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  That peace ended at the veranda railing as if by a wall. Thackeray was no longer behind bars, but Sully could sense them there all the same. He knew people, regulars at the Black Fox, who had been to prison. One parolee in particular he knew had done a fifteen-year stint for second-degree murder, and he was a living example that while most people eventually left prison, it never really left you.

  Then again, Thackeray Schuster had at least one other thing that had to be eating him up today.

  Sully eased himself onto the other chair, the one he guessed had been Betty’s, alert for any signs should Thackeray not want him sitting there. He said nothing, so Sully launched into his reason for coming, staring down at his hands as he cupped one inside the other and rubbed at his fingers.

  “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sully wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it was a little more than “thanks.” Questions for sure, whether a simple ask about whether he’d been there, what had happened, had she suffered. Maybe Thackeray didn’t want to know, or just didn’t know how to ask. But, while there were no right answers in grief, Sully had come to understand it was wrong for loved ones not to have questions.

  “I worked with Betty, and she’s always been awesome.”

  “You didn’t know her.”

  “I knew her pretty well. It’s been almost four years since I started working at the Fox.”

  “I meant you don’t know her like I do.”

  “What do you mean? What don’t I know?”

  Thackeray took a long drag on his smoke, then butted out the rest without finishing, grinding it down into a well-used ashtray. “Nothing. Doesn’t matter. That all you came here for, to tell me you’re sorry?”

  “I guess. I don’t know …. I guess I wanted to ask about something.”

  “What?”

  “There was a break-in there last night. Did your mom mention that to you?”

  “We weren’t exactly chatty.”

  “So I don’t imagine she said anything to you about a thumb drive, huh?”

  “No, why?”

  “She said it contained family photos and history, stuff like that. She was really worried whoever broke in had stolen it.”

  “It was stolen?” That had him turning his full attention on Sully.

  “So you do know about it.”

  Thackeray narrowed his eyes, returned his gaze to the floorboards of the veranda in front of him—all the better to concoct a lie. “She was working on compiling our family history. She was big on that sort of thing, said she wanted to leave me something about my heritage. It’s all I have left now, I guess.”

  “And there wasn’t anything else she kept on there?”

  Thackeray’s eyes were on him again, shock replaced by controlled anger and suspicion. “Why are you so interested in it? It’s none of your business.”

  “I was there when your mom was killed, and I was there when the place was broken into. I’m just trying to figure out what happened and why.”

  “Cops think you were involved, you know,” Thackeray said. “When they came to notify me about Mom, they asked a lot of questions about my family, about me, but also about you. Seemed like they were trying to make out like you did it.”

  “Let me guess,” Sully said. “The officer who spoke to you was named Forbes Raynor?”

  “Yep. No friend of yours, I gather.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this. I didn’t hurt your mom.”

  “I know that. Cops get shit wrong all the time and, anyway, you probably wouldn’t be here talking to me if you had. If you were really after something like that thumb drive, you’d have snuck in here in the middle of the night or waited till I went out. Not like this place is Fort Knox or anything.”

  “But you haven’t seen it here? You’re sure?”

  “She told me she had something, but she never said where. I looked once or twice in the past, but I’m thinking she kept it at the office.”

  “Maybe we could look for it now. I mean, she must have taken it with her last night. No way she left it behind at work after all that happened, not if it was that important to her.”

  “I’ll look for it again,” Thackeray said. “I don’t need the help.”

  What he’d no doubt meant to say was that he didn’t want help, not from Sully, anyway. But there was something else on which Sully figured Thackeray could use the assistance.

  “I stopped off at the army surplus earlier,” Sully said. “The manager there has some posters he’s put up of you. Sounds like there’s more around town than just the shop.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen them.”

  “Your address is on them.”

  “Like I said, I’ve seen them.”

  “You don’t seem as upset about it as I thought you might be.”

  “Look, I spent almost two years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, one that makes you a pariah in there. I’m on parole now, and my PO is just itching to throw my ass back in. I’m doing everything I can to keep from going back there, all right? It’s hell. So, no, I’m not confronting some guy who’s got it in for me.”

  “You didn’t do it?” In Sully’s experience—and he’d met more than his share of ex-cons at the Fox—few people ever willingly admitted to wrongdoing. He was skeptical of Thackeray’s assertion, and it showed.

  The tone of Thackeray’s reply was that of a man who’d been down this road many times: exhaustion rather than indignation. “No. I didn’t.”

  “But they would have found the stuff on your computer, right? That’s usually pretty concrete.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why they convicted me. I had a lawyer for a while, a Legal Aid guy who kept grumbling about his caseload. He kept at me to plead out, to take the deal the Crown was offering, but I told him I wasn’t going to cop out to something I didn’t do. So he withdrew on me, told the judge I was refusing to take his advice. I had no choice but to run the trial myself. You can see how well that went. Not only did I not get the sentence the Crown initially offered, the prosecutor asked for additional time since I’d pursued the matter in court. The judge had no problem with that given the size of the collection the cops found. The judge made some comment about it being the largest he’d ever seen.”

  “So if you didn’t download it, how’d it get on your computer?”

  “I have no idea, okay? If I did, I would have had my case made. And it wasn’t just my computer. It was on some thumb drives that just turned up at my place, and someone had taken my digital camera and snapped a bunch of photos of kids at a nearby swimming pool. I was set up and, no, I don’t know why. No one ever came at me for hush money or anything. One day, the cops just turned up with a warrant and seized all my electronics. Said they received information through an anonymous tip line that I was spying on kids. Surveillance didn’t pan out—obviously because the tip was bogus—but they apparently found my IP address on one of those file-sharing sites used by perverts. I guess that got them their warrant, and everything else they needed was miraculously there. If I had to guess, I’d say one of the cops planted it because they were pissed they couldn’t get me any other way.”

  Sully’s brain had caught on one statement in particular. “You said police found some of the stuff on thumb drives. Do you think that has anything to do with what your mom was hiding?”

  “Look, what’s all this to you? It doesn’t involve you.”

  “I know,” Sully said. “It’s just that the drive seemed important to her. I want to make sure it’s safe. I guess I’m hoping to help her in some way, if I can.”

  Thackeray scoffed. “Yeah, well, don’t bother. She doesn’t need your help and, what’s more, she doesn’t deserve it. That thumb drive you’re talking about? It contained information that could clear me.”

  “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  “She never did a damn thing but sit on it, like it would hatch a chick if she waited long enou
gh. I knew she had something because she told me, but she never let me see it or make a copy. She wasn’t there for me when I needed her. She never was. She was always more worried about my nutcase of a father than she was about me, and that’s a fact.”

  Sully did what he could with the information Thackeray had provided. “Maybe if we found the thumb drive, we could at least clear your name. That would be worth something, right?”

  “You don’t get it, man. The amount of porn they found was beyond anything they’d seen before. My name was all over the news and reporters were at my trial. You think anyone will care if I’m exonerated now? Even if it’s reported, you think anyone will listen or read it? Anyone will still be able to look up my name online and see the stories about my conviction. This is with me forever, no matter what I do.”

  Thackeray stopped, staring down at his knees and, with no other conversation forthcoming, Sully said the only thing he could think to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever.”

  Sully spotted movement, watched as Betty materialized behind Thackeray’s right shoulder, blood still mottling her shirt front and seeping from her mouth as she stared down at her son. Suddenly, Sully knew the way to that thumb drive might be within reach, if only he could convince Thackeray to turn a blind eye for a minute or two.

  “Hey, Thackeray? I’m sure you don’t need me hanging around here much longer, but I’m hoping I might be able to use your bathroom before I go.”

  But it seemed the veranda was as far as Sully was going to get today.

  “There’s a coffee shop down the street,” Thackeray said. “I really think I want to be alone now.”

  9

  Sully skipped the bus and opted to walk to the Black Fox, hoping to be able to get upstairs for some of his things.

  Instead, he found himself standing in the parking lot with a view of the rear door, watching as the body removal service carted Betty away in a bag.

  Death was always real to him—hell, it was stare-you-in-the-face real—but something about watching a friend’s body being removed from a murder scene hit Sully as hard as last night’s intruder had done in nearly this same spot.

  Police tape still surrounded the area, cordoning off a section of the parking lot for good measure, and Sully expected he wasn’t getting back in there any time tonight.

  He walked for a while longer, lost track of time somewhere along the way, his mind playing through the events of last night and early this afternoon, thinking through the possibilities. It occurred to him, as the sky began to take on the first tinges of nightfall, that he hadn’t heard from Dez in a while. His brother had taken a step or two back in the past couple of years, allowing Sully a little more room to move and breathe, but his solid and protective presence was always somewhere nearby. He would be off shift by now, and no doubt wondering why Sully hadn’t made it to his house yet.

  A check of his phone revealed the reason for the radio silence. It was drained, despite it being a relatively new phone which he’d fully charged before leaving Dez’s and had barely used today. It happened a lot, this sort of thing. Ghosts liked to use him as a battery, but oftentimes they’d take advantage of whatever electronic devices were around too. It had taken a teenaged Sully a while to figure out why he couldn’t seem to find a phone that held a charge. Now that he knew the answer, he could only hope manufacturers would come up with an app to prevent ghost drainage.

  Sully took the bus out to the Gladstone neighbourhood, a suburb largely populated by young families and single, white-collar professionals. As expected, Dez was waiting at the end of the trail, arms folded and eyebrows lowered.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Sorry, lost track of time.”

  “I tried calling you, like, twelve times.”

  “My phone died,” Sully said. “Usual issue.”

  Dez looked like he was about to launch into some form of lecture when his five-year-old daughter, Kayleigh, came flying down the stairs and into Sully’s arms.

  “Uncle Sully! We waited and waited for you and Daddy was mad, but we ate anyway. There’s spaghetti in the fridge. And steak. Daddy barbecued.”

  “Steak sounds great,” Sully said.

  “There’s none for you,” Dez grumbled, but broke off in a smile that suggested he’d feed Sully regardless.

  Unfortunately, the Kayleigh distraction proved only short-term with the emergence of a frazzled Eva. “Kayleigh. Bath and then bed. Now.”

  “But Uncle Sully just got here.”

  “Uncle Sully will still be here in the morning,” Eva said. “Go.”

  Kayleigh rolled her eyes but gave Sully one last hug before running up the stairs almost as fast as she’d come down.

  “Kayleigh! What did I tell you about running on the stairs?” Eva turned a quick smile on her brother-in-law. “Hi, Sully. Sorry. Talk to you in a bit.”

  With that, Sully was left alone with Dez and the explanation his brother would be expecting. Thankfully, Dez allowed it to come over a plate he and Eva had made up, letting Sully use chewing as an excuse to come up with better-worded answers.

  Sully told his brother about the visit to Marc’s office before realizing he’d have no choice but to mention his chat with Thackeray Schuster.

  “You did what?”

  It was Dez’s quiet tone, the one that typically proved a prequel to a yell. Sully could see his brother one day becoming one of those paternal staff sergeants whom officers both loved and tried hard to avoid pissing off.

  “I wanted to apologize and to ask him about the thumb drive.”

  “I thought I told you to stay away from there. Both he and you are being questioned on this. God, Sully, do you have any idea how badly Raynor wants your ass? You’re making it easy for him.”

  “Do you want to hear what Thackeray had to say?”

  “He’d better have had something to say, after all that.”

  “At first, he said he didn’t know anything about a thumb drive, but he looked pretty startled when I mentioned someone might have tried to take it. Finally, he said his mom told him it contained some info that would possibly exonerate him, but that she never used it. He said he looked for it a couple times at the house but didn’t find it. Obviously, that was because Betty was keeping it at the office.”

  “We’re putting an awful lot on this thumb drive without even knowing for sure whether it’s connected in any way to her death. And Thackeray’s not exactly the most reliable source given his history. I mean, for all we really know, the drive contains exactly what Betty told you.”

  “Betty was there, Dez. At the house.”

  “Oh.” Ordinarily, Sully would have found Dez’s obvious and well-anticipated discomfort amusing, but he didn’t expect he’d be in a laughing mood for quite some time.

  “She put that drive somewhere, man, and the only way to know what’s on it is to find it. I think it’s more than possible she’s still trying to protect it, so I’m going to need to talk to her. Thing is, Thackeray doesn’t seem to be in any mood to let me in there.”

  “He just got out of prison. He’s bound to be a little edgy.”

  “Fair enough, but that doesn’t solve my problem.”

  “Sully, are you sure you want to go down this path? I mean, you’ve been through a hell of a lot today, and if the next-to-last place I want you is in the middle of an investigation, the very last place is somewhere you’re going to mess yourself up. Have you even allowed yourself a moment to really process everything?”

  “I did on the way over,” Sully said. “I went for a long walk. That’s why I was so late getting here.”

  “And? How are you holding up?”

  Sully shrugged. “I don’t know if I can answer that. When I saw Betty today ….”

  “What?”

  “She looked like she had after she was killed, all bloody and shot up. I tried to apologize, but ….”

  “Apologize for what, Sull? It wasn’t your fault. You need to get that throu
gh your skull.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know that. Not until I can figure out what happened and why. There are answers I need, and I’m not sure the police are going to find them. How can they when they don’t even know what questions to ask or to who?”

  “That’s what investigations are for. To figure out what questions to ask and to who.”

  “And you’re sure Forbes Raynor is the one to do it?”

  Dez didn’t have an answer, so Sully pressed on. “This isn’t all about me, you know. It’s not just about wanting to clear my name on this. I need to help Betty. Maybe that means helping Thackeray, I don’t know. But I owe her at least that much.”

  Dez sighed, the sound of resignation. “Okay, what do you want to do?”

  “I need to get inside her house.”

  “You said Thackeray wasn’t letting you in.”

  “Even so.”

  Dez stared at Sully, a half-smile on his face suggesting he hoped his brother had been joking. “Sorry, it sounded to me like you were suggesting breaking and entering.”

  “Do I have a choice if he won’t let me in?”

  “Goddamnit, Sully, no. You are not breaking into someone’s house. Forget it. Jesus Christ, kid, it’s like you get off on making me crazy. I’m trying to keep you this side of the bars and you just keep looking for ways to put yourself in.”

  “I need to talk to her, Dez, and that’s where she is. Maybe she’s around the Fox, too, but I can’t exactly get in there to check, now, can I?”

  “They’ll be releasing the scene soon enough. You can get in there then, see if she’s around. In the meantime, you stay put here, lie low and try to get your head around all this, okay? Please, man.”

  “That’s just it. I can’t get my head around it until I’ve done something to help Betty. Until I know she’s all right—and until I know for sure I wasn’t responsible somehow—there’s no way I’m going to be able to rest easy on this.”

  Resting wasn’t coming any easier for Dez that night.

  He usually didn’t have trouble falling asleep after getting off a shift, the twelve-hour stints—and the general business they typically entailed—resulting in an exhaustion only sleep would cure.