Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who is reading and following this story! Thank you especially to everyone who reviewed the last chapter: max2013, EvergreenDreamweaver, and Cherylann Rivers.

Chapter XI

Fifteen years earlier

"Dad, hold this." Three-year-old Nancy placed a toy bird in Carson's hand as he sat on the couch in their apartment, holding an ice-pack to his still-aching head. Nancy, meanwhile, continuing lining up several other toy animals on the floor.

"What are they doing?" Carson asked. "Having a parade?"

"No." Nancy looked up at him with a confused expression, as if she couldn't believe that he didn't understand her game. "They're the suspects."

"Oh." Carson grinned. "It must be a big case."

Nancy nodded gravely. "Feathers was kidnapped."

"Is this Feathers?" Carson held up the bird he was holding.

"Uh huh." Nancy turned back to the more serious business of playing.

Carson watched her for a while, passing the toy bird back and forth in his hands. His mind began to drift back to the case as he tried to fit the pieces into place. He wondered what the Moriares had to do with it all and where they had gone, as well as whether the police had found them yet. It had only been a day since his run-in with Dan, but he hadn't heard a word since then and he was beginning to get anxious.

Kate came into the room with a cup of hot tea and sat down next to Carson with a deep sigh. "It's nice to have a day off. How's your head feeling?"

Carson grimaced. "Don't remind me. I'm just hoping Mr. Shoemaker doesn't decide to take me off the case after this."

"I don't suppose there's any chance of you needing some help on it," Kate said. "Maybe we can get it solved and then head back to River Heights a little early."

Carson grinned as he put his arm around her shoulders. "You know perfectly well that if you were working on this case, you wouldn't want it to end early."

"No, I suppose not," Kate replied with a grin.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

"Never a moment's peace," Kate complained good-naturedly as she got up to open the door.

Detectives Hardy and Johnson were outside. They apologized for disturbing Kate at home and then asked if Carson was around. She led them into the living room. Nancy looked up from her play, and being a little frightened by the strangers, crawled up on the coach to sit next to her father. Kate sat down on the other side of him, while the detectives took the two armchairs.

"I was beginning to think you were investigating without me," Carson said, after greeting the two men.

"We were," Johnson told him, grinning as he did.

"Just research-based investigating," Hardy added, casting a somewhat exasperated glance at his partner. "Now we need you for our next step."

Carson put the ice-pack up to his head again. "You're sure I'm the right man for it? You saw what happened last time."

Hardy nodded. "You got us our first big break. Thanks to what you found out, we've got a pretty good idea of where to look next. You see, we pulled all our files on Joy Moriare – you said that she said she had been arrested, so we had to have records – and, acting on your theory that Dan is her husband, we checked out the name Dan Moriare. They both paid off."

"Except you were wrong about Joy and Dan being married," Johnson spoke up. "Joy's married to Dan's brother, Cliff."

"Either way," Hardy continued, "we were able to find out a lot about them, and it seems to fit in. Joy's arrests are mostly for petty thefts when she was a teenager. She's only twenty now, and she hasn't been caught stealing for three years. She got married then to Cliff Moriare, and even if she hasn't been arrested, I doubt she's gotten cleaned up any."

"Why do you say that?" Kate asked, just as interested in the conversation as any of the men were.

"Mainly because Cliff and Dan have been in nothing but trouble since they were ten and eight," Hardy explained. "That was their first run-in with the law when they purposely smashed the windows on several cars in a parking lot near their home at that point. Since then they've been arrested for or suspected of dozens of crimes, ranging from vandalism to grand theft to voluntary manslaughter."

"No actual first-degree murder charges, though?" Carson asked. "It would be pretty tough for me to believe that this was anything else."

"No," Hardy admitted. "They've been acquitted of all their more serious charges, as well. Neither of them have jobs, though, from what we can see. Joy has her job at the pawnshop, but naturally she didn't show up for work today."

"But that's not the big reason we think you've found our murderers for us," Johnson interjected. "The Moriare brothers' father was Randy Moriare. About five, six years ago, he turned up dead in the river. It all came out that he was working as an errand boy for – you guessed it – the Irish Mob. And you know who the main suspect in the murder case was?"

"It's not too hard to guess," Carson replied. "Devin Matthias?"

"Bingo." Johnson nodded knowingly. "That was just about the time he got arrested for complicity in some illegal mob 'business ventures'. He turned state's evidence on some guys that we all but had in jail anyway, so the murder charge got dropped. Okay, they said that they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute, but I smelled something fishy then, and I still think that's the case."

"Wait, so you're saying that Cliff and Dan killed Matthias to avenge their father?" Carson unconsciously used the toy bird he was holding to point at Johnson and emphasize his words. When he caught Johnson's bemused expression, he realized what he was holding and hastily handed it off to Nancy. "Anyway. Is that what you're saying?"

"That's exactly what we're saying," Johnson said.

"It seems like a good possibility." Hardy modified his partner's confidence. "We've got their addresses, but they seem to have split. That just makes it all the more likely."

"So what do you want me to do?" Carson asked.

"We had a hard time pitching this idea to the big brass," Johnson explained. "They weren't crazy about putting a civilian in this position."

NDNDNDNDND

"Man, you have got the most patient kid I have ever seen," Johnson was saying. "You said she's what? Three? And she just sat there and listened the whole time. That's nothing like Fenton's two holy terrors."

Carson shrugged. "Nancy's just always been that way. She always wants to know what's going on and she will sit still and listen if that's what it takes to find out."

It was late the next afternoon, with evening coming on in an hour or so. The two men were walking from the parking lot of a tenement building to one of the apartments. Meanwhile, Hardy was hanging in the background, watching in case something went wrong.

They were going to call on Irene Moriare, the widowed mother of Dan and Cliff. It was to be a casual interview, such as Irene had come to be accustomed to between her late husband and her sons. The main purpose was apparently just to check up on the two young men and make sure they were still clean. Hardy and Johnson, however, wanted to make it look like they were tipping their hand by having Carson along. If Dan or Joy should happen to be nearby, they would recognize him and their next move might perhaps not be so well-advised. It was a risky plan that had a large chance of not succeeding, but they had determined that it was worth a try.

The building was run-down, and the people whom Carson and Johnson passed in the halls cast them suspicious looks. They finally came to the apartment they were looking for, and Johnson rang the bell. It took a few minutes for the door to finally open, revealing a girl of about fourteen years with very wide, wondering eyes.

"I'm Sergeant Mitchell Johnson of the NYPD." Johnson took out his badge and showed it to the girl. "This is Carson Drew. Is this the home of Irene Moriare?"

The girl looked at the badge and then up at the faces of the two men. "Yes. She's my mother. But she's not at home right now. She's at work."

"Where does she work?" Johnson asked.

"At Five and Twenty, the department store," the girl replied.

"Which one?" Johnson put his badge back into an inner pocket. "There are three or four in town."

"I don't remember the street," the girl admitted. "Grant? It's a president."

"Cleveland," Johnson said. "All right. Thank you. What time does your mother get off work?"

"I don't know," the girl told him. "It changes every day." She looked up at him almost beseechingly with her large, brown eyes. "Is this – is this about my brothers again?"

"Yes, it is," Carson replied. "We're afraid they've gotten themselves into some very big trouble this time. Are they –" He stopped when he felt Johnson step on his foot, realizing that the officer didn't want so much to be revealed.

"Thank you very much again," Johnson said to the girl. "What is your name?"

"Evangeline," the girl replied and closed the door.

As Johnson and Carson walked back down the hall, Johnson commented, "There's something about that girl that I don't trust."

"What?" Carson raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. "She's probably barely in high school. What can you suspect her of?"

Johnson shrugged and gave a bit of a laugh. "Hazards of being a police officer, I guess. You start to be suspicious of everybody, especially close relatives of people you suspect of being murderers."

Before Carson could make any kind of a reply to that, he was cut off by a piercing shriek from the floor above. Immediately, Johnson bolted toward the elevator, calling to Carson to follow him. They found a crowd gathered at the door of one of the apartments.

"Police. Let us through." Johnson began pushing through the crowd until he got through the door, Carson following close behind.

A dazed-looking woman was sitting on the floor of the main living room which the door opened into. She was shaking and crying and seemed utterly incoherent.

"Ma'am? I'm Sergeant Mitchell Johnson of the NYPD." Johnson crouched down next to her and tried to get her to look at him, but she wouldn't take her face from her hands. "What happened, ma'am?"

Prudently, Carson closed the door, blocking the gathered crowd out. "Do you want me to call Hardy?"

Johnson shook his head. "Not until we know what's going on here. This could be a ploy to distract us."

"Distract you!" the woman burst out in a shuddering voice. "He's – in the bathroom."

Carson and Johnson glanced at each other, and then followed the woman's pointing finger toward a partially closed door. Cautiously, Johnson swung it open. The bathroom was small and tastefully decorated, but that was not what attracted the attention of the two observers. What caught their attention was a man, fully dressed, lying face-down in the filled bathtub – or rather, the body of a man. Otherwise, the bathroom was in perfect order, except for five seeds that were lined up on the sink.

Present Day

"Mr. Drew!" Bess's panicked voice and her pounding on the door woke Carson from his half-sleeping state. He checked his phone's screen which showed that it was about two-thirty in the morning.

"Mr. Drew!" Bess repeated her cry. "Mr. Drew! Nancy's gone!"