“It’s like he never left. Like he could just walk in here like he used to, pick up where he left off.”
“You loved him a lot.”
He nodded. “Still do.”
“He’d be proud of you, Sam. He is. I feel it.”
He met Megan’s eyes. Could she know what her saying that meant to him? Yeah, he thought. She knew. He’d never been with a woman who knew him the way Megan did.
“If he had kept anything related to work, private files or cases he was working on–”
“Mom found everything he had here, gave it to Ed.”
She tipped her head. “Probably. But there’s a chance she could have missed something. She must have, because I feel very strongly there’s something here. So where would he have kept them?”
Sam shrugged and looked around the room. The big oak desk took up most of one wall, face out, a chair behind it, so his father could sit there and work and still see the TV set. It held an oversized IBM Selectric typewriter with the soft cover securely in place, a leather blotter, an earthenware mug full of pens and pencils, a stack of blank sheets of paper, a paperweight–clear acrylic with a forever-frozen spider inside, a Father’s Day gift from Sam–and a couple of framed photos of the family, as they had been many years ago.
“I don’t know. The desk I suppose.” He moved behind his father’s desk and opened its drawers. None were locked, but then there was no reason why they should be. He didn’t find anything like what they were looking for in any of them, but the small center drawer’s contents brought him up short.
It held his father’s badge.
“I know this is hard for you, Sam. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry to put you through this.”
“I know you are.” He took the badge out and held it in his hands as he moved from the desk to the file cabinet, which was nearly empty. The badge was in a folder the size of a wallet, with his father’s photo ID card on one side and his badge on the other. He couldn’t stop looking at it as he searched the room. Within a few minutes, he realized Meg wasn’t joining him in the search. Instead she was standing patiently aside, while he checked all the obvious places. She seemed engrossed in the family photos on the desk.
She felt his eyes on her and looked up, meeting them; she offered him a sad smile. “Your father was a handsome man. You look like him.”
“Think so?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You can help me look, Meg.”
“It feels like a sacrilege,” she said softly. But she joined him in the search, even crouched down to look under the sofa and chair, while Sam checked beneath the cushions. He felt the backing and upholstery for unusual lumps or bulges. Nothing.
It was while he was performing that last little function that he dropped his father’s badge on the floor. Meg was on her hands and knees peering under the chair, and it fell right beside her hand. Naturally, she stopped what she was doing and picked it up, looking at it, her eyes somber as she rose to her feet.
And then her head snapped backward so hard Sam thought she might have wrenched her neck. Her eyes widened and rolled back, and she staggered backward until her body slammed into the bookcase.
“Megan!" Sam went to her, reached out to her, but she spun away from him, her arms flailing and knocking books to the floor.
“Easy, Megan, easy.”
“No, no, no!”
She wasn’t seeing him, wasn’t hearing him, he realized. She was seeing something else. Some vision brought on by the touch of his father’s badge.
God, he was almost afraid to speculate....
Meg backed into a corner and sank to the floor, curling her legs up to her chest, hugging them and rocking. Sam knelt beside her, touching her. “Megan,” he said. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. I’m right here.” He stroked her hair away from her face. But she didn’t seem to feel him, didn’t see him, was beyond his reach, and clutching his father’s badge in a death grip.
He could do nothing but leave her alone until it passed. She seemed to need space to recover. So he backed off, returning the books to the shelf to minimize his mother’s outrage at his invasion of what was, to her, sacred space. But when he lifted the first several volumes to the shelf, he stopped and just stood there, blinking.
In the space left by the fallen books, there appeared to be a false bottom on the bookshelf. He could see the fissures on either side of a short expanse of the wood. And when he gripped it and tugged, it came away, revealing a shoebox-sized compartment underneath. Inside that compartment was a manila envelope, folded in half, lengthwise, and tucked out of sight.
He pulled the envelope free, swallowing hard as he turned it over. But before he could examine the contents, Megan’s blood-chilling scream split the silence.
Megan shook off the debilitating impact of the vision and shot to her feet when she saw Chief Skinner walk through the door into the room. She tried to form words to warn Sam, but couldn’t seem to make her lips form anything coherent, and finally poured every ounce of energy she had into warning him in any way she could, clenching her fists, opening her mouth, forcing sound to come. The result was a scream.
Sam spun around, wide-eyed, an envelope in his hands, but it was too late. Skinner had already drawn his weapon and was pointing it. “I’ll take that file, Sam.”
“Ed, what the hell is going on here?” Sam asked.
The chief looked momentarily confused, then angry. “Trying to pretend you haven’t already figured it out isn’t going to help.”
"It didn’t help his father, after all. Did it, Chief?” Megan asked from behind him.
She’d found her voice. It was weak, shaky, far softer than normal, but at least she could put words together now.
The chief turned his head slightly. “Get over there next to him.” He directed her with his gun.
She stayed where she was, lowering her gaze to the badge she held in her hand. “I know what you did that night at the liquor store. I saw it, all of it.”
“You don’t know a damn thing, Ms. Rose.”
She looked past him, met Sam’s eyes. “They got the call. Armed robbery in progress, and they went over there. To Joe’s Wine and Spirits. There were tubes of red neon in the shape of a giant wine bottle in the front window. I don’t think it’s there anymore.”
“No. They closed it after–”
“Your father went around the back. Skinner went in through the front. The place was empty except for those two kids and the clerk, who was lying on the floor, unconscious, bleeding, maybe already dead. It was the perfect opportunity, wasn’t it, Chief?”
“What did you do?” Sam asked.
“Pulled his gun and shot both of the suspects,” Megan said softly. “Never shouted a warning. They didn’t even know he’d come inside. Your father heard the shots, came in to help. He saw that his friend had it under control, and he lowered his weapon.” She narrowed her eyes on Skinner. “That’s when you took the gun from one of the boys you’d killed, pointed it right at your best friend, saw the shock and horror in his eyes, and shot him down. Pumped three bullets into his head.”
“Stop it!” Skinner cried.