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“No. Call for officers and an ambulance. Their baby was dead. Your baby brother.”
Gregory didn’t realize he had started to shiver until his teeth chattered hard enough to rattle his jaw. Cold gnawed at his chest, his arms, the pit of his stomach. “I– I didn’t have a baby brother.”
The voice on the other end of the call gentled.“You did, Mister Pierce. Technically your half-brother, I think, since he came from your mother and Robert Lane. When we got there, the front door was open. Your mother, she was sitting on the couch. She had her head in her hands, but she was looking out between her fingers. Robert, he was standing on the other side of the room. White as a sheet. Stunned. But then, there was you. When I saw you, my heart just broke. You looked like such a good big brother.”
Every breath was a battle to take in around the weight on Gregory’s chest. “What was I doing?”
“You were sitting in the middle of the floor, holding your baby brother in your arms. Cradling him against your chest, as gentle as I’d ever seen. You were telling him it was okay to cry, because you were there to hold him. But he was already gone.”
The veil over Gregory’s memories pulled away, slow as thick fog but inexorable as daybreak. Sitting like a statue of ice, too cold to move, tears melting down his cheeks, he remembered at last what his mind had buried. As the man on the phone continued to speak, Gregory watched the words play out in his memories.
“It didn’t take long to sort out what had happened. Darlene and Robert were high as goddamned kites. The baby, they said, wouldn’t stop crying. Darlene couldn’t take it anymore. She said that she’d just wanted to make the crying stop. Have quiet for a while to enjoy her high. She took a pillow, and she put it over that baby’s head. Pressed down until the crying stopped. I guess that was when Robert came out of his high enough to realize she’d done something bad. They called for an ambulance. You started holding that baby while they did. A few minutes later, we found out she’d called her daddy, too, because Henry Russell showed up.”
The name filtered into the cold of Gregory’s mind. “My grandfather knew.”
“Knew? He was the one who came up with the plan to keep his daughter and her boyfriend out of prison. Said he’d pay for my partner and me to tell a different story when we wrote up our reports. See, the medical examiner would know that baby had smothered. We had the call to 911 recorded for more proof. None of those said who held the pillow. Either of the adults would go to prison for a long time.”
He remembered police. Two officers with concerned, broken looks on their faces as they surveyed the room. His grandfather’s voice as it murmured. Glances in his direction as he stared at the sheet-covered form on the floor and wondered why his brother had to stay there, cold on the floor, instead of being held.
“No one would punish the five-year-old son of drug addicts. A kind judge, especially one sweetened by your grandfather’s money, would dismiss it as an accident, if the prosecutors even took the case to trial. Juvenile records are sealed. It wouldn’t do you any harm to take the blame. Your grandfather swore he’d help both Darlene and Robert get themselves straight. Your mother wouldn’t ever have custody of you again. Your grandfather and your step-grandmother would take you in to raise themselves. And we’d get money every month for the rest of our lives if we kept quiet.”
Gregory lurched out of his chair. If he didn’t move, didn’t shake away the cold and heed the restless energy that built within him, he would break apart into a thousand shards of ice. He paced across the room once, twice, one arm cradled across his belly as if he could still feel the baby against him. “That’s what you did?”
“Yes. Your grandfather took you away that night. We wrote it up in our report that the baby had been crying all day. Your parents had fallen asleep drunk. You didn’t know what you were doing. You just wanted the baby to stop crying. You put a pillow over him. The prosecutors didn’t even press the case. Robert Lane and Darlene Pierce went to get themselves clean. Robert, he made good on himself after he lost his son. Darlene, I guess she just stopped making bad.”
Back and forth. Every step reminded him he stood on solid ground, not trapped in a terrible dream of darkness full of the cries of a neglected child. “They’d still be on the hook for this, wouldn’t they. Murder hasn’t got a statute of limitations.”
“They would. That’s why those payments continued. My partner and I knew the truth. That money, and us staying bought, were the only things that kept them out of prison. The last time I spoke to Mister Russell, back when the case was wrapping up, he said he wanted to do right by Robert. Henry’s daughter had taken Robert’s son away. The only way Henry knew how to pay that back was to help the man build a life.”
It all fell into place. As long as Henry Russell lived to keep the secret, to pay the bribe, Gregory’s mother had nothing to fear. Her father had protected her from the consequences of her actions, as he had protected Robert. Likely, that would have continued had Robert taken the company over. Clean money from a corporation put into an anonymous bank account, instead of personal funds wired over to point a finger at the one who made the payments.
Randolph Marano had told Hanna that Henry Russell had acted on his regrets.Maybe what he regretted was protecting his daughter and putting the blame on me instead. Or letting Robert get away with his part in his own son’s loss. Or maybe, just maybe, he regretted never telling the truth about my dead baby brother.
Gregory turned to face the large portrait of his grandfather that hung behind his desk. Henry Russell stared at him, impassive, impressive, face bisected by the line of light that spilled in through the office door. A man with two faces, one the stern grandfather Gregory had grown to love, the other the cold, logical man who had no trouble pinning the blame for a killing on a five-year-old scapegoat.
“Sir, if I offered to pay for your lawyer, for your medications and your grandchild’s surgery, would you be willing to speak out about this? Maybe a lawyer could find a way to arrange a deal where you don’t serve time in exchange for your cooperation. Would you be open to exploring that possibility?”
Silence stretched out on the line. Then the man said,“Yes. Maybe it’s time for the truth to out. This phone number, it’s a burner phone. But if you call, I’ll answer it. You arrange an attorney for me, and we’ll work through them. For the hospital bills and all. I can’t tell this story unless I know my grandchild’s taken care of.”
“I understand. Tomorrow, I will call you with all the details.” Gregory had no doubt he could trace down the caller’s identity now. No need to worry the man would disappear. Offering an attorney for a mediator provided a measure of security to maintain the man’s goodwill. “Thank you, sir. For telling the truth.”
“Sometimes, I wish I’d done that a lot earlier. I can’t fix that now. All I can do is go forward the right way.”
“That’s the only thing any of us can do. Have a good night.”
The line disconnected. Gregory stared down at his phone screen as it showed the termination of the call, his background, and then darkened into its resting state.They killed my brother. Then they lived off my grandfather’s money the rest of their lives. No consequences. Robert is rich, has a whole new family. Now he’s trying to take my company away to keep his secret. As if taking my brother away weren’t bad enough, he’s willing to stab me in the back a second time for his own ends. God, to think I respected him. Thought of him as a father figure to replace the father I never had.
A breath of wind tickled the back of Gregory’s neck. His hairs stood on end. He glanced up fast and caught his reflection in glass over his grandfather’s portrait.
Behind him stood a woman. He didn’t recognize her sour face, pinched and black with a look of pure evil, or the old-style clothes that hung from her. The scent of patchouli, carnations and vanilla hung rancid in the air. Startled, he spun to face her.
His mother stared back at him. The last thing he saw was her malevolent smile before she jammed the taser into his stomach. Pain wracked him. Then a shadow passed over him, and consciousness fled.
17
The Blessing of Sparrows
Consciousness returned without mercy. Muscles Gregory could not have sworn he had before they ached, both with the offense of a mild electrocution and with the strain of the bindings that lashed him to the hard, rough wood chair. Long streaks of stinging pain burned down one forearm and the inside of one thigh. A warm, sticky feeling irritated both wounded places, dribbled down his leg and hand.
