Randall had been correct about them crossing water. He’d been here many times before when he’d been courting Sadie. They were on the Bolivar Peninsula to the east of Galveston, a narrow strip of land surrounded by the gulf on one side and Galveston Bay on the other. It had suffered catastrophic damage during Hurricane Ike; most of its homes had been wiped out. It seemed crazy that the ferry had been running in this weather, but maybe they’d caught the last one; the one that had, by the look of the desolate landscape, taken the remaining inhabitants of the peninsula to Galveston for evacuation.
“Why have you brought me here?” he asked.
“I think you know why,” said the killer, grabbing Randall’s arms behind his back and securing his wrists together with a zip tie.
Anyone with any sense had left a couple of days before, and the killer didn’t need to worry about anyone seeing them as he ushered Randall up a dirt road to a decrepit beach house on stilts. “You remember this place?” said the killer.
The howling wind kicked up sand as Randall was forced onward. It blurred in front of him, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth. If the hurricane hadn’t arrived, it was only a matter of time. Of course he recognized the place. He’d been here most days during high school, catching the ferry and walking inland just to spend a few minutes with his then girlfriend, Sadie. “I was told she’d moved,” said Randall.
“She did, but she came back here one final time to rest.”
Randall didn’t like the way the killer said that. He’d always been racked with guilt for leaving Sadie when she’d fallen ill. The condition that had claimed her when she was eighteen would have eventually meant a life of care. Randall had told her he would stay with her whatever the circumstances, and a small part of him had probably even meant it. But when the opportunity had come to leave her, he’d taken it. It had been at her insistence, but he hadn’t needed to be asked twice. They’d made love one last time, in the house he was now being forced toward, and he’d never seen her again.
The guilt had stayed with him long after he’d started seeing Annie. She’d understood his guilt and had helped him own it. He’d never forgotten, but had managed to more or less put it behind him before that first letter arrived.
Every step was torturous. The wind seemed to be blowing in all directions at once, and it took the killer’s strength to guide them both up the wooden steps to the screen door. An unholy smell greeted them as Randall was pushed through the opening. He fell to the floor and kept his face down, not wanting to look up and see what was waiting for him. He screamed with pain as the killer grabbed hold of his hair and yanked his head back.
“You need to look. To see what you’ve done.”
Randall looked up at the source of the stench. A couple of yards away, still in her wheelchair, sat what he somehow knew to be Sadie’s corpse, which, by the state of its pallid skin and yellowed eyes, had been in this condition for a few days.
The killer yanked him up off the floor, a manic smile on his lips. “What do you think, Dad?” he said. “Isn’t it nice for us all to be together for once? One, big, happy family.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Laurie did another sweep of the property, the wind now so powerful that she struggled to keep her balance. She’d sensed the tension between the two Randall brothers, but couldn’t understand why Frank would have done this to Maurice—or how he could possibly have carried it out, as fragile as he’d seemed to her. But then, it seemed she’d horribly misjudged him all along.
Returning inside, she was astonished to find bars on her phone. She called Filmore before they disappeared.
Filmore’s phone crackled with static. “Laurie?” he shouted down the line. “Hang on, let me try and get some shelter,” he added. “That’s better. Where are you?”
Laurie explained the situation. “No sign of Frank Randall,” she said.
“Listen, Laurie, I don’t know if it’s hit you, but there has been a storm surge, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m on the corner of 46th and Avenue S and it must be two feet here already. If there was ever a time to make a run for it, now would be it. You need to get the hell out of there or you risk getting stranded or worse.”
Laurie took a look at her watch, wondering how long she’d been away. “I’m at a murder scene. I can’t just leave it.”
“Well, CSI isn’t going to be with you anytime soon. Everyone’s been called in, did you not hear? Maurice Randall will still be there afterward.”
“Unless the water gets to the house. I could bring him in?”
“God, no,” said Filmore. “You wouldn’t be able to reach anywhere to safely keep the body. Take photos and video, and anything else you see that might be relevant, but you need to get the hell out of there as quick as you can. That’s an order, Laurie. You understand me?”
“Lieutenant.”
Laurie closed the call and looked outside. The thick gray clouds were so low it was as if she could reach out and touch them. She feared what would happen when the storm surge reached Frank’s house, but there was no time to dwell on the possibility. Pulling on another pair of sterile gloves, she returned to the crime scene. She’d worked with CSI before, so knew the basics of what they did. She wouldn’t be able to take any samples, but knew enough to take the correct photographs of the corpse, which was all but floating on a river of blood. She zoomed in on the deep, ragged mark on Maurice’s neck, which appeared to have severed the carotid artery. Videoing the mark, she made a comment suggesting this was the cause of death, before moving downward to capture Maurice’s disfigured legs.
She cleaned herself up in the bathroom before taking a final sweep of the house, stopping in Frank’s bedroom. Had the man killed his brother and then just upped and left? If he was out there in the wild, chances were high that the hurricane would take him one way or another. But no, his truck was missing. It was feasible that he’d joined the thousands evacuated and had already escaped the island, and possibly the state. This was frustrating for so many reasons, and Laurie wondered if they would ever find out why he’d done what he’d done.
She was about to leave when she caught sight of something beneath one of the pillows on Frank’s bed. It was an envelope addressed to Frank. The paper was dry, the ink faded. Putting on another pair of gloves, she took out the letter and began to read.
It was a note to Frank from someone named Sadie, thanking him for some money he’d given her. “I know it must have been hard for you, hearing from me all these years later,” she wrote. “I have wanted to write you for so long now. There are so many things I wish I had told you. It’s so good to see you’re doing well, that you are married and have your son, David. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him.”
Who was this Sadie, and why was she mentioning David?
“This means so much to me,” she went on, “and will help more than you can ever know.”
At the bottom, it was signed, “All my love, Sadie x”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Laurie placed the letter in a waterproof evidence bag before leaving the house. Frank must have been reading it before Maurice was killed, and she wondered at its significance. Something about the styling felt odd, especially the mention of David. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but it was possible the letter had some bearing on recent, and past, events.