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

by Lisa Regan

  My father shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems odd. I don’t really think of shooting as a primarily feminine hobby.”

  My mother raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, I think if more women did it, more women would enjoy it.” She turned to me. “If you enjoyed it, maybe we could go together next time. I have a nice little Ruger .380 you might like.”

  My father stared at my mother as if she had just landed on the couch in a spaceship. “Jenny,” my father began.

  Her eyebrow arch grew even more pronounced. “After you left, a lot of things changed,” she said pointedly.

  “I did enjoy it,” I said. “I mean it was scary and intimidating at first, and I only got on the target a couple of times, but it was great.”

  My mother beamed. My father looked back at me with an openmouthed, dumbfounded expression on his face.

  “It’s been so long since I tried anything new,” I gushed. “You know, just for the sake of trying something new. Just because I could. It was exhilarating.”

  When my father glanced at my feet, I realized I was rocking back and forth on my heels. When he looked back at my face, his eyes were wet.

  “Dad? Are you okay?”

  My mother smiled. “He’s crying, dear, because you sound like your old self.”

  My body stilled. I looked from one parent to the other. “Really?”

  Both my parents nodded.

  I smiled. “I guess that’s good.”

  “Yes,” my mother agreed. “Yes, it is.”

  Brianna waited in the room I’d been sleeping in, curled up on the bed, reading a book. The sight of her made my stomach fall. The high I’d enjoyed a moment earlier dissipated completely. She jumped up when she saw me.

  “Claire,” she said.

  I didn’t look at her. “Can we do this another time?”

  “I’m not here to … I don’t want to …” she stammered, tossing her book onto the bed and putting her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry.”

  Hesitantly, I met her eyes. She wore reading glasses, which she removed. Her usual hard exterior softened. She looked like the sister I had known ten years ago. I ached for the time we had lost. I saw now the way her bitterness had become like the hard outer shell of a tortoise. She used it to keep the world out—all of it.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  I sighed and sat at the foot of the bed. “Me too,” I muttered.

  Brianna rounded the bed and stood before me. “I shouldn’t have come at you like that. I had so many questions. I was trying to understand. Mom said to think of the worst thing that had ever happened to me and to try to imagine how I’d feel if I had to discuss it with everyone and their brother ad nauseam.” She sighed and sat down next to me. A long moment passed. Brianna continued, “I’ve never been raped. Never been beaten. I’ve never even had a guy come on too strong. The only thing that came to mind was that a guy I was living with cheated on me once. The more I thought about it—about how humiliating that was—I realized I never wanted to talk about it or answer questions about it. I just wanted to forget.”

  “Bree, you don’t have to explain.”

  “I know it’s not even remotely comparable to what happened to you. I’m just trying to make a point. I am trying to understand what it must be like to be in your shoes. But in all honesty, the worst thing that ever happened to me was you being abducted.”

  I looked at her. My eyes stung with unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” I said, my throat thick.

  “Were you scared?” she asked, her voice low and tentative.

  I sniffed. “All the time,” I admitted, my voice cracking.

  “I know that what happened to you was not your fault,” Brianna said, taking my hand. “I’m angry and bitter, but I know that what he did to you was not your fault. I wish … I …” She struggled, looking away and then back at me, shoring herself up for what she would say next. All the years of anger had made it difficult for her to be vulnerable. “I wish I could somehow take on some of your pain, relieve you of some of it. I don’t care about what happened to you. I care that you are back with us. You’re my baby sister. I love you.”

  I nodded, dropping my chin to my chest, squeezing Brianna’s hand. I couldn’t hold the tears back. They streamed silently from my tired eyes, a mixture of raw emotions that could not be tamed. Relief, guilt, shame, and happiness.

  “One day I will tell you,” I offered. I said this because I had always shared everything with Brianna. I also knew that she was trying to smooth things over between us, but one day she would want to know. One day I might need to confide in her.

  “Claire, I don’t need …”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “One day I will tell you. But not today.”

  “Okay.” She hugged me hard, and I inhaled her scent. She released me and said, “Hey, wanna make brownies and watch The Cutting Edge?”

  I laughed. It had been our ritual before I was taken. Whenever one of us had needed cheering up, we would make brownies and eat all of them while we watched The Cutting Edge. It was a silly romantic comedy, but it always made us feel better. I hadn’t thought about it in almost a decade.

  “You still have that on tape?” I said.

  Brianna wrinkled her nose. “On tape? I have it on DVD.”

  “What’s DVD?”

  Her eyes widened. “Wow,” she said. “Sometimes it really is like you were in a coma for ten years.”

  “I wish I had been,” I said.

  She grimaced. “Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Really. It’s fine. I’d prefer it sometimes if we could pretend that’s where I was.”

  “Maybe we can, kind of,” Brianna said. I followed her down the hallway to the living room. My parents had gone to bed. “We can come up with a code word. You just say coma and I’ll know to pretend that’s where you were.”

  I laughed. “Maybe,” I said.

  “I’m going to mix the brownies. You turn on the TV. When I’m done, I’ll give you a lesson on DVDs,” she said.

  “Okay.” I used the remote to turn the television on. I flipped through a few channels, but the same thing was on every channel. It was a breaking news report. An Amber Alert had been issued for thirteen-year-old Emily Hartman. She had been abducted six hours earlier from outside her home in Bakersfield, California. The news programs showed a photo of her. It was a candid shot, probably taken by a family member. She had a broad smile, big blue eyes, and long, curly brown hair. She looked a lot like me. Like Alison Ward. She had been abducted by a man and a young woman.

  Brianna came back into the room. Her voice barely registered. “Claire? Claire. Hey, are you okay?”

  Nausea rocked my body. Acid burned the back of my throat. A man and a young woman. My abductor and Tiffany.

  I felt Brianna’s hand on my shoulder. “Claire. You’re freaking me out.”

  Numb, I gestured to the television. “It’s him,” I said. “He’s taken someone else.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  “It’s been two weeks since Emily Hartman was abducted. You don’t have any leads?”

  Connor watched Claire pace in Farrell’s kitchen. She kept folding her arms across her chest and unfolding them, like she didn’t know what to do with them. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. Connor estimated she had lost at least five pounds, if not more. She had already been thin. She was approaching gaunt now.

  “Claire, that’s really not up to us. Bakersfield PD is handling that case. That’s a long way from here,” he pointed out.

  She stopped walking and gave him a stricken look. “But it was him. He took her. I know it. Have you called the police in Bakersfield? Did you tell them?”

  Connor sighed. “Yes, Stryker contacted them. He suggested to them that the man who abducted you might have also abducted Emily Hartman.”

  She shook her head, as if disgusted with this paltry offering, and resumed her frenetic pacing.

  Connor took
a step toward her. “Claire, your mom said you haven’t been eating or sleeping.”

  She stopped again and met his eyes with a serious look. She lowered her voice in case any of her family members were outside the kitchen, listening. “I can’t … I can’t do this,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  She gestured around her. “This. Live a normal life. He’s out there, he has taken another girl, and now the same thing that happened to me is happening to her. I can’t … I can’t do this.”

  Tears leaked from her tired eyes. Connor fought the urge to gather her in his arms and comfort her.

  “I keep seeing Alison in my mind.” Claire shuddered and hugged herself. “It wasn’t real until I saw her. Can you understand that?”

  “What wasn’t real?”

  “That he could do what he did to me to someone else—that he would do it. There was only ever me. Tiffany was there willingly. But when I saw Alison and after that, when I came home, I found out about that other girl, Noel—” A sob choked off the rest of her sentence.

  Connor laid a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t wince. He wanted to comfort her, hold her, but he didn’t want to scare her or add to the tremulous fear he saw in her eyes. The more time he spent with her, the more Connor felt an inexplicable pull toward Claire. She was traumatized, and along with that angry, frightened, overwhelmed, and confused. But she was also Claire. There were panic attacks, nightmares, and tears. In spite of that, being with her was effortless. The whole thing was making his mind spin.

  “Claire,” he whispered. “This isn’t your job. Believe me, the police are looking for this guy. The whole state is looking for him.”

  She took a moment to compose herself, swallowed, and looked up at him. Her eyes made him ache. “Do you have any leads?”

  Connor cleared his throat. “Not on the photo yet, but they started digging at the house you took us to—the one where Miranda Simon was killed.”

  As Connor had anticipated, Claire’s abductor had switched aliases from Rod Page to George Minarik and bought the property outright. Boggs and Stryker had tracked down the real estate agent who sold it. Rod Page aka George Minarik had paid cash over nine years earlier.

  They had caught two breaks this time. First, because the suspect bought the house under a false name and was wanted in connection with two abductions, three counts of attempted murder, and several counts of assault and rape, they were able to get a search warrant and dig up the yard, which would add at least two murders to the man’s crimes, although it had taken two weeks to get all the requisite technicians and equipment before the digging started.

  The second break was that George Minarik had a recent driver’s license.

  Finally, they had a photo. Both Claire and Alison had positively identified the man as their abductor, and the photo was almost an exact match to the composites the police department had created in the previous weeks. The driver’s license photo was released to the media, and for the last two weeks, Connor could hardly turn on the television without seeing the man’s face. The department got over a hundred calls but no viable leads. Boggs and Stryker were still waiting for fingerprint matches in the national database, although Stryker had called Connor that day to say they might have something by the next morning.

  Claire stopped pacing. Her face was incredibly sad, and for that, Connor felt like a failure. “That doesn’t sound like very much,” she said.

  He grimaced. “It’s not, but I promise you, my division is working on this. Look, Boggs and Stryker wanted me to come by the division tomorrow morning. They think they may have found some new leads. Why don’t you meet me there and see if they’ve turned anything up?”

  Claire sighed. Her face was so drawn and haggard. She looked like she had been through a war. Connor saw now why Jenny had called him, asked him to talk to Claire. “Fine. I’ll meet you there tomorrow.” She didn’t sound the least bit enthused. “But Connor—” She broke off, and he saw a raw mixture of anger and fear in her eyes.

  “Yes, Claire.”

  “Every hour that goes by is another hour that he is spending torturing Emily Hartman.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Claire was already waiting for him when Connor arrived at work the next morning. She sat outside the building that housed the Major Crimes Unit with a cup of coffee in her hands. He could tell she had not slept overnight. In spite of that, he felt a little thrill go through him at the sight of her. She rose abruptly when she saw him and smiled. Once again, looking into her eyes, he felt a split second of panic. This time it wasn’t from the sorrow he often saw there—it was her.

  He looked away from her eyes, instead studying the untamed dark curls resting against her cheek as she gazed up at him. He was completely disarmed by her, and it frightened him to think how much he had come to care for her in such a short period. The last time he’d even come close to feeling what he felt for Claire, he’d wasted eight years of his life only to have his heart trampled on. But he already knew he could not turn his back on her. It was far too late for that.

  He smiled. “I heard you got your driver’s license. Did you drive yourself?”

  Her eyes lit up a little. “Yeah, I did. I’ve driven before—as you know—but not as a licensed driver.”

  Connor laughed and led them inside. Stryker greeted them as they got off the elevator at the division. Connor and Claire followed him to his desk. Stryker pulled out his chair and gestured to Claire. “Sit,” he said.

  Claire took a seat, and Connor sat on the edge of Stryker’s desk. “Where’s Boggs?” he asked.

  “Following up on something. He should be here any minute.”

  Claire fidgeted with her hands and looked from Connor to Stryker.

  “What have you got?” Connor asked.

  Stryker sighed. He folded his arms across his chest and looked directly at Claire, his eyebrows drawn together. “Miss Fletcher,” he began.

  “Claire. Please, call me Claire,” she said.

  “Claire, what I’m about to tell you is generally not released to the public during an open investigation. A lot of it is public record, but pretty much if the press doesn’t splatter it all over the front page or the six o’clock news, then people aren’t aware of it.”

  “I understand,” Claire said. “I’m not a police officer or an investigator.”

  Stryker nodded. “First, we found the remains of Jim Randall. At least that’s the initial report from the ME. It’ll take him a few days to write it up in his official report and release it to the press, but the dental records match.”

  Claire’s face turned pasty white. One of her hands flew to her chest. She swallowed with difficulty. “Where?”

  “A few yards away from Teplitz and Simon,” Stryker said.

  Claire squeezed her eyes closed. Connor saw a tremor move through her frame as she fought off the shock and horror of the revelation.

  Stryker gave her a moment before he continued. “Second, I want you to hear this because I know a lot of victims of sex crimes who blame themselves for what happened to them. Almost all of them do at some point or another. But you gotta know that none of what happened to you was your fault. This guy was a creep from the get-go.”

  Claire looked at Connor. The color did not return to her skin. She radiated dread. Connor could feel it where he stood. He smiled briefly at her. He was used to this. There weren’t many rap sheets or criminal pasts that surprised him. Repeat offenders made crime a lifelong habit. Many of them started out with misdemeanors and escalated into felonies. Before Stryker read off the various charges levied against Claire’s abductor in the past, Connor could almost tell her word for word what they would be.

  Claire blinked. “Please. Just tell me.”

  Stryker reached between Connor and Claire and pulled a thick file off his desk. “This guy’s rap sheet reads like a pedophile’s résumé,” he said. “This is the reason the goddamn prints took so long. Not all of this shit was in AFIS.” For Claire’s be
nefit, he added, “AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It was before the technology came along. We turned up so many matches we thought the system was on the blink. Took a while to sift through them and confirm we were looking at the right guy. We’ve got several aliases but all their prints match up and so do photos and descriptions. He moved around a lot. He got mostly misdemeanors in a number of states—trespassing, stalking, indecent exposure, and a couple of Peeping Toms. Not all states have laws against that.”

  “What happened with those?” Connor asked.

  “He paid the fines and they let him go. He only ever spent one month in jail, and that was in Vermont twenty-two years ago.”

  “So he has money,” Connor said.

  Stryker pursed his lips momentarily. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Parks.” Stryker pulled a sheet of paper out of the file and placed it on the desk in front of Claire. Connor saw a black-and-white photo and a summary of criminal charges beneath it on the page. Claire studied it for a moment before gasping.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  Stryker nodded. “Bradley Cullen, Minnesota. One count of sexual assault and battery against a minor. This is the first record of a more serious offense that we could find. It’s pretty old. He made bail and took off. They never found him. The statute of limitations ran out but we managed to get a copy of the file thanks to our good buddies in the Minneapolis PD.”

  “What does that mean?” Claire said.

  Connor frowned. “Well, that’s a tough one. Depending where you are, sexual assault and battery can include anything from the guy rubbing himself against you to rape. It has to involve contact.” Connor turned to Stryker. “What did the file say?”

  “Thirteen-year-old girl. Apparently she lived across the hall from him in an apartment complex. He let her come over to his place to watch television. One day he starts fondling her. Kid starts screaming to high heaven. Parents called the cops and he was arrested that day,” Stryker said.

  “What else?” Claire interjected before Connor could glean more information on the case from Stryker.