Cry For Help

by Wendy Dranfield

  “What do you want, Taylor?”

  “I want you to introduce me to your supposed boyfriend.”

  Mandi laughs and picks at her pink cotton candy, but she doesn’t eat it. God forbid she should put any weight on. Instead she drops it piece by piece onto the ground and then licks her fingers. Nikki realizes why the boardwalk is always so sticky.

  “Yeah, right. As if I’m going to introduce you to him.” She knows Taylor would love to poison Mason against her.

  “I don’t believe anyone would date you. I mean, look at your clothes. You look like a boy in those pants. And have you even brushed your hair today?” Taylor laughs.

  Nikki hates her for not needing a job in order to buy her clothes. For being able to ask her parents for money whenever she wants. “Fuck off, Taylor. At least I don’t look like a Kardashian wannabe.”

  That angers her. “I’m going to find your boyfriend and tell him he’s dating a tramp. And then I’m going to show him what he could be getting instead.”

  Nikki’s so close to slapping her she starts trembling. If Taylor says anything to Mason, she’ll die. If she tries to kiss him, she’ll kill her. Scared that he might actually prefer Taylor to her, she storms off and doesn’t listen to what they’re calling after her. There’s nothing they can say that she doesn’t know already: she’s ugly, she’s boyish, she’s unlovable. Their words are wasted on her.

  She fights back tears as she throws the garbage bag onto the ground and runs off toward the Haunted House.

  16

  Madison’s cold, exhausted and running out of patience. An icy shudder tears through her, a result of being locked up almost directly under the A/C vent all night in this holding cell. No one has offered her anything to eat or drink this morning and she’s just about ready to rip someone’s head off. That’s when she hears footsteps approaching.

  Officer Shelley Vickers appears with a surprised look on her face that quickly spreads to a warm smile. “I didn’t believe it when I heard you’d been brought in.” She immediately unlocks the cell and enters, giving Madison the kind of hug you only get from someone who has a genuine fondness for you.

  Madison has to hold back unexpected tears. The two of them were close back in the day. “You have no idea how much I need to see a friendly face right now.” She pulls away.

  “What’s Douglas up to?” says Shelley in disbelief. “You shouldn’t be in here.” But she glances over her shoulder as she says it, as if she’s fearful of being overheard.

  “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.” Sensing she only has limited time, Madison speaks quickly. “I don’t want to put you in a compromising position, but I need help, and I’m pretty sure no one else in this place is going to want to get involved.”

  “Of course, what is it you need? Don’t ask me to bake a cake with a file in it.” She laughs. “I can’t bake to save my life.”

  Madison smiles. “No, nothing like that. I’m happy to face Douglas and Chief Sullivan because I’ve done nothing wrong. But I need to know what happened to Stephanie. I need a copy of the crime-scene photos at the very least. The autopsy report would be good too.”

  Shelley looks doubtful. “Have you asked Detective Bowers for them?”

  “I haven’t seen him yet—I only arrived back in town last night—but I’m pretty sure he’ll say no. Please, Shelley. I think Stephanie’s killer could be the same person who framed me for Ryan’s murder.”

  Shocked, Shelley takes another look over her shoulder, but they’re the only two people down here. “What happened to you was disgusting. I never believed you killed Officer Levy but I was ordered to present a united front with the department. It was made crystal clear that if anyone spoke out in your defense, all our necks would be on the line. Chief Sullivan told us we were right to be shocked by what had happened but we had to put our friendship with you to one side and believe the evidence. And your gun was found at the crime scene…” She trails off.

  Madison takes a step closer to her, disappointed that she clearly has doubts. “Shelley? Give me enough time and I will prove I didn’t kill him. All I need is a lead, something that will give me a head start. I think Steph’s crime-scene photos will help. I’ll be able to see what evidence Mike and Douglas took from the scene and maybe I’ll notice something they missed.”

  Seconds pass and Madison can see her weighing up the pros and cons of passing on inside information. Eventually she says, “Let me see what I can do. Where are you staying?”

  Relief washes over her. “Stephanie’s place.”

  “Oh God, Madison. How can you stay there?”

  She shrugs. “I have nowhere else to go.”

  Shelley smiles sadly. “I’ll drop by when I have something.” She gives Madison a quick squeeze before locking her back in and walking away.

  Madison sits on her bunk and tries to think things through. She hears Brody barking in the distance. She can’t tell where he’s being kept. Hopefully he’s being treated better than her.

  More footsteps running down the stairs toward her cell make her tense. Mike appears.

  “I’m sorry, Madison. I only just heard you were in here.”

  Seeing him again feels unreal. Their only contact since her conviction has been their recent telephone calls about Stephanie. It’s clear he’s stressed, as he looks disheveled: his tie is undone, his shirt crumpled, and there’s a couple of days’ stubble on his jaw. He’s starting to let himself go. It’s not that surprising: it comes with the job.

  She stands up and walks to the bars of her cell door. “What the hell is going on, Mike? Haven’t you told Douglas I wasn’t even in town when Stephanie was killed?”

  “Yeah, I did.” He looks around. “As soon as he arrives, I’ll speak to him and the chief. I’ll get you out of here.” He runs his hands through his hair. “For some reason, that guy’s gunning for you big-time.”

  Madison shudders again. She doesn’t know why Detective Douglas hates her so much. “There will be absolutely no evidence linking me to Stephanie’s murder, so there’s no way he can hold me for much longer.” Her anger’s getting the better of her now. She needs to get out of here. “You’re an asshole, Mike! You should never have let this happen to me again.”

  He holds his hands up. “I don’t doubt you’re innocent of this. I know you wouldn’t have had Stephanie killed.”

  She hesitates as she realizes what he’s implying. “Are you for real? You’re suggesting that I may not have been there in person but I might’ve got someone to do it for me?”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean. Calm down, Madison. I’m probably your only friend here, remember?”

  She scoffs. They might have been friends once, but that’s in the past. “If we were friends, you would have had Stephanie’s house cleaned up before my arrival.”

  He rubs his forehead and has the decency to look ashamed. “Shit, I forgot about that. Douglas is handling her case and I guess I just assumed he’d organized it already. I’m sorry, Madison. I haven’t been inside the house since we found her. My last visit was to leave the keys outside for you to find.”

  She can hear the concern in his voice and realizes she needs to cut him some slack if he’s going to stand up for her against Douglas and Chief Sullivan. She looks at him. “I never asked before, but now that I’ve seen the house, I need to know. What happened to Stephanie?”

  He hesitates. “Her throat was slit.”

  She looks away and imagines how terrifying those last minutes must have been for her. She suddenly wishes she’d never asked.

  “She was raped too,” he adds.

  “What?” Madison feels like she’s been slapped. Her body breaks out in goosebumps. The indignity of Stephanie’s final hours makes her heart ache for her. “Before or after?” she whispers.

  “Before. Someone must have seen her out and about, liked the look of her and followed her home. We’re working on a list of recently released sex offenders in the area.”


  Madison’s shaking her head. “No. It wasn’t a random attack; it was those guys who were hassling her about me. Come on, Mike. Isn’t that obvious?”

  He looks doubtful. Maybe he doesn’t believe those guys exist. “What exactly did she tell you about them when she called? Were you in touch regularly?”

  She looks away. “She visited me in prison for the first few years of my sentence. But we’d split up long before my arrest, so she did it out of pity, I think. Her visits slowly reduced and inevitably stopped. I wasn’t upset; after all, it was a long way for her to travel.” Madison was incarcerated at the La Vista Correctional Facility, a five-hour drive north from Lost Creek. “Eventually I stopped hearing from her completely. I mean, I knew she would be there for me if I ever called her, but I wanted her to be able to move on with her life.” She feels deep guilt whenever she thinks of Stephanie. “I got my first call from her just a few weeks ago, quickly followed by two more. She said some heavies had turned up at her door asking for me. They had obviously heard I’d been out for a while, and were asking her if she knew my location. She didn’t know where I was because I hadn’t told her.”

  Mike nods. He appears to believe her.

  “They showed up three or four times, putting pressure on her. I told her to contact you, but she wasn’t convinced you’d help her because of everything that happened with my unlawful arrest.” She glances at him. He doesn’t contradict her. She may still be a convicted felon in the eyes of the law, but he must know she didn’t kill Ryan. “She said they were both tall and white, possibly brothers. And one of them was overweight. The last time she called me, she didn’t want to talk for long. But she was genuinely scared and Steph never scared easy.” She pauses. “Did they leave any DNA behind?”

  Mike nods again. “The medical examiner found spermicide in Steph’s vagina, meaning the asshole used a condom, thinking he was taking his DNA with him. But we found semen on her jeans. Just a small sample, but useable.” He pauses, looking concerned.

  “What is it?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

  She ignores his concern. “Would you show me the crime-scene photos? I want to piece it all together and help you find her killer.”

  He’s already shaking his head emphatically. “You know there’s no way I can do that. You shouldn’t even ask. And it’s not your case to solve. Take a bit of friendly advice from me: don’t get in the way of our investigation. Douglas will just use it against you.”

  She feels defeated. Shelley’s going to be her only hope for inside information. “Why the hell am I in here if you know it was a guy who killed her?”

  “I guess Douglas thinks you ordered the hit. I don’t know.”

  She shakes her head, then remembers the girl who died at Fantasy World. “Is there any link to how Nikki Jackson died? Because two unexpected deaths within a few days of each other isn’t normal around here.”

  He frowns. “No. That was a suicide.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Really? Then where’s the knife? Do you have it yet?”

  Annoyance flashes across his face. “Listen, if you saw her body, you’d know it was obviously suicide by the way she’d slit her own wrists.” He changes the subject. “Let me go upstairs and find out what’s going on with Douglas.” He pauses before leaving. “It’s good to see you, Madison. Obviously not in here like this, but I’m glad you came back. You just need to tread carefully. People remember what happened and they saw you convicted for it.”

  “I’ll make them see I didn’t do it.”

  He appears surprised. “What do you mean?”

  She doesn’t want to talk about it with him. “Never mind.”

  He reluctantly lets it go. “Want a coffee while I’m up there?”

  She nods grudgingly and watches him leave.

  17

  Nate wakes to the sound of silence. It takes him a few minutes to remember where he is. After Madison’s arrest last night, he was ordered to stay away from the police station until morning, or risk being arrested himself.

  Forcing himself out of bed, he feels overwhelmed and irritable. More than likely thanks to his unexpected run-in with the cops as well as being seriously worried about Madison. He tries to shake it off, but he recognizes the unsettling feeling that usually precedes a depressive episode. He needs to get busy before it kicks in.

  He looks around Stephanie’s small spare bedroom. It’s pretty sparse: just a single bed, a vanity and a closet. But there’s a telltale sign of her life with Madison and Owen: a border running around the middle of the wallpapered walls with trains and a railroad track on it. This must have been Owen’s room before the couple split up.

  He wonders why Brody hasn’t greeted him yet and then remembers he was also taken away last night. Because the dog tried to defend him, he got himself dragged off to the station with Madison. The cops promised they wouldn’t destroy him, but Nate doesn’t trust the word of anyone in law enforcement. He’s sure it was only because he desperately explained that Brody was a former K9 that he wasn’t immediately euthanized.

  After their long road trip and the stress of last night, he can’t resist a shower before getting dressed, even though he has a lot of work ahead of him. The hot water soothes him. He found some shower gel under the bathroom sink and uses it to wash his hair and body, trying not to think about how it belongs to a dead woman whose blood was spilled downstairs. He catches his rosary and it snaps, falling at his feet. “Shit.” He can’t help seeing it as a bad omen. Is today going to be even worse than yesterday?

  Once he’s out and dressed, he fixes the beads and slips them back in place around his neck and under his fresh T-shirt. He grabs his cell phone, heads down to the kitchen, and starts searching the internet for local lawyers.

  He tries calling the first name that comes up: Darryl Facek.

  “Hi, I’m looking for someone to help a friend who was wrongfully arrested last night,” he explains. “She’s currently being held by Lost Creek PD.”

  “Is that so? Let me grab a pen.” Darryl appears to be chewing tobacco. It makes Nate want to heave. “What’s the lady’s name?”

  “Madison Harper.”

  Darryl starts laughing down the phone.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, just that there’s no way on earth I would represent her. I think you’ll struggle to find anyone who would. Anyone from around here, that is. Maybe even from further afield. We don’t defend people like Madison Harper.”

  Nate’s grip on the phone tightens. “You’re a defense attorney; it’s your job.”

  “Oh sure, it’s my job. But I get to pick who I defend and I am not working for that woman. Good luck, my friend, but you’re backing the wrong horse.”

  He hangs up before Nate can question him.

  “What the fuck?”

  The next lawyer he tries sounds nervous the minute he hears Madison’s name. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t work for Ms. Harper. I wish you luck, though.”

  “Hang on a minute. Just tell me why? You’re the second person to turn me down. What’s your problem?”

  The lawyer hesitates before answering. “All I know is that I came into the office to find an answerphone message telling me I’m not to represent Madison Harper under any circumstances. Not if I want to see my wife and kids when I get home tonight.”

  Nate’s shocked. That’s a serious threat. “Who left the message?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t divulge that information.” The lawyer hangs up.

  Nate stares at his phone in disbelief. Someone from her past already knows that Madison’s back in town and was arrested last night. They knew she’d be in need of a lawyer this morning and spent the night calling around issuing threats. Because he’s not from here Nate has no idea who could be responsible, but it can only be someone with a vendetta and someone on the inside. Detective Douglas maybe.

  He tries calling LCPD for an update on Madison, but the woman who answers ste
rnly tells him she’ll get someone to phone him back at some point. Not holding out much hope of that, he calls Rex Hartley for help.

  Rex is Nate’s go-to guy for background information and financial checks. He lives in San Diego on a ranch with a million rescue animals, and he’s the only other friend Nate has. Nate has no idea how he gets his information, but he has sources in many different government offices. He’s also spent time inside for a crime he didn’t commit, and as a result his beef against corrupt cops is even bigger than Nate’s.

  “Hey, Rex. How are you?”

  “Never mind me,” answers Rex. “How the hell are you? Have you made it to the Centennial State yet?”

  Nate gives him an update on their location. “We’re in Lost Creek. But we’re also in trouble.”

  “In trouble already? Jeez, you guys work fast.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s pretty serious.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re in jail?”

  Nate sighs and uses his spare hand to rummage through Stephanie’s kitchen cupboards in a desperate search for some instant coffee. “Not me, although I almost was. Madison’s been arrested for murder.”

  Nate hasn’t told Rex much about Madison’s law enforcement past, knowing full well his friend wouldn’t want him working with an ex-cop, but Rex managed to put two and two together pretty fast last time they spoke in California.

  “You’re kidding?”

  He sighs. His body is craving a line of coke, but he knows to wait it out or he’ll be sucked under. “No. I need you to find her a trustworthy lawyer.”

  “Wow, that might actually be the hardest job you’ve ever given me.” Rex laughs at his own joke. “How long has she been in custody?”

  “About thirteen hours. She knows how to play the game, so I’m sure she’s kept shtum and is just hanging tight, waiting for an attorney. I tried a couple of locals, but word’s out that she’s blacklisted and they’ve all been threatened.”