“Mr. Holt,” Bowen said. “Are you?—”
But Griffin staggered upright and backed away from the table, feet getting tangled in his shackles. He tried to turn toward the door, despite Bowen, Josie, and Gretchen yelling for him to sit down. There was a deputy just outside, but it became clear that Griffin was no threat when he fell to his knees and vomited all over the floor.
Bowen leapt from his chair and knelt beside his client. “Mr. Holt! Mr. Holt! Help in here, please!”
“He’s dead,” Griffin said hoarsely, shackled hands pressing against his stomach. “He’s supposed to be dead.”
“Who?” asked Gretchen, rounding the table and handing him some tissues from her pocket. “Who’s supposed to be dead?”
Bowen looked from Gretchen to his client. “Maybe we should speak privately.”
“No.” Josie walked over and looked down at Griffin. She wasn’t so tired or consumed with emotion that she couldn’t figure out who the man was, given Griffin’s visceral reaction and the fact that he thought the man was dead. The puzzle started locking together rapidly in her mind. All the vandalism, the fire, the theft at the garden center. The murders of Maxine and Haven. Taking Dani and Cassidy right out from under Griffin’s nose. Trying to take everything Griffin and his sister loved. Josie waved the sketch in his face and he flinched. “This is the manwho tried to steal the garden center out from under your mother. The man who abused your sister.”
Griffin lifted his tear-stained eyes to hers. There was something so raw in them, so terrified, that it almost knocked her back on her heels. “But he’s dead. There was a car accident. Mom told us he was killed. We never saw him again. He has to be dead. There is no way he would have just left us alone. He wouldn’t have just gone away.”
“What’s his name?” Gretchen asked, taking out her notebook and pen.
“Saul,” Griffin said in a scratchy voice. “Saul Vought.”
He started to list to the side, like he might fall over. Bowen grabbed his upper arm and righted him. “Really, Detectives,” he said, “I have to insist we stop here. My client has answered your question about the sketch, and he needs medical attention.”
Josie ignored Bowen. “Did you ever see an obituary? Talk to anyone else about his death besides your mother and sister?”
“No, no,” he said. “He was just gone, and I knew he was dead. I knew he was because of the way she came back.”
“The way who came back?” asked Gretchen.
“My mother. She and Reina had gone on a vacation. Rented a house near Lake Wallenpaupack. I was supposed to meet them there after I got back from a college tour. When I got there, they were gone. I went home but they weren’t there either. I knew Saul had to be behind it. I figured out where he lived. By the time I got there, he had my mom all dressed up in some old thrift-store wedding gown. He’d beaten her. I only had a few minutes to talk to her before he took her. He was going to force her to marry him so he could have everything. Said he’d paid someone off to put all the paperwork through and to look the other way if my mom tried to tell him she was being coerced.”
Griffin tapped the side of his head. “I went after him but he hit me pretty hard. Disoriented me. Then he got me down onthe floor and started kicking me everywhere. Mom stepped in, though, and got him to stop. She told me it was going to be all right. To stop fighting. She promised Saul to go with him if he left me alone. He laughed and said something to her like ‘I told you he wouldn’t save you.’ Said I was useless. Before they left, she whispered to me to get Reina and get out, to go home. Then she left with him.
“We’d talked about running but we didn’t want to leave Mom alone with him. We were afraid because I had told”—his voice dropped to a husky whisper—“I had told on him. My mom needed to know what he was doing to Reina even though she made me swear not to tell. So I told her what Saul had been doing to my sister. It was right before he started beating me. Right before she left with him. Reina and I didn’t understand why she went with him knowing what she knew. We didn’t get it until she came back without him. Reina started crying hysterically but Mom kept saying she was okay and that it was over. He was gone. Gone. She wouldn’t have told us that if it wasn’t true. Wouldn’t have lied. Maybe about how he died but not that he was dead.”
He was leaving something out, but Josie didn’t have time to draw it out of him.
“Saul Vought could very well still be alive,” she said, even though it raised the question of what the hell he’d been doing for the past twenty-plus years, and why he would suddenly take an interest in Griffin or in getting some kind of revenge on him. Despite the questions, adrenaline flooded her body. She itched to run from the room so she could get to a database and look up Saul Vought.
“Mr. Holt,” Bowen barked. “I’d advise you to stop talking. You’ve answered the detectives’ questions.”
“No.” Griffin shook his head. “I can say this now that she’s gone. My mother did something. I know she did. She?—”
“That’s enough,” Bowen snapped as Griffin wobbled again. “This meeting is over.”
But Josie and Gretchen were already passing through the door, leaving the two men kneeling on the floor.
On the way back to Denton, Gretchen thrummed her fingers against the steering wheel, stealing glances at Josie while she used her phone to find out if Saul Vought was still alive and if so, where they could find him.
“Anything?”
Josie stared at the information she’d been able to find. “He’s definitely not dead. In fact, he just turned fifty-seven. He currently resides in Denton.”
“Where’s he been all this time?” Gretchen asked.
“Serving seventeen years for aggravated manslaughter in New Jersey. He got out almost two years ago.”
“Seventeen years is a long time to plot your revenge,” Gretchen noted. “Whatever Mrs. Holt did to him, it didn’t work.”
Josie did some math in her head. According to what Milo and Griffin had told her and the information she’d just uncovered, Saul had murdered a woman the same year Liora Holt had banished him from their lives. Had he merely been licking his wounds, biding his time until he could return to exact his revenge on Liora?
