Thicker Than Water (24 page)

Mobley gave them a few seconds, then walked over.

“Stand up, Brian. You're under arrest.”

Brian didn't move. Finally, Scott helped his brother to his feet. Brian stood there, wavering, his face streaked, his eyes panicked. Scott took his brother's face in his hands, looking him in the eyes.

“Brian, listen to me,” Scott said. “Don't say a word, not one damn word. I'll be there as soon as I can. Do you hear me?”

Brian closed his eyes.

Scott shook him. “Brian! Do you hear me?”

Brian nodded weakly. Scott let go.

Louis watched as a deputy led Brian away, Scott following. Mobley was giving orders to the deputies. Louis turned and walked back into the cabana.

He went back to the hole in the wall. He stared at the skeleton. The tilt of the skull made it look almost like it was in mourning.

He moved closer. He could see it was a female.

The red fabric was a skirt, deep brown stains of dried blood running down the front of it. The yellowed cloth was streaked with brown splotches. There was a pink band around the skull and a necklace of some kind hung between the clavicle and sternum.

Louis squatted down so he could see the necklace.

Dear God.

He heard the crunch of Mobley's boots on the broken tile behind him.

Mobley let out a slow breath. “Who the hell is that?” he said softly.

Louis couldn't take his eyes off the necklace. “I know who she is.”

The bones were laid out on the steel table.

She had been tall,
Louis thought, as he stared at them. Just like her father, Bob Ahnert.

Louis sipped his coffee, his eyes going to the items that Vince had carefully laid out on a table nearby. A ragged red skirt, the yellowed blouse stained with brown blood. A beaded pink headband they had taken from the skull. The small white puka beads taken from around her vertebrae.

Louis stared at the skull, at the crack, high on the cheekbone. Vince had told him someone had hit Lou Ann Ahnert hard, hard enough to crack her face open.

Shit.
He threw the empty styrofoam cup in the trash.

He thought he had it all figured out.

He had spent hours at the house, watching the techs dismantle the wall, carefully sorting the bones and scraping the hard dried blood off the plywood behind them. He had stayed as they went back through the house, searching for anything that might have been missed. They were working two homicides now—Kitty Jagger's and Lou Ann Ahnert's. They still had found no evidence that Kitty had been killed there. And they didn't know who had killed Lou Ann Ahnert. But at least they knew now that Brian Brenner had something to hide.

A sound behind him made Louis turn. Christ, it was Bob Ahnert.

He was standing at the door, his beefy face drawn, his eyes red. Louis knew that Mobley had already told him that remains had been found and that it was suspected the puka beads belonged to Lou Ann. It could all be confirmed through dental records later. But Louis had not expected Ahnert to show up here.

Damn.
Mobley had gone down the hall for a cup of coffee. Louis started toward Ahnert.

“Is that her?”

Ahnert's words stopped Louis in his tracks. Something told him to just step aside. Bob Ahnert's eyes were fixed on the table. He came forward slowly.

He stared at the bones for a long time, his face slack, his eyes empty. There was nothing there, nothing in his expression.

“Detective—” Louis said.

Ahnert was shaking his head slowly. “That's not Lou Ann, it's just bones,” he said. “Just bones.”

Then, his eyes skittered to the table where the clothes lay.

He went to the table. Louis moved to his side. Ahnert was looking at the clothing. Something in his expression changed, shifted slightly, like he was focusing in on one small thing.

“Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.

He started to reach for the puka beads, but Louis grabbed his wrist.

“Don't,” he said gently. “It's evidence.”

Ahnert looked at Louis. His eyes teared and he moved away. Louis let him go.

Louis stood there, looking down at the clothing. He heard weeping. He turned and went to Bob Ahnert, putting a hand on the detective's shoulders. Ahnert continued to sob softly until they both heard the snap of Mobley's boots in the tiled hall way.

Ahnert turned, wiping at his face, drawing quick breaths.

The door opened and Mobley stopped, seeing Ahnert. He sized things up immediately and cleared his throat.

“Bob, I'm sorry—”

Head bowed, Ahnert brushed past him and was gone.

Mobley watched him go, then turned to Louis. “How'd he take it?”

“Hard.”

Mobley walked to the table, looking down at the bones. Louis came up next to him.

“Hard to believe it about Brian,” Mobley said. “You think you know people.”

Mobley moved away. When Louis turned to look, Mobley had sagged into a chair, hands on his knees. Louis went to sit down next to him, leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. For a long time, neither spoke.

“The heir and the spare,” Mobley murmured.

Louis looked over at him.

“I keep thinking of that, what you called them,” Mobley said. “It was true. Brian was always kind of . . . an afterthought.” He let out a tired sigh. “I remember he used to come and watch us at football practice, this chubby zit-faced kid standing out by the chain-link fence by himself, watching his brother. He always wanted to hang with us afterward. We didn't want him around. But Scott, he'd drag him along anyway.”

Louis was thinking of Kitty and what Brian had done to her. And what he might have done to Lou Ann Ahnert. He didn't want to hear anything about how tough Brian had it.

“It must have been hard,” Mobley went on. “Your mom's dead, your father's gone all the time. And your only role model is a brother who's smarter, more popular, better looking, than you ever had a prayer of being. Shit, do you love him or hate him?”

Louis closed his eyes, fatigue beginning to take over his body. Mobley nudged him.

“You okay?”

“I just want to go home.”

“Brian will be home before we are.”

“He made bail already?”

Mobley shrugged. “He will in a few hours, you watch. Come on. I'll drive you back to your car.”

Louis followed Mobley outside and they headed toward his cruiser. It was past three in the morning and the air was wet and still, enveloping him like a warm blanket.

Louis settled back in the seat and closed his eyes, lulled by the squawks and chattering from Mobley's radio. But even that did not stop the snapping in his brain.

The images were fast-forwarding like a high-speed slide show, propelled by Mobley's talk of Brian Brenner. He saw Kitty's empty grave. Willard Jagger's worn face. A pink dress on a lifeless body. Bones in a cabana wall. And the tortured look on Brian's face when he saw them.

The car stopped and Louis sat up. They were in the parking lot in front of the Brenner law offices. Mobley mumbled something about getting some sleep and Louis got out. As Mobley drove off, Louis stopped in the street, looking up at the top floor of the granite building in front of him.

I put her in the dump.

Why the hell did Brian say that? Had he been so terrified and confused that he simply mixed up his victims?

Louis unlocked the Mustang and got in. And why had Brian shown up at the mansion during the search? He wasn't the type of man who hid his feelings easily. He hadn't even seemed nervous at the cabana—until they had found Lou Ann's bones.

Louis started the car. The slides were still moving in his head and suddenly he could see Bob Ahnert's face showing him Lou Ann's picture.

She ran away from home Thanksgiving night.

College kids came home at Thanksgiving.

They also came home at Easter. And Easter was almost always in April.

Louis leaned on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. The slides were forming a new picture now. One bathroom shared by two law offices. One secret shared by two brothers. And a father who was never there—until it counted.

Louis jerked the Mustang into gear and made a U-turn across the deserted street. He needed to see one thing to be sure, before he said anything to anyone. He headed north, toward the cemetery.

 

 

The darkness disoriented him. He swung the flashlight beam over the headstones, stepping gingerly on the soft, wet grass. Finally, he spotted the black outline of the huge lace-canopied tree and found his way to Kitty's grave. From there, he was able to retrace his steps to the Brenner family plot.

He flicked the beam over BRENNER and down across CHARLES and VIVIAN. On the ground, the beam picked up the three tiny markers.

Geraldine Infant Baby Girl Infant Baby Boy
1942–1944 1945 Stillborn 1948 Stillborn

 

Louis focused the beam on the first baby girl. He was remembering now what Ellie had told him about the Rh-factor. She had told Louis that the first positive child was the one who triggered the antibodies that killed all the positive babies who followed. Vivian's first child wasn't a stillborn; she had a name, Geraldine, and she had lived two years. That meant she was positive and the one who triggered the death of the second baby, a stillborn.

So Ellie had been wrong. Scott wasn't the firstborn—he was the third. And he had to be Rh-negative.

A sudden image came to his mind—Scott at Kitty's exhumation, standing over the grave, holding a hand to his mouth, a hand that hid not nausea but a smirk.

God damn him. God damn him to hell.

Louis turned and walked quickly back to his car. He jammed the keys in the ignition and roared the engine to life, jerking the Mustang into reverse.

He was almost to the entrance when he saw oncoming headlights. He slowed to let the car pass. It was a black BMW.

It was Brian.

Louis turned around, cut his lights and trailed the BMW. He gave Brian enough time to park and walk away from the car before he pulled up behind. When he got out, Brian had disappeared.

On top of the rise, Louis looked toward Kitty's open grave, but Brian wasn't there. Louis started off toward the Brenner plot.

Brian was standing there, head bowed, staring down at the headstone. Louis hesitated, knowing if he took one more step, he would beat the shit out of the pathetic bastard.

Brian looked over at him. Louis could barely see his face in the darkness.

“I hardly knew my father,” Brian said softly.

Louis unclenched his fist and moved closer.

“When Scott came and got me tonight,” Brian said, “he told me to just go home. I couldn't. I had to come here. I had to talk to him. I had to apologize.”

“To who?” Louis asked.

Brian nodded at the headstone. “My father. I had to tell him I couldn't keep our secret anymore.”

Brian was staring at the headstone.

“Brian?”

He looked up at Louis. There was something in his face, a piteous look, almost a forewarning, that for a moment made Louis want to turn and walk away. But he knew he had to hear it.

“Tell me what happened that night, Brian.”

“I remember it was really warm that night, like summer was coming early.”

Brian raised his face to the dark sky, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he was looking across the cemetery but not focusing on anything in particular. The tombstones were just gray shapes in the weak predawn light, like silhouettes of people waiting patiently in line for something to begin.

“I had a new red Corvette. It was my first car, and I remember I wanted to show it off.”

He fell quiet. Louis waited.

“You went to the drive-in that night,” Louis said finally.

Brian gave a slight nod. “It was crowded. Everyone was there.” He blinked several times, like he was trying to bring the picture in his head into focus.

“She hung the tray on my window. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing this silly red and white hat on her head. She smiled at me and said she liked my car.” He paused. “God, she was so pretty.”

Louis looked down at the ground for a second, then back up at Brian.

“I had seen her before,” Brian went on softly, “but I didn't have the guts to talk to her. But then when she said she liked my car, I guess I felt a little braver. I don't know . . .”

He was quiet again. The silence was broken by the first faint birdsong of the morning.

“I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride,” Brian said. “She said she had to work. I asked her if I could wait and give her a ride home.”

Louis couldn't resist. “She turned you down,” he said.

Brian looked over at him and gave a wan smile. “Yes,” he said. “But I was used to it. I wasn't like Scott. Talking to girls was hard for me.”

The breeze lifted Brian's wispy hair down over his forehead. For a second, Louis thought he looked like he was twelve, but then the illusion was gone.

“I parked down the block and waited until the drive-in closed,” Brian said. “It was about eleven-thirty, I think, when I saw her come out and start down Linhart. I followed her to the bus stop. She saw me and we started talking. I remember sitting there at the curb and she came over and leaned in my window to look inside the car. She smelled like . . . chocolate, like a chocolate malt.”

Louis rubbed the back of his neck. “What happened next?” he asked.

“She said her feet hurt. I asked her again to let me give her a ride home. I told her I would put the top down. I thought she was going to turn me down again. But she didn't. She got in the car.”

Brian stopped, his eyes going up to the trees and then down again. He took a few steps away and sank onto a stone bench facing the Brenner headstone. He pulled a Kleenex out of his pocket and quietly blew his nose.

“I had a hard time watching the road,” he said. “I remember we were driving down McGregor and the top was down and it was warm and the wind was blowing and she was laughing and her hair was blowing back. I had a hard time watching the road . . .”

Louis leaned against the tree, watching as Brian's features took shape with the quickening light.

“She said it was almost warm enough to go swimming,” he said softly. “I told her my family had a pool.”

Louis crossed his arms. “She went with you willingly?”

Brian nodded. “I could tell she was worried about it and I remember she said something about her father. But I told her I lived really close and I would take her home right after. So we went to my house.”

Louis looked away to the pink-edged horizon. He could see the Brenner mansion and everything it must have represented to Kitty. When he looked back at Brian, he was sitting, elbows on knees, head bowed.

“You gave her something to drink?” Louis asked.

Brian's head came up slowly and he nodded. “One beer. She had a few sips, but she said she didn't like the taste and gave it to me. I didn't like beer either, but I drank it anyway.”

When Brian fell quiet again, Louis prodded him. “You went out to the pool.”

“Yeah. We weren't supposed to use it because it was getting redone. So I told her to be quiet so no one up at the house would hear.”

He stopped, like he just remembered something. “There must have been a full moon, because I could see her standing there and I was too scared to turn on the lights. But I could see her really clearly. She took off her tennis shoes and sat down on the edge, dangling her feet in the water. I sat down next to her, drinking the beer. She was so damn pretty sitting there and I was so damn nervous.”

Louis felt a twinge of anger, but he said nothing.

“She said she didn't have a bathing suit so I showed her where we kept the spare suits for the guests,” Brian said. “She went in the cabana to change. I stripped down to my underwear and sat there, waiting. I drank up her beer.” He paused. “Oh god, when she came out . . .”

Louis shut his eyes. He heard Brian pull in a deep breath.

“I had to get in the pool quick. I . . .” he hesitated. “I had a hard-on and I didn't want her to see it.”

Brian's voice had gone soft. “She got in and we started swimming. She was laughing and I was feeling so good. I was splashing her and we were playing around. I could feel her skin, so warm and wet.”

“When did things start to go wrong?” Louis asked.

Brian balled the Kleenex up in his hand. “I dunked her and she came up coughing. I didn't mean to be so rough. We were just playing. But she got out of the pool and said it was late and she'd better get home. She went into the cabana to change.”

The pink in the eastern sky was deepening. “What did you do?” Louis said slowly.

Brian didn't answer. Louis could see that his eyes were closed.

“Brian, what did you do?” he said, more firmly.

“I stayed in the water for a minute,” he said softly. “I felt . . . I didn't want her to leave, so I got out and went in the cabana. I don't know, maybe I was going to apologize or maybe I thought I could talk her into staying, I don't know . . . but when I went in, she was standing there. She was standing there in her panties and bra and she looked . . .”

Brian looked up suddenly at Louis, as if for understanding. “I was sixteen. I was a fucking virgin. I didn't know . . . I didn't think . . .” He stopped, pulling in a deep breath and the rest of the words came out in a torrent. “I grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She was trying to pull away and all I wanted to do was kiss her. And then she screamed.”

He stopped abruptly, looking away.

“What did you do?” Louis said.

“I slapped her.”

Louis took a slow breath to calm himself.

“She looked at me, then started screaming again. I think I put my hand over her mouth, I'm not sure. I was so scared someone up at the house was going to hear and come down.” Brian stopped. “Then suddenly, Scott was there.”

Louis pushed off the tree and came closer.

“He was home for Easter, and I remember how embarrassed I was, Scott seeing me in my underwear with her there. I was afraid he would call me stupid or something in front of her. But he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at her.”

Louis could see it in his head; he could see Scott looking at Kitty.

“She was crying, holding her cheek,” Brian said, “And then she went to Scott and started begging him to take her home. She was yelling that I tried to rape her.”

“What did Scott do?”

Brian closed his eyes. “He locked the door.”

Louis felt his fist clench.

“Then Scott shoved her backward. She fell on the floor, against the wicker chair. There was some bags of stuff the workers had left in a corner. She was curled up against them in a ball.”

Brian's voice cracked. “Scott looked at me and he said ‘I'm going to show you how it's done, little brother.' ”

Louis turned away.

Brian looked up at him, his eyes red. “Do you want to hear all of it?”

Louis nodded.

“He was on her before I could move,” Brian said, “I didn't want to look, I didn't want to . . .” Brian had wrapped his arms around himself. “He pulled off her bra and panties and held her down. I couldn't . . .” He was rocking slightly. “He was grunting and pushing at her and she was crying. It seemed to last forever.”

Brian drew in a shuddering breath. “Then it was quiet. I looked over at her. She was behind the wicker chair, curled up in a ball, naked. Scott picked up her uniform and threw it at her. He said something about how she smelled like grease.”

“What were you doing through all this?” Louis asked.

Brian shook his head. “Nothing . . . nothing.”

“What happened next?” Louis said tightly.

“She got dressed. I could hear her trying to hold back her sobs and I wanted to go help her but I couldn't . . . I just wanted to get away from there.” Brian hesitated. “That's when she said it.”

“Said what?”

“She looked at us and said, ‘I thought you were better than us.' ”

Jesus . . .

“Scott spun around and backhanded her and she fell down hard.” Brian stopped suddenly. “And she just laid there.”

Brian had shredded the Kleenex. “I guess she must have hit her head against the bag of cement. Scott rolled her over with his foot, but she didn't look like she was breathing. I was so scared. I . . . I puked up the beer, and when I looked up Scott was gone. And then he came back and he was carrying that thing, that tool. He said we had to make it look like a sex murder and that we had to stab her.”

Louis could see Brian's face clearly now. His eyes were fixed on the headstone. “I just stared at him and he told me it didn't make any difference because she was already dead.”

Louis thought of what Vince had told him, that Kitty had not died of the head wound. For a second, he thought of telling Brian that Kitty had been alive before she was stabbed. But he couldn't; he needed to hear all of it.

“I wouldn't do it,” Brian said in a whisper. “So . . . so . . .”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Scott knelt down, I saw that, but then I closed my eyes. I kept them closed, but I could hear the sound it made. I could hear it.” He took a breath. “I can still hear it.”

Louis looked up at the sky, deepening to a coral as the sun broke the horizon.

“When I opened my eyes, I didn't look at her,” Brian said. “But I could see the blood. It was everywhere. I was just sitting there on the floor and Scott was talking, telling me what we had to do. But I couldn't move.”

Louis couldn't look at him. He just keep staring at the sky.

“I guess that's when he pulled down the shower curtain and wrapped her up in it. I don't remember, I was just sitting there. Then Scott was shaking me and yelling at me to get up, get dressed, telling me I had to help.”

“What did you do?” Louis asked.

Brian shook his head, like he wasn't sure. “We carried her out and put her in the trunk. Then we went back to the cabana. There was blood everywhere and Scott said we had to clean it up. I saw something and picked it up. It was her gold necklace. I remember she had it on in the pool. I put it in my pocket.”

Brian stopped again.

“What did you do next?” Louis prodded.

“Scott was mad at me because I was just standing there staring at the blood. So he told me to go get rid of her.”

“Did he tell you where?”

Brian nodded woodenly. “The gardener's dump. He said it had to be the gardener's dump.”

He let go of the shredded Kleenex and it fluttered to the ground. “It was way across town. It took me a long time to get there. Then I had trouble carrying her. She was heavy and I dropped her.” He paused. “Then I set her down in the . . . I set her down and I ran. I ran back to my car and when I went to get my keys out of my pocket, I felt the necklace. I went back. I went back and laid it around her neck.”

Brian closed his eyes and bowed his head. He covered his face with his hands. It was quiet except for the chirping of the birds overhead and the faint sound of a lawn mower starting up somewhere far off.

“Things were different after that,” Brian said quietly. “We never talked about it, but it was like we shared something, like we were closer somehow. More like brothers.”

Louis stared at the Brenner headstone. All the feelings that had been churning inside him for the last hour were now settling into one deep ache.

Brian looked up, tears in his eyes. “She was so pretty,” he whispered.

The quiet was broken by the thud of a car door. Louis turned. A figure was coming over the rise toward them. It was Scott.