mother. I’d just like to get a read on him before then.”
Nick frowned. “Burns didn’t give us permission to search his computer.”
“I noticed. I’m going to make sure the twenty-four/seven surveillance on Burns has been approved while we wait for Little Brother to leave.”
Brandon Burns walked out of the Sand Shack alone shortly after nine-thirty that night. Carina recalled seeing him the first time she visited the Shack with Will. Brandon was tall and skinny, still growing into his awkward height. He was pleasant-looking, if a bit nondescript, and well-groomed with short brown hair and pressed clothes. Carina and Nick approached and showed their police identification.
“Do you have a couple minutes to talk?” Nick asked.
“Um, sure, I guess. Do you want to go inside?”
Carina didn’t want Kyle to interrupt her conversation with Brandon. “Here’s fine. It won’t take long.”
“Okay.” He looked from Nick to Carina. “You’ve been here a couple times this week.”
Carina nodded. “Yes, we’re talking to everyone who worked with Angie. Did you know her?”
“A little.” Brandon played with the change and keys in his pocket.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t know. Last week sometime, I guess. I think we both worked on Wednesday and I worked Friday to set up for dinner, but Kyle doesn’t want me working more than four hours a day.
“That makes sense, since you’re in high school. Don’t want your grades to slip,” Carina said. “Do you like working for your brother?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yeah. He’s really great.”
“Do you know if your father has been in contact with your brother?”
He stared at them wide-eyed. “My dad? Do you know where he is?”
Nick’s heart went out to the kid. His father, a convicted rapist. What must it be like growing up with the weight of that on your young shoulders? He’d just been a little kid when his father was in prison, then nine or ten when he disappeared.
“No, we don’t,” Carina said. “But we’re trying to find him. Has he contacted you at all in the eight years since he disappeared?”
“Me? Why?” A hint of wariness, uncertainty.
“We’d just like to talk to him.”
The kid bit his thumbnail. “I haven’t talked to him since I was nine. He stopped coming home one day. I didn’t want to move here because how could he find us? But my mother said we had to.”
“Do you think your mother has talked to him?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s probably the one who chased him off, always yelling at him. Stupid this, dumbass that, pathetic fool. That’s what she called him and he didn’t like it. She’s the reason he left.”
“What about your brother? Do you think Kyle has kept in contact with him?”
No comment.
“Brandon?”
His face turned red with barely restrained anger.
“Kyle doesn’t like him.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
Whether Brandon really didn’t know about his father’s history, or was lying, Nick couldn’t tell. He did sense that Brandon was embarrassed, which suggested that he might have an idea of what had happened years ago, but maybe his brother or mother had tried to protect him.
Nick spoke up. “Brandon, do you know why your father went to prison?”
He stuck his lip out. “Yes.”
“Was Kyle angry with your father because he was in prison?”
Brandon shook his head. “Kyle was angry all the time when he got out of prison. He didn’t want him to come home.”
Carina handed Brandon her card. “I want you to call me anytime, day or night, if you hear from or see your father.”
“Why?”
“We really can’t say.”
Brandon’s face lit up with hope. “Do you think he’s here? In San Diego?”
“Brandon,” Nick said, “call if you hear from him, okay? Or if he contacts your mother or brother.”
The teen nodded absently, and Nick wondered if he’d even heard what Nick had told him.
They left to track down Regina Burns at her house in University City.
“What do you think?” Carina asked.
“I think he misses his dad and either doesn’t know why he went to prison or doesn’t care.”
“He was just a kid.” Carina frowned. “He’s the same age as Lucy. I can’t imagine what she would have felt if she found out someone she loved had done something like Brandon’s father did.”
“He may be a kid, but…” Nick paused.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“I want to know what you’re thinking.”
He didn’t know if he could trust his instincts, but the last time he’d had a hunch and didn’t tell anyone, he’d almost been killed.
“Brandon’s reaction was odd.”
“To what?”
“To the idea that his father might be in town.”
Carina pondered that. “If you were a seventeen-year-old kid who hadn’t seen his father in eight years, forgetting that his father is a criminal, wouldn’t you be excited? Hopeful?” She paused. “I regret giving him false hopes, though. If Mitch Burns
“Brandon has probably worked up some fantasies about his father. Made him into a hero, not a villain.”
“You sound just like Dillon, and I think you’re right. Brandon said that his brother was angry when their father was released. Because he thought he should stay in prison?”
“Do you know many kids who have that strong a sense of right and wrong? That they’d
“Most would probably act like Brandon, put their criminal father up on a pedestal.”
“There may be something else going on here.”
“Like what?”
“We have a similar but not identical MO to Mitch Burns. We have DNA of a male relative of Burns. What if one or both of the brothers are involved?”
“A killing pair?”
“Kyle is a strong-willed, dominant older brother with a hair-trigger temper and huge chip on his shoulder about his father,” Nick said. “Brandon is quieter, reticent, looks up to his brother and worships a nonexistent father. He’d be very susceptible to outside influences.”
“There’s no evidence. I can’t just walk in and take Brandon’s computer without cause. He’s a minor. But maybe his mother will let us have the computer. At least we can rule him out if nothing else.”
It was after ten Saturday night by the time Carina and Nick arrived at Regina Burns’s house in University City, roughly halfway between downtown San Diego and La Jolla.
Mrs. Burns lived in a small, post-World War II cinder-block house in a quiet neighborhood. By the looks of the automobiles and neatly trimmed lawns, most of the houses’ owners were original, and were now well past retirement age. The houses that had changed hands were split between would-be mechanics with multiple cars in various states of assembly in oil-stained driveways, and young families with kids’ toys as lawn art behind chain-link
