Dead End (2 page)

2

“Evan! How’s it going?”

A hand slapped him on the back, and Evan turned to find Will Fletcher, a friend of Annie’s from the Bureau, leaning against the bar.

“Some wedding, huh?” Will gestured around the tent with one hand, the other hand wrapped around a glass of champagne.

“Yeah. Beautiful. Glad the weather held for Mara and Aidan. The reports this week weren’t too promising.” Evan declined the flute offered by a tuxedoed young man and opted for a pilsner of beer.

“That’s one beautiful bride.” Will nodded at Mara, who, with her tall, handsome groom, was making her way around the room.

“No argument from me,” Evan agreed.

“Great idea, don’t you think, to have Annie and Julianne give the bride away?”

“Well, since Mara’s parents aren’t alive, having her sister and her daughter there for her was a really nice touch.”

“The kid—Julianne—looks like she’s survived her ordeal pretty well.”

For a moment, Evan had forgotten that Will had been there when Julianne had been returned after spending seven years living under an assumed name with her father, Jules Douglas. Unable to forgive Mara for having divorced him, Jules had done the one thing he knew would hurt Mara the most. He took their five-year-old daughter, and disappeared.

After years of tracking, the FBI was finally led to the Valley of the Angels, a Wyoming ranch that was part of the network of one self-proclaimed evangelist who called himself Reverend Prescott, whose mission in life was to “rescue” young drug-addicted runaways from the streets, only to clean them up and sell them to the highest bidder on the Internet. Jules’s mathematical wizardry had come in handy when it came to cooking the reverend’s books. Jules was currently in prison awaiting trial for kidnapping and a host of other charges related to his work at the Valley of the Angels. Julianne had been present when her father was arrested, just a few days after she’d been reunited with her mother. All in all, it had been one hell of a year for everyone involved.

“From all accounts, Julianne seems to be doing just fine. She seems to be accepting Aidan as a stepfather—Mara would have postponed the wedding if she hadn’t been able to handle it—and Annie has been keeping tabs on her. She thinks Julianne’s doing great.” Evan’s searching eyes found Annie, halfway across the tent. He willed her to look at him, and eventually, she did. She smiled and winked, and continued her conversation with one of the guests.

Will said something else, and Evan nodded and excused himself. The band was starting to play an old ballad from the forties and he wanted to dance with Annie, wanted to feel her arms around him, wanted to feel her pressed against him. He smiled at the person she was chatting with—a man he vaguely recognized as someone from her office—and took her hand.

“It’s time to dance with your guy,” he told her as he led her to the dance floor.

“Gladly.” She moved into his arms and swayed with him.

“What’s with this forties music?” he asked.

“Mr. Shields asked them to play it.”

“He asked them to play the last two sappy songs. Since when does the father of the groom get to submit his own playlist?”

“Since no one has told him he couldn’t.”

Out of the corner of one eye, Evan watched the Shields clan gather. They were all now, or had been at one time, in the FBI. Aidan, the groom. Connor, his older brother and best man. Thomas, their father, and Frank, their uncle and Thomas’s brother, both now retired. The cousins—Frank’s kids—Andrew, Brendan, Grady, and Mia, the lone female in the family. Two generations of FBI, eight in all.

But of course, there had been nine. It was the ninth Shields—Thomas’s middle son, Dylan—who was on everyone’s mind right then.

“Annie!” Grady shouted over the heads of the other dancers. “We need you!”

Evan thought he’d felt her stiffen slightly, but she smiled and kept on dancing.

“We’re about to drink a toast to Dylan, Annie”—Brendan made his way through the crowd and took Annie’s arm—“and we can’t do it right without you.”

Annie appeared slightly uncomfortable, as if unsure what to do, but did not protest when Brendan tugged her along.

“Evan, do you mind . . . ?” she asked.

“You go on,” he said. “It’s okay . . .”

“If you’re sure . . . ?”

“Sure.” He shrugged, and watched her disappear into the crowd.

A few minutes later, Thomas Shields asked the band to stop playing so that he could propose a toast to his son.

Not Aidan, the groom. But Dylan, the one who’d been killed in an undercover drug deal gone bad more than two years earlier.

Dylan, everyone’s favorite, the best of the Shields brothers. Best athlete. Best student. Best friend. Best agent. The golden boy whose memory would forever remain untarnished to those who had known and loved him.

Dylan, who had been engaged to marry Annie.

Evan signaled the bartender for a beer, then leaned back against the bar and took a long drink while listening to the tributes, one after another, being paid to the fallen hero.

“If they keep this up much longer, they’ll turn the wedding reception into a wake,” he muttered.

“What?” The man next to him leaned forward, thinking Evan had been addressing him.

“I said, nice that they’re remembering Dylan,” he said dryly.

“Oh, hell of a guy. Damn shame, what happened to him.” The man shook his gray head. “Just a damn shame. And him all set to marry that pretty little Annie McCall. Broke her heart, the day he died, I can tell you that. Just a tragedy.”

The man appeared to wipe a tear from his face, and Evan fought an urge to roll his eyes.

“Friend of his, were you?” the man asked.

“Ah, no. We never met. I’m actually a friend of the bride.”

“Then you must know Annie.”

“Yes, of course. I know Annie.”

“They sure do love her, don’t they?” He nodded to the cluster that the Shields family made on the opposite side of the room. “But then again, what’s not to love about Annie, right? Damn shame she had the love of her life snatched away from her like that.”

Evan’s stomach began to knot. He put the beer down on the bar and started to excuse himself, but his companion kept talking.

“Makes it worse for everyone, not knowing, you know.”

“Not knowing what?”

“Not knowing who pulled the trigger. Never did find the shooter. I think that would have helped everyone, if they had closure, you know?”

“I’m sure the Bureau investigated thoroughly.”

“They did, but nothing came of it. Sometimes it happens like that. It’s not always like it is on those TV shows, you know.”

Evan knew.

The eulogies finally over, the band began to play again. Evan looked around for Annie, but found her still surrounded by the Shields family. When he saw Mara standing along the edge of the dance floor chatting with a girlfriend, he put his beer down and made his way to her.

“May I have the honor of dancing with the bride?” He held out his arms.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Mara smiled and joined him on the dance floor.

“Beautiful wedding, Mara,” he said.

“Oh, thank you. I’m so glad it didn’t get humid. You know how it gets here in Pennsylvania in the summer. It can really swelter.”

“Well, you lucked out, all around.” He moved her around the dance floor in time to the music. “Everything is perfect.”

She nodded somewhat absently, and he caught her looking over his shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

“We should be leaving soon, but I’m afraid it’s going to be hard to tear Aidan away from his family.”

“On his wedding night? I doubt it.”

“It’s been a difficult day for them—for Aidan and his dad and his brother and the rest of them. This is really the first big family event since Dylan died, and they’re all missing him so much.” Her eyes flickered, and she looked up at him. “Probably not so easy for you, either, but for a different reason, right?”

He shrugged.

“The Shieldses are a tough group, Evan,” Mara said, as if that were all the explanation necessary.

“Honey,” he said softly, “it’s your wedding. They should let you have your day and not turn it into a memorial service for a man who’s been dead for more than two years.”

Her cheeks flushed, and he instantly regretted his words.

“I’m sorry, Mara. I shouldn’t have . . .”

“It’s okay. And you’re right. I know I should say something, but they are just a little intimidating when they’re all together. And I don’t think any of them ever got over him dying like that, the way he did. I know Aidan is still having a lot of issues because of the way he died.”

“Look, how about if I go on over there and see if I can get Aidan’s attention.”

“That would be great. Thanks, Evan. Maybe just let him know that he needs to watch the time, and that I’m ready to leave whenever he is.”

He left Mara with the same friend she’d earlier been chatting with and somehow managed to breach the edge of the circle that was gathered around Thomas Shields and his two sons. Between Aidan and Connor sat Annie, looking very much a part of the clan. Evan managed to catch Aidan’s eye and mouthed that Mara needed to talk to him. A quick glance at his watch reminded Aidan why. He nodded and excused himself quietly. Evan stepped back to let him pass, pausing, trying to decide the best way to get Annie’s attention. But she was absorbed in a story Grady was telling about one time when they were younger and he’d had the bad judgment to challenge Dylan to a pitching contest, the prize being Grady’s new bike. Dylan, who’d been scouted by several pro baseball teams as a senior in college, had all but taken his cousin’s head off with his fastball and, at the end of the exercise, had driven off on Grady’s bike, whistling “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Evan stepped back and away from the crowd. Still on the fringes, he watched Annie for a few more minutes, but she never glanced his way. He walked out of the tent toward the parking lot and disappeared into the night.

He drove around for forty minutes trying to decide what to do. When his phone rang, he answered on the first ring.

“Crosby.”

He listened for a moment, then turned his car around in the next parking lot.

“I’m on my way.”

He headed for Belle Mead, a small town four miles away, where another young girl lay dead, and tried to ignore the fact that his first reaction had been relief of sorts for having been provided with an excuse for having left the wedding.

He knew that it was Annie he’d left behind, and that sooner or later he’d have to deal with that. For now, he could simply tell her he’d been called away, and rather than making a scene at the wedding, he’d thought it best to just slip out quietly. Surely she’d understand. She was, after all, with the FBI.

She’s also a shrink, he reminded himself, and more likely than not would see right through that smoke screen.

Well, so be it. He’d deal with it.

And sooner or later, they’d both have to deal with the fact that while Dylan Shields was gone, he sure as hell wasn’t forgotten.

3

Anne Marie sat at the red light and speed-dialed Evan’s cell phone for the fourth time. He always had his phone with him, and it was always turned on. Why wasn’t he picking up?

Maybe he’s in a meeting and has the volume turned down. Or maybe he’s at a crime scene and can’t take the call. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was almost two in the afternoon. He could be home, sleeping. Maybe he’d been out on a case all night and had only been home for a few hours. Not unusual for a homicide detective to play catch-up during the day if he’d been up for more than twenty-four hours.

She’d find out soon enough. She was less than six miles from West Lyndon and Evan’s townhouse.

She closed up her phone and tossed it onto the passenger’s seat, and tried to ignore the uneasiness that had been haunting her since she’d looked for Evan at the wedding and found that he was gone.

That had been three days ago. She hadn’t heard from him since, despite having left several messages for him on his home, office, and cell phones.

Not a good sign. Definitely not a good sign.

As she turned the corner onto Evan’s street, she was surprised to see his car parked out front. Annie pulled into the space behind his and turned off her engine. Walking alongside then in front of his car, she placed her hand on the hood. It was cold. The car had been there for a while.

Okay, so I was probably right about him sleeping.

She slipped the key he’d given her three months ago, when their relationship passed from occasional to steady, into the lock. Assuming that he was in fact asleep, she opened the door and quietly entered the townhouse then paused in the foyer. From the basement, she could hear music. Loud blues, which grew louder with every step she took in the direction of the steps leading downstairs.

“Evan?” she called.

“Yo!”

Well, if nothing else, he was awake.

She descended the steps into the long, narrow space Evan had been working on for the past year. His goal was to have a fully operational family room—complete with wide-screen TV, a bar, and a built-in stereo—before next Christmas. For months, he’d barely had time to work on it. Today, he appeared to be determined to make up for lost time.

In the center of the room, Evan stood over a table saw. At his feet, a pile of two-by-fours was stacked unevenly. He turned on the saw and proceeded to cut first one, then another, of the lengths of wood until they were all of a uniform size. Annie sat on the third step from the bottom, watching the pile grow, making mental bets with herself as to how many minutes would pass before he would turn around and talk to her.

Finally, she stood up, unplugged the saw, and turned off the radio.

“Why, yes, I was able to find a ride home from the wedding, nice of you to inquire.”

“Any one of a dozen people would have been more than happy to see you home on Friday night. I knew you’d have no problem getting a ride.” No longer able to cut, he started to stack the wood in an obsessively neat pile, an attempt on his part, she knew, to concentrate on anything other than her.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Her eyes narrowed. “You knew someone else would take me home after you dumped me?”

“I didn’t dump you. I got called out.”

“Not another . . . ?”

“Yup.”

“Same as the others?”

“The same—but different this time.”

“Are you going to elaborate?”

“Same MO. Throat slashed. Vic is the same age as the others, but no one seems to know who she is. No ID. No one’s reported her missing. And she’s Hispanic. The others have all been white, reported missing before the bodies were found. This girl, it’s like she came out of nowhere. I’m not sure what to make of that.”

“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”

“Like I said, same MO. Same cause of death, the missing shoes—”

“Any chance of a copycat?”

“We never released the details, no one outside the investigation knows about the shoes.”

“I realize this is an important case, but you could have taken one minute on Friday night to tell me you were leaving.”

“I couldn’t have gotten to you even if I’d tried.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you were in the Shields zone. No outsiders allowed.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I did come over to the table, but I couldn’t get through the throng. Couldn’t even get your attention, you were so caught up with whatever story whichever Shields was telling at the time.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were jealous.”

“Maybe you don’t know me so well, after all.”

“Are you serious? You’re jealous?”

“Let’s just put it this way, Annie. It’s really tough having to compete with a dead man for your attention. Especially when that dead man was, by all accounts, an absolute paragon of—”

“Stop it, Evan. Just . . . stop it.”

She turned her back and started toward the stairs. She got up to the second step and turned back to him.

“I will say this one time, so listen up.” She took a deep breath. “If you are waiting for me to tell you that I did not love Dylan, you are going to be very disappointed. I did love him. I loved him with all my heart. I planned to marry him and grow old with him. When he was killed, I thought I’d never feel that way about anyone, ever again. I accepted that.”

“Annie . . .”

“Don’t. You started this, you will let me finish.”

She came down off the steps.

“The first time I met you, I knew how I was going to end up feeling about you. Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t. But I met you, and I thought, Well, now, how about that? Lightning can strike twice, apparently. Then we began dating, and for a time, I was confused, because I wasn’t sure I understood how anyone could be lucky enough to find that kind of love more than once. And I knew that I loved you, pretty much right from the time we started seeing each other. There was just something in you . . . something so good and honest, something that just spoke to my heart.” She took a long breath.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but there was something else I saw in you that I saw in Dylan as well, and I don’t mean this to sound as if I’m comparing you to him. I’m not. It wasn’t that you were alike. It’s more in the way he cared about what he did. It might sound corny, but he took the whole business of fighting crime very seriously. He was always on the side of the victims, always stood for those who couldn’t stand for themselves. I loved that in him. I saw all those same things in you—that same determination, that same dedication—and I loved it in you, too. I really felt that in spite of what had happened, I would have my happily-ever-after. With you.”

Evan rubbed the back of his neck, then shoved his hands into his pockets. He just didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry that you felt left out on Friday. I have to be very honest with you—I did feel uncomfortable, after a while, the way Dylan’s family was turning my sister’s wedding into a sort of memorial service. But you have to understand that this is a very close family. In some ways, they are still trying to come to grips with Dylan’s death. His father will probably never accept it. He’s still reeling from it. I feel bad for all of them. It hasn’t been easy.”

“You didn’t seem to be protesting too much when I saw you.”

“What was I supposed to do, Evan? Tell them all to just get over it, to get on with their lives?”

“You didn’t have to sit there all night and be part of the wake. It looked to me that you fit right in.”

“I did not know what else to do, Evan. I did not know how to gracefully walk away. They see me as a link to him. Especially Thomas. Dylan loved me; they have to love me, too. If he hadn’t died when he did, I’d have been one of them.”

“You are one of them.”

“This is a family that has been shattered by a death they believe wasn’t supposed to happen. It makes it all the more difficult for them to accept because they still don’t really know what happened that night. That wound is still festering. That one of their own was murdered, and none of them—none of the big bad FBI Shieldses—has been able to bring his killer to justice.”

“Someone else said something like that, someone I was talking to near the bar. He said that the FBI still didn’t know what went wrong.”

“True. And it haunts everyone, everyone who knew him.”

“Are you haunted by him, Annie?”

“Not
by
him, maybe, but
for
him, I guess. I wish I did know what happened that night. I wish I did know who killed him, and why. I wish there could be justice for him. It was set up to look like it was part of that undercover drug deal, but no one ever thought that felt right, and no one has been able to come up with an alternative that makes any sense, either.”

“What didn’t feel right? It’s not unusual to have an undercover op go bad.”

“The dealers Dylan and Aidan were meeting didn’t arrive until after Dylan had been shot. They pulled into the alley just after, and of course, the agents in the building across the alley opened fire, and—”

“So you’re thinking if the dealers had been onto the op, they wouldn’t have shown up at all. If anything, they’d have sent their henchmen to kill Dylan and Aidan and simply disappeared.”

“Exactly. But these men came to the buy, just like they’d planned. And they all denied having known that Dylan and Aidan were law. They all swore they had no clue.”

“Of course they’d deny it. No one in his right mind admits to setting up the FBI.”

“True. But no way, if they’d shot an FBI agent minutes before, would they have shown up at all. That’s just plain stupid, and these guys have been at this a long time. They’re far from stupid.” She shrugged. “And that’s what’s so hard to accept for everyone. Dylan’s killer got away with murder, and no one has the slightest idea who he is. That’s what keeps it raw, keeps it stuck in everyone’s craw. Not knowing why, or who.”

“Does anyone really think they’ll ever answer those questions?”

“Realistically, no. But they’ll never stop asking, never stop talking about it.”

Evan shook his head somewhat vaguely.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for what happened to him, I swear I am. But I can’t fight them for the rest of my life, Annie. There are just too damned many of them. Your sister married into the family; they’re always going to be around.” He took a deep breath. “I’m always going to feel as if I’m sleeping in a dead man’s bed. I’m just not sure how long I can go on doing that.”

“Oh God, Evan, I had no idea you felt that way. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t change the situation,” she said softly. “But I can’t change what was or what is. I’m so sorry, for both of us. I was hoping that you and I . . .”

Her voice trailed off and she made a gesture—a sort of “I give up” flutter of her hands—before going up the steps and directly to the front door. Once in her car, she sat quietly for a few moments, trying to compose herself, fighting back the tears that had been threatening to fall, trying to stop the hollow feeling inside her from spreading, but it soon engulfed her. With a sense of sorrow and regret, she put the car in gear and headed toward the airport. It was going to be a long trip back to Virginia.

Evan sat on his back steps, his forearms resting on his thighs, mindlessly peeling the label from his bottle of beer, dropping the little scraps of paper at his feet. The deck he’d started building in the spring was just as he’d left it two months ago, mostly frame, some little bit of floorboard. Incomplete, like the basement.

Like his life.

Well, he’d almost had it all, hadn’t he? The girl, the job, the future he’d always dreamed of. Then, of course, he had to go and let that green-eyed monster take over his intellect, had to go and open his big mouth. Well, that was the end of that. Shit, he must have sounded like a bratty adolescent who’d caught his girl walking with another guy to her locker.

He blew out a long breath that was filled with exasperation and self-doubt. He had some big decisions to make, and he’d have to make them now, before things between Annie and him got any worse.

Like they could get worse.

He went inside, dropped the empty beer bottle into the glass recycling bin, and got himself another, then went back outside. He walked the deck frame, balancing carefully as he followed the narrow supports that would eventually be covered with flooring.

If I get that far.

He stood at one end, the end where he’d planned on building steps that would go into the narrow backyard. A few months ago, back in the early spring, he and Annie had stood out here and discussed flower beds. She’d been excited about the prospect, and they’d spent an afternoon talking about how he would go about digging beds around the entire perimeter of the yard so that she could plant her favorites—roses, peonies, hollyhocks. All the staples of an old-fashioned garden, she’d told him, just like the one her mother had planted in the tiny yard of their twin home in Philadelphia’s University City back when her father was a professor at Drexel. Annie’s cheeks had flushed with the joy of that memory, and her eyes had sparkled at the prospect of re-creating her mother’s garden.

Evan had dug up one section that weekend, a short piece across the back face, and the following day, Annie had gone to the nursery and bought three peonies, which they’d planted together.

“The man at the nursery said that they won’t bloom for a few years, but that’s okay.” She’d smiled up at him. “We can wait them out together. Just think how much we’ll appreciate those first flowers when they finally bloom . . .”

That had been the last time they’d worked on it. The responsibilities that came with both their jobs had intervened. Now Annie’s garden lay before him, just one more loose end in his life. Just one more thing he’d started, but never got around to finishing.

Evan put the beer down on the back-porch steps and went into his garage. He emerged a minute later, carrying a shovel. He went straight to one side of the fence, walked off a depth of three feet, and began to dig. When he finished with one side, he began to dig along the other, until the entire fence was framed with a newly dug bed.