Never Tell

by Lisa Gardner

  “If you loved Conrad,” Mr. Delaney asks softly, “what do you think happened to your relationship?”

  I can’t answer right away. When I do, the words are hard to say. “I don’t think I’m good at marriage.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know how to trust. I don’t know how to . . . believe. The kinder Conrad was to me . . . the more I grew suspicious. I’d wonder what he wanted, what he wasn’t saying.”

  “You thought he was being unfaithful?”

  “I don’t know. He was gone so often on business trips, but when he came home, he didn’t want to talk about it. Life on the road is boring, he’d tell me. Let’s hear about your week. Except I didn’t believe he really wanted to learn about my week. He just didn’t want to talk about his.”

  “You grew up in a household with adults who generally had an agenda.”

  I have to smile because I know exactly whom he’s talking about. “My mom.”

  “Some men do like to hear from the women they love.”

  “I know. And I’d tell myself that. The problem is me. I believed my husband had secrets because, of course, I have this huge secret. But then, I’d notice little things, see little things . . .”

  “Such as?”

  “Conrad knew everyone. Every neighbor who stopped by, every fellow teacher of mine. He was a walking encyclopedia of names, faces, vital statistics. Except . . . no one knew Conrad. Where were his colleagues, family, friends? He’d told me his parents had died in an accident years ago. Our marriage was very small, at the courthouse because Mom—”

  “Didn’t approve.”

  “But month after month, year after year . . . All these people Conrad could tell you so much about, and yet no dinner with the neighbors, no guys’ night out. He always had an excuse. For someone who appeared so outgoing, if you stepped back, peered at him from a distance, he was a loner. Separate from all of us. Even with me.”

  “Did you ever ask him about it?”

  “He said he had me, he didn’t need anything more.”

  “Romantic.”

  I look Mr. Delaney in the eye. “Is it? Because my knee-jerk reaction was that he was lying. So again, was the problem him or me?”

  “Do you have close friends?”

  I shrug, uncomfortable. “I have a colleague, another teacher at the school. She and I often have lunch together. But see, I know I’m antisocial. And frankly, given that I’ve spent my adult life being the woman who killed her own father, I have good reasons for being reserved. I admit to these things. Conrad . . . He came across one way, but over time if you paid attention . . .” I shake my head. “I felt sometimes he was less a person, and more a character in a play. He said the right things, but were they things he really meant, or just the next lines of dialogue?”

  “You didn’t trust him.”

  “I worried about it,” I say carefully. “The inconsistencies between what he said and what he actually did. Add to that the whole locked office in the privacy of his own home. Yet, when I tried to bring it up . . . he’d make me feel petty. Like I was being paranoid. I really couldn’t argue with that. They say liars are always the first to think others are lying. And let’s face it, for sixteen years now, I’ve been one helluva liar.”

  “But you got pregnant.”

  I smile roughly. “Ever hear of desperately-trying-to-save-your-marriage sex? We got pretty good at it.”

  “All marriages are hard,” Mr. Delaney tells me. I know what he means, but I’m not sure all marriages are the constant exercise in suspicion that mine was.

  “By the end,” I say softly, “I didn’t believe Conrad anymore. He was lying. Maybe not about his love for me, which he promised was true. Maybe not about the baby, which he wanted so badly. He swore he’d be the best dad in the whole world. But he was also almost frantic on the subject. Something was up. I could feel it. Something was going to happen. The past few weeks, the tension in our home, all the things we suspected but couldn’t say. I still don’t understand it all. My husband was a liar I couldn’t catch in a lie. And our marriage was on a collision course with something terrible I just couldn’t see.”

  “The fake IDs?”

  “I don’t know anything about them.”

  “But you shot up the computer.”

  “One day, I found a document in the memory cache of the printer. Financial records regarding a great deal of money. More than even the cash Conrad had in that lockbox.”

  Mr. Delaney waits patiently.

  “There were also monthly withdrawals. For what? What was this account? What was he funding on all those business trips?”

  “Prostitutes? Drugs?”

  “Maybe worse. I saw . . .” I can’t bring myself to say it. I can’t bring myself to see it again. I shake my head.

  “You understand, Evie, the police are going to figure this out. When they do, they’re going to say that Conrad’s misdeeds are your motive for murder. Shooting the computer proves it—you were trying to cover your tracks.”

  “But I wasn’t. At the time . . .” I shrug, feeling again the crushing weight of my dysfunctional childhood, followed by an equally dysfunctional marriage. “He’s the father of my child,” I say at last.

  Mr. Delany doesn’t need me to explain any more. “Still protecting the legacy,” he murmurs.

  “Some habits are hard to break.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have burned down your house?”

  I shake my head. Which, now that I’m truly considering, sends a trickle of unease down my spine. In the shock of everything that’s happened over the past forty-eight hours, the loss of my house has felt mostly like that—a loss. But after visiting the scene and talking to Sergeant Warren I’m starting to realize it’s also a threat. Someone out there murdered my husband. Some unknown person torched my home to cover his or her tracks.

  And for all my searching, all my questioning about the man I married, I have no idea who that person might be. Or if they’re finished yet.

  “Have you felt watched, threatened, in the past few weeks?” Mr. Delaney asks, as if reading my mind. “What about Conrad? You said it felt like something was up.”

  “He was tense. I wondered . . .” I can’t put into words yet what I thought. The increasingly silent meals. The way I’d wake up some nights and find Conrad staring at me. The reason I had come home late from work that night, because if I arrived at the house any earlier . . .

  I haven’t been worried about some mysterious stranger out there. But increasingly, I had started to wonder about the man sharing my bed.

  I shrug. Everyone wants answers. My lawyer. The police. I only wish I had some.

  “Evie, whatever your husband did, it’s not your fault.”

  “I’m a liar. I married another liar. And now, my baby . . .” My throat closes up. I can’t speak anymore. Whether it makes any sense at all, at one time I did love Conrad. Then I lost him. And like my father, Conrad remains a mystery; there are so many things now I’ll never know about him. I feel tired of it all. The pattern of my life is wrong, and yet I can’t seem to break it.

  “I want to know the truth,” I whisper. “I want to know one thing to be true.”

  “About your husband or your father?”

  “I’ll settle for either.”

  Mr. Delaney regards me for a long time. “Then I think you’re going to have to start asking more questions.”

  “How? Who? I don’t know anyone to talk to Conrad about. And my father, that was sixteen years ago. You were his closest friend. If you don’t know who might’ve shot him, how am I supposed to figure it out?”

  “There is another person.”

  I have a sudden sinking feeling. “No!”

  “Yes. If you really want to understand what happened sixteen years ago, you should talk to your mom.”
r />   CHAPTER 20

  D.D.

  FROM THE BEGINNING, PHIL HAD warned D.D. that she’d regret making Flora Dane a CI. The woman was a known vigilante, an avowed loner, and just plain reckless. D.D. always hated it when her mentor was right.

  “So to recap,” she said briskly now, sitting at the head of the table, “you”—she skewered Flora with a glance—“took it upon yourself to call an Atlanta FBI agent and invite her into my investigation.”

  “Technically, I invited her to assist in my investigation,” Flora said.

  Yep, D.D.’s confidential informant had definitely gone rogue.

  Flora continued. “I have an interest in all this, too, you know. What was Conrad Carter’s association with Jacob? Were there other men or predators he was meeting? Does this mean he was part of some larger network of sociopaths and I missed it? Then, talking to SSA Quincy and hearing about other missing women—”

  D.D. held up a hand. She pointed at the other newcomer in the room, who appeared to be around thirty years of age, could’ve passed for a Tom Ford model, and was sitting a lot closer to Flora than strictly necessary.

  “And you? What’s your role in all this?”

  Kimberly Quincy was already smiling, which meant this was going to be good.

  To the man’s credit, he planted both elbows on the table, leaned forward, and met D.D.’s stare. “My name is Keith Edgar. I’m a computer analyst, and, um . . . I run a forum for true-crime enthusiasts. In particular, we’ve been working the Jacob Ness case for the past six years.”

  “You’ve been working the Jacob Ness case?”

  Kimberly Quincy’s smile was growing.

  “We’ve always suspected there were other victims. The degree of sophistication and planning that went into Flora’s abduction . . . no predator gets that smart overnight.”

  If Flora was offended to be discussed as little more than a case study, she didn’t show it.

  “And you know this because you’re a computer analyst?” D.D. pressed.

  “No, I know this because I’ve done a great deal of reading on the subject—”

  “Internet true-crime porn.”

  “And I work with a group of talented experts, which included retired BPD detective Wayne Rock.”

  That caught D.D.’s attention. She’d known Wayne before his retirement five years ago. Great man, brilliant detective, who had lost his battle with cancer just a few months ago. The whole department had grieved, herself included.

  “Wayne also believed there were other victims?”

  “Absolutely. Most predators follow a pattern of escalation. With a self-proclaimed sex addict such as Ness, he probably started young as a voyeur, then evolved to inappropriate touching, before engaging in full-fledged sexual assault, and finally, ultimately . . .”

  Edgar gestured awkwardly toward Flora, who still remained completely expressionless. Briefly, D.D. felt her heart soften. This was Flora’s life. To be forever defined by a monster, whether she wanted to be or not. For the two years D.D. had known Flora, the woman had always refused to discuss her past. So to be part of this conversation now, to have invited a feebie no less, was an act in courage, whether D.D. liked it or not.

  “Which brings us to you.” She switched her attention to SSA Quincy. “The agent who actually figured out Ness was a long-haul trucker and organized the SWAT raid. You must’ve recovered a helluva lot of evidence.”

  “Yes and no, that’s the problem. Ness’s rig offered up some hair, other DNA samples. But his computer—which, according to Flora, he logged on to daily—”

  Flora nodded.

  “—was suspiciously lacking in content. Not even porn.”

  “He always watched porn.” Flora spoke up.

  “Completely wiping a hard drive is nearly impossible,” the computer analyst spoke up. “He must have used a tool or app. Let’s see, we’re talking 2010.” Edgar paused, seemed to be considering. “I’m guessing SteadyState, which was a free Microsoft app that worked with all XP operating systems. Microsoft offered it as a home computer safety system. It basically reverted the computer to a prior clean slate every time the laptop was rebooted, effectively deleting any malware or viruses kids might have inadvertently downloaded while playing online. The app worked so well, many computer professionals used it as well, myself included.”

  Edgar regarded Quincy with open curiosity.

  “Ness’s laptop did indeed contain SteadyState,” she volunteered tersely.

  “Interesting. Because it takes some time and capability to set up the app. To pick which items on the hard drive should be cleared and which should be left alone each time the system is rebooted. That alone proves an interesting level of computer sophistication for a man who didn’t even graduate high school. And you’re saying you didn’t recover a single book in Ness’s truck on computer programming, Windows operating systems, anything?”

  “Nada.”

  Edgar and Flora Dane exchanged a look. D.D. wasn’t sure she liked it.

  “Ness’s cell phone?” D.D. interrupted now.

  “No smartphone,” Quincy supplied. “We recovered a cheap, prepaid flip with hardly any usage. Certainly no texts or anything useful.”

  “I don’t remember him ever using a cell,” Flora said. “I would’ve guessed he had no one to call.”

  “Meaning the lack of evidence is the evidence,” D.D. filled in. “Someone must’ve taught Ness how to cover his tracks, both with this computer app, and the prepaid flip.” She glanced at Flora. “But the only time you remember him meeting up with another person was the one time you saw Conrad at the bar?”

  “That’s the only person I saw. But Jacob would disappear for days, sometimes even a week at a time. I always assumed he went on drug binges. But he could’ve been meeting up with other buddies. Maybe he was going on mini crime sprees, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you think he’d brag to you?” Quincy spoke up. “He spoke to you about a great many things. And wasn’t above threatening you with replacement.”

  Flora shrugged. “Jacob bragged. If he’d spent days with another woman, whether victim or prostitute, he might say something. But . . .” Flora took a deep breath. “Jacob was clever. He knew who he was. From a very young age, he told me, he knew he was different from others. And he knew he had to hide it. He was very adept at self-preservation. If he’d found some group, started networking with other predators, even met them from time to time, no, I don’t think he’d tell me. He liked his secrets, too. And it amused him when others underestimated him. Saw just a white-trash trucker, when he knew himself to be more.”

  “What about a Tor browser?” Edgar spoke up.

  Quincy regarded the computer analyst coolly. “As a matter of fact, in addition to SteadyState, Ness’s laptop also had the Tor browser.”

  “What does that mean?” Flora spoke up.

  “Tor, a.k.a. ‘the Onion Router,’ is a browser that uses a peer-to-peer network that intentionally obfuscates source IP addresses,” Edgar explained. He looked at D.D. “It’s perfectly safe and legal. It also happens to be the primary browser used to access the dark web.”

  D.D. got it. “Where Jacob could very well have trolled chat rooms filled with other perverts such as himself, picking up all sorts of new tricks and forensic dodges, while rebooting his laptop each night, allowing this SteadyState to automatically clear all record of such site visits and chat-room logs.” She glanced at Quincy. “And knowing all this, the FBI can’t magically do anything to rebuild the computer’s history?”

  “The FBI has tried its magic,” Quincy drawled drily, then turned to Keith Edgar. “Don’t even think about it. No matter how brilliant a geek you are, I assure you, my geeks are better. Nor is the FBI in the business of sharing evidence.”

  Edgar sank down. D.D. started to remember how much she liked Kimberly Quincy.


  “What about his trucking log?” asked D.D. “Don’t long-haul truckers have GPS and computer monitoring and that kind of thing? Seems like that should be a significant source of data.”

  “Once again, the answer is yes and no,” Quincy said. “The company Jacob worked for only kept the backup data for three months. So we know his last three months of movement, give or take, but as for the time he had his rig at his safe house to first load up Flora, nada. Likewise, even if we had a specific time period—say, Flora could pinpoint the week or month Jacob met your murder victim at the bar—we can’t look it up. What we did find . . . Jacob drove the highways of the South with some side trips to cheap motels, et cetera. We also discovered gaps in the data, which leads us to believe Jacob may have figured out how to turn off his GPS and computer monitoring—and that’s not easy to do. These systems are required by law and designed to track how many consecutive hours a trucker has traveled and basically demand driving breaks. You can’t just turn them off with a flick of a switch, or all drivers under a tough deadline would do it. Again, a surprising level of electronic sophistication from a man with a ninth-grade education.”

  Quincy tilted her head toward Edgar, who’d first made the point.

  “So what exactly is the plan here?” D.D. asked. “Go after Jacob Ness’s principal hideaway? See if we can find new evidence there?”

  Quincy and Flora nodded.

  “And to do that, Flora has volunteered herself as what, a hypnosis subject? Because you know experts still don’t agree on the validity of recovered memories, and juries just plain hate that crap.”

  “There are other techniques.” Flora spoke up first. “I’ve done some research. The human brain works a lot like a computer. First, there’s the matter of what data is recorded in the moment. Particularly in traumatic situations, some people’s senses heighten and they see all. But most people actually shut down. They squeeze their eyes shut, cover their ears, try to block what’s happening. They don’t want to know. Meaning the data is incomplete.”