by Ragan, T. R.
Palmer stroked his beard. “White females. All between the ages of ten and twelve. What else have you got to link them together?”
“Bus routes and schools,” she said. “Every girl except Riley Addison was walking to or from school. Many of them rode a bus.”
His phone rang. He held up a hand to stop Sawyer from saying anything more and picked up the call. “Geezer,” he said. “What have you got?”
Geezer wasn’t only a photographer for the Sacramento Independent. He often worked alongside Palmer since he had a nose for finding interesting tidbits to report and was good at gathering information. Geezer spent most days making the rounds, talking to people, and keeping Palmer apprised of anything new.
Palmer’s expression hardened as he listened. “Stay where you are. I’ll be there shortly.”
Once the call ended, Palmer glanced at Sawyer. “Mark Brennan was arrested.”
The news did not compute. “What for?”
“For the murder of Riley Addison. They found blood on his car and near the steps to the house.”
No way, she thought. “Mind if I tag along?”
He handed her the map she’d given him to look at. She slipped it into the file.
“I’ve got to make a quick call,” he said. “Meet me in the parking lot in five minutes.”
Sawyer grabbed her files and headed back to her cubicle. On her way she spotted Derek’s assistant, Marilyn, and rushed that way. “Hi, Marilyn. Is Derek in his office?”
Her smile was friendly. “He took a week off. If it’s something urgent, I can pass the information to him when he calls in.”
“That’s not necessary, but thank you.”
They parted ways. Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder what Derek was doing. He rarely took time off. Thinking about him made her stomach all jittery.
She had called and texted. What else could she do?
She left her files next to her computer inside her cubicle, grabbed her backpack, and headed toward the exit. The moment she stepped outside her thoughts returned to Mark Brennan’s arrest.
Her stomach turned.
Had Aria been right about him?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The minute she heard Bubbles’s car pull out of the garage, Riley climbed off the mattress, lay faceup on the floor, and slipped under the bed. She poked two fingers into the hole at the bottom of the mattress and began where she’d left off, twisting and turning one of the coils.
As she worked, she thought of Mom and Dad and her brother. She missed them. Every night she prayed, making promises to God that she would never yell at her brother again. She would help Mom with laundry and put away the dishes without complaint and walk the dog with Dad after dinner.
She wondered if anyone was looking for her. She’d wanted to see if there was anything on the news, but Bubbles refused to let her watch television. Over the weekend she’d heard faint voices coming from the television downstairs, but she’d been unable to figure out what they were saying.
As she made circles with the wire, around and around, she pulled hard, hoping the coil would break free. It had to work. If she didn’t find a way out of this place soon, she’d already decided she would make a run for it the next time Bubbles gave her a bath.
Her fingers were already sore. She could feel little indentations from holding the wire tight as she pulled and twisted.
She was about to take a break when the coil suddenly snapped. She let out a whoop of joy, pushed her way out from under the bed, and sat up. She held the coil in front of her face and examined her new tool. It was strong enough that it wouldn’t break. There was even a tiny hook at the end where the wire had come loose.
Still sitting on the ground, she tucked the foot with the metal cuff closer so that she could try to unlock it. As she poked and prodded, she felt bits of lead inside from when the tip of the pencil broke.
But nothing was happening. For at least thirty minutes she tried to get the metal cuff free, but it was no use. Frustrated, she pounded a fist against the hardwood floor and groaned.
What now?
She pushed herself to her feet and walked to the cooler. Bubbles had left water and plastic bottles of Tropicana orange juice with screw-top lids inside. The orange juice tasted good. There were also grapes inside and a bag of pretzels.
As she munched on a pretzel stick, her attention went to the closet door. She picked up the piece of wire and dragged the chain attached to her ankle across the room. Very carefully she stuck the hooked end of the wire into the hole in the lock and listened carefully, as she had seen her dad do when he’d accidentally locked them out of the house.
Surprised when she heard a click, she turned the knob.
The door was open—only an inch—and yet she merely stood there. What was inside? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. What does a mentally unstable person like Bubbles keep locked inside a closet?
She was about to find out.
Eyes closed tight, she sucked in a breath of air and opened the door. She counted to three and opened her eyes. It was a small walk-in closet, too dark to see anything. She brushed a hand against the inside wall and flicked on a light switch. The light was bright, and it took her brain a minute to figure out what she was seeing. Plastic containers were stacked high to her right, but that wasn’t what held her attention. Every bit of wall space was covered with Polaroid pictures that had been stapled in place.
Swallowing, she walked farther inside to get a closer look. All the girls looked to be Riley’s age or younger. Most looked younger. The majority of the pictures had been taken in the same bed she was sleeping in. The wood-slatted headboard and the scarred wooden bedside table looked exactly the same. At one time or another almost every girl wore the same yellow dress and shiny red shoes that Bubbles had dressed her in when she first arrived.
Riley’s hand trembled as she brushed her fingers over one particular picture. The girl in the photo had yellow-blonde hair, blue eyes, and a big pink bow clipped to her hair above her right ear. On top of her head was a colorful, cone-shaped birthday hat. The kind with tissue paper pom-poms on top. The girl’s mouth was open wide, and tears streamed down both sides of a big red-marker smile that had been drawn on her face.
Chills raced down Riley’s spine. Afraid she might be sick, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Once she was certain she wasn’t going to blow chunks, she searched through one of the plastic bins. She found more pictures and shoes and clothes that looked like they would fit a six-year-old. Custom name labels had been sewn into every shirt and dress. Molly Finlay.
Riley dug through to the bottom where she found a baby book. The first two pages were titled BEFORE WE MET YOU and BEFORE YOU WERE BORN. Both pages were blank. Every page after those two were to record memories and milestones. Molly at one month, Molly at two months, and so on. Height and weight and what she liked to eat had been written in great detail.
At the end of the book, when Molly Finlay reached the age of one, there were two pictures of Molly sitting in a high chair. Her hair had started to grow in around the ears. Blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked happy. Her face was covered with chocolate icing. The next page revealed a picture of Bubbles holding Molly. Bubbles looked different. Much younger and happy. Who had taken the picture? she wondered. And what happened to Molly?
Finished with the book, Riley slipped it back where she’d found it and put the lid of the container on tight before opening the next bin. This one was filled with birthday cards. Many of them unsigned. Bought but never used. There was also a stack of children’s books, including a copy of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, one of Riley’s personal favorites. She plopped down on the floor and began to read, wiping her eyes as she turned the pages.
Somewhere along the way, she fell asleep. In her dreams she heard the doorbell and was so happy that someone had come to visit. Her body felt light, almost as if she were floating as she ran to the front of the house. When she turned the knob and opened th
e door, it was Bubbles who stood there with those crazy bug eyes and pinched face.
Riley screamed, but nothing came out of her mouth.
Her eyes shot open.
A knock sounded on the door downstairs. Someone was here. She jumped to her feet, rushed as far as the chain would allow, and screamed, “Help me!”
Hearing nothing in return, she clanked the chain against the floor. “Help me! I need help! She locked me up! Please help!”
This time when she stopped to listen, she heard a car engine roar to life.
“Don’t leave me!”
But it was too late. If she hadn’t fallen asleep she might have been able to save herself. As she wiped tears from her eyes, she inwardly scolded herself for crying and being a baby. She went back to the closet and put everything back the way it was before and then pushed the lock and shut the door.
Only then did she look around for the wire and realize she’d left it on the closet floor.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Dragging the chain along with her as she made her way to the window, she sighed when the chain stopped her from being able to put her face up against the glass. More than anything she wanted to pull the curtains wide, open the window, and take a breath of fresh air.
Movement caught her eye. Leaning forward, straining every muscle, she saw someone in the backyard of the neighbor’s house. A little boy was throwing a ball high in the air and catching it—over and over again.
Frantically, she looked around the room, trying to find something to throw at the window to get his attention.
She tried not to think about everything in the closet she could have used. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder at the cooler, then rushed that way, gliding her feet across the floor as if she were wearing snowshoes. It was faster that way.
Unable to lift the cooler, she opened it and grabbed a small plastic bottle of OJ. No schoolbooks today. Of course not. Just paper copies of a math assignment and some lined paper to write an essay about what she did this summer. What a joke. She couldn’t remember anything about this summer except the very last day. She’d helped an injured woman with her packages and learned the hard way that it didn’t pay to be nice. Mom hated that saying. But whoever came up with it was right.
She grabbed a pencil and eraser from the table by the bed, and her water bottle, then rushed back to the window and tossed the OJ bottle first. It hardly made any noise at all. Next, she threw the pencil and then the eraser. Laughable. With only the water bottle left, she wound her arm up like a pitcher, aimed, and threw the bottle as hard as she could. So hard she thought she might break the glass. It made a good loud bang, but then fell to the ground and rolled out of reach.
When she peered out the window again, her shoulders dipped.
Nobody was there.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yellow barricade tape wound its way around Mark Brennan’s brick steps and across the front yard, disappearing around both sides of his house. Sawyer made her way to the front entrance while Palmer went to talk to Geezer.
On the drive over she’d learned that Geezer used a scanner, which allowed him to get to a scene quickly. When the crime scene photographers were finished taking pictures, Geezer would be allowed to take photographs for the Sacramento Independent. If there had been a body, or the blood had been located inside the house, more often than not, Geezer would not be given such liberties.
A technician was on bent knees at the steps in front of the house. He used a metal scraper that looked like an instrument a dentist might use to scrape what looked like flecks of blood into a small plastic bag. He placed the sample inside his kit and then straightened and made his way to the front window where the gardenias grew and where Aria and Sawyer had been only yesterday. After putting on a clean pair of gloves, the technician carefully clipped two bloodied blossoms and a number of waxy green leaves, each bagged separately.
Sawyer’s heart raced as she pushed the rewind button in her brain. She was 100 percent certain there hadn’t been blood on the gardenia bush when she was here yesterday. If less than twenty-four hours ago there was no blood, what did that mean?
It haunted her to think she could have been so wrong about Mark Brennan. Sure, he was clean-cut and personable, but she always made it a point not to judge a book by its cover. It was the way he’d talked about Riley and how he’d expressed himself that had convinced her he was innocent.
But Aria had sensed something else entirely. Had Riley Addison been tucked away inside his house somewhere, maybe in the basement or a bedroom closet, and then taken to his car after she and Aria left?
Her stomach felt queasy.
Directly across the street, she noticed that some of the neighbor’s houses had windows with a view of Mark Brennan’s front stoop. A group of people stood huddled together in front of one of the houses, so she headed that way. Two people took off before she stepped onto the curb.
“Hello,” she said to the remaining people, which included one elderly woman, a young man, and a woman with two children. “I’m Sawyer Brooks with the Sacramento Independent. Do any of you live around here?”
“I live in the yellow house,” the woman with a cane said. “Did that man do something?”
“Do you know him?” Sawyer asked.
“Not personally. I’ve seen him around, though, and on occasion I hear music coming from his place.”
“Same,” the young man said. His hands were shoved deep into his front pants pockets. “I hear music every once in a while, and my wife and I say hello if we run into him on one of his walks, but I don’t know him.”
“I know Mark Brennan,” the woman with the children said. Her hair was twisted into a bun on top of her head. Sawyer guessed her to be in her late thirties. One small child held on to her leg. The other was in a stroller.
“Did you see Mark Brennan yesterday?” Sawyer asked.
“I did. The kids and I waved, and he waved back.”
“Do you remember what time that was?”
“Between five and six. He takes a walk around the neighborhood around that same time every day.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about him?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “He’s such a friendly man. I usually bring him a plate of holiday cookies at Christmas. He’s offered to give my girls free piano lessons since we’re neighbors, but I turned him down because that would be taking advantage.”
“Do any of you know if the police canvased the area after Riley Addison disappeared?”
The young mother covered her older child’s ears. “Nobody came to our house, but I prefer not to talk about what’s happened. We better go,” she said. “You understand?”
Sawyer lifted a brow, confused by the woman’s reaction. “Please call me if you hear anything at all.” Sawyer handed the woman her card before she could get away.
“I’ve got to run off myself,” the man said. “But I’ll take a card in case we hear anything.”
Sawyer thanked him and handed him a card.
“How are those kids going to learn about real life if their mother refuses to let them see what it’s all about?” the woman with the cane asked after everyone else was gone.
Sawyer kept her opinion to herself and instead asked, “Did the police talk to you after the little girl disappeared?”
“Not that I’m aware of, and I’m home most every day.”
“How did you hear about the missing girl?”
“I get the newspaper, and I listen to the local news. But even if they had come to my door, I wouldn’t have been any help since I didn’t see anything.”
Sawyer thought about returning to the area at another time and going door to door. She knew from everything she’d read that the surest way to solve a crime was to send detectives out to canvas the streets and talk to potential witnesses.
“The couple who ran off when you came this way said blood was found on the man’s car. Is that true?” the woman asked.
“It’s true,” Sawyer said. “They also found blood on his steps and on the gardenias out front. But I just talked to Mark Brennan yesterday. I even took a whiff of his gardenias, and I didn’t see any blood.”
“How’s your eyesight?” the woman asked with obvious skepticism.
Sawyer liked the woman already. She was blunt and unafraid to say whatever came to mind. “I have twenty-twenty vision,” Sawyer told her. “And I’m very observant.”
“Well then, if you’re absolutely certain the blood wasn’t there yesterday, he either got rid of the body after the sun went down or someone planted the blood.”
“Or maybe he cut himself in the car on his way home,” Sawyer said.
“Nah,” the woman said. “I recently finished a book called Framed for Murder by Allison Krepp, and the blood was planted.”
Sawyer smiled. “You read a lot of mysteries?”
“I listen to books on audio nowadays. If it’s a murder mystery, I usually solve the case halfway through. My friends tell me I should write my own book.” She snorted. “How hard could it be?”
“If you do write that book, I want to read it.” Sawyer reached into her bag for another card and handed it to the woman.
She looked it over. “I’ll call you if I see anything unusual or when I finish my book. Whichever happens first.”
Sawyer thanked her and said goodbye, then headed back to Mark Brennan’s house as a string of questions floated around in her head. Who found the blood? Who notified the police? Neighbors? A passerby?
She locked eyes with Palmer as she stepped onto the curb. He came to stand by her side. “Something troubling you?”
“Yes. None of this blood was here yesterday.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was here. In that house. Talking with Mark Brennan. On our way out, we noticed the gardenia bush.”
“We?”
“My sister and I.” Sawyer kept talking, didn’t want to give him time to be upset that she’d brought her sister along. “When we left, we stopped to admire the sweet smell.” Sawyer set her gaze on his. “I swear to you, Palmer. There wasn’t a drop of blood on that shrub yesterday. Not one drop. I would have noticed.”