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

by Lisa Regan

  “Cute,” Connor said. “Where’s the wife?”

  “Fuck you, Parks,” Stryker said without malice. He bobbed his head toward Boggs’s desk. “Fucker’s doing some family shit this weekend. Left me to follow up on these damn witness statements. It’s all right, though. I’m saving the real combative ones for him. What’s up?”

  Connor pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “I need a last known,” he said, handing it to Stryker. On it, Connor had written the name of the woman who had owned a blue Pontiac Parisienne station wagon and lived in Dinah Strakowski’s neighborhood in 1995. “That’s where she lived ten years ago. I need to know where she is now.”

  Stryker placed the sheet on his desk and turned to his computer. “Irene Geary,” he said, manipulating the mouse with small but swift movements. “You might get more than one—name isn’t real common like a John Smith or something, but there’s probably more than one. You want to search the whole country or just the state?”

  “Let’s start with the state,” Connor said.

  Stryker moved silently and quickly, absorbed in the task. His hands worked as if they were extensions of the computer. Connor grinned as he watched. Stryker was the division’s technology guru. Short but stout and well muscled from a daily regimen of running and weight lifting, Stryker looked more like he belonged in front of some trendy bar serving as a bouncer or acting as bodyguard for some important public figure, rather than behind a computer.

  But the rest of the guys came to him when their own computer skills failed them. If anyone could find what they were looking for, it was Stryker. Connor could have done the search himself, using his own computer, but he knew Stryker would have an address within minutes, whereas it might take Connor a couple of hours to get the desired information from his own temperamental machine.

  “Two in the state,” Stryker said. “What the fuck are you grinning at?”

  Connor laughed. “Nothing. It’s just that you’re gonna make a damn fine receptionist someday.”

  “Fuck you, Parks,” Stryker said. He printed out the names and addresses and widened his search to include the rest of the country.

  Connor pulled the printout from Stryker’s printer tray and looked over the other man’s shoulder. “The Internet?” he said. “Jeez, Stryke, I could have done that.”

  Stryker grinned. “No you couldn’t. You dumbshits are lucky you can get a computer to boot up, let alone navigate the Internet. It’s always, ‘Stryke, I can’t find this,’ or ‘Stryke, this file won’t come up,’ or ‘Stryke, my computer took a shit.’ I oughta give seminars. That way I could spend more time cracking down on shitwad perps instead of doing everyone’s goddamn work for them.”

  “Yeah, we’re so lucky to have you,” Connor responded.

  Stryker printed out another sheet of paper. “Fucking Internet Whitepages, baby,” he said appreciatively. “Now I’m gonna use another database to see if I can get a social security number to go with that vehicle registration, and we’ll just see which one of these Irene Gearys is the lucky winner.”

  Connor waited, tapping his fingers against the edge of Stryker’s chair.

  Fifteen minutes later, Stryker had a winner. The Irene Geary that Connor was looking for now lived in Arizona. Stryker printed out her address and phone number and handed it to Connor.

  “I’m gonna start keeping a jar on my desk for tips,” Stryker said. “Least you fuckers can do is give me a little extra scratch for all the shit I find for you.”

  Connor smiled as he walked to his own desk. “Here’s a tip, Stryke,” he said. “Don’t piss in the wind.”

  As Stryker threw back his typical response, Connor mouthed it along with him. “Fuck you, Parks.”

  Stryker was all bark and no bite. Most of the guys in the division bantered with each other crudely and traded cruel insults in jest. Inappropriate humor and affected pit-bull personas were their strongest defense mechanisms. When you had to look at all the grievous sins that human beings committed against one another day in and day out, finding a way to cope with it, however crass, became a priority.

  Connor settled behind his desk and booted up his own computer, which he was far more adept at handling than Stryker surmised. It took him another hour to run a full background check on Irene Geary. She had no criminal record, although she had been arrested twice before moving to Arizona—once for shoplifting seventeen years ago and once for disturbing the peace shortly thereafter. Neither arrest had resulted in charges being filed. She’d also been involved in several domestic disputes in which various boyfriends were charged with beating or harassing her, all of which took place prior to 1995, when, presumably, she was living with the man who would later abduct Claire Fletcher.

  She had one child, a daughter named Noel, who, according to the records Connor found, would now be twenty-three years old. Connor found one local listing for a Noel Geary and jotted it down next to the contact information he had on Irene.

  He phoned Irene Geary first. He would have preferred to drop by in person, which would provide her little opportunity to give him the brush-off if she was at all apprehensive about discussing a ten-year-old relationship.

  A female voice that cracked under the strain of years’ worth of smoking too many cigarettes snapped, “Who is this?” at Connor after he said hello.

  “I’m trying to reach Irene Geary,” Connor said.

  “Yeah, who wants to talk to her?”

  “My name is Connor Parks,” he replied. “I’m a detective with the Sacramento Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit. I need to ask you some questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  Connor heard the flick and hiss of a lighter, followed by a deep, sucking breath and then a heavy exhale. “Ms. Geary, did you once reside at 1653 Larkspur Road?”

  Another drag on the cigarette. Then, “Yeah.”

  “You lived there from 1992 to 1996, is that right?”

  “I moved out of there in ’95,” she said. “What is this about?”

  “In ’95,” Connor said, “what happened that precipitated that move?”

  “Whose business is that? You tell me why you’re calling or I’m not saying squat. How do I know you’re a real cop?”

  Connor offered her his badge number, the name of his captain, and the phone number for both the city police and his own extension. He instructed her to call the information line for the police department and confirm that he was indeed a detective there.

  Instead she said, “I had a problem with a tenant. I left. Took me a while to get rid of the house. That it?”

  “Can I have the name of that tenant?” Connor asked, excitement spiraling up from his gut.

  “Don’t remember,” she said.

  “Do you have some written records of that?” he asked.

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “What was the nature of your problem?” he asked.

  “Don’t remember,” she said again.

  “Ms. Geary, does the name Claire Fletcher sound familiar to you?”

  “Claire who?”

  “Claire Fletcher. Have you heard that name before?”

  “Don’t think so,” she said.

  Connor would have had a better read on her had they been face-to-face, but she didn’t sound as if the name struck a chord. “Ms. Geary, Claire Fletcher is the name of a woman that we think may be in grave danger. We’re investigating the possibility that your former tenant may have something to do with her disappearance.”

  There was a long silence. “You don’t even know his name,” Irene Geary said. “How do you know he’s involved?”

  “I can’t discuss the details of the investigation, but it is very important that we find out everything we can about this person,” Connor said. “Are you still in contact with him?”

  Irene Geary coughed and spluttered, hacking like a veteran smoker. “No,” she said. “No way. I told you, we had a problem. I never saw or heard from him again. I don’t know anything about
any woman or anything else. Is that all?”

  “Just a few more questions,” Connor said. “Did you allow your tenant use of your Pontiac Parisienne station wagon in 1995?”

  “Look,” she groused. “I told you I don’t remember. I’m done talking. Now leave me alone and don’t call back.”

  Abruptly, Irene Geary ended the call, leaving Connor with the sound of a steadily buzzing dial tone pressed against his ear.

  Connor redialed her number three times, but she did not answer, nor did an answering machine pick up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  1997

  When I hit road, I turned right. I didn’t know where I was going. I was not experiencing conscious thought. I was numb and eerily calm, as I had been since I took on the part of Lynn, the pet who wore pretty clothes, slept in a bed unchained, and asked for books to read.

  I drove several miles. Cars passed in the opposite direction, and it seemed strange that I should be out in the world, seen even fleetingly by others, and that nothing happened. There were no shouts, no pointing, and no masses of people rushing to my rescue calling, “There she is! That’s the girl who was kidnapped! Call the police.”

  I didn’t exist anymore, and that realization left me hollow. There were signs on the road that alerted me to the fact that I was a mere ten miles outside the city I had called home for the first fifteen years of my life. I pulled into the first place I saw, which happened to be a bar. Glowing neon signs promising various brands of beer bracketed the door. I got out, still with no particular plan in mind. The careless, ignorant fingers of the world that no longer saw or looked for Claire Fletcher scraped the last of the soft tissue from the hollow place inside me.

  I walked in and took a seat at the bar. There were maybe ten people inside. Some playing pool, some at the end of the bar engaged in a secretive conversation with the bartender. I sat for some time, the cool, smoky air rubbing my arms lightly. I did not notice the single form nursing his beer at a corner table until he came to sit next to me.

  He smiled at me, and the sight almost knocked me off my stool. My throat closed up with the realization that I had not looked at a single face besides my captor’s and Sarah’s in two whole years.

  He was young and slightly overweight with shaggy brown hair and wide brown eyes. His smile was kind and a little nervous. Shy, I realized. He extended a hand.

  “Hi, I’m Rudy,” he said.

  “Claire.” The voice seemed to come from somewhere just behind me, startling me. I shook his hand.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” he said.

  “I don’t get out much.”

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “Okay.”

  “What would you like?”

  I looked at the beer in his hand. “Whatever you’re having is fine,” I said.

  He smiled again and signaled the bartender, who hardly glanced at me and returned to the conversation at the end of the bar almost before he set the beer down in front of me.

  I picked it up. It was wonderfully cold in my hand. “Thank you,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  I drank almost all of it in a single gulp. Rudy put his hand on my wrist, laughing. “Hey,” he said. “Slow down.”

  Some of it dribbled down my chin and I swiped it away with the back of my hand. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “I just don’t want you to get sick is all.”

  I nodded.

  He studied me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I drank more slowly after that, and he bought me another beer and then another. He talked, and I surfed on the sound of his voice. A new voice, a different voice, a kind voice. His laughter suffused every part of my body. I closed my eyes, and my body cooed as Rudy’s voice reverberated through me.

  He told me about his life, his parents, and how he had dropped out of college last year and taken a computer repair job at a small office just miles away. Occasionally, he asked me general questions about myself, like where I was from, had I ever been here or there, which I answered monosyllabically when possible.

  I stood up to use the bathroom and swayed from the alcohol. When I returned, Rudy’s face was lined with concern. “Claire,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said again. “I just—I haven’t had anything to drink for a while.”

  “Then you definitely shouldn’t have any more,” he said. He placed another bill on the bar and gently touched my elbow, guiding me toward the door.

  The air outside was hot and thick. The parking lot spun a little.

  “Did you drive here?” Rudy asked, glancing at the vehicles in the parking lot.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Well, can I give you a lift home?”

  I looked at him for a long time. “No,” I said. I don’t have a home, I added silently. “I want to go somewhere with you.”

  His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “That’s not why I was buying you drinks, you know, Claire,” he said.

  I smiled, something that felt unnatural to the contours of my face after the last two years. “I know that,” I said. “Please. I want to go somewhere with you.”

  “Um, well, okay. But where? My apartment?”

  I shook my head, and the ground tipped up ninety degrees and back. Rudy caught my shoulder so I wouldn’t fall. “No, not your apartment,” I said. “Where else can we go?”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, and before he spoke again, it was obvious the suggestion was couched in much hesitation. “Well, there’s a motel just down that way, past those trees about a quarter mile.”

  I smiled again and leaned my body into his. “Let’s walk,” I said.

  Rudy wrapped a hand around my upper arm to steady me as we walked. The motel was small, with shabby brown siding and ten identical doors. I waited outside as Rudy paid for a room. We were in number six. The room had only a bed, a nightstand, and a small bathroom off to the side, hardly bigger than a closet. I peed with the door open, and when I came out, Rudy stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed, hands thrust into his pants pockets.

  I went over and stood in front of him. I smiled and pulled my dress over my head, dropping it beside us. I unhooked my bra and he flushed deeply.

  “Wow, Claire,” he said.

  “Kiss me, Rudy,” I said, enjoying the sound of a stranger’s name on my lips.

  He held my face and kissed me sloppily, his tongue flopping around in my mouth. I plopped onto the bed and kicked off my shoes. He looked down on me in raw amazement. “Come on,” I said. “You have something, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, I …” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, and from that a condom, which looked as if it had spent the better part of its shelf life in his wallet.

  I had only to gesture for him to come closer, and he was fumbling at the front of his pants. He did not take off his clothes. He climbed on top of me, making a haphazard attempt to feel between my legs and graze my breasts with his hands. It took less than a minute. I felt nothing.

  He lay beside me afterward, panting. “Wow, Claire,” he said again. “Wow.”

  I said nothing, did not even look at him. I looked at the water-stained drop ceiling and felt the full satisfaction of my betrayal. Another man had touched me—finally. Another man had been inside my body. I was no longer only my captor’s reluctant treasure.

  In minutes, Rudy was snoring beside me. I pulled my clothes back on, not bothering to wash the smell of his sweat or sweet-and-sour breath from me. I watched him sleep for a while and wondered what I would do next. Some part of me realized that I could go home now. I was free. But the prospect of taking that road terrified me almost as much as returning to the shack in the woods with the dead girl in the backyard. I couldn’t tell why.

  I tore a page from the Bible that sat on the end table and fished a pen out of Rudy’s pocket. On it, I wrote only my name—my real name—and my former
address. Perhaps he would go there and look for me. Perhaps he would tell my family he had seen me, and they would know that I was alive, even if I could not return home.

  I walked out into the cool night air, my feet padding silently along the road. I sauntered back to the truck, embraced and tightly held by the darkness all around me, filled with the sounds of cicadas and night-flying birds. I was almost to the door of the truck when I saw him. His car was on the other side, and he was pacing back and forth between the vehicles, his face set in angry lines, fingers drumming madly against his thighs.

  He flew around the front of the truck and grabbed the back of my neck. I thought I saw tears streaking his face, but it was too dark to tell. He turned me around to face him and delivered a sharp uppercut into my middle. He pulled me up by my hair, opened the truck door, and stuffed me inside, pushing me to the passenger’s side so he could climb in after me. I curled into the pain in my stomach and pelvis as he drove back to the wooden house. He dragged me inside and into my room, where he threw me to the floor.

  Venom dripped from his mouth with every word, and spittle flew as he kicked me.

  “You disgusting, filthy little whore,” he said. “You dirty, disgusting slut. How could you do this to me? To us? I gave you everything. I’ve done everything you’ve asked, given you all that you asked for and this, this is how you show your gratitude?”

  He spit on my curled form. Dimly, I thought of reminding him that I had asked for only two things: my freedom and books. I had only books. In fact, he had given me only one thing I’d asked for. I thought it went without saying that I would give any amount of books for my freedom.

  “You’re disgusting,” he said, his voice husky and moist.

  He bound me hand and foot and left me tied to nothing, lying in a spit-soaked heap on the bedroom floor.

  He did not return for several days.

  When he returned, he was crying. Like a small child. He sprawled on the floor and pulled my head into his lap. He poured water over my lips, and I tried to drink it as fast as it came but ended up choking on most of it.