“Her middle name,” Dean explains. “It was her mother’s maiden name.”
Sam and I look at him, and Dean shrugs.
“Private investigating has taught me a lot of skills. Skimming background information is child’s play. When I found out the name Alice Logan, I wanted to know more about her. I did a check on her to find out who she was. That’s how I knew she’s Jake’s mother.”
“If I was her, I would have changed my name, too. I wouldn’t want to be associated with her family or known for what she did. Of course, according to her testimony, she didn’t do anything wrong. She tugged the heartstrings with a long story about how horrible her husband was and how oppressive her home life was. To hear it from her, the reason no one in town knew who she was or where she lived was because of her husband, John. He didn’t want her or their daughter Sally leaving the house or associating with anyone. He would fly into a rage and get incredibly violent if she put so much as a toe outside of the line, he put down for her. Of course, that line was always moving, so she didn’t know when she was going to get in trouble.”
“Wasn’t she the one who abused Jake?” Dean asks.
“The way he told it to me, they both did. And considering I was listening to his declaration while waiting to be sent up as a burned sacrifice, I tend to believe him,” I say.
“How did she justify leaving him, though?”
“She said she didn’t just leave him. She didn’t disappear. Her official testimony was that she couldn’t take the abuse anymore. Sally was starting to withdraw, and one day she caught her husband looking at their daughter when she got out of the shower. She decided she couldn’t take it anymore and told her children, both her children, they were going to leave. She’d already gotten in touch with her sister, who lives in Utah, and they were going to go live with her. To hear her tell it, Jake refused to go. He wanted to stay with his father. She knew she didn’t have the time to argue with him, especially when he ran off into the woods. So she left. She did what she had to do to survive. She said she reached out to him several times to try to get him to come to be with her, but he never wanted to.”
“And Jake never mentioned any of that?” Sam asks.
“No. I don’t believe a word she says other than that she planned to leave. I think she hated her husband and her son. Jake was the product of an affair, and it caused all kinds of problems. She favored her daughter, so she figured the only way she was going to have the life she wanted was to leave. I don’t think she tried to get in touch with him or ever even thought about him again. She went so far as to change her name so he couldn’t find her. She wasn’t too creative about it, granted, but she did it,” I say.
“And life after she left? Any idea what she’s been doing?”
“Just living a normal life, apparently. She and Sally separated themselves from everybody in Feathered Nest and faded into obscurity, essentially. They were able to produce information that shows they lived a normal life… rented a house in the suburbs after living with her sister for a while, got a job in an office. Nothing extraordinary.”
“An office job?” Dean asks. “I wonder why she would go from being a nurse to working in an office?”
“She realized she didn’t actually like taking care of people?” I suggest. “Or she just really wanted a totally different life.”
I reach for my phone.
“Who are you calling?” Sam asks.
“Eric. I want to see if he can track down what is quite possibly the most common car on the face of the planet.”
Chapter Fifteen
“No surprise, there are far too many cars of that exact color, make, and model in the area to even try to narrow it down right now. We didn’t see the license plate number, and while there are other ways that we could track movements of the cars, it would take forever, and we just don’t have time for that right this second. But, I did ask Eric to pull up the surveillance at a couple of places. He sent me the videos,” I tell them, opening my laptop and cueing up the first of the videos Eric sent.
“What’s this?” Dean asks, Looking over my shoulder at the screen.
“This is one of the surveillance cameras outside the bus station in Richmond that was bombed. The footage from inside clearly shows Greg walk in, go to the back lockers, go to the information desk, then leave right before the blast. The ones from the outside aren’t quite as useful. They aren’t positioned in the best way, but it shows some of the parking lot.”
We watch the footage from the camera until the stomach-turning moment that captures the explosion. I’m thankful the cameras don’t have audio. Seeing the blast of light and the building turn to shrapnel is enough without having to hear it.
“Did they ever figure out how the explosion happened? Where the device was?” Dean asks.
“No,” I tell him. “But I know a lot of people think Greg carried it into the station in the bag he’s holding.”
“But you don’t believe that,” he says.
“No. The bag doesn’t look like it’s holding much if anything and investigators on the scene were skeptical the source of the explosion was the lockers. There’s not enough damage, and the direction of the blast overpressure is off. Which means the explosive was located somewhere else in the building.”
“And you think Catch Me is responsible for it,” Dean acknowledges.
“I’m sure of it. It was the first message he sent me; I just didn’t realize it yet. What I don’t understand is Greg’s
