Chapter 24
Sylvia Reed lived in a working-class neighborhood less than a mile from the airport.
Tucked between several freeways, the small ranch house hid behind a high green hedge with glossy leaves that shone darkly in the soft rain.
A cluster of inexpensive vinyl patio furniture had been pulled into the mouth of the narrow driveway, blocking passage through the hedge.
A soggy handwritten No Trespassing sign was taped to a chair back.
Behind the house, a two-story garage loomed.
There were no curbs or sidewalks, just a muddy verge and abrupt knee-deep drainage ditches flanking the cracked asphalt.
At the next intersection, Peter made a U-turn and pulled in behind the Pathfinder, opening his door as a huge Delta jet screamed overhead, almost close enough to touch.
The engine noise made Peter’s teeth hurt.
June kept walking. “Part of the job, Marine. You worry too much.” She wasn’t wearing a vest, either.
“I’m serious. We don’t know anything about this woman. Maybe she’s as crazy as her brother.” They were almost at the tangled pile of patio furniture. He went to grab June’s elbow.
She twisted away and slipped through a narrow gap between an upended picnic table and the hedge. Then she turned to face him from the far side, still backing toward the house. “Sylvia Reed works at a middle school. Which makes her practically a saint. Are you coming or not?”
“You’re not bulletproof, June.”
She flared at him. “You aren’t, either, and that didn’t stop you yesterday.”
“Yesterday I didn’t have a choice. Today I do. Can we pick our battles?”
Her face was stony. “KT was my friend.” She turned away and headed toward the tiny front porch. In the picture window, the long white vertical blinds began to sway.
Peter shoved the picnic table aside and charged through the enlarged opening. “June, let’s talk about this.” He heard nothing behind him but knew Lewis would be right on his heels.
The storm door opened. A gray-haired woman stood in the opening with a worn-looking 20-gauge snugged against her shoulder, barrel rising. Her face was tight, her voice loud and angry. “I told you people to leave me alone. Now get the hell off my property or so help me, I’ll fire both barrels.”
Peter believed her. He slowed, feeling his boots slip in the long, wet grass. “Don’t shoot. We’re going.” He put his hands out, palms forward, trying not to seem threatening, but kept advancing. “Come on, Juniper. Let’s go.”
But June didn’t stop. She climbed the steps to the edge of the porch and pushed back her hood. The rain fell on her face and her cropped red hair. The shotgun muzzle was almost at her chest.
Peter was a few strides back, reaching for her arm, when she said, “I’m sorry to bother you. I was hoping we could chat for a minute. My name is June Cassidy.”
The woman put her finger on the double triggers. “I have nothing to say to you. Leave now or I will shoot.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” June said. “I lost someone yesterday, too. Katelyn Thorsen was my good friend. I’m trying to understand why your brother tried to kill her and her thirteen-year-old daughter.”
Something passed across the woman’s face, an emotion vast and ungovernable. The shotgun wavered for a moment, then steadied and turned toward Peter, centering on his chest. “And who are you?”
He froze. This could still go any number of ways, depending on her state of mind. Her finger was tight on the triggers. He had no idea what loads she had in that thing, but at point-blank range, even birdshot could kill him.
In for a penny, he thought. “Ma’am, I’m the one who saved their lives.”
Her eyes closed and her face began a slow collapse. The shotgun didn’t move. Peter stepped sideways from the line of fire, then reached out and captured the barrel. She let him tug the gun from her hands. He watched the air go out of her.
She said, “I guess you better come inside.”
June glanced back at Peter. He broke open the 20-gauge and pulled out a shell. Number 4 buckshot. They’d have put a hole in him the size of his fist.
Lewis held out a hand for the shotgun. “You go with them. I’ll keep an eye out.”
—
Peter followed June and Sylvia Reed through the small cluttered living room to the kitchen. A windowed breakfast nook had a view of the garage and the overgrown back yard. The noise of jet engines rose again, and dishes clattered on open shelves as another big plane roared close overhead.
Peter and June sat at a small white table and Sylvia fussed over an antique coffee maker, its logo long since worn away by years of washing.
While it hissed and roared, she rattled through chipped yellow cupboards, taking out mugs and spoons and paper napkins, then opened the fridge and stood there looking at its contents as if she couldn’t quite remember what she was doing there.
Peter knew the feeling after his own losses at war. You did familiar chores without thinking, your mind wandering in a vain attempt to seek understanding that it would never find.
Sylvia Reed was stocky and plain in a Costco fleece and jeans with a silver cross on a chain around her neck. Despite the gray hair, she was younger than she looked, thirty-five at most. Her brother was only twenty-eight. Her eyes were the fractured red of someone who’d been up all night crying.
Finally she poured the coffee and sat, staring at the garage apartment out back, hands restless on her lap. “You want to know why my brother did what he did,” she said. “The detectives were here twice already, asking all sorts of questions. I wish I had answers, but I don’t.”
“Your brother,” June said. “Tell us about him.” She leaned slightly toward the other woman, her voice calm and quiet.
Sylvia Reed sighed. “If you met Geoff on the street, you’d think he was okay. But he wasn’t. Not for a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” June said. “That must have been hard. In what way was he not okay?”
“As a kid, he was really smart. Like off the charts. Taught himself to program when he was twelve. He never even went to college. He got a software job right out of high school. The hours were long, but he loved that job. And he made twice as much as I did.
“He was a sweet kid, but he was always volatile. He had these fits of anger where he’d break things, shout at people.
Afterward he’d feel terrible, blame himself.
He never really told me what happened, but one day there was an incident at work.
He got fired. He couldn’t find another job.
It was really hard on him. And he was really hard on himself. ”
The roar built as another plane flew overhead. The whole house seemed to shake. She stopped talking until it subsided, then picked up as if nothing had happened.
“After that, things got worse. He had his own apartment in those days. I would go visit, and the place would be filthy. He’d stopped cleaning.
I’d tidy up, do the dishes, run the laundry.
I had to beg him to take a shower and brush his teeth, and most of the time he wouldn’t.
He stopped talking to me. He spent all his time on his computer. ”
“What about your parents,” June asked. “Did they help?”
Sylvia shook her head. “It’s just the two of us.
Anyway, Geoff ran out of money and stopped paying rent on his place.
When the deputies came to evict him, he physically attacked one of them.
He actually bit the poor man. That’s why he ended up in the hospital.
They said he’d had a psychotic break. The diagnosis was schizophrenia. ”
Peter thought about Lewis and Dinah’s two boys, Charlie and Miles. Both were bright and curious and full of life. He couldn’t imagine the heartbreak of seeing someone you loved go through that change.
Sylvia pointed out the window at the garage apartment.
“After his release, he moved in over there. The medication seemed to help. He was calmer, less reactive, although he didn’t like the pills.
He said it was living in a fog bank. But I watched him swallow them twice a day, just to make sure he actually took them.
He always did. A couple of years ago, he said he could handle it himself, so I stopped monitoring him.
He’d already gotten that job at the Speed Mart.
And he’d actually made a friend, one of his regular customers.
They went camping together a few times.”
She sighed. “Now I wonder if Geoff had already decided to do something like this. He stopped letting me visit him in the room over the garage. He came here for dinner a few nights a week, that’s how I kept an eye on him.
But I should have seen the signs.” She put her hand over her mouth.
“Dear God, what if he’d succeeded? What if he’d killed you? ”
She closed her eyes, collecting herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just a lot. He’s—was—my brother. I loved him.” She cleared her throat. “Now then, Ms. Cassidy, what else did you want to talk about?”
Peter had some questions, but June beat him to it. “Geoff’s camping buddy, the customer from work. Do you know his name?”
“The detectives asked that, too, the second time they came, after your friend died. Geoff called him Ollie.”
“Did you ever meet Ollie?” June glanced at Peter, knowing he was wondering if the friend was Enderby.
Sylvia shook her head. “He only came through town every month or so. Geoff said he was a traveling salesman. I don’t know what he sold or who he worked for.”
Peter said, “You said Geoff spent all his time on the computer. What kinds of things did he do?”
“I don’t really know. Geoff called it research. He had a lot of interests. The police took his laptop, you know. When they went through the apartment.”
Peter asked, “Did your brother ever say anything about the Dark Time, or the end of the world, some kind of apocalypse?”
Sylvia’s hand went to the cross around her neck.
“The Bible talks about the End Times, in Matthew and Revelation. Geoff used to like the story of the Rapture. But he left the church a long time ago, after our dad walked out on us. It was hard on Geoff, he was only fifteen. I thought the Gospel would help him, but he wouldn’t even step into our church, let alone sit and pray. ”
“Your brother said something to me before he died. That he’d gotten some kind of message. It told him to kill Katelyn Thorsen. Does that mean anything to you?”
“The police asked the same question. I have no idea what he was talking about.”
“What about somebody called the Messenger? Did he ever mention that?”
Her forehead wrinkled in thought. “I don’t believe so. Although the Bible is filled with references to messengers. John the Baptist, angels, Christ himself. Anyone bringing the Word of God. Did he use that word, ‘messenger’?”
“It was someone else.” Peter took the cassette tape from his shirt pocket. “Do you know if Geoff had any of these?”
“Oh, sure.” She nodded at the garage apartment. “He had a whole bunch over there. He used to trade concert bootlegs with his friend Ollie.”
June said, “Would you mind if we took a look?”