Page 42 of Silent Ridge

I go back in the office and round Ronnie up and head to the car. I didn’t ask Sheriff Gray to contact the sheriff of Snohomish County just yet. I’m afraid Michael will still have friends in the area that might tip him off that I’m looking for him. The good-old-boy network.

Now that I’ve put most of it out there for the sheriff, I’m not so worried about questions of how I know any of this.

“Where are we going?” Ronnie asks, getting in the car.

I start the engine and a thick cloud of smoke belches out of the tailpipe. “First, tell me what Mr. Bridges said.”

She takes out her ever-handy notebook with its fancy leather cover and flips to a page she’s marked. “He gave me some names. Most are recent victims’ families.”

“I want to hear the ones that are three or more years old.”

“Okay.” She flips some more pages. “Monique’s daughter, Leanne, was murdered—”

“I know about that one,” I say a little too quickly.

“Did you know she didn’t believe the guy they caught was the killer?”

“I may have known that,” I lie.

“Did you know that she thought two other murders were tied to her daughter’s murder?”

I act surprised. “Two others?”

“A girl named Shannon Blume and a Megan Moriarty, both sixteen when they died.”

“Did you look them up?” I am hoping she did.

“I’ve got the case number for each, the parents’ information and the names of the detectives working the cases. Both cases happened almost twenty years ago. Right around the same time as Leanne Delmont.”

“Where?”

“All in King County. Including Leanne.”

“Who were the detectives?” I ask, like I don’t know. “Are they still around?” I know we can’t talk to him.

“A Sheriff’s Office detective. Alex Rader.” She says this with emphasis.

“The same Alex Rader that they think killed his wife? What was her name?”

“Marie Rader,” ever-ready Ronnie says. “She was wheelchair-bound. He’s the one who disappeared and was never heard from again. Don’t you think it’s odd that his brother has done a runner too?”

I agree. It only adds to my suspicion that Michael is our guy. “Do you have an address for Shannon Blume’s parents? Do you know if they still live there?”

She has the address already pulled up on GPS and I hear that grating robot voice give directions. We head that way.

As I drive I remember where I first heard the names Shannon Blume, Megan Moriarty and Leanne Delmont. After my stepfather was killed, I fled the house with Hayden and we discovered that I had a key to a safe-deposit box in a Seattle bank. In that box I found several envelopes. Letters, newspaper clippings and a gun. One of the envelopes was marked in my mom’s handwriting:

For my daughter’s eyes only.

Another was marked for Hayden:

For my son’s eyes only.

And it was in that letter to me that I found out the truth my mother had hidden from me until that day. I destroyed the letter, not wanting Hayden to ever know, but I remember it word for word.

Honey, I have lied to you. I lied because it was the only course of action to save you, save me, save Hayden.

She told me that the man we’d been running from our entire lives wasn’t some jilted boyfriend or a stalker. He was my real father. Alex Richard Rader. A police detective. A serial killer. He’d tried to kill my mother but she told me she was the victim who got away.

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