“Your father never made it to Ohio,” I said quietly.
Jimmy gave me a wide-eyed, disbelieving look. “He didn’t?”
Obviously that was the story Jimmy had always been told. No doubt he’d believed it, most likely because the person who’d told him that tale had believed it, too.
I took a deep breath before continuing. “We now believe that on or about the twenty-seventh of March, 2006, Christopher Danielson was murdered, most likely by Shelley Adams.”
Jimmy seemed taken aback. “You mean the same woman who just tried to murder my grandfather?”
I nodded.
“But why?”
“She wasn’t your grandfather’s wife back then, but the two of them were very close,” I answered. “My understanding is that your grandfather’s plan was to pay Chris a sum of money in order to get him to go away and leave your mother alone.”
“Like a bribe you mean?”
“Exactly,” I agreed, “and Shelley was the one who was supposed to deliver the money. Instead we believe she murdered Chris and kept the money for herself.”
“How did he die?”
“Of blunt-force trauma,” I answered. “Do you know what that means?”
Jimmy nodded. “I’ve seen it on TV. It means someone bashed him over the head, but where’s he been all this time? And why didn’t we know about it?”
“Your father’s skeletal remains were located in a bear den near Eklutna Lake two years after he disappeared, but they remained unidentified until today, when DNA from those remains were matched to Chris’s brother, your Uncle Jared.”
I watched Jimmy’s face as his eyes flooded with tears. “So my father’s really dead, then? He’s never coming back?”
“Not ever. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy, sobbing brokenly, leaned over and rested his head on my shoulder. “Mom always hoped he’d come back someday,” the boy managed through his tears. “I did, too.”
Jimmy had at least had that myth to cling to—that someday his father would return. Now he no longer had even that.
As one fatherless child to another, I knew exactly how he felt.
Chapter 34
There’s a reason hospital lobbies and waiting rooms are stocked with unending supplies of tissues. When Jimmy finally started to settle down, I passed him a handful of those. He wiped his face and blew his nose.
“Do you know what happened to my dad?” Jimmy asked at last.
I sighed. He was just a kid, but still he wanted to know the whole story.
“Your father was working in a restaurant at the time, something called Zig’s Place. It’s still in business here in Homer. That evening when he was about to get off work, a woman asked him to come help her change a tire.”
“Was it Shelley?” he asked.
I nodded. “That’s what we believe.”
“Did anyone else see her besides him?”
“No, but when he left the restaurant a few minutes later, that’s the last time he was seen alive.”
“How come you finally figured it out today?”
“We had to connect a bunch of dots,” I answered. “That’s what homicide detectives do—assemble all the pieces of the puzzle and then put them together. When your uncle first consulted me about your dad, we had no idea he was dead. First I contacted the authorities here in Alaska and discovered that a set of unidentified human remains, the remains of someone who’d died of homicidal violence, had been found near Eklutna Lake in 2008. That’s when I asked your Uncle Jared to provide a DNA sample. Next we had to assemble a timeline for when your father disappeared. That’s when I learned about the unidentified lady who asked him for help changing a tire. In the process we learned about the sum of money—ten thousand dollars—Roger Adams was prepared to pay Chris to leave town.”
Jimmy was clearly impressed. “Ten thousand dollars?” he asked. “That’s a lot of money. Is my grandfather rich?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “At that point I really thought that if your father was deceased, Roger Adams had something to do with it. But then we found out about the money. At the time Shelley was living with her previous husband, Jack Loveday, in what she regarded as straitened circumstances.”
“What does that s-word mean?”
“Straitened? It means that she didn’t have much spending money. But then, a couple of weeks later in early April, just days after your father disappeared, she took a very expensive weekend trip to Vegas.”