You Don't Want To Know - By Lisa Jackson Page 0,177
than a little effort. Outside, the night was thick, impenetrable, while inside the house, a pall had settled over the residents.
More cops arrived, along with the medical examiner and the crime scene people. Even J. T. Biggs, the sheriff himself, in full uniform, showed up in the early morning hours, though he spent more time outside the house organizing the search party than inside.
While the staff and occupants of the house were called in for interviews one by one, the technicians and investigators began collecting evidence. Everyone was questioned, even Graciela, who arrived for work several hours into the interviews and was escorted into the den. Doe-eyed, she, too, waited to tell everything she knew about Jewel-Anne’s death, which she’d only heard about when Khloe had texted her earlier.
When it came to his turn, right after Wyatt Garrison, Dern was led into the dining room, offered coffee, which he declined, and was pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table from Detective Lyons. She was typing on a tablet computer, her coffee forgotten, not so much as a lipstick stain on the rim of the cup.
The interview was quick. “Just tell me what happened last night,” she instructed. Obviously the police already knew about the altercation between Jewel-Anne and Ava that had occurred the night before the murder. What they didn’t know was where Lester Reece was hiding or that Austin Dern just happened to be his half brother. Dern decided to lay all his cards on the table. First with the cops; next with Ava. He figured he owed her that much. So, after explaining about the night before and answering a few subsequent questions to his statement, he said, “You know, there’s another wrinkle here.”
“Is there? And what’s that?” Lyons asked as she typed on her keypad.
“I’m Lester Reece’s half brother.”
Her reaction was swift. She looked up sharply, her fingers quit moving, and her gaze focused hard on him.
“Is that right?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You know,” she said, her eyes narrowing a little, as if she really thought he might try to con her, “I haven’t seen any record of Reece having a sibling.”
“Then your records aren’t complete.” Dern was ready for the argument, had figured no one would believe him, and he didn’t really give a damn one way or the other; he just wanted to say it. “Here’s the short and the long of it: Reece and I have the same mother.” She glanced at her iPad. Probably checking out his facts as he gave them to her. “My mother is Reba Melinda Corliss Reece Dern McDaniels. The marriage to Reece was short. She lives in Texas. Moved around a lot. El Paso, Houston, a couple of smaller towns. She’s now living in a town called Bad Luck. Kind of appropriate.”
Her eyebrows lifted a bit as her gaze moved from the small screen to his face. “So many names. Your mother was a serial marrier?”
“You could say that.” He tried not to be rankled, to let it slide, but he’d always had a soft spot when it came to Reba.
Lyons’s eyebrows puckered together, and Dern could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. She clicked a pen as she thought. “I don’t know how we could have missed this.”
“Me, neither. But I’m just telling you straight up,” he said.
“Okay, go on.” Finally he’d caught her interest. She leaned back in her chair.
“Well, here’s the good news,” he said cautiously. “I think I can lead you to Reece.”
“Seriously?” Again the skeptic.
“Yep.”
Her smile said she didn’t believe him for a second, but she quit clicking her damned pen. “Okay, Dern, I’ll bite. That’s the good news? So what’s the bad?”
Dern said, “He ain’t gonna like it.”
“So I should have told you sooner, I guess,” Dern admitted after telling Ava that he was Lester Reece’s half brother.
“I don’t guess,” she said angrily. “I know!” Ava couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but Dern seemed dead serious as he broke the news to her in the kitchen, less than an hour after he’d finished his interviews. He’d spoken for a long time with Lyons and then spent another hour or so in the dining room talking to both cops after Lyons called Snyder in. Ava had guessed whatever he’d told them was important, but she hadn’t expected this—that Dern was Lester Reece’s damned half brother. Dear God, was everyone related to the maniac? First Noah and now Dern.