Nothing to Fear

by Karen Rose

  “So how did you know, Maynard?” Moore asked again.

  “Conway fired a warning shot in the beach house. I had a friend run the ballistics. It matched a slug used in a robbery in Florida a month ago in which a woman was killed.”

  Moore sighed. “Just to be straight, you removed evidence from the scene of a crime.”

  “I did.” Clay leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest.

  Moore sighed again. “I thought so. As long as we’re connecting dots, I found Bryce Lewis, Sue’s brother. He’s in jail in Ocean City for attempted armed robbery.” She told them about the West Virginia detective and Rickman’s prints on the missing power cord. “Lewis has an alibi for Rickman’s murder, but not McMillan’s.”

  “Has Bryce Lewis been charged, Sheriff?” Reagan asked.

  “With the attempted armed robbery. We needed more evidence to charge him with McMillan’s murder. But he knew about it.” Moore nodded in satisfaction. “Anyway, right after Janson and I left, Bryce gets a visit from one James Lorenzano. He’s got mob ties in New York. He visited Bryce again this morning. Between visits, Bryce was beaten badly.”

  “But why did Lorenzano visit Lewis?” Mia asked, her brow furrowed. “Unless he’s looking for Sue. Buchanan, didn’t you say you thought there was an accomplice?”

  Ethan nodded. “She gave us the slip when she bought those tickets to St. Louis.”

  “Maybe,” Clay said, “it was Lorenzano she was trying to lose.”

  Ethan stood up and walked over to the window where Dana stood, once again alone in a crowded room. He put his arm around her shoulders, felt her stiffen. “What I want to know is how did Sue find you, Dana? Out of all the shelters in Chicago, why yours?”

  Dana frowned, afraid she knew both how and why. Afraid of what else Sue knew. “Somebody obviously told her about us. She was an inmate at Hillsboro. Mia, call the prison and ask about Conway’s cell mates or any women she came in contact with that had histories of abuse.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Ask if Sue knew a woman named Tammy Fields.” If she did, that would be the link, right there.

  “Who was Tammy Fields, Dana?” Ethan murmured.

  She looked up at him, troubled. “A former client. She left Hanover House with big plans for herself and her kids, but got scared and went back to her husband. I saw on the news that she’d shot him. The defense tried battered wife syndrome, but the jury didn’t buy it. She’d been gone a month. When she went back, her actions seemed premeditated.”

  “Did you testify, Miss Dupinsky?” Moore asked.

  She turned to look at Moore. “No. Tammy never named Hanover House or me as part of her defense. I went to visit her in jail before her trial, even offered to testify as a character witness, but she said she’d done a terrible thing and she wasn’t about to ruin it for all the other women.” She looked away. “I have to admit I was relieved.”

  “So you picked Jane up on Friday night,” Reagan prompted. “You told us at the station that her face was bruised. Perhaps this Lorenzano helped put the bruises there.”

  “Perhaps, but it doesn’t explain how she got our number. If Tammy did tell her, Sue would have had to have a contact inside the prison. I think it’s more likely that she contacted Fred Oscola to get the shelter’s phone number from Tammy. Maybe Sue thought we’d believe her story better with the bruises.”

  “I’ll get Oscola’s schedule,” Mia promised. “First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “When did Sue leave the shelter?” Abe asked. “Be as specific as possible.”

  “To my knowledge she didn’t leave Hanover House until Tuesday morning. Yesterday,” Dana clarified. “I told her she had to go look for a job. That’s what she said she’d done.”

  “When did she come back to the shelter yesterday?” Reagan asked.

  Dana faltered. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there—I was at the hospital with Caroline.” And then later here, in bed with Ethan. I was here, having the night of my life while . . . “I left Evie alone with her. All night.”

  Ethan’s hand rested at the small of her back. “You didn’t know, Dana,” he insisted with quiet firmness. “You didn’t know.”

  “I told her not to go back to the shelter, Abe,” Mia murmured. “We thought Goodman was watching her. Dr. Lee had just been killed.”

  Dana nodded, her throat suddenly thick just thinking about Dr. Lee’s last moments. “Evie said he left suddenly and didn’t say good-bye. That he wrote a note saying he had another emergency and left some of Alec’s epilepsy medicine on the kitchen table.”

  Mrs. Vaughn looked up at that, relief in her eyes. “So he does have his Keppra?”

  “My doctor friend got him a new prescription.” Dana’s lips trembled and sternly she pursed them. “Now he’s dead. And Sandy, too.”

  Ethan pulled her to him and she didn’t pull away. She wasn’t sure she could if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t want to. “I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered. “We’ll find her before she can do any more harm.”

  “Dana.” Mia’s voice was soft and warning bells went off in Dana’s head. “A beat cop found Sandy’s car about two hours ago.”

  Dana’s head shot up, eyes wide, heart pounding. That Mia hadn’t spilled whatever this was immediately meant it wasn’t good news. “Tell me.”

  Mia looked pained. “The beat cop found a seventy-two-year-old woman in the backseat of Sandy’s car. She’d been knocked unconscious but she’s in stable condition now. The old woman’s car is missing. He also found this in Sandy’s backseat.” She pulled a plastic bag from her jacket pocket and handed it to Dana. “Don’t take it out of the plastic. I have to get it to the evidence room.”

  Dana took it, her hand shaking. “It’s Evie’s,” she confirmed, her voice as unsteady as her hand. “It’s the St. Luke medallion Caroline gave her for her birthday two years ago. Right after . . .” She swallowed hard. “Right after she got out of the hospital.”

  “After Winters attacked her,” Mia said to Abe who just nodded silently. And wrote it all down.

  There was something comforting in Abe Reagan’s thoroughness, Dana thought as she gave the bag back to Mia. “She never took off that medallion, Mia. Never.” She exhaled on a ragged breath. “She wanted us to know she’d been there.”

  Ethan tightened his hold on her shoulders. Tilted her chin up. There was something comforting in Ethan’s steady eyes, too, and Dana looked her fill, taking comfort wherever she could. His eyes narrowed slightly as he focused on her face. “Dana, the way I see this, we know a hell of a lot more than she thinks we do at this point. We have to use that.”

  Dana looked up at him, her jaw set. “She thinks we’ll blame Evie’s disappearance on Goodman,” she said, forcing her voice to be stronger and Ethan felt a surge of pride.

  Mia started to pace. “Conway has no idea we know about the Vaughns.”

  “We need to get all the places she frequented before she went to prison,” Reagan said. “We’ll need the address of your old apartment, Mrs. Vaughn, and the house where you grew up. Plus we’ll run checks on all the drug runners that were arrested with her.”

  Mia nodded, still pacing. “We need to figure out what she has in mind. It seems like she wouldn’t go to all this trouble unless she had something really big planned.”

  “It will be symbolic,” Dana said. “Something that will make Mrs. Vaughn suffer like she did. And I’m certain Sue sees herself as having suffered a great deal.”

  “She has my son,” Randi cried. “Isn’t that suffering enough?”

  Dana shook her head. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Vaughn. I think she took Alec to lure you here. Why else would she work so hard to get to Chicago, to find a safe place to hide here? This isn’t about Alec as much as it’s about you. You betrayed her. You sent her to juvie when she was a teenager and you sent her to jail when she was an adult. In her mind you are the cause of everything bad in her life. I think it’s going to get worse for you before it gets better.”

 
; There was a beat of sober silence, then Ethan forced himself to say aloud what he’d been thinking. “For you, too, Dana,” he said. “She took Alec to get to Randi. She took Evie to get to you.”

  Dana looked up, met his eyes, and Ethan’s heart simply stopped. She knew that she was second only to Randi Vaughn on Sue’s list. And characteristic of Dana Dupinsky, she didn’t care that she was at risk.

  “No way in hell,” Ethan growled, sinking his fingers into her shoulders. “There’s no way in hell you’ll even consider it.” He looked up, found Mitchell’s gaze resting evenly on his face. “Tell her she can’t. It’s stupid to even consider it.”

  “Dana, you can’t. Buchanan’s right.”

  Dana shrugged out of his grasp. “You can’t stop me. It’s me she hates, not Evie. The words she wrote in the note she left next to Sandy’s body were for me. I know that. I also know I’ll do anything to get Evie back unharmed.” She turned to Mia, brows lifted. “You got that, Mia? Anything. She wants to trade, you do it.”

  Mia shook her head. “No, Dana. No trades. She’ll kill you.”

  Dana walked to the window, standing alone in the crowded room just as she’d stood alone in the crowded park Monday night. “Evie’s innocent in all this. I won’t have her suffer because of me. You make the trade, Mia. Or I’ll do it for you.”

  On that somber note, everyone in the room fell silent and it was then a cell phone started ringing. Everyone reached for their phones at once. Dana cocked her head, listening. “It’s in your pocket, Ethan.”

  He fished the phone out of his pocket, his face hard as a stone. “It’s yours. I forgot I had it. You left it in my room this morning.”

  Dana stared at the phone as if it would hiss and strike. “Only Evie knew this number.”

  Mia sprang into action. “Everyone stay quiet. If it’s Sue with Evie, try to keep her on the line as long as you can. Remember, she doesn’t know you know about Alec. She’s Jane and her kid is Erik. And you will not trade yourself. Answer it.”

  Chicago, Wednesday, August 4, 9:35 P.M.

  Sue leaned back against the concrete wall that housed the mall’s multiplex theater and took a nice long drag on her cigarette, the receiver of the pay phone against her ear. Finally there was an answer. A shaky voice. Dupinsky had found the social worker then, and the note. Just the picture of it was enough to make Sue smile.

  “Hello?”

  Sue exhaled a long plume of smoke, then crunched her brows. “Dana, is that you?” she asked, as small as she could make it.

  “Is this . . . Jane? My God, I’ve been worried sick! Where are you?”

  “Dana . . .” Sue took an exaggerated breath. “I was so scared . . . I ran. But I wanted you to know . . . I needed to tell you . . .”

  “Jane, were you in the house this afternoon? Did you see what happened, honey?”

  “Y-y-yes,” she whispered. “I was sitting in the living room watching TV with Erik when that man crashed through the back door. I thought I’d locked it when I came back in from smoking, but . . . I hid, Dana. I’m sorry.” Sue swallowed again and again, trying to make her voice sound thicker. “I wanted to call the police, but I was scared and I hid. He killed that woman and I hid. He shot her . . . Oh, God, he shot her right in the head.”

  “I know, Jane.” Dupinsky’s voice was soothing and it scratched at Sue deep inside. I hate when they use that voice. Like I’m an animal and they have to calm me down. “Try to calm down.” Sue gritted her teeth, dug deep for calm, and made herself listen. There was a quaver underneath Dupinsky’s calm. She could hear it. Dupinsky was terrified. “I—I found Sandy Stone, Jane. She’s dead. I need to know exactly what you saw. You’re the only witness. You have to help us catch the man that did this or nobody in the shelter will be safe. Will you tell the police what you saw?”

  “No. I don’t want to go near the police, but I’ll tell you and you can tell them.”

  “All right, Jane. Tell me, but first, is Erik all right? Was he too frightened?”

  Actually Erik handled the whole thing just fine, Sue thought, remembering. Maybe there was hope for the kid yet. Too bad he wouldn’t live long enough for her to find out exactly how much of her blood ran in his veins. “Erik’s not so good. He was scared to death and now he just sits rockin’ himself again. He had a seizure, a bad one. I hid with him in the downstairs closet under some blankets when the man came in, but the man didn’t even look. He wanted to find you and Evie. He was yelling and screaming. Evie told him you weren’t home so he hit her hard. She was bleedin’, Dana. Real bad. Then he dragged her out the back door. He kept screaming that if he couldn’t find you, he’d make you come to him. That you’d pay. That’s what he kept saying, screaming—that you’d pay.”

  She could hear Dupinsky’s breath coming fast now. Frightened little pants. It was nearly arousing in its own right. “I need you to listen, Jane. And think hard. Was Evie alive when he took her away?”

  Sue grinned, hearing the anguish and fear in Dupinsky’s voice. Then she wiped the grin from her face. It was hard to sound scared when you were grinning from ear to ear. “Yeah, but she was bleeding a lot. She kept calling for you. I wanted to come out, I really did, but I had to protect Erik.”

  “You did the right thing, Jane. Your first responsibility is to your son. Where are you now? I’ll come get you and take you where you’ll be safe.”

  Sue looked around the mall parking lot, crowded with teenagers hanging out at the movie theaters on a summer evening. She’d be safe enough here. “I’m not going back to the shelter.” She said it on a little hiccup, like she’d been weeping. “I appreciate what you did for us, but too many people are getting hurt at your place. You said we’d be safe, that no one could hurt us, but it was more dangerous there than back with Erik’s father. I’m going to another town now, but I wanted you to know about Evie. She was good to Erik.”

  “Jane, wait. If he saw you, you could be in danger, too.”

  “He didn’t see me. He didn’t even know I was there. Thank you. I’ll never forget you.”

  And with that, Sue hung up the phone and took a nice long satisfied drag on her cigarette while digging in her pocket for the long-distance calling card she’d purchased just a half hour before. One down, one to go. Little birds beware. The cat is coming.

  Wearily, Dana handed the phone back to Ethan, her lips pursed in a tight line. “She told me Goodman kidnapped Evie, that she saw it all, but was hiding. That when Goodman was gone, she took Erik and ran.”

  “She doesn’t know Detroit PD caught Goodman this morning,” Mia commented from the bedroom doorway, sliding her own phone in her pocket. “CSU is working to get a trace, but it’ll be harder with a cell phone. Why would she call you, Dana? What’s in it for her?”

  Dana’s shrug was grim. “She wanted to hear me in pain, to know I was worried about Evie and powerless to do anything. She set it up that if Goodman couldn’t find me, he’d use Evie to get me to come to him.” She narrowed her eyes when Mia frowned. “I know. No trades. I heard you.”

  “But you never said you wouldn’t pursue it,” Ethan said, his jaw taut. He was still angry. It all but emanated from him in waves.

  “She still thinks you only know her as Jane,” Reagan inserted, probably as much to keep the peace as anything else. “Good work, Dana. You never slipped once.”

  Another time, the praise would have made her warm with pride. Now, it barely registered above the rage that bubbled just below the surface of her mind. “I want to kill her,” Dana muttered. “Slowly and painfully.” She looked over her shoulder at Randi Vaughn. “She said Alec had had a seizure, Mrs. Vaughn, but she could be lying. If he did, does that put him in physical danger?”

  Randi took a deep breath and Dana had to be impressed with how she tried to stay calm. “Depends on how deep he went under and how long it lasted. Normally they only last a few minutes, but he’ll be weak as a kitten for at least a day. If she calls again, can you find a way to make sure he
takes his medicine?”

  Dana found a small smile for the terrified mother. “I’ll try. She also—”

  Another cell phone began to chime and Sheriff Moore raised her brows. “Well, you may be able to do that yourself, Mrs. Vaughn. I had the phone at the beach house forwarded to my cell. This could be for you. Remember, you don’t want to let on that you know she’s in Chicago. You’re still in Maryland, remember that. Try to keep her talking.” She put the phone in Mrs. Vaughn’s visibly trembling hands. “Good luck.”

  Randi clutched it with both hands, her skin taking on a greenish tinge. Ethan moved to her side, put his arm around her shoulders. He took the phone from Randi’s shaking hands, flipped it open, and held it to her ear so that he could hear it, too. He gave her a nudge and a nod. “Go,” he mouthed.

  “H-hello?” Randi stuttered. Her body was shaking so hard he thought she’d crumble.

  “Hello, Mrs. Vaughn. Do you know who this is?”

  Randi flashed frantic eyes to Ethan, terrified to say the wrong thing. Ethan shook his head. “You don’t,” he mouthed.

  “No. Who is this?”

  A low laugh sent a chill up Ethan’s spine.

  “You don’t have any idea, Randi? What if I called you Miranda? Would that help?”

  Randi’s eyes slid shut. “Sue. So it is you.”

  “I’m hurt there would have been any doubt, Miranda. You’ve done well so far. You’ve stayed put and haven’t called in the cops. I’m proud of you.”

  Randi stiffened, her eyes darting from Reagan to Mitchell to Moore. “No, I didn’t call the police or the FBI.” The knowledge that Sue thought she was still compliant seemed to bolster her and she sat straighter. “Where is Alec, Sue?”

  “I bet you’d like to know. I wanted to know, too, when I was sitting in a jail cell while the DA tried to indict me for murder. You knew it and you took the kid. Made it look like I’d killed him. You wanted me to fry. You stupid little bitch.”