Chance had been the middle of three children and the only boy. Shortly after his younger sister’s first birthday, their mother went out to the grocery store one day and never came home. While her disappearance was initially worked as a potential kidnapping, it was quickly discovered that the woman had simply abandoned her children and husband and run off with her boyfriend.
Left with three young children to raise on his own, Chance’s father turned to gambling as his coping method of choice and was soon up to his eyeballs in debt. When he couldn’t pay his bills, he borrowed money from a loan shark, and after losing two fingers and having his kneecaps broken, he began stealing from the homes of people he did electrical work for.
With their mother gone and their father arrested and sent to prison, Chance and his sisters had entered the foster care system. They spent a couple of months in various foster families before going to live with an aunt and uncle.
“I found this photo. It’s Chance dressed as Humpty Dumpty at some sort of nursery rhyme day at his school. He looks like he’s about seven, so this photo had to have been taken around the time his father went to prison, and he went into the system?”
Could that be a trigger?
The thing that started the nursery rhyme obsession?
It was possible, but extremely sketchy and hardly proof of anything. Chance had stayed out of trouble, got good grades, played basketball throughout high school and college, and become a social worker. By all account, there was nothing to suggest that he had ever committed any crime of any sort up until the kidnapping. And even that wasn't necessarily him. For all they knew he was an innocent victim too.
Allina handed over the photos to Jonathon and continued looking through the drawer. A moment later, she found something that convinced her that they had been wrong about Luke Sleigh.
“Jonathon, look at this.”
He took the book she held out. It was a book of nursery rhymes. Several of the pages had been marked with a smear of blood.Jack and Jill,I'm a little teapot,Little Miss Muffet, andRock-a-bye Baby. She would bet anything the blood on the pages was going to match his victims.
“There are other pages that he’s bent the corners of.” Her partner was flipping through the book. “Humpty DumptyandA-Tisket A-Tasket, he has as least two more victims in mind.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Okay, Chance is the killer, but I don’t get it. Why would he suddenly start murdering people? What was the trigger? We can claim a connection between the nursery rhyme day and losing his home and family, but that’s pretty flimsy, and even if it’s true it only gives a reason why he’s got this nursery rhyme theme, it doesn’t tell us why he’s killing people. Criminals don’t usually jump from nothing to cold-blooded murder.”
“I think I found the answer to that.”
Her partner was holding up a large envelope. He slid out a scan. It looked like a cat scan.
Eyes wide, she looked at Jonathon. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s a brain scan. Chance’s brain scan. Taken several months ago. He has a brain tumor.”
* * * * *
3:02 P.M.
He had no idea what he was doing.
It had been hours since he had left the police station and he was still no closer to finding Summer.
Maybe he should have stayed at the precinct. Perhaps his time could have been better spent convincing the cops that Chance was the man they were looking for. If he could have convinced them of that then maybe they would have found Summer already.
If his decision to run ended up costing Summer her life, he would never forgive himself.
Luke was second-guessing every decision he had made in the last fifteen hours. What should he have done differently? What had he done that he shouldn’t have? What hadn’t he done that heshouldhave?
It would help if he knew Chance better. Then he might be able to come up with someplace where he might hide out. As it was, he was basically driving blind.
He’d gone to Chance and Hope’s new house, hoping he might be able to sneak inside and find something that would tell him where to look, but the cops must have figured that he would stop by there because there had been a police car parked in the driveway.
With that option out, he had tried to think of everything he had heard Chance say when they’d been together the other day. Honestly, he hadn’t spared the man all that much attention, he had been unable to take his eyes off Summer. His and Chance’s conversations had been minimal and had centered around congratulations over his engagement and new house.
How could he find where Chance was hiding out if he didn’t even know the man?
If he wasn't on the run, maybe he could have spoken with Aggie, and picked her brain for information. But if he went to his brother and sister-in-law’s house, he would be arrested on the spot, and where would that leave Summer?
There had to be something.
Anything.