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CHAPTER TWO

Washington State

G randpa’s truck rolled into the parking spot with all the grace of a coughing rhino. It was still Grandpa’s truck even though Jacob Wilson had been the sole driver the past ten years since the older man passed away. Jacob owned a BMW SUV as well but rarely drove it downtown. Just over to the beach on the West Coast when he needed to get away from Benson.

Snow from the six inches that had fallen last week had been piled at the edges of the parking lot for Grassy Knoll Retirement Home. Situated beside a YMCA, the retirement home was brand-new and had been open for six months. Given the price tag, it seemed to be where the wealthy who lived in Seattle proper, an hour west, dumped their nearest and dearest. Close by, but not so near they’d have to visit much.

Jacob left the truck keys in the cup holder, grabbed his camera bag and backpack, and headed for the front doors. His boots crunched the salt on the asphalt.

He pushed inside and pulled off the beanie that kept his ears from going numb. His hair fell to the left. It was necessary to grow it out to cover the scar just behind the hairline on the left side of his forehead.

He ran his hand through it and headed for the receptionist.

He got a good look at the gray strands on the top of her head before he rapped his knuckles on the counter.

She flinched and looked up. “Oh, Jacob. Hey.”

Naomi was older than him by a few years. He remembered her from youth group summer camps a couple of years in a row. The ones where he and Addie had snuck out during free time and hidden behind the tennis courts. When they got lost in the trees—and each other.

Probably not the most righteous thought to have.

The town had easily doubled since he was little and was almost a small city now. He could see the sky between the downtown office buildings from his apartment windows. Hopefully, Benson didn’t get too big it obscured his view of Mt. Rainier.

Naomi was an RN now and on staff here. Though usually she didn’t wear a nervous look on her face. She shoved the book she’d been reading under the lip of the counter where he was supposed to not be able to see it. Too late.

Jacob swallowed. “I’m here to see?—”

“Mr. Harris, that’s right.” She handed him the clipboard so he could check in. “He’s expecting you.”

He signed his name on the entry log. Tried not to let on that this was the most conversation he’d had in four days. Talking to Mr. Harris was going to have him right back at his apartment with only the ambient noise of city traffic for company. His two cats were the only living creatures he spent time with until he was ready to venture downstairs.

He’d given up expecting people to understand why he was the way he was or how he managed it, especially when people insisted on reading that book.

Sure, it’d been a bestseller. The library next door to the elementary school a block from his building had sixteen copies, and most of them were usually checked out. He’d heard lately they were thinking about putting it on the high school English curriculum.

Someone had made a ton of money writing about the worst two days of his life. Whoever it was never got any information about what’d happened aside from compiling hearsay. Then again, he’d refused an interview and heard from his lawyer that everyone else involved did the same. None of them wanted to relive any of it.

People thought what they wanted to. Jacob just went home to his solitude.

He left Naomi to her bestseller and headed for Mr. Harris. He was eighty-seven next month and had some dementia but had agreed to talk. Jacob could take all the photos he needed.

When he reached the room and saw Mr. Harris in his high-backed chair looking out the window, the light caught Jacob’s attention.

He dug out his camera and slipped the bags off his shoulder.

Jacob lifted the Nikon to his eye and looked at the man through the lens Grandpa had given him. A way for him to see the beauty in the world, the way Grandpa always did. The truth people tried to hide or walk away from—the good below the surface.

So he could experience it for himself, at least from a distance.

He’d needed it after all those hours at the whim of a man whose intention was to torture them until they broke. And that had only been the beginning of his plan.

Jacob had spent every day since—a span of more than fifteen years—purposely not thinking about it. Trying to find peace and see the good in what God had made. After all, he’d seen the bad. There was nothing worse left.

The click of the shutter reassured him. Like waking up to the relentless mew of hungry felines, waiting for him to dish out breakfast.

After getting a handful of good shots, he lowered the camera and took his things in. A pat on the shoulder jolted Mr. Harris out of his musing. The old guy roused as though he’d been sleeping, smacked his lips, and blinked.

Jacob pulled over a stool that might not bear his weight for long and sat opposite him. Mr. Harris wore brown slacks, wool slippers with tan rubber soles, and a threadbare blue shirt. Bumps ran up the older man’s arms.

Jacob grabbed a blanket from the end of the twin bed. “Here.” He waited for a second just in case the older man wanted to object, then settled it over his legs.

Mr. Harris clenched the edge of the blanket with knuckly hands. “Ah, yes. Our chat.”

“If that’s okay with you,” Jacob said. “It doesn’t have to be today.”

Mr. Harris lifted his hand and waved away Jacob’s comment. “I should tell someone.”

The comment was plenty loaded, but Jacob wasn’t about to ask questions on the man’s situation. Mrs. Harris had passed away in the ’90s—so coming up on thirty years nearly. Three children, seven grandchildren. They all lived in Seattle, and none had visited recently.

Whether that was due to them, or Mr. Harris, Jacob wasn’t about to get into it. He was more interested in Mr. Harris’s life as a young man. The stories were forgotten as the years passed, which he then compiled into a book. It was Jacob’s way of giving a voice to too many who were overlooked. Silenced or simply neglected.

“Was there a specific time you wanted to tell me about?”

Jacob preferred to leave the interviewee to decide what to reveal. He wasn’t worried about prejudice or corroborating stories to get to the truth. He wasn’t a reporter. He simply wanted people to talk in their own words. He’d developed a radar for stories that were genuine and held back what he thought might be fabricated or embellished. Out of the thousands of hours of interviews he did for a book, only a fraction would be printed about the person.

And still, people insisted on reading the drivel published about him.

Jacob let Mr. Harris think about his question. He needed a subject for his new book and hadn’t found the right person yet. The process had gone on so long it had set his schedule back.

God, is it Mr. Harris…or someone else?

A nurse came in. She spotted them talking and motioned that she would come back.

“There was a tree in the back yard. An oak, I think,” Mr. Harris began. “We used to climb to the top before supper, and my sister would pull us down so she could be first.”

Jacob recorded the conversation with a handheld voice recorder.

“She pushed my brother once. He fell and broke his arm. She told mother it was me, and I had to sleep the night in the shed.” He swallowed. “I couldn’t sit for a week.”

Jacob wanted to smile, but that wasn’t the kind of parenting he’d been raised with, and neither was it amusing or “just a fact of life.” He didn’t frame the stories he was told with his own experiences, just presented the words of the storyteller.

His upbringing hadn’t exactly been full of peace and love. His parents had argued more than they got along—with him in the middle. Passed between them like a chess piece when they were “off” and ignored when they were “on again.”

“That was the tree we buried Timmy under.”

Jacob held the question on his tongue.

“Two summers later, after the harvest failed. Pa took him to the shed. Two days later, the sickness took him to Jesus. Ma broke after that. Jennie took up with the preacher’s son, and Pa kicked her out.” He fell into a period of silence.

“What happened to your parents after that?” Jacob asked. Eventually he’d get to the old man’s adult life, but that might take several conversations.

“Pa spent all day drinkin’ at the creek.” Mr. Harris blinked, the only movement aside from the rise and fall of shallow breaths. “Mama saw the preacher’s wife at the house. I thought she had the same sickness as Timmy.”

An orderly pushed another resident down the hall in a wheelchair. Only after the sounds of their conversation faded did Mr. Harris speak again.

“All day, muttering and carrying on. I was sick of it.” His expression flexed like a tick in his cheek muscle. “She wasn’t right. Yelling at me about peelin’ potatoes. Holdin’ that knife out, wavin’ it in my face. That’s why I grabbed the poker. Told Pa she fell over, hit her head. The blood had stained the floor, and she was cold by the time he got there. The water in the pot boiled until there was nothin’ left. The gas ran out. He slapped me for letting the gas run out. Told me I was useless. That I couldn’t even stop her from killing herself.” Mr. Harris blinked. “He never even thought I could’ve done it.”

Jacob held himself still. He’d learned not to show a reaction, or people generally shut down. When he could speak without inflection, he said quietly, “Did he ever find out the truth?”

“I told him,” Mr. Harris said. “The night he had that heart attack. Told him he’d be going to hell, where I put her.”

Harris blinked. It lasted two seconds. He said nothing and blinked again.

Jacob watched him succumb to a nap, thinking about what Mr. Harris had just said. Before he proceeded with the story, he’d investigate the man’s background. See if he could find anything to provide insight into what Mr. Harris said. Jacob had met people who’d done bad things before, but there was something off about the unemotional way he’d told this story.

The sister he had mentioned might still be alive. Any of her children might’ve been told stories about the family.

Jacob looked at the framed wedding picture on the mantel. A bride and groom smiled, but it hardly told the whole story. He needed the words, which meant coming back and talking to Mr. Harris some more.

Not just to find out if he’d ever killed anyone else.

Jacob found himself in the hall with both his bags. He wondered how he got out there without realizing and looked back at the door for a second. No part of him wanted to associate with someone who could turn out to be at all like the man who’d captured him after homecoming, his senior year. A deranged madman who’d been given back-to-back life sentences for what he’d done to not just Jacob but others.

“Everything went okay?” Nurse Naomi stopped in front of him. “You look a little spooked.”

She probably wanted him to talk about what she’d read.

“Everything’s good.” He could find out what he wanted to know on the internet before asking the administrator to reveal personal information for Mr. Harris’s next of kin.

Jacob went to the lobby, where the administrator stood behind the desk with Naomi’s relief. The administrator straightened her suit jacket. It didn’t help the straining buttons. She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl lately.”

“Celia’s been like this since she got a boyfriend.” The receptionist pushed her glasses up her nose. “She said she’d be seeing him this weekend. Maybe they went out of town?”

Jacob frowned. Celia hadn’t felt good about the boyfriend last week when she stopped him in the parking lot to talk. She’d said she wanted advice from someone older. It wasn’t like he knew her well enough. They’d barely spoken before that, but she’d been upset. The whole thing seemed off to him, but he still tried to encourage her.

Until the boyfriend showed up to pick her up, Jacob had just about managed to keep from getting a fat lip and a black eye, but it had been close.

Celia had simply hopped in the guy’s car without a look back.

Jacob didn’t think anything good had happened between them.

“Celia knew she had a shift.” The administrator shrugged. “ When she gets here, let me know. I want a word with her about her responsibilities.” She glanced at Jacob, winced, and walked away.

The receptionist looked under the counter, then at him, then under the counter again. Guess the book is still there.

Jacob knew Celia. He could swing by her mom’s house where she lived and check if she was all right. The girl probably just forgot to call in sick. Or the receptionist was right, and she had spent the weekend with her boyfriend out of town.

He didn’t need to get in the middle of a young woman’s poor choices, though. It was none of his business, even if she was nice and that conversation hadn’t had an ulterior motive.

He had work to do trying to figure out if he’d been interviewing a murderer today. Then he would dismiss Mr. Harris as a candidate and meet with someone else.

Jacob needed a story to tell.