Oliver leaned closer to Walt. “Simply stated, I have to find this son of a bitch. In order to find him, we have to get creative. This is as creative as I get. So yes, everyone is onboard, but I pushed to get them there. I need your help, Walt. You’d be back on the payroll for as long as it takes.”
There was a long pause as Walt digested the offer. He’d been looking for something to pull him out of the downward spiral he was trapped in. He never imagined help would come from his former employer. And he had no idea it would involve a case from his distant past.
“What do you say, Walt? Retirement never suited you. We both know that.”
Walt looked back at Jim Oliver, paused briefly, and then nodded.
“Excellent.” Oliver held up his nearly empty glass of rum. “Now, I’ll need another one of these before I get into the details.”
Walt stared at his former boss for a long moment. Finally, he raised his hand and flagged down the pretty waitress with the sweet Jamaican accent. For the rest of the afternoon, and deep into the evening, he listened to Jim Oliver describe the operation that would pull him back to New York. He did his best to drown his doubt in rum.
PART II
Fate
CHAPTER 15
Catskill Mountains, NY Friday, June 25, 2021
THE HOUSE WAS NESTLED SOMEWHERE IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE Catskill Mountains. Avery sat behind the wheel of the Range Rover as she cruised the two-lane mountain roads flanked on each side by thickets of forest. The drive was peaceful, with only the occasional car passing in the opposite direction. An hour and a half after she left the city, she turned into the drive of Emma Kind’s home. It was a cute Victorian with a wraparound front porch and a score of potted hibiscus hanging in long lines from the eaves. Even before Avery turned off the ignition, a round woman with graying hair walked through the screen door and stood on the porch. She looked to be in her sixties. She smiled from behind wire-framed glasses and lifted her hand in an amicable wave. The gesture prompted Avery to do the same from the front seat.
“You have got to be kidding me,” the woman said as Avery climbed from her car. “Avery Mason, in my front yard.”
Avery smiled as she walked toward the porch. When Avery had called earlier in the week, she’d heard more than a little skepticism in Emma Kind’s voice about whether she was really speaking with Avery Mason, the host of American Events.
“This is too much,” the woman said. “I told you I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it, and now I’m seeing it.”
“Your house is gorgeous,” Avery said when she reached the bottom of the porch steps.
“Thank you. Come inside, please.”
She climbed the front steps. “Avery Mason.”
The woman shook her hand emphatically. “Emma Kind. This is really just too much. Come on in.”
Avery followed Emma inside. The interior of the house was as quaint—a mixture of classic Victorian with a woodsy vibe. Sturdy oak beams lined the pitched ceilings, cherry-oak wood floors shined with the afternoon sun, and ornate moldings outlined the entryways.
“What can I get you to drink?” Emma asked. “Tea, water, coffee?”
“Oh, I’m okay. Thank you, though.”
Emma opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of chardonnay. “Avery Mason is standing in my kitchen, so I’m having a glass of wine. Would you like to join me?”
“I suppose it would be impolite to say no twice.”
Emma smiled and removed two wineglasses from the cabinet. They headed to the back where they sat in the shade of a large patio umbrella and stared off to the mountain peaks in the distance. Emma poured two glasses of chardonnay.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Avery said, taking a sip of wine. “I’m sure it’s not easy to talk about your sister, even this many years later.”
Emma pulled her gaze from the mountains and looked at Avery with a smile. “Even after twenty years I still miss her.”
“Victoria was your younger sister?”
Emma nodded. “By five years. She was thirty-five when she was taken from this world.” Emma raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Hard to believe she’d be fifty-five today. There’s just no way for me to picture my baby sister in her midfifties. You know, when a loved one dies young your perception of them is placed in a time capsule. You’re only able to remember them as they were then, not as they would be today. Victoria was so young and healthy, full of life. To me she will forever be that vibrant young woman. It’s the only way I’ll ever know her.”
“Does the news of finally identifying Victoria’s remains bring closure for you?”
Emma took a sip of wine. “In a way, I suppose. But not the type I’m looking for.”
“What kind is that?”
Emma blinked and studied Avery for a moment, a look of curiosity coming over her. “Do you know much about Victoria?”
“Not much. Only that she died on 9/11 and her remains were just identified by the medical examiner’s office. I was hoping you could tell me about her.”
“Yes, of course. And I have waited twenty years to finally put my sister to rest. Maybe that’ll be possible now, but I doubt I’ll be able to do it properly.”
“You mean with a funeral?”
Emma smiled in a way that made Avery feel as if she were missing something.
“You really don’t know about Victoria’s past, do you?”
“No,” Avery said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Emma shifted her gaze back to the panoramic view and took another sip of wine. “My sister was involved in a murder investigation prior to her death. It was a great, big, sensationalized case around here. An awful case, gruesome in its nature and filled with perverted sex. The media and the police painted Victoria out to be a monster.”
Avery sat up taller in her chair. “Victoria was involved in the investigation, meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning they said my baby sister was a killer. Something I know without doubt is false. So until I find a way to come to terms with that, I’ll never be able to properly put Victoria to rest.”
Avery had come out to the country looking for a feel-good story about a woman finding closure twenty years after her sister was killed on 9/11. Instead, she’d stumbled onto a twenty-year-old murder investigation. Her mind buzzed with possibility, and the curiosity center of her brain ached for every detail.
“Would you tell me about it?” Avery asked, trying not to sound too eager.
Emma nodded. “That’s what the wine is for.”
CHAPTER 16
Shandaken, NY Friday, June 25, 2021
WALT JENKINS’S PLANE LANDED THE DAY BEFORE. HAD HE NOT RECENTLY come to the realization that his life was in a downward spiral, he might have passed on Jim Oliver’s offer. But Walt was looking for an opportunity to stop running, and perhaps he’d found it. The Bureau put him up in a suite at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown. It took Walt just over an hour to make the trip out to the country. The Bureau of Criminal Investigation branch of the New York State Police was an investigative division of plainclothes detectives that, for the most part, assisted local law enforcement that lacked the investigative resources needed for major crimes. The 2001 murder of Cameron Young in the Catskill Mountains, near the town of Shandaken, had certainly been an example of a county police department caught off guard. The community consisted of wealthy individuals who owned second homes in the area and spent long weekends and holidays in the town. Before Cameron Young had been found hanging from his balcony, there hadn’t been a homicide in the area in four decades.