The Dollmaker(The Forgotten Files #2)(3)
“My grandmother’s going to hear I got knifed in a drug deal,” Terrance said.
“I’ll see to it she doesn’t know about this.”
“Why me?”
“This isn’t personal, kid.”
“My old man told me not to talk.”
“Jimmy was right.”
How many times had his grandmother warned him about Jimmy? She was going to be so pissed and heartbroken.
Terrance’s vision grayed, and his last image was of this man praying for him as his life bled out onto the dirty, gray cobblestones.
CHAPTER ONE
Monday, October 3, 9:00 a.m.
Agent Dakota Sharp with the Virginia State Police stood apart from the paltry gathering of mourners. Hands clasped. Feet braced. He wondered if guilt or loyalty had tipped the scales in favor of the twenty-mile drive north to this small town to attend his stepfather’s funeral. They’d never been close, their relationship a study in toleration. And after Sharp’s half sister died from an overdose, they rarely spoke again. And yet here he stood, carrying the banner for what remained of their family.
Roger Benson, RB to his friends, a talented artist and former chair of the local college’s art department, would have been embarrassed by the low turnout at his final tribute. Two decades ago, when Roger was in his prime, he had been a showman who’d inhaled attention and devoured the limelight. He once joked his memorial would be a festive event. He’d envisioned hundreds in attendance, a New Orleans–style brass band, and an open bar. Or course, there’d be a proper prayer or two. Tears from the ladies. Bemused male laughter over past exploits. And, in the end, a fitting celebration of a life well lived.
Sharp scanned the cemetery’s gray headstones, which skimmed the sloping hill toward a hedge and a stand of oaks ripe with orange and red leaves. The sky was a thick gray, and a southwesterly wind blew at ten knots.
A gleam of light glistening on a cross affixed to the coffin drew his attention to the four people behind the priest who stood at the head of the simple casket. To think so few had shown for the old man’s closing performance; that had to sting for whatever incarnation of Roger hovered in the ether.
To the right of the funeral attendant stood Benson’s former agent, Harvey Whitcomb, whose frequent cell phone checks undercut his bereaved expression. Benson’s attorney, Donna Conner, wore a dignified black pants suit, a strand of pearls, and an expression that looked more bored than bereaved. Last was Douglas Knox, the town’s former police chief, who’d shoehorned his expanded frame into a wrinkled gray suit.
Sharp had been ten when his mother, Adeline, a stunning woman with auburn hair and an infectious laugh, had been hired as Roger’s office assistant. Four months later she was pregnant, she and Roger were married, and Sharp and his mother moved to Roger’s lake house near the small college town north of Richmond.
From day one, Sharp and Roger had been at odds. Roger thought in shapes, sensations, and colors. Sharp clung to hard facts. Roger painted. Sharp shot empty bottles off a fence with a BB gun. Abstract versus linear lines. Joie de vivre met bull in a china shop.
As different as the two men were, they agreed on two things. They both loved Sharp’s mother, and they both loved the baby she and Roger had together. Katherine Whitney Benson. Kara to friends and family. Because of Kara, Sharp and Benson did their best to get along.
Twelve years ago when Kara disappeared after a college party, Sharp had been deployed in Iraq as a marine sniper and was stationed miles outside Al Fallūjah. When word of Kara’s death reached him, they’d been in the thick of some very nasty fighting. He wanted to leave immediately, but weeks would pass before the fighting eased enough so he could return home to his sister’s grave and a family torn into fragments.
Neither his mother, Benson, nor Sharp could really accept that Kara had died of an overdose. It simply didn’t fit the girl they’d loved so much. The devastating news had driven his mother to sedatives. Roger began harassing the police chief for any answer to explain why his only daughter was dead. And feeling helpless, Sharp had returned to Iraq.
His mother died a year after her daughter, and Roger grew more adamant about finding a reasonable explanation for why Kara was dead. No answers were ever unearthed, and the old man became more withdrawn and eccentric. When Sharp’s contract with the marines ended, he’d wanted to protect his home turf, not a far-off desert, so he joined the Virginia State Police. After eight years as a trooper, he was promoted to agent two years ago.
Rain droplets leaked from thickening clouds as the priest read from the Book of Common Prayer, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.”
When the service ended, the priest made the sign of the cross, then picked up a handful of dirt, which he gently tossed on the casket. Sharp followed suit, scooping up some soil and letting it drop from his fist.
The priest said a final prayer, and Sharp turned toward the two headstones next to the empty grave soon to be Roger’s final resting place.
He muscled off the heavy grief resettling on his shoulders as he stared at the stone-etched names of his mother and sister and the dates encapsulating their lives. Flexing his fingers, he suddenly realized he’d not brought flowers. Shit. It was a small failure but another in an endless succession.
His attention settled on Kara’s headstone, and most specifically, on the day she died. The actual date was a guess. She had been missing five days before her body was found propped against a tree by a country road, so October 21 represented the medical examiner’s best estimate. Her birthday was tomorrow. She’d have been thirty.