by Deirdre Dore
“Someone will recognize you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jane. It’s Wednesday. You have until Friday to escape so we can prepare for the solstice that evening.”
“What about Jessop?” Jane whispered. “Does he know I’m here? Does he know what Mark did?”
George patted the top of her head awkwardly. “Yes, he knows, but I’m handling him, Jane. Haven’t I always taken care of you?”
Jane nodded obediently, wondering if that meant George intended to kill her himself.
14
RAQUEL HAD A stack of paperwork to complete on her desk. She usually worked on the backlog of reports, requests for records, and filings for about an hour of her shift before she began her routine of logging on to chat rooms. She ignored all of it today. It wasn’t that she didn’t think it was important. She knew she helped people, but she could sense that time was running out for her to catch whoever had been killing women and dumping them in the pond, whoever had taken Summer, and for now that took precedence over Internet scumbags.
The first thing she did was call Ryan and let him know about the investigation into Gloria Belle’s death. Technically it wasn’t his case, but since he was the lead investigator on the serial killer case that had led to Chris’s kidnapping, and now he was working jointly with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office on the incidents of a few weeks ago, when Mark Arrowdale had kidnapped and killed Bessie Weaver and Atohi, it made sense that he would stay abreast of what had happened to Gloria Belle. There wasn’t any proof that the incidents were connected, but there was a good chance they were. The FBI would stay on the case because interstate drug and sex trafficking were involved. It was likely that he already knew just as much as she did about what they had found at the crime scene, but he hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen her mother’s body sprawled in the mud.
He was surprised, though, when she told him that she and Brent suspected that whoever had been in charge of the drug trafficking back then, whether it was the Warlocks or someone else, was still active now and was covering up his tracks.
“Why do you say that?”
“Brent has some contacts from back when he made the documentary. They mentioned that someone had seen Gloria Belle taken by some drug dealers who looked like bikers, but they wouldn’t give any more details.”
“Okay, so let’s say this is true. We don’t have any evidence . . . yet. There may be some when Gloria Belle’s autopsy comes back, but we don’t have any connection between the events of eighty-six and any current drug operations. The evidence of meth they found at the mill was at least a couple decades old.”
Raquel knew that, but she talked through it anyway. “Well, it makes sense that they wouldn’t have kept using it, not after a little girl went missing in that area and there were cops and search teams swarming all over the mountain. According to Jane, she was home that night, and she had no idea that Charlie was dead until Mark told her later.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think anyone believes that. Least of all you.”
“I don’t,” Raquel agreed. “But I’d like to talk to Jane. Can you get me in to see her?”
“She met with her lawyer today, but I’ll see if I can get you in to see her tomorrow.”
“Her lawyer?”
“Yeah.” Ryan sounded irritated. “He called and said that he was the attorney representing Jane Arrowdale on behalf of the Haven family of Fate, Georgia.”
“Great.” Raquel chewed her lip. “You know, something just occurred to me. We think she knows more than she’s telling about that night. For the sake of argument, let’s just go with that thought. If she does know something, and someone involved is killing off people who know what happened that night, then isn’t it possible that Jane is in danger?”
“Maybe,” Ryan said, sounding doubtful, “but she’s secured at the psych ward of Rome Hospital. There are guards outside her door. She’d have to be a pretty serious danger to someone to risk breaking in there and doing her harm.”
“Yeah,” Raquel agreed. “I could be wrong. I could also be wrong about Gloria Belle, but I have a hunch.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about Gloria Belle.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Raquel responded abruptly, not wanting to talk about it. “I wanted to know what she could tell us about that night, who killed Charlie, and where the hell that money came from. Have there been any leads on that?”
Ryan seemed to take the hint that she didn’t want to talk about it. Thank God for men. Tavey would have forced her to talk about how she felt about the death of her mother. Best friend’s license to pry.
“A reporter called yesterday, saying he’d heard a rumor that a large sum of cash had been found with Charlie Collins’s body, but we verified his credentials,” Ryan informed her.
“So rumors, but no one who’s called with any additional information.” Raquel tapped her keyboard, pulling up the local Fate paper’s website. Right there on the front page was the story of Gloria Belle’s death. Next to it was a small sidebar with follow-up on the scandal of Charlie Collins. People in town had been interviewed, asked about the rumored connection between to two, but there was no mention of money.
“So far.”
“What about connections to Abraham? Were you able to verify that they’d served together in Vietnam?”
“We were. I requested the service records and any photographs of the unit as well. They’re supposed to arrive tomorrow, along with the DNA results from the hair ribbons that were found. They’re sending all the evidence back to me since Tyler is in the hospital. As for Jessop Chance, he’s served a few years here and there for disorderly conduct, possession of unlicensed weapons, and assault, but although he’s been questioned several times in connection with drug trafficking, he’s never been indicted.”
“Do the FBI have any suspicions?”
Ryan confirmed that with a snort. “They have suspicions up the ass, but no hard evidence. Biker gangs are tough to infiltrate. They suspect that Jessop runs drugs from Mexico to destinations in Florida. For his East Coast operations, they believe he uses Atlanta as a midway point, cutting the drugs and distributing here, and sending along more to be distributed in the East. His base of operations is Pennsylvania.”
“Okay.” Raquel glanced over at her supervisor’s office. He was watching her curiously. When she’d showed up at work today, he’d asked her why she’d come in, in light of Gloria Belle being found. She’d said she’d wanted to clear out some work that had been piling up, that it was better than sitting at home. Normally, though, she didn’t spend this much time on the phone unless there was a suspected child predator they were setting up.
She spoke a little lower. “I’d like to be there to go over the evidence when it arrives. I’m off tomorrow—it’s Thursday—and we can go over everything we’ve found, but if these traffickers are still active, and they’re covering up their tracks, then we should be able to find some additional evidence, maybe in surrounding towns. But we need to find it soon, before they pack up and are gone.”
“Okay, I can make sure Jane is secure and get you in to talk to her,” Ryan said.
“I’ll ask Brent to start looking into police reports in nearby towns and counties—” Raquel paused. She hadn’t intended to get Brent any more involved, but it just slipped out. The man was good at research, good at finding connections between people, and she needed some help, unless she decided just to quit her job.
“Raquel?”
She dragged herself back to the conversation. “Yeah, I’ll look into other drug activity and disappearances. See if I can find any evidence that the bikers continued their activity,” she said. “In the meantime, has anyone looked in Abraham’s house? There could be some evidence, some photographs of his time in Vietnam, some kind of correspondence between him and this Jessop.”
“The Cherokee County sherif
f’s officers took a look right after he was found dead, but since at the time they assumed it was natural causes, I don’t think they did a complete investigation. Tavey has been over there cataloguing everything when she has time. She hasn’t wanted to take anything until Tyler is out of the hospital. Abraham left him the house in the will,” Ryan said.
“I thought he did die of natural causes.”
“He might have.” Ryan sounded doubtful. “The man had lung cancer. He could have stopped breathing on his own, but call me paranoid, I just don’t think it’s a coincidence that Arrowdale kidnaps Bessie and Jane, and Abraham dies around that same time. Just seems suspicious to me.”
“And we can’t request an autopsy because he was cremated, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“So there could be something at the house?”
“It’s possible. Why don’t we all meet at Tavey’s tonight? We can have dinner and then head over there.”
Raquel had never turned down a meal with her friends, but she was suddenly strangely reluctant to involve them any deeper in her plans. She already had Chris doing something slightly illegal for her, she’d broken the law by going into that house and taking evidence. She was involving Brent in a police investigation, and withholding evidence, she mentally added, thinking of the wig. She was starting to think that she might have to do something a little drastic to get Jane to reveal what she knew, and she didn’t want her friends, each of whom had found the love of her life this past year, to be too involved.
“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, because she didn’t have a good reason to refuse and she knew it.
“All right. Call Tavey and set it up.”
“Sounds good.” Raquel signed off, mentally considering her options.
The wig wasn’t important anymore, she decided. Finding Gloria Belle wasn’t her goal any longer. Finding out the connection among Gloria Belle, Jessop, and Jane was.
What she really needed to do was talk to Jane about what had happened. Even if she hadn’t been there when Charlie was killed like she claimed, maybe she knew someone who fit the description of a fat white guy who’d been involved in the drug smuggling. Raquel thought that someone like that would be prominent in any recollections of that time, but Jane hadn’t mentioned anyone else, and Mark had been shot and killed before he could give any testimony. Of course, there was always Brent’s uncle, George Mills. He’d known Gloria Belle, he’d known Charlie before he’d faked his own death, maybe he’d met this mystery fat man at some point as well. It had been years since Raquel had even seen Mills; he preferred to stay indoors and post on his blog.
Reluctantly, Raquel picked up the phone on her desk and called Brent. She didn’t know where he’d gone after he’d followed her to the station, but she doubted he was too far away.
He answered immediately, his voice hushed, as if he was trying to be quiet.
“Where are you?” Raquel asked.
“At the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, looking through missing person’s records. Why?”
Raquel wondered if he’d already had the same thought she’d had, that if the drug dealers had continued their operations, there would be some trace of their activities, but she wanted to get to the point. “Could you talk to your uncle, ask him if he remembers anyone fitting the description Tristan gave us?”
Brent didn’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah, I can talk to him. I’d planned to talk with him this evening, see if I could look into his research about the town of Fate.”
“Ryan is trying to get me in to see Jane, but I thought that maybe Abraham’s place might have some evidence as well.”
“Okay. Raquel?”
“Yeah?”
“I found some information about possible kidnappings mistaken for teenage runaways in towns with a population similar to Fate’s—small towns with fairly transient populations.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I started looking into the runaways because of Jessica. They didn’t actively search for her because they assumed she was a runaway. I thought maybe the same thing had happened with some of the other skeletons they found in that millpond.”
Raquel couldn’t help but appreciate the way he thought. “Did you send the pictures to Ryan to match against the drawings created by the forensic anthropologist?”
“I did. There’s one possible match so far.”
“That’s amazing, Brent,” Raquel admitted. “I was just talking to Ryan. We thought that if the men we’re looking for are still active and have been all these years, then perhaps there would have been incidents, maybe small ones, involving drugs that would show a pattern. If you send me the locations of the missing teenagers, I’ll see if I can find any unusual arrests for drugs in those areas.”
“I can do that,” Brent agreed. “It’s a good idea.”
“Thanks.”
“We make a good team,” he told her.
“Brent—”
He cut her off. “Don’t deny it. It’s not just sex. Though that’s pretty great. I’m not going to lie. I sit here and think about touching you, and I can’t stand up for a while because everyone knows I’m looking into the disappearance of teenage girls.”
Raquel winced.
“I know you can take care of yourself and you don’t need my help, but you’re going to get it. I’m not going to stop looking into this case. I think we’d be safer if we worked together.”
Raquel knew he was right; hadn’t she just volunteered him on the phone to Ryan, like they were a team? But she shied away from acknowledging what that meant. A part of Raquel, the small hurt part that she denied, the part of herself that said, You’re not afraid of anything, knew that she was in trouble of caring too much for Brent, and one day he would leave. He would start another documentary and disappear from her life. Part of her wanted that for him, wanted him to go about recording people’s lives and getting more and more famous, and never be in danger of being hurt or killed, but another part, the part that avoided romantic entanglements, suspected that she was protecting her own heart out of fear of being hurt. He’d said he liked me, she remembered, and wished she didn’t remember every detail of his face, the solemn promise his eyes made as he looked down at her.
Raquel didn’t want him hurt, but she wanted to find Summer and catch these bastards. Part of her wondered, though, if she wasn’t really afraid that Brent already meant too much to her. She went out of her way to avoid getting close to anyone except Tavey and Chris, but she feared it was already too late, that she already cared about him too much.
“See if you can look at your uncle’s research tomorrow night,” she told him. “Ryan suggested that tonight we all meet at Tavey’s for dinner and then walk over to Abraham’s and look for evidence.”
“And you want me there?”
Raquel wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she was tired of being afraid. He wasn’t going to quit looking into the case, and she had had enough of trying to make him. It didn’t mean she wanted a relationship. She didn’t want to risk that, but she did want him, and it was too late to stop caring about him.
“I’ll call Tavey. She’ll want to meet around seven. Okay?”
“Okay,” Brent agreed, and there was a world of promise in the word.
15
BRENT STARED AT the phone for a moment after hanging up, wondering if Raquel’s words meant what they’d sounded like they meant, but he immediately dialed his uncle George, who answered on the second ring, sounding a little breathless.
“This is George.”
“Hi, Uncle George. It’s Brent.”
“Brent, what are you doing?”
Brent frowned. His uncle never asked that, never asked about anything in particular. “I’m researching Jessica’s disappearance. I came across a small piece of information, a description of someone who seemed to be connected with Gloria
Belle’s death. I wanted to run it by you.”
“Sure. Sure,” his uncle replied with what sounded like forced cheer. “I’d be happy to help.”
Brent shook his head. But then, George had always been weird. “It’s not much, just a description. We’re looking for a tall white guy, pretty fat, that you might have met with Charlie or Gloria Belle.”
His uncle seemed to think about it. “No, I can’t remember anyone who fit that description, but people change.”
Brent frowned. He’d considered that, that the person they were looking for might have gained weight over the years.
“All right. Well, it was worth a shot. Hey, would it be all right if I looked at the research you’ve done about Fate? I want to combine it with some information I’ve found out about these missing kids.”
“Sure. When did you want to take a look?”
“Tomorrow evening maybe?” Brent ventured. “I’m having dinner at the Collins house with Raquel tonight.”
“Oh.” His uncle sounded uncertain. “Are you happy about that?”
“Sure, we’re just going to talk about what happened in eighty-six, the missing kids, the rumors of drugs. I’ve found a pattern, I think, in missing persons from around the county and outlying areas.”
“You have?”
“Yeah, I’ve been looking into old case files at the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office most of the day.”
“Oh, what else have you found?”
“Not much,” Brent replied, “but it seems like whatever was going on back then is still going on now. Raquel is pretty determined to catch whoever’s behind this.”
“Raquel is Gloria Belle’s daughter.” His uncle sounded more enthusiastic now. “She’s one of the three Mistresses of Fate. I write about her and Tavey and the other one on my website.”
Brent sighed. His uncle sometimes reminded him of a big kid, a kid who didn’t understand why no one wanted to play with him, like Lennie in Of Mice and Men.