One Final Breath

by Lynn H. Blackburn

  Leave it to Leigh to think about that. “It would definitely be less hostile than a police station.”

  “Indeed. Although we have to see what Velma Brown’s statement is, first. I think that will probably need to happen here.”

  “Yes. I agree,” said Gabe.

  “I guess Anissa’s going to handle that?” asked Ryan.

  “I guess. She’s being pulled in so many directions and everything is happening at once. She’s just trying to stay one step ahead of it. For today, I’m asking Brady to ask Velma Brown to come to Carrington. He’s going to tell her we’ve been doing some investigating into her late husband’s death and would like to speak with her about that if possible. Hopefully she’ll come willingly and before we take her to get Liz. We can’t let her go back to Liz if she was somehow involved in kidnapping her.”

  “True. Poor kid. I’m praying for the best outcome for everyone, but I sure can’t see what it will be.” Ryan summed up Gabe’s own worries in that one line. “I’ll be in the office later. Let me know what you need. The house will be ready for them tonight.”

  Gabe spent the next hour on the phone with Brady. Then on the phone with Velma Brown. Then on the phone with one of the pediatric nurses at the hospital. A quick call to Anissa, then to Brady, and the wheels were in motion. Velma Brown would arrive at the sheriff’s office around four.

  Father, please let us be doing this right.

  20

  Nothing went as planned.

  Brady called Gabe at three that afternoon. He had Velma packed and headed toward Carrington, but there was no way she would be able to come to the sheriff’s office. She was weak and fragile. She’d almost fallen twice on the walk to the car.

  Instead of taking her to the sheriff’s office, Brady went straight to Leigh and Ryan’s house.

  Leigh had explained the situation to the hospitalists working with Liz, and it took a few hours to figure out how to legally get Liz out of the hospital and to the Weston-Parker home without violating any laws. Not that anyone involved would press charges, but they needed to be sure they had all their paperwork correct in the case of an audit.

  Someone figured something out. They explained it to Gabe, but after a few seconds, all he heard was “blah, paperwork, blah.”

  The result was that Velma Brown was welcomed into the care of Leigh at four thirty that afternoon. Leigh got Velma’s signature on the forms they needed for Liz and handed them to Ryan, who took them back to the hospital. While Ryan handled the paperwork, Leigh tucked Velma into a cozy spot, fed her some homemade chicken soup, and insisted she sleep.

  Liz was released from the hospital around seven that night and taken straight to the Parkers’.

  Anissa and Gabe watched the reunion between mother and daughter from the deck. Liz was so forgiving and so worried about her mom. That girl was a gem.

  But she’d been sick. And Velma still was.

  They called it an early night and no one could blame them. The truth was that everyone involved was relieved to have this part of the process over.

  Tonight had been easy enough.

  Tomorrow night would be very different.

  After another night on Anissa’s sofa, Gabe volunteered to swing through the Chick-fil-A drive-through and grab biscuits for everyone, the security guards included. “I’ll meet you at the storage unit at eight.”

  He wasn’t sure if Anissa had given up arguing with him about driving or if she just really wanted that chicken biscuit.

  “What girl could resist a guy who brings Chick-fil-A?” Anissa called to him through her open window as she pulled out of her driveway, the security guards close on her tail.

  But eight turned into eight thirty when someone who was allergic to bee stings was stung in the middle of the drive-through line. Everything stopped for fifteen minutes while the EpiPen was administered, the ambulance was called, and the minivan was moved out of the line and into a parking space.

  With bags full of biscuits and minis, Gabe pulled into the storage facility parking lot and chose a spot between Anissa’s car and the forensics van.

  Two deputies were flanked by two Campbell guards. They stood on either side of an open roll-up door at the end of a long row of storage units. “Yo!” he called down the hall. No response.

  “Yo!” he hollered again as he got closer. “I come bearing gifts.”

  This time Dante met him ten feet from the door and held up a hand. “Hold up, bro.”

  What was going on? “Where’s Anissa?”

  “She’s inside. She’s fine. Well, she isn’t fine. But . . . prepare yourself. Okay?”

  Gabe handed Dante the bags and ran to the door.

  Nothing could have prepared him.

  Pictures of Anissa covered every square inch of the unit, including the ceiling. Newspaper articles highlighting her cases. Pictures of Carly. Pictures of a three-year-old Jillian. Pictures of Anissa’s family in Yap.

  Most of the pictures were a few years old.

  But not all of them.

  He spotted pictures of him and Anissa on a run. When had that been taken? Maybe April?

  Pictures of him eating tacos with Anissa outside a food truck. That had been in May. Cinco de Mayo.

  His gaze finally landed on the real, very much alive Anissa. She was in gloves, booties, and a hairnet, walking around the ten-by-ten space. She made the circuit and stopped when she saw him at the door. Confusion. Fear. Misery. All raced across her features. “Why would Ronald Talbot have these pictures of me? I don’t understand any of this.”

  He didn’t either.

  Three hours later, Anissa still had no idea what was going on.

  The cursory evidence in the storage unit indicated that Ronald Talbot had known Carly and held a grudge against Anissa for what happened to her.

  There were copies of the documents that had been sent to Paisley Wilson. Exact duplicates. No way a different person was responsible.

  Journal entries documented Anissa’s friends, her favorite restaurants, her work schedule, her church, her gym, even her preferred grocery store.

  At first blush, it appeared that Ronald Talbot had been a stalker—the photographs and obsession with Anissa’s activities—but he didn’t seem to have had any desire to obtain any truly personal information. No favorite books or movies or music. No favorite foods or brand of tennis shoe.

  No. This data collection only made sense if his purpose had been to try to figure out the best way to kill her.

  Anissa slid down the wall in the hallway outside the storage unit. She pulled her ponytail out from the hairnet and peeled the latex gloves from her hands.

  The entire facility was shut down for the rest of the day. The sheriff personally stopped in—a very abnormal event. The captain spent an hour generally annoying everyone but then gave them free rein to do whatever they needed to do to figure out who had created this bizarre shrine to Anissa. If Ronald Talbot was the guilty party, then he was no longer a threat, but no stone was to be left unturned. No witness left unquestioned. No possibility left unexplored.

  Forensics determined that prints were nonexistent. Nary a hair or a fiber was uncovered.

  The management of the facility fell all over themselves to help, but they didn’t have a clue. The security tapes—such as they were—were placed in Sabrina’s hands when she stopped by to see the unit for herself.

  Sabrina spent the vast majority of her time working in her lab with her computer as her weapon of choice, but once in a while she liked to see the scene of the crime for herself. She said it gave her a different perspective on the person she was trying to make sense of through their computer files. She arrived an hour after Gabe did, Adam at her side. Sabrina studied the room for fifteen minutes without saying anything. No one interrupted her. When she came back into the hallway, she wore a frustrated expression and needed only three words to explain what she’d seen. “This is—bizarre.” Sabrina’s nontechy pronouncement somehow made Anissa feel better.


  Bizarre was the only word for it.

  The autopsy of Ronald Talbot was bizarre too. He’d died of a gunshot wound that blew off half his face. Dr. Oliver had postulated two scenarios. One was that he’d tied weights to his ankles and shot himself on the edge of the dock, knowing he would fall into the water and the weights would pull him and the gun to the bottom.

  At least for a while.

  A lot of people didn’t realize how much buoyancy a dead body developed when putrefaction set in. The weight needed to drown someone wasn’t nearly enough to keep them from bobbing to the surface within a week.

  Why he would do this and why he would do it this way remained a mystery. Dr. Oliver’s other scenario was that someone else shot him, used the weights to submerge the body, and then tossed the gun in after him.

  The security footage from the neighbor with the great cameras would be quite useful, except for the footage obtained during the thunderstorm, when the visibility went to almost zero.

  No one in the neighborhood remembered hearing a gunshot in the middle of the night, but a well-timed shot that coincided with a rumble of thunder wouldn’t have registered in anyone’s memory.

  They were missing something. She knew it. Gabe knew it. Dante knew it. Dr. Oliver knew it.

  Even Mr. Cook knew it.

  “Ron didn’t do this, Anissa.” Mr. Cook had arrived in a pickup truck two hours in. How he’d found out, she had no idea. Although it wouldn’t have surprised her if her so-called security guards had been reporting everything back to Charles Campbell. And Charles Campbell wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Mr. Cook.

  “I know you want to believe the best about him,” she said. “But the evidence, weird as it is, points to him.”

  “I don’t believe it. Not for a second.” Mr. Cook crossed his arms, his mouth set in a firm line. “You’re in danger because the person who did this is not in the morgue.” He looked at Gabe. “Don’t you let her out of your sight.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gabe’s response had the weight of a solemn vow.

  They’d found it a bit faster than he’d expected, but that just meant he’d be getting his hands around Anissa’s throat sooner than he’d dared to hope.

  He’d chosen this particular unit because the security cameras had been damaged in the storm last week. When they’d called in for a repair, he’d jumped at the chance to fix them . . . and to ensure there was no footage showing him hauling everything in. It had taken him the better part of forty-eight hours, but it had the look of a place that had been curated over several months.

  It wouldn’t hold up to detailed scrutiny and that was okay. He didn’t need them to think Ronald Talbot was the killer for long.

  Just for long enough.

  21

  At 2:00 p.m., Anissa stood outside the sheriff’s office family meeting room where Velma Brown waited on her. After a good night’s rest, some of Leigh’s healing food, and a sweet reunion with her daughter, Velma was ready to speak to them about her ex-husband.

  Leigh had come up with the brilliant idea to invite Brooke Ashcroft over. Not to swim, but to hang out with Liz while Velma was gone. The last report Leigh had sent was that both girls were curled up in the den watching Singin’ in the Rain and wondering how they’d missed the classic film.

  Gabe stepped close behind her, and for a few seconds she allowed herself to lean into him. To soak up some of his strength. To breathe in the essence of him. He’d volunteered to come with her into the room, but she needed to do this alone.

  She’d filled in the captain this afternoon when she returned from the storage unit. He’d been shocked, concerned, and more than a little annoyed that his homicide investigators had been off on a tangent. But he’d also been understanding of the importance of this case to Anissa. The fact that he had a fourteen-year-old daughter may have helped. More than once, he whispered, “I can’t imagine.”

  So, he would be watching along with Gabe, Ryan, and Adam. The latter two had no reason to be there other than that they wanted to be supportive, and she appreciated that more than they would ever know.

  With one final prayer for wisdom, Anissa opened the door.

  Velma Brown attempted to stand, but Anissa rushed forward and took her hand before she could get an inch off the sofa. The woman looked as though a glancing blow from a squirt gun would knock her over.

  “Please, don’t get up. I’m Anissa Bell. We met yesterday.”

  “Of course. I remember.” Even Velma’s voice had a thinness to it.

  Lord, please give her the strength to handle this. Anissa sent up the quick prayer before speaking to Mrs. Brown. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me today.”

  “That nice officer, Detective St. John, he said there were some questions regarding my husband’s death that you thought I might be able to help answer? I’m not sure how I could. We’ve been divorced nearly a decade. Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve been separated a decade. The divorce took a few years. Maybe three? So we’ve been divorced seven.”

  “May I ask what the delay was with the divorce?”

  “I couldn’t find the man to divorce him.” Velma ran a hand over her face, the skin like tracing paper over her veins. “I suspect he thought I wanted child support, but I didn’t. But remaining married made things so complicated, especially with the medical insurance for Liz. I needed to get the divorce finalized so I could apply for all the things she needed without everyone asking for his financial information. And I needed him to give me full custody so there wouldn’t be any issues there either.”

  “He didn’t contest custody?”

  Velma’s eyes misted as she picked at a knot in her sweater. “No. He . . . we . . . it’s hard to explain. We couldn’t have children. Decided to adopt. We were thinking about fostering first, maybe adopting a child a little bit older, when a guy on my husband’s crew—he worked construction—had a niece who needed to be adopted. This guy already had five kids of his own. Couldn’t take on another. But the parents had died. No will. It was a mess. He knew we had been considering adopting an older child. Said he hated the thought of her going into the foster care system.”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure about it, but then I saw her. Such a doll. Precious. A little skittish, which was understandable. Cried for her mama. I know her mama loved her. I made it my goal to love her so much she’d never remember that there’d ever been a season when she didn’t have a mama. Liz knows all this, of course. I told her. Never kept it from her. I wanted her to know she was doubly loved.”

  Anissa’s heart twisted as Velma told her story. Jillian had cried for her mama. And Velma Brown had loved her enough to tell her how much her mama had loved her.

  “We’d both, Sy and I, wanted a baby so much. Liz was the answer to so many prayers. And it hadn’t cost as much as it normally would have, so we would be able to adopt again. I was thrilled. But Sy, he never seemed to take to her. It was strange. It was like he never bonded with her. He’d play with her. Make her laugh. Feed her. But it was always like she was a stranger’s child. Not like she was his daughter. It destroyed our marriage. I never understood it. Still don’t.”

  Her voice trailed off. “He wasn’t a bad man. But when he left, I was relieved. It made everything easier. I quit trying to fix things with him and I could focus on Liz. She was having health issues. Turned out to be kidney failure. Several years of dialysis. Then a transplant. She’s done great since. We’ve had a good life. But then I got sick this spring and I panicked. Liz comes across as confident and strong, but she has some deep-seated fears of abandonment that my love has never been able to completely eradicate. I didn’t want her to be afraid. Figured if she got a great summer of fun at camp—she’s been to Camp Blackstone before and loved it—then when she got home, the worst would be over.”

  Velma gave a weak shrug. “But it hasn’t worked out that way. The doctors tell me I have a good chance of living another five to ten years. Maybe more if they make some awesome medical adv
ances. I need to stay alive until she’s an adult and can manage on her own. She demanded I tell her everything last night. Give her the worst-case scenario. She said she forgave me. I hope she has.”

  “I’m sure she has, Ms. Brown. She seems like the forgiving type.”

  “Yes, she is.” Velma blinked a few times. “But I’ve gotten us off track a bit, I’m afraid. What is it you need to know about my husband?”

  Anissa took a deep breath. “Ms. Brown, there’s something I need to tell you, and I’m afraid there’s no easy way to say it. We wanted to ask you about your husband because there were some irregularities surrounding your adoption of Liz.”

  Anissa didn’t think it was possible, but Velma Brown went even paler. “Irregularities?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We don’t have the DNA back yet, although a judge gave us the warrant for it and we expect it back anytime, but we do have fingerprint confirmation that your daughter is a child who went missing thirteen years ago.” Velma leaned back against the sofa and Anissa had to get the rest of it out. “Her name was Jillian Davidson and she was taken from a city playground in Virginia and never seen again.”

  Velma’s eyes filled with tears. “That can’t be right. Her parents had died. Her uncle . . .”

  Anissa didn’t try to fill the silence. She was 99 percent sure Velma Brown had no idea that Liz/Jillian had been kidnapped, but if there was any chance she did, this would be the time she might slip up.

  “Does she know?” Velma asked.

  A valid question. “No, ma’am.”

  “Do her . . . her parents . . . her birth parents . . .” Velma paused, no doubt letting the idea of birth parents sink in after years of believing they were dead. “Do they know?”

  “No, ma’am. Although those are the next steps in the process. We expect to have the DNA back by tonight or tomorrow. Once that confirmation comes through, those notifications will happen immediately.”