The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Author:Jacquelyn Mitchard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2021-11-14T20:33:40+00:00

8

The fire demolished more than my sister’s vintage junker. It wiped out Stefan’s confidence too.

Heartbroken, I watched as he parked his truck and stepped onto the porch the next morning. He looked to the left and to the right, then ducked inside, glancing around him as he sprinted.

“I’m fine!” he snapped at me before I could say a word.

Jep said he wanted to install alarms and follow lights.

“Those are good ideas,” said the young police officer who came. She went outside to scold the crime-scene investigators who’d left strips of sticky paper and sticks of blue chalk on the driveway (“Didn’t your mom ever make you clean up your room?”). “But something like this is up close and crazy. It feels like a grudge, don’t you think? The bad thing about a grudge, it’s personal. The good thing about a grudge is that most wear out with time. I’m not going to ask if there’s anybody who has it in for you. I know your story. The best thing you can do is exercise more caution than you ordinarily do, and we’ll be watching, every night for a good long while, for anything that looks funny.”

A good long while: This just suggested that more was on the way. Who was behind this? I was convinced that the answer wouldn’t turn up on Washtenaw Street in Portland.

I called Pete Sunday that afternoon.

“I want to see copies of all the police reports from the night Belinda McCormack died. Not just the ones that pertain specifically to Belinda’s death. I want copies of those too. But I want to see any copies of anything having to do with the drugs he might have been on—whether there were bad drugs circulating at the time that might account for Stefan’s behavior that night. There must be all kinds of things I didn’t see. From the...the autopsy. And the way that the...crime scene looked. I never saw all that.”

“Mrs. Christiansen, why would you? You already had access to all of the relevant documents.”

“I only remember hearing about the report dealing with the emergency call at the time of Belinda’s death, and I’m not sure it was complete at the time.”

Pete Sunday sighed, but somehow, I could tell that it wasn’t from impatience or boredom. He actually didn’t know what to say. It had been several years since that night in the hospital; but I could still picture him, a sharp-dressed man seemingly out of place in the Northwoods hamlet. Belinda’s death had been the most shocking case of his career; to be fair, it would have been among the most shocking cases of anyone’s career outside Baltimore.

“Mrs. Christiansen, there’s a limit to what I can share with you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Can you make copies and mail them to me? Or email them?”

“I can’t mail police reports. We can discuss what you need to see. You’d have to come up here and pick up any reports. The ones I can give you anyhow. Which I’m not sure what they are.

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