Sam nodded. “Got to admit that I had a bad time for a while after I found out that the file on the cas ad been destroyed. I think I knew, deep in my gut, that Bob Thornhill had engineered that littl o-called accident.”
“As a favor to Victor Webb,” Irene said.
“It wasn’t a favor.” Luke went to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. “He saw it as repaying a debt. Like so many other people in this town, he owed Victor Webb. Webb had paid for his wife’s medications.”
Sam exhaled heavily. “Hell, even if I had tried to reopen the case after I took over this job, I would have been looking at the wrong member of the family. When I did allow myself to speculate on who might have killed the Stensons, I always assumed the most likely suspect was Ryland.”
“But it was Victor you called that night,” Luke reminded him.
“Thing is, I never figured him for the killer.” Sam unfolded his hands and spread them wide. His eyes were bleak. “He never acknowledged me, but he was my dad.”
“Yes,” Irene said.
Sam scrubbed his face once with his right hand. “I considered the possibility that after I called Victor,
he turned around and called Ryland to confront him about the accusation of incest.
There was som ogic to that. I thought it was possible that Ryland had, in turn, rushed up here to Dunsley to get ri f the Stensons before the scandal broke. But that was as far as I got with my theories. Like I said,
I just didn’t want to go there.”
Luke looked at him. “I’ll bet Bob Thornhill wasn’t eager to go there, either.”
“No,” Sam admitted. “He was my new boss, and he had a lot of years of experience.
I was twenty-three years old, and that was the first killing I’d ever seen. When Thornhill announced that it was a murder-suicide and closed the case, I was more than willing to go along.”
“As the new chief of police, Thornhill had no problem shutting down the investigation,” Irene said.
“It wasn’t like there was anyone in town who was going to argue that there was an unknown kille unning loose in Dunsley,” Sam agreed.
Irene studied him. “You called Victor because you were sure that Pamela was lying about the abuse, didn’t you?”
Sam nodded. “I just couldn’t believe it. I knew Pamela was angry at Ryland because he’d forced her t o to that boarding school. I thought she was trying to punish him so she invented the tale about the incest.”
“What about the video? Did you think she faked it?”
“I didn’t know what was on that video. She wouldn’t tell me. She just kept saying it was bad. I wondered if maybe she’d caught Ryland having sex with someone from Dunsley or something along those lines. I was still pretty naive in those days. Just couldn’t believe that my older brother had abused his daughter. So, yeah, I called Victor.”
“What did he tell you?” Irene asked.
“He said he’d take care of things, the way he always did when there was a problem in the family. He reminded me of how he had always taken care of my mother.” Sam closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he looked straight at Irene. “He was in his office at the San Francisco store that day. Just a couple of hours away.”
There was a short, heavy silence. Luke squeezed Irene’s shoulders to reassure her and then went bac o the window.
“He used an inflatable boat with an outboard motor each time he came to Dunsley to kill,” he sai uietly “Launched it in some deserted section of the lake. That way there was no risk that anyon ould see him entering or leaving Dunsley. Probably didn’t worry at all about being seen when he murdered Hoyt Egan, though. No one at the apartment complex would have recognized him. Hoyt
would have opened the door to him.”
“Just as my parents did,” Irene said.
“I’m betting that he used drugs to kill Pamela’s mother all those years ago,” Sam said grimly. “When he decided to get rid of Pamela, he was forced to act quickly. He must have concluded that it would be easiest to use the same method. After all, he had already done the research.”
The certainty in Sam’s voice caused Luke to turn around. “You found some evidence?”
Sam’s mouth thinned. “I discovered an empty syringe in the glove compartment of my SUV thi orning. Sent it off to a lab to run some tests on it. Expect they’ll find traces of whatever Victor use o kill Pamela.”
Irene’s brows rose. “Speaking of your SUV what reason did Victor Webb give you when h orrowed it?”
“He didn’t exactly knock on my door and ask permission to take it,” Sam said evenly. “He stole it whil was here in my office. I got a call from the chief of police over in Kirbyville saying he’d found the vehicle abandoned out near the old Ventana Estates subdivision site.
We both figured some kids ha aken it joyriding.”
“Victor must have been desperate to use your vehicle to try to get rid of me,” Irene said. “It meant h ad to take the risk of slipping into town and stealing the SUV out of your garage without being seen.”
“Not that much risk involved.” Sam shrugged. “He probably used the old logging trail that runs through the forest behind my subdivision. Remember, he hunted around here all of his life. He knows the terrain as well as he knows his own face in the mirror.”
“Still, it seems odd that he used your SUV,” Irene insisted. “Why not his own vehicle? Or a rental? And why did he leave the syringe in your glove compartment?”
“Because he knew that things were starting to fray,” Luke said quietly. “Victor realized that there wa growing risk that the situation would get out of control. If that happened, he wanted to be sure tha here was a convenient fall guy.”
Irene’s face tightened with dismay. She looked at Sam.
“You,” she whispered.
“Me,” Sam agreed. “He was setting me up. Just in case.”
None of them spoke for a while.
Eventually Sam fixed Irene with his world-weary look. “Your dad knew about the gossip that I wa ictor Webb’s son. He talked to me about it once.”
“When was that?” Irene asked.
“One night when he found me pursuing my favorite hobby, getting drunk at Harry’s Hang-Out. Tha as just after Mom had died. I wasn’t handling things very well. He shoved me into his cruiser an ook me for a ride. Talked to me.”