Page 146 of Paranoid

“Oh, she has,” Donna said with a pasted-on smile. “Several times.”

But he barely heard her as he pushed his way out the front door and jogged to his truck. He’d call Voss on the way, have her find out from Bruce Hollander’s parole officer where he was, and once he’d made certain that Rachel and the kids were okay, he’d hunt the bastard down.

That was the easy part.

What was more difficult was eventually telling his ex-wife that her father had lied, that he’d been complicit in her brother’s death, that he hadn’t taken an iota of blame for the tragedy and had let it all fall on Rachel’s shoulders.

Until he was certain of the facts and had a talk with Ned himself, Cade decided not to burden Rachel, but eventually, the truth would come out, and then, all holy hell would break loose.

* * *

In Astoria Kayleigh had driven through McDonald’s and picked up a Diet Coke and a double cheeseburger and a small order of fries. For the moment, she was ignoring all the bad publicity about fast food and sodas. She just needed something on the run, so she was driving, sipping from the ice-packed Diet Coke, and picking at the fries when her phone rang. She swiped her fingers on her jeans and picked up the second she saw Cade’s name flash onto the screen.

“I think we’ve got a break.” From the sound of it, he, too, was driving, rushing air and traffic underlying his words.

“What?”

“We’re looking for Bruce Hollander, Luke Hollander’s father.”

“You still think there’s a connection between him and what’s happening now?” she said, tossing the

idea over in her mind again. Was it possible? Maybe. But . . .

“Sure of it. We need to check with his parole officer, find out where he lives, put out an APB on his car, a Buick LeSabre, white, circa the late 1990s. Idaho plates. And he might have a dog with him.”

“A dog?”

“Beagle.” And then Cade explained his theory, which seemed a little far-fetched, that Bruce Hollander had gotten out of prison and within months moved to Edgewater to wreak his revenge on anyone who was close to the son he’d never really known, especially anyone who might have given sworn statements that allowed Rachel, whom he blamed for killing Luke, off the hook. He was certain Hollander had vandalized Rachel’s door, been watching and possibly following her in the Buick with Idaho plates. Cade had even run into Hollander searching for his dog near Rachel’s house, and he suspected that the dog, whom he was told was named Monty, was really the missing Freddy.

“I don’t know,” she said, thinking the motive was thin. “I mean, yeah, if Rachel can ID him on the vandalism, then we can get him there. But the rest? It’s a big leap from tagging a door to murdering two people.”

“He has a record. Did time for several assaults, the last being to Luke’s mother.”

“A long time ago.”

“Once a thug, always a thug. Prison usually doesn’t help.”

“Possibly.” She paused for a stop light, took a long drink from her diet soda, and tried to piece it all together, but it was ragged, with sharp edges, not melding together in her mind.

“Let’s find him and bring him in, see what he has to say.”

“Okay. I’d like to be there,” she said as the light turned. “By the way, I got a call from the lab, on the painter’s tape.”

“You located where it was purchased?”

“No. But they found a small hair on it.”

“DNA?”

“No, that’s the kicker. They don’t think it’s human.”

“What then?”

“Still working on that. Should have an answer soon. But we can’t get too excited, yet. If it’s from a dog, it could be from one of the dogs Violet Sperry owned. I mean, that’s the most likely scenario, but who knows? Maybe we’ll catch a break. I’m on my way to the lab now. They already have samples from the Sperrys’ Cavaliers, so we should learn something.” And if the hair on the tape, not human, wasn’t from the victim’s dogs? That thought gave her a little tingle, and though she was jumping the gun a little, she sensed she was getting closer to the truth, to figuring out exactly what was going down, despite the missing pieces and jagged edges.

She switched lanes and thought there was a slim chance that the animal hair and DNA would link Freddy, aka Monty, to Hollander. It was a long shot, but worth checking out.

“Get this,” Cade said. “It turns out that Luke Hollander wasn’t dead when he was admitted to St. Augustine’s.”