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“Oh. Well...” Abigail fumbled with the hem of her shirt, unsure what to say, when he stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“What do you want with this case?” His eyes bore into hers, seeing through the lies.
“Nothing. I just... We really were working on this for a school project. That part was true, but the detective had researched my family tree. That’s why my grandmother hired him.” Abby shifted on her feet, hoping he bought her explanation. “We were hoping if he had next of kin, they might have whatever information he put together for my grandmother. I’d like to give it to my grandpa for his birthday, as a gift.”
Mr. Oliver pinched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, Kaden’s a good kid. I don’t know what you’re getting him into, but right now, what he needs is to focus on school. He has a real future in front of himself. He was accepted to Columbia College in the fall, and the last thing he needs are outside distractions.”
No, what he needs is a social life. Some friends. A break from responsibility.
Abby wanted to say all those things and then some. Instead, she said, “Mr. Oliver, we’re friends. Kaden needs friends. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Mr. Oliver grunted, and a flicker of movement behind the glass pane of the door caught her eye. She watched as Kaden snatched her phone off the table and opened the case file. Flicking through the documents, he held it over a page, pausing then flipping the papers and repeating the cycle. Was he...
Mr. Oliver started to turn, but Abby gripped his arms and stopped him. “Don’t tell him I said anything,” she blurted, as he stared down at the hands on his arms, then glanced up at her with a raised brow. She dropped her hands. “I wouldn’t want him to be mad at me for betraying his confidence, but I thought you should know that he’s lonely. He confided in me about how he wished he had more friends. He needs a life, Mr. Oliver. You need to let him have one.”
“Do you—"
“Hey, are you two done yet?” Kaden poked his head out the door.
“Yeah,” his dad said, distracted. He shot Abby one last warning glare before nodding toward Kaden. “I expect you’re heading home now?”
“Yeah. Sure thing,” Kaden said, smiling and grabbing Abby’s hand, despite the way his father’s gaze zoned in on the gesture.
With a yank on her arm, he pulled Abby away from him and back through the main office of the precinct. As soon as he pushed open the door to the outside, they burst into the balmy spring air.
“Were you taking pictures?” Abby asked.
With a glance behind him, Kaden said, “Yeah. And there’s more he didn’t tell us. A lot more.”
He wra
pped a hand around her arm and tugged her forward, further into the parking lot as he whispered, “Like the fact that the suspect, McBride, was found dead two weeks after Lawson was murdered. I guess McBride had a note on him confessing to the murder, which is what led the cops to close the case despite the fact that everything they had on him at that point had been circumstantial.”
Kaden stopped as he pulled out Abby’s phone, scrolling through the pictures and enlarging them. “I didn’t get to look at everything, but I saw the report that Lawson didn’t drown, just like my dad said.”
Abby’s eyes widened as her breath caught in her throat. “How’d he die?”
“He was poisoned with some sort of plant. Belladonna?” he said, reading off the name. “Because the husband was into homeopathic stuff they started investigating him first, but...”
“But what?”
He shook his head, staring down at the ground, lost in thought.
“Kaden?”
“The reports on the night Lawson went missing... Well, check it out,” he said, handing her the phone and pointing to it. “Several people said the man he was spotted with was older, in his sixties or so. But the husband was only thirty-five. That’s a pretty big discrepancy.”
“Let me see.” Abby took the phone from him and scrolled through the images. She fell quiet as she flicked through several reports with no relevancy, squinting at the screen and the tiny print until she came to an image and gasped.
“What is it?” Kaden glanced over her shoulder at the screen.
“The phone records. The private investigator called three people right before he died,” Abby said. “According to your dad, the department of justice was one of them, but I know this number. And it looked like he called it minutes before his recorded time of death.” She met Kaden’s gaze, shock registering in her voice. “He called my grandmother.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
June 25, 1943
I remember my first days on the Sonderkommando.
