Deadly Secrets

by Margaret Daley

  “Not yet.”

  “I feel like the whole department is working these cases, and we aren’t getting anywhere.” He stopped a few feet from Sarah. “I’ve been trying to reassure Rebecca that we’ll find Alicia, but you and I know with each passing day the odds are getting worse. Now that Donna’s been kidnapped, will we find Al—Alicia’s,” he closed his eyes for a few seconds, “body somewhere like Terri’s?”

  “I’m hoping the killer made a mistake at Donna’s house that will lead us to him. Her kidnapping could have been a spur of the moment decision. Is Rebecca finally sleeping?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but I have a feeling that when I left the bedroom, she returned to looking through her photos of Alicia.”

  “I’ll go and check on her.”

  “Thanks. Maybe talking to you will help her.”

  “Is Nana taking a nap?”

  “Yes.” As Sarah passed him to walk down the hall, Mark touched her arm. “I’m sorry about earlier with your dad in the rec room. When you left Cimarron City fifteen years ago, he was devastated.”

  “You mean angry.”

  “No, devastated. He thought you and Hunter were made for each other and couldn’t understand why you left Cimarron City. He threw himself into his job, and after working long hours month after month, he collapsed at the police station from exhaustion. I found him in his office. He let me take him to the hospital where he ended up staying overnight. After that he took a week off. Nana and Rebecca never knew what happened to Paul.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them, especially Rebecca?”

  “Because he said he wouldn’t take the week off if I told anyone.”

  “This family has more secrets than I realized.”

  “Secrets always have a way of coming out. Rebecca knew by the end of that week.”

  “Like mine, coming out this trip.”

  “And I have a bone to pick with you.” One side of Mark’s mouth tilted up. “Making my wife keep a secret from me.”

  “No more. I promise.”

  “Then you should tell Hunter you still love him.”

  “No, I don’t…”

  “I’ve seen how you look at him when he’s not looking. I’m good at my job because I can read people, and you’re shouting your love for Hunter.”

  Mark started for the steps leading downstairs.

  “Wait. Take this coffee to Officer Quinn. Chief Scott should be here in five or ten minutes. If I’m running late, have your officer tell him I’ll be there shortly.”

  “Why is he coming? About Donna?”

  She nodded. “I need someone to help ID people in the library the night Donna was drugged.”

  “I’ll take care of the chief until you return. I’d like to see the people on the video, too. I might know some of them.”

  Sarah hoped Rebecca was asleep, but when she quietly opened the door and peeked inside, her sister sat in the middle of her bed with picture albums spread out everywhere on the coverlet. “You’re supposed to be taking a nap.”

  “Every time I close my eyes, I see Alicia. I can’t sleep.”

  “Looking through all these photos might be why you see her when you close your eyes.”

  “She’s all I have. I’m not ready to lose her.”

  “You have Mark Junior. Have you let him know about his sister?” Sarah eased down onto the bed, her gaze riveted to a picture of Alicia looking for Easter eggs in the backyard. David had loved doing that until he couldn’t anymore because of the Huntington’s Disease. Although she’d had several years to prepare herself for her son’s death, she hadn’t been ready to lose him. She missed his smile and laugh although he’d rarely been able to do that in his last year.

  “He’s out on a patrol. His commander will get a message to him and try to get him a pass to come home.”

  “Good. You need him here. I’ll do whatever I have to bring Alicia home safely. Time’s running out. He’s taken another woman. Donna was the first victim he went after here in Cimarron City, but he wasn’t successful in kidnapping her the first time. He’s changed what he’s done in the past. His MO is evolving.”

  “I need to do something. Sitting around doing nothing is driving me crazy.”

  “Pray, Rebecca. When David was dying, I felt your prayers halfway across this country. It helped me keep a brave front for my son.”

  Her sister touched Sarah’s arm. “Pray with me.”

  “Of course.”

  With their hands clasped together and heads bowed, Rebecca started with the prayer, and Sarah finished, saying, “Lord, please protect Alicia and Donna and show us who the killer is. He needs to be stopped. Anything is possible through You. We need Your help. Amen.”

  Sarah started gathering the albums. “Let’s put these on the dresser. Even if you don’t feel like taking a nap, close your eyes and imagine being held by God. Lean on Him.”

  Rebecca picked up the nearest open album and closed it then stacked another on top of it while Sarah placed them on the dresser.

  “You have a ton of pictures of Alicia. You must have followed your daughter around with a camera.”

  “I have an album for each year for each of my children. I hadn’t looked at them in ages. When Alicia comes home, it’ll be nice to go through these albums with her. The same with my son.” Rebecca lay on the bed, her eyes shut.

  “I love you, Sis. Rest.” Latching onto her sister’s positive thinking—when, not if—Sarah quietly left the bedroom.

  She rushed downstairs as fast as she could go holding a mug full of coffee. She hadn’t relied on the Lord when David was dying. After the rape, she’d been angry with God, but then David came along. She had loved her son in spite of how he’d come to be. David loved hearing about the Lord. But when she’d learned David had Huntington’s Disease and there was no cure, she turned away from God again. How could He take such a sweet, loving child?

  Both times she’d faced devastating circumstances, she’d run away from God. She wasn’t going to now. Alicia and Donna are safe in Your hands. That maniac can’t harm them.

  Officer Quinn stood guard by the door to the rec room. Sarah moved inside, surprised to find Hunter had returned while she was upstairs. Also, Mark and Chief Scott were still there, discussing the case.

  Hunter caught sight of her first and bridged the distance between them. “Is Rebecca okay?” he whispered.

  “No, but we prayed for Alicia. I think that made her feel less helpless.” She smiled at Hunter, his staunch presence reinforcing all the things she’d missed because she’d fled in fear and shame years ago. That action led to what was happening now in Cimarron City. “Chief Scott, thanks for coming to help with the identification.”

  “Where are the pictures you want help with?”

  Sarah moved to the table and picked up the folder sitting next to the computer. “I printed pictures of all the people I want identified.”

  Chief Scott took the file and sat in a chair nearby. “Let me see what I can do. I may have to take the photos back and show the other officers. Would that be okay?”

  “Sure. I made a second set in case you needed to do that. I didn’t expect you to know all four thousand students at the college.” Sarah smiled. “Only three thousand ninety-nine.”

  Chief Scott laughed. “I may fall short by one or two.” By the time he went through the thirty-two pictures, he had named fifteen of them. “I’m sure my staff can come up with more, if not today, by the end of tomorrow. If we can’t identify everyone, we’ll ask around the college and see if the people at the library know who they are.”

  “I appreciate the help. The sooner the better.” Sarah gave the second set of pictures to Mark. “I’d like you to look at them, too. While watching the tape, I saw Ben pick up Alicia from the library. I didn’t see her come in because she must have been there for hours.”

  After the head of the campus police left, Mark flipped through the photos. He held three out and laid them on the desk. “I know these
three young men, but the guy we’re looking for should be in his thirties or forties if we’re going on the assumption the perpetrator who attacked you is behind this.”

  “How do you know them?” Sarah asked.

  “They went to high school with Alicia. She was friends with them.”

  “Write their names down. We’ll interview them. Not every place in the library was on the video. Our killer could have been there but avoiding the camera. Maybe someone saw something to help us.”

  Mark scribbled their names at the bottom of their photos. “That’s something I can follow up with. I’ve got to do something more. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know. Anything in particular I need to ask them?”

  “Yes. Donna was on the top floor of the library in the back corner on the west side at a study cubicle. Did any of them see her? Was anyone else around her?” Sarah gave her brother-in-law another picture. “That’s Donna Conroy.”

  “I’ll check on Rebecca, and then I’ll find out where these three people I identified live and talk to them.” Mark walked from the rec room.

  “We can start with the fifteen people Chief Scott identified from the video.” Hunter picked up the stack of pictures and shuffled through them.

  “Do you know any of them?”

  He pointed at a large, bulky guy. “He’s on the football team as a tackle. He could be drafted into pro football.”

  “We need to also talk with Alex Peterson. He was one of the two men who helped Donna in the parking lot. She didn’t know the other one, but Alex should. They may have seen something she didn’t since she was lightheaded. They called 9-1-1 when she passed out.”

  “We could start with Peterson. Mark is right about focusing on men ten or fifteen years older than these, but we can’t rule them totally out. What if we’re wrong, and Terri’s murder had nothing to do with what happened to you?”

  “From Donna’s interview and the video, I know that Dr. Carter was at the library the evening Donna was.”

  “Ben’s friend?”

  “Yes, we met him Saturday at the church.”

  Hunter ran his fingers through his hair. “We need a background on Dr. Carter and anyone else who has a connection to the three women, especially through Cimarron City College.”

  “Like professors they all have?”

  “Yes. Do any of them have family members with Huntington’s Disease? I’m going to call Officer Harris to dig into Noah Carter’s background. Anyone else off the top of your head?”

  Sarah remembered Donna talking about taking a class with Alicia. “Dr. Carey Allen. Alicia and Donna were in his class. Check the list to see if Terri took the course at a different time. I’m going to see what Nana and Rebecca are doing. Then we need to interview as many as we can.”

  “I’ll add what we know on the board.”

  Sarah glanced out in the hallway. “Have Officer Quinn go through the library video. I could have easily missed something. There’s a lot of footage. I can’t shake the feeling the killer was there. Someone had to spike Donna’s drink.” Sarah exited the rec room and ascended to the ground floor.

  Did she look as tired as Hunter? She needed to get some sleep or she’d soon become ineffective. Upstairs in the kitchen, she filled a travel mug with coffee. She reached for the drink and noticed how much her hand shook from too much caffeine. This would have to be her last cup.

  Staring at the dark brew, she suddenly envisioned that night fifteen years ago. The stranger who offered to help her held out his hand, and she caught sight of a class ring from Cimarron City High School with the same year she graduated with over five hundred others. It gleamed in a stream of light from the campground.

  Chapter Nine

  As Hunter listened to Sarah tell him what she remembered about the evening before their wedding, conflicting emotions—from anger that he couldn’t protect her to sadness that they’d both lost so much that night—battled for supremacy. The regret and grief won out in the end.

  He parked in the lot in front of the Cimarron City College Library, wishing he could hug her and never let go. If only she’d told him... “Are you sure you didn’t see the guy’s face? You might have if you saw the class ring. You could have suppressed it.”

  “I wish I could remember. The only reason I saw the ring was because someone left the campground and had turned on their headlights. When the driver quickly backed out and left, everything went dark again.”

  “What about the sound of his voice? Anything familiar about it?”

  “Not that I remember. Let’s go talk with Alex Peterson. I’m glad he could meet us here. I want to walk through the library after interviewing him. I watched so much tape this afternoon I feel like I know this place and yet I don’t. This library was built ten years ago, so I’ve never been inside.”

  “Actually, I haven’t either.” Hunter climbed from the SUV and met Sarah at the front of his vehicle.

  Their gazes embraced, and all he wanted to do was hold her and never let her go. If only things had been different. If only she’d felt she could come to him and share what happened to her rather than leaving. Together they could have dealt with it. But looking back on their past, he could see now why she didn’t. He’d wanted to be a law enforcement officer. Her father and he had been close. When he was ten, his own dad had died while serving his country, and Paul had filled the massive void.

  But after what he’d witnessed earlier today, when Paul heard about what Sarah had gone through and had reacted badly, Hunter saw Sarah’s relationship with her dad differently. She hadn’t trusted how her father would have handled the situation, and now Hunter understood.

  “Sarah, before we go into the library, I want to tell you I’m sorry you couldn’t share with me what happened sooner. I knew you and your father weren’t close, but I should have seen the depth and width of your separation.”

  “And I should have shared more, but you and Dad were growing closer. You looked up to him because he was the police chief, and he was good at his job.”

  “I wanted to be the kind of cop he was or so I thought. After working under Mark’s leadership at the police department, I realized Paul had issues managing some of his officers effectively.”

  “Before I leave and after we get Alicia back, I need to have a long conversation with my dad if I can get him to listen.”

  “I hope you can, but I also want to talk to you when we aren’t so consumed about finding your niece and Donna.” Hunter strolled toward the main entrance, feeling for the first time in years that they had a chance of letting go of the past and moving forward—together.

  “I feel we put a spotlight on Donna by interviewing her. We have to find her.”

  Their arms brushed against each other as they mounted the steps to the library. Hunter looked sideways at her and clasped her hand. He didn’t break the physical connection between them until he spied Alex Peterson in the lobby, panning the area.

  “I’m Detective Davis and this is Special Agent St. John with the FBI.” Hunter shook the young man’s hand. “Thanks for coming here on such short notice.”

  “I can’t believe the woman I helped was kidnapped today.”

  “Did you know Donna Conroy prior to the incident in the parking lot?” Sarah gestured toward an empty table and chairs off to the side, away from the foot traffic.

  “I’ve seen her in the library occasionally and around campus, going to and from classes, but we aren’t in any together.” Alex sat at the table.

  Hunter took the chair across from the young man. “Why did you think Donna was in trouble and needed help?”

  “Donna left the library right before us, but my friend, Derek Taylor, called out to me. I stopped and waited for him, and then we exited together. He wanted help with our calculus test we were having the next day. Derek saw Donna stumble, and she nearly stepped in front of a moving car. We hurried forward and stopped her. I knew immediately something was wrong. She acted drunk, but I didn’t smell any alcohol. Then I
thought maybe she’d taken some kind of drug, but she insisted she hadn’t. She waved at her car at the back of the lot then started for it, and we decided to go with her. I offered to take her home so she wouldn’t drive, but before she answered, she collapsed. Derek caught her and laid her gently on the ground while I called 9-1-1.”

  Hunter jotted the information from Alex on his notepad. “Did you see anyone near her car or anything unusual?”

  His brow knitted, the young man thought for a long moment. “When I first came out, there was a man standing by the tree near her Chevy, but while I called for an ambulance, he quickly left.”

  “Which way?” Sarah asked.

  “To the right.”

  Sarah drummed her fingers on the table, something she did when stressed. “Did you notice if he got into a vehicle?”

  “Maybe. Derek distracted me when he said Donna had lost consciousness. I checked to see that she was breathing. When I heard a siren, I stood back up. At that time, an old black van drove out of the parking lot. It could have been that man’s. It left from the direction he’d been walking. I didn’t think too much about it because I was worried about Donna.”

  Hunter looked from Sarah to Alex. “Did you see a license plate number or any distinguishing marks on the van?”

  “No. It was two rows over with a pretty full parking lot.”

  “Do you have a way to contact Derek?” When Alex nodded, Hunter slid his pad toward him.

  “He lives on campus in the McClain Dorm, but I don’t know which room. I have his phone number.” The young man wrote it down.

  Sarah folded her hands together. “Did you see anything else that might help us find the van?”

  Alex tilted his head and squinted his eyes. “Actually yes. The back windows were painted over with black.” He rose. “I have a paper due that I need to work on. If I think of something else, I’ll call you.”

  Hunter handed him his card. “Again, thanks for your help.”

  After the young man left, a long silence fell between Hunter and Sarah until she asked, “Have you seen an old black van with painted windows?”