Next of Kin Read online

  PRAISE FOR JAMES TUCKER

  “Gripping from its opening lines, Next of Kin is a white-knuckle page-turner, where ruthless power, murder, and crimes hidden for generations create an intricate, utterly absorbing tale. The life of a vulnerable young boy hangs in the balance, and Detective Buddy Lock must find the killer before it’s too late. Simply a fantastic read.”

  —Marya Hornbacher, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Wasted, The Center of Winter, and Madness

  “Terrific plot! And Buddy Lock is a cop protagonist that’s a delightful departure from the norm. I’m wholeheartedly recommending Next of Kin.”

  —Mike Lawson, author of the Joe DeMarco thrillers

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

  Text copyright © 2017 by James Tucker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542045667

  ISBN-10: 1542045665

  Cover design by David Drummond

  for Megan

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-One

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Chapter Ninety-Eight

  Chapter Ninety-Nine

  Chapter One Hundred

  Chapter One Hundred One

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  Ben heard shattering glass. He pictured the bottle of champagne his father had been holding, now lying in shards on the oak floor.

  His father’s voice boomed from the living room. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  He froze.

  He was in the walk-in pantry at the back of the house, looking for a chocolate bar.

  He listened for an answer to his father’s question, but only heard him groan loudly. His mother screamed.

  Then she shouted: “Run, Benjamin! Run! Ru—”

  Silence. Her voice had been cut off.

  A shiver passed through him. His hands began to shake.

  He stared at the columns of shelving. If he could keep his hands steady, he might be able to get out. But what about his sister, Ellen-Marie?

  She cried once, a pitiful burst, and the house again grew quiet.

  Then he heard footsteps on the oak-plank floor, moving toward the back of the house, toward him.

  Slowly, quietly, as only a ten-year-old can do, he moved to his right, to the farthest segment of shelving, the one he’d accidentally pressed against the previous June. He pushed on the section of shelving holding the jars of olives, just as he’d done last summer, but it wouldn’t budge. He put both hands on the vertical planks and pushed. Nothing. He wondered if his father—who’d told him never to mention the secret doorway—had nailed it shut, to keep him from exploring.

  The footsteps again. They were in the long hallway now, perhaps fifteen yards from him.

  He brought his shoulder against the shelf, leaned into the wood, and shoved as hard as he could. He strained and his slippers began to slide on the floor, but then he heard the faint snap of the catch.

  Now he pulled on the heavy shelf, grateful it made no sound as it swung into the pantry. He saw the stone steps leading down into darkness.

  The footsteps grew closer and came faster.

  He moved onto the stairs, balanced precariously, and turned to pull the pantry shelf closed behind him. He did so carefully. When he heard the catch snap into place, he stood on the top stair, perfectly still.

  The footsteps entered the pantry. He heard them cross from one end of the generously sized room to the other and back again. Then they ceased. There was no sound. Yet Ben hadn’t heard the footsteps leave. He held his breath. Someone knocked on the pantry walls. One wall. Another wall and another. Not six inches from his face, a knock on the fourth wall. Startlingly loud. He shook involuntarily and swayed backward. He hoped the shelving sounded solid. For thirty seconds he heard nothing. He shivered with fear and cold. He was dressed in a thick cotton bathrobe over his pajamas, but his hiding place
was frigid and he was thin as a reed. Even the pantry had been cold.

  Now he heard breathing on the other side of the shelves. He listened carefully but kept still. There was no sound other than the person’s calm, full movement of air in and out of his—or her—lungs. An unusual scent, one he didn’t recognize, passed through hairline cracks in the shelving. New leather mixed with lemon and something else.

  And then, all at once, the footsteps retreated from the pantry.

  A moment later he sensed a change in the air, followed by the sound of the house’s front door opening and closing, but he couldn’t be sure. And because he wasn’t sure, he knew that he remained in danger. He couldn’t go back into the house.

  He drew his bathrobe more tightly around himself and eased down the steps into the darkness. It was farther than he remembered. When he reached the tunnel’s soft earthen floor, he began walking. His hands guided him along the left concrete wall into the unknown. He went much farther than he had last summer. His teeth chattered and his hands tightened with cold. He thought he had to get out or he’d die.

  After a while he stumbled upon another set of stairs. These he climbed carefully and at the top of them, touched the wooden surface he found. At first it seemed to be the back of another hidden pantry door with no discernable latch, but he was relieved to find a typical round knob.

  Turning it, he pushed open the door and walked into a pantry that was much larger than the one in his parents’ house. He knew he’d reached the lodge. Recessed lights burned low, illuminating shelves of spices and juices, canned goods and cereal, flour and wheat, syrup and sugar. On the floor he saw bushels of potatoes and winter squash. At the edge of a green marble countertop was a telephone. Beside the telephone was a pile of folded wool blankets.

  Without alerting anyone in the lodge to his presence, he picked up the telephone and dialed 911.

  “Someone killed my family,” he whispered when the dispatcher answered. “Please help me.”

  Chapter Two

  Three days later, Buddy’s cell phone rang in the silent, brittle cold. He considered not answering. He was standing at his mother’s grave in Kensiko Cemetery north of New York City—his mother who’d died of cancer twenty-one years ago today. He’d been close to her and didn’t want to be distracted. But a feeling of duty welled up within him. He was a detective first grade with the New York City Police Department, and his job was nearly all that mattered to him. He reached into the breast pocket of his navy-blue overcoat and pulled out the phone.

  “Lock here,” he said.

  “Detective Lock, this is Ray Sawyer. I’m an attorney for a member of the Brook family.”

  The names weren’t immediately familiar. “Yeah?”

  “Detective, I need your help solving murders.”

  In the faint light—it wasn’t yet seven in the morning—Buddy shook his head, annoyed this stranger had called him. He said, “I’m with the NYPD and I don’t moonlight. You’ll have to find someone else to work the murder.”

  “Murders, Detective Lock. Three of them. Almost an entire family. Upstate, at a great camp in the Adirondacks wilderness.”

  Now Buddy made the connection. He’d read about the crime in the Gazette. Many hints about the murder of a rich family at their estate up north. No arrest, he recalled. Hardly any information. Not even a statement of how the family had died. And some of the details he’d found didn’t add up. For example . . .

  No, he told himself. Goddammit, no. Stop thinking about it. He turned from his mother’s grave and said, “Mr. Sawyer, I’m assigned to the Nineteenth Precinct in Manhattan and normally don’t have jurisdiction anywhere else. Aren’t the State Police handling it?”

  “Yes, but they’re lost,” Sawyer told him. “And this is a Manhattan crime. I need you, Detective Lock,” Sawyer pleaded. “I need you or I wouldn’t have called.”

  Buddy stopped. Turning, he looked at his car, the only one parked along Lakeview Avenue. “What do you mean, a ‘Manhattan crime’?”

  Sawyer said, “Camp Kateri is owned by the Brooks. Four houses arrayed around a main lodge, one house for each branch of the family. In the winter there’s nobody up there except the caretaker and one or two of the staff. But a few days ago the entire family was gathered for the New Year’s holiday. Somebody entered one of the houses and killed Alton Brook, his wife, Brenda, and their daughter, Ellen-Marie. The murders are Manhattan crimes because all the family live in Manhattan.”

  “And the staff?” Buddy asked.

  “They may be local, but why would they do something so awful?”

  Buddy thought of a number of reasons as he headed back to his car. He wanted to end the call with Ray Sawyer and get down to the precinct before the worst of the morning traffic. He also wanted to quash the interest in this case that had formed in his gut. He couldn’t get involved, but at the same time he wanted to know more. A bad sign. A sign of an addiction he recognized all too well, one that tallied his clearance rate against the breakup of his family. He’d long ago chosen to focus all his energy on work, the organizing principle of his life. Work helped him blot out his misfortunes. It helped him move forward and was the key to his survival. For years there had been nothing else. Until he’d met Mei on a case the year before. Now his world had two suns that eyed each other warily. He said, “Mr. Sawyer, you said almost an entire branch of the Brook family was murdered.”

  “That’s right.”

  He came to a monument in the shape of a cross. With his free hand he brushed off the snow and looked down at the name: Sergei Rachmaninoff. Here lay the great Russian composer who’d been one of Buddy’s inspirations when he was on the concert circuit as a young man, before he’d failed in the most public way possible, at Carnegie Hall.

  “Detective Lock? Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Buddy said, touching the headstone once, then turning from the grave and hurrying down the hill toward Lakeview. “Who survived?”

  “Their ten-year-old son, Ben. I’m now his guardian.”

  Jesus. Buddy closed in on the last thirty yards between him and the unmarked Dodge Charger. “Was Ben at the camp that night?”

  “Yes, but he escaped. We don’t know how, and he won’t tell us.”

  “Where is he right now?”

  “He’s with my wife at our apartment on West End Avenue. We’re afraid to put him back in school until we know he’s safe.”

  Buddy reached the Charger, opened the door, and dropped into the driver’s seat. He closed the heavy door and started the car. “The remaining family won’t take him?”

  “Ben’s parents were very clear in the family trust documents. They didn’t want him living with his aunts and uncles. They thought his uncles were unethical in business and in life, and that his aunts spoiled their children so much those children didn’t need to work. Ben’s parents hated their laziness. And I won’t allow these people custody of the boy, especially when a family member might be the killer.”

  Buddy said, “And you think Ben is safe at your apartment?”

  “I think so.”

  More and more questions filled Buddy’s mind, but he stifled them. He bit down on the insides of his cheeks and tasted blood. His left hand gripped the steering wheel. Years as a piano prodigy had taught him to see order in a thousand notes, and he thought this skill would help him find clues invisible to everyone else. His relentlessness would lead him to the killer. And yet he knew the job couldn’t be his. Forcing his voice to be calm, he said, “Mr. Sawyer, I can’t take over an investigation upstate. But I’m going to refer you to someone who might be able to help.”

  “Who?” Sawyer asked, his voice betraying disappointment.

  “His name is Ward Mills. He has the time and money this case will require.”

  Buddy gave out his half brother’s telephone number, wished Sawyer the best of luck, and ended the call.

  He thought of why—why Ben Brook had lost his mother, why he couldn’t help the boy or his
family. In frustration he pounded the steering wheel with his heavy fist.

  Chapter Three

  Not long after he’d sat down in his cubicle at the Nineteenth Precinct building on East Sixty-Seventh Street between Third Avenue and Lexington, his brother Ward had called him.

  “Can’t do it,” he’d told Ward.

  Ward’s cultured voice was smooth and cajoling. “What is it you can’t do?”

  “Work the murder up north.”

  “All right, Buddy. But why don’t we look at the crime scene? Just for an hour or two.”

  Buddy drank from his large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. “Can’t. Not my jurisdiction, and I have cases to work.”

  “So what? Take a vacation day. You probably have two months in the bank. I’ll pick you up in an hour at the South Street Seaport.”

  “We’re taking a boat?” Buddy had asked, stalling as he calculated his vacation hours, which came to about four months.

  “The lakes in the Adirondacks are frozen, and I want to see the crime scene while it’s fresh. So we’re taking a bird.”

  Buddy didn’t like helicopters. He said, “The murders were a week ago. Nothing’s fresh.”

  “Whatever, Buddy. Are you in or not?”

  He was in. His irritation had only grown after he’d left the cemetery. His mind had begun turning around the details of the case, and he’d been powerless to stop it. After calling Mei at Porter Gallery, he’d finished his coffee and taken the subway down to the Seaport.

  Now he was sitting next to Ward in the plush rear seat of the Sikorsky helicopter his brother had chartered for the day. Taking off—rising up as Atlantic winds buffeted the machine—unnerved him. He liked to be on firm ground. But once they’d left South Street Seaport in Manhattan and were flying rapidly above the trough of the Hudson River Valley, he breathed easier.

  But not easy. He was preparing for the puzzle he’d find when they landed.

  He said, “Who are the Brooks? The Gazette mentioned they had piles of money but not much else. Ray Sawyer didn’t explain.”

  Ward had dressed in dark-wash jeans, Sorel boots, and a black-collared ski sweater with a zipper. His sandy-colored hair was brushed back perfectly. His handsome face showed an easy confidence that at times slipped into arrogance. He was forty-one, two years younger than Buddy. Ward said, “Sawyer didn’t think he had to explain.”