidy invaded her mind next.
Had he taken her and Dani instead of killing them in Griffin’s home so he could have time with her?
Had he hurt her before he killed her? The thoughts made her skin feel too tight for her body.
She had to slap them away, vanquish all memories of Cassidy Turner standing before her in the great room a few months ago or she wouldn’t be able to do her job.
Gretchen said, “Come on, Saul. We know you were planning to go back to Liora once you recovered.”
“You got me,” he said. “You figured out my big secret. Once I was back on my feet, I was going back for the kids. I couldn’t leave them alone with their crazy mother. That wouldn’t be right, but, as you know, I got into some trouble before I could do that.”
“Did you come back to this area to help the kids when you got out of prison?” Josie asked.
Saul walked over to where the bag of gypsum plaster mix sat next to a collection of trowels. “Don’t know what you mean.”
“Reina took over the garden center. She’d made it more successful than ever.” Josie tapped her finger against her chin. “Funny thing, though. Around the time that you moved back here, they started having all kinds of problems. Vandalism. Theft. Fires.”
“Don’t know nothing about that,” Saul muttered.
“Then there’s Griffin. He’s a successful pharmaceutical rep. He’d met a woman. They’d fallen in love. He bought a house.”
Saul barked out a laugh as he knelt and put the doorknob onto the floor next to an empty five-gallon bucket.
“That boy ain’t normal enough to fall in love.
He’s a sniveling little weirdo. No one needs to sabotage him.
He does it his own self. Buying a big fancy house next to the mayor ain’t gonna change that. ”
Across the room, Josie met Gretchen’s eye, acknowledging the bomb Saul had just detonated.
“You know where Griffin lives?” Josie asked. “You said you hadn’t had any contact with him in twenty years.”
“I-I haven’t,” Saul stammered. “I don’t.”
“Have you ever been there?”
He searched through the trowels along the floor. “No, no. I told you, I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”
Josie’s hand hovered near her holster. Those trowels had sharp edges. No way in hell was she letting this pedophile get the drop on her.
“But you’ve been living in the same city as him for at least a year since you got out,” Gretchen pointed out. “You never sought him out? Maybe followed him around? Kept tabs on him? Maybe took note of the women he was seeing.”
“Like I care which married bitch that little shit was sniffing around,” Saul sneered, picking up a mixing paddle and thumbing away some dried plaster.
Neither of them pointed out that he’d just admitted to knowing enough about Griffin’s love life to reveal that he had dated married women.
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said conversationally. “Seems like messing with his love life would have been sweet revenge for what happened with Liora. She’d already passed away when you were released. Nearly twenty years of waiting to pay her back. Why not just take it out on the kids instead?”
“Yeah,” Josie agreed. “Griffin really had it coming, didn’t he?
He’s the one who ratted you out to Liora.
Told her what you were doing with Reina.
Made her so mad she beat the hell out of you.
Drove you away. Then you got in some ‘trouble.’ Spent all that time locked up while he got to live a good life.
Why should he get the mom and the teenage daughter? ”
The last two words caused a muscle in his jaw to jump. Abandoning the mixing paddle, he stood and grabbed the handle of the bucket. “I don’t give a damn what that little pissant got up to the last twenty years.”
With that, he turned and walked out the front door.
After exchanging a wary glance, Josie and Gretchen followed him.
Picking through all the detritus outside, he made his way along the side of the house where a new outdoor hose had been installed.
Squatting down, he used it to fill the bucket with water.
Josie wiped sweat from her upper lip and put her hands on her hips. “One of the women Griffin was seeing had a daughter. Her name was Cassidy Turner. Her and her mom’s faces have been all over the news, social media.”
“Don’t watch no news or go on no social media,” he grunted.
Gretchen stepped closer to him, peering down into the bucket as the water level rose. “Cassidy told a friend that a man had been following her around back in June. You know anything about that?”
Saul reached into the bucket and gathered some water into his palm, using it to dampen the back of his neck. “Why would I know anything about a girl?”
Josie pulled a copy of Cassidy’s sketch from her pocket and held it out for him to see.
The muscle in his jaw twitched again. Slowly, he hauled himself to his feet, never taking his eyes from the drawing.
His poker face was good, Josie would give him that.
Saul Vought was good at manipulating people, lying, covering his tracks and biding his time, despite the fact that after he murdered the woman in the bar two decades ago, he’d been caught immediately.
That had been an impulsive act. Since his release, he hadn’t gotten caught once wreaking havoc on the garden center, and he’d managed to stay off the radar of police after murdering the Barnes women and taking Dani and Cassidy.
Griffin had been poised to take the fall for him, and he remained a veritable ghost.
Josie was certain he’d meticulously catalogued everything he could find out about Griffin’s life before he started stalking Griffin’s former lovers and their daughters.
It was diabolical. It was probably just as Griffin had described to them when he thought Charles was behind everything.
Saul had been following him. Had seen him take Dani and Cassidy and then waited for the right time to strike, waiting until Griffin finally went to work before breaking in and taking the ideal family that Griffin was trying so hard to ‘protect.’
“Cassidy Turner saw you,” Gretchen said.
“Well,” he breathed, eyes still riveted to the sketch. “I’ll be damned.”
“Mr. Vought,” Josie said. “I think it’s time we went to the stationhouse to talk about this.”
He wiped his palms on the front of his shirt, head shaking slowly back and forth. “That little bitch.”
The words were so low, Josie could barely make them out.
She sensed Gretchen’s body stiffen and knew that her friend had heard them loud and clear.
Before either of them could speak, a popping sound came from inside the house, like glass breaking but softer.
When the scent of something burning reached Josie’s nose, she realized it was probably one of the old wall sconces in the house short-circuiting.
“Dammit!” Saul growled, stomping back toward the front door. “That electrician said it was fine.”
Josie wondered if he hadn’t realized his slip-up just now. That little bitch.
She had her answer when they trailed into the front yard after him and he took off, sprinting into the forest surrounding the house.