A Necessary Evil(23)

He’d been thinking of her all day, ever since Frankie had strolled into his office and thrown her name out like a grenade. Thinking of all the fun times they had together growing up. How they looked nothing alike, though they were fraternal twins. Kurt had always been shorter and a bit stocky with shaggy brown hair and standard-issue hazel eyes, while Addie had been tall and slender with long blonde hair and bewitchingly pale blue eyes. It was no wonder Frankie thought of Addie when he looked at his own granddaughter. Kurt had seen the resemblance in the very first photograph of her he’d seen, and it had taken his breath away.

And the similarities didn’t end with their stunning good looks, either. Both girls had been kidnapped in their late teens. Addie by Julian McAllister and Mollie by his son, whatever his name was. They’d both been taken in the dead of night on their way home from work. The only difference in their stories was that Mollie could still be alive. Addie hadn’t been lucky enough to live more than twelve hours. At least, that was what the police had told his family back in 1978. Kurt’s parents had sheltered him from the worst of the details about his twin sister’s murder, but years later, when he’d become a cop, he’d used his resources and connections to open his sister’s file and was able to see and read much more than he was prepared for.

According to the autopsy report written by then ME Harold Fortney, Addie had been severely beaten, raped, and eventually strangled with the killer’s bare hands before being dumped in the mouth of the Kentucky River, only a mile from the Jamison farmhouse. Kurt had thrown up in the wastebasket near his desk when he’d read this and seen the autopsy photos. His once beautiful eighteen-year-old sister’s body was white as alabaster. Green, purple, and blue bruises covered her arms, legs, torso, and face, and dark fingermarks were evident on her throat. It was the one and only time in his life he’d been thankful to Frankie for handling Julian McAllister his way instead of letting the law deal with him.

Remembering the file and the photos of his sister brought bile up the back of Kurt’s throat, and he spit it out into the sink. As he rinsed away the sickness, his mind went back to the day Frankie’s mother had come down into the basement where the two best friends were sharing a joint and arguing over whether Jimmy Page or Robert Plant was the true frontrunner of Led Zeppelin.



When Mrs. Cartwright said, “It’s Addie,” and told Kurt that her body had been found at the creek, Kurt stood frozen like a deer in headlights while Frankie had pushed past them both and bolted up the stairs. He didn’t know where Frankie was going, and he didn’t care, either. He stood there like a statue wondering how on earth it could have happened. As far as Kurt and his parents knew, Addie was spending the night with a friend after her shift at the local ice cream shop. No one had even known she was missing, let alone how her body wound up in the river.

His first assumption had been that she and her friends had gone down to hang out by the river, as most kids in the area did in those days. Perhaps she’d been drinking with her buddies and lost her footing or drowned in the treacherous undercurrent while swimming at night. It never once occurred to him that she’d been abducted, held prisoner, beaten, raped, and murdered by a madman. Kurt would go on assuming this until later that night when Frankie showed up at his doorstep insisting on seeing him, though Kurt had told his parents no visitors.

Kurt could still see the rabid look on Frankie’s face when he’d stepped out into the warm summer night and found his friend out of breath and rambling on about how he was going to catch the psychopath and make him pay.

“What psychopath?” Kurt had asked, still puzzled by his friend’s fury.

“The one who killed Addie,” Frankie had replied.

“She wasn’t murdered. She drowned in the river. She must have been goofing off or swimming or—”

“Shut up, Kurt!”

Kurt was taken aback. Frankie had never so much as raised his voice at him. Although they’d grown up together like brothers, they’d never squabbled the way some guys did. They never argued over a girl, or sports—or anything, for that matter.

“What’s wrong, Frankie? What are you talking about?”

“Addie was murdered. You seriously didn’t know?”

“Murdered? What? That can’t be true. She just drowned, that’s all.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Frankie’d said. “But I overheard my parents talking to the sheriff earlier. I’m sorry, buddy. Someone definitely killed Addie. But don’t worry. I’m gonna handle it.”

Kurt had been stunned into silence once again. It was as if he’d been punched in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. He’d stumbled backward and nearly toppled off the front porch, only catching himself on the railing at the last minute. “Who…who killed her?”

“I don’t know yet. But as soon as I find out, I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands. I know she was your sister, Kurt, but I loved her too.”



The ringing of his cell phone brought Kurt back to the present. He reached into his pocket, fished it out, and held it to his ear. “Detective Jamison.”

The voice on the other end belonged to the cyber forensic tech he’d spoken to earlier, telling him he’d managed to triangulate the last ping of Mollie’s cell phone. The tech gave Kurt the address of a run-down grocery store out on Delong, and as soon as he hung up, he plugged the address into his phone’s GPS and darted out the front door, completely forgetting about his shower.