Chapter 22 #3
“Great,” Devon muttered. “I feel two things are going on here. One, the murders that were here. And, two, this insanity that I’m being pulled into.”
“And you’re right,” Stefan confirmed. “That’s why we also have to make sure that we can deal with both.”
“I’m heading back to the home tomorrow,” Camden shared. “I want to talk to Mark Brewster again.”
“No,” Stefan argued, his voice urgent. “You need to go tonight.” Then he hesitated and added, “Take Devon with you.” With that, he hung up.
*
Back at the retirement home, no one stopped them as they made their way to where Camden had last left Mark.
He was sitting in the same place, but, as soon as he saw them, particularly Devon, Mark started to cry.
Camden stepped forward beside the sobbing man and said, “Mark, you know getting rid of that pain, that secret, will make you feel so much better.”
Mark just stared at him, tears streaming down his face. Finally he muttered, “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You have to,” Devon declared. “This cannot be left as it is, and, once you pass on, who’ll tell us the truth?”
Mark closed his eyes. Camden watched as Devon put a tissue in Mark’s hand, and he lifted it, dabbing his eyes, his breath coming out in short, choppy sounds.
He whispered, “It’s so hard.”
“Of course it’s hard,” Devon agreed.
Camden added, “I don’t know what you saw or what happened—or what you did or didn’t do, but somebody needs to speak up so we can get this settled and solved once and for all.
Many people have gone on with their lives, and yet some people haven’t been able to.
” He studied the distraught older man. “You are holding one of the pieces that’s needed to solve this, and we need to hear what that is. It’s time.”
Finally Mark took several deep shaky breaths and faced Camden. “They’ll hate me.”
“No, they won’t hate you,” Devon argued, “and anybody who is still here will understand. An awful lot of people out there just want answers. They need to know that whatever has happened here, there is a chance for justice and, if not justice, at least answers.”
But it seemed that Mark couldn’t quite get started.
Devon looked over at Camden, and he just shrugged back at her. Finally she reached out a hand, squeezed his fingers, and said, “Just start. That’ll be the easiest. Once you start, we can get all of this out.”
Mark shook his head. “You don’t understand. Everyone will hate me.”
“Why will they hate you?” she asked. He wouldn’t talk but kept sniffling into the Kleenex, putting it up against his nose. “Did you kill them?”
He looked at her in horror and shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t.”
“Then nothing can be as bad as that,” she noted. “So, if you didn’t kill them, do you know who did?”
His eyes started filling with tears.
“So, you think you know who killed him, and you didn’t say anything all these years, right?”
His shoulders sagged in defeat, and he slowly nodded.
She nodded. “You think you know, or you withheld something? Which is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know that he did it, but he might have,” he whispered. “It’s tormented me all these years, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t ever go back. I couldn’t say anything about it.”
“Did you get knocked out while you were there, or did you faint?”
He closed his eyes and whispered, “Maybe I fainted. It’s all such a bloody nightmare that I haven’t really been able to figure out exactly what happened.
I just know that I didn’t do what I was supposed to do,” he admitted, “and it has tormented me ever since. I couldn’t go back into the force because what if I did it again?
What if something else happened, and I failed again? It’s just awful.”
“Yes, it is awful,” she commented, not sure how to get him to open up.
Watching her hesitate, Camden interjected, “But if you didn’t kill these people, then everything else is secondary. So, let’s start with this. Did you see somebody in the house when you arrived?”
He frowned. “I don’t know if he was there when I arrived.
That’s the thing. I was in so much shock.
I was staring around, and then he said, Oh, hey, Mark.
Then I stopped and gasped. I was like, Oh my God.
He told me, I came over to check in on them, but look.
Then he shook his head and added, I’m so glad you’re here, man.
I’ll just disappear. I don’t want to be involved in any of this. And he took off.
Camden and Devon both kept silent, hoping he would keep talking.
Then Mark admitted, “And I just never told anybody.”
Camden sat back and frowned. “Why wouldn’t you tell somebody? If this person was there, where was he?”
“He was at the kitchen, at the back door,” Mark replied.
“The thing is, blood was everywhere. I mean, everywhere.” He took a deep breath.
“And the biggest problem over the years was that I didn’t tell anybody that he was there or what he told me, but I also didn’t tell anyone what took me a long time to figure out.
And I didn’t register it at the time. That’s the thing.
I didn’t. I really didn’t. I didn’t see it at that moment for what it really was.
Then afterward I didn’t know how to bring it up. ”
Camden exchanged confused glances with Devon.
“Okay,” Camden began. “Let’s take this one step at a time.
You saw somebody at the back door. You assumed because of what he said that he had just come in the back door, checking up.
He saw something that made him freak out and he left, saying, Hey, you’re here, thank God, I’m leaving. ”
“Yes, exactly,” Mark confirmed.
“So, what is it that made you realize afterward that maybe everything wasn’t as it should have been?”
He looked at Camden, swallowed, and said, “There was just so much blood everywhere. I didn’t clue into the fact that he was also covered in blood.”
Camden nodded. “And there was no need for him to be covered in blood if he had just walked in, right?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “That’s when either I passed out or he hit me. I don’t even know if that’s possible. Or maybe a second person hit me. I just don’t know. I didn’t hear anything. The world went black, and I went down,” he told them. “That is all I can say.”
Camden looked over at Devon, and such compassion filled her expression. All Camden felt was a burning anger that an entire family had been decimated, and the cop sent to check on these people didn’t report seeing anybody in there.
It would have completely changed the investigation if Mark had done that.
Camden knew that. There was absolutely no way this case would have stalled out if they’d had an eyewitness to a person at the scene, somebody who they could have tested.
Even if they didn’t have DNA, it was a given that something would have moved and shifted in this case because they had somebody to start with.
Camden sat back, silently regarding Mark.
The old man looked at him with his rheumy eyes and pointed at him. “See? You’re already looking at me differently.”
Camden sighed. “You and I both know that the case would have gone in a very different direction if you had spoken up back then, no matter how belatedly,” he stated. “As a cop myself, it’s hard for me to understand why you wouldn’t have mentioned something.”
“Honestly,” Mark began, “I was just so shocked by the scene. Her head. … It was right there, and I had accidentally touched it with my boot. I just started screaming. I was absolutely beside myself, and then he poked his head out of the kitchen and looked at me. I stopped because I was just in so much shock. That’s when he spoke to me, and I realized that what I was doing was not what any good cop would do,” he admitted, shaking his head.
“So, I just completely accepted what he told me because it was easier. You got to understand, it was a whole lot easier.”
“And why was it a whole lot easier?” Devon asked. When Mark hesitated, then she nodded and suggested, “It was easier because you knew him, wasn’t it?”
Mark closed his eyes, his bottom lip trembling. “Yes. … I knew him, and I just … My mind would not accept what I was seeing, and I just blacked out, passed out, whatever. I ended up down in the middle of all of it, with the head right beside me,” he whispered, now sobbing.
“She’d always made cookies for us when we were over. She was just the most fun, crazy, whimsical, almost gypsy kind of person, and it just made no sense.” He started sobbing again. “I just couldn’t, I couldn’t handle it.”
She could understand but damn …
“The doctors have given me all kinds of diagnoses over the years, and PTSD is one that always comes up as far as why I’ve never adjusted,” he shared, sobbing.
“But somewhere along the line … I mean, how do you go back to that, and who would believe me? I mean, the case had been closed for however many years.”
“It’s a serial murder case, so it’s never been closed,” Camden corrected, trying hard to understand.
“Nobody could judge somebody who had walked in and seen people he knew, people with whom he had interacted often, and potentially people he cared about a great deal, in that bloody scene, butchered to that extent,” Camden shared. “But you did know who did it, right?”
“No,” he countered. “I don’t know that he did it. I just know that I saw him there and that he was covered in blood.”
Devon noted, “And that is a good distinction too. Just because he was there and covered in blood doesn’t mean that he murdered the family. He could have done just what you did, which was walk in and see them.”
“Exactly,” Mark exclaimed eagerly, turning to look at her.
She looked over at Camden, who just shook his head at her, and she sighed and added, “And I also get it from Camden’s point of view.
It probably would have spun this case on a dime, and there would have been a whole different outcome.
Now, you have to tell us who you saw at that door. Then we’ll go talk to them.”