Page 62 of Justice for JoElla

“Hmmm. Would be nice if you could find some relatives. Any idea where he’s been holing up?”

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tellsomeone, and Brandon would be a safe person to tell. Except that he’d have a fit when he found out she was going to meet someone at an abandoned arcade, someone who, for reasons she couldn’t understand, had been helping a serial killer. He’d be angry if she went. It would most likely be the end of their relationship. No, she’d told Warmuth she’d keep it to herself, and that was what she was going to do. “No. We have no idea. He wasn’t very cooperative.”

“Yeah. I’m sure they seldom are.”

“You’d better get back to work, and I’ve got stuff to do. Reports and stuff.”

“Okay. Want me to come over when I get off shift?”

JoElla thought about it. No, she’d probably still be out, hopefully at the station house booking some criminal into jail. “Nah. I’ll probably be in bed by then.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later then. I miss you.”

JoElla smiled. Someone missed her. That was new. “I miss you too. Talk to you later. Bye.” When she ended the call, she sat there and held the phone in her hand, tipped toward her and resting against her lip. What was she about to do? Something incredibly stupid?

Or the smartest thing she’d ever done?

Chapter 10

They’d been calledout to an accident, and it was particularly gory. One of the victims had been trapped and had an arterial bleed. Fortunately, they’d been able to get the bleeding staunched long enough to transport him. His wife hadn’t been so fortunate. Slamming into the back of a semi trailer at sixty miles an hour tended to have unfortunate, catastrophic results.

By the time they got back and got everything cleaned up and restocked it was almost nine, so Brandon made himself a sandwich and carried his laptop upstairs to the lounge. Curled up in the corner of one of the big sofas, he opened it and poked around for a minute or two, looking at social media and liking some of the posts from his kids and Jerrica. He liked and commented on the kids’ posts often, but they never responded. It was like he was invisible. It really rankled him, especially since he knew it was most likely Maria’s doing, and he made up his mind to ask the attorney to set up something for him to see and talk to them. Family. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes fickle.

The strangest idea ran through his head, and he decided to follow it. There was a site for looking up people to find family connections, and it took him a minute or two to remember what it was?Ancestors4Me dot com. Once he found it, he tried to remember his username and password. It took him a few attempts, but he finally got in.

The first person he looked up was AntonWarmuth. That wasn’t exactly the most common name in the world, but he got nothing. Then he thought about how he would’ve spelled it if JoElla hadn’t spelled it for him, and he typed in “AntonWarmath.”

Records started popping up. The first one was a birth certificate. The date of birth sounded plausible, and the birth took place in Kentucky, but whoever had loaded it into the system had mistyped because it clearly said “Warmuth.” The mother was listed with the same last name, first name of “Polly,” and her race read “Caucasian.” Her birthdate would’ve made her barely twenty-two at the time. The blank for the father’s name said “unknown,” and his race was reported as “African American.” That sounded right. As usual, the certificate had the other questions he always saw on them. Was it a live birth? How many births had this mother had? How many were live? Two. That meant he had an older sibling. So where was he, the older brother?

Brandon thought about it for a minute. Anton had been born two years into his birth decade. That meant if the sibling had already been born before the beginning of the decade, he’d be in the census reports. Poking through them, he finally found an old census record from twelve years before Anton had been born. Sure enough, he found a family named Warmuth, and one of the children was listed as Polly. He skipped ahead to the next census report and prowled through it. Sure enough, the same Warmuth family showed up, but without Polly, so he kept looking. He finally found another Warmuth, and that time, the head of household was shown as Polly. There was a man’s name, something that wasn’t familiar, and one child. Brandon blinked, then blinked again. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The child’s name was Lance.

A million things buzzed through Brandon’s mind, but the one he kept coming back to was the fact that Lance had shot JoElla. Fear penetrated his heart as he dug through the rest of the census reports. By the next census, Polly was listed alone. No kids. JoElla had said Quint told her that Warmuth had been in foster care. “Holy shit,” he whispered aloud to himself. Had Lance been the one hiding Anton? Giving him money? And why? Just because they were brothers? Had they even lived in the same household at any time? And why was Lance’s last name Margolis? The man shown living with Polly when Lance was still with her wasn’t named Margolis.

Of course. He’d been adopted. That had to be it. Brandon started poring through census records again, looking for a Margolis. He paged through to the next census report and scanned the screen for the name. In the very next census, he found three Margolis families in the area. There, on the screen in front of him, was the name: LanceMargolis. He backtracked, looking for the previous census report on the same family. That turned up easily enough and, of course, no Lance was listed.

What he’d found was significant. He had no idea on the why or how, but at least he’d figured out the who. After he’d taken screen shots of the appropriate screens, he hit JoElla’s contact, but it went straight to voicemail. That was the sort of information he didn’t want to leave in a message, so he decided he’d wait. She was probably in the shower.

Ten minutes later, he decided to try again, and still no answer. Something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t explain it?it justwas. After five minutes of pacing, he decided he’d just go to her apartment and tell her because she sure as hell needed to know. “Family emergency!” he called out to the guys as he ran toward his car.

“Hose and everybody okay?” he heard someone yell behind him.

“I’ll explain later.” In seconds, he was on the road.

Brandon drove along the darkened streets and highways. He was almost to JoElla’s when he recognized the car coming toward him and, sure enough, it was her, headed toward town. “I thought you said you needed to write up some reports,” he mumbled under his breath as he turned around to follow her. Once she stopped, he’d confront her and find out why she’d lied to him. Her car made a turn up ahead into an alley, and Brandon drove on past to the next corner, made a U-turn in the intersection, and came back to park on the street down the block, curious to see what she was doing. He tried to call her again, but her phone went straight to voicemail again. Her car door opened and he was shocked.

He could plainly see her service weapon in her hand, held close to her side. To his horror, she disappeared around the corner of the building, so he got out and strolled along the sidewalk like he was going somewhere until he got to the building’s back edge. That was the moment he saw it. A car pulled into the parking lot from the other side of the block, and it wasn’t just any car.

It was a Taylorsville City Police cruiser. The air felt thin and too light to breathe, and Brandon willed himself to stop panting. What was she doing? Meeting him for what? Hadshebeen helping them? No, that wasn’t possible. Was she still fucking Lance? He was pretty sure that wasn’t going on either. Did she even realize he was there?

No. She did not.

A million things ran through Brandon’s head, and none of them were good. He had to get to her, to tell her about the connection, before Lance found her. Ducking around the corner of the building, he found an old service door. It was propped open just a slit with a brick that was lying there, and he was careful not to make a sound as he opened it enough to slip inside.

Total darkness greeted him, and his eyes struggled to adjust. When they finally had, he couldn’t see much of anything. There was an emergency exit sign lit up ahead somewhere. What was the place? He glanced to his right and saw an old rack with bowling balls in it parked up against a dusty pinball machine. An arcade. Katie’s. That was what it had been. The place had been a maze when he was a kid, and it was even worse since it had closed. Vandals had moved stuff around, thrown stuff, and broken stuff in their quest for something they could sell, and it had changed from a maze to an obstacle course. He inched forward until his pant leg caught on something and when he reached down to free it, a hand grabbed his and jerked downward.

He dropped to his knees and found himself face to face with JoElla. “What in the everlovin’ fuck are you doing here?” she whispered so quietly he could barely make out her words.

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