Page 48 of Last Resort

If Carr isn’t a nephew, who is he? I didn’t buy the “long-lost family showing up out of the goodness of his heart” bit, but at least a nephew is a real connection. Bastard son? Tom probably sowed some wild oats before he became a recluse. Cousin on the other parent’s side? Or just someone who heard the stories and decided to fake his ID for a chance to find a treasure?

“We’ve got to go down to the police station,” Ben told Jenny when Sean showed up. “Sounds like they might have caught the killer.”

“I’ll keep everything running while you’re gone,” Jenny promised.

Ben filled Sean in on what Hendricks had told him as they headed for the station, but kept some of the other things he had discovered to himself for now. Knowledge might be power, but it was also dangerous, and Ben didn’t want to put Sean at more risk than absolutely necessary.

Ben and Erik had become reluctant supernatural sleuths and accepted what went with the role.I’d rather not drag Sean into it. Let him live a normal life.

Or as normal as you can be selling onion rings in Wildwood.

The officer at the desk waved them through. “Chief is waiting for you in the back.”

They hurried toward the briefing room, and it occurred to Ben that perhaps he should be concerned that he knew his way around quite so well. Hendricks was already at the table.

“Come in. I’ve got questions.” Hendricks gestured toward mugshot printouts. “You ever see this guy before?”

Ben and Sean moved closer. The man in the mugshot looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, unremarkable except for his dead-eye stare.

“Who is he?” Ben asked. “I don’t recognize him.”

Sean shook his head as well.

“Edward Frazetti, aka ‘Freaky Eddie Frazetti,’” Hendricks said with distaste. “He’s got a rap sheet longer than my arm, and that’s not counting records that were sealed from his stint in juvie.”

“Upstanding citizen,” Ben observed. “How do you know he killed Raines?”

Hendricks shrugged. “Good old-fashioned police work. Got a tip about an odd man at the coin-op laundry trying to get blood out of his clothing. Put the security and traffic cam photos together and tracked him down, matched the blood to Raines.”

“Contract kill?” Ben asked.

“He’s not saying anything, but that’s my guess,” the chief said. “My question is—why did he stick around after Raines was dead?”

A chill went down Ben’s spine. “Because that wasn’t his only target.”

“Bada-bing,” Hendricks replied.

“You think he was after Ben—or Erik?” Sean paled.

“Maybe. Tom Raines and his mother moved up the coast after his father was killed. He worked in and around Atlantic City before he disappeared. That means he didn’t have a lot of personal ties in town.”

Ben thought of the ghost at the convent. She and Raines had fallen out of touch, so she wouldn’t have been useful to someone like Frazetti, even if she had been alive.

“But why would the people who sent Frazetti after Raines be interested in Erik or me?” Ben thought hard. “Unless they’re still sore about the stuff that happened earlier this year.” Unfinished business from both of their pasts had drawn dangerous attention.

Hendricks raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

Ben shrugged. “I kinda figured that would have been sorted out sooner, that’s all.”

“There’s something to be said for giving a mark time to let down their guard,” Hendricks replied. “But in this case, I’m working on the suspicion that they think you had proximity to Raines and might have found something or passed something to Erik.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, well. They don’t know that,” Hendricks responded.

“Then who is Holden Carr, and what’s his angle?” Ben asked. “Jaxon knew him years ago in New York City, so he’s gone by that name for a long time, but I did some digging and found out Galen Raines only had one child, so Tom wasn’t Carr’s uncle.”

“Oneacknowledgedchild,” Hendricks corrected. “If Carr was talking about missing heist money years ago, like Jaxon told you, he could be Tom’s illegitimate child, or the child of one of Galen’s bastards if he had any. Whether Carr’s a blood relation or not, he’s definitely a person of interest, but so far, we haven’t caught him.”

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