The Fury hp-4 Read online

  Makhoulian took over. "The first entrance wound, combined with what we know about Mr. Gaines, suggests that his killer was right-handed and slightly shorter than him."

  I listened to this. "Wait," I said, looking at Makhou lian. "You said 'first' entrance wound."

  Makhoulian eyed Binks. Then he turned back to me.

  Binks said, "There was a second entrance wound. It went right through the occipital bone in the back of

  Gaines's skull. That bullet was still lodged in his head when Gaines was brought here."

  "I thought you said he was shot point-blank," I said.

  "How can you shoot someone in the head twice from point-blank range?"

  "Only the first wound was delivered from close range," Binks said, his voice growing softer. His fingers traced the path of a bullet as he showed where the first bullet entered Gaines's skull. "The second was delivered from about four feet away. From a downward trajec tory."

  Binks raised his arm with his forefinger and thumb cocked like a gun. He pointed it at the floor to demon strate the likely scenario. He continued, "There were no muzzle burn or gases expelled from the second shot.

  Despite the brain matter, the wound itself is oddly clean."

  "What does that mean?" I said.

  "Well," Binks said, scratching his nose with a gloved hand. "The impact and the trauma suggest the initial shot was fired from very close range. The brain matter and impact site…"

  "Impact what?" I said.

  "It's where the bullet impacts after exiting the body,"

  Makhoulian said. "In this case, ballistics found the first bullet in the wall about six feet off the ground. But they didn't find the bullet itself."

  "So the killer took it," I said.

  Makhoulian nodded.

  Binks continued. "The entry wound is nearly devoid of gases or burn marks. Considering the devastation and the impact site, it has all the marks of a point-blank shooting. See, normally when a bullet is fired, espe cially from close range, the wound will leave burn marks on the flesh, which is literally seared from the heat. In this case, the burn marks were nearly unde tectable."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "My guess?" Binks said. "The killer was using a silenced weapon. Now, very few guns have those kind of professional silencers you see in movies, that screw on like a lightbulb. Usually they're homemade, a length of aluminum tubing filled with steel wool or fiberglass."

  "Forensics is checking for both," Makhoulian added.

  "It's not just professionals who use them. Some hunters use silencers out of season. Even guys in their backyards shooting beer bottles who don't want their neighbors to hear. Of course, there's a chance the killer simply did it the old-fashioned way," Binks said, "and covered the muzzle with a pillow. The killer didn't need to be an expert in weaponry. In fact, there's a reason you see that in the movies. It's not going to dampen the noise completely, but as a quick fix-"

  "Please," I interrupted, pleading to either man.

  "Explain to me what the hell all this means."

  Makhoulian said, "It means whoever killed your brother shot him once in the back of the head with a silenced weapon. Then while he was lying on the ground, dying, the killer shot him one more time to finish the job. Your brother wasn't just killed, Henry. He was executed."

  4

  I followed Detective Sevi Makhoulian out of the examiner's office. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat outside, and Makhoulian approached it. He leaned up against the door. He took a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. I stood there watching him, unsure of what to do. What the next step was.

  "You still haven't told me why you're so convinced

  Stephen Gaines is my brother. And even if he is, why did you call me? " I asked. "I barely spoke two words to Gaines in the entire thirty seconds I knew him. So again, why me?"

  "You weren't our first choice, Henry," Makhoulian said, pocketing the cloth. "The first person we called was James Parker, your father. And Stephen's father."

  "Wait," I said. "We had the same father?"

  The detective nodded with no emotion. "You thought you were related through osmosis?"

  I hadn't had much time to really think about every thing, to consider what all this meant, but if Makhou lian was right and Gaines was my brother, we had to share a parent. And I could never picture my mother holding on to that kind of secret. There was no way she could keep that from me.

  My father was another story.

  From the first time I could think clearly, I recognized my father was the kind of man, who, if not your blood, you would go out of your way not to know.

  Even as a younger man, he was mean, belittling, nasty, vicious. Violent.

  That man was fifty-five now. In the last twenty years he'd never held a steady job. Never made enough money to move out of the house I grew up in, never desired to give my mother anything more than he had when they married. If anything, he took much of it away.

  He preferred swinging from branch to branch on the employment tree, always looking for a vocation where the bosses didn't mind if you showed up late, left early to drink, and showed no ambition to rise above foot soldier. Comfort was given highest priority. When I began to write first for my school paper, then took various internships before taking a paid job with the

  Bend Bulletin, James Parker approached it like I was up setting the gods of apathy. And hence upsetting his life.

  The harder I worked, the more work came home with me. My editors and sources would call at all hours of the night, and because this was before cell phones were more common than pennies, they would call my family's landline.

  I remember sitting at my desk, the phone resting inches from my hand while I wrote, my eye always flickering to the headset, waiting to pick it up the mil lisecond it rang. The system wasn't foolproof, but it's

  the best I could come up with. The trick was to simply be the first to answer the phone when it rang. The moment that shrill bell rang, the phone was in my hands. "Henry Parker," I would say, hoping if the call was for me, my father would simply leave it alone.

  Every now and then I was slow, distracted or in the shower, and he'd pick up. It meant I had to deal with hang-ups from sources who were scared off by unrec ognized voices on the other end. And if, heaven forbid, someone called during dinner, I could count on James

  Parker locking me in the garage. If I was lucky. And if

  I wasn't-I had a scar or two to motivate me to quicken my reaction times.

  My mother, Eve Parker, was withdrawn. I hate to say aloof because that wasn't it, but it seemed as though she'd been shell-shocked by her husband into a per petual state of submission. She rarely flinched, just went through the motions like an automaton who forgot that at one point she was human. I wondered what she had been like before she'd met James. If she'd been strong or vivacious. If she'd hoped to marry the man of her dreams. Or if somewhere, deep down, she was resigned to a life married to this thing that called himself a man.

  If anything, though, I had to credit James Parker with making me stronger. He made me work harder, longer, better, if only to give myself every chance of getting the hell away from that house. When I was growing up, I wasn't strong enough, mentally or physi cally, to stand up to him. Now, I was twice the man he ever was. And I considered him lucky that his son left before he could stand up to him the way that he deserved.

  "Wait," I said to Makhoulian. "If Stephen Gaines and I had the same father…who's Stephen's mother?"

  Makhoulian nodded, as though expecting this question to be asked sooner or later.

  "According to the birth certificate, her name is

  Helen Gaines."

  "I've never heard that name before," I said. "Where is she?"

  "Actually, I was hoping you could tell me," the de tective said. "All we know about Helen Gaines is that she was born in Bend, Oregon, in 1960. Her financial records show that she closed out her bank accounts in

  Oregon in 1980, and m
oved. Where, we don't know."

  "So if she was born in 1960, and Stephen Gaines was thirty, that means he was born in, what, 1979?"

  "March twenty-sixth," Makhoulian replied.

  "Then Helen Gaines was only nineteen when she gave birth to Stephen."

  "That's right."

  "And my father was…twenty-six. I know he married my mother when he was twenty-five. Jesus Christ, my father's mistress gave birth to his child while he was married to my mother."

  Makhoulian stood there silent. I don't know what he could have said. I rubbed my temples, still trying to process everything. I still hadn't spoken to Amanda all day. I felt like crawling into her arms, just sleeping for a while, hoping this would all have been some dream when my eyes finally opened.

  "Have you contacted my father yet?" I asked.

  "We've left several messages for him and your mother at home. None of them have been returned."

  "Not totally surprising," I said.

  "Is your father prone to ignoring calls from the police?" Makhoulian asked.

  "He's prone to ignoring any calls that aren't either

  Ed McMahon with a giant check or someone offering him a free longneck."

  Makhoulian let out a small laugh, not wanting to distort the gravity of the situation too much. "What about your mother?"

  "I think he purposely bought an answering machine she wouldn't know how to use. Let's just say last I heard, she didn't get many calls, didn't return many calls."

  The detective nodded. "Listen, if you do hear from your father, tell him to call me." Makhoulian took a card from his wallet, handed it to me. I looked it over, put it in my pocket.

  "I promise you I won't hear from him."

  "But if you do…"

  "If I do, I'll make sure he calls."

  "That's all I ask."

  "In return," I said, "will you keep me in the loop? Let me know if you have any suspects, how the investiga tion is going. If you catch the bastard."

  "Far as it doesn't interfere with the investigation, sure.

  I'll keep you informed. Again, I'm sorry for your loss."

  I shook Makhoulian's hand, then watched as he climbed into the Crown Vic and drove off. Once he was gone, I trudged to the subway, took it back uptown to my apartment. When I got out I called Wallace

  Langston at the Gazette. Nobody picked up, so I left a message on his voice mail.

  "Wallace, it's Henry. Listen, I don't know how to say this…a man who was apparently my brother was shot and killed last night. His name is Stephen Gaines. I don't know much else, but I had to let you know. I'll give you a call when I know more but…I thought you should know in case anyone calls for comment. Anyway, call me back."

  I hung up. Thought about it. I knew the Gazette would run a piece on the murder. Even though crime was down in the city, murders still got ink. It wouldn't be a long article. As of right now there was no suspect.

  There was no conspiracy. Gaines was a junkie, likely killed over whatever drug fiends were killed over.

  Stolen stashes. Territory beefs. He wasn't famous, wasn't some rich guy's son. Nobody knew him. Not even his family.

  It would get a paragraph, two at most. I wouldn't write it. And unless there were future developments, my brother's death would be just another junkie murder in a city where you'd need a landfill for all his brethren.

  Stephen Gaines's death was just as short and seem ingly unremarkable as his life.

  I entered my apartment to find Amanda sitting on the couch. She was reading a sports magazine, but didn't seem that interested in it. Her eyes perked up when I entered, then narrowed when she saw that mine did not.

  I took a seat on the couch next to her.

  Amanda and I had met several years ago. When I was wanted for murder, she was the only person brave enough to help me. She trusted me despite all common sense saying she shouldn't. I fell for her right away. It was easy. I'm a sucker for a beautiful woman with crisp, auburn hair, a smile that will make you stop in your tracks, wit that will keep you laughing all night and a perfectly placed mole by her collarbone that you could trace every night with your finger. Hypothetically.

  But despite all that, I nearly lost it all. I had pushed her away, and it wasn't until I spent time without her that I realized just how much I'd lost. She knew that because of the kind of person I was, the kind of job I had, she might be put in harm's way. As long as we faced obstacles together, she'd said, there was nothing we couldn't overcome. Since we'd reconciled, the last few months had been wonderful. We started our rela tionship going backward, in a way. We went out to dinners. We saw movies. I sent her flowers at work, she gave the best neck massages this side of the Golden

  Door Spa.

  Once we restarted our relationship, I made two promises to her. First, I would tell her everything. Even the hardest things, she would be allowed to judge and decide for herself. And second, every decision would be a joint one. I would never again make a decision about our relationship on my own. That was a hardlearned lesson. One I should have known right away.

  So sitting there next to her, I knew she had a right to know about what Detective Makhoulian told me about Stephen Gaines. And she had a right to know about my father.

  So I told her. Everything. I told her about seeing Gaines on the street. About the call from Detective Sevi Makhoulian. That Gaines had been murdered, viciously.

  And that my father had sired Stephen when his mother, Helen, was just nineteen. I still couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that Gaines was my brother. Certain things you can be told and accept as gospel. This was not one of them.

  When I finished, we both sat there. Amanda looked stunned, unsure of what to say. Putting myself in her shoes, I'd be lost for words as well. Finally she got up, went into the kitchen. I heard a few clanking noises, turned to see what was going on, but the door frame blocked my view.

  Amanda came out carrying two plastic cups, and a bottle of red wine. She sat the bottle down on the coffee table, peeled off the foil and uncorked it. She did so without a problem. She then poured two generous glasses, handed one to me.

  "I thought we might need this," she said.

  "It's amazing how you can read my mind even if I'm not thinking something."

  She took a healthy sip, and I did the same. Then I sat, twirling the cup in my hand.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked. I shook my head.

  "I don't know what I can do," I replied. "It's a police investigation. As far as the Gazette, they'll cover it, but nothing more than standard murder reporting unless something else breaks that gives the story legs."

  "Do you feel," she said hesitantly, "I don't know… sad?"

  I thought about that. "I don't think sad 's the right word."

  "So what is?"

  "Angry," I replied. "Mad. Pissed off. I want to know why I've lived nearly three decades without knowing any of this. If this is true, how could my father not have told me? I mean I know he's a bastard, but this is a life he chose to ignore. And I want to know why Stephen

  Gaines, after all this time, came to me for help. He'd lived thirty years without Henry Parker as his brother, and all of a sudden he decides to have a family gather ing outside my office one night? I don't buy that for a second."

  "You didn't know about him," Amanda said. "Do you think he knew about you?"

  "I honestly don't know. He knew about me right before he died. I don't know when he learned. If Helen

  Gaines told him about his family, or kept him in the dark like my parents did with me. I wish I knew."

  "So find out," Amanda said. "At least that much is in your hands."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know where your parents live. Where your father lives. Go ask him. Make him tell you the truth."

  I stood up, paced the room. "I don't know if I can do that. I haven't seen him in almost ten years. Bend isn't really my home anymore. I don't know if it ever was."

  "Your heart might be here,
but the truth is there," she said. "Today's Thursday. I can call in sick tomorrow."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "To go with you," she answered. "We're going to find out how much your father knows."

  5

  We woke at five in the morning having purchased plane tickets online the night before. We threw a few days' worth of clothing into a suitcase, then caught a cab to La Guardia. The minute the cab pulled away I realized I forgot my toothbrush.

  Living in New York had become increasingly diffi cult over the last few years. After some time when it looked like Manhattan would be the only city unaf fected by the subprime crisis, real-estate prices came tumbling down. Of course, we were renting, and there fore unaffected, and inflation was still rising faster than a hot-air balloon. My salary at the Gazette had barely seen a bump in my tenure, and working at the Legal Aid

  Society, a not-for-profit organization, Amanda wasn't exactly rolling in dough. At some point we would have to make a decision about our future. Where to live, where we could afford to live.

  I didn't want to leave the city, but I also wanted to think long-term. Many reporters commuted. Yet the fantasy of living in New York City always captivated me. It was one of the motivating factors that led me to

  the Gazette. And the possibility of working in the big city, seeing things I couldn't see anywhere else in the world, was one of the motivators that kept me going when I could barely stand another day in Bend with my family.

  We got to the airport and loaded up on coffee, a fat tening muffin nearly crumbling in my hands as I shoveled it into my mouth. We stopped at the magazine stand, where Amanda picked up her fashion and celeb rity mags and I bought a selection of newspapers.

  "I brought something else to read," she said, "but just in case." Amanda wasn't the kind of girl who waited in line at sample sales and had a separate closet for her shoes, but something about reading about the hottest beach bodies made plane rides go by quicker. Maybe I should give Cosmo a whirl.

  Sitting at the gate, I leafed through the Gazette. I felt my stomach clench when I turned to page eight and saw the two-paragraph article that started: