Killing Bliss Read Free

him again, her face was etched with sadness and regret. "I quit on her. I gave up too soon."
    He shifted on the sofa, uncomfortable. If she was waiting for a reply, either of castigation or disapproval, he sure as hell wasn't the one to give it.
    "Odd, isn't it? How it's the things you don't do in life, the sins of omission, that bring the most regret, the most pain."
    Cade wasn't sure he agreed, but he hadn't come here to debate what kind of sin did the most damage. Hell, he didn't know why he'd come.
    Susan, who'd gone silent for a time, seemed to force herself out of her painful reverie. "No matter. My mistake is irrevocable. I have to live with it, but I don't have to repeat it. All that matters now is finding my lost grandson. His name is Josh. Or so I was told."
    Cade had his coffee cup close to his mouth. He set it down. "Grandson?" This was news to him.
    "If I may?" Stan said, looking at Susan.
    "Yes, Stan, please." She looked relieved. "I'm sure Cade will appreciate a more orderly presentation of the facts."
    Stan fixed pale gray eyes on him. "Mariah had a son some months before she died. Father unknown. She never told her mother she was pregnant, nor did she inform her of his birth. I've confirmed she was clean when she had him and for a time after he was born. She went back on drugs when the man she was living with—not the father of the child—took off." He glanced at Susan, his eyes questioning.
    "Go on," she said. "Tell him. All of it."
    He didn't look as if he relished the task. "Mariah was squatting in a condemned building when she overdosed. She was dead two or three days before they found her. Josh was a toddler, sixteen months old. He was..." He shifted in his seat. "Let's say the boy was lucky to be alive."
    Cade got the picture.
    Stan went on. "With no one to contact, the state scooped him up, gave him what medical attention he needed, then put him into an interim care foster home. It took over two weeks before they linked Mariah to Susan."
    "And?" Cade urged.
    "It was too late." He paused. "Josh disappeared from the foster home within hours of being placed there."
    Cade looked at Susan, then at Stan. "Disappeared?"
    "The boy was taken to the home in the afternoon. Two o'clock, according to the social worker's records. There were three other foster kids there at the time. A boy and two girls. Ages ranging from thirteen to seventeen.
    "That same night, the foster mother, a Mrs. Belle Bliss, was murdered. Four bullets in the head. She was not, by all accounts, an attractive corpse. By the time the police arrived, the house was empty except for one of Belle's sons, Frank. He had called the police. Her other son, Brett, was staying the night at a friend's place. All of which checked out. Frank's statement named the three foster kids as responsible for the murder. He said the boy pulled the trigger while the girls stood by, egging him on."
    "The gun?"
    "Never found."
    "And the kids?"
    "As gone as they could get. Probably disappeared into the streets. Pretty easy for kids, then and now. Especially ones as savvy as those three."
    "And the child? What did Bliss say about him?"
    "Nothing. Said after they shot his mother, they turned the gun on him, and when it didn't fire—out of bullets, I guess—they jumped him, beat the crap out of him, and knocked him cold. When he woke up, the boy was gone."
    Susan spoke up. "The police did look for Josh, but after a few months, with nothing turning up to keep them going..." She lifted a shoulder, dropped it "They said one possibility was that the kids had taken him—for God knows what reason—then, when he became too much trouble, abandoned him."
    "There are other possibilities, Susan," Cade said, careful to keep his tone mild.
    "That they killed him? Disposed of the body?" Her words were hurried, and she glanced away for a moment. When she turned back, her face was tight. "Possible, yes. But possibilities prove nothing. I need to know."
    Cade saw it then, in the depths