Chapter 26

A fter speaking to Simon, Kate headed back inside the facility and sat in the reception area, when Doug bolted in.

When he sat down beside her, his chest heaved badly. "What the hell is going on?"

"Try to calm down. I just want to do a DNA test," she whispered.

"Why do you need that? It's my sister," he declared, staring down the long hall.

"How often have you visited her?"

"Never. I haven't. I just couldn't."

"Okay, so come with me then." Kate stood. "Come tell me that your sister is the patient here."

He bounded to his feet and stared nervously down the hall. "I haven't seen her since… you know."

"And yet she's your sister."

He glared at her. "Don't judge me."

"Then let me have a DNA sample from her—and from you, for that matter." He looked at her in astonishment. She shrugged. "Is that so hard to understand?"

He frowned, then nodded. "Let's go."

And, with that, she led him down the hallway. As she opened the door to go inside, Doug stopped her.

"Wait, I'm really nervous. "

"Why?"

"I haven't seen her in so long."

"Come on, You can see her now," she suggested encouragingly.

He sighed, stepped inside, and looked at the patient in the bed. "This is the wrong room."

"Is it?" she asked. "This is who they say is your sister."

He looked again at the woman in the bed and shook his head. "No way. This cannot be. My sister is way younger than that."

"Exactly," Kate murmured. "This is why I need this woman's DNA. And yours."

He stared at her in shock. "But then where's my sister?"

"I don't know," Kate replied. Yet the nagging in the back of her mind said that Kate should have a good idea where Alison Feldspar was.

*

Back in her office, after delivering two DNA swabs to forensics, Kate was sitting at her desk when Dr. Smidge called her.

"It's a young woman, about eighteen years of age at the time of her death. I'll have more for you when I get her on my table."

"A couple more things before you go," she added. "What caused her death, and how long has she been in the ground?"

"I'll say close to a decade in the ground, but you'll have to wait for a definite answer on that. Cause of death? Yeah, a gunshot to the head." And, with that, he disconnected.

She sat down and got out her notes, then put up a big whiteboard and methodically placed evidence there just to clear her mind. When Lilliana, Rodney, and Owen joined her, she was still zoned out from the events of the day so far. When Lilliana called her name, Kate snapped out of it.

"I got DNA from the patient in the care facility just a few blocks from Simon's place. That's supposed to be Doug's brain-damaged sister, Alison Feldspar, but no way in hell it's his sister, she's too old. Doug agreed. Now Smidge has confirmed the dead body in the Feldspar backyard is most likely the sister, age eighteen, buried ten years ago."

"Did Doug explain why he never went to see her?"

"Yeah, he hasn't seen her since the murders went down. He's got this phobia about hospitals, and she was a vegetable anyway, and visiting her would just be a constant reminder of what happened."

"He sounds like a real piece of work," Owen muttered in disgust.

"He's still a very traumatized young man," she murmured. "That's what I see. As much as I wanted to think that he might have done all this, I don't see it now."

"So, we have a case of mistaken identity," Lilliana noted, "but, so far, we don't have more than that."

"I presume the comatose woman in the facility is the missing aunt, who was obviously much older than Alison."

"What possible reason would there be for switching the sister with the aunt?" Lilliana asked, looking at Kate in confusion.

"That's the question of the day," Kate said, "and I'm waiting for more data."

Reese came in just then. "I did a review on the Feldspar trust and the company in charge of it and got the formal partnership filing and board of directors' information."

"And?" Kate asked, turning to look at her.

Reese smiled and asked, "You already know, don't you? "

"I have a pretty good idea. I just don't know how we're supposed to prove any of it. That's where you come in."

"DNA should prove something," Rodney added, now at her side, as he looked at Reese. "Kate seems to have figured out some of this mess, but we haven't. So you want to fill us in?"

Reese laughed. "It would appear that whoever survives this gets to keep everything in the estate."

"Of course, and that much all of us can guess," Kate said. "Come on.… Give it to me straight."

"What you don't know is there is a court order where Darrian Jackson has full guardianship and power of attorney over the entire family."

"Interesting. With most of the family dead, including the sister, or so we think now," Kate pointed out, with half a smile, "that leaves surviving brother Doug and the no-longer-missing aunt, now comatose in a facility downtown?"

"Yes, those two."

"Interesting, but who is the ultimate beneficiary?" Lilliana asked.

"My money is on Darrian," Kate spoke up. "To further complicate things, I think the DNA swabs will confirm Doug's birth father is actually Darrian, and Doug's supposed aunt, who's the brain-dead one in the facility, may actually be Doug's birth mother."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a minute. How does that work?" Lilliana asked.

"The aunt and the sister both had very similar features, and the aunt took a shotgun blast to the face. It's amazing that she didn't die, and everybody identified her as Doug's sister, Alison, ten years ago. However, today Alison has been potentially ID'd and found buried in the Felspar backyard. "

"In other words, it's all conjecture until we get the DNA."

"Yes, but that still doesn't make any sense," Lilliana complained, hopping to her feet, as she started pacing. "So, we have a couple, who have a daughter and a son, but the son doesn't belong to them. He really belongs to the aunt and Darrian?"

"Yes," Kate stated. "There was a formal adoption of Doug by the Feldspar parents, and, because it was an adoption, everything Feldspar had was left to him and his sister. Since Alison died, Doug was the only heir remaining. All the shares, the companies, the assets, all of the Feldspar earnings, everything was given to Doug, but biologically he is Darrian's son. Now, whether Doug knows that or not is a different story."

"Right," Rodney agreed, "but that doesn't mean that Darrian killed anybody. He's an accountant, potentially just looking after his client's assets, which happens to be his son in this case."

"Exactly," Kate noted. "So the question is, why all the cover-ups? Why the swap of the sister with the aunt? Why is the Feldspar aunt in a hospital bed under Alison Feldspar's name, and why did they then bury the Feldspar daughter in the backyard? The Feldspar murders were originally reported to be three dead; the parents and a grandmother."

"Have you seen the full face on this woman in the facility?" Lilliana asked Kate.

"Yes, but half her face is completely twisted, from the original gunshot wound, and maybe cosmetic procedures to fix them. So I really couldn't tell how old she was for certain. Plus, patients in comas age very quickly in some cases, so age is not always that easy to estimate. "

"Right, so either way, we have a mess. Does Doug know he was adopted, and does it matter? And who the hell would have killed the entire family?"

Kate stared off into the distance. "Only one person would have been in the middle of all this, and that's Darrian." She turned to Rodney. "We need to bring him in for a talk."

He nodded, as he headed toward his desk to make some calls and to get Darrian picked up.

Meanwhile her phone rang, and she picked it up.

"What did you say to him?" Doug cried out, "What did you say to him? I told you that he had nothing to do with this!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Doug, hang on a minute. What are you talking about?"

"Darrian, I'm talking about Darrian! He told me that he's leaving the country and that he won't be back. The cops are on his case, and no way you'll set him up for any of this."

"I haven't even talked to him," she stated in astonishment, even as she motioned to Lilliana, mouthing to her, Call the airports .

Racing to her desk, Lilliana made those calls.

"Listen, Doug. I haven't even talked to Darrian. I haven't contacted him in any way, so whatever he's telling you, he's getting his information from somewhere else, potentially from a long time ago."

Silence came from the other end. "He said you tried to make it look as if he was involved."

"First of all, are you aware that Darrian is your birth father?"

A shocked gasp came on the other end. "What?"

"Yes, you are adopted, and your birth mother was also not who you thought she was. Your birth mother was your aunt, Albert Feldspar's sister. Your aunt and Darrian had an affair, and you were the result, and the Feldspars adopted you. So they had one boy and one girl. Of course you were already family, so that was good. Your biological mother, the woman you were raised to believe was your aunt, could never have any more children, so it appears she stuck close to the family because that was the only way she could stay close to you."

"No, no, no."

Kate continued. "As you know, we're in the process of doing a DNA test run on the woman in the hospital bed. I believe we will find she is your aunt, your birth mother."

"Well, she sure as hell isn't my sister."

Kate took a deep breath. "We also found a body buried in the back of the Feldspar property. We think it may be Alison."

He started to cry. "What are you doing? Why are you saying all this?"

"Because it's true, but we haven't positively identified the body yet," she clarified. "All I can tell you is that it'll take a little bit for us to sort through all this."

"Jesus," he muttered. "So you're saying Darrian is my father, and my sister was murdered a decade ago, and my biological mother is in that hospital bed? How is that even a thing?"

"I'm not yet certain which one of the women—your adopted mother or your biological mother—is in that hospital bed, but it's not your sister."

"But she's also not my sister," he wailed.

"She's your adopted sister. Biologically speaking, she would have been your cousin too. "

"Christ," he said in a gutted tone. "What does any of this have to do with anything? It's too much," he muttered, "and it doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't make any sense," Kate agreed, "but, if you had looked at any of the financial documents you've been getting quarterly, maybe some of it would have."

"All of this has now been revealed because some homeless guy died?"

"Because a homeless guy who was always at the Paragon building and had either stolen documents from your house or been given documents from the Feldspar house… or something," she shared. "Those papers led us back to this cold case of the Feldspar murders. Plus, the papers you sent me confirmed that you have a family trust that Darrian runs. If anything happens to you or the woman in the facility, Darrian gets everything. Regardless he has full control over everything in your world."

"Jesus Christ." Doug started to bawl.

"I'll come over and talk to you."

"No, no, don't.… I need some time."

"Okay," Kate relented, "but don't do anything bad."

"No, no, not at all," he whispered, "but you just dropped a ton of bombs on me."

"I know… but you wanted answers, and I'm just doing my job. What about your other cousin? Rosemary? The one who had the twins with Ted Mahoney?"

"What about her? Or is she not my cousin either?"

"I don't know, but it would be interesting to get her DNA tested."

"Why? Is she part of this?"

"I don't know. How has Darrian treated her?"

He hesitated. "Honestly? Like shit. "

"Then chances are she's not anybody's family member and has no money?"

"No, Rosemary definitely had no money, and honestly I think she really liked the old guy, Mahoney. I think she really cared for him."

Kate agreed. "From what I've learned, Rosemary had a shitty life, I think, until she hooked up with old man Mahoney."

"She spent a lot of time with my father—my adopted father."

"The same way your sister Alison spent time with Albert?"

"Yeah," Doug muttered.

Kate shook her head. "Rosemary was pretty damn young, so that sounds like grooming to me.… You might want a talk with her about that because, if you were right about your sister being abused, it could explain why Alison is dead. Maybe somebody killed her to keep her quiet. I still don't know why your adoptive parents were killed."

"I don't know either," Doug muttered, "but none of this makes any sense."

"It will," Kate noted. "It will eventually, but I need to talk to Darrian."

Doug gave a broken laugh. "Absolutely no way he'll talk to you now."

"Yeah? Let's hope you're wrong about that."

"Why?" he cried out. "Isn't it bad enough that you've absolutely destroyed my life?"

"I'm trying to help you put it back together again," she declared, her voice firm. "You can't make any headway here if it's all built on lies, so you need the truth. All of it."

"The truth as you say it," he snapped. "I lost my adoptive parents, and now I won't even have my own parents anymore."

"Your birth mother, your aunt, may need to be reevaluated, so don't give up hope for her. And Darrian remains your biological father, a living family member, whether he lives here or not," Kate pointed out. "How come that doesn't fill you with joy?"

He hesitated.

She took a deep breath and forged ahead. "It doesn't fill you with joy because, in your heart of hearts, you never really trusted Darrian. Yet do you realize how much you have left in his care? The whole Feldspar family trust is in his hands."

"I didn't care about the money," Doug muttered.

"I know that, but remember my suggestion about looking after yourself and these assets in case something might happen? You have more reasons than ever to do that right now."

"He won't do anything to me," Doug snapped. "I'm his son, remember? And my mother, the one he had an affair with, he's been paying for her care at the facility. So what's the problem?"

"Yeah, but you didn't know all this before, and maybe he didn't want you to know. Maybe he's happy not telling you."

"That would imply that he knew about all this."

"Don't you think he did?" Kate asked. "Who do you think arranged for your adoption?"

"Ah, shit. So he didn't want me either."

"Or he wanted you taken care of in a way that didn't require him to put in too much effort," she suggested. "Either way, let's get to the bottom of it, once and for all."

Just then in the background she heard another voice on Doug's end of the call.

Doug replied, "What are you doing here? I thought you were heading to the airport?"

Kate frantically yelled, "Doug, get out of there. Get out of there now!"

"What are you talking about?"

Then she heard a loud bang .

*

Simon walked around downtown, heading from one rehab project to the next. He was a little confused over what was going on at the facility he had recently visited, but he knew that he wouldn't see Kate until she got to the crux of the matter. In his mind, he kept going over why they would try to pass off one patient as another, and it always came back to money. As he headed toward another rehab project he had going on, he felt something weird cross his shoulders. He looked around but saw nothing. He also had a weird sensation of being followed. So he stepped into an alleyway and waited. When he thought that maybe the timing would be right, he stepped out, only to again find nothing there.

Swearing, he called out, "If any ghosts are here, damn it, leave me alone." At that, he heard a laugh behind him, and, sure enough, he saw the older homeless guy, always wearing the same cap.

"Yeah," he replied, still chuckling. "Ghosts are here all right, and they've been haunting me forever."

"You mean, since your two friends died this week?"

He nodded. "Yeah, since then."

"That's because you didn't tell the cops everything."

He glared at him. "What the hell am I supposed to do?" he muttered and then looked as if he were about to cry. " They're cops. We don't talk to cops."

"No, but you talked to the wrong guy too, didn't you? Darrian ."

He nodded. "Yeah, everybody talked to Darrian."

"Why is that?"

He shrugged. "He used to pay us for information on the streets. So, we would listen in on deals, listen to conversations in coffee shops, street corners, wherever," he explained. "If we came up with something good, he would pay us for it. But Frankie was getting a little too snippy about how Darrian didn't pay for every tip, but still Darrian paid for the best stuff. Every once in a while, if you had something you knew was golden, Darrian would still be good for it. But it wasn't the same as before, and we had to prove we had something of value in order to be of interest to him," the older guy explained.

Simon nodded. "I need you to come down to the police station and tell all that to the cops."

" Nah , I don't feel like telling them nothing."

"How about the fact that Darrian is behind a lot of these murders, including the deaths of your two friends?"

He swallowed. "Now that I believe," he moaned.

"Yet, if you don't tell the cops, you'll always be looking behind you for Darrian because you can't stop him. You can't take the chance of letting down your guard because Darrian could end your life. Guaranteed."

"If you put him behind bars, then I won't have to worry about it, will I?"

"That's why I need you to come back with me and talk to the cops."

"Nope, not unless you get him locked up first," he argued, stepping back from Simon. "You get him locked up so he'll never get out, then maybe I talk to the cops. In the meantime, no way in hell."

Simon glared at him, shaking his head. "What about your friends? Don't they deserve anything?"

"They were stupid. I told Shawn not to talk to Darrian, to just leave him alone, that he was bad. Darrian hadn't been the same since he got all bigwiggy ."

"You mean, he hadn't been the same since the Feldspar murders?"

He nodded. "I always wondered if he had something to do with that. I still do, but I have no reason for it though."

"Oh, there's a reason for it, probably all about greed. We'll find out even more soon," Simon shared.

At that, the older man whispered, "Probably about the young girl."

"What young girl?" Simon worried this old man knew way more than he was saying.

"The one he was abusing."

"Darrian? I thought Albert Feldspar was the abuser?"

"Maybe." He shook his head. "Darrian likes them young, probably was abusing both cousins. It doesn't matter to him, he just likes them. It was Darrian's idea that Mahoney married Feldspar's niece and had the whole second marriage."

"You knew about that?"

"Sure, we knew about it. We were always listening for gossipy tidbits. That's the thing with guys like Darrian. He wants to hear the word on the street, and then we get some that is all about him. Seems Darrian was a blood relation to Albert."

Simon frowned at that, thinking of all the tangled webs in that disturbed family. He had to tell Kate, but he didn't want to interrupt this guy, not while he was in a sharing mode. Simon nodded.

The older guy continued. "Shawn told him way back when about the second marriage."

"Hang on a minute, Shawn told Darrian?"

"Yeah, Shawn told Darrian that Jet and Daisy were still married. Shawn had seen them together at work, and that's when Darrian went to Mahoney's second wife and told her."

"And you know this for sure?"

He shrugged. "Shawn told me, starting to wonder what was going on. That was a while ago. But I think he put a little bit too much together eventually, and that killed him."

"So, how did he end up at Feldspar's house?"

"Probably looking for justice. He wanted to go there anyway, and he might have been looking for some evidence. You know there's a secret room in that house, right?"

When Simon just stared at him, the older guy nodded. "Will probably take a builder to find it."

"Or maybe not," Simon muttered. "Maybe I'll find it. Any idea what floor it's on?"

"No clue, but, if you find it, you put away that asshole Darrian. You do that, and I'll come give a statement because that Darrian guy is bad news." And, with that, he turned and walked away.

Simon picked up the phone, calling Kate. When he got no answer, he raced up to the Feldspar house himself. He got into the empty house and gave it a serious analysis, then headed up to the second floor and smiled. Off the master suite was an extra six feet that wasn't accounted for.

He quickly picked up his phone and took several photos of it, and then seeing a rip in the dry wall on one spot, he punched his fist through it and started ripping out some of the wall. Sure enough, he found a small room. A sickening little room with all kinds of sex toys. But it was also a room that seemingly nobody could get in or out of. As he stood here staring in shock, his phone rang.

"You called? What's up?" Kate asked.

"You need to come to the Feldspar house."

"I can't. Darrian is on the run. I've got everybody out looking for him. He shot Doug."

"Ah, hell, I'm fucking too late again."

"That depends on what you've got."

"I've got a secret room in the Feldspar house, full of what seems to be a little torture chamber."

"Yeah, probably made by Albert especially for Alison, his daughter," she shared in disgust.

"I think there may be two victims because the niece, Rosemary Feldspar, was also abused. And maybe both girls were abused by both Albert and Darrian."

"I'm on my way to go talk to Rosemary then," Kate replied in exasperation. "If you can take some photos and send them to me, I'll turn them over to a forensic team."

"One more thing. Darrian and Albert seem to be related, may be brothers." He ended the call and promptly took several photos, then sent those to Kate. Meanwhile Simon waited until the forensic team showed up. It only took a few minutes, as a team was still working in the backyard. He pointed them to the secret room, and they stood there staring.

"Christ, sometimes I hate my job," Smidge muttered.

"If no blood is in there, what are the chances it was consensual?" Simon asked, hoping against hope.

The forensic guys looked at him and shook their heads. "It would be nice to think that we could find a situation like that once, but it's the exact opposite. Nobody gets to say yes or no in a deal like this. It's always all about satisfying the addictions of the men."

"I suspect that's what we'll find in this case too," Smidge added.

Simon shook his head. "I'll leave it to you." And with that, he turned away.

Feeling a certain disbelief and edginess, probably brought on by his own history, he turned and escaped that house of horrors. It might be a good property for somebody, but it sure as hell wouldn't be for him.