“What?”
She tossed the tissue in the trash and took off at a jog back to her desk. Cloister followed on her heels. “He had an alibi,” she said over her shoulder. “It came up in the background check, but he had an alibi, so I didn’t think about it.”
“What are you talking about?” Cloister asked.
Tancredi scrabbled through the paperwork on her desk and dumped handfuls of it onto her chair as she looked for one particular file.
“This,” she said eventually. She shoved the file at Cloister. “He changed his name to Tranquil Reed years ago, legally and everything, but he was born a Spence. He’s our killer’s father. That’s the link to the Retreat.”
Dread caught in Cloister’s stomach like a stone. It was stupid. So it had been a while since Javi called in about heading to the Retreat. That didn’t mean anything. Javi could take care of himself. But the dread didn’t care about any of that. It stayed lodged in his gut.
“I’ll call Agent Merlo,” Cloister said. “You tell Frome.”
Tancredi took off at a run and Cloister grabbed his phone. The call rang through to voicemail.
It still didn’t mean anything. Except neither Cloister nor the dread in his gut believed that.
TRANQUIL REEDhadn’t been happy to see the police turn up in force at the Retreat again. He was even less happy when he found out why they were there. The ex-hippy’s usual linen-pressed charm was frayed at the edges as he hunched behind his desk and fidgeted. It was the first time Cloister had ever seen Reed sweat, and he took a certain vicious enjoyment in it.
“You’re wrong.”
“We’re not,” Tancredi said. She dealt out the photos of the confirmed victims and laid down each photo to create a perfectly straight line. “The nephew of the bank president who foreclosed on your ex-wife’s house. The daughter of the property developer who pushed through the Mallard Park development. The son of the councillor who approved the construction permit. The daughter of the construction company’s owner. The son of the fireman who found your daughter. He kidnapped all of these people.”
“And now an FBI agent is missing,” Cloister said. The words caught in his throat as though they wouldn’t be true if he didn’t spit them out. “Special Agent Merlo arrived here to speak to you earlier today. Now he’s gone. Your son did this.”
“He’s not capable,” Tranquil insisted as he pushed himself up out of the chair in a burst of frustration. He grabbed at his hair with tense, bony fingers, as though he needed to shake the words out. “After what happened to him and Hettie, he had PTSD and neurological deficits and all sorts of things. He struggles to do things. That’s why he works here, because he can’t hold down a job anywhere else.”
Cloister slammed the door to the office. The crack of noise made Tranquil jerk and sit back down hard.
“Tell that to the lawyer you’re going to need for your son,” he said. “They’ll care. We don’t. Right now your son is in trouble. If anything happens to Drew Hartley or Special Agent Merlo, then it’s going to be a lot worse. Where is he?”
Tranquil opened his mouth and then shut it again. He looked, all of a sudden, quite old. “I don’t know,” he said. Cloister made a frustrated noise of disbelief. “I don’t. I’m telling you the truth. My marriage broke up because I came here, when I became this. That caused enough problems, but after what happened to his mother and sister? To my wife and daughter. He never forgave me for that. We don’t talk. He doesn’t tell me about his life. I give him work when he’s sober and let him sleep here if he wants. Sometimes I don’t see him for weeks at a time. I don’t know what he does or where he goes.”
He stopped and looked at the hand of victims spread out in front of him. His face sagged with grief and the death of his denial. “Why would he do this? These children didn’t hurt Hettie or Jill. They’re just children.”
Cloister looked down at the photos. Loved ones had picked them out, so they showed the missing teens at their best. The glossy colors captured clear skin and innocence. Cloister had grown up in a pretty shit town, and he remembered how he resented the kids who hadn’t lost a sibling, whose dads weren’t useless assholes, who had moms who didn’t look at them with disappointment. The worst he’d ever done was start a fight with a football player out of frustration. But he still understood.
“They’re just children,” Cloister said. “They got to be just children because they didn’t have to watch their sister die in a locked car. I guess he doesn’t think that’s fair.”
Tranquil looked like he’d been slapped.
“Is there anything you can tell us,” Tancredi asked as she swept up the photos and tapped them together.
It looked like Tranquil was going to answer. He looked up with his mouth open and his eyes desperate. Then he shrugged and shook his head.
“I don’t know him.” He dragged one hand down his face. The skin stretched under his fingers like it had lost all its elasticity. “I don’t think I’ve known him for a long time.”
Tancredi looked up at Cloister and gave a slight helpless shrug. They weren’t going to get anything useful out of Tranquil right then. If he did know something, the revelation of the accusations against his son had driven them out of his head.
“Does he have any friends?” Cloister pressed without much hope of getting an answer that would help. “Anyone he’d talk to?”
Tranquil shook his head. He bent forward, braced his elbows on his knees, and buried his head in his hands. There wasn’t time to try to coax him back. Cloister opened the door and went into the reception area. Crime-scene techs had swarmed the area to take samples and bag the splash of puke on the floor.
“Witte,” Frome said. Nothing else.
Cloister stalked outside and to his car, and the wind shoved a breath of hot, dusty air up his nose. He pulled the door open and let Bourneville jump out. She flattened her ears and clamped her tail as the wind hit her. It pushed her fur the wrong way, into knotted rosettes.
“Witte.” Tancredi had followed him. She held her hand up to shield her eyes. “They’re going to send out helicopters from LA—with infrared. We’ll find them.” There was a pause, and then she added, “Him.”
