“What was she like?” he repeated softly. He shook his head. “Nothing like Trina Simms.”
When we got back, Judd was sitting on the front porch, waiting for us. Not good. I spent about five seconds wondering if we could claim to have spent the day in town. Judd held up his hand and stopped the words before I could form them.
“I always believed, you give kids enough space, they make their own mistakes. They learn.” Judd said nothing for several seconds. “Then one time, my daughter was about ten. She and her best friend got it into their minds that they were going to go on a scientific expedition.”
“You have a daughter?” Michael said.
Judd continued on as if he’d never spoken. “Scarlett was always getting ideas like that one. She’d get it in her brain that she was going to do something, and there was no talking her out of it. And her little friend—well, if Scarlett was in it for the science, her friend was the expedition type. The scale-down-the-side-of-a-cliff-for-a-sample type. They damn near got themselves killed.” Judd fell into silence again. “Sometimes, some kids, they need a little help with the learning.”
Judd never raised his voice. He didn’t even look angry. But suddenly, I was very sure that I did not want Judd’s “help.”
“It was my fault.” Dean’s voice was a perfect complement for Judd’s, and I realized that some of his mannerisms were the older man’s as well. “Michael and Cassie only went with me so I wouldn’t go alone.”
“Is that right?” Judd asked, giving the three of us one of those stares that only someone who’d been a parent could manage, the one that—when your own parent made it—reminded you that they’d changed your diapers and could recognize your BS, even now.
“I needed to do this.” Dean didn’t say any more than that. Judd crossed his arms over his chest.
“Maybe you did,” he allowed. “But I’d think of a better excuse in the next five seconds, son, because you’re going to need it.”
I heard the sound of heels on tile. An instant later, Agent Sterling appeared in the doorway behind Judd. “Inside,” she barked. “Right now.”
We went inside. So much for not getting caught. Sterling herded us into Briggs’s office. She gestured to the couch. “Sit.”
I sat. Dean sat. Michael rolled his eyes, but took a seat on the arm of the couch.
“It was Dean’s fault,” Michael announced solemnly. “He needed to do this.”
“Michael!” I said.
“Do you know where Briggs is right now?” Agent Sterling’s question wasn’t what I expected. My mind started searching for reasons that Briggs’s location might be relevant to this discussion, to what we’d done. Was he out looking for us? Meeting with the director to do damage control?
“Briggs,” Agent Sterling said tautly, “is at the Warren County police station, meeting with a man who thinks he has information about the Emerson Cole murder. You see, a serial killer’s son paid his mother a visit this afternoon, and Mr. Simms believes the boy might be violent.” She paused. “The gentleman has a bruise on his neck to back up the claim.”
Christopher Simms had reported Dean to the police? I hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Luckily,” Agent Sterling continued, making the word sound more like an indictment than an expression of luck, “Briggs had asked the locals to route anything relevant to this case through him, so he’s the one who took the statement. He’s still there, taking the statement. As it turns out, Christopher Simms has quite a lot to say—about Dean, about the rest of you, about his mother’s relationship with Daniel Redding. He’s just a fount of information.”
“He drives a black truck.” I stared at my hands, but couldn’t keep from speaking up. “He has a connection to Daniel Redding. His mother berates him constantly. He lost his temper while I was there and grabbed me, so you’ve got impulsivity, but his movements and mannerisms are also controlled.”
“You slammed Christopher into the wall when he grabbed Cassie?” Agent Sterling asked Dean. Of everything I’d said, it figured that she’d latch on to that.
Dean shrugged unapologetically. Agent Sterling took that as a yes.
Sterling turned to Michael. I expected her to ask him something, but instead she just held out her hand. “Keys.”
“Spatula,” Michael replied. She narrowed her eyes at him. “We aren’t just saying random nouns?” he asked archly.
“Give me your keys. Now.”
Michael dug his keys out of his pocket and tossed them blithely to her. She turned back to Dean.
“I told my father that I trusted you,” she said. “I told him I could handle this.”
Her words dug their way under Dean’s skin. He pushed back. “I never asked you to handle me.”
Sterling actually flinched. “Dean…” She looked like she was about to apologize, but she stopped herself. The expression on her face hardened. “From this point on, you’re not alone,” she told Dean sharply. She gestured to Michael. “You two are bunking together. If you’re not with Michael, you’re with someone else. Now that you’ve flung yourself onto the local PD’s radar, if and when our UNSUB strikes again, you might need an alibi.”
Agent Sterling couldn’t have devised a better punishment for Dean. He was a solitary person by nature, and after the day’s events, he’d want to be alone.
“You’re dismissed.” Agent Sterling’s voice was crisp. All three of us were on our feet in an instant. “Not you, Cassie.” Sterling fixed me in place with her stare. “You two,” she told the boys, “out!”
Michael and Dean glanced at each other, then at me.
“I won’t ask you again.”
Agent Sterling waited until the door shut behind the boys before she spoke. “What were you and Dean doing out at the old Redding house?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Was there nothing she didn’t know?
“Christopher Simms wasn’t the only one who contacted the police,” Sterling informed me. “The local police hear ‘teenage prowlers’ out on Redding’s old property, mere minutes after someone files a complaint about Dean, and one guess where their minds go.”
Even I had to admit this didn’t look good.
“He needed to go back,” I said, my voice soft but unwavering. “Just to see it.”