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

by Lisa Regan

  “He was a pervert,” she said. “A pedophile. He could only get it up for little girls. Maybe for little boys too. I don’t know, but he sure as hell got it up when he started sneaking into my room at night.”

  “What did he do?” Connor asked. Most of the time he would have taken a less direct route to finding out details, since victims of sex crimes were often reluctant to relive the horror of their ordeals, and rightfully so, Connor thought. But Noel seemed as if she wanted, maybe even needed, to talk about it.

  Now she looked at Mitch, who held her gaze thoughtfully, compassion tempering the usually military affect of his face.

  “Well, he started out climbing into bed with me and just touching me,” she said. “He’d wait till my mom was asleep and he’d creep in and get under the covers with me. I never slept after the first time. I was always up, waiting to see if he would come or not. I didn’t have a lock on my door. After a few times, I figured out how to wedge a chair under the knob and that stopped him for a while. He would just slip his hands under my pajamas and rub me—you know, my chest and between my legs.”

  Noel made a face of disgust. Goose bumps rose along the flesh of her arms and legs.

  “Did he say anything?” Mitch asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not then. I kept pushing him away and telling him to stop. Back then I didn’t know a whole lot. It wasn’t something I was prepared for.” She lowered her eyes, ashamed. “I kind of didn’t know what to do.”

  Mitch nodded. “That’s very common, Ms. Geary.”

  She gave him a shy smile, which lasted only until she spoke again. “Plus, I felt really dirty and gross, you know?”

  Mitch and Connor nodded in unison.

  “I mean it just felt so … dirty.” She used the word dirty again as if it was a curse, her voice low and throaty.

  “Ms. Geary,” Mitch said, his voice soothing, as if he were speaking to a child. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You were a child. What he did to you was wrong and certainly not your fault. Most children do not know how to respond to such things and that’s okay—children are not supposed to find themselves in that situation.”

  “Yeah,” she said, as if she wasn’t quite sure she believed him.

  “So when you started putting the chair beneath the doorknob, did the abuse stop?” Mitch asked.

  She shook her head. “For a while. Then it started again when my mom was at work. She didn’t get home for about two hours after I got home from school—and he was there. He was always there. I don’t remember him ever having a job. Anyway, he would corner me in the living room or bedroom. He would take my clothes off and touch me. He kept saying he was doing it because he loved me and he wanted to make me feel good, but all I ever felt was disgusting. I told him I was going to tell my mom and that she would make him stop, but he said that she wouldn’t believe me.

  “He said he was the best guy my mom had ever gone out with, and I knew that was true ’cause she said it all the time. He said she would never believe that he would do anything untoward to me. That’s the word he used. Untoward. I had to look it up in the dictionary.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He was a real fucking sicko,” she said. “He kept saying that we had to keep our love a secret because other people wouldn’t understand—like I wanted him to grope me and stick his nasty fingers in me. I told him that my mom would believe me, even though by that time I wasn’t totally sure. I was almost as afraid of telling her as I was of him molesting me all the time because I kept thinking, What will I do if she doesn’t believe me? I couldn’t face that.”

  “It’s a tough spot to be in,” Mitch said. “Unfortunately, there are many parents who don’t believe their children or choose not to believe them when faced with the prospect that someone they love, someone they have welcomed into their home, is hurting their children in the worst possible way. That doesn’t make it right, though.”

  Noel smoothed her hands over her thighs. Blonde locks fell over her shoulders, partially blocking her face. “Yeah,” she said. “I knew this girl in my school back then who said her pastor was screwing her—she was my age. She told everyone and nobody believed her. Nobody. Not her parents, not her grandparents, not our guidance counselor, or any of our teachers. All that guy had to do was deny it and everyone bought it. Five years later, the police caught him doing some eleven-year-old girl in the back of his car and he went to prison. Then all of a sudden, everyone realized that that girl might have been telling the truth.”

  “Did you ever try to tell anyone?” Mitch asked.

  “No. Well, I tried to tell my mom a few times, but I didn’t know how to say it. I was so afraid she wouldn’t do anything that I never really got past the words, ‘Mom, I have something to tell you.’ So it kept happening. He went from touching me to touching himself while he touched me. He didn’t have any problems getting it up when he was being a big, disgusting pervert. After a while, he would make me blow him. That was the worst. I had heard girls at school talking about it, although I don’t think any of them had actually done it at the time. There I was, thirteen and having to suck this guy’s dick when I got home from school. Then my mom would come home and he would be all sweet and pleasant with her like he couldn’t do a thing wrong.”

  “Did your mom ever walk in during one of these incidents?” Mitch asked.

  Noel smiled, a delightfully wicked smile. “Better,” she said. “The day he actually tried to fuck me, she came home early from work and saw him on the couch, trying to stick his cock in me. He was rock-hard too, so it was pretty clear at that point why he couldn’t get it up for her. He liked kids.”

  “What did your mother do?” Mitch asked.

  “She beat the shit out of him. I never saw her like that. I mean all those assholes she dated before used to knock her around, and she didn’t do a damn thing but take it and then cry all night long. But that day, she didn’t even put down her bag. She was on top of him so fast I barely had a chance to get off the couch and away from him. She just kept hitting him and hitting him. It took him a few minutes to get her off him. Then she just stood there, looking like a wild animal. Her hair was all messed up, and her clothes were rumpled. She told him to get out.

  “Then he started in on this thing about how him and I were in love and we were going to be together forever and she couldn’t stop it—all this really sick shit. She didn’t buy a word of it. She told him to get out again, and he said he wasn’t leaving without me. Then she broke a lamp over his head. He laid there moaning while she got me dressed and then we left.”

  “Where did you go?” Mitch asked.

  “For the first couple of nights, we went to a hotel. It seemed like she didn’t know what to do. She asked me a few questions, like how long it was going on, and why I didn’t tell her and all that shit. I know she went back there a couple of times to try and get him to leave but he wouldn’t. So then we went to stay with one of her friends until she could get him out of the house.”

  “Your mother never called the police?” Connor asked, feeling it was safe to rejoin the conversation now that the worst parts were over.

  “No. Never. I thought she would, you know? But she didn’t. At the time, I didn’t really care. I was just happy to be away from him. But looking back, I wish she had. I mean it wasn’t right. God knows what he’s done since then, how many other girls he’s done things to.”

  “What did your mother tell her friend when the two of you moved in there?” Connor asked.

  Noel shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know she didn’t tell her about him being a pervert. She made up some story. We really never talked about it after that, not to each other, not to anyone. Anytime someone asked her what happened with that guy, she made up some story.”

  “Did you ever go back to the house?” Mitch asked.

  “No. I never did. He lived there for almost six months, though. She couldn’t get him to leave. Finally, when she told him she was selling the house and people would be coming by to
look at it, he took off. Just like that. There one day, gone the next. She went, got our stuff, and we moved to Arizona.”

  “Do you get along well with your mother?” Connor asked.

  Noel laughed. “Not so much,” she said. “I moved back out here for school to get away from her. I mean we still talk on the phone, but I’m happier when she’s not around.”

  Connor and Mitch asked her a few more questions about Rod Page, Mitch taking notes furiously. They thanked her for her time and for talking with them, especially since the subject matter was not easy for her to speak about. The session seemed to take something out of her, cast a pall over her buoyant mood. She was quiet as she walked them to the door.

  Connor turned to her once more before leaving. “Ms. Geary,” he said. “Would you be willing to sit down with an artist and come up with a composite sketch of Page?”

  Noel shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  Connor handed her his card. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch. Call me if you think of anything else.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Outside, the two men stood on either side of Connor’s car. They stood by their doors but made no move to get in. Connor looked at Mitch from across the vehicle’s roof.

  “That’s quite a woman,” Mitch said. “And I don’t mean the way she looks.”

  “Yeah,” Connor agreed. “I think that may be the first time she’s ever talked about what happened to her.”

  Mitch frowned, deepening the lines in his face. “You think this is the guy who took Claire?”

  Connor ground his teeth before answering. “He’s looking pretty good. He was close by. I checked the address out the other day, and they had a garage. He would have been alone there for months. The car fits. Plus, the minute he heard people would be coming to look at the house, he left.”

  “And he was a grade A sicko.”

  Connor sighed and leaned his arms atop the car. “Well, Geary said that he thought they were in love with each other. That’s what he told the mother. So the mother takes her away and he freaks out.”

  “That’s probably what triggered it,” Mitch said, placing his arms on the top of the car to mirror Connor. “He decided to go get him a new girl, one he could keep.”

  “Which would explain why he didn’t kill Claire,” Connor said.

  They looked at each other, both distinctly uncomfortable. Mitch’s eyes were watery, and for a moment Connor thought he might cry. “What he must have done to her,” Mitch murmured.

  Connor swiped a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “You know, even if she could have come home, maybe she didn’t want to. Not that she didn’t want to get away from him, but maybe she was ashamed to face her family.”

  He thought of the victims of the rapist he had killed. He knew that for some women who suffered through sexual assaults or sexual abuse, facing the world again could be as traumatic as enduring the abuse.

  Many times their families and friends, coworkers, and other acquaintances no longer knew how to act or what to say to them. Many rapes went unreported because it was just too difficult for the victims to tell their stories over and over again to hospital staff, police, attorneys, and then in court. Many victims who did go through the process of seeking justice described it as being raped all over again.

  “But her family wouldn’t have cared,” Mitch said.

  “It changes you, Mitch,” Connor said. “I deal with rape and sex abuse victims all the time. It changes you. It’s not pretty.”

  Mitch waved a hand. “I know, I know,” he said.

  “Do you? You worked homicide, right?”

  “For a long time, but I worked my share of sex crimes.”

  “Well, I know this is hard to wrap your mind around because it’s Claire—and she was like a niece to you—but I don’t think this guy kept her for ten years just to look at her.”

  “You think he’s still, you know, abusing her?”

  Connor squinted. “I don’t know. She’s probably too old for him now. But obviously he still has some control over her, some claim on her, or she wouldn’t be calling me to tell me to protect myself.”

  “You think he’s got another girl now?”

  “I don’t doubt it. These guys don’t stop. He snatched Claire and so far he’s gotten away with it. There’s nothing stopping him from doing it again.”

  “Man, this is a real shitstorm.” Mitch tapped the roof of the car. “We should check out missing persons for girls between twelve and fifteen. You wanna try and find this guy while I do that?”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. “I need to get an artist out to Geary’s place too.”

  “You know any forensic artists?”

  Connor grinned sheepishly. “No. Can’t say I do. There is someone the division uses now and then. I could find out who.”

  Mitch waved a hand. “Nah. I know someone. It’s gonna cost close to a grand, though. Could be more. I doubt your department is going to pick up the tab on this since you’re not even supposed to be working this case.”

  Connor shrugged. “I’ll pay for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m a divorced workaholic. What do I have to spend my money on? It’ll be a small price to pay if it helps crack the case.”

  Mitch stared at him for a long moment, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. Finally, he said, “We’ll split it then.”

  “All right,” Connor said. “You check on missing girls and get me an artist. I’ll see what I can dig up on Rod Page. I’ll drop you off at your car, and I’ll come by your office later when I’ve got something.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  1998

  After our first conversation, I tried to pity Tiffany. I tried to imagine her as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, unspoiled and rife with promise. What had happened to her that sent her down this ugly path to his bed?

  As time wore on, I found I could no longer pity her. I hated her. I hated her not for reasons that she surmised, which had mostly to do with jealousy over him, but because she had chosen freely to live the life I had been forced into. I hated her because she had thrown away a girlhood I would have died to recapture.

  I became a ghost in the house, only conjured back into form when the two of them needed me to cut a path through the mire of their bizarre liaison. When she felt his attention slipping away for even a moment, she would tune into my presence long enough to blame me for some transgression against her, for which he would punish me. My punishment placated her and jerked him back to her.

  After a while, she discovered that refusing to fulfill his sexual fantasies was even more powerful than putting me in the cross fire between them. On those nights, he would suddenly remember me. He came to my room and tried to force himself on me. I had become stronger with growth and months without physical abuse so that, finally, I was able to fend him off. I think he came more to make her jealous than to fulfill his degenerate needs.

  They professed their love for each other relentlessly, but their connection thrived on the warped, writhing entrails of jealousy more than anything else. It was music they danced to, a theater in which they acted out a tedious melodrama. I had only cameo roles. Mostly, I did not even speak.

  I embraced my life as a sentient ghost. I endured their summons from a place far away, aware of them only as vague annoyances. I kept watch over the two graves outside my window and read what books Tiffany had left me again and again until the pages were dog-eared and the bindings loosened.

  Still, Tiffany was an irritant. Like getting an eyelash in your eye. She was a paper cut on your index finger that wouldn’t heal. She was the incessant twang of an alarm clock that you could never turn off. Sometimes she was a hot burner you accidentally placed a hand on. No amount of cold water could cool her.

  She tested even his patience. I saw in his face sometimes that he questioned the decision he’d made to bring her home with him. In a way, I had been easier for him to deal with. I could be beaten into submission and chain
ed to him. Tiffany, however, had to be placated. If he tried once to hit her, she would leave, and she fulfilled his ultimate fantasy—the child bride wholly in love with him.

  Her campaign to exile me from her kingdom began almost the moment she arrived. One evening, the three of us sat at dinner. I ate silently and did not look at either of them.

  “What’s the matter with her?” Tiffany asked him, looking pointedly past me as if I were merely air, an unpleasant odor, or a stain on her tablecloth.

  He set his fork down. “With whom?”

  She stabbed her own fork in my direction. “Her. She don’t say nothing.”

  He smiled. “Oh, Lynn has always been very quiet.”

  He didn’t mention my litany of protests, my howled entreaties to be returned home, or the hours I’d spent screaming so long and loud that I could no longer tell when I had stopped.

  “Is she dumb or something?”

  “No.”

  “Retarded?”

  “Tiffany,” he said, gently admonishing.

  She did not lower her eyes. “Well, she acts like it.”

  She resumed eating, shoveling forkfuls of food into her mouth as if at any second the feast before her might be snatched away.

  I pictured her eating from a garbage can. He reached over and touched her forearm. “Slow down,” he said. “From now on you will have all the food you could ever want.”

  At this, she was humbled. Her face was like broken glass when she beamed at him. “I want chocolate,” she said.

  “Anything you want, my darling.” His words dripped saccharine over her sour demeanor.

  He lavished her with anything she asked for. He would not allow her to leave the house, though she begged to go everywhere with him.

  In the three and a half years he’d held me captive, he had never had a television. Now he installed one nearly the size of Tiffany. When he was gone, she languished in front of it, making lists of things she wanted, which she gleaned mostly from commercials.