Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(6)

Chapter 3




Without warning, Jared abruptly lurched to his feet, mumbling something about needing to use the restroom.

“That way,” I said, pointing him toward the powder room. Fortunately, after Mr. Roto-Rooter left, I had gone through the house and made sure everything was draining properly. Jared probably did need to use the restroom, because I heard him flush a minute or so before the door opened and he emerged, but I’m pretty sure the real reason he fled the living room was to avoid letting me see his sudden onset of tears. Too bad for him, because I already had.

While he was gone, I refilled our coffee cups and released Sarah from her wait on the rug. By the time he returned, Sarah had stretched out full length on the sofa with her head resting in my lap. (Yes, we’re the kind of household where dogs are allowed on the furniture.) As a result Jared took a seat facing me, and that was exactly what I’d intended. When we’d been sitting side by side, I’d only been able to observe him in profile. When it came time for him to tell me the rest of the story, I wanted to be able to look him in the eye.

Jared picked up his coffee mug and stared into the dark depths of it the same way I used to stare into glasses full of MacNaughton’s. I knew from experience that the answers he was seeking still weren’t to be found there, but I had the good sense to wait him out by changing the subject.

“How’d you find me?” I asked. Mel’s chief of police, so we don’t exactly post the location of our residences in public forums.

“Molly,” Jared replied. “Molly Lindstrom.”

Molly is the widow of Big Al Lindstrom who was once my partner, too. After he was injured on the job, I ended up being partnered with Sue Danielson, but he had known her as a fellow member of the homicide squad, and both he and Molly had attended Sue’s memorial service. The last time I saw Molly had been at Big Al’s funeral. I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t done a better job of staying in touch with her. While she, on the other hand, had clearly made the effort to stay in touch with Sue’s mother and the two boys. And I had no doubt she had done so the old-fashioned way, with handwritten cards and letters rather than emoji-filled texts and e-mails. In other words two black marks on my name as opposed to just one.

Awash with an added layer of self-recrimination, I gave Jared a nudge. “What’s really going on, Jared?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

“Chris blames me,” he answered at last.

I was baffled. “Blames you for what?” I asked.

“For our mom’s death,” Jared said, almost choking on the words. “He thinks if I had called the cops sooner instead of running away from the house the way we did, maybe Dad wouldn’t have killed her.”

I felt an instant flash of outrage. Jared had been a true hero that night. With his folks arguing in the living room and with Christopher still asleep in his bed, Jared had called to alert me about what was going on. I’d been south of Seattle outside Auburn when his call came in, but I knew that having squads of patrol cars show up with sirens blaring and lights flashing would likely make things worse. So I had told Jared to throw whatever cushioning he could find outside the window to soften their landings and then take his little brother and run, and that’s exactly what Jared had done—he followed my instructions to the letter.

Were those instructions wrong? I’ve certainly questioned them myself often enough over the years. Maybe having armed officers show up on the scene might have resulted in a different outcome, and Sue wouldn’t have died. But in no way was Jared to blame for any of it. I believe to this day that if the two boys had remained in the house, they would have perished right along with their mother.

“You know that’s not true,” I offered quietly.

“Do I?” he asked bleakly.

“Jared, you were only a kid,” I told him. “What you did that night to save your little brother was brave beyond belief.”

“It’s beyond belief, all right,” Jared retorted, “at least as far as Chris is concerned.”

“What makes you think he blames you for what happened?”

“He told me so,” Jared replied, “time and again.”

Passing blame around made it sound to me as though maybe Christopher Danielson was a chip off his father’s old block. “So tell me about Chris,” I said. “What’s his deal?”

Jared sighed again before he answered. Whoever wrote that line “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” never met Jared Danielson’s little bro.

“With both our parents gone, our mom’s folks—our grandparents, Annie and Frank Hinkle—took us back home to Monroe, Ohio, to live with them. It was a good place to grow up, or at least it was for me if not for Chris. I graduated from high school and won a scholarship to Ohio State. By the time Chris was in eighth grade, he was already smoking, drinking, ditching school, and sneaking out of the house at night. Gramps was an Eagle Scout kind of guy. Whenever he tried to get Chris to straighten up and fly right, Chris backtalked like crazy. He barely made it through eighth grade, but right after graduation he snuck into their bedroom one night, stole money out of both Grandma’s purse and Grandpa’s wallet, and then took off.

“Naturally they were worried sick about it and reported him missing. The cops looked for him but couldn’t find him anywhere. Three months later our dad’s mother, Linda Danielson, wrote to Grandma Hinkle saying that Chris had turned up on their doorstep in Homer, Alaska, asking to stay. She said he claimed he’d run away because Grandpa Hinkle had beaten him with his belt, something I can tell you for sure never happened. Gramps wasn’t that way. She said that since Chris wanted to live with her and Grandpa Danielson, she needed his school transcripts and shot records so she could get him enrolled in high school there.”