Desolate Mantle Read online

  He opened his mouth several times to answer in the silence that followed, but had no idea what to say. Anger and sorrow and confusion warred in his chest, along with the fact that perhaps she made too much sense. He couldn’t think of where to begin refuting her points.

  “I think you should go,” she said a moment later. Her voice was soft and her eyes still wet. Her gaze remained steady on his when she said it.

  Without a word, he turned and walked out the door.

  Chapter 20

  Gabe arrived home well after the sun came up. He was exhausted physically, mentally, and in all other ways. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for twelve hours. He rolled out of his car, feeling twenty years older than he actually was. Vaguely, he wondered if he felt better or worse than Kyra did. Immediately he berated himself for his stray thoughts and pushed her firmly from his mind. If she didn’t want his help, so be it. He couldn’t protect someone who didn’t want it. The entire argument with her left a bad taste in his mouth.

  With a sigh, he headed for the house.

  “Detective!”

  Barely suppressing a groan, he turned to see Dane jogging toward him from across the street. The young man must have been spending more time with Eltern.

  “Dane,” Gabe said levelly, as his neighbor came to stand in front of him.

  “Hey, man,” Dane studied his face. “You look trashed.” When Gabe didn’t answer, Dane shook himself. “Uh, sorry to do this, but could I get your help on something?”

  Gabe tried not to sigh and only half-way succeeded. “With what?”

  “I’m helping Ellie set up his garage—doing some carpentry. He has this huge, heavy oak table. We want to move it into the kitchen. I mean this thing is massive, man. Ellie’s an older guy, and I’m not that strong, despite all the iron I’ve pumped lately.” Dane grinned, showing a bicep like a twig, and Gabe smiled in spite of himself.

  “All right,” he said. “Make it quick.”

  “I gotta grab some tools from my mom’s garage. Go on over—the side door that leads into the garage is open—and I’ll be right there.”

  Dane jogged off and Gabe started across the street, hoping he didn’t get roped into helping with anything else. He supposed manual labor might take his mind off his night. Sleep would be better.

  He made his way to the side of the house. A regular-sized door leading into the garage stood open, propped with a cardboard box. Inside, the biggest table Gabe had ever seen sat in the middle of the space. Gabe wasn’t sure they’d be able to wrestle it into the house. Perhaps if they turned it on its side.

  The door from the garage into the house was also propped open. “Ellie?” Gabe raised his voice. “You here?”

  No answer. Gabe decided to wait for Dane to return. He didn’t like the idea of just stepping into his new neighbor’s home, especially if the man wasn’t expecting him. Instead, he surveyed the garage. Shelves lined the perimeter, backed with peg boards that already sported metal hooks meant to hold tools. Gabe had been in this garage once or twice when the Braxtons still lived there, and the shelves hadn’t been here then, which meant Ellie installed them. The carpentry was actually quite admirable. It was nice that Ellie gave Dane work; keep the kid out of trouble for a change.

  Gabe ran his eyes over the setup. On higher shelves sat mason jars full of odds and ends. Of course, stacks of boxes still loomed in the corners of the garage, which might have been expected. Not enough time had passed for Ellie to have unpacked everything.

  Heaving a bored sigh, Gabe wished Dane would return, or Ellie would appear. His jaws cracked with a yawn a moment later and he stuffed nearly his entire fist in his mouth.

  His blurry gaze fell on something up high on a shelf. His heart lurched, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. Nestled between mason jars was a small, polished wooden box. Small enough for Gabe to hold in the palm of his hand, the image of a string of white rosary beads, complete with small cross, painted on the side.

  Gabe had seen that box before. The exact one. It wasn’t something he would ever forget.

  Crossing to the shelf, he glanced toward the open door leading to the house. No movement. No sign of the middle-aged man at all. He reached eighteen inches over his head and slid the box off the shelf and into his hand. A chill whispered down his spine.

  The box containing the first set of rosary beads his brother’s kidnapper sent him looked exactly like this one. They’d arrived one year to the day after Dillon disappeared. Just as the rosary beads sent over the years were all different, so were the boxes that contained them. The early ones were made of plywood or cardboard. In more recent years, they’d been made of flimsier stuff: checkbook boxes and the like. The first box was identical to this. Beautiful. Delicate. Lacquered. And with the exact same rosary image on the side.

  Gabe investigated the origin of the first box, but he’d only hit walls. At one point, he’d taken it to an antiques dealer. The dealer told him the box wasn’t an antique at all. It had been recently made and most likely hand-carved and painted. There was no telling where it came from without something to start with, though, so his search stalled.

  If Ellie could tell Gabe where he’d gotten his box, it might open a new avenue in Gabe’s search for his brother.

  He slid his thumb under the lip of the lid. He shouldn’t open it. Whatever was inside belonged to Ellie. Gabe didn’t care what the box held at all; he needed to know about the box itself. Unbidden, his thumb flicked upward, pushing the lid of the box back.

  Inside, on a bed of black batting, lay a tiny, white, crystal rosary.

  “Detective? What are you doing here?”

  Ellie’s voice startled Gabe and by reflex he snapped the box shut with a thunk. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, anger reared up, abrupt and fierce, in his chest. He held the box up to his neighbor. “What is this, Eltern? Where did you get this?”

  Ellie’s face went blank for an instant, then the corners of his lips turned upward. He glanced up at the place on the shelf the box had sat. “Rosary beads. My mother’s.” As he spoke, he descended the two stone steps leading to the garage floor and spread the armload of tools he carried onto the oak table. “Have you come to help Dane and I move the table, Detective?”

  Gabe shook his head. How could the man be so nonchalant while Gabe’s heart tried to pound its way out of his chest? “Yes. Whatever. Where did she get them?”

  “Where did who get what?” Ellie turned fully toward Gabe, raising an eyebrow.

  “Your mother.” Gabe held up the box. “The beads. Where did they come from?”

  The man shrugged in an offhanded way. “Who’s to say? She had them all my life. Always up on the shelf.” He barked a laugh. “You know, my older brother wanted them when Mother passed, but he was never the religious type. He always ridiculed her for her religion. I was the one who went to mass with her.”

  Gabe studied Eltern’s face, his body language, everything about him. The old man shuffled around the garage, moving things around casually. He didn’t once meet Gabe’s eye. It wasn’t that Gabe didn’t believe the man’s story—he barely registered it—but something about it felt…rehearsed.

  “We fought about it for weeks after the funeral,” the man rambled. “Eventually he gave in. I triumphed happily, though it still makes me angry, how long he dragged it out. He claims there’re no hard feelings. Usually we get along swimmingly. Unless he happens to see the box. Then he won’t talk to me for days. That’s why I keep it in the garage.” He chuckled, turning toward the open door that led out of the garage to the side yard. “Excuse me, Detective. I’m looking for something specific. I think it may be in one of the boxes on the side of the house. When Dane gets back, we’ll all move the table.”

  He paused in the door frame, one hand on the molding, and turned back toward Gabe, looking him dead in the eyes. Something feral lurked behind that grandfatherly gaze. “It’s so unnatural sometimes, isn’t it? The bond between brothers.” He held eye cont
act for two more seconds before disappearing through the door.

  Gabe watched the old man walk away for all of five seconds before slamming the box down hard onto the oak table and following.

  Eltern stood four paces outside the garage door, digging through some kind of crate that sat up against the house. Gabe stalked forward, grabbed the older man by the shoulder, spun him around, and slammed him into the side of the house. Eltern cried out when his back hit the siding. Gabe ignored him, wedging his forearm up under the man’s neck.

  “Who are you?” Gabe shouted.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Detective.” Eltern’s face did contort somewhat, but it looked more like worry than fear, and his voice remained utterly calm. “You know my na—”

  “Who are you,” Gabe growled again. “Where did that box come from? Who sent you here?”

  “Why would someone send me?”

  Gabe scrutinized Eltern’s features again, in a way he never had before. But it couldn’t be. Nothing about Eltern clicked in his mind. “You aren’t him,” Gabe said. “You couldn’t be. I remember him. You aren’t old enough. So who are you?”

  “I told you I don’t—”

  Rage surged through Gabe and he dug his forearm harder into Eltern’s throat until the man gagged. “You are going to tell me what I want to know, Eltern. After the day I’ve had, I swear on everything I hold sacred I could kill you where you stand, and then go into my house and sleep like a saint.”

  Eltern’s eyes widened more than at any point during the entire exchange, and for the first time his face held genuine fear. He held up his hands, motioning for Gabe to let him go.

  Gabe lessened the pressure on the man’s windpipe enough to let him talk. “If you aren’t my brother’s kidnapper, who are you?”

  “Gabe?”

  Gabe glanced to the side without releasing Eltern. Dane stood ten feet away, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. His arms were wrapped around a wooden box with short tool handles sticking out of the top. Gabe looked back to Eltern. The worry had disappeared from the man’s face. The instant Dane’s voice carried to them, the old man relaxed utterly.

  Bringing his knee up as swiftly and violently as he could, Gabe connected with Eltern’s gut, then released him. The man crumpled to the ground.

  Gabe dug out his cell phone and dialed Shaun. “Go home, Dane. Right now.”

  Dane’s mouth worked silently for a minute. “But…I thought,” he motioned vaguely toward the garage. “We were going to—”

  “Now Dane. This man is under arrest.”

  Mostly on whim, Gabe reached into the box Eltern had been digging in before Gabe grabbed him. His fingers closed around something cold and solid. Slowly, he extracted a sinister-looking, eight-inch scythe, its curve ending in a gleaming point. Gabe threw it forcefully back into the box.

  Shaun’s phone began to ring in Gabe’s ear. He turned to find Dane still standing behind him, wide-eyed.

  “This place is going to be swarming with cops in twenty minutes, Dane. Go home and stay there. Now. I’ll come talk to you as soon as I can. And you’d better be there when I come.”

  Looking utterly lost, Dane turned and stumbled toward his mother’s house, throwing terrified glances over his shoulder every ten feet.

  ***

  Hours later, standing in darkness and peering through the one-way mirror into an interrogation room, Gabe felt more awake than he had in days, though he’d gone longer without sleep than he usually did. The room Eltern sat in was well-lit, with blank walls and no windows. A table and three chairs around it were the only pieces of furniture.

  CSU combed every inch of Eltern’s house. Given that he’d only moved in a week ago, Gabe didn’t expect them to find much. The rosary box and its contents had already been printed, swabbed, and tested in every other way they could think of. It would be at least a week before the results came back from the lab.

  The door behind Gabe opened and Shaun entered, followed by Cora, who shut the door behind her. Still out at a crime scene, Tyke didn’t know anything about this yet. Cora would no doubt fill him in the second his car appeared in the lot, though.

  Shaun took one of four hard seats around the table in the center of the room. Cora sat beside him. Gabe turned his back on the window into the interrogation room, but didn’t sit. The way Shaun sighed as he collapsed into the chair, the deepening lines in his face making him look haggard, told Gabe the news wasn’t good.

  “You didn’t find anything?” he asked.

  Shaun shook his head. “He’s not in the database. The guy doesn’t have a record.”

  “Doesn’t mean he’s not involved,” Gabe said irritably. “Just means he was never caught.”

  “Gabe,” Cora said gently, “you’re positive this isn’t the man who took Dillon?”

  “It can’t be,” Gabe sighed. “He’s not old enough. The guy who took Dillon was this age,” he motioned toward where Eltern sat stoically behind the one-way glass. “I remember thinking when he took Dillon that he was older than my dad at the time. This was twenty years ago. When I turned five, my dad was in his mid-thirties. Eltern is—what? Forty?”

  “Forty-two.”

  Gabe shook his head. “The kidnapper would be sixty by now. Besides, he doesn’t look like the guy who took Dillon.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Cora said, her voice still gentle.

  “I get that,” he said dryly, turning to look at Eltern on the other side of the glass. “I get that my memory might be distorted. I get that he’d look really different than I remember. But,” he hung his head to study his hands. “I also think if I ever come face to face with Dillon’s kidnapper again, it’ll snap in my head, you know? I’ll know it’s him.” He turned back to Shaun and Cora. “I’ve seen this guy off and on for a week while he’s been moving in. Nothing’s registered. Not once.”

  Shaun nodded.

  Gabe joined them at the table, falling into a chair across from them. “But that box, what he said, the fact that he moved in across the street from me…Obviously none of that is a coincidence. So who is he?”

  Shaun flicked open a folder he’d brought in with him. “I may have a partial answer to that.”

  Gabe’s head snapped up. “You do?”

  Shaun nodded. “I had a hunch, Gabe. The kind of hunch that comes with working more kidnapping cases than my conscience likes to deal with.”

  Gabe leaned back in his chair, swallowing. It was one of the reasons Shaun understood about Dillon. As a young, newly-minted detective, Shaun worked crimes against children out of L.A. for several years. When Gabe asked him about L.A. compared with Abstreuse, Shaun’s only response had been that, despite there being more homicides per capital here than in L.A., he found it easier to deal with two gangsters who killed one another in a senseless fight, than with finding the body of a child who’d been brutalized beyond human understanding.

  Gabe motioned for Shaun to continue.

  “I ran him through the missing person’s data base.”

  “And you got a hit?”

  Shaun nodded, using his fingers to twirl the file on the table until it faced Gabe, then push it toward him. “Four years before Dillon disappeared, a young man by the name of Brad Collund went missing from Modesto, California. No one ever heard from him again.”

  Frowning, Gabe pulled the file toward him with an index finger. The photo and missing person’s report for Brad Collund stared at him. Though they stared out from a face twenty-five years younger, the eyes gazing up at Gabe from Brad’s picture were unmistakably Eltern’s.

  “But,” Gabe rubbed his head, trying to make sense of it all. “Are we saying this guy,” he jerked his thumb toward the interrogation room, “was kidnapped by the same guy who took Dillon? How is that possible? Why would he be here now?”

  Shaun shook his head. “That’s what I plan on asking him.”

  “But,” Gabe sputtered, his mind refusing to wrap around the concept, “he’s older than Dillon.” Ev
en as he said it, he realized what an ignorant argument it was. “I mean, he would have been much older than Dillon when he was taken.”

  Shaun nodded. “Fifteen, when he disappeared.”

  Gabe sighed. Dillon had been eight. Odd. Pedophiles and killers who went after children generally had a narrower age range than that. But, not always. Criminal profiles were as diverse as human beings. He dropped the file onto the table and tried to make his gaze bore into Shaun’s. Given how many hours he’d been awake, now, he wasn’t sure he managed it. “I want to interrogate him, Shaun.”

  “You know that’s not an option, Gabe. You shouldn’t be here at all.”

  Gabe opened his mouth to protest. Shaun raised a hand to stop him. “I won’t make you leave. I know what this means to you. You can observe from in here. Gabe, you are anything but objective here. And the department has policies about conflicts of interest.”

  Gabe did his best not to grind his teeth. He knew plenty about the department’s policies. Most cops gave other cops, especially their co-workers, a lot of leeway where family was concerned. Still, Shaun wasn’t wrong.

  “If you have any questions you want me to ask him,” Shaun said, taking a pen from his breast pocket and laying it atop a legal pad. “Write them down.” He pushed the pad toward Gabe.

  “I have about a million,” Gabe muttered.

  “Write them down, Gabe. I need straight-forward, cohesive questions.”

  Gabe raised his head and met Shaun’s gaze head-on. Shaun must have read mutinous thoughts there, because his eyes went flat. “Best I can do.” His tone brooked no argument. He didn’t use it often, but everyone in the department knew not to challenge him when he sounded like that.

  Shoulders slumping, Gabe snatched up the pen, yanked the legal pad toward him, and began writing.

  ***

  Gabe watched from behind the glass as Shaun entered the interrogation room. Ellie sat at the table, looking grim, but not panicked. Gabe forced himself to be calm, his body still. The index and middle fingers of his right hand twitched.