He couldn't help but think that Ricky ran into the house for a reason. He was convinced of it. It was probably the same reason he and Bobby attempted the break-in only a week before. They were definitely after something in the house, but he couldn't think of anything it could possibly be. He remembered Bobby's words: "How do you open it?"
He tossed and turned, and he wondered why Sarah lied to him. There was no mistaking what he had heard when he first approached the house. There were two men inside arguing. "So what the blazes happened to that other man?" he asked himself. "And why would Sarah lie to cover anything up?"
Dean liked Sarah from the moment he met her, but she seemed different last night. She seemed to have far more control over her terror compared to the absolute distress she was in the night before when he agreed to go check on Simon. Both Gerald and Simon died, and she seemed too calm about it. Where was the distress over the deaths of two very close people in her life? Simon especially.
Dean returned his thoughts to the house itself, and the Oliver boys popped into his mind. "Now where the hell did they suddenly vanish to after escaping from their escorted leave?" It's not easy to disappear without a trace without even one reported sighting in a city the size of Calgary.
He remembered how he first felt when the call came in about the murders in the Oliver home. He had felt elated; it was the opportunity he was looking for. It provided him the chance at a bit of personal redemption after failing to provide adequate and accurate evidence in his last murder case: a case that ended with the acquittal of the man who he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, committed the murder. He had not felt that elation since that first phone call. The Oliver murders still made no sense to him at all. He suspected, once again, that the Oliver boys were connected to the events of yesterday, but how?
Dean began to second-guess himself as sleep continued to evade him. He wondered if he really had what it took to be an effective detective. He had not done very well on the only two murders he handled since he came to Bluffington. He knew the questions he would be facing from his bosses over the next few days, and he would again be short of answers. He hated that part of his job.
These thoughts continued to roll through his mind, and soon a different thought surfaced above all others: Sarah's insistence on staying in the house after they took Gerald's body away. It annoyed Dean at the time, but now it bothered him. Gerald was her tormenter, and he just died in her new home. Still, she insisted that she wanted to stay there. Maybe she felt if she left now she’d never be able to face coming back to that house. He should have expected her, at a minimum, to have a friend to stay with her, but she had not even suggested a friend and refused the offer of a hotel. Who was her closest friend in town? That would be Simon, and he too was murdered.
Why did she not show grief? She should have been much more upset than she appeared to be. Could she still have something more important on her mind?
Dean rose out of bed and decided he would head back over to Sarah's as soon as the sun broke the horizon.
CHAPTER 103
It was around 10:00 PM when the coroner finally left with Gerald's body and shortly after midnight when the last investigator left Sarah's house. She forced a smiled as he said goodbye. She thanked the officer and closed and locked the front door. She watched out the window until the vehicle disappeared down the road and immediately rushed over to the fireplace.
She shouted out to the boys and knocked against the metal frame of the fireplace enclosure.
"Everyone is gone. You can come out now."
She listened for sounds from within the room and heard shuffling from the other side.
"Hey! Boys! It's safe to come out. How do you open this?"
Sarah felt the fireplace move and then the right side slipped backwards and revealed Tommy and Jason's worried faces as they poked their heads out from the darkness.
"They're gone?" Tommy asked warily.
"Yes. They are all gone, but they will be back first thing in the morning. You need to get going on this thing of yours right now," she said.
Tommy stepped out of the room. "I need the washroom first," he said and quickly headed up the stairs.
As he passed her, Sarah looked at Tommy's face with dried blood crusted in his hair and smeared down his face.
"Oh, you're going to need something for that cut," she said.
Jason stepped out of the room and thanked Sarah for all she did for them. He looked back into the dark room and paced anxiously outside of it as he waited for Tommy to return. It was obvious to Sarah that he didn't really want to go back into the room alone.
Sarah tried her best to put him at ease.
"Is there anything I can do? Something you need?"
Jason just shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm still wondering why you're helping us. I don't even know who you are."
Sarah felt many emotions rise up at Jason's questions. She thought of Gerald and then Simon. There were many reasons she could offer Jason.
"Tommy told me all about what is inside that room. And my name is Sarah," she said.
"Oh," Jason replied. "I'm, uh… Jason." He dropped his eyes to the floor as he hoped to avoid discussing the details of what Tommy may have said.
"I promise I will not tell a soul about any of this. I don't pretend to know why you think this is up to you and Tommy, but I could see your brother was really upset over this yesterday."
Jason looked up at her. "If not us, then who?"
Jason's commitment surprised her. "But why you?"
Tommy came back in the room as Jason answered. "In that room is bad stuff. My best friend Tim killed himself because of what's inside there and what it all represents. I don't want anyone else to die. It needs to stop, and getting rid of it is the only way we can be sure that it's really over."
Tommy nodded. "He's right you know. We have to get rid of it all." Tommy pushed past Jason, walked into the room and flicked on the light. "Our dad did all of this."
He hesitated for only a moment and then moved over to the shelf on his right. "Oh, Jesus," he said as he flipped over the top photo. It was one of what seemed like hundreds stacked in separate piles. He looked back at Jason and Sarah and wiped his eyes.
"Who was it?" Jason asked coldly.
Tommy could only shake his head.
"Who?" Jason asked again. "Was it Tim?"
Tommy turned away and closed his eyes. He nodded.
Sarah shuddered. She didn't know how she could help them, but she wanted to do something.
"You'll need something to carry this out of here. Wait here. I think I have just the thing," she said.
Sarah hurried out of the room and upstairs to her bedroom. The thought came to her immediately. A few moments later, she stood in front of Jason and passed her bright red suitcase to him.
"Will that be big enough?" she asked.
Jason held the suitcase up for Tommy to see. Tommy nodded back.
"It's real nice," he said.
Sarah smiled and left the study. This was a task for the boys to complete alone. She felt diminished as her own troubles with Gerald paled in comparison to the burden these boys were carrying. She didn't know if they were going to look at the photos of their friends or try not to look at any of them. It troubled her that she couldn't help them. She put on a pot of coffee, gathered up some gauze and bandages for Tommy and sat at the kitchen table.
It started with a little sniffle as Sarah let the fact sink in that she would never see Simon again. She would miss him and his strange ways. Her sniffle soon turned to real tears as she knew what happened to Simon was truly her fault. If only she had not pushed him to check on Gerald, but she knew Simon would have insisted on going anyway.
Sarah let the tears flow for Simon as she waited for the boys to finish. She even cried for Gerald because she remembered the good times they shared in their early days together.
CHAPTER 1
04
Tommy flipped over the top photo and grimaced in disgust. He could almost taste bile because he felt so deeply sickened by his father’s perversions.
"Aw fuck," he said and gazed out at Jason and Sarah. He didn't know if he was going to be able to do this.
"Who was it?" his brother asked. He could see his brother shut out all emotion as best he could.
Tommy wiped his eyes. The image seemed to burn itself into his retinas, and he fought hard to make it go away.
"Who?" Jason prompted him. "Was it Tim?" he asked.
Tommy closed his eyes and turned away from Sarah and Jason. He nodded.
The photo was a simple image of their friend Tim naked and sitting on the training bench in his dad's physiotherapy office. It wasn't that the image was disgusting or even remotely graphic; it was just a simple photo of Tim sitting naked on the bench. He wasn't smiling, but he didn’t look sad or uncomfortable. Both boys saw Tim naked many times as they changed and showered after hockey games and practices. They saw Tim naked when they stripped down at the pool to crawl into their swimsuits and even twice when the crew went skinny-dipping in the river. It was the actions and purpose behind the photo; those that made the image such a horrible, revolting trophy of a perverted conquest that repulsed him.
Tommy breathed deeply and slowly opened his eyes. He was terrified of what he was about to see as he moved his eyes across the many shelves. He could see names and dates written on the packages, boxes and cases that littered the shelves. He tried not to read any of the words and names, but his eyes betrayed him. As Tommy opened the bright red suitcase and began to shovel the video tapes and CDs inside, the names began to leap off the labels. Each one screamed at him to never forget them. He recognized some of the names. Some he didn't know at all and many were from years ago. From years before he was in Pee Wee hockey.
Tommy wanted to scream.
"Jason," he called over to his brother who stood just outside the entrance. He sighed heavily and wiped at the tears in his eyes. "Just stay out there, Jason. I'll get this."
Jason stood at the doorway as Tommy continued to fill the red suitcase. Tommy looked up briefly and watched as Jason stole a glance down at the labels stuffed into the suitcase. Jason pulled his eyes away to his left and let them fall on a small, flat-panel TV screen that rested on the shelf inside the room. Below the TV was a small DVD player. Tommy said nothing as Jason stepped inside the room and pressed the eject button on the player. The player churned and grunted in the process of releasing the disc. The voice of Tim from the night of the murders echoed in his head.
"No, Jason!" Tommy shouted as Jason reach for the disc.
It was too late. Jason removed it and held it in his hands. T G was written on the label. He stood there staring at it in his hands. Tommy was shouting at him, but Jason didn't hear a word he said. Jason caressed the disc in his hands for a moment, and then slipped it back inside the player, hit the play button and turned on the TV.
"No!" Tommy screamed and scrambled up from the floor. He grimaced as the pain throbbed in his ribs, but it wasn't enough to stop him. He rushed over, swept the TV and DVD player off the shelf and let them both crash down on the floor.
Tommy grabbed Jason and hugged him tight. "I miss him too, but that's not the Tim we know. We have to let it be. It's over, and we need to remember him the way we always knew him."
Jason squeezed Tommy back and sobbed.
Tommy held his younger brother until he was sure Jason was going to be okay. He led Jason out of the room and instructed him to go see Sarah to get a bag or something for the rest of the stuff while he continued to load it all up. There was too much to fit inside the one suitcase. Jason left the study and Tommy returned to the task of removing all of the images from the room.
As Tommy emptied shelf after shelf, he realized these images were trophies. Each one represented his father’s sick power over the young boys entrusted to his care. The violation of each one of his friends and of the many boys he didn't know didn't stop once the victims left this property. Even with his father dead, the violation continued. That was what made these images so vile. In each of the images, a piece of each boy's soul was imprisoned in the digital memory and on to the photographic paper. Every victim knew these images existed, and Tommy realized that they could never heal completely if the images remained.
It was really so much worse than he first understood. His father was a collector. The worst kind of pedophile. Tommy couldn't do anything about what happened to each one of these victims, many of whom were his friends, but he really thought what he was doing here with Jason was important and would somehow stop the hurt from continuing. He knew the victims would want to know that the evidence was destroyed, but he couldn't bear the responsibility of learning the name of each and every victim. For now, his focus was only on ensuring that all evidence was removed and destroyed forever. Once this was done, he promised himself that he would revisit his concern about letting the victims know. He wasn’t sure how, but he would find a way.
Tommy looked around the small room and spotted a computer in the corner. A greater fear brought a new darkness over him that he had not even considered before. He wondered if his father had even gone farther than collecting. Was his father also a trader? He didn't want to know the answer.
Tommy stopped loading the suitcase. He stared hard at the computer, and his worry multiplied the longer he looked. He glanced back towards the entrance and was glad to see that Jason had not yet returned. He moved quickly and smashed the computer onto the floor. He used a long, steel screw driver he found sticking out from a small tin filled with a few pens and a pair of scissors and pried the hard drive from the computer. He tossed it in the suitcase with the rest. He zipped the suitcase closed before Jason returned. He wouldn't tell Jason what he thought about the hard drive.
Jason returned with a large, paper, handled gift bag. Tommy filled up the bag until there was nothing left on any of the shelves. Jason remained outside the room and watched from beyond the door. He dropped his eyes often but never looked entirely away. It was necessary that he be part of the process.
It was almost 3:00 AM when Tommy and Jason entered the kitchen and stood behind Sarah. Tommy held the paper bag, and Jason held the bright red suitcase.
Sarah told Tommy to have a seat. They sat in silence as Sarah cleaned up Tommy's cut and bandaged his forehead. She tossed the bloody rags into the sink when she was finished, sat back down and looked at the boys. She couldn't smile.
"It's done?" she asked.
The boys nodded together.
"Well. Let's get you out of here then."
Sarah grabbed her car keys, opened the back door and ushered the boys outside to her car was in front of the garage.
CHAPTER 105
The mountains to the west were washed with a cool, amber glow as the sun rose up on another cloudless Saturday. It promised days of wonderful weather.
Dean waited eagerly on the driveway alongside Sarah's house until Sarah finally pulled up and stopped in front of the garage. He gave a gentle wave to Sarah and walked over to her car as she got out. Dean arrived more than an hour before she arrived home when the sun was first breaking over the horizon in the east, and he was very surprised to find she wasn’t at home.
Sarah greeted Dean pleasantly, but he sensed an edginess about her when he peered in the windows of her car.
"Morning to you as well, Sarah," Dean replied. There was nothing of interest in her car.
Sarah walked up the steps towards the back door. Dean followed close behind.
"Bit early for you, isn't it, Dean?" she asked light-heartedly. "I thought you weren't coming back until eight this morning."
Dean paused and looked over at her car in the driveway. "Wouldn't have expected you to be up so early after last night. Any special reason you went for a drive this early in the morning?"
Sarah fumbled
with her keys in the lock. "Couldn't sleep. That's all. Come on in," she offered. "I have the coffee on already.”
Dean followed Sarah inside to the kitchen, and they sat at the table with coffee. Dean scanned the room out of habit and tucked what he saw in the corners of his mind. He was tired and he hoped the coffee would perk him up.
"It's a bit strong. I made it a few hours ago."
Dean nodded. One sip confirmed that it was definitely not fresh.
"Tell me, Sarah. Where does one go for a drive when one can't sleep after a night like that?" He watched Sarah carefully.
"I just drove out of the city."
Dean purposely withheld any reply, and Sarah fluffed her hair unconsciously. He expected she would offer more if he waited long enough, if only to break the awkward silence, and he was right.
"I just kept driving. Ended up in Calgary. I just drove around thinking. I even drove by the old house before I came back here.
"Hmm," Dean responded. He didn't buy it.
Dean maintained his silence and sipped at his coffee. He wondered where she had really gone.
"You must be tired," Dean suggested.
"I am," Sarah replied and smiled. "Yesterday was such a long day. Then after I went to bed, my mind just went crazy. I tossed and turned and finally had to get up. It was 3:00 AM I think when I put on the coffee, and then I just had to get out of here."
Dean smiled back. "I couldn't sleep either," he said. He sat up and leaned closer to Sarah. "What am I missing, Sarah?"
Sarah shook her head. "I don't know what you mean."
Dean laughed and stood up. He walked over to the kitchen window above the sink and looked out the back to the porch that protruded off to the side.
"Do you own a backpack?" He stared out the window above the kitchen sink.
Sarah shook her head. "No. Why do you ask?"
Dean pointed out the window. "Well, you see right out there, in the shrub next to the back steps, I found a backpack this morning while I was waiting for you."
He turned back and faced Sarah. She looked as though she had no idea what he was talking about.