Their Last Secret Page 12

  “There you are, Kayla!”

  She turned to the happy face of Clara Jean O’Connor who took her hand and nodded to cameras milling through the activity.

  “The TV people are here! They want to interview your dad, you and Emma. We’re going to meet them at your dad’s table.”

  * * *

  “Do you have westerns?” a man with silver hair, wearing a gingham shirt and a bolo tie, asked Emma. “I’m looking for Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour.”

  “Westerns are in row twenty.” Emma pointed to the sign.

  “I thank you kindly, miss.”

  As the man made his way, Emma’s smile faded and she returned to her problems. Angry that Marisa Joyce Narmore had slipped away from her on the freeway before she could get answers about the note. Emma would have to try again with Marisa soon.

  Then there was Kayla with her questions about her past. Emma hated lying to her and to Ben. But she had to, to protect them. She hoped one day she could undo her lies and reveal the truth.

  But right now her plight was bearing down on her, with fears she was being followed. And, with the anniversary nearing, and every news item in the Canadian media about the case, Emma felt like she was running out of time.

  “Emma!” Clara Jean O’Connor approached, waving to her and pointing to TV news cameras. “They want you.”

  * * *

  Emma’s stomach clenched as she threaded her way through the crowd to join Kayla, Clara Jean and the TV people waiting at Ben’s table.

  Clara Jean, her face flushed with excitement, indicated the two camera operators and two reporters.

  “Wonderful,” Clara Jean said, “everyone’s here. We’re so happy to have two teams from the Santa Ana bureaus of their L.A. stations. This is Maggie and Ron.”

  “It’s Rob, Rob Gallo with KRVZ First News.” He offered a dazzling white-toothed smile, shook everyone’s hand with one hand while his other gripped a microphone. “Love your books, Ben.”

  “I’m Maggie Shen, with KTKT.” She followed suit. “You’ve got a lot of people waiting for you, Ben,” she said, “so Rob and I decided we could do this together, quickly. Promise to keep it short.”

  “Sure,” Ben said.

  “Then when we wrap, we’ll talk to you separately, Clara,” Maggie said.

  “Wonderful,” Clara Jean said. “This is our opening day. Please don’t forget to tell your viewers we have two more to go.”

  “Yes.” Maggie held up her phone. “It’s all here in the news release you sent us.” Then to the Grants: “If you guys could get a little closer together.”

  Ben, Kayla and Emma moved closer.

  “Great.” Maggie got her microphone ready. “Just look at Rob and me like we’re having a regular conversation. Don’t worry about the cameras.”

  The operators hoisted the cameras up on their shoulders.

  “Good to go.” Maggie smiled. “So Ben, what brings a world-famous author and his family to this event today?”

  “The proceeds go to literacy programs across the county. It’s an effort me and my family support wholeheartedly.” Ben indicated Kayla and Emma, whom he’d noticed had slid on large sunglasses. “We were happy to join the countless volunteers and do our part to launch this three-day event and make it a success.”

  “Ben, I have to ask,” Rob said, “it’s been a few years since your personal tragedy. One could only imagine how you, if you ever do, recover from a blow like that.”

  Ben nodded, bracing for whatever was coming.

  “What I’m getting at is, it’s been years since your last book. Can we tell your readers that another book is coming and when?”

  “Yes. Well, what I can say is that a new book is being planned.”

  Emma turned her head to him, listening intently.

  “I can’t tell you what it will be about, but a new one is being planned.”

  “Great, will it be a local case or an international one?”

  “I can’t reveal that yet,” Ben said.

  “Kayla.” Maggie moved her microphone to her. “It’s great that you’re here helping. Why did you come?”

  “Like my dad said, it’s a good cause and it’s something my mom would’ve done.”

  “Have you decided on a career path?” Maggie asked. “Are you going to be a writer, like your dad?”

  “I’d like to be a reporter, like my mom and dad were.”

  “And what about you, Mrs. Grant?” Rob glanced at his notebook. “I’m sorry, Emma. Are you a writer or a journalist? Is that why you’re here?”

  Emma pushed her glasses closer to her face. “I’m a school counselor. I think Ben and Kayla said it best—this is a terrific cause and—” she cast an arm to the people jam-packed amid the books, as if to divert attention from herself “—you can see, a lot of people support it.”

  “Indeed,” Maggie said. “Okay, I think we’re good. Thank you.”

  The cameras were lowered and Emma disappeared into the crowd, leaving Ben and Kayla to exchange glances and shrug at her donning of sunglasses and hasty departure.

  Twenty-Four

  Winnipeg, Manitoba

  2000

  KILL THEM ALL

  The enlarged photo showing the blood-scrawled message was affixed to one of the big rolling whiteboards in the RCMP’s crime lab.

  The facility was housed in a low, wide building with a stylistic cluster of red circular chimneys on Academy Road. This was where a team of experts with Forensic Identification Services had been working around the clock processing the exhibits collected from the Tullock murders, going all out to find who was behind the killings.

  Autopsy results provided by the province’s Medical Examiner’s Office, which was located across the city, had confirmed that all the victims died of stab wounds. Specifically, Roy’s left carotid artery was severed from behind, consistent with a cut throat. Linda and Neal died from wounds that had pierced their hearts. Connie died as a result of injuries suffered from multiple stab wounds to her organs. The weapons used were steak knives recovered at the scene from a set belonging to the household.

  Given the horrific magnitude of the crimes, given that no suspects had been arrested, the case had been assigned the highest priority and the brass at National Headquarters in Ottawa was monitoring results.

  Sergeant Amanda Marsh, the Forensic Identification Specialist who headed the FIS team from the first call to Old Pioneer Road, had been given authority to bring in every specialist and assistant available. Her commanders had arranged for others from Regina and Edmonton to be flown in to help.

  Marsh glanced again from her worktable at the chilling message. Its meaning is for the profilers to decipher. She then looked at the other forensic experts quietly concentrating on examining and processing material.

  Other whiteboards rolled against the wall displayed gruesome crime scene photos, showing positioning of the bodies and the knives. One board held drawings, detailed like blueprints, offering a site plan of the Tullock home, showing the basement, main and second floors, and the yard. The drawings had legends with corresponding color-coded keys, numbers and letters pinpointing “blood drops,”

  “blood on grass,”

  “blood on windowsill,”

  “blood on floor,”

  “blood on stairs,”

  “blood on wall,”

  “blood pooled,” and “large pool standing blood.”

  One of the whiteboards had photos and a map locating the small, empty glass vodka bottle that was discovered by a K-9 unit before it lost the trail leading into town. Another board held charts and checklists.

  Much work had been completed, but more needed to be done.

  At the scene, they had searched, recorded and preserved latent and visible fingerprints from the knives, the bloodied message, basement windowsill, door handle
s, doors, walls, kitchen, bathrooms and the vodka bottle. They were submitted electronically to Ottawa for an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) search against the national repository of fingerprint and criminal record information. They were also checked against local records and the set of elimination prints volunteered by people who had been in, or had access to, the Tullock house.

  Marsh also reviewed the painstaking work on the footwear impressions found in blood at the scene. They’d been photographed and in some cases they’d been lifted using casting silicone. The impressions were then searched digitally against various databases, including those with images from other crime scenes, and those provided by shoe manufacturers.

  FIS also worked on the shoes volunteered by people who’d had access to the house, making test impressions and photographing them, studying and recording the outsole size, the pattern and wear, such as cuts, nicks and embedded objects. Further processing involved comparing the impressions with those found in the blood pools and partial tracks throughout the house.

  Marsh was confident the team would produce results soon.

  At one end of the room she’d posted photos of the Tullock family, aglow in happier times, to remind everyone on the case that they had a profound duty to see that justice was done. For a moment she thought of Torrie Tullock, the lone survivor and what she’d have to live with for the rest of her life. Then Marsh allowed a personal thought of her own family, her son and daughter, her husband, a fighter pilot, and how fragile life was, when her line rang.

  “Amanda, it’s Teresa. I’ve got something.”

  Marsh went down the hall to the workstation of Corporal Teresa Honchar, one of the RCMP’s most seasoned fingerprint experts. She’d been at it for twenty-two years. When Marsh entered, she saw two images of fingerprints splitting one of Honchar’s two large monitors.

  “Okay.” Honchar pointed with her capped pen. “Look at the loops, whorls and arches against the sample.”

  “Consistent.”

  “Yup, and all minutiae points match. The branching of the ridges match. I got twenty clear points of comparison on this one. It’s solid for court as a match. This comes from the knife, the windowsill, the bottle, the message, all over the place.”

  “And the hit?”

  “It’s local. The prints come from a shoplifting case.” Honchar typed a command. “Here’s the record.”

  Marsh looked at the subject’s photos, the ID and the abstract of the incident at a drugstore in Eternity concerning a teenage girl’s theft of eyeliner.

  “Wow,” Marsh said.

  “There’s more.” Honchar entered new commands cuing up new prints on her monitor. “Got a solid match with a second subject whose prints were found in all the same places, in the blood, on the knives, the windowsill.”

  “And was the hit local or from AFIS?”

  “Neither. This came from the set volunteered for elimination.”

  “From the elimination set?”

  “Yup, and here’s who they belong to.”

  Marsh stared at the information.

  “Amanda,” Honchar continued, “I also have a third set of prints I’ve been unable to identify, on the knives, in the blood, the windowsill, everywhere.”

  A short silence followed as they both digested the ramifications of the break in the case.

  “This is a heck of a thing we’ve got here,” Honchar said. “I haven’t seen anything like this.”

  Marsh nodded. Before returning to her table, she was stopped by Corporal Steve Egerton, in charge of processing footwear impressions.

  “Was looking for you,” Egerton said. “I’ve got three distinct sets in the blood, tracked in the house and at the windowsill, indicating three individuals involved.”

  “Three?”

  “There’s a lot of overlapping so there’s a remote, very remote, possibility of four,” Egerton said. “But I can confirm three sets and we have a match on one of them. It comes from footwear that was volunteered.”

  Egerton opened a file folder and handed Marsh the information on the owner of the shoes: one of the two people whose prints Honchar had identified, the ones that had been volunteered.

  “Thanks, Steve.”

  Marsh returned to her desk, taking in the significant developments. Forensic analysis of the evidence showed that at least three individuals were behind the Tullock family murders. They had the identities of two of the suspects. The evidence did not identify who the third person was but when investigators arrested the first two, it would likely point them to a third. Evidence seized from that person may be conclusive.

  Marsh was mindful of the fact that the evidence did not show who did what, but it unraveled the mystery on who was behind it.

  As Marsh reached for her phone to alert Sergeant Lou Sloan, she stared again at the scrawled message, then the photos of the Tullock family.

  This one’s beyond comprehension.

  Twenty-Five

  Cielo Valle, Orange County, California

  Present day

  “I see,” Doctor Hirsch said over the line as Ben updated her on Kayla during their scheduled call.

  Ben was home alone in his office. He’d shut the door, put Hirsch on speaker and related Kayla’s recent history.

  “Interesting,” Hirsch said as Ben concluded. “It appears Kayla is going through some prolonged grief.”

  “Prolonged grief?”

  “Yes, and entwined in her grief is loyalty to her mother and the subconscious fear that if she should accept and love Emma, her stepmother, it would be a betrayal to her mother.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what appears to be happening. You see, Ben, in these cases the only way for a stepchild and stepmom to have a healthy relationship is for the biological mother to encourage it, in essence to release the child from their singular loyalty.”

  “Right.”

  “But in Kayla’s case, that permission or encouragement cannot be given for obvious reasons. Kayla reinforces her loyalty to her mom with her rejection of Emma, and it’s manifested with her ‘suspicions’ that she’s an imposter, making her an unacceptable replacement. That’s Kayla’s way of coping and it’s also her challenge.”

  “That seems to fit. It might also explain Kayla’s acting out.”

  “That would also be part of it, certainly. And the more Emma is loving and warm toward Kayla, the more conflicted Kayla becomes because her natural inclination to reciprocate is bound to her loyalty to her mother.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Kayla had done well before our sessions ended a while ago.”

  “Yes, this new stuff seems to have surfaced after Emma came into our lives.”

  “All right, then if Kayla’s agreeable to come back and see me, we can set up an appointment schedule.”

  “She may be reluctant. I’ll have to talk to Kayla, and Emma, too. Let me first give it some thought.”

  “Take your time, Ben.”

  The call ended and Tug came into the office, putting his head on Ben’s lap.

  “Why don’t you go through your door outside to the back?” Ben knew Tug was bothered by the chlorine and wouldn’t go in the pool but he liked to trot around it. “Go out and get some exercise.”

  Ben patted Tug as he tried to process Hirsch’s unofficial assessment of Kayla. A moment later his computer pinged.

  Need to talk. Stand by. I’ll call you soon.

  That was all Roz Rose said in her email.

  Twenty-Six

  Cielo Valle, Orange County, California

  Present day

  After reading Roz Rose’s email, Ben continued studying the confidential files he had acquired on the Swedish case with growing interest.

  He’d started work on them prior to his call with Doctor Hirsch.

  The sto
ry of the married surgeons and the vile acts they’d committed could be analyzed on so many levels. They were devotees of the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche and Josef Mengele. This was a breakdown of humanity. Two respected, privileged members of society had flourished in secret visiting evil on the vulnerable. After Ben replayed the dungeon video, he’d come to a decision.

  This was the one. This story had to be told.

  Relieved he’d landed on a case, he began thinking ahead. He’d go to Stockholm, rent a place to stay while he researched the book.

  There were many players he’d need to talk to, the investigators, the families—the doctors themselves, if they consented to it. He knew the drill. He also thought about the possibility of Emma and Kayla joining him when he was done—they could take a family vacation across Europe. He’d likely need the break from all the dark elements of the story before he returned to California to write.

  Roz and Adam, his editor, would be happy.

  This could work out, he thought, feeling a spark of renewed energy.

  Ben then typed on his keyboard, went online to the sites of the TV stations, KRVZ and KTKT, and again watched the short reports on the book fund-raiser. It had been a week since they’d been broadcast and posted. They made him smile.

  Here we are: a family.

  As he watched Kayla, Ben thought about his call with Doctor Hirsch and her observations on why Kayla was rejecting Emma and regarding her as an imposter of sorts.

  We’re going to have to work on that.

  His phone rang. Roz.

  “I’m afraid I got some bad news,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “The publisher’s lawyers had concerns with the stories we’d sent you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It started with the Swedish case. Apparently, the defense lawyers for the doctors and the prosecution got wind that you might be considering the case for a book.”