Chapter Twenty-One
Dustin kept busy, researching on his laptop, carefully funneling money into numbered accounts.
He had learned a thing or two from his father, after all.
He worked around what he thought of as his mother’s hovering. He visited his father every day, driving himself now in his new BMW sedan.
He’d trade that in on a muscular truck or monster SUV once he headed west. But the stylish sedan suited for now.
He made certain to express his gratitude—adding a few tears—when his father transferred the house in Washington State to his name. Something about probate, estate taxes, he didn’t care.
The Retreat belonged to him.
Information he didn’t share with his mother.
Since he had the car, he drove to Short North. He needed to keep an eye on Arden’s apartment. The minute he parked the car, he had to fight the urge to just go in, bring her out—drag her if need be—and head to their new home.
He knew better. He had work to do first. Completing the work on his new identity, and using that to buy a gun. He could use that on the lawyer—no forgiveness there just because of the early release. He’d make it look like a robbery, a mugging.
The judge? He needed to work that out. An accident seemed best.
The two cops? Trickier. He might wait on that. Come back in a year or two. His mother? He’d have to wait until his father died.
Then, that done? Arden.
But the urge kept calling to him.
He pulled his ski cap over his head, low enough to cover his hair, most of his forehead. He added sunglasses.
She might be working. He’d just take a quick look in the bookstore. A quick, careful look.
His parka added bulk, and the scarf hid a little more of his face.
He only wanted a look. Just a look. He’d lived too long without one.
Jittery with excitement, he walked in. He saw they’d painted the walls a pale green, changed the order of the stacks.
It irritated him.
He saw customers browsing the books, the sidelines, but he didn’t see Arden.
A woman came up to him, bouncy brown hair, ready smile.
“Good afternoon. I’m Cassie. Can I help you find something?”
“Just browsing. I haven’t been in for years—I moved to Connecticut. I’m back visiting family for the holidays. I remembered this bookstore, the variety, the terrific customer service.”
“Thank you, and welcome back.”
“You know, I particularly remember a tall woman, wonderful hair. Like rose gold. She was so helpful.”
“You must mean Arden. I’m afraid she’s not with us anymore. She moved out of state. Did you know she’s an author?”
He tried to process moving away. Out of state. Not there.
His smile came as more of a grimace. “No!”
“Arden Bowie. She writes thrillers. We have all her books.”
“I’ll have to get one.”
He bought all four, paid cash. Outside, he put them in the trunk. Seething, he got behind the wheel. He’d need to keep them hidden where his hovering bitch of a mother wouldn’t find them.
He’d smuggle them in to read, one at a time.
The selfish whore had written three books while he’d been locked away. She’d played around with her hobby while he’d lived in hell.
He’d fully intended to allow her to continue her hobby until their first child came along.
She could forget that now.
The bookstore bitch hadn’t known or wouldn’t say where she’d gone. And the bio on the book flap didn’t include that.
She’d changed her hair, let it grow long. Without his permission.
He’d cut it off if he wanted, but he liked it long. Long was better. But he might whack it off to teach her a lesson.
He’d find her, wherever she’d gone. There were ways to find anyone, especially when you were meant to.
He was meant to, he thought as he pulled away from the curb.
She belonged to him. He’d remind her.
When he got home, Theresa immediately rushed to him. “Dustin, thank God you’re all right. I’ve been so worried.”
“Why? Jesus, I’m a grown man.”
“Yes, but I been trying to reach you for over two hours! You didn’t answer your phone, calls, texts.”
“I guess I forgot to turn it back on. You know I turn it off when I’m with Dad, and before that I had therapy.”
“Yes, but Mitzi said you’d left well over two hours ago.”
His eyes went cold. His right hand fisted. “Why are you checking up on me?”
“I wasn’t. I wanted to ask if you’d stop and pick up some milk. We’re nearly out. Then you didn’t answer. It started to sleet, and I was worried.”
“I didn’t answer because my phone was off.” In his mind he saw his hands around her neck. Something inside him shouted:
Do it. Just do it. Do it now.
“We had that sleet. The roads are slick. I couldn’t help but worry when you’d left your father’s so long ago.”
“I needed some time. I went to the park, walked around for a while. He looked really bad today, and he slept most of the time. His breathing sounded…”
He turned away, dragged off his ski hat as if overcome.
“I expected each breath to be his last. You need to get off my back.”
“I’m sorry.”
You’re going to be, he thought. But when he started to turn to her, when he started to answer the shout inside him, her phone rang.
“Oh, it’s Mitzi. Let me tell her you’re all right. Mitzi, he’s—Oh, oh no. I’m so sorry. Do you want us to come? Is there anything we can do? Yes, of course. Of course. I know you did, so did he. We’re here for you, and for Willow, whatever you need. Whatever we can do. Goodbye.”
She lowered the phone, looked at Dustin with damp eyes. He knew before she said it—he wasn’t an idiot. But he kept his face blank.
“Dustin, darling, I’m sorry. Your father’s passed.”
She put her arms around him, held him close. “I know this is hard, so hard, but I hope you take comfort in knowing his pain is over, and you had this time with him.”
“I knew.” He actually choked up, so it made the sobs come. “I knew in my heart this would be the last time I saw him, the last time we spoke. He’s gone. My dad’s gone.”
And with that death, his mother could live. Temporarily.
Gideon had read the case file. He could and did maintain his objectivity when reading the words, the notes, the reports. But couldn’t, just couldn’t when he looked at the crime scene photos.
Blood, her blood on the apartment door, on the floor, the overturned table, the shattered lamp. He couldn’t look with an objective eye at the photos of Arden’s bruised and battered face. The haunted look in her blackened, swollen eyes.
And not when he viewed the feed from her nanny cam.
Once he had, he’d closed the door to his office until the leading edge of his rage had passed.
She said Dubecki would have killed her, and she was right. He knew prosecutors made deals that didn’t go down easy with law enforcement, but this deal?
Bullshit. Bullshit, and all kinds of wrong. The man who’d struck her down, who’d torn her shirt off when she’d been unconscious, who’d choked her, beaten her was a predator. A violent, dangerous, delusional predator.
But rage wouldn’t help her, so he took time to let it burn off.
He had some conversations with both Columbus detectives. And when done, he felt he knew Dustin Dubecki as well as possible.
An obsessive, narcissistic, violently misogynistic and delusional sociopath.
Like his Ohio counterparts, he didn’t believe Arden had been the first woman he’d targeted.
He gave himself an hour a day to dig deeper, and felt that time paid off when he spoke to the president of the college where Dubecki had flunked out in his second year.
“Yes, I remember Mr. Dubecki very well. His mother made a large donation. I spoke with her personally a few times. Simply? Mr. Dubecki didn’t appear to find it necessary to do the work, and in fact plagiarized an essay in the last semester of his sophomore year.
Despite the donation and his mother’s advocacy, we have a very strict policy on plagiarism. He was expelled.”
“Other than academically, did he cause any problems on campus? Were there any complaints from female instructors, students?”
“He was difficult, often missed classes, and yes, some of his instructors cited him for behavioral issues. Arguing, insulting. There was a female student who lodged a complaint. She felt he was harassing her, stalking her.”
“I’d like to speak with her.”
“Chief Riley, I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving you her information.”
Which meant, Gideon thought, he had it or could get it. “Could you contact her, give her my name and number?”
“I read about his assault on the woman in Columbus a few years ago. Does this have to do with that?”
“It may.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
For Gideon, his position as chief of police meant more than riding a desk and organizing officers. Like his predecessor, he wanted the people he served to know him. So he took patrols, handled calls, and as much as possible, kept an open door policy for his officers and the residents of Riverbend.
As it neared the end of his shift, he took a call with Kim on a residential break-in.
The homeowner, Livvy Forrester, finished her classes as an instructor at the fitness center, picked up her kids—ten and eight—from after-school care, and had come home to find a pane of glass broken out from the mudroom door.
She’d ordered her boys back to the car, called the police. Then, armed with a hammer from the tool kit in her trunk, walked in to find the Kindle she’d left on the kitchen counter gone, presents she’d wrapped and put under the tree with the wrapping torn—and some missing.
“I kept looking around,” she told Gideon. “They got my husband’s laptop, the Xbox, about two hundred in cash, my grandmother’s pearls. They’re not real, but they mean something to me. The toboggan.”
“Toboggan.”
“For the boys, for Christmas. We had it up in our closet. We’re going for a week right after Christmas to a ski resort, Mount Hood.”
For the first time Gideon saw her eyes well, her lips tremble as grief edged through anger.
“The kids are really looking forward to sledding and snowball fights, and … Oh shit.”
“Why don’t we sit down?”