by Jeff Gunhus
It didn’t take her master’s degree in psychology to catch the shift in the topic of conversation. The way the girl’s voice cracked was heartbreaking.
“Tracy was murdered.”
“How?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Allison said. It had the added benefit of being true.
“You’re trying to protect me,” Natalie said. “Do I look like someone who needs to be protected?”
“Yes, you do,” Allison said without hesitation.
“Well, you’re wrong about that.”
Allison softened her voice. “I don’t know what happened to Tracy. I don’t know what happened to you,” she said. “But I think you’ve needed protection for a while.”
Natalie lifted her hands to her face and leaned forward, her shoulders giving away the crying she was trying to hide.
“The way you reacted to Carl, that was something more than anger for a friend,” Allison said. “That was something far deeper. I know because I’ve been there.”
Natalie swallowed hard, then looked up and wiped her swollen eyes. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Maybe not. But I know that anger. And I know a little something about pain,” Allison said. She hesitated. She was moving too fast, but she thought there was a chance to strike quickly and convert the girl over to her side. She decided to just lay it all out. “I saw pictures of your sister in high school. Something happened her senior year.” She watched closely and saw that Natalie tensed at the words. “You know what I thought when I saw her picture from that last year in school?”
“What?”
“That I’d seen that same look in the mirror before. It was the person looking back at me for an entire year after I was raped.”
Natalie rocked back, looking at her differently. It always happened when Allison revealed that dark part of her past. People’s body language shifted ever so slightly, showing their discomfort, sometimes their pity, other times their revulsion. But Natalie had none of those reactions. She simply looked as if she completely understood.
“I was a student at the Naval Academy. A young instructor took an interest but I refused him. He saw me at a party, followed me out with a couple of his friends. Once I was away from everyone he raped me.”
“Just him?” she asked. “Not his friends?”
This gave Allison pause. No one had ever asked that question before. “Just him. But that was enough.”
Again, a simple nod and that look, I understand.
“The Naval Academy covered it up, basically told me to move on, suggested that I was to blame somehow. Word got around and people made it hard. So, I gave up and quit. And when I went home, I looked just like your sister did in those photos.”
Natalie looked away.
“What happened to her, Natalie? Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same, but something happened to her.”
“Our mom…” Natalie whispered so soft that it was more like a breath than a word.
“What was that?” Allison said, leaning her head against the steel bars separating them.
“Mom died,” she said. “Summer before Tracy’s senior year. Things sort of…you know…fell apart after that.”
Allison closed her eyes, letting the twang she felt of missing her own mother rattle around inside her chest for a second. When she opened her eyes she saw the distant expression on Natalie’s face and her instinct told her this wasn’t the entire story.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Did they ever find who killed her?”
Natalie looked sharply at her and Allison worried she might have gone too far.
“I said she died, not that someone killed her,” Natalie said. “Are we playing games here?”
“No, I’m sorry. I just thought that since your sister changed so much, that trauma can…”
“So you don’t think losing your mother is trauma enough?”
“I’ve lost my mother too,” Allison said. “I know how it is.”
This admission tamped down the rising tension in Natalie’s voice and body language. She slumped back against the wall of her cell but her expression remained rigid.
“Convenient,” she said coldly. “I’m starting to think maybe you’re just full of shit. Sheriff Frank warned me about you FBI people. That you’d say anything to try to bond with me. To get me talking.”
“That’s what Sheriff Frank says, huh?”
“Your mom is probably home right now baking cookies and reading romance novels. I bet you made the whole thing up just so you can…”
Her voice trailed away as Allison held up her phone, screen forward. It was a picture of Allison next to an ancient, shriveled woman lying in a hospital bed, not much more than a skeleton with thin, yellowed skin stretched over it. The woman was done up with makeup and a wig and sported a brave smile that didn’t quite hide her pain. There was an IV in her arm and an oxygen tube around her neck, lowered from her nostrils just for a second for the sake of the picture. Allison’s smile was filled with the sadness of someone who knows they are taking a final picture with someone they love.
“She died two days later,” Allison said. “So you and Sheriff Frank can kiss my ass.”
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said. “I shouldn’t have…”
Allison waved the comment away. “Listen to me closely. If you don’t want to tell me what happened to Tracy, that’s OK. But there is something I need you to tell me the truth about right now.”
Natalie nodded.
“Tracy had a video camera in the room where she was murdered. That video feed went to an encrypted Internet connection and was stored on a server somewhere.”
Natalie seemed confused for a second, but then looked excited. “Then you know who killed her.”
“We can’t track where the signal went.”
The confused expression returned. “But you’re the FBI.”
“It’s complicated. She used a simple but effective way to cover her electronic footprint. She set up a physical server somewhere, a computer where all the video is stored.”
Understanding was followed quickly by an incredulous look. “Wait, you think I have this computer?”
“I was hoping so, yes.”
Natalie laughed but there was no joy in it, just hopelessness. “You’re really no help then, are you? I haven’t seen Tracy in over four years. No, it’s been five years now. Not since the day she just…you know…left me here.”
Allison felt the disappointment claw its way up from her stomach and into her throat. She hadn’t realized until this moment just how much stock she’d put into this strategy. In her mind she’d pictured Natalie walking her over to a nearby house and opening a back closet to reveal a computer nestled on a shelf, happily blinking away as it waited to reveal the identity of Tracy’s killer. That wasn’t going to happen.
“Maybe your dad?” she asked.
Natalie’s laugh turned harsh and mean. “Step-dad. Our real dad took off when we were still in diapers.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. “That’s a dead-end.”
“I have to try,” Allison said. “Where can I find him?”
“Trailer outside of town,” she said softly, her voice growing distant. “Still right where Tracy left him. Right where she left me.”
Allison caught something in her voice. The pieces weren’t quite together yet, but she felt that they were floating near one another, wanting to coalesce.
“You feel like she left you behind.” It was a statement, not a question.
Tears back in the girl’s eyes. “That’s what she did, isn’t it? Left me there. With him. She got out, but I didn’t. I had to stay there. She had…sh…she had to know what would happen, right?”
“What happened, Natalie?”
“Why didn’t she come back for me?”
“You can tell me if you want. It’s OK.”
Natalie wiped her eyes angrily and sucked in a shuddering breath. She shook her head. “Nothing happened,” she said. “Nothing
at all.”
“Everything OK back there?” Sheriff Frank called out from the end of the hallway.
Allison didn’t take her eyes off of Natalie.
“We’re fine. Just a few more minutes, please,” she said.
“No,” Natalie called out. “I think we’re done actually.”
Allison reached through the bars. “I’ve been where you are. I can get you help.”
Natalie turned away, crossing her arms and hugging herself.
Sheriff Frank walked up and shot Allison a questioning look. Allison stood and walked past him. As she did, she heard the sheriff whisper in a tender voice, “I’m gonna let you get a night’s rest here, Natalie. Get you home in the morning. I called the house and told them not to expect you tonight. I think that’s best. All right?”
Allison didn’t hear a response and she doubted there was one. The poor girl was likely tackling demons from her past, fighting them back and forcing them down into the cages where she kept them in her daily life. She remembered those days all too well, back when the smallest thing could trigger a flash of memory so real that it took her back to that night on the grass with Craig Gerty pawing at her like an animal. If the stepfather had sexually molested her, then Allison thought there was a good chance he had molested Tracy too. Maybe that was the source of the thousand-yard stare in the pictures more than just the loss of a mother.
Regardless, it still put her no closer to finding the videos and the killer than before. If anything, this was looking like a complete dead-end. If Tracy hadn’t seen her sister in five years, and there seemed zero chance she’d contacted the stepfather, then there wasn’t much to go on. An old boyfriend, maybe? Or a business where she used to work? But would she come all the way up here and not visit her sister? Allison didn’t think it possible.
She opened the door to the front office area ready to admit defeat and call in the information she knew about Catherine’s true identity to the main investigating team. They would have the resources to shadow Natalie in case the killer showed up to question her. It wouldn’t make Mason happy, but this was too big of a data point not to share. There’d be hell to pay when the team found she’d withheld the information as long as she did, but what was done was done. Ensuring Natalie’s safety was the most important thing.
But when she walked into the front office, Mike was gone. Only Deputy Cal was there, Facebook open on his desktop screen.
“Where’s Mike?” she asked.
“The fella you were with?” Deputy Cal said. “He left the minute you walked into the back.”
“Where’d he go?”
“He asked me where Natalie lived ‘cause he said there weren’t no address for her online.” Deputy Cal looked smug. “Guess the FBI don’t know as much as they think, huh?”
Allison thought he was at least right about that. “Where does she live?”
“Not too far from here. The Smith-Shelly house. Owned by the town. It’s for women and kids who need a place to stay. Natalie’s been running it the last couple of years. She was pickin’ on Carl Wilson about one of the women who stays up there sometimes.”
“Pickin’ on Carl Wilson?” Allison asked. “Is that what she was doing?”
The dark cloud on Allison’s face wasn’t lost on the deputy. He flushed red. “No…didn’t mean it like that…c’mon now…”
“What’s the address?”
“Three-twelve Prescott Street,” he stammered. “Go out here, turn right about a mile, then left another mile. Big white house on the hill.”
Allison turned and hit the door as the deputy called out behind her.
“That thing I said about Carl, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She ignored him and stepped outside. She knew exactly how he meant it and she couldn’t care less. The only thing she was wondering at that particular moment was what the hell Mike Carrel thought he was up to and why. A few seconds later, she was wondering how she was going to get to her destination since the bastard had taken her car.
36
Allison glanced out the window of the sheriff’s Blazer as they pulled up to the Smith-Shelly House and parked behind Allison’s car.
“I thought you said he was with you,” Sheriff Frank said. “That he was FBI.”
He hadn’t been too excited to give her the ride over, but he’d relented easily enough. The news about Tracy Bain and his chat with Natalie had left the man edgy and emotionally spent. Allison figured it was a tough way to spend a night, especially when only a few hours earlier he would have bet good money that he would have been in Ned’s ex-wife’s bed about then, with his stomach full and his balls empty. Allison wasn’t giving him the whole story and she could tell he was getting tired of it.
“No, I told you he was with me, but not that he was FBI,” Allison said.
“What is he? DC police or something?”
“He’s a reporter.” Allison popped open the door and climbed out to get away from the bitching she knew was about to follow.
“Aw damn,” Sheriff Frank said, also climbing out. “Damn, damn, damn. I hate those pricks. Always making the police out like we’re the bad guys. Who knows what I might of said in front of him. Let alone Cal. He’s a good man but he’s got horse manure for brains sometimes, you know?”
“I should have told you earlier.”
“No shit. Whatever happened to professional courtesy?”
“You mean like what you’ve given me?” Allison said, feeling her temper flare. “You tried to convince Natalie not to talk to me. Then you warned her that I would lie to try to get her to talk. Is that what passes for professional courtesy around here?”
Sheriff Frank squared his shoulders to her as they stood on the front yard, halfway to the front door. Allison squared off just the same, not backing down.
After an awkward silence, Sheriff Frank grinned. “You’re a tough som-bitch, aren’t you?”
“Can be.”
A scream erupted in the house behind her.
Sheriff Frank’s smile disappeared as he looked over her shoulder.
She turned. It took a second to register what she was looking at, but once it did, every internal alarm bell went off. Windows on the top floor of the old home glowed orange. Fire.
Allison broke into a sprint, hearing the sheriff making a call to the fire department behind her. The description Deputy Cal had used echoed in her head. It’s a place where women and children go.
Women and children.
A fire alarm finally went off inside the house, ridiculously late. Allison burst through the front door and was hit with a wall of smoke. Screams came from upstairs and the back room. A large African American woman came running down the stairs clutching a baby in her arms.
“This way,” Allison called to her. “Outside.”
The woman ran toward her, eyes wide in panic.
“Is there anyone else upstairs?” Allison asked her.
The woman shook her head as she pushed past to the main door. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She didn’t wait for Allison to ask a second question. Holding her baby tight, she escaped out into the night.
Allison turned to see two little boys in matching Captain America pajamas run down the stairs, eyes wide, hands to their ears to block the piercing sound of the fire alarm. Allison ran up to them.
“It’s all right, come with me,” she said.
The boys may not have been able to hear her above the noise, but they were more than ready to have an adult help them. They quickly followed her the rest of the way down the stairs, both of them hacking and coughing from the smoke. As she got to the door, Sheriff Frank was running in. She handed the boys off to him. “Where’s your mother?” she asked, yelling over the piercing alarm.
One of the boys, the older by only a year or so it seemed, pointed upstairs.
Sheriff Frank shouted something at Allison. She couldn’t understand the words but the meaning was clear. He wanted her to take the boys outside and let him go in. But she kne
w she was faster and more agile than the overweight cop who’d been drinking his worries away only a few hours earlier. She turned and sprinted up the stairs.
The smoke was worse on the top floor. She pulled her shirt up over her mouth and shielded her eyes as much as possible. Even keeping low to the floor, she hacked and sputtered. Her eyes burned and blurred from tears.
The landing on top of the stairs was in the center of the house. The hallway stretched in either direction with a row of doors on each side like a hotel. To the right was a wall of smoke, to the left fire was licking up through the floorboards from the level beneath. She’d seen the fire in the upstairs windows though so she knew the fire had to be in at least one of the bedrooms already.
“Anyone up here?” she shouted.
Allison ran to the left, thinking that side likely had less time before caving in. If someone was trapped, they needed help right away.
The first room was empty. So was the second. As she ran to the next, the floor gave way beneath her feet, a section of it falling into the inferno raging in the room beneath her. She jumped across and came up short, landing from the waist up on the hallway floor, her legs dangling through the hole.
The heat was incredible. In her mind’s eye, her skin turned black as it burned, curling up at the edges in thick, scabrous layers. But she dragged herself up from the hole, scraping her shins on the rough edge, and patted her smoking pants with her hand. She hadn’t been burned. Not yet anyway. By the looks of things, that possibility wasn’t too far out of the question. She had to hurry.
She ran to the next room but could only get the door open a foot or so. Something heavy lay on the other side. She put her shoulder into it and the door slowly slid open. Smoke and heat poured out as she looked in. The far corner of the floor had been eaten away by the flames. The curtains caught fire in a sudden flare, turning that side of the room into a wall of flame.
Allison looked down and confirmed her fear.
A young woman in sweats and a t-shirt lay sprawled on the floor, her hands up to her mouth. Allison ran over to her, fell to her knees and felt for a pulse. Weak, but there.