The connection ended.
“Bastard!” Dane threw the phone across the room. His father didn’t give one shit about him.
The rage he’d held at bay for most of life rocketed through him, shook him hard. Randolph Drake had it all. Everyone bowed to him. While his son paid the price.
Well, Dane had had enough.
He wasn’t living with this anymore.
He was putting a stop to it tonight.
28
9:50 p.m.
3200 Fernway Road, Mountain Brook
Tanner Estate
Carson stood on the sidewalk and stared up at the house looming in the darkness.
He hadn’t been back here in four years, three months, and two days.
He’d only been in the house three times since that night. October 10.Fifteen years ago.
He’d awakened in his car or at least he thought he had. Parts of that evening after the blackout remained sketchy. He had driven from the Mountain Brook Park. As best he could determine the time had been eight or eight thirty. The house had stood in the darkness, as it did now. Staggering up the steps that night, he had dropped his keys twice before reaching the front door.
He retraced those steps now. He was exhausted. He’d left Holman and driven around with no destination for a while. Then he’d come here. The entire trip, scenario after scenario had played out in his head. None made sense. None added up to a logical conclusion.
As he reached the door, he recalled that on October 10 fifteen years ago the front door had been unlocked. Ajar. The realization had confusedhim at the time, but then he’d still been fairly inebriated. Later, though, he had remembered vividly that the door was unlocked and partially open.
The investigating officers had suggested that he’d wanted to remember it that way.
Maybe he had.
Carson reached into his jacket pocket and removed his cell phone. He entered the number and waited for her to answer. “You know where I am. Meet me.”
Tonight he would have the answers he needed. All of them.
From the only source willing to give him the truth, as ironic as it might be.
Annette Baxter.
How screwed up was that?
Carson slid the key that he still carried on his key ring into the lock and opened the door.
The musty odor of disuse filled his lungs. The house no longer smelled like home. New carpet and fresh paint a few months after the murders had stolen the stench of death as well as the scent of his family from the air.
A flip of a switch filled the entry hall with light. A maintenance crew kept the house in good order so that he didn’t have to think about it or come here. The furnishings were free of dust, the floors pristine. No one would ever suspect that the worst a man could do had been carried out here against his family.
The sickening sensation that expanded in his chest whenever he thought of that day did so now, tightening his muscles, threatening to explode.
He stood at the bottom of the staircase, his left hand on the newel post. The police had dragged him away that night. For hours he had remained covered in his family’s blood ... until Senator Drake had taken him to his own home and helped him clean up. He’d dressed in Dane’s clothes until his own could be salvaged from the wreckage that had been his life.
Carson took the first step upward. His shoes sank into the thick carpeting that lined the treads. His heart pounded. Sweat dampened his skin.
Another step, then another, until he reached the second-story landing.
