by Karen Rose
‘We won’t let him do that,’ Decker said. ‘We won’t let him kill you.’
‘I know you’ll do your best not to let him,’ she said, echoing his earlier words with a resignation that hurt to hear. She closed her eyes for a minute. ‘Don’t stop taping. I’m not finished.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Trip said respectfully.
‘He killed his girlfriend. Her name was JJ. He . . .’ She swallowed audibly. ‘He cut her body up and put it in suitcases. Then he made me take the suitcases to the motel where she’d left her car, and put them in the trunk. He told me to leave the keys in the ignition, so I did. Maybe somebody took it, I don’t know. And he’s got a wife – Roxy – and she’s really sick. She’s at his house. Please help her, too.’
‘Anything else, ma’am?’ Trip asked.
‘Um . . . he’s got a sister, Nell. She’s nice, but she thinks I’m bad. I don’t think she knows about him. His other sister, Gemma, is an addict. And Macy’s mom. He got us both from our real mother and he kept me and gave Macy to Gemma when she was a baby.’ She licked her lips nervously. ‘Gemma’s husband is a policeman. His name is Bob. I don’t know his last name. I don’t know where they live.’
A cop. That makes a lot of sense. ‘Okay,’ Decker said. ‘We’ll look for them. Bob’s a common name, but Gemma’s not. Her name will be in his personnel record.’
Her eyes opened wide and filled with tears. ‘You believe me?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. Of course I believe you,’ Decker said.
She choked on a sob. ‘Nobody believed me. Nobody ever believed me.’
Decker’s eyes stung. ‘Who didn’t believe you, honey?’
‘Bob. I thought he’d help me. I thought he loved Macy and would want to protect her. But he didn’t believe me and he hit me. Hard. He told me to stop lying and then he told Gemma, who told the doctor. That was the first time he locked me in a closet, but it wasn’t the last time. He had everyone around us, all the neighbors, anyone who saw me, he had them believing that I was a mental case. That I hurt myself and that he was this wonderful guy for taking me in and giving me a home. Nobody would believe me if I said he was bad.’
Decker had to swallow hard. There was more, he knew. So many people who’d let this young woman down. Who’d betrayed her. Eventually he’d get the name of every one of them. But he needed to find the Professor first. That was his priority at the moment.
‘Well, we believe you now,’ he said hoarsely.
Meredith was standing at the head of the bed and now brushed Mallory’s hair off her forehead. ‘What happened to your mom, Mallory?’
‘She gave us away because he sold her drugs. She was addicted to heroin and just wanted more and more. So she . . . sold us to him.’ She blinked, sending the tears down her face. ‘She sold us for drugs,’ she sobbed brokenly. ‘And nobody believed me.’
Decker wiped his eyes with his free hand, because he wasn’t about to let go of Mallory, even if she broke every bone in his hand.
Trip cleared his throat roughly. ‘Should I keep recording, Mallory?’
Mallory sucked in a breath, and damned if she didn’t suck in her sobs too, just like Kate did. Tears continued to fall, but she quieted her crying through sheer will. ‘Yes. You need to look in his basement. That’s where he makes the drugs. Sometimes it smells really bad. I don’t know what he’s making. Sometimes I have to sleep outside because of the fumes. So check the basement.’ She looked away, her brows furrowed. ‘I think that’s all.’
‘I have one question,’ Kate said. ‘Well, maybe two. We know that he changed the place where he made the movies. Do you know where the new place is? Is it in his house?’
‘No, it’s not in his house, but I don’t know where it is. I’m sorry. I really don’t know. That’s probably where he took Macy. He always gave me something that made me sleep and then blindfolded me in case I woke up before we got there. It’s surrounded by trees. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ Kate said. ‘You’ve helped us a lot. The last question – why did he change the place where he filmed?’
‘Because of the second time I tried to tell. I borrowed a phone from a lady at the store and called the police. The police came to his house – his old house – and looked around, and one of them . . . he knew me. From the videos. He told the doctor that he’d tell. He wanted some of the money from the videos or he’d tell that movies were being made in his house. So the doctor sold the house and moved to where he is now. Do you need the address?’
‘Tell us, just for the taped record,’ Kate said.
Mallory recited the address, and it was the same one that Zimmerman had put on the warrant. The same one they’d search as soon as the girl had spoken her piece.
‘But I don’t know the cop’s name,’ she finished.
‘Would you know him if you saw him again?’ Decker asked.
Mallory’s swollen red eyes narrowed. ‘Yes. But only if . . . only if I saw him without clothes. Because he also made the doctor let him . . . have me. I never saw his face, but I remember his birthmark. So yes, I’d remember if I saw the birthmark again.’
Decker gritted his teeth against a sudden wave of fury that blazed through him. Goddammit. Another cop who should have protected her. No wonder she hadn’t come forward sooner. ‘Good. Because we believe you about that too.’
Her smile was weary. ‘Thank you. There’s a key to the house . . . it was in my pocket.’
Meredith pointed to a clear plastic bag that held Mallory’s clothes. Kate pulled on a pair of gloves and searched the clothing, coming up with a key. ‘It’s new,’ she said.
‘He replaced the locks two days ago. JJ had made herself a key and was trying to steal drugs from him. He changed the alarm, too. The new code is 4655.’ Mallory sagged back into the pillow. ‘I’m all done. You can stop recording now.’
From the corner of his eye, Decker saw Trip lower the phone and take a swipe at his own eyes. Decker gave Mallory’s hand a light squeeze. ‘I have to go for a little while. I’ll be back. We’re going to do our best to find your sister. But you need to know that whatever happens, you are brave. And you are a good person. Nothing that’s happened here is your fault. And Macy is lucky to have you for her big sister. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for telling me about your sister. What was her name?’
‘Shelby Lynne. And I miss her, every day.’
‘Then she was lucky to have you, too.’
Decker brought her hand to his cheek. ‘Thank you. Now try to sleep. We’ll be back.’
She let go of his hand and he stood up, his legs shaking beneath him. His whole body shook. He needed to get out of this room before he fell apart.
Kate led him to the door and took his phone from Trip. ‘Did I hear you offer him food?’
‘You did.’ Trip handed her his cooler. ‘Y’all be safe.’
‘We will.’ Not saying another word, Kate kept a firm hold on Decker’s arm from the moment they left Mallory’s room until he climbed into the passenger seat of her car. She gently buckled his seat belt and kissed his forehead. ‘I was so proud of you in there. You’re a good man, Griffin Davenport. Griff and Mama D would be proud too.’
He tried to smile and found he was too weary, physically and emotionally. ‘You need to call Zimmerman.’
‘I texted him while Mallory was talking. Told him it was a go. That the video was coming. I think I may have to upload it to a cloud somewhere, because it’s way too big to email. Once you got her talking, she didn’t want to stop, and I didn’t want to stop her.’
‘Kate?’
‘What do you need, Decker?’
‘You for one, but mostly right now I need a nap.’
She kissed his temple. ‘Fine, but eat what’s in the cooler first.
’
Decker managed to eat all but the slice of apple pie before Kate made it to the interstate. Then he closed his eyes.
And let himself grieve for Mallory and Macy and for Shelby Lynne and all the other kids whose names they might never know. It wasn’t until Kate pressed a pack of tissues into his hand that he realized he was crying, but he felt no embarrassment. No shame. Not with her. He wouldn’t have let anyone else see him this . . . bare. No one but her. Because she was weeping too.
Twenty-seven
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Saturday 15 August, 6.30 P.M.
Decker woke with a start, fists clenched. Everything clenched. Because Kate was not there, her scent no longer in his head.
‘Easy, soldier.’ Troy sat in the driver’s seat, his laptop balanced on the steering wheel while he typed. ‘She went inside.’
Decker was in the passenger seat of her car, the seat tilted back as far as it would go. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. It wasn’t dark, but the sun had moved across the sky. He scrubbed his face, trying to wake up fully. ‘Inside where?’
‘Edwards’s house. Damn, it feels good not to call him the Professor anymore.’
Decker grunted his agreement and hit the lever to straighten the seatback, glancing at the dashboard clock as he took stock of his surroundings. He’d been asleep for two and a half hours.
And felt surprisingly good. ‘I thought you and Zimmerman went to the doctor’s office.’
‘We did. We picked up the doc’s sister, Nell Edwards. She’s a physician’s assistant working under her brother’s license.’
‘Mallory mentioned her. Said she was nice and probably didn’t know what her brother was doing.’
Troy’s expression softened. ‘Yeah. I saw the tape. That was a nice thing you did, Decker, telling her about your sister.’
Decker’s face heated despite the cold air blowing from the A/C vents. ‘Yeah, well. Anyway, what did Nell say?’
‘That we were wrong. That her brother could never be involved in any of that. That Mallory was mentally ill, unbalanced. That he had cared for the girl as a father and this was the thanks he got. And on and on. We left her in the interview room with an armed agent. She claims she doesn’t know where her brother could be, but I’d lay good money that she’s lying. Protecting him. We’re getting ready to use the videos – him with Alice and him with Mallory – so we can convince her that he’s a sociopathic pedophile, but I’m betting she finds an excuse for that too.’
‘Probably. People are very good at believing what they want to believe. So Edwards wasn’t in the house. What about the four kids?’
‘Only thing remaining was the hovering cloud of an epic pot party. First guys in said they felt high just walking around the house. It’s dissipated now, but you can still smell it in the carpet. There were cups of coffee in the living room and a half-drunk glass of pop in the kitchen. All positive for GHB.’
‘So he drugged them and took them somewhere.’
‘Farm boy’s all woken up,’ Troy said with sarcastic cheer. Decker gave him the finger, making Troy laugh.
‘How long have we been here?’
‘You’ve been here over an hour. I just got here twenty minutes ago. I took watch-Decker’s-ass duty mainly because I wanted to sit in the A/C.’
‘Nobody needs to watch my ass.’
Troy gave him a look of mild reproach. ‘Less than twenty-four hours ago Kate was shot. Before that, Dani was assaulted because she knew where you were. We’re not going anywhere alone. None of us. Z’s orders. And speaking of the boss, we were happy to find out that it was Nell the PA who did their physicals a few years back, not Edwards himself.’
‘That’s good,’ Decker said, profoundly relieved. ‘What about Edwards’s wife?’
Troy grimaced. ‘That was pretty awful. They’d transported her by the time I got here, but she’s sick. Maybe days from dying. Severe liver disease. Her skin was yellow and she wasn’t coherent. The bedding was soiled . . . although it did appear she’d been cared for up until today.’
‘Mallory,’ Decker murmured. ‘And no sign of Macy, I take it. Or any connection to a cop named Bob?’
‘Not so far. And so far no one has reported Macy missing.’
‘And the basement?’
‘The door is set like a vault. We want to make sure we’ve collected all the evidence before we blow it off its hinges and send up a cloud of dust.’
‘What if he’s down there with Macy and the four kids?’
‘There’s no other way out. So if he’s there, we’ve got him. But somehow I can’t see him trapping himself like that.’
‘I agree.’ Decker was getting antsy. ‘I’m going inside now. You coming?’
‘Of course. I was just waiting for you to finish your beauty sleep.’
Troy gathered his things, and he and Decker found Kate with Adam and Quincy Taylor in Edwards’s home office, gathered around his desktop computer.
Kate looked up, excitement in her eyes. ‘You remember Mallory’s comment about how he always watched her?’
‘With spies and cameras,’ Decker said. ‘Did you find the cameras?’
‘Did we ever,’ Adam said. ‘Took a while to figure out his password. We ended up asking Diesel how he’d broken into McCord’s system nine months ago. Once he told us, it was straightforward.’
‘Not really,’ Quincy said. ‘Diesel’s kind of a fucking genius, which I did not expect.’
‘I think he cultivates that Hell’s Angels image on purpose,’ Decker said, remembering how the man had broken down after giving him the flash drive. ‘He’s not what I expected either. So, what have you found?’
‘We just started looking,’ Kate said.
‘The system records,’ Quincy said eagerly, ‘and it keeps the footage for years. This is a goldmine.’ He tapped a few more keys, tabbing from camera to camera. The basement, the kitchen, the bathroom, Mallory’s bedroom. ‘God. He really was watching her. All the time. Poor kid.’ He found the living room and rewound the tape until the four teens showed up. Three were smoking weed, their avid attention on what appeared to be an explicit movie on the big-screen TV.
‘He’s sexing them up,’ Kate said, disgusted. ‘Giving them drugs and edging them towards accepting porn. It would be only a matter of time before he pushed them into posing and having sex with each other. And him.’
Quincy fast-forwarded a bit to when Edwards returned to find the party going on. He was very matter-of-fact about it, then left the room with one of the teens. Quincy switched the camera view to the kitchen and they watched as Edwards mixed white powder into cups of coffee and one glass of cola. ‘That’s where he adds the GHB. We found it in the leftover drinks.’
One by one the teens began to get loopy and he walked them outside.
‘Did he have a camera on the exterior?’ Kate asked.
Quincy found it, and they watched Edwards putting the teens in an old minivan, then tying and gagging them.
‘We just missed him,’ Adam muttered. ‘Goddammit.’
‘What about the basement?’ Decker asked.
Quincy found the camera and whistled. ‘Wow.’ The room was filled with chemistry equipment and had several large interior doors. Tabbing a few more times showed what was behind the doors – one was a storage room with big bags of powder marked Heroin, Coke, Meth, and bottles labeled Steroid. One door hid a cache of weapons – mostly semi-auto rifles and handguns.
‘Jackpot,’ Decker said, a grin nearly busting his face open. They had Edwards for the porn and the drugs. Now they had to put together all the evidence for the murders he’d committed. He was never getting out of prison.
‘And he’s got a very sophisticated wine cellar,’ Troy added. ‘We have an erudite sociopathic drug-dealing pedophile.
’
Quincy tabbed a few more times and everyone did a double-take.
‘That’s his practice,’ Troy said, edging closer to the screen. ‘We were just there.’
Quincy hit a few buttons and the tape began to rewind. ‘Yep. There you are, Luther.’ He stopped the rewind and hit play. ‘The camera really does add ten pounds.’
‘Fuck you,’ Troy said, but without heat. ‘That’s Nell, the sister.’ She was vigorously shaking her head. ‘She was not going to believe her brother could do any wrong.’
‘Does he have cameras anywhere else?’ Decker asked. ‘Like maybe in his studio?’
Kate gave him an approving look. ‘Nap time served you well.’
‘I gave him juice and a cookie,’ Troy deadpanned, then his spine abruptly stiffened. ‘What the hell? Stop. Oh my God. Quincy, stop tabbing.’
‘I’m stopping, I’m stopping,’ Quincy complained. They all stared at the screen. It was a different living room. ‘This isn’t here or the office. And who is that?’ he asked as a man paced into camera range and crossed the room, shoving his hands through his hair and looking agitated. Panicked. Hysterical even. ‘That looks like a CPD uniform.’
Decker got in close. ‘Based on the photos of Macy on the bookshelves, I’d say that’s a cop named Bob, Edwards’s brother-in-law and Macy’s adoptive father. Anybody recognize him?’
‘No,’ Adam answered, the only one from CPD in the room. ‘But if we can send a still of his face to my lieutenant, she can pass it around. Somebody’s got to know him. The photos on the bookshelf, there are some with a woman in them. Could be his wife. Get a copy of those, too.’