The Widening Gyre Read online

  The flight attendant placed his drink on the fold-down tray, along with a small scrap of paper. He already knew what she’d written. He knew the room number, knew she would be waiting for him, stretched out on the couch in all her glory, a glass of red wine in her hand. He already knew she would scream for more, and how her screams would change to something a little more frantic when she realized he was cutting her throat. He had a special place reserved for this one, too.

  He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the plush leather seat. The shotgun was a nice touch, Larry old buddy. Messy, but a nice touch. Too bad your timing was a little off. A few hours later, and half of my dilemma would’ve been eliminated. No bother, though. You’ll be paying for your mistake for a long, long time. He should’ve been there himself, but he’d decided to let good old Larry handle it. He’d pushed him, convinced him, and just when it looked like everything would turn out fine, Larry decided to go bonkers too early. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  About forty-five minutes later, the 757’s nose dipped slightly as the flight crew started their gradual descent into Omaha’s Eppley Airfield.

  11

  “Good work, Wilson,” Taggart said. They’d found the Sayres’ daughter safe and sound at a friend’s house just a few miles away.

  “We’d have found her sooner, but we had to handle another domestic. Some kid got smashed in the head with a baseball bat after getting into a fight over some girl. He’s in critical condition over at Nebraska Med.”

  “Wonderful. Is he gonna make it?”

  “They’re not sure.”

  Busy night. “How’s the Sayre girl doing?”

  “Better than you might expect. Apparently, the Williamses were watching the news and called their daughter as soon as the story popped up. The daughter brought the Sayre girl here right away. Callahan is in with her now.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “She knows her parents are dead, that’s about it. They’ve kept the TV off.”

  “Any word on next of kin?”

  “Only one. According to the girl, she has an aunt in Twin Creek, a Justine Harmon. We’ve got the sheriff trying to track her down right now.”

  “Good. Keep on it.” Taggart walked up to the front door and rang the bell. A moment later, a man dressed in a bathrobe, jeans, and slippers opened the door.

  “Sir, I’m Detective Jim Taggart.” He flashed his badge, and the man gave it a cursory glance.

  “Come in, Detective, please. I’m Derek Williams.”

  Taggart stepped inside and could smell coffee brewing, strong and black. It was obviously shaping up to be a long night for this family. Williams shut the front door and motioned toward the couch. “This is my wife, Sandra, and my daughter, Desiree.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Detective?” Sandra asked, trying to be a proper hostess, even under the circumstances. A young girl Taggart assumed was their daughter was sitting beside Sandra, eyes red and puffy from crying.

  “No ma’am,” Taggart said. “Thank you, though.”

  Officer Jill Callahan emerged from a side hallway. As if reading Taggart’s mind, she said, “Peyton Sayre is in the restroom. She’ll be out in a moment.”

  “They reported there was a shooting, and two people were dead,” Williams said. “Then they released the names, and we called Desiree right away. We knew she’d gone out with Peyton.”

  “Did you know Mr. and Mrs. Sayre?” Taggart asked.

  “Not at all,” Williams said, sounding slightly guilty. He glanced at his daughter. “The girls have been best friends for a few years, but Peyton’s never really spoken about her parents.” He paused. “What’s going to happen to her, Detective?”

  “We’re trying to contact her next of kin right now. Apparently she has an aunt in Twin Creek, but it may take some time to get in touch with her. Until then—”

  “Until then, she’ll stay with us,” Williams said, clearly more of a statement of fact than a suggestion. “This is the best place for her right now.”

  Good man. “I’d like to keep Officer Callahan here tonight also, if that’s all right with you. She’s trained in grief counseling, so she’ll stay close.”

  “That won’t be a problem at all,” Williams said. “Peyton can stay in our guest room in the basement. And Officer, there’s a couch down there too, if that’ll work for you.” Callahan nodded. “Sandra can get you some blankets and a pillow.”

  “Officer Callahan will bring Peyton to my office tomorrow morning,” Taggart said. “I need to ask her some questions.” The nagging feeling was still there, the sense that there was more to this than just a simple murder-suicide.

  Peyton entered the room and sat down on the couch next to Dezi.

  Taggart noticed she didn’t look like a kid who had just lost her parents. Her eyes were clear and bright, not puffy and red from crying like he expected. “Peyton, I’m Detective Taggart. I’m very sorry for what happened tonight.”

  Peyton nodded. “Thank you, Detective.” Her voice was quiet, yet strong. “I’m sorry for what happened tonight, too. My parents . . .” She looked down, unable to finish her statement.

  Taggart expected to see tears when she looked up at him again, but there were none. “Peyton, Officer Callahan will be staying with you tonight. If there’s anything you need, let her know and she’ll take care of it right away.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Peyton said. “There’s really no need for her to stay.”

  Callahan sat down beside Peyton and clasped her hand. “I’ll be here if you want to talk about it, Peyton.” She patted her own shoulder and said, “If you need one of these to cry on, this one works just fine.”

  “I’ll need to speak with you tomorrow for a little while, Peyton,” Taggart said. “Jill will bring you to my office at around nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay, Detective,” Peyton answered. “Nine o’clock.”

  Taggart excused himself and stepped back outside into the freezing winter night. He rubbed his eyes again, trying to wipe the fatigue away. It didn’t work.

  He was relieved the girl had been found, and was even more relieved now that he knew she was in good hands. But.

  The feeling of dread he’d felt outside of the Sayre house was still there. Something else was happening, going to happen, and he couldn’t logically explain why he felt the way he did. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, and knowing it was going to be one mother of a shoe when it did.

  It was a gut feeling. Something he’d learned to trust over the years.

  The Sayre kid was in danger.

  *

  “I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.”

  “Thank you, Officer Callahan.”

  “Call me Jill. Please.” Callahan’s smile was soft and soothing, conveying that underneath her uniform, there was a caring person willing to talk, just girl to girl.

  “Okay, Jill.” Peyton smiled. “But really, I’m fine.”

  “Get some rest now, okay?”

  “I’ll try.” Peyton settled back against her pillow, and Callahan closed the door.

  Peyton’s mind was whirling. Her parents were dead—she knew she should be sad, but the feeling just wasn’t there. There had been good times, so many years ago, but the two people who had once loved each other enough to bring her into the world had been dead long before tonight. They had started to die the first time Peyton felt the sting from a belt cruelly whipped across her back during a drunken frenzy. They died a little more when her mother no longer came running when she screamed. And when her tears no longer mattered, her parents were fully dead and gone.

  She tried to sleep, but couldn’t.

  It wasn’t because of her parents’ deaths.

  She had seen a face, at the party. A face that had opened a floodgate of emotions, and left a lingering tingle of happiness and joy.

  She realized it was the face of a boy she had seen once before.

 
In her dreams.

  12

  Morning had arrived much too quickly. Jim Taggart sat at his desk and stared at his third cup of coffee; the steam slowly rose in tiny swirls before vanishing. A half-eaten Danish lay on a napkin on the corner of his desk. Not enough sleep, too much caffeine, and a sugar bomb for breakfast were the perfect recipe for a crappy start to another crappy day. The Sayre report lay in a manila folder in front of him. Peyton was scheduled to be there in about forty-five minutes.

  There was a knock on his door.

  “Enter.”

  “Mornin’, boss.”

  At least he didn’t say it was a good morning. “What’s up, Wilson?”

  “The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office called a couple of minutes ago. They’ve contacted the Sayre girl’s aunt. She and her husband got back from a vacation this morning. They’ve agreed to take Peyton in as soon as possible.”

  “Is Social Services working it?”

  “The wheels are already turning. Shouldn’t be a problem to get her there within the week. And it gets better. The Harmons are foster parents, no kids of their own. They take in kids from troubled homes, as a matter of fact. Sounds like a perfect fit.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  Wilson handed Taggart a yellow stickie. “Husband’s name is Rick, 1307 Oak Hill Drive. They’ve lived in Twin Creek for the last fifteen years. Phone number is at the bottom.”

  Ever since he first heard the town’s name, something had been tugging at his memory. Now, it came to him. “Check my memory, Wilson. Twin Creek. Bank robbery about twenty years ago, right? Multiple homicides?”

  “Yeah,” Wilson said, “I forgot about that. Two brothers, right? One was killed, and the other one disappeared? I remember seeing it on the news when I was a kid.”

  “Thanks, Wilson, for making me feel old.” Taggart had been a beat cop then.

  “You bet.” Wilson smiled and shut the door behind him as he left.

  Taggart looked down at the photo of Peyton Sayre paper-clipped to the manila folder, most likely her latest school picture. Her eyes were just as he’d seen last night, deep and blue, shining with an inner light. He’d seen a lot of kids from troubled homes slowly slip away, piercing every imaginable part of their bodies, tattooing themselves, using drugs and alcohol, all because of the pain they were suffering at home. Not this girl. Peyton Sayre was one of the lucky ones, that much was obvious, but he still had the nagging sense that the other shoe was about to drop, and Peyton was in some kind of danger.

  As a man accustomed to dealing with facts and hard evidence, Taggart didn’t like that feeling.

  *

  Tom and Linda Regan sat at the edge of their son’s hospital bed. Their eyes were bloodshot, faces long and drawn. This was the second time they had been in a hospital room with their son, hoping he would survive. Once had been more than enough.

  Zach’s chest abruptly rose, and then slowly fell, with each cycle of the respirator. An intravenous line was taped to his wrist. The room was filled with the hushed electronic sounds of an intensive care unit, mindless machines functioning around the clock to keep flesh and blood alive.

  A doctor entered the room. “Mr. and Mrs. Regan? I’m Dr. Vinson.”

  Tom stood. “I’m Tom Regan, Zach’s father. And this is my wife, Linda.”

  Linda didn’t seem to hear either of them. She sat quietly at Zach’s bedside, holding his hand.

  “I don’t know how much they told you last night, but—”

  “Is he going to make it?” Tom said, wanting the doctor to cut to the chase.

  Dr. Vinson thought it better to speak to Tom alone, as he didn’t want to disturb the moment Linda was sharing with her boy. In his line of work, he knew those precious moments were sometimes heartbreakingly brief. Quietly he said, “Tom, can I speak to you in the hallway, please?”

  Both men walked out of the room and stood in the hallway of the ICU. The lights were dimmed, and nurses quietly walked from room to room checking on their patients. In each room lay a person fighting to live.

  Speaking to the parents of an injured child was one of the toughest parts of any doctor’s job, but not as difficult as telling a parent their child had died. Dr. Vinson hoped he wouldn’t have to have that conversation with the man standing before him. “Tom, Zach has suffered a serious blunt trauma to the back of his head. There were no fractures to the skull, and for that we should be extremely grateful. Right now, he’s in a therapeutic coma.”

  “Oh, dear God.” A little bit of hope faded from Tom’s face.

  “After head injuries like this, the brain swells and presses against the inside of the skull. If the pressure is excessive, it can cause further injury to the brain tissue, which is something we want to avoid. Zach is on a ventilator, and we’ve given him medications to deepen his sleep state and reduce the swelling. We’re helping him breathe, and monitoring his other vital functions. We’re doing what we can to help his brain overcome its injury.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Tom asked.

  Doctor Vinson knew providing false hope was comforting, but also brutally cruel. When Zach was first brought in, he’d scored a 7 on the 15-point Glascow Coma Scale—a series of neurological tests to measure his eye, verbal, and motor responses—which meant they would have to intubate, help him breathe. The first two scans of Zach’s brain showed the swelling wasn’t pressing on the brain stem, at least not yet. If it did, their efforts would all be for naught. “If we make it through the first forty-eight hours, which it appears right now that we will, the next seven to ten days are critical. If Zach survives to that point, we’re over the initial hurdles, but you have to be prepared for the possibility that Zach won’t make it.” He put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’ve been in the medical profession for thirty-five years, and I’ve seen a lot of injuries just like Zach’s. We’ll do all we can, but what he needs most right now is his family by his side, letting him know you’re there, and telling him that you love him. That’s stronger medicine than I could ever provide.”

  13

  Callahan brought Peyton Sayre to Taggart’s office a few minutes before nine. “Good morning, Peyton,” he said. “Come in and sit down.” She wore different clothes than she’d been wearing the night before, probably borrowed from her friend. She’d obviously showered, done her hair, and put on her makeup, not exactly what he expected to see.

  “Thank you, sir.” Her voice was quiet, soft.

  “I’d like to talk to you about . . . last night. If it gets too difficult, we’ll take a break.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He knew Callahan hadn’t told her any specifics, but he wasn’t sure if the Williamses had told her anything. “Do you know what happened inside your house?”

  “No sir, I don’t.”

  Taggart nodded, and sighed. “There’s no easy way to say this, Peyton. It appears as if your father shot and killed your mother, and then killed himself.” He expected a moment of shock, maybe tears, but her response was calm, reasoned.

  “Detective, my mother and father died a long time ago,” Peyton said. “I feel bad that my parents caused all this trouble.”

  Taggart thought Peyton sounded thirty, not seventeen. “You don’t need to apologize for what happened. None of this was your fault.”

  “There was a time when I thought it was,” Peyton said. “It took me a long time to realize that it had nothing to do with me, and to be honest, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier than it did.”

  “How would you describe their relationship, Peyton?” He’d seen the bruises on her mother’s arms, felt the sense of despair within the unkempt house, and knew what she’d say. He wanted to hear it in her own words, though, hoping it would explain her lack of emotion.

  Peyton took a deep breath. “It started when I was little. My father lost his job—he hurt his back—and the company let him go. He couldn’t find any work, and we had to keep moving to smaller and cheaper places to live. He started working od
d jobs, but he never really got over it. He started drinking when I was about five. When he drank, he got mean.” She paused.

  Taggart had a pretty good idea how the rest of her story would unfold. Unfortunately, he had heard it before. For some people, when the day-to-day pressures of life became too tough to handle, they just gave up and turned to drugs or booze.

  “At first, it was just a lot of yelling,” Peyton continued. “Then he started hitting. My mother first. Then me.”

  “Did she ever try to—”

  “Leave?” Peyton completed the question for him. “When he started drinking, my mother turned to pain-killers. After a while, those little brown bottles were all she cared about. She forgot about me.”

  Taggart remained silent, letting her tell her story. He had a feeling he was the first person to hear it.

  “I think he would’ve killed me, too, if I’d been home.”

  Finally, a tear. Taggart handed her a tissue.

  “What’s going to happen to me now?” she asked.

  For the first time, Taggart saw uncertainty in Peyton’s eyes. She was alone now, not yet ready to live on her own as an adult, and her immediate future would be decided by people she didn’t know. Taggart hoped what he was about to tell her would alleviate some of her apprehension. “We were able to contact your aunt Justine this morning, Peyton. She agreed to take you in right away. She mentioned she hadn’t spoken to your parents for years. Do you know much about her?”

  “She, Justine, was nice to me when I was little. She really wants me to come live with her?”

  “If you want to go, we’ll make it happen. If not, you’ll be placed in a foster home until you’re of legal age . . . which is in a few months, right?”

  Peyton nodded. “I—I want to go, but I don’t know where she lives. I know it’s somewhere in the state, but I’m not sure where.”

  Taggart glanced down at his notes. “She and her husband, Rick, live in Twin Creek, about an hour northwest of here.”

  Peyton’s heart began to race. Hearing Twin Creek sent a shock wave of emotions through her body, a compelling sense of urgency she couldn’t explain. She should feel scared to leave Omaha and head to another town to live with people she didn’t really know, but for some reason, going to Twin Creek seemed like a puzzle piece falling into place. It just felt right. She wasn’t scared at all. She was excited.