Death Falls

Nick stabbed the article with an index finger. “The story is pretty vague. Although it quotes the police chief at the time. Jim Campbell. Does that name ring a bell?”

The man in question was Kat’s father, who had been Perry Hollow’s police chief until he died when she was eighteen. Nick knew this bit of information, and Kat knew that he knew. He had hoped it would make her smile. Instead, she frowned at the page.

“This was a long time ago, Nick.”

“I know.”

“And it’s really the foundation’s next case?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

The Sarah Donnelly Foundation was named after Nick’s sister, who was murdered when he was ten. The killer was never caught, but Nick had a pretty good idea who did it. Since that man had died in jail years ago, there would be no closure for him. That’s where the foundation came in. The Philadelphia newspapers referred to Nick as a cold case philanthropist. Nick couldn’t have said it better himself. His mission was straightforward—find unsolved cases and solve them. It didn’t matter if his clients were rich or poor, young or old, city slickers or backwoods hillbillies. They needed closure and Nick tried to help them get it.

Other than himself, everyone who worked on a case did so on a voluntary basis. Kat had helped him out in the past, flipping through files, riding with him to distant crime scenes, even calling a few police colleagues in other towns and asking for information. Only this time, the situation was different. Her town was involved. So was her father’s police work. It understandably put her on edge.

“You know I’m happy to share whatever information I have,” she said. “If you want, we can go to the station’s basement right now and take a look at the report. But if you’re expecting me to help, I can’t. The case has been officially closed for decades.”

“Would it change your mind if I told you who hired me?”

Kat sighed. “Not likely.”

“His brother.”

“You talked to Eric?”

She had done a good job of trying to temper her surprise. Her voice remained steady. Her body stayed loose. The only thing she couldn’t control was a slight widening of the eyes, which Nick naturally noticed. He was good at spotting the little things that betrayed people’s emotions. It’s what had made him a great cop.

“I guess you two knew each other,” he said.

“We did.”

Nick watched her closely, searching for the slightest sign that told him the whole story. But Kat was on to him. She remained as still as a stone, her face and voice a complete blank. This was uncharacteristic for Kat, whose emotions were usually so transparent they could have been pinned right next to her badge. She knew Eric Olmstead better than she let on.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“It was a long time ago,” Kat said. “You’d get more accurate information from the Internet. He probably has a page on Wikipedia.”

“He does.”

Nick had looked at it five minutes after getting off the phone with him. He’d done a Google search, too, finding out lots of useless tidbits about Perry Hollow’s most famous native son. Eric Olmstead, forty-three, author of seven bestselling mysteries. Two-time winner of the Edgar Award. Sometimes played baseball with John Grisham and guitar with Stephen King. The search yielded links to his official Web site, to fan fiction based on his most famous creation, private eye Mitch Gracey, to online retailers that sold all of his books.

What Nick couldn’t find was any reference to his brother or why, after more than forty years, Eric Olmstead was so interested in finding out what happened to him. Their conversation had been brief, covering only the basics of his brother’s disappearance—who, what, and when. The why part had been omitted, although finding that out was the point of Nick’s midweek jaunt to Perry Hollow.

“Do you know why he’d ask me to look into Charlie’s disappearance?”

Kat nodded while simultaneously taking a sip of her coffee—the skills of a hard-core java junkie. “I suspect it has something to do with his mother. She died two weeks ago.”

“Interesting. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. Want to tag along?”

“Where?”

“To pay Eric a visit. I told you I was coming here to meet a client.”

This almost made Kat drop her mug. “Eric’s still in Perry Hollow?”

“So he says,” Nick replied. “Might be nice to see him. Catch up on old times.”

“I never said we had old times.”

“You didn’t need to.”

Kat abruptly stood, pushing in her chair so hard that it slammed against Nick’s good knee. While she acted apologetic, Nick remained suspicious. The topic of Mr. Olmstead seemed to bring out the worst in her.

“So are you going with me or not?” he asked.

Kat paused at the door, holding it open for Nick and his cane. “Of course.”

“Good. In the car, you can tell me all about how Eric Olmstead broke your heart.”

And with that, Kat let go of the door. It slammed shut inches from Nick’s face, forcing him to struggle once again to open it while wrangling with his cane. Through the glass, he saw Kat watching him with what could only be described as bemusement.

“That,” Nick yelled through the door, “was not an accident!”

Kat smiled sweetly. “Neither was the chair.”

THREE (#u72f506bd-52a9-5a6e-93cb-4f6e5d08dcec)

Sitting in front of his laptop, staring at the blank screen he had faced so many times before, Eric typed two words: FIND HIM.

He sighed, reading the slim columns of black against the wide expanse of white. This was not what he was supposed to be writing. He had told his editor—promised, in fact—that he would be hard at work on the latest adventure of sports-reporter-turned-detective Mitch Gracey. Yet the two words on his screen were the most he had typed in two weeks, and they had nothing to do with hard-drinking, Mets-loving Mitch.

Still, Eric couldn’t delete them and start over. In fact, he typed more. FIND YOUR BROTHER.

Eric deleted it immediately. He needed to focus. He needed to write. And fast. He was nearing a head-on collision with his deadline and had nothing to show for it. Sitting up in his chair, he cracked his knuckles and let his fingers hover over the keyboard.

They remained motionless.

As much as he tried, Eric found himself incapable of forming a sentence. It was that way in the days before his mother died and had only grown worse in the two weeks that followed. At first, he had chalked it up to a variety of factors. Location was a big one. The rickety desk and the bedroom he grew up in were a far cry from the Brooklyn apartment that served as his usual writing base. Timing was another. He normally wrote at night, when darkness made it easier to come up with the brutal scenarios required for crime fiction. But in Perry Hollow, he woke early. His mother’s condition had required it. Now that she was gone, he still couldn’t shake the habit.

Yet deep down, he knew these weren’t the reasons. They were simply excuses he used to justify spending the day napping. Or surfing the Internet. Or eating peanut butter sandwiches while watching Animal House for the sixteenth time. The real reason Eric Olmstead couldn’t write was because the well had run dry. He wasn’t sure what had sapped his creativity. Grief, probably. Guilt, definitely. But it was gone, not to return anytime soon, no matter how much time he spent at his laptop.

That morning he vowed to stay there until he wrote five pages or until noon rolled around, whichever came first. But with no inspiration in sight, Eric had a feeling noon was going to be the winner, so he was happy when the doorbell rang at quarter after nine. It meant he had a distraction on his hands, and writers loved distractions almost as much as they loved royalty checks.

Reaching the front door, he found a man in a black suit standing on the porch. Had he been a character in a Mitch Gracey book, Eric would have described him as worn but handsome. The cane gripped in his right hand hinted at a troubled past. Also he had been a cop at some point. Eric knew that from the searching green eyes that tried to take in everything all at once.

“Eric Olmstead?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir.”