Defender Read online

  On the computer screen is a collection of thumbnail photos of familiar faces, stacked in a pyramid, with the yearbook picture of Lucy at the top.

  “Suspects,” I read the title.

  “Right. I’ve gathered everybody connected to the case. With the victim on top, then the prime suspects below her, and at the bottom you get the persons of interest.”

  I lean in to study the three levels of the pyramid.

  “This is why you wanted to see my family photo album the other day? To get these photos?”

  He nods. “Your family’s at the heart of all this. No way around that. And I got the picture of Slimy from a news story online.”

  Below the sad smiling shot of Lucy, the prime suspects are Slimy, my grandfather Mad Dog Doug and Dad. The image of the old Dog is taken from the only picture in the album in which he appears, at one of Dad’s junior high basketball games. My granddad looked a lot like Uncle Jake—that same grin and good looks. Like Celia said: a handsome devil, but a devil first. Next to his picture is Slimy’s, all leathery tan and laser-blue eyes. Dad’s shot has his playful, scowling “don’t take my picture” look from some party.

  “Teddy’s up there with the primes only because he’s involved somehow,” Stick says. “But not like he’s the one who did it.”

  My brain won’t go there. Can’t let it. I don’t know why Dad got tangled up in this, but I’ve got to protect him. To save everything we have together. Save him from himself and whatever he’s done.

  I move on to the persons of interest. “Why the hell is my grandmother there?”

  “You say she keeps the family secrets, right? Hides things? She might know what happened. And she’s got some potential motives herself.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “Like maybe she found out her husband was cheating on her with this girl. She got jealous and confronted Lucy, things got out of hand and she killed her.”

  “My granny, a homicidal maniac?” I laugh.

  “Everybody’s got a dark side. And think who your dad would do it for—get rid of the body. His own mother’s got to be right up there.”

  Gran, with all her secrets…But a killer?

  “No way.” I steal a chip from Stick while I move on to the rest of the lineup. “Who else we got? Uncle Jake?”

  “He was living in the Zoo, had access to everywhere. And from what you say, he was trained by the Mad Dog himself. Look what he’s done with your aunt. Sounds like a suspect.”

  “I doubt it. He’s a drunk with a temper. But it’s a big jump from abuser to psycho murderer. I can’t see him going that far. And way back then he would have been only a kid himself—like, sixteen.”

  “You can be psycho and sixteen. Where do you think serial killers come from? Anyway, he was living under the same roof as your dad and the Dog, so he might have been in on it somehow.”

  I shake my head. “Who else we got?”

  “There’s Lucy’s foster sister, Rosie.” The yearbook shot of Rosie shows the big girl frowning. “She acted real suspicious when we questioned her. First kind of denying she knew Lucy, then admitting it. And that stuff she said: Who sent you? I don’t want anything to do with this. Whatever happened was a long time ago. She knows something. Maybe she did it, or maybe she helped.”

  “Yeah, she’s a definite maybe. But with all these ‘suspects’ and ‘persons of interest,’ we have to ask why my father would cover up for any of them. Why hide their crime? He might do it for family, but for the rest of them? For Slimy? I can’t see it.”

  “Could have been a Greer family crime, all of them playing a part. Each guilty somehow, so there’s a conspiracy to keep it quiet.”

  I look at the last person of interest. No picture, only a black silhouette of a man’s head with the name UNSUB below it.

  “Who’s UNSUB?” I ask.

  “That’s crimespeak for ‘unknown subject.’ The one who’s not even on our radar. Mr. X. The suspect to be named later.”

  I put my hand on Stick’s shoulder and give him a little shake. “You’ve watched way too many crappy murder shows.”

  “Television’s my religion.”

  “Well, start praying to your TV, then. Because we could use some help.”

  “My bet’s on Slimy.” Stick taps that snake’s face, leaving a red smear of barbecue on him. “We know he was picking up all kinds of neighborhood girls, so he had the opportunity. Like your mom was saying, whenever the cops tried laying charges on him for underage stuff, he’d buy the girl’s silence. What if Lucy wouldn’t be bought and he had to shut her up permanently? He had access to the Zoo to dump the body.”

  That wouldn’t shock me. But I’m leaning in another direction.

  “I say it’s Mad Dog. All the secrets. Gran wouldn’t tell me how he died….”

  Stick tips his head back and empties the last crumbs from the bag into his mouth. “Or the Man in Black. Our UNSUB. It always turns out to be the one you don’t see coming.”

  There’s one final option. And it’s the worst. What if Dad really did do it? No conspiracy, no covering up for anybody but himself. But I can’t go there. That’s the nuclear option, the one that destroys everything.

  Why he got rid of the body, and however he’s tangled up in this mess, I’ve got to find out. Because what if there’s more at stake than my belief in Dad? I need to know what kind of hold whoever killed Lucy still has on him. And if there’s some threat out there, I need to protect us—me, Mom, Squirrel and Dad.

  “So what’s next, Ty?”

  We’re running out of places to look.

  But I’m not done yet. There’s one more place I can dig.

  I TAKE A bus out to Uncle Jake’s house, with a gift for Gran.

  I need to know what she knows. What happened back then, how the Mad Dog died, and whether he was capable of killing.

  I feel guilty, ambushing her like this. But there’s no other way.

  I went through our basement storage room earlier and found what I was looking for, plus something more that might be the key to Gran.

  When I arrive at the house, nobody answers the bell. But Aunt Vicki’s car is in the driveway, so I go around the side. Looking through the glass patio doors, I see Vicki on the couch, watching TV. It must be up loud, or else she’s just spaced out like usual. I’m about to knock on the glass when I look over and spot Gran on the hill out back, in her garden. Perfect.

  I’m halfway there when Jake’s German shepherds show up on patrol duty, wearing the shock collars that zap them if they try to leave the grounds.

  I slow but don’t stop, hoping they recognize me. The dogs silently circle me, then come close for a sniff.

  “Hi, guys. You know me. I’m family.”

  They always treat Squirrel as one of the pack. Me, I get long stares from their hungry eyes. Like if the command were given, they’d take me down. Right now they only keep pace with me, watching and waiting. So I keep moving.

  When I reach the garden they hold back, keeping their eyes on me.

  The path through the bushes is lined with wood chips. Gran hears my crunching footsteps and looks back, startled, as if she’s been caught at something, or someone’s come for her.

  “Ty, honey! What are you doing here?”

  “Brought you a little surprise.”

  I unzip my backpack and pull out the worn leather satchel I got from storage. Gran’s eyes light up, and she undoes the clasp, opening the flap.

  “My old tools! Look at that, they’re all here.”

  The gardening kit has a variety of pruners, clippers, knives with curved blades and a small handsaw.

  Gran reaches in and grabs a pair of shears. “See, they fit my big hands perfectly, like they did my mother’s. I’ve missed all these.”

  “Yeah, I remembered you saying that, so I thought I’d dig them out of the basement.” It feels good to see her happy. But she won’t be so glad to see what else I’ve brought.

  “Let me try them out.”
>
  I follow her to the hydrangea bushes, where she prunes the shriveled remains of last year’s blooms.

  “Still sharp after all these years,” she says. “Thanks, honey.”

  “I found something else when I was looking. Here.” I hand her a stuffed envelope. “Old photos.”

  She puts the shears away and sets the satchel down. “Let’s see.”

  There were boxes of photos in the basement, sealed with yellowed tape like they hadn’t been opened in decades. I selected a handful that I thought might be useful with Gran.

  I watch her go through them, starting with shots of Dad and Jake when they were small.

  “My boys. Look at Teddy. He grew so fast I couldn’t keep up. His shirts were always too small, his pants too short. Nothing fit him for more than a week.” She laughs at one photo of the boys wrestling in front of a TV showing real wrestlers in the ring. “They were like puppies. And there’s Teddy in his team uniform back in junior high. He was made to play basketball. If only he hadn’t wrecked that ankle.”

  Dad stands with the ball in one hand, holding it out to the camera like he’s giving it up, with the same serious frown I’m used to. I wonder if this was taken before or after Lucy was killed.

  The next picture is of Lucy. I slipped it in there, the shot from the yearbook cropped so it just shows her laughing and covering her mouth to hide that chipped tooth.

  “Do you remember her?” I search Gran’s face for any reaction. All I get is a blank look and a shake of the head.

  “Doesn’t look familiar.” She checks the back of the photo to see if there’s a note, then moves on.

  Guess it was a long shot that she might give me the connection between Lucy and our family. Anyway, I shuffled the deck with these pictures, leading up to what comes next.

  My grandfather. The Mad Dog, sitting on a motorcycle, looking badass in black leather. Thick, wavy dark hair, three-day stubble and a wolfish grin. His eyes stare right out of the photo at me.

  I look at Gran’s face and feel a stab of guilt. I don’t want to do this, but I have to. She seems to slouch a little, as if the day has suddenly gone cold around her.

  The last picture shows them all together, with Gran and the boys kneeling by a Christmas tree and my grandfather standing behind them, his hands on Gran’s shoulders. The three in front look frozen in his shadow, their smiles stiff and pained.

  “How hard was he on the boys?” I ask.

  It takes a moment before she finds her voice.

  “That was such a long time ago,” she says, as if those memories could have faded. Like she isn’t haunted.

  I know she doesn’t want to talk about all that. Still, I can’t leave it.

  “But it got bad for my dad?”

  Gran takes a deep breath and lets it out with a shudder. “He was hardest on Teddy. My fault, really. Teddy would get in Doug’s way when he came after me, took the hits meant for me. It made his father furious that any of us would stand up to him. And Teddy was so big, taller than Doug by the time he was eleven.”

  When you’re so big so young, people think you can take more, that they can be rougher with you. I got that at school, everyone treating me like I was older.

  There’s no easy way to ask what else I need to know, so I just say it.

  “I was talking to Celia back at the Zoo. She told me how Granddad was kind of popular with the women on the block.”

  I wince, putting that out there. Gran doesn’t look surprised or hurt, though, just shakes her head a bit. “If you’re asking did he run around on me, yes, I knew what he was up to. Never said anything to him about it. It was just the way he was.”

  “And do you think he was violent with them too?”

  She shrugs. “It wouldn’t shock me. He always had that blind rage. Anything could set him off.”

  “How far do you think he could go with it? I mean, were you scared he might ever…kill you?”

  Gran looks down at the Christmas shot, hunched as if she can still feel those hands pressing on her shoulders.

  “When it goes on for so long, when it’s all you know, you go past scared, to numb. Just waiting for it to happen, for him to go too far. It might have come to that, if he hadn’t died young himself.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Stroke. That ran in his family.”

  I’d heard it was a stroke, but that doesn’t fit with what Jake said when he was drunk. I can’t stop now.

  “Uncle Jake said how Dad never fought back, he just took it. But that he beat Granddad in the end. That he got him back. Had the last laugh.”

  That startles her and she meets my gaze. “He shouldn’t have said that. Must have been drinking.”

  “He was. But, what did he mean? How did Dad get him?”

  “Why so many questions, honey? And about such horrible things? Best left forgotten.”

  But nobody has forgotten. They’re just not talking.

  “Me and Dad have been having some troubles…working through some stuff. I’m trying to understand him better, the way he is. And trying to fix things. He won’t say, but I think a lot of the problems we’re going through have to do with what happened with Granddad. All that old, bad stuff. So can you tell me the truth about what went on back then? And what Jake meant?”

  Gran shakes her head a little, glancing away. I look at her green eyes, the left one permanently damaged and darker, its pupil blown wide. When I was little I asked her why it was like that, and she said it was her “witchy” eye, good for seeing in the dark. Then she winked at me, getting me to giggle. It was only years later I found out from Mom that the Mad Dog did that to her.

  For every question, she has some evasion.

  Reaching out, I touch her hand gently, making her focus on me.

  “It’s important, Gran. I need to know.”

  I hold her gaze till she gives in with a shaky sigh.

  “All right, Tyne. If it’ll help fix things with you and your father. But, never tell.”

  “Never tell.” It’s our family motto.

  “The truth is, Douglas was a beautiful, rotten, miserable man. I really think he was wired wrong in his head, more than just violent. Maybe that was what killed him. No other way to explain how he could be so charming, warm and funny one moment and so vicious and brutal the next. One time he told me, ‘You really have to love something to hurt it so bad.’ ”

  She looks at the photo in her hand.

  “Anyway, the day it happened, me and Teddy were in the kitchen. I was making dinner when Doug got home. He was smiling, but that didn’t mean anything. He smiled when he was happy and when he was raging mad. Someone had told him they ran into me at the bank. The thing is, Doug never let me do the banking, wouldn’t even let me have any cards. The accounts were all in his name, and he gave me money to run the house. I tried to lie about being at the bank, said they must have seen someone else. But he already knew what I was up to. I’d been hiding money away, not much, but it wasn’t safe to keep it around the apartment, so I opened my own account. And he knew what that meant. It was my runaway fund, my escape plan.” She hugs her arms. “He usually left my face alone, didn’t want what he did to show. So right then, in the kitchen, he punched me in the stomach. Knocked the wind out of me. But then Teddy got between us. Like he always did. I was yelling for Doug to stop. Teddy had his arms up to shield himself.”

  Gran has to slow down to catch her breath. “Then Doug just froze in the middle of throwing a punch. Stood there stiff, his face gone red, eyes bulging. And suddenly he dropped to the floor like he’d been shot, and started seizing, making these choking sounds before freezing up again. Teddy and I stood still, staring down at him. His face was all contorted, and I knew what was happening to him. So did Teddy, and he was reaching for the phone to call for help, when I grabbed his arm and held him back. Because if we waited and just left him there, it might all be over. I held on to Teddy, and when he looked at me I shook my head. So we waited and waited, with Dou
g staring up at us. The longest moments of my life. I never prayed so hard for anything as I did for him to stop breathing. And then he did.”

  She pauses to breathe herself.

  “Then we sat down. I knew Doug was gone at last, but I wanted to be sure. It was a miracle. I’ve never felt guilty about that, but I know your dad does. It was a blessing for me and a curse for him. My poor Teddy. My fault. I don’t know how, but I should have saved him from all that. That’s where I’m guilty, in failing him.”

  Gran goes quiet. The sun’s still out, but the afternoon has chilled around us.

  “So there it is,” she says finally. “How are you going to look at me now? What’ll you see?”

  I gaze into her eyes. Our features are so much alike, she’s me plus fifty hard years.

  “I still see you, Gran.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “I see us.”

  WHEN ME AND Gran come in from the garden, we find Aunt Vicki still watching TV—some new mass shooting in the States, with the death toll at the bottom of the screen.

  “Vicki, do you want to join us for a bite?” Gran asks her. “We’re going to try some of your cherry pie.”

  Aunt Vicki looks up from the couch, where she’s curled under a blanket.

  “Some pie, yes. Let me get that for you.”

  I know she doesn’t like people messing around in her kitchen. Aunt Vicki keeps the house pristine, and whenever we visit I feel like she decontaminates it after we leave. She practically follows Squirrel around with a Dustbuster when he’s let loose.

  Vicki serves us up her black cherry pie, with vanilla bean ice cream scooped into perfect snowballs. She likes to cook, even though she doesn’t seem to eat, and her stuff is delicious. I devour my slice and get seconds. Gran’s got a sweet tooth too, and keeps up with me while Vicki pecks at hers, watching in awe at our appetites.

  “You’re both so big and tall. Makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland, when she’s shrunk down to an inch.”

  Soon as I’m finished, Aunt Vicki rinses off my plate and fork and quarantines them in the dishwasher. Then she wipes down the counter and starts washing her hands. As she scrubs away, I notice something on her left hand. She’s taken off her wedding band and set it on the counter while she soaps up, and on her ring finger there’s a strange mark. A scar.