by Karen Rose
“She was drugging him,” Randi cried, her eyes filling with tears. “You’re supposed to be a professional.” She all but spat the word. “Didn’t you see it?”
Dana’s lips trembled and she quickly pursed them. Mrs. Vaughn had a talent for hitting vulnerable spots. “I did. I called a doctor I trusted to examine your son. Jane came back early and now my doctor friend is dead. My assistant called Children’s Services to come and take your son, and now my social worker friend is dead and my friend is gone.” Her voice shook and ruthlessly she controlled it until she could speak steadily, Ethan’s hands on her shoulders all the while. “We did all the normal things we knew to do.”
“But this is not a normal situation,” Clay finished for her, kindly, and Dana shot him a look of appreciation. “Miss Dupinsky, you’re the only one who’s seen her face. Can you give us anything that would be useful?”
“I gave the police sketch artist a description. Ethan has it.” She looked up and over her shoulder to find Ethan already pulling the sketch from his pocket and looked back at Clay. “She had a tattoo on her right shoulder, about four by three inches. I never saw all of it. She had little scars on her arms. She’d cut herself a long time ago, which was my first indication something was very wrong. But the thing that was most . . .” Dana rubbed her hands up and down her arms as new chills prickled her skin. “She has these creepy eyes. Light, light blue. Almost transparent.”
Ethan held the sketch out to Clay who glanced at it before passing it to Stan Vaughn who’d said not a word since she and Ethan had entered the room.
“Well?” Clay demanded but Stan just shook his head. Sadly, Dana thought.
“I’ve never seen her before,” he declared quietly and passed the sketch to his wife.
Dana sighed. “She didn’t call your son Alec. She called him—”
“Erik,” Randi whispered. “She called him Erik.”
Ethan’s hands tightened on Dana’s shoulders as all eyes swung to stare at Randi Vaughn. The woman’s face was so pale Dana thought she would faint. Her hands shook so hard the sketch trembled.
“How did you know that, Randi?” Ethan asked softly.
Randi Vaughn looked up now, her eyes wild and terrified. Every ounce of venom was gone. “Because that’s his name.”
Dana twisted to look up at Ethan, only to see that he appeared as shocked as everyone else. Randi carefully set the sketch aside and the room became deadly quiet.
Randi folded her hands in her lap. “Because she’s his mother.”
Chapter Sixteen
Chicago, Wednesday, August 4, 6:15 P.M.
Jane sat down on the edge of the motel bed, the black metal of her gun in stark contrast to the rust-colored bedspread. “I am extremely annoyed. Tie him tight or I’ll kill you.”
Evie spared a quick glance at Jane from the corner of her eye as she struggled to tie Erik’s hands with twine. The woman did look extremely annoyed. It was an odd description to give a woman who’d gunned down a social worker before their eyes. “I’m tying him as hard as I can,” Evie said levelly. “My hand is disabled.”
“Oh, yes.” Jane’s mouth curved in what appeared to be genuine amusement. “Your run-in with that other killer a few years back. You seem to have very bad luck, Evie.”
“That I do,” Evie murmured. She ran her hand over Erik’s hair. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed to him, still hoping he could understand. He blinked. Two times, in slow succession. Erik appeared to understand a lot more than Evie had previously thought. She remembered the look on his face as she’d released him from the protective hold she’d taken when Jane was shooting Sandy. His expression was one of grim acceptance, as if Sandy wasn’t the first body he’d seen. “Why, Jane?”
Jane lifted a brow. “Why did I kidnap you and the kid?”
Evie was calmer than she ever expected to be. Two years ago she’d pled for her life and it had gotten her nowhere. Rob Winters had cut her, raped her, choked her, and left her for dead. It was only Dana’s frantic call to 911 that had saved her life.
This time she had no intention of pleading for her life. She’d spent the last few hours cowering in the trunk of a stranger’s car in fear and it had gotten her nowhere. Jane still held her at gunpoint. Jane still had Erik, whoever he was.
Jane would kill her. I’ve been through pain. I almost died at Winters’s hands. Before all this is over, I will die at Jane’s. Somehow the knowledge was a comfort. It left her with nothing to fear. “No, I don’t expect you to tell me why you’ve taken Erik,” Evie answered calmly. “I know you’ll kill me. What I want to know is why didn’t you kill me back at Hanover House, like you did Sandy?”
Jane considered her thoughtfully. “You’re a cool one under pressure. I can respect that. When the time comes, I’ll make it as painless as possible.”
Evie inclined her head. “I appreciate that. Will you kill Erik?”
Jane looked amused at this. “Not directly, no.”
Evie’s hand stilled on Erik’s head, her mind working, trying to think of a way to get this child to safety if nothing else. “Will you make it as painless as possible for him?”
Jane lifted a brow. “That depends on the actions of another person.”
“So why am I still alive, Jane?”
“Because the only things that Dana Dupinsky cares about, besides that shelter of hers, is Caroline and you. Caroline’s taken care of for now. Dupinsky is next.”
Evie drew a breath. So it hadn’t been Goodman after all. A burden of guilt rolled off her shoulders. For two days she’d agonized over being the one to lead Goodman to Caroline because she’d attended that funeral. “So I’ll be the tool of your revenge.”
Jane smiled. “One of them, yes. Now put out your hands so I can tie you. I’ve got to go out and I can’t have you doing anything heroic while I’m gone. Then, I’ll retie the kid. I learned a long time ago that if you want something done right, to do it yourself.”
Chicago, Wednesday, August 4, 6:15 P.M.
Stan slowly rose and turned to Randi, his face a mask of disbelief. “What did you say?”
Randi drew a breath. “Her name is Sue Conway. She is Alec’s mother.”
Ethan shook his head, not understanding. “You mean you adopted him?”
Randi’s eyes closed. “No. I took him.”
There was absolute silence in the room. Then Stan dropped into his chair. “Maybe you’d better explain, Randi,” he said acidly. “So there’s no question who’s to blame here.”
“Shut the hell up, Stan.” Clay’s tone brooked no argument. Stan shut up.
Ethan sank into the chair next to Dana’s, utterly thrown. “Who is Sue Conway?”
Randi opened her eyes, locked them on Ethan’s as if he were her lifeline. “I grew up here, in Chicago. Not too far from Lincoln Park. My parents were nice people. We lived in a nice neighborhood. Our next-door neighbors were the Lewises. They didn’t have kids of their own, until one day their niece and nephew came to live with them. Sue and Bryce. Sue was twelve or thirteen at the time. Bryce couldn’t have been more than two or three. I was sixteen or so. I used to babysit when the Lewises went out on Saturdays. Sue and Bryce’s parents had died. There was a rumor their father had been killed robbing a store.”
“Spare us the details,” Stan snarled. “Get on with it.”
“Shut up, Stan,” Clay murmured. “Please.”
From the corner of his eye Ethan watched Dana look around the room, taking in every face. He could almost hear her mind assessing each participant, making her conclusions, and was suddenly, fiercely glad she was sitting at his side. At the moment he was feeling neither calm nor logical. At the moment it seemed his life was standing on end.
“Go on, Randi,” Ethan said and Randi gave a little nod.
“A few months after Sue and Bryce came, Mr. Lewis asked me to babysit for them after school every day, until he and Mrs. Lewis came home from work.” Randi dropped her gaze to the hands she’d clenched in her la
p. “I needed the money for college, so I agreed. I’d pick Bryce up from day care on my way home from school. He was such a sweet little boy. Sue was sullen and disobedient, but I thought all teenagers were.”
“Most are, Mrs. Vaughn,” Dana said and Randi looked up, startled by the kindness in Dana’s tone. “But Sue was different from other teenagers, wasn’t she?”
Randi nodded. “I used to wonder why they paid me to babysit when Sue was old enough to do it herself, then one day I saw Sue in the bathroom, cutting herself with a razor blade. Up and down her lower arms. There was blood everywhere.” Randi ran her fingertips up her own forearm. “I’d never seen anything like it.”
“What did you do, Mrs. Vaughn?” Dana asked, as if she expected that very detail.
Randi moved her shoulders restlessly, obviously still upset by the discovery. “I took the razor away and cleaned her up. She sobbed and made me promise not to tell her aunt and uncle. That her aunt hated her and wanted any excuse to send her away. That I was the closest thing to a mother she had. That I was the only one who loved her.”
“That you were the only one she could trust,” Dana murmured.
Randi shook her head in disgust. “She had my number, didn’t she?”
“She had mine, too,” Dana said softly. “She played on your unwillingness to be the cause of any more pain, hers or her aunt’s. So you never told anyone, did you?”
Randi closed her eyes again. “No, I never told anyone. Sue got older and wilder. I couldn’t control her. The Lewises adopted Bryce, changed his last name. They tried to adopt Sue, but she fought them and they gave up. She swore she’d keep her daddy’s last name. I didn’t understand it. The Lewises would have taken such good care of her.”
“Sue must have been close to her father, then.”
Randi nodded. “He was a criminal, but she idolized him. Then one day I came home from school to find her having sex with a . . . a man, a grown man, right there on the Lewises’ sofa. I was only seventeen. Sue couldn’t have been more than fourteen herself.”
“And she cried, saying her aunt would throw her out on the streets if you told.”
“She did. So of course, I didn’t say a word.” Randi pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “My God, what was I thinking?”
“You were seventeen,” Dana said pragmatically. “You did the best you knew how. The adults in her life couldn’t get through, how could you?”
Randi sighed. “Well, the Lewises couldn’t make her behave. Sue did drugs and went to wild parties. They could never leave her alone. Ever. Bryce was a good boy, but Sue . . . She was just horrible. Then one day my mother’s ring went missing. Mother wore it every day. The only time she ever took it off was when she was washing dishes and she had a special little dish she’d set it in until she was finished but that day she’d heard the doorbell ring. Nobody was at the door, but when Mother came back, the ring was gone. Mother was just devastated. I knew Sue had stolen it. I was so angry for my mom . . . I just didn’t even think and marched over to the Lewises’ house, barged into Sue’s room and found the ring in her drawer. She came in and found me searching and went ballistic, scratching and clawing, screaming that she’d get me and my mother someday. Her aunt and uncle called the police who took Sue to juvenile detention. When she got out, she ran away and never came back. The next year I went away to college.”
“But you didn’t go to college,” Stan said, his tone now bewildered.
Randi’s mouth bent sadly. “Oh, yes, I did. Got my CPA when I was twenty-two, before I ever met you. How do you think I did the books for you all those years, Stan? I walked away from an entire life because of Sue Conway. I had parents, a career. Friends.”
“What happened, Mrs. Vaughn?” Dana asked and Randi took another deep breath.
“I was living in the city, when one day I get this knock at my apartment door.”
“It was Sue,” Dana said softly. “And she said she needed your help.”
Randi jerked a painful nod. “She was eight months’ pregnant with Alec. Told me how some man had forced her. She cried so pitifully. She couldn’t go home to her aunt and uncle. I had to help her since it was all my fault anyway.”
“Because you were the one to turn her into the police all those years before.”
Randi’s eyes slid closed. “Yeah. I was the cause of everything wrong in her life, but I could make it up to her. She said she just needed a place to stay until the baby was born.”
“But she didn’t stay, did she?” Dana asked. “You bought her things for the baby and made sure she saw a doctor, but after a week or two she left?”
Randi’s eyes opened and in them Ethan saw stunned respect. “Yeah, she did. I’d bought her vitamins and baby clothes. But I came home from work one day and she’d cleaned out my jewelry box and stolen three pairs of my shoes.”
“And her feet weren’t even your size,” Dana mused.
Randi blinked. “How did you know?”
Dana’s smile was gentle. “I am a professional, Mrs. Vaughn.”
Randi blanched. “I’m sorry I said that.”
“It’s all right. I recognized the potential for this kind of behavior when I saw the scars on Sue’s arms. It’s a common behavior in borderline personality types. They make some of the best manipulators you’ll ever meet. I’d planned to dig deeper into this aspect of her background, but everything happened so fast and . . .” She faltered and her shoulders, held so steady, now sagged. “I was distracted at the time.”
“Sue’s been pretty active this week at Dana’s shelter, Randi,” Ethan said quietly and took Dana’s hand. “The police believe Sue was responsible for hitting Dana’s pregnant best friend with a car on Monday night.”
Randi’s gaze flicked from Ethan back to Dana. “Is she all right?”
“She was lucky. Both she and the baby will be fine.”
Randi paled. “I’m sorry.”
Dana shook her head. “You didn’t do this. Sue did.”
Randi sighed, so wearily. “I’m sorry, Miss Dupinsky. I was cruel and wrong about you.”
Dana’s grip on Ethan’s hand was punishing, but her voice was even. “It’s all right. So, back to your story. I’m guessing a few weeks went by and you worried about the baby and then Sue shows back up, sorry for stealing and crying about being desperate and scared.”
Randi nodded. “That’s exactly what happened. She begged me to help her with the baby—she was in labor. I took her to a clinic and stayed with her while Alec was born.” She swallowed hard. “I was the first one to hold him. He was so precious.”
“And you took care of him because Sue would come and go.”
Again the nod. “I found someone to watch him during the day when I was at work and at night . . . At night it was like he was my baby. I loved him and he loved me. And I lived in fear that Sue would come and take him.”
“Which she did.”
“A time or two, for a few days at a time. She always brought him back when she got tired of playing house. Alec was always dirty or sick or hungry. Once she broke into my apartment and just left him there. I’m lucky I got home a little early that day. He was starving and had diaper rash and . . .” Her voice cracked and tears spilled from her eyes, down her cheeks. “Then Sue came back, a few weeks later. I told her I was going to call a social worker, that she was an unfit mother. As soon as I said social worker she went ballistic. She slapped me so hard I fell on the floor, then she threatened to take Alec away and never come back. I didn’t know what to do.”
Dana’s grip on Ethan’s hand had lessened and now she let go, reaching over to pat Randi’s knee. “What was the straw that broke the camel’s back, Mrs. Vaughn? Drugs?” Randi nodded and Dana leaned a little closer. “Using or selling?”
“Both.” Randi’s lips quivered and she bit them sternly. “She’d bring these guys to my place. Dirty, scary men. I was afraid to sleep in my own bed. Then one night I overheard them talking. They were all high as kites. They
were running drugs from outside the country, which would have been bad enough, but they were talking about using Alec.”
Dana’s eyes widened. “They planned to use an infant as a mule?”
Ethan’s stomach turned over at the thought. Poor Alec. Poor Randi.
“They’d already done it at least one other time, one of the times Sue had disappeared with Alec for a few days. They filled baby formula cans with coke, strolled through Customs with Alec in their arms. Nobody thought twice about white powder in baby formula cans.” Her jaw tightened. “Alec could have been killed.”
“I’ve read about drug rings like that,” Clay said. “They’re big in New York.”
“Well, they were alive and well in Chicago, too,” Randi said bitterly. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought about going to the police, but I didn’t want Alec to end up in a foster home or back with Sue. I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Lewis would take him. She really hated Sue. And I knew if the police came around that Sue would take Alec. I’d never know if he was safe.”
“So you took him,” Dana murmured. “And left your life behind.”
Randi drew a deep, deep breath. “I took him and left my life behind.”
Dana got up out of the chair and took the space on the sofa next to Randi. She took Randi’s hand in hers. “I would have done the same thing.”
Randi lifted her chin. “And I reported them all to the police.”
Dana’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “Anonymously, of course.”
Randi’s smile was equally wry, but fleeting. “Of course. I ran east until I hit ocean—Baltimore. Then I got a job waiting tables and followed the trial with Chicago newspapers I got at the library. Sue got fifteen years for drug running and child endangerment. They knew she had a kid, but she couldn’t produce him. They assumed the child had been harmed, but couldn’t prove the child was dead, of course, so they went for endangerment instead. I didn’t think about her taking Alec now because she was still supposed to be in jail.”