Facing the Past Read online

  Facing the Past

  J. J. Cagney

  Sidecar Press, LLC

  Contents

  Facing the Past

  Facing the Past

  1. Nancy

  2. Arlen

  3. Arlen

  4. Danielle

  5. Danielle

  6. Nancy

  7. Danielle

  8. Arlen

  9. Danielle

  10. Nancy

  11. Arlen

  12. Danielle

  13. Arlen

  14. Danielle

  15. Danielle

  16. Danielle

  17. Arlen

  18. Danielle

  19. Arlen

  20. Hunter

  21. Danielle

  22. Danielle

  23. Danielle

  24. Arlen

  25. Danielle

  26. Danielle

  27. Hunter

  28. Danielle

  29. Danielle

  30. Arlen

  31. Hunter

  32. Danielle

  33. Danielle

  34. Arlen

  35. Hunter

  36. Danielle

  37. Arlen

  38. Arlen

  39. Hunter

  40. Danielle

  41. Arlen

  42. Danielle

  43. Arlen

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Facing the Past

  J. J. Cagney

  Facing the Past

  A childhood tragedy. An unsolved murder. In the quest to rewrite her family’s past, Danielle Patterson could lose her future.

  After her mother’s sudden death, the Dallas housewife struggles to hold her young family together…especially after she uncovers a dark secret that shatters her reality. Determined to bring her brother’s killer to justice, Danielle picks up exactly where her late mother left off. All too soon, her reckless pursuit proves Danielle—and her mother—knew the killer.

  Facing the Past is a poignant domestic thriller that explores the interplay between relationships and regrets. If you like the lyrical prose of Gayle Forman and the gripping family drama of Marisa de los Santos, you'll enjoy this captivating novel.

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  FACING THE PAST © 2018 J. J. Cagney

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Edited by Nicole Pomeroy

  Cover Design by Daqri Bernardo

  1 Nancy

  Nancy was dying. Cancer nibbled away at her insides.

  No more time.

  She picked up the phone and called the detective who’d worked on the case all those years before.

  “Chief Hardesty,” he rumbled into the phone.

  “Arlen?” Nancy licked her lips. “This is—”

  “Nancy,” he said, his voice softening. “I haven’t heard from you in years.”

  “Probably ten, I’d guess. I wasn’t sure you were still there.”

  He chuckled half-heartedly. “They haven’t gotten rid of me yet. Got about five more weeks till I’m outta here for good.”

  “Oh.” She paused.

  “What can I do for you, my dear?” His voice was softer still. He’d always tried to help her.

  “I . . .” What to say? What to do?

  “I wrote journals,” Nancy blurted, unsure about this call, about the decision she’d struggled to make for years.

  “All right.” His voice stayed pleasant.

  “I want . . . make sure Danielle gets them. Not Hank. Please.”

  Chief Hardesty was silent for a long time. “Only way I can do that, Nancy, is for you to hand them over to my department or for them to be part of a search warrant.”

  “In the attic. Boxed up in the back. Hank can’t have them. He’ll . . .” She blew out a breath. “He hired Trevor Dresden. He plans to put Trevor in the directorship for his foundation.”

  “Hadn’t heard that,” Hardesty said, his voice contemplative.

  “You need to talk to him.”

  “Hank?”

  “Trevor.”

  “He was a little boy Nancy,” Hardesty said. His voice held a hint of pity, maybe even frustration. “The FBI did talk to him. I was there. He was so scared.”

  Nancy clutched the phone. “I’m dying, Arlen. Soon. Trevor knew. He was there. Closer to the killer than I was even. Please. The journals. For Danielle—after you go through them . . . promise me.”

  Chief Hardesty sighed in a long, drawn-out affair. She sensed that he wanted her to leave him alone. He must yearn for a time when the case of a kidnapped and murdered seven-year-old quit haunting him. At least that’s what Nancy supposed his sigh meant.

  “You want me to reopen the case?” Arlen asked.

  Nancy thought of Danielle, of her pretty green eyes and the worry she buried deep inside herself. The idea that came out, ever so softly over the years, that Danielle considered herself unlovable. Nancy’s fault for not being the mother her daughter deserved.

  With each passing moment, Nancy’s mistakes piled higher, choking her. She leaned her head back against the recliner’s tufted pillow. The memory bubbled up, taking over her consciousness as it always did.

  Nancy screamed his name. Danielle was pressed against Nancy’s heaving chest, clutched tight. Too tight. Nancy couldn’t make her arms loosen. Her heart beat so hard, her ribs ached with each pounding.

  “Jonny, Jonathan!”

  Danielle mewled into Nancy’s neck.

  The street and park were empty; it didn’t matter how many times Nancy looked, how far she jogged up and down the road, clutching her daughter, yelling Jonny’s name.

  Nancy’s breath broke as she stumbled over Jonny’s ball glove lying on a crack in the sidewalk. Just five feet from their station wagon.

  Five feet.

  “Yes,” she gasped, pulling herself, grief fresh, from the recollection.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Arlen replied.

  But Nancy heard the skepticism in his voice.

  She’d waited too long.

  2 Arlen

  Arlen Hardesty set the phone back in the cradle. Damn. Not the call he’d wanted today—not that he’d ever turn Nancy Foster away. Still, he was days from retirement now. He and Irene marked each day off the calendar after dinner. Over the last six months, the ritual became soothing, pleasant, moving them a day closer to an extended vacation and less stress.

  He closed his eyes and dropped his face into his palms. Oh, he remembered that gruesome day—and the harrowing week, month, even the year that followed. An investigation of a murdered child wasn’t something he was ever likely to forget, and Jonathan Foster’s had been his first.

  3 Arlen

  Hank led Arlen into the parlor, its disuse evident from the vacuum marks in the light brown shag. Arlen edged cautiously into the spindle-legged orange-and-green floral chair toward which Hank had
gestured.

  “I’m really sorry, ma’am,” Arlen said, looking to Nancy. “Y’all know pretty much where things stand already.” He rolled and unrolled the edge of the dress blazer he kept in his office on a hanger since the day he’d made detective three-and-a-half years and seven pounds earlier. He could feel the fabric pulling apart at the stitches up the back seam and imagined the darker black of that last bit before the seam became visible as he leaned forward. He needed to lose some weight. Or get a bigger suit coat.

  “We’re gonna keep at it, keep looking. Of course.” His voice was hushed as he eyed the baby lying prone in Nancy Foster’s lap.

  Nancy’s eyes, red-rimmed and wild, veered over to her husband, who moved to sit next to her on the couch.

  “When does the ground search start up again in the morning?” Hank rasped, his throat sounding dry.

  “At first light, maybe before.”

  Arlen looked first into Hank’s then Nancy’s eyes, holding her stare until her breathing regulated.

  “I want to go, too,” Hank said.

  Danielle whimpered, and Nancy began to stroke the baby’s back soothingly. Pat pat pat. Pat pat pat. Pat pat pat.

  Arlen decided sheer exhaustion kept the baby, Danielle, from going into another full-blown wail. The mite sniffled and burrowed in closer to her mother. Hank leaned closer and placed a hand on Nancy’s thigh, down by the knee, as she continued to shudder, her teeth clicking.

  “Now, Mr. Foster, I can’t tell you no.”

  “That’s right; you can’t. So just tell me where to be.” Hank’s pointed chin thrust out, the sloping ridge of his jaw snapping in, out, up, down.

  “Now, I can’t tell you no,” Arlen continued, failing to keep his voice as neutral as intended. “But I can tell you I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Hank stood, a sharp jerk of a motion. Arlen watched as six feet of thick-boned male pantomimed grace. Except fear and despair had eaten at Hank’s joints, muscle, bone.

  “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask,” Hank said, his voice escalating from a low, almost inaudible drone to a near shout, stepping forward.

  A crunch.

  A red fire truck was buried in the carpet when Hank lifted his foot. Both men stared at it. The ladder lay broken, the upper part caught in the couch’s stitching. Hank collapsed back onto the couch.

  Arlen sighed. “Meet us at the station at dawn,” he mumbled, his gaze stuck on the truck. His son had one like it.

  Hank nodded. Arlen lifted his head, opened his mouth, glanced back at the truck and shut it. He tilted his head to Nancy before following Hank to what he assumed was a seldom-used front door. Its intricate leaded glass side panel caught the light.

  The door swung closed. The click of metal catching metal jolted out from inside the now-silent house. Arlen drove home that night to sit by his son’s narrow bed, a prayer of thanks looping through his head.

  Still a good twenty minutes to full light. The air settled over them in a cold, though sticky aura. Clouds built at the edges of the horizon. Seventy-two people stood in the main room of police headquarters, in a pseudo-line of churning bodies, awaiting their assignments. Half of that number was police personnel, either local or from neighboring areas. The rest was concerned friends, mostly fathers, shaking their heads, stomping their feet, not meeting each other’s eyes and unable to bear the sight of Hank as he slumped against one of the station’s gray walls.

  Arlen stood at the front with the chief of police, the county sheriff, and someone in a suit none of the locals knew, but whom the uniformed officers eyed warily. Assignments were divvied and handed down. Groups of six to eight, covering a fifty-square-mile radius. For now.

  They bundled into cars, doors slamming, voices low.

  “Can’t believe it. Just can’t believe we’re doing this,” Arlen said. He heaved out the faintly sweet breath from the four sugars he took in each cup of coffee. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, removing the crud that gathered near his thick-bridged nose, then swiping his hand absently against his jean-clad leg.

  “I spent the night tossing so much my wife got mad a couple of times. I’d go in and watch my kids sleeping for hours, seems like. Go back to the bedroom and get kicked out again. Don’t know how you do it regularly,” he said, facing the man in the suit.

  Suit’s answer: a shrug, sip of coffee, eyes creasing and measuring the disbanding group.

  “Any live wires in the bunch?” Suit asked. “I want to know where they all were yesterday at the time of the child’s disappearance. Anyone that showed up here today, I want to know.”

  Chief stood nearby, sucking in his gut, unable to keep it from spilling over his brass-and-silver belt buckle. He said, “Now see here, it isn’t gonna be one of our own.”

  “You don’t know who took that boy. In fact, you’ve got zilch,” Suit said, his voice quiet. “So, we start with what we do have. Thirty-seven people unaffiliated with this or another department showed up today to look for Jonathan Foster. I want to know why they’re here and we’ll start with where they were yesterday.”

  Chief mumbled, cursed, then headed back to his desk because “someone’s gotta man the fort whiles you boys are out there.”

  Arlen trudged off to join his group, his head hanging low between his shoulder blades. The first gray hairs shot upward from the cowlick at his crown, highlighted by the fluorescent tubes in his bathroom earlier this morning. He’d stared at them, mesmerized.

  The helicopter was circling the town, thrumming through the air in lazy, large loops. Mosquitoes buzzed, swarmed and men cursed as they swatted ineffectually.

  Arlen shot a quick glance down at his battered, scratched watch when the call came in: 12:23. Thoughts of his kids, the heat edging upward of ninety degrees, and a diet of caffeine and a stale jelly donut turned his intestines into a murky, dank swamp.

  “Hardesty, where you at?”

  “Southeast edge of my plot, over by Framb’s back pasture.”

  “I’m on the other side, by the ditch. You need to head out thisaway. Soon’s you can.”

  “On my way.”

  Arlen’s stomach lurched in a horrendous exchange of icing and burning. He swiped his neck, wishing he hadn’t drunk a whole pot of coffee. He already knew what he’d find as he stepped up to the edge of the ditch, but knowing still didn’t prepare him for it. He could never have prepared himself for finding Jonathan’s body.

  “Damnation and hellfire,” he hissed. “Christ, God Almighty. Suit’s gonna need to see this.”

  Arlen backed away, bringing the rest of the group with him. Six gray, damaged faces. Not a scene any of them would be able to forget.

  “Where’s the father? Hank?”

  “Over by the park.”

  “Keep him there,” Arlen said, his voice clogged. He sucked in air, shook his head. “Not a word to him till they can get this boy covered up some. At least. No, we’ll take him to the funeral home to do it properly. Might help. Jesus H. Christ, I hope to hell it does. Not one word about this here. We are not telling that family how horrendous this boy looks. Get me?”

  He stared down at the far edge of the four-foot-deep ditch, seeing it again in his mind, swallowing again and again. The coffee had burned its way back up his throat.

  Two of the men behind him heaved into the thick underbrush.

  Arlen wished he could purge the memory of that little boy’s body from his mind. He couldn’t—instead, he kept seeing it each time he closed his eyes, not just that day but for years.

  Nailing the son-of-a-bitch who did that to a child had become Arlen’s goal.

  To date, he’d failed.

  4 Danielle

  Danielle never intended to delve into her brother’s death. Don’t go digging, her mother liked to say. You won’t like what you find. For nearly thirty years, she managed as she always planned—as her mother wanted.

  Until she received the packet in the mail. The mail of all mundane life experiences.


  The thick, large, white envelope with her name scrawled across the top in thin, elegant writing. Danielle recognized her mother’s handwriting.

  Strange. Her mother never sent her letters.

  Heart slamming against her ribs, Danielle slit open the envelope and pulled out the single sheaf of plain stationery paper atop a much thicker, stapled document. She glanced down at the note.

  “Cremate my body, and I don’t want a preacher there.”

  She signed the page “Mom.” The packet included her will, which Danielle thought was odd because Nancy knew Danielle planned to stop by her house that afternoon. She and the boys had made a big batch of sugar cookies.

  Nancy loved them, the kind with the icing spread on top. Danielle had made these into different shapes for the boys: a dog, an appalling version of a ball glove, a heart, a bird, and a circle. Danielle made sure not to bring any of the gloves to her mother.

  Danielle offered the cookies first when she arrived at her mother’s large, dark house near the SMU campus in a posh part of Dallas’ city center—the coveted Highland Park address Danielle knew Nancy had never wanted. But, here, on the oak-lined boulevards, the noise from 635 or even Love Field, with its constant airplanes, dared not penetrate. At least not fully.