What Echoes Render Read online

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” was all he offered.

  Jesse sighed, hung up the phone, and glanced at the clock. It would take him about forty-five minutes to reach Riverside from Albany. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he would look the same as he had two days earlier. She kind of liked his work look; it was sturdy and rugged and spoke of a man who worked hard physically. Mark had always worn suits. And while he’d worn them well, they sometimes seemed more like part of an image he’d wanted to portray than a part of the man himself.

  With a shake of her head and an intentional reprimand to bring her mind back to task, she pulled up her latest draft of the newsletter. With any luck, she would be able to finalize it before David showed up.

  Forty minutes later, Jesse sat back and stretched her arms over her head. She’d just hit the send button and was newsletter-free for another month. As if on cue, her phone rang. She smiled when she saw David’s name on the caller ID.

  Their conversation lasted less than a minute, then Jesse slipped her phone into her pocket, locked her computer, and made her way to the lobby to meet him.

  ***

  David was standing in the lobby perusing staff pictures when he heard the click of Jesse’s heels. He turned to watch her walk toward him. It was hard not to appreciate the view. Today she wore a green dress that made her eyes look brighter and fit her petite curves perfectly. The slit up the side was probably tasteful, but coupled with her high heels, well, it made his mind wonder things it shouldn’t.

  She was talking on the phone as she approached him, and holding up a finger to ask for a moment, she gave him an apologetic look as she finished her conversation. He nodded and shifted his gaze back to the inanimate pictures on the wall.

  “No, that’s great, Julie. Thanks, I’m really looking forward to picking it up. What time are you open on Saturday? Ten? Great. I’ll be in early so I can get it out in Saturday’s mail. No, no worries, it wasn’t your fault it was delayed. Right, thanks again, and I’ll see you Saturday.”

  She hung up and gave him a chagrined look. “Sorry. I ordered a quilt for my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary from the local shop in Windsor. Julie, the owner, has lots of friends in Amish country who make things for her. It’s going to be gorgeous, I know, but it came in a little later than expected so I’ll need to be sure to pick it up and mail it on Saturday. Their anniversary is next week,” she explained. He almost smiled at the subtle look of confusion that crossed her face when she finished speaking—as if she didn’t understand why she’d told him everything she had.

  “Will it make it to your folks on time?” he asked, taking a step back as a woman pushed a food cart past them, followed by another woman carrying a little girl. He’d been in his fair share of hospitals over the years but he still found it surprising how similar most of them were. The staff and volunteers all wore the same type of uniforms and the visitors tended to have one of two expressions on their faces—happiness or fear. Sometimes it was subtle, but in his experience, it was always one of those two.

  When the hallway door closed behind the passersby, he turned his attention back to Jesse. The quilt had nothing to do with why he was there at Riverside, but he didn’t bother to stop himself from making small talk. He also didn’t bother to wonder why he was taking the time to make small talk in the first place.

  She nodded. “Yes. They live in Washington State, so as long as there aren’t any problems and I can actually get it out in Saturday’s post, it should be fine. Of course, I can always send it overnight, and I will if it comes to that, but I’d rather not spend an arm and a leg if I don’t have to,” she added.

  “Amen to that,” he muttered in agreement. He knew he should ask to see Aaron right away, but standing there, looking at Jesse, he realized that despite looking as good as she did, she looked more tired than she had a few days ago. He frowned.

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  The personal nature of his question caught them both a little off guard, but she recovered quickly and smiled at him.

  “Fine,” she answered. “Except for having my tires slashed at my sons’ track meet Monday night, everything is fine. I would say it’s just one of those weeks, but every week seems to be one of those weeks, if you know what I mean?” she added with a smile.

  He did, and he liked to see her smile. But he didn’t like what he’d just heard. “You had your tires slashed?”

  She nodded and lifted a shoulder in a what-can-you-do gesture. “Some kids, I imagine. It happened at the school,” she added.

  David frowned. That kind of vandalism wasn’t something he expected to hear about in Windsor. Cow tipping, maybe. Kids trespassing to party, definitely. But destruction of property with a knife? He was about to ask her if she’d reported it, then he cut himself off. She didn’t seem too concerned about the situation and he knew she was a friend of the sheriff’s, so if she had been concerned, she no doubt would have gone to Ian.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Then turning the conversation back to work, he asked why she had wanted to see him before he headed up to the ICU.

  Her smile faltered and she gestured for him to follow her. She started speaking as they walked toward the elevators, her voice low enough for only him to hear.

  “I know you have your job to do and I don’t begrudge you doing it. If Aaron was responsible for that fire, he needs to be held responsible. But he hasn’t had it easy these past few years,” she started. When they stepped into an empty elevator, her voice went back up to its normal level and she continued. “I asked Matt about him,” she said. “And no, before you ask, I didn’t say anything about the investigation. We just talked in general terms.”

  Jesse had been working in a hospital for a long time, and she struck David as a woman who knew a thing or two about the importance of privacy. He hadn’t been about to accuse her of breaching any laws regarding an ongoing investigation. But he was curious about what Matt had said.

  “What did your son say?”

  “Well, you probably know all this already, but Aaron’s mother died a few years ago. They were really close. She was a sweet woman. His dad wasn’t bad, just never really around, probably more mentally absent than physically absent, though he was a truck driver for a year or so when Aaron was little. Anyway, his mom supported them, and his dad could never really get it together. Never held a job for any length of time, never really seemed to do much of anything to help out,” Jesse answered.

  “But,” he prompted as they stepped out of the elevator and into the ICU.

  “But after his mom died, his dad seemed to kind of lose it a little bit. We’d see him in town, picking fights, that sort of thing. Matt told me that a time or two he saw Aaron come to school with bruises on him.”

  David could tell from the way her voice went hard that had she known of this before, she would have been sure to have done something about it. Unfortunately, he knew from experience that sometimes there just wasn’t anything anyone could do. That didn’t mean he or anyone else had an excuse for not trying, but it did mean that it was impossible to save everyone.

  “His dad was beating him?” he asked, just to clarify. If this was true, it was new information in the investigation. And it could go both ways as to whether or not it would help Aaron. It certainly gave the boy motive to hurt his father, but if his father was going off the deep end, maybe Aaron just got caught in the middle.

  Jesse glanced at him and shrugged. “I couldn’t say for certain,” she answered as they made their way down the hall. “Matt did ask Aaron if he needed any help with anything and Aaron said no, but that is what Matt thinks. Matt’s feeling really guilty about it now. About not doing something more to help his classmate,” she said, almost on a sigh.

  “It’s hard to help people who don’t want to be helped,” he offered as they came to a stop outside Aaron’s room.

  She turned to face him as she responded, “And it’s hard for a seventeen-year-old boy t
o understand that, let alone accept it.”

  Having been one himself once, albeit twenty years ago, David understood what she was saying.

  “So, you wanted to tell me what?” he asked, his eyes locked on hers.

  “I didn’t really have anything specific to tell you. Like I said, you have to do your job. And while I know a lot about what I do, I know nothing about what it takes to do what you do.”

  “But?” he pressed.

  She turned to face the massive window that looked into Aaron’s room. “But I’d ask that, if you can, maybe take it easy on him a little bit,” she answered quietly.

  He watched her profile as she gazed into the room He didn’t doubt she was every bit the professional he recognized her to be, but standing there, looking at Aaron, he knew she was looking at the boy as a mother, as a protector.

  “You don’t want me to use my thumb screws?”

  Startled by his comment, she turned her big hazel eyes on him. And then smiled at his expression.

  “Am I being too protective?”

  He shook his head. “Everybody needs someone to look out for them. Maybe he’s involved, maybe he isn’t. But judging by the way you and your colleagues are tiptoeing around him and my investigation, I expect he’s the kind of kid who’s going to tell me the truth. And telling me the truth will make everything a lot easier.”

  She studied him for a long moment, before nodding. “Thank you.”

  “No need to thank me. I’m just doing my job.” And he was, just maybe a little more pleasantly than he usually did. “Do you want me to stop by when I’ve finished?”

  Again, she looked surprised, and pleased, by his offer. “Yes, thank you, again. I’d appreciate that. And in the meantime, I’ll let you get to it.”

  He watched her walk away, admiring the sight, before turning back to Aaron Greene. Over the last two days, he’d developed his own theories on what had happened. Now it was time to see if he was anywhere near the mark.

  “Aaron?”

  The boy’s head turned a fraction as David entered the room. He approached the bedside so Aaron could see him more clearly without having to move.

  “You’re the investigator.” Aaron’s voice was scratchy and muffled by the bandages around his neck and lower jaw, but otherwise coherent. “Mrs. Baker told me you’d be by,” he added.

  “She called me after you woke up. I was hoping we could talk.” David looked into Aaron’s eyes and saw moisture gathering.

  “Yeah, I think we should talk.”

  ***

  David slid the door closed behind him. On the other side, Aaron was taking a much-needed rest. The boy had told him everything he needed to know—David didn’t think it was everything Aaron needed to, or should, say about the past few years since his mother had died, but it was what David needed to close the investigation.

  He headed down the hall and rather than taking the elevator he opted to jog down the stairs to Jesse’s office. She’d be glad to hear what he had to say and he was feeling good about being able to deliver news that would make her happy. Well, maybe happy was too strong a word given the circumstances, but information that would give her some peace.

  But then again, closing the investigation meant he’d no longer have a reason to visit Riverside. He’d no longer have a reason to run into Jesse.

  He didn’t live all that far from Windsor, just a few towns up I-90 toward Albany, but it was a world away from the close-knit hamlets that made up the Windsor townships. Aside from Windsor proper, there was Windsor Center, North Windsor, East Windsor, and Old Windsor—not that he’d looked into it. The area looked the same as where he lived, but somehow, maybe because of the close proximity of so many small towns, it actually felt like a community, rather than a haphazard collection of houses and a post office like in his township.

  As he hit the landing of her floor, he mulled over the idea of asking her out. He was pretty sure she was single, given that the sheriff had hinted about his wife, Vivi, scheming to set David and Jesse up. But that could mean a lot of things in this day and age—maybe she was newly separated from a husband, or maybe there was never a husband at all. He didn’t really know her story, and not knowing her situation, or her expectations, made him somewhat hesitant to pursue her. Because the truth was, after the way he’d spent the last twenty years of his life, he wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to start dating anyway. And something about putting the two unknowns together just didn’t seem like a great idea. Not intellectually, anyway.

  Pushing aside all thoughts and questions of dating, and focusing on the task at hand, David walked into the administrative offices just as a man in scrubs walked out. Kayla, on the phone, waved him toward Jesse’s open door. Knocking on the doorframe he poked his head in and found her standing by the window talking on her cell. She glanced over and motioned him in with a wayward smile.

  “Just a quarter cup, James. No. Yes, it goes in the spot to the left. No, not hot water unless you want your shirts to fit me. Yes, that’s right. Good. Okay, I’ll be home in an hour or so. Yes, love you, too.”

  She ended the conversation, gave the phone an exasperated look, then shook her head with a smile.

  “Sorry,” she said, turning toward him. “First quilts, now this. I do actually work on occasion.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine. Except for my younger son’s socks and white shirts. He washed them with his new red sweatshirt. Everything is pink and of course he doesn’t have anything clean to wear tomorrow so he has to fix it tonight,” she explained with good-natured patience.

  “At least he does his own laundry,” David offered.

  Her eyes went up to the ceiling. “There is that, I suppose. Please, take a seat.” She gestured to the empty chair in front of her desk but didn’t move to sit herself.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d rather stand,” he responded. “I was just getting out of an insurance fraud deposition when you called earlier. I’ve been sitting all day.”

  She smiled and perched at the end of her desk. “I was wondering about the suit,” she said with a nod to his formal attire.

  He caught and held her gaze for a moment. She’d been thinking about him. Again the thought of asking her out crossed his mind. Then one of the pictures on her shelf caught his eye. Two smiling young boys and a man standing on a mountain trail surrounded by maple trees in their full autumn glory. Leaves of vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows framed the three figures and littered the trail floor. Judging by what he remembered of the photo he’d noticed during his first visit, one of the boys was obviously Matt, Jesse’s oldest son. And given how much the younger boy looked like the older one, he assumed it was her younger son. He couldn’t say for certain who the man was, but based on the body language in the picture, with an arm slung around each boy’s shoulders, David would wager it was their father. And wondering why Jesse would have a picture of the boys’ father up in her office when she was single served to remind him of just how many unknowns there were between the two of them.

  “You’ll be happy to know I’ll be closing the investigation and filing my official report tonight or tomorrow morning,” he said, bringing his eyes back to the woman in front of him.

  A single brow went up. “Am I allowed to ask how your conversation went?”

  “You are, but it’s just between us for now. Until I file the papers, that is,” he added. When she nodded, he continued. “Aaron didn’t talk too much about what his dad was like before the last few weeks, but I got the sense that what your son noticed was spot on. And in the last few weeks it had just gotten worse and more erratic.

  “Aaron said he would come home to find his dad online looking up explosives. But as soon as he realized Aaron was in the room, he’d close everything down and go out drinking. Eventually, he’d come home drunk and raving about how the restaurant where his wife worked was responsible for her death. In his mind, they worked her to death. Made her heart go out. At least that’
s what Aaron got out of his father’s ramblings and accusations.”

  “Too blinded by guilt to acknowledge his role in how much she worked? That she might not have worked so much or might have taken care of herself more if he’d bothered to help pay the bills?” Jesse posited.

  David lifted a shoulder. “Yes, that was Aaron’s take. Anyway, last Wednesday morning he woke up and came into the kitchen to find his dad actually assembling what Aaron assumed was a bomb, given what he’d seen his dad looking at online.”

  “And they fought?” The inevitability in her voice echoed his.

  He nodded. “A big fight, according to Aaron. A fight that explains his broken arm,” he added, then paused to reflect on the horror the young boy had been living with and in. David let out a deep breath and continued.

  “Finally, in desperation, Aaron grabbed a two-by-four his dad had brought into the house as part of the station he’d set up to assemble the bomb. Aaron nailed his dad in the head and dragged his unconscious body away from the explosives. Or whatever it was his dad was building.”

  “And he went back for the bomb? Why would he do that?” Jesse asked. Her hand had unconsciously come up to her throat, an empathetic reflection of the vulnerability Aaron must have felt.

  David paced to the other side of her office, feeling her eyes on him the whole time. “He said he wasn’t sure what it was or, more likely, didn’t want to believe what he suspected. He said his dad wasn’t too literate or savvy, and even if it was a bomb, Aaron thought he might be able to dismantle it himself.”

  “And protect his father,” she said on a sigh. “If no one knew, no one would be able to do anything.”

  He nodded. “I don’t think Aaron grew up being abused. I think the abuse started when Aaron was old enough to see the pain his father was going through.” His eyes had landed on some award that Jesse had won, but he wasn’t really looking at it. It was just somewhere to fix his gaze.

  “And old enough to make excuses for him,” she added.

  David nodded even as his attention was drawn to a picture of Jesse and her two sons, smiling, on a beach somewhere. It was a far cry from what they were talking about now. “He was making excuses for his dad, for sure,” he responded. “But not the same kind that someone who’d been through systematic abuse would make. I think he honestly thought that if he could just help his dad through this rough patch, he’d go back to being the dad he was before.”