Speak No Evil

“I want to help you, Steve. But you need to be completely honest with me.”

“What do you want from me, Nick? I told you everything I know. I didn’t kill Angie.” Steve stomped off again, and Nick trailed at a distance to give his brother time to cool off and think about the situation.

The differences between Nick and his brother didn’t elude him. Steve thrived here among the hordes of people, on the edge of a major city, where he couldn’t possibly know even a small fraction of the population by name. So anonymous, it made Nick uneasy, coming from a town where he could engage in a conversation with a stranger and learn that they had more than one mutual acquaintance.

Even now, in the middle of a murder investigation where he was a suspect, Steve waved to people he recognized, smiled, acknowledged peers. Like he was on stage, always on show. It was the old Steve coupled with a Steve he didn’t really know, and that bothered Nick.

Just how much had Steve changed since he left Montana?

Nick caught up with Steve and asked, “What do they want with your computer?”

“I don’t know. I guess to see where I’ve been, what I’ve done online. It’s actually really easy to track e-mail and Internet traffic. It should be a piece of cake for the police.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do they want to know where you’ve been online, what e-mails you sent? Why is your computer important to them?”

Steve paused. “Angie had an anonymous online journal. It was…irresponsible. I told her to tone it down, but she didn’t listen. I know that journal had something to do with her murder. I guess the police just want to make sure I didn’t say something incriminating online or threaten her or something. Or maybe they are looking for something like that to pin Angie’s murder on me, but I didn’t do it. And they’re not going to find anything that said I did.”

Steve sounded defiant, and Nick’s uneasiness grew. The police had mentioned the website. Nothing in detail. “I need to look at this journal.”

Steve shook his head. “There’s no reason for you to.”

“Dammit Steve!” Nick stopped walking. His brother turned around and glared at him. “You have to take this seriously,” Nick said. “Your ex-girlfriend was murdered. The police are looking at you. You have motive and no real alibi.”

“I had no motive to kill Angie! Whose side are you on?”

“I want to be on your side. I really do. But look at the facts. Angie was eighteen years old. You’re old enough to be her father. That’s-” Nick cut off what he was about to say, something that would be impossible to take back.

Instead, he softened his tone. “What’s going on with you, Steve? You’re not working, you’ve been going to school long enough to earn three degrees, and you’re dating college girls. You’re just shy of forty and your girlfriends can’t even legally drink!”

“Why are you judging me? Don’t you trust me? Don’t you know me?”

“I thought I did.” Nick hated the direction this conversation had taken, but he had no choice. The truth demanded that he push Steve.

“I don’t make it a habit dating girls at the college. Angie was the only one. It-I understand what you’re saying. Really. And you didn’t know Angie. She was different. She needed me. We hit it off.”

Nick wasn’t certain he fully believed Steve, but why would he lie?

“Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

Steve clenched his fists. “Do you think I did that to Angie?”

“No.” But Nick had waited a beat before answering, and Steve seized on it, his jaw tight but his eyes filled with hurt.

“You think I’m capable of that type of cruelty? That I could rape a woman? You think that of me? You really don’t know me.” Steve stared at the ocean, his eyes watery. “You don’t know me at all.”

“That’s not what I said-” Nick began, but Steve cut him off.

“I thought you were here to help me, Nick. I was wrong. I didn’t think I had to prove to my own brother that I’m innocent. Maybe you’re right, maybe I do need a lawyer. Because if my own flesh and blood believes me capable of murder, it’s no wonder the fucking police are trying to hang me.”

“That’s not how it works-”

Steve shook his head, waved his arm toward his apartment building up the beach. “Why don’t you go join your buddies who turned my apartment upside down? Skewer me because I’m the easiest to blame. And let Angie’s killer walk the streets free. Because the truth doesn’t mean anything, does it? As long as you guys have someone to throw in jail, the truth doesn’t matter.”

Steve turned and walked up the beach, back toward the apartment. Nick watched him, perplexed. What was that about? He replayed the conversation and didn’t see what he’d said to set off his brother. But the pressure of a police investigation, the stress of being a suspect, of having the police in your home, asking personal, embarrassing questions…maybe it had just gotten to Steve.

Steve had asked Nick for help and the only way Nick could do that was if he knew all the facts.

Nick understood why the police suspected his brother. Older man, much younger woman dumps him. Restraining order. There was more to that story than Steve let on. And Nick had to see Angie’s website to know exactly what the police had on his brother. And hope that Steve trusted him enough to be completely honest once his temper cooled down.

Steve jumped into a small, sporty car and drove off. Nick started back up the beach, noticed that the police vehicles were gone. He hoped the apartment door was unlocked. If not, he knew a few tricks. Hunger and weariness ate at him. It had been a long day and he needed to get off his feet. Or rather his knees. Walking on the beach had not been a wise move. He wanted his pain pills, but refused to give in to the need.

Nick slowly crossed the beach and opened the rental car, unzipped his shaving kit, and poured two prescription-strength Motrin into his hand. He swallowed them with the now cold coffee he’d picked up at the airport after he’d flown in, hours before, wincing at the foul taste.

Grabbing his bag, he started toward Steve’s apartment again. Grinding pain in his knees and ankles forced him to walk slowly.

He counted twenty-four stairs. There were twenty-two stairs in his house in Bozeman. He could have moved his bedroom downstairs to the guest room, but he had refused. It would have meant he’d been defeated by the pain, defeated by his mistakes, defeated by a killer.

He could do this.

One.

He put his right foot on the first stair, and pulled his left foot to stair two. Okay. The pain was minimal, but he had known it would be. His right knee hadn’t been as damaged as his left.

Bracing for the electric jolt he knew would come, he pulled his right leg up to the second stair.

His vision blurred and he took a deep breath.

He did four more stairs in the same fashion, trying to pick up the pace, until it became obvious that he wouldn’t make it, not like this. He swung the bag in his right hand to build momentum, then tossed it up the stairs, praying it would make it to the landing and not roll all the way down. It made it, barely.

He grabbed both railings and used them as crutches, putting more pressure on his right knee than he should, but relieving his left leg. He reached the top and sank down on the landing to catch his breath and wonder again what he was doing. Could he even catch the bad guys anymore?

Inevitably when he was in pain, self-pity took hold.

That’s it, Sheriff. Get off your ass.

Nick hauled himself up and shuffled across the balcony to Steve’s apartment. The door was locked, but not bolted, and Nick easily popped the old lock.

When Nick opened the door, he was surrounded by a bright, orange glow. It took a moment to realize the light came from the setting sun shining through the large, sliding-glass windows that made up the back wall of the apartment. The sun rested on the ocean in front of him, bleeding into the sea, the water sparkling like bursts of