to the front door, his mind wandered back a dozen years to when Kevin had been a baby. And Mary Lee had been his wife. They’d been happy then, hadn’t they? He and Mary Lee had still been in love. They’d been proud parents planning a future for their son. A future that they’d believed would include the two of them raising Kevin and giving him a brother or a sister at some point down the line.
Then everything had gone wrong. Little things at first. His obsession with his job. Mary Lee’s boredom and restlessness. The arguments. The accusations. And then his partner had been murdered and for a while, Jim had nearly lost his mind. After that, nothing had ever been the same again. Not with his marriage. Not with his life.
Just as Jim reached out to ring the Grangers’ doorbell, he heard loud laughter and splashing water, the sounds coming from the back of the house. He vaguely remembered R.B. telling him to make sure Kevin brought along some swim trunks because they had a backyard pool. Jim stepped down off the porch, rounded the side of the house and opened the black wrought-iron gate. He stopped a good fifteen feet away and watched Kevin and R.B. in the pool. They tossed a huge beach ball back and forth, the boy and the man laughing. Brenda Granger, in a pair of yellow capri pants and a short-sleeved white blouse, stood on the patio watching the two, a wide smile on her face. As if sensing Jim’s presence, she turned and waved, then called to him.
“Hello there. You’re just in time for lunch. We’re having hot dogs, potato chips, and chocolate pie,” Brenda said.
Kevin tossed the ball out onto the patio, then swam across the pool and pulled himself out and onto his feet. “Hey, Dad. Any word on Mom?”
Jim nodded. “Allen just phoned.”
“How is your ex-wife?” Brenda asked in a hushed tone as she approached Jim. “We’ve been trying to keep Kevin occupied so he wouldn’t worry.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Granger. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything y’all have done for Kevin and me.”
“It’s our pleasure. And please, remember to call me Brenda.”
Kevin rushed up to Jim and looked him square in the eyes. “How is she? She’s all right, isn’t she?”
“Allen said she came through surgery just fine. She’s still asleep. He’ll call us tonight and then if she feels up to it, your mother will call you tomorrow.” Jim glanced at Brenda. “I gave him your number. I hope that’s all right.”
“Yes, of course, it is.” Brenda reached down and picked up a large beach towel from a nearby chaise lounge and handed it to Kevin, then turned to R.B., who had just emerged from the pool. “Come inside and help me get lunch on the table.”
“Let me dry off first.”
“Well, hurry up. I’m sure Jim needs a few minutes alone with Kevin,” Brenda said.
As soon as the Grangers went into the house, Jim put his hand on Kevin’s back. “Let’s go sit on the deck and I’ll tell you what Allen told me.”
They walked over to the deck that separated the patio area around the pool from the back of the house. As soon as they sat in a couple of cushioned, brown wicker chairs, Jim faced his son.
“They removed your mother’s left breast. They’re testing the lymph nodes they removed during surgery, and they should know in a few days whether the cancer has spread. Either way, she’s looking at chemotherapy, which means she’ll lose her hair and the treatments will make her tired, sick and very weak.”
“Mom will hate losing her hair.” Tears pooled in Kevin’s eyes.
Jim wanted to pull the boy into his arms and hug him. He wished he could promise his son that everything would be all right, that there was no chance his mom would die. Be optimistic, he reminded himself, but be honest.
“Your mom’s a tough lady. She’s a fighter. She won’t let this thing beat her.”
Kevin glanced down at the deck floor. “She’s not going to want me to see her sick.”
“Probably not.”
“It’ll be a good while before I get to see her again, won’t it?”
“I know it’ll be rough on you not seeing her, but we’ve got to think about her right now. What she wants and needs.”
Kevin lifted his head and blinked. Teardrops clung to his eyelashes. “Allen will take good care of her. He loves her.”
Jim swallowed hard. He heard his son’s unspoken words: You didn’t take care of her. You don’t love her. All the old guilt resurfaced. He could have stayed with Mary Lee. He could have forgiven her for sleeping with other men. If he’d swallowed his pride. But how did a man erase the image of his wife screwing another man in their bed? Jim had walked in on them in the middle of the act and he’d come very close to killing both of them. Even now, he could still feel a little of that old rage.
But Kevin didn’t know what his mother had done, would never know if it was up to Jim to tell him. Besides, he was too young to understand then and now. All Kevin knew was that his dad had divorced his mom. And felt that his dad had divorced him, too.
“She’s not going to die, is she?” Kevin almost choked on his tears.
Clenching his teeth, praying he would say and do the right thing, Jim reached over and laid his hand on Kevin’s damp knee.
“I don’t think so,” Jim said.
Brenda Granger opened the back door and called to them, “Lunch is ready, you two.”
“Come on, son.” Jim stood. “Let’s go eat.”
When Kevin got up, Jim placed his arm around his son’s shoulders. Kevin shrank away from Jim, but stayed in step at his side as they headed for the house.
Jim sat at his desk and studied the information he’d gotten when he ran their killer’s MO through VICAP. There were numerous women who’d been raped, tortured and murdered, many of them killed by having their throats slit. But there were only four murder cases that were practically identical to what they knew about Stephanie Preston’s and Jacque Reeves’s abductions and murders. And there was a fifth murder case that had some similarities. All five women had been killed in the Southeastern part of the United States, all within the past five years. Two in Georgia—Julie Patton and Michelle McMahon; one in Tennessee—Courtney Pettus; one in North Carolina—Sara Hayes; and one in South Carolina—Shannon Elmore. Jim had no idea if these women had anything in common other than the fact they were all victims of brutal rapes and murders, their killer’s MO practically identical to the killer now stalking women in northeastern Alabama. But did that mean all these women had been murdered by the same man?
Thanks to this FBI program, Jim had access to the names of the lead detectives on all of the murder cases. He intended to get in touch with each of them in order to obtain as much information as he could. The more he learned about these similar cases, the better able he’d be to judge whether their northeastern Alabama killer was or was not the same man.
Although Bernie had given him free rein as the lead detective in the Preston murder case and the Hardy missing person’s case, she had asked him to make sure she was included in everything.
“I think I can learn a lot from you, Jim,” she’d told him. “And I’m not too proud to admit that fact. You’re probably better qualified to be sheriff than I am, but this is Adams County and my last name is Granger.”
He admired her honesty, admired her for having the guts to speak so bluntly. But he thought maybe she was selling herself short because she kept comparing herself to her father.
As if thinking about her had brought her to him, Jim heard Bernie’s voice in the outer office. She was talking to John Downs, asking him for an update on the Thomasina Hardy case.
“Have you and Ron questioned everybody you know of who traveled County Road One-fifty-seven between six and