What Have You Done Read online

  “How can I help you?”

  “Don and I are working on a case, and I know he dropped off something for you to take a look at. You get that done for him?”

  Rocco spun around in his chair so his back was to Sean. He was quiet for a moment. “Sorry to inform you, but Detective Carpenter didn’t come by here.”

  “He did. It’s okay. I know he did. He told me. Said he needed you to take a look at something for us, but he forgot to tell me exactly what it was that needed your expertise. I was in the neighborhood, so I figured I’d stop by to see what you found. We’re working the case together.”

  “I’m telling you, he wasn’t here.”

  Sean leaned over and turned the chair back around. “Rocco, I’m not screwing around. I need whatever he gave you, and I need to know what you found.”

  Rocco swallowed once, his eyes locked on Sean’s. “I’m not screwing with you,” he said slowly, carefully, as if each word needed to be formed before it could come out of his mouth. “Detective Carpenter didn’t come by here. I don’t have a drive.”

  “Ah, so it was a drive.”

  In a flash of movement, Sean grabbed his gun and pressed it against Rocco’s head. He pulled the hammer back and leaned in. Rocco was about to scream, but before he could, Sean pushed his hand against his mouth so all that came out was a muffled sound, too low for the neighbors to hear.

  “No more lies,” Sean said. He was panting and shaking as his adrenaline kicked in. “I get it that you want to keep a secret my partner asked you to keep, but this is bigger than you, and I need answers.”

  Rocco nodded over and over.

  “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. You scream, and I end you.”

  Again, Rocco nodded emphatically.

  Sean let go of his mouth, and Rocco immediately fell forward in panic, tears streaming down his face.

  “Tell me what he gave you.”

  “I don’t have anything! Don came here and asked me to decrypt a file. I already gave it back to him. I swear I don’t have it. I swear!”

  “Did you see what was on it?”

  Rocco took a deep breath. “Come on, man! Don’t make me do this.”

  Sean pressed the gun harder against Rocco’s temple. “Did you see what was on it?!”

  “Pictures! Pictures of you and some chick. I don’t know her. Never seen her before.”

  “Did you make a copy?”

  “No!”

  “What else?”

  “GPS coordinates taken from a boat. It showed the route some boat took to like five or six destinations.”

  “Whose boat?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t say.”

  “Whose boat?”

  “I swear, I don’t know whose boat it was. You gotta believe me. Penn’s Landing Marina. That’s all I know. Detective Carpenter has the flash drive. That’s all I know!”

  Sean finally took the gun away and straightened up. “I believe you,” he said. “But I can’t have any loose ends. This has already gotten way too out of control.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  “I need to set things straight.”

  “No! No! I won’t say anything. I won’t!”

  Sean shook his head as he grabbed a pair of scissors from the desk. “I’m sorry.”

  54

  As the sun rose over the horizon, Liam stood by the locked gate that closed off visitors from the amusement rides. From this vantage point, he could see everyone who came onto the boardwalk, and should the police close in, he had a route that would help him escape unseen through the small alleyway that led back out to the streets. The boardwalk at Point Pleasant was deserted. It was still early, and the air coming off the Atlantic was cold. A mist hid most of the beach, but he could still hear the waves crashing onto the sand, one after the other.

  Don approached slowly, his head on a swivel. His hands were in the pockets of his trench coat, the oversized collar turned up to protect him from the wind. He walked up the ramp that led from the road and stopped.

  Liam waited a few minutes to ensure he was alone and then stepped out so Don could see him. “Over here.”

  Don made his way toward him, and they walked into a dark alley. The sounds of the ocean were muted here, the wind only a simple breeze.

  “You alone?” Liam asked.

  “That’s what you said in the text, right?” Don pulled out his phone and started reading. “Need to talk. I’m innocent. Meet me at Point Pleasant boardwalk. Come alone. No Sean. Life or death. Liam.” He looked up at his fugitive. “It was dangerous contacting me like that.”

  “I’m still not totally sure I can trust you.”

  “I get it. If I were in your shoes, I’d feel the same way. What you’re doing shows a lot of faith, considering I could take you down right now and be everyone’s hero.”

  “I’m wondering why you don’t.”

  “Because I know you didn’t kill Kerri. Or the girl in Delaware. Or the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Exactly.”

  Liam searched Don’s face for any sign of doubt but saw nothing. “What makes you so sure I’m innocent?”

  “I’ve learned a few things.” Don held up a small white envelope. He opened it and pinched a piece of yellow foam between his index finger and thumb.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the answer to a question I wished I never had to ask. It’s another missing piece of the puzzle. Could be part of your get-out-of-jail-free card.” Don searched behind him for a moment and then turned back. “I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that you could be guilty of what I saw in the crime scene photos at the Tiger, but when you suspected that I could’ve killed her, I got scared. I don’t know why, really. I think it was the fact that someone I’d trusted so completely could think I could do something like that. I thought I might have to clear my name, so I started my own investigation. Just me. I didn’t know if I could trust Sean. I figured he’d always side with you over me, and if you had me as a suspect, I needed to preemptively clear my name.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I made two copies of Kerri’s computer on two separate flash dives. Sean only knew about the one he destroyed. I found some things on the copy I kept.”

  Liam was silent.

  “I have an extra key to your brother’s house and his truck. Always have. Yesterday I found myself snooping around, trying to find something that might make sense of what was going on. I waited until Sean was out and looked through the house, but I couldn’t find anything. When he was at the station, I took a peek inside his truck. All of it was just a cop’s hunch. But that’s the thing about cop’s hunches. There’s usually something there.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Did you know there was a rip in his seat, passenger’s side by the door?”

  “No.”

  “This is foam stuffing. I asked Jane to run it against the material that was under Kerri’s nails. It was a match.”

  Liam’s world dimmed into a blackness that engulfed everything else. The noise of the waves lapping against the shore disappeared. The seagulls above. The sun hanging in the sky. His breath would not come. He felt as if he were suffocating. As if he were drowning in his mother’s tub all over again.

  “It was Sean,” Liam said.

  Sean knew about him and Kerri. Sean knew about the paper flowers their mother had left for them the day she’d tried to kill them. Sean knew how to make the paper flowers and knew their mother had cut her hair. He knew about it all. Everything. His brother’s words echoed in his mind.

  Those flowers scare me. Somebody knows something.

  Don placed the foam back in the envelope. “Kerri found out about things your brother was trying very hard to hide. It’s tough to say this. Sean was having an affair with Vanessa.”

  Liam fell against the wall, stunned. Everything he knew about his life was crumbling before h
im. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. For over a year.”

  Liam said nothing.

  “I don’t know how, but Kerri found out about the affair and spent a good deal of time following them. I found the pictures she’d taken of them on the flash drive I copied from her hard drive. I also think that while she was following them, she came across another secret Sean was hiding. He was killing other women. She’d tracked his coordinates on his boat, and they match the vics we found. Up and down the coast, Sean was abducting prostitutes and killing them. Kerri had the GPS coordinates with the pictures. Your brother killed Kerri, the girl you guys found in Wilmington, and five others. For whatever reason, he’s pinning it on you. That call you got from Kerri the night of her murder could’ve been her wanting to tell you everything. Show you the pictures she’d taken. Tell you about the boat trips your brother was taking.”

  “But I still don’t remember anything about that night.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you about that. Drugged maybe?”

  “My blood came back clean.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Liam’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I came here to convince you I was innocent. I guess this’ll be easier than I thought.” He showed Don the copy of the police report he’d taken from Lakewood and explained how Gerri Cain had found Kerri’s old medical record that led him there. He also explained what happened during his encounter with Kiki and Grandpa.

  Don lowered his voice as a small group of joggers ran by on the boardwalk next to them. “There’s even more,” he said. “I read through Keenan’s case file again to see what else was uncovered and get up-to-date on things. Since Guzio, everyone’s attention has been focused on bringing you in. No one’s even talking about Kerri.”

  “Why would they? I’m the target. I’m the conviction. I know how it works. You bring me in, perp walk me, and the media rests. Until then, I’m the lead on every broadcast. The mayor needs this to go away ASAP.”

  The wind cut through the alley. Don pulled his jacket tight. “It turns out Teddy went down to the navy yard a few days ago and showed some of the guys pictures of the knots we found in the extension cord at the Tiger. One is called a Prusik knot, which secured the cord around the pipe that Kerri was hanged from, and the other was a slipknot tied in a figure eight. According to the navy guys, these are technical knots mostly used in mountain climbing and boating. Something Sean would need to know to get his boating license.”

  Liam blew into his hands. It was getting colder by the second. “How do you know I didn’t take the boat those nights? Or borrow Sean’s truck the night Kerri was killed?”

  “I’ve seen you near water. You’re terrified.”

  “Could’ve been faking it.”

  “You can’t fake that kind of fear. Besides, we saw the video stream from the chopper that was following you when you took his boat. You clearly had no idea what you were doing. The trips Sean took to kill these other girls took hours and were in the dark. They needed precision maritime navigation, even with the GPS. It’s not you.”

  “Are you going to turn all this evidence in to IA? Talk to Phillips?”

  “Yes, but not yet. Not until I have this thing airtight.”

  “What more do you need?”

  “Something concrete. The foam from the seat is a match, but it’s also likely to be the same foam used in thousands of other cars. Your picture of Kerri at Boathouse Row wouldn’t do us any good in court, and the medical records and police report would only do so much. The information I obtained from Kerri’s computer about the GPS tracking was taken without a warrant, and I’m not even assigned to this case. The photos she took prove an affair, but that’s not against the law. We have a lot of evidence, but most of it is either circumstantial or inadmissible. I want to dig deeper into these other murders. If we take him down, it’s gotta be flawless.”

  “I don’t think we have time for flawless,” Liam said. “This needs to be exposed now.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I have an idea. They found hairs at your house when they were doing their sweep. They were Kerri’s. There were traces of oil on the hairs, and Jane matched it to Olin gun oil. Sean uses Olin.”

  “So do I,” Liam replied. “So does half the department.”

  “I’m guessing he’s keeping the hair he took when he shaved her head, and the heads of the other vics, in his gun-cleaning kit or close enough to get the oil on them. If you had enough time to search his house, you might be able to find something.”

  “He cleans his gun in the basement. I know where he keeps the kit. You get him out of the house, and I’ll go in and see what I can find.”

  “Exactly.”

  A few more people made their way onto the boardwalk and walked toward the ocean. Don watched them as they passed.

  “This ends now,” Liam whispered.

  Don began to make his way out of the alley. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back into Philly, and we’ll figure out our next steps. Where can you hide?”

  Liam thought for a moment. “South Street Mission. Father Brennan will help. I just saw him the other day.”

  “Good. You hide there until I contact you. When I get Sean out of his house, you go in.”

  “How was all this happening without us knowing?” Liam asked. His eyelids were heavy. He was so tired. “He killed those girls, and we never suspected a thing.”

  Don kept walking, head down, fighting the wind coming off the ocean. “He’s always had the charisma of a leader. With that comes a trust you put in him. We’re all victims of his manipulation. None of us saw this.”

  “But he’s my brother. He’s the only family I ever really knew.”

  “He’s not the man you thought he was. He’s not the man any of us thought he was.”

  55

  As morning turned to afternoon, then on to dusk, Don sat alone in his bedroom, sipping a cup of coffee and staring at the white envelope on his nightstand. Everything he’d thought he’d known was crumbling in his fingers, creating a new reality he wasn’t sure he was ready to acknowledge. So many signs had been right in front of him for so long, yet he’d been blind. Now things needed to be fixed. There was no other way.

  He’d dropped Liam off at the South Street Mission and then headed home. Joyce was downstairs, preparing dinner. She had no idea what he was dealing with.

  The ringing of his phone snapped him from his thoughts. He answered before it could ring again.

  “Hello?”

  “Ah, so you are alive. I’ve been calling you all day. Glad to hear you’re still breathing.”

  Don’s stomach tightened at the sound of Sean’s voice. He’d been avoiding him as he tried to figure out his next move. Hearing him now brought everything to the present and reminded him he could not run from this issue no matter how desperately he wanted to.

  “Hello?” Sean said. “You still there?”

  “I’m here,” Don replied. “I thought Joyce was calling me.” He tried to lighten his tone. “I checked in at the station house this morning and then took a quick run back up to my mom’s to make sure she was still okay.”

  “Is she?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. And how about you, partner? How you doing?”

  “I’m fine. Still nothing on Liam. All of Camden County has the BOLO by now.”

  “Any idea where he might be? Is there somewhere in Jersey you think he’d go?”

  “I can’t think of anything specific.”

  “You talk to Vanessa? She hear anything?”

  “Yeah, I spoke to her, but Liam hasn’t called. I told him to turn off his phone. I guess he listened.”

  Don rose from the bed and began pacing the room. “So you calling to make me feel guilty about not calling you?”

  Sean chuckled on the other end. “No. I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “We need to find Liam. You and me. I know I’m supposed to stay away in light of the other victims, but this
is my brother. I was hoping you could pick me up, and we could head over to Jersey and start poking around. I can’t keep sitting here on my hands waiting for something to happen. We have to find him. I gotta bring him in myself.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea. Phillips told you he wanted you to keep your distance on this for now.”

  “I know, but I need to do something. Anything. Sitting around here is killing me. You watch my back; I watch yours. That’s the way it goes. Do me this favor. He’s my brother, and he’s like family to you too. Please.”

  Don fell back onto the bed. What could he say? He had to keep his discovery to himself and act as natural as possible. If he was with his partner, he could at least control the situation, which would allow Liam access to Sean’s house to look for the proof they needed. And if he refused to go, Sean could suspect something. He had no choice. “Yeah, okay. I’m in.”

  “I appreciate it, man. I owe you.”

  “What time do you want me to come get you?”

  Papers rustling. “Pick me up at my place at ten.”

  “Go it. Ten o’clock.”

  “You’ll be home by midnight. Promise.”

  “That’s what you said about Sullivan’s the other night, and I didn’t get home until two.”

  “I’ll see you later.” There was a slight pause. “I know I don’t have to say this out loud, but this is between us. No one knows about this. Corporate could bust your ass for helping me, and I could get thrown into a hole for disobeying an order from Phillips.”

  “You’re right; you didn’t need to tell me that.”

  “Bring the sedan. I don’t want to draw any attention with the Mustang.”

  “Okay.”

  Sean hung up. Don listened to the void of silence on the other end until a recorded message came on instructing him to disconnect. “Joyce!” he called. “Come up here a second!”

  What could he do? He had to go so he wouldn’t raise suspicions. His gut told him this was a bad idea, but he could find no other alternative that would keep his secret under his own control for the time being.