Finding Claire Fletcher (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 1)

by Lisa Regan

“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Lynn,” he said, his tone as quiet as ever. “But you’re impervious to all of my efforts to help you get comfortable here. I’m afraid I have to teach you a lesson.”

  He hefted her up and slung her over the arm of the couch. Her legs dangled on the floor, and her upper body curved over the arm. She turned her head and saw me. She had brown eyes. Big brown eyes with luxuriant lashes. Her eyes were so wide it looked as if someone was literally squeezing them out of her head. I pulled and pulled against the cuffs. My body drew toward her like a magnet. She screamed as much as the gag would allow. She spoke to me with her eyes that said, Help me, oh God, please help me.

  My eyes on him, I stretched toward her. “No,” I said. “I don’t need a lesson. I don’t need a lesson. Please. Let her go. Leave her alone. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll never leave again. I’ll be good. Please.”

  Her eyes filled with a mixture of horror and relief. I tried with my own to tell her that I meant every word. I would do anything to get him to let her go.

  He shook his head sadly, sighing. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Lynn.”

  “No!” I screamed. My body squirmed futilely against the cuffs. “I swear to you. Please. I will do anything you say, anything you want. I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Just let her go. Don’t hurt her. Please.”

  I used his language. “I’ll be a good girl. I’ll be such a good girl, and we can forget all about before. I’ll be so good you’ll forget I was ever bad. Please. Just let her go.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know you will, but letting her go will not help us. I have to teach you a lesson, Lynn. I have to prove my love for you because it’s obvious you don’t believe how much I love you.”

  “No,” I said. “I do believe you. I believe you. You don’t have to do this. I don’t need a lesson. I get it now. I get it, okay? Just let her go.”

  The girl blinked her eyes rapidly. Tears dripped from her face, and a thin strand of snot hung from her nose. Her face twisted, and I could smell both of our sweat and fear commingling, filling up the air between us.

  “This isn’t about her,” I pleaded. “She has nothing to do with—us. Please. Oh, please.”

  His lips pressed into a thin line, and he took off his belt. I did not want to watch. I thought he would rape her, and I did not want to see it. I did not want to watch the violation he had perpetrated on my own body so many times.

  I could not reach her. Nor could I look away. My eyes, my frantic gaze, and empathetic tears were all I had to offer her. But he did not rape her. Instead, he wrapped the belt around her neck, looping the end through the buckle.

  It was over in a few minutes, and it was silent except for my screams, which ended abruptly when he released the belt that had become embedded in her delicate neck. Her skin was like clay, the belt cushioned in its purple mass. My voice cut to silence as if it were my own throat being constricted. I slumped, staring as sightlessly as the dead girl before me.

  I had killed her. I had done this. My stubbornness, my sheer and unyielding furor to be free of him had led her to this place. A lonely wooden shack in woods unknown, bound, stinking of putrid fear like a compost of freshly slaughtered animal carcasses. A man on her back, tightening the strap.

  When he approached me, he seemed to come from miles away, a dot on the horizon, even as I felt his leg brush against me. His voice seemed low and muffled as if he were talking to me from across the room.

  “Now,” he said breathlessly. “Tell Daddy how sorry you are, and we can forget this whole thing.”

  And God help me, I did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Connor prowled around his bedroom like a large cat, its hackles raised. He glanced at the phone on every turn as if looking at it would make it ring again, but after an hour, it didn’t.

  Claire had slipped from his grasp again, leaving him more agitated than ever.

  He had tried to use his callback feature to get the number she’d called from, but the damn thing said the number was unavailable, which probably meant she used a pay phone.

  Without a subpoena for calls to and from his home telephone, Connor could not access the number. He couldn’t get a subpoena because he wasn’t working on the case with the approval or backing of his division. He’d promised Farrell that he’d use all of his police resources to find Claire, but he never brought the case before Captain Riehl. Until he met with the review board, Connor was on the desk, and even then there was a chance that he might not be able to keep his job. He wasn’t supposed to be doing any active investigative work.

  But all that bothered him little compared to the fear and regret he’d heard in Claire’s voice. Acid roiled in his stomach at the stark reality of not being able to help her.

  Clearly, she was under duress as he and Mitch had theorized. Connor had not even felt this helpless two years ago when Denise announced to him over breakfast that she had fallen in love with someone else and would be leaving him within the week.

  Her tone, which was the same as the one she used to tell him to take out the garbage or mow the lawn, should have alerted him that refusing to sign the divorce papers and trying to reconcile with her would prove futile.

  The first year of their separation, as he tried to win her back, he’d felt as powerless as a man standing unarmed before a firing squad. Eventually, he accepted the fact that the marriage was over, and it had taken another year to sort out the details.

  But in all that time, he had never felt as useless and ineffective as he did now. Silently, he had dismissed Claire’s plea for him not to come after her the moment it left her lips, as he had her sorrowful insistence that she was beyond help.

  He’d spent a single night with a woman he knew nothing about, but he wanted to see her again—her broken eyes and razor-edged laugh—more than he had ever wanted his wife to stay and work on their marriage.

  He had to help her. Even if it meant going expressly against Claire’s wishes to be left alone.

  At 5:30 a.m. Connor woke Farrell, calling first his cell phone and then his home phone. The soft edges of sleep left the man’s voice quickly when Connor recounted the phone call.

  “How did she get your number?”

  “I’m in the book,” Connor said.

  “She said you’re in danger?” Mitch asked, focusing on a part of the conversation that had barely registered with Connor.

  “Yeah,” Connor said.

  “You got a security system over there?” Mitch asked.

  Connor grunted. “Yeah, it’s called a lock and a dead bolt. I can’t sleep.”

  Mitch grumbled words Connor could not make out, then said, “Okay, first things first. You said it sounded like a pay phone?”

  Connor paused before responding. He’d been so intent on Claire, on her voice, on convincing her to let him come to her, that he hadn’t listened for ambient noise or automatically tuned in to things his detective’s mind would normally listen for. He explained about the callback, from which he drew the assumption that Claire had called from a pay phone, and that he could not get a subpoena for his phone records.

  Mitch sighed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do with that. Might be able to call in a favor or two. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for anything unusual. We can meet at your place later. I’ll check it over for security measures.”

  Connor felt no calmer after hanging up with Farrell. It was too early for him to make any calls, so he pulled on a pair of sweats and went out back, where a heavy punching bag hung from the awning over the patio.

  From the large storage bin he kept on the patio for gardening implements, Connor pulled out some hand wraps. After wrapping his hands and wrists tightly, he went to work on the bag, his fists slamming into it from all directions, springing off on angles as the bag swung back toward him.

  Connor barely felt the cool morning air or the sting of his knuckles against the coarse material of the bag. There was only the hard, muted thud of his f
ists pummeling with satisfying impact into the bag. The image of Claire Fletcher’s face, untouchable and out of reach, burned in his mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  1996

  The night my captor strangled the life from the blonde girl with the terror-stricken eyes, my voice left me. Even when my mouth worked, no sound issued from my throat. My body shook most of the time though I was not cold. My eyes stared straight ahead, and I could not force them in any other direction. They didn’t see what was in front of me, though. My vision was filled with the entire room. I was looking down on myself—a small, huddled mass of bones and tatters with tangled, matted brown hair. I watched from the ceiling as the days blurred past. He took the girl outside. I had named her Sarah in my mind because she was every bit as real as me, only now she was dead, and it was my fault.

  I watched, perched in a tree, as he buried her behind the house. I watched him return to the quivering body that still breathed, drank, ate, shat, and struggled blindly against his advances in silence, but was minus me, severed from me, because now I was on the ceiling. Sometimes I floated out back and sat beside the mound of dirt that formed Sarah’s hard-packed coffin. I sang to her, though no sound came from me or the body within the house.

  He no longer bound that body, and sometimes it called me back, tugging at me, unraveling me in long skeins and tightening me around it like a bandage. I could not stay in it long because of the panic attacks. My chest grew heavy as if I were the one lifeless and crushed beneath the dirt in his backyard. I felt the dirt filling my mouth. I couldn’t breathe.

  The room began to flash around me, a disconcerting strobe effect. I clutched at my throat, dug my fingers into my mouth, trying to scoop the invisible dirt out of my throat. A high-pitched buzz assaulted my ears, rising in pitch with my panic. Somewhere deep in my bowels, I screamed soundlessly. I was dying. Dying, dying, dying.

  The body would pass out, not able to hold the panic, which was hard but slick, and I would leave again.

  He was not pleased with me, with this body that was dead but still thrashed and tried to pull itself out of its own throat.

  He did not beat me, though. Instead he came home with small green pills, which he put in the body’s mouth, pressing his hand over its lips until it swallowed. Every day a green pill until the body began reeling me in more and more. Until I could lay in it quiet, formless, and unmoving for a few moments before the panic began again.

  After many more weeks, I could feel myself breathing with the body again, could feel its cracked lips, cool sweat on the back of its neck. The panic lay just outside of us, ebbing and pulsing dangerously close but hesitating around our borders, uncertain, squeamish. I began to hear sounds again but still could not speak.

  One day he returned home with a bed frame, box spring, and mattress. He had a dresser and several boxes. It was all packed into a stout rental truck. He unpacked it himself, sweat soaking the back of his shirt in an inverted V. I watched from the couch as he passed back and forth for hours. I heard the clangs, thuds, and the rustling of him working in my room.

  At nightfall, he took my hand and guided me from the couch to the room. There was a bed with a pink floral comforter, pillows, a table beside the bed on top of which sat a delicate lamp. A dresser sat across from the bed, its wooden surface shiny. A vase filled with fresh flowers burst from the top of it. The closet was packed with clothes dangling from hangers. He had affixed a full-length mirror to the inside of the closet door. He said nothing and left me standing just inside the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  I looked dumbly at all the things I had desired for almost two years. In the dresser drawers were bras and panties, socks, a pair of slippers. Beneath the clothes in the closet were two pairs of shoes. A pair of sneakers and a pair of black shoes, which were slightly dressier. I fingered the clothes and inhaled the scent of the flowers, feeling heady from the smell of something besides death and my own stink.

  The table beside the bed was equipped with a single drawer just beneath its surface. It held a hairbrush, antiperspirant, and a towel and a washcloth, neatly folded. I lay down on the bed, sinking into its plush softness. I curled on my side and stared at the clothes hanging in the closet. I stayed there for hours. The night changed colors, and the sun came and went again.

  I wanted to enjoy these things. The feel of shoes, socks, and undergarments. Real clothes, pretty clothes that fit my shriveled body. I wanted to shower by myself, wash the unending grime out of my bird-nest hair. I wanted to comb my hair, smooth deodorant under my arms.

  I wanted these things with a sultry blue ache, but how could I enjoy them? I deserved nothing. How could I revel in my ablutions, brush my hair, and put on new clothes when Sarah lay beneath a mound beyond my window, her pretty face peeling away?

  Indulging myself would seal my complicity; I would be taking a step through the door I thought I would rather die before entering. I would really be Lynn. I would have taken candy from his hands, from the devil’s own hands. Sold my infinitesimal soul to him, handing it over in tatters and shards.

  I thought of killing myself. I had enough access to the rooms of the house to find something, some way of doing it. Surely that would be most prudent. But that seemed selfish. Beautiful, lithe Sarah lay dead in the ground while I lived. My life held nothing, not a single joy, not even the silly joy that came with relieving a full bladder after holding it indefinitely. But I was still alive, and she was not. I kept on in contrition and penance for her—the dead girl in the backyard whose real name I did not know.

  I did wash myself, comb my hair, and dress in the new clothes. Some of them fit, some of them didn’t. There were dresses, skirts, blouses, and slacks. Even a pair of jeans, which I wore the most. Sometimes I put on everything that would fit and slept that way.

  I was not sure why I still lived, but a part of my brain, still partially hidden from my view, was working, trying to figure something out. Perhaps another bid for freedom. I began eating at the kitchen table with him, and he cooked full meals, though I rarely tasted the food I shoveled into my mouth.

  One day I looked at him and said, “I want books.”

  “What?” he said, momentarily startled since it was the first time I had uttered a word in nearly six months. It surprised me a little too. It was strong, firm—a woman’s voice.

  “I want books,” I repeated. “To read. Lots of them.”

  He set his fork down carefully on his plate, dabbed the edges of his mouth, and looked at me.

  “Please,” I added, though my tone was flat.

  “What kinds of books?” he asked.

  “Any kind. I don’t care. Whatever you can get.” Then, because I knew it would flatter him to think I deferred to his judgment, I said, “You decide. You pick them out. I would just like something to read.”

  This brought a smile to his face, and he blushed like a young girl. “Very well, my darling. You will have books.”

  I said nothing and resumed eating.

  The next day my room was filled with books. Volumes. In spite of himself, he had chosen well. They were mostly classics: the complete works of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Joyce, Twain, Faulkner, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. There were several newer novels, which he pointed out had all won prestigious literary prizes. There were a few history books, some biographies of legendary American figures, and National Geographic magazines from the past year.

  I did not thank him because I could not get my mouth to voice the words, but I felt full with anticipation. For two weeks I read without sleeping, one book after another. I could not get enough. He seemed pleased, and while he still saw fit to touch me—to soil me over my objections and the thrashing, whipping resistance of my body—the days passed unremarkably.

  Then one day I was sitting on the porch reading in a wicker chair he’d provided for just such a whim. My eyes drifted off the page as I watched dusk settle around the house. He had bought an old truck weeks before, in a
ddition to his car. It sat there like a jilted lover, brown, stained with rust and dirt. He was gone for the day, although he would likely return within the hour.

  I didn’t give it much thought when I went into the house and retrieved the truck keys from the hook in the kitchen. I climbed into the truck, which smelled vaguely of cigarettes and gasoline. Before I was taken, my father had been giving me driving lessons. Had I not been stolen from the street, I would have had my driver’s license within months. He taught me first how to drive a manual because, for some reason, he thought it was important.

  “You never know when you might have to hop into a car that has a manual shift,” he had said. “Could be an emergency.”

  Indeed it could.

  The truck was a manual. I pressed the clutch to the floor and turned the key. It roared to life, hacking and gurgling like it was about to spit up a hair ball. It took me several stalls and starts before the art of driving came back to me. I turned the truck to the narrow trail and drove.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At 7:30 a.m., Connor showered, changed into a suit, and drove to the division. It was Saturday, but several detectives were there. Unfortunately, criminals never took time off. They worked weekends and holidays too, which meant that law enforcement investigators not only matched them hour for hour in work, but usually went overtime trying to clean up the carnage left in their wake.

  Connor walked by Riehl’s open door, greeting him in passing with a mock salute. Riehl barely nodded. Stryker, looking oddly like an amputee without Boggs, sat at his desk, which abutted his missing partner’s, talking on the phone. The younger man leaned back in his chair until it looked like it might tip and send him feet over head while he twisted the phone cord around in his fist.

  Stryker raised his head in acknowledgment as Connor leaned against the edge of the desk, waiting for him to finish his call.

  When the detective hung up, he took a moment to disentangle himself from the phone cord, muttering expletives under his breath before grinning at Connor. “Hey Shoot-’em-up, what are you doing here so early on a Saturday? Thought you desk jockeys went fishing on the weekends.”