The Fury - Jason Pinter [40]
Nobody had any idea of the whereabouts of Helen
Gaines. She hadn't called the police. Hadn't stopped
anywhere for help.
She'd just disappeared.
It might have just been me, but that didn't seem like
typical behavior for a woman whose only son had just
recently been killed. Especially when the alleged
murderer was locked up awaiting trial.
I had no idea how this would play in regards to my
father. Stephen Gaines was still dead. The police were
still figuring out if anything in the cabin was missing.
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If they could chalk it up to a burglary gone horribly
wrong. Or if there was something else. Another reason
the intruders had come to that cabin in the middle of the
night.
Regardless of how the autopsy and discovery came
out, I couldn't believe the murder was the result of a
botched robbery. The killers had brought in weapons.
For protection? Maybe. To scare any residents?
Perhaps. Or maybe they brought them because they
were there for the sole purpose of killing Helen Gaines.
And Beth-Ann Downing just got in the way.
On the ride back from Blue Lake Mountain, neither
Amanda nor I said a word. The iPod sat on the armrest
untouched. We had no coffee, no snacks. It was just
completely and utterly silent.
I parked the car on the street near my apartment.
Amanda came upstairs with me.
Upon opening the door, I had a momentary burst
of fear. I generally took my safety for granted, despite
the fact that I'd been the recipient of some fairly
severe beatings over the past few years. I had scars
on my leg, my hand and my chest as a result of in
truders. Yet I wanted to believe I was safe. With
Amanda I usually felt that way. But tonight, after
seeing how another person's life--a helpless
person--could be invaded and snuffed out so quickly,
it made me rethink the simple dead bolt that protected
my apartment.
"Did you see," Amanda said, forcing the words out,
"all that blood?"
I nodded. Went into the kitchen and poured us each
a glass of water. Amanda gulped hers down while I sat
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there holding the cool glass in my hands, wondering just
what the hell was going on.
It didn't make sense that Helen Gaines would be on
the run. I had to assume my father did not kill Stephen
Gaines. I also had to assume that Helen Gaines knew
who the real killer was. And if that was true, she fled
because she did not feel like contacting the police. She
fled because of something she knew, either about her
son or his killer.
She'd gone to upstate New York to hide from some
thing or someone. And not just from her son's killer.
From something larger. If you fear one person, that fear
can be contained, limited. Controlled. You can seek the
help of cops, lawyers. There are always people who can
help.
What exactly was Helen Gaines fleeing from?
I thought about what Binks and Makhoulian talked
about at the medical examiner's office. Binks said that
Stephen Gaines was killed by a pistol likely covered by
some sort of makeshift silencer. That insinuated the
murder was premeditated. Of course, any prosecutor
could make the claim that my father made up his mind
to kill Stephen, that his death would allow my father to
keep on living without paying the money Helen wanted,
or exposing his bastard child to his family. The motive
would still hold up.
But then I thought about seeing Beth-Ann Downing
lying facedown in that pool of blood. The scene was
gruesome and hard to look at, yet I'd trained myself to
do just that. You had to divest yourself of any emotional
attachment. Present the facts. They would tell the story
themselves.
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Beth was lying in a pool of blood. I remembered
seeing something floating in that pool. A small piece of
gray hair. I hadn't thought much about it then, merely
processed it into my memory, but now I called it back
up.
The strand was very thin, very short, almost a hair's
width. But it wasn't hair--it was metal.
The conversation with Binks and Makhoulian came
back to me. The silenced gun that