Chapter 24

As Melender entered the Trent home, she breathed in the aroma of fresh bread and chicken with a hint of rosemary and thyme. The scent took her back to her childhood, standing on a stool in front of the old wood-burning cook stove in Sudie’s kitchen to stir the simmering soup. Tears pressed her eyelids as a fierce longing for her grandmother’s warm embrace shuddered through her. In the kitchen, Mrs. Trent wiped her hands on a towel. A large pot bubbled on one of the burners and bread cooled on the counter.

“Melender, I thought you’d be gone all afternoon.” Mrs. Trent greeted her with a smile.

“We finished earlier than expected.” Melender left out that she’d spent the past forty-five minutes walking around the neighborhood to settle her thoughts about Brogan before entering the house. Now, to avoid more questions about her outing with Brogan, she redirected the conversation to safer ground. “Something smells good.”

“My grandmother’s chicken soup recipe, guaranteed to sooth away any sickness in one mouthful.” Mrs. Trent lifted the lid and stirred the pot’s contents with a long-handled wooden spoon.

Melender inhaled deeply. “Too bad it doesn’t provide a balm to the soul as well.”

Mrs. Trent replaced the lid and set the utensil on a cat-shaped spoon rest. “It’s been known to calm the mind.” She shot Melender a knowing glance. “Is my nephew giving you a hard time?”

Melender ducked her head at the straightforward question. How on earth did she answer that without revealing more than she wanted to?

“Ah, I can see by the look on your face he has.” Mrs. Trent chuckled as she wiped up a spill by the stove. “I’m not surprised. You’re as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof and Brogan, well, he’s as jumpy as a caged tiger.”

That was one way to sum up the situation. Curiosity compelled her to question Brogan’s aunt. “What has he told you?”

“About you?”

Melender nodded as she leaned against the counter.

“Not much, beyond the basic facts.” Mrs. Trent plugged in the electric kettle. “How about I make us a cup of tea?”

“That sounds lovely. Let me wash up first.” Melender ducked downstairs, glad for a few minutes to regain her composure. She had been so sure that catching Jared in a lie about the night Jesse disappeared would be enough evidence to propel a deeper look into the case. But now that she thought about it, Brogan was right. She needed hard proof that someone else committed the crime before law enforcement would take another look at the kidnapping.

When she came back upstairs, Mrs. Trent was pouring boiling water into a tea pot.

Not sure she was ready for a tête-à-tête with Brogan’s aunt but wanting to hear more about Brogan, Melender seized on a diversion. “I noticed you have a lot of what look like journals on the shelves of the bookcase at the foot of the stairs. Are those family writings?”

“Oh, no.” Mrs. Trent smiled as she set sugar and cream on the counter. “As you know, my husband’s work is collecting and studying American folk songs. That’s part of his collection of diaries written by Appalachian women.”

At the mention of Appalachia, Melender pictured the soaring cliffs of the majestic mountain range. All these years later, she could still tick off the states the range touched after memorizing them in school: Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Homesickness washed over her like a breeze on a peak.

“Brogan said you grew up in the mountains.”

She nodded. “Every morning, I’d greet the sun rising slowly over the top of a peak. In the glooming of the day, I could hear the nightingale’s song. It was my home until Sudie died.”

“You must miss her very much.”

The soft acknowledgement of her still-sharp grief nearly loosened Melender’s hold on her emotions. “I do.” She cleared her throat. “Sudie left school at age nine when her father was killed in a mining accident, so she never read or wrote well. But she could tell stories like no one else in the hollow. I loved to listen to her as we shelled peas on the front porch or canned a batch of her famous huckleberry preserves.”

“She raised you?” Mrs. Trent passed Melender a mug, steam wafting up like fog on a mountain.

Melender held the cup as the memories flooded her mind. “My mother died when I was three. Complications from childbirth. My little brother died too.”

Mrs. Trent asked other questions, drawing out Melender’s family history and upbringing. Sudie had schooled Melender well in their family heritage. During the early years of the nineteenth century, her family had settled in the foothills in the Blue Ridge section of the range. Some of her ancestors had even been displaced when Shenandoah National Park had been cobbled together. Her home sat deep in Maple Hollow just outside the park borders.

“When Sudie died, my only living relative was my aunt, my father’s younger sister,” Melender said. “At sixteen, the Commonwealth of Virginia didn’t deem me old enough to be on my own. I didn’t realize until later that I could have petitioned the court for emancipation, but by that time…” She didn’t want to reveal she learned that tidbit of information in the prison library.

“Have you gone back to visit since your release?”

Melender shook her head. Even though the mountains called, were a part of her, she hadn’t dared venture back. Her years in prison had not diminished the burning need to return to her heritage or her longing for the quiet stillness of the forest.

Staring at the dregs of her tea in the bottom of her cup, Melender struggled to put into words why she couldn’t go home, not yet. “There’s something pure and clean about the mountains that I can’t contaminate with a felony conviction.”

She shook her head. “Until I find out the truth of what happened to Jesse, I can’t go home. The mountains should be used as a sanctuary, as a resting place, not as a hiding place. If I go back before this is completely resolved, the peace that the mountains give won’t be mine. It’ll be a facsimile of the rest I’m longing to have.”

Looking Mrs. Trent square in the eye, she added, “That’s why I won’t stop until I untangle the lies and bring Jesse home. Only then can I return to the mountains.”

* * *

Brogan’s heartsank as Fairfax County Police Detective Mark Livingston exhaled loudly into the phone.

“Can’t do it,” Livingston said. “The district attorney will not want to press charges against Jared Thompson for perjury. His testimony supported what others said, but it wasn’t crucial to the conviction.”

“That’s what I thought.” Brogan held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he opened the car door. “But that’s not the only reason I called you.”

“If it’s related to the closed Thompson case, I don’t have time.”

“Jared knew Snake.”

Silence. Believing the detective hadn’t hung up, he went on. “Snake was Jared’s supplier around the time of the incident. On a hunch, I asked Jared why he met with Snake the night the man was killed.”

“What did Jared say?”

“He insisted we leave. Cleary the question scared him. A lot.” Brogan started the car. “Given some of the ransom money was found on Snake, I thought you might like to know.”

“Thanks for the tip. Gotta go.”

He’d planted the seed and hoped Livingston would water it. Jared was hiding something, but it could be nothing more than he had returned to his old drug habit. Brogan laid his phone on the front seat, then maneuvered out of the parking lot.

But his gut screamed that there was a lot more to the Jared’s fear, one that had the potential to blow the case against Melender wide open.

* * *

Brogan tuckedin his shirt with one hand as he searched around for his notebook on his desk. It had to be here somewhere. Fallon had requested an update on the Thompson case pronto, and his boss didn’t like to be kept waiting.

Seth rested his forearms on top of the short cubicle wall that separated their workspaces. “Anything new on the ransom money?”

“Nothing concrete yet.” When he spied his notebook under a pile of folders, he grabbed and stood. “Can’t talk now. Fallon called me in for a meeting five minutes ago.”

Outside Fallon’s office, his boss’s assistant looked up from her keyboard. “You’re late. He’s waiting for you.”

“I know.” He held up the notebook. “Couldn’t find my notes.” Better gauge the boss’s mood before entering his office. “Kendra, how’s the temperature this morning?”

“Sunny with a chance of isolated thunderstorms.” She shot him a smile. “But I’m prepared for all kinds of weather.”

“Appreciate it.” Brogan headed toward Fallon’s closed office door and knocked once before entering the room and shutting the door behind him.

Seated behind his desk, Fallon glanced at his watch, then motioned for Brogan to take the chair opposite him. “Catch me up on the Thompson investigation.”

Brogan recapped what they’d gleaned from the files and interview with Jared Thompson, plus his conversations with Quentin, the detectives, and the former FBI agent.

“What’s your take on Jared Thompson?” Fallon walked a pencil across his knuckles, flipping the item with causal indifference, his trademark thinking stance.

“Thompson admitted to lying to the police about his actions the night Jesse disappeared, but that’s not what concerned him the most. He got agitated when we brought up Snake’s murder. I’ve interviewed enough people to know when I’ve touched a nerve.”

“Snake was Jared’s longtime drug dealer, correct?”

Brogan nodded. “When I asked him about seeing Snake before the man’s death, Jared sidestepped the question and threw us out of the apartment.”

“Hmm.” Fallon tapped the pencil on his cluttered desk. “What do you think of Harman?”

Brogan didn’t want to touch that, but Fallon’s expression warned that his boss wouldn’t let him sidestep the question. Fallon had told Brogan his first day on the job that he expected full honesty from his reporters. Given Brogan’s own shaky background, he had to be even more scrupulous.

“I, uh.” Brogan struggled to find the right words to diplomatically reveal his thoughts about Melender. “She’s maintained her innocence throughout everything—her arrest, trial, and incarceration. Now that she’s out, she’s very determined to find out what happened to Jesse.”

“Bottom line. Do you think she’s guilty as charged?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Brogan scrubbed his face. “I think she has valid points in favor of her innocence.” He picked his way through the words like a soldier clearing a minefield, wanting to give Fallon the truth but not the whole truth of his conflicted feelings for Melender. “Her lawyer did the bare minimum as far as fair representation, and he didn’t challenge any of the witnesses or circumstantial evidence presented at trial. Even I could see places in the transcript where her attorney ought to have followed up. Are there enough points in her favor to give a jury reasonable doubt? I couldn’t say, but it’s odd that a couple of years after the trial, her defense attorney ends up at the law firm for Thompson Energy.”

“Have you spoken with this attorney?”

“Not yet. I wanted to finish going through the FBI and police files first.”

Fallon leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as he regarded Brogan, who tried not to squirm under the scrutiny. Could Fallon see that Brogan had lost his objectivity when it came to Melender?

His boss depressed the intercom call button. “Kendra? Please ask Seth to come to my office right away.” He released the button upon Kendra’s acquiescence but didn’t reveal why he’d called for Seth.

Brogan still didn’t have a clue as to what Fallon had in mind when, minutes later, Seth knocked on the door of Fallon’s office.

“Have a seat, Seth. I think you know Brogan’s been looking into the Jesse Thompson kidnapping,” Fallon said.

“Yes. Good timing, too, because it’s been in the news again since a chunk of the ransom money was found on that murdered drug dealer,” Seth replied.

Fallon looked from Seth to Brogan, as if trying to make up his mind about something. “Right.” The editor pointed a finger at Brogan. “As of now, you’re off your usual beats.”

Brogan’s heart sank. Despite his best efforts, it sounded like Fallon was firing him. He’d fallen in love with journalism all over again, writing about the little moments—and some big ones—in the lives of Fairfax City and county residents. While this job had morphed from a steppingstone back to the big leagues and into a real career move, he was now terminated.

Fallon turned to Seth. “What are you working on?”

His colleague recounted his current assignments to Fallon, while Brogan tried to school his face to not show the disappointment building inside him.

“Brogan?”

At Fallon’s query, Brogan snapped back to attention. “Yes?”

“I want you to bring Seth onboard. I think this has potential to be something really big.”

“You want us to…” Brogan nearly shook his head. Surely he hadn’t heard his boss right.

“Reinvestigate the Thompson case.” Fallon finished for him. “Obviously, details were overlooked if ransom money is turning up nearly two decades later. You already have an in with Harman, and with Seth’s assistance, you’ll be able to go through the material quicker.”

Brogan couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t being fired. In fact, Fallon was giving him carte blanche to dig deep into the case. “Thank you, sir.”

His editor dismissively waved his hand. “Don’t thank me. Unearth the truth and write the kind of investigative piece I know you’re capable of writing.”

Brogan swallowed the unexpected complement with gratitude. “I will.”

“I expect daily updates. Now get to work.” Fallon turned to his computer.

Brogan and Seth moved as one to the door. Brogan had just pulled it open when Fallon spoke again. “The paper can spare you two for a week to work on this assignment. Use your time wisely.”