Chapter Nineteen
Saturday night, Dalton hunched over the computer, staring at the document he had found, one foot tapping idly as he read it again.
Digging around in the archives of the Santa Fe New Mexican, he had uncovered an article about a group of men charged with possession of child pornography.
Three men were arrested, but a fourth—Ned Solomon—fled and, according to the article, remained at large.
Dalton had almost skipped past the brief story, but had stopped cold when he saw the picture of the wanted man.
Ned Solomon could have been Ed Anders’s twin.
Ned—hadn’t he heard somewhere that that was sometimes short for Edward?
Anders was Mitch’s last name, but Dalton was sure Carter had told him Mitch’s parents were never married.
Maybe Anders was Mitch’s mother’s name. Edward Solomon might have started using Mitch’s last name as a way to distance himself from his past charges.
Dalton read more. Ned Solomon was the fourth man known to be part of a ring of men who traded in child pornography. The other three were Frank Bartholomew, Gerald Jimenez, and George Suarez. That must be the George Mira had been involved with.
Dalton took out his phone and called Carter. As the call rang out, he glanced at the clock. It was after eleven. Late, but this was important. He was pretty sure his brother was with Mira. Maybe she could tell him more about George, or even Ned.
The call went to voicemail. “Hey, call me, it’s important,” Dalton said, then ended the call.
He turned back to the computer and began a search for more information about Ned Solomon.
It took a little digging, but twenty minutes later he had information about the man’s arrest record.
Solomon was younger than Dalton had assumed Ed was—only fifty-two, whereas Ed looked a decade older.
But Mitch couldn’t be much over thirty, so he could definitely have a fifty-year-old dad. And a hard life could age a person.
Or was that a disguise? Was Ed pretending to be older and more disabled than he really was in order to distance himself from his former life?
Or as a way to hide what he was really up to? Fear gripped Dalton. Maybe he was overreacting, but he couldn’t shake the sense of danger.
He grabbed his phone and tried Carter’s number again. Still no answer. Maybe Carter had silenced the phone so he and Mira wouldn’t be interrupted. Dalton didn’t bother leaving a message this time. He thought a moment, then called 911. “What is your emergency?” a brisk female voice asked.
“I don’t have an emergency, exactly,” he said. “But I need to talk to the sheriff. I have information about a possible crime.”
“What is the crime?”
Dalton shifted in his chair. “It’s more that I have information about an ongoing investigation. But it’s important.”
“What is your information?” the operator asked.
“I really need to talk to the sheriff.”
He imagined the operator rolling her eyes over wasting her time with someone who was being so vague. But nothing in her voice gave that away. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Dalton Ames. Can you ask the sheriff to call me? It’s really important.”
“I’ll relay the information to the sheriff.”
“Thanks.”
He ended the call, without much hope that he would hear from the sheriff before tomorrow, if ever.
Maybe he was blowing all of this out of proportion.
The sheriff had to know about Ned/Ed’s past, right?
The paper said he had confessed to writing the letters to people around town, so maybe he had owned up to his arrest record, too.
Had the sheriff questioned him about the attempted child abductions? Mitch had been arrested for those crimes, but what if he wasn’t the one responsible, but his father?
He pulled out his phone again. Carter wasn’t answering.
He didn’t know how to reach the sheriff.
Who else could he call? He scrolled through his contacts, dismissing each one.
He stopped when he came to Jake Gwynn. Jake was a sheriff’s deputy and a fellow SAR volunteer.
And probably asleep at this time of night.
Dalton made the call anyway. The call went straight to voicemail. “Hey, Jake. I’ve been looking around online and I found out some stuff about Mitch Anders’s father, Ed, that has me pretty alarmed. Maybe it’s nothing, but it might be important. If you’re still awake, call me.”
He ended the call, then went back online to see what he could find out. It wasn’t as if he was going to be able to sleep.
Mira knew that voice, but from where? She stared at the black-clad figure, searching for anything familiar. The man—she was sure it was a man—was slight—maybe five foot seven or eight inches tall, with rounded shoulders.
“Get up,” he ordered, and motioned with the gun. “Both of you. Get out of bed.”
“Ed Anders? Is that you?” she demanded.
“Ed?” Carter echoed. “What are you doing here?”
In answer, he fired the gun. The bullet hit the wall a few inches past Carter’s head, the explosion deafening in the small bedroom.
Carter and Mira jumped out of bed. She grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her shoulders, clutching her cast protectively across her stomach.
Carter stood on the opposite side of the bed naked, his gaze fixed on the gun.
“Ed, what do you want?” Mira asked. She took a step away from the bed, putting more distance between her and Carter. If she could keep Ed focused on her, maybe Carter could get away.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said.
“Why?” Carter asked. “What did either one of us ever do to you?”
“You killed my friend.” Ed spoke to Mira, ignoring Carter. “The best friend I ever had.”
Mira gasped. Was he talking about David Ketchum? Did he really believe she had been responsible for the boy’s murder? “I never killed anyone,” she said.
“You signed George’s death warrant when you turned him in to the cops,” Ed said. “Prison destroyed him. He was never the same after that.”
“You knew George?” She thought she had known all of George’s friends. Not that he had very many.
“He was my best friend. I stayed in touch with him even after he was sent away. We had the same…interests.”
The word made her skin crawl. No wonder she hadn’t known Ed. George had done a very good job of concealing that whole side of himself from her. “I didn’t turn George over to the police,” she said. “I had no idea he was into child pornography until the police came to our apartment.”
“That’s not what he told me. He said you had ratted him out.”
“I didn’t. I promise.” She held the robe closed with one hand and tried not to stare at the gun trained on her. The shot had been so loud. Surely one of her neighbors had heard. Had they called the police? If she and Carter could keep Ed talking until help arrived, they could stay alive.
“Did you send Mira those letters?” Carter asked. “The ones about David Ketchum?”
“Yes, I sent them.” Ed turned his head to look at Carter, though he kept the gun focused on Mira. “I wanted to ruin her life the way she ruined George’s life.”
“Why try to connect Mira with David Ketchum’s death?” Carter said. “She was never even a suspect.”
“The police never knew who did it. I thought if I gave them a suspect they would do the rest of the work to prove she was guilty.”
“But why bother?”
He said nothing. The silence stretched and Mira strained her ears, listening for an approaching siren.
All she heard was Ed’s own ragged breathing.
She couldn’t keep herself from focusing on the gun now, and gooseflesh rose along her arms as she imagined the bullet tearing into her.
It wasn’t fair. She had just found Carter.
She was in love with him. Not the way she had loved George—because he was easy and falling in love with a man and getting married was what everyone expected her to do—what she expected to do.
Her feelings for Carter ran deeper. Being with him wasn’t about expectations.
It was all about possibility. With him, she didn’t see only one path, but many, all of them better because he would be at her side.
“I think you sent those letters because if the police focused on Mira, they would stop looking for the real killer,” Carter said. “You were in Santa Fe then. I think you killed David.”
The words shook her like a physical punch. She stared at Ed. A slight, unassuming man. But one who had admitted to accusing her of a terrible thing. Was Carter right? “Did you do it?” she asked. “Did you kill David?”
“No! Why would you say such a thing?” His voice sounded strained, like a guitar string pulled too tight.
“Those boys here in town? Were you the one who went after them?” Carter took a step toward the older man.
“How could I?” Ed gestured with the gun, but vaguely, no longer pointing it directly at her. “I can hardly walk.”
“You didn’t have any trouble breaking in here and crawling through the window,” Carter said. “You’re walking fine now. Standing up straight.”
He was right. This wasn’t the stooped man, hunched over a walker, who Mira was used to seeing. “You were pretending to be feeble,” she said. “So people wouldn’t suspect you.”
“Did they suspect you after David disappeared?” Carter asked.
He took another step toward Ed, the slightest, gliding movement that Ed didn’t appear to notice.
The older man’s gaze was locked on Carter’s face, mesmerized by his words.
“You took him, didn’t you? Just like you tried to take the boys here in Eagle Mountain.
You thought you got away with it once, why not try again. No one would suspect you.”
“That’s right. And they won’t suspect me now. Not when I get rid of you two.” He straightened and held the gun steadier.
“What happened to David?” Mira asked. She had to keep Ed talking. She had to give Carter a chance to get away and go for help. “He was a friendly boy. It probably wasn’t hard for you to get him to trust you.”
“I didn’t do it,” Ed said.
“One of the boys here in Eagle Mountain will probably be able to identify you,” Carter said. “When the police in Santa Fe hear about those crimes, they’ll want to take another look at you.”
“It was an accident!” Ed took a step back. “He wasn’t supposed to die. I was going to let him go but then he started screaming and I just wanted him to stop making so much noise…” He looked away, silent.
Mira’s stomach roiled. The image of David’s sweet, smiling face—the photo that had appeared on posters all over town—was burned into her mind.
The thought of how afraid he must have been threatened to buckle her knees.
But she couldn’t afford to think of that.
Not now, with his murderer standing right here, threatening to kill her and Carter.
She swallowed her disgust and tried to make herself sound sympathetic.
“You should tell the sheriff it was an accident,” she said. “They can find you some…some help.”
“They’ll never prove I had anything to do with any of that,” he said.
“The cops in Santa Fe never even questioned me about it. I got out of that place as soon as I could. Started using my full first name, which I never used before, and Mitch’s last name—his mother’s name.
Guess she was smart not to give him mine.
I bummed around for a while, got in a little trouble in St. Louis for messing with an underage girl, but I wasn’t inside for long.
I ran out of money and decided to look up Mitch. He took me in.”
“The sheriff’s department thinks your son was responsible,” Carter said. “Because you used his car.”
“I never wanted to involve Mitch. He’s a good kid. Doesn’t take after me at all.”
He was sounding more confident now. More like a man who would shoot them. Mira searched for some way to distract him again. “Why did you write all those letters to people?” she asked.
“Because it was fun. I got a kick out of hearing how wound up everyone got over those. And it proved my point that every single person fudges the law some way. They’re not that much different from me.”
Mira could have pointed out that there was a big difference between illegally parking or leaving trash cans out overnight and molesting children or killing them, but decided not to antagonize Ed further.
Carter had moved forward another step. Suddenly, Ed swung the gun in his direction. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Get back.”
But instead of moving back, Carter lunged forward, reaching for the older, smaller man. He grabbed Ed’s arm and the gun went off. Then Carter stumbled back and fell against the wall, blood blooming red across his chest.