Nine Years Gone

by Chris Culver

  We didn’t talk long, but both Katherine and Ashley seemed to be in high spirits. Ashley thought they were on vacation with Uncle Vince, and I did nothing to disabuse her of that notion. I did, however, dampen her mood somewhat when I told her that if she wasn’t back home by Monday, I’d go by her school to coordinate her homework assignments with her teacher. After that, I told Katherine that I loved her and that I was thinking about her. She said likewise, which was nice. I didn’t feel that everything was right between us after I hung up, but I felt like it could be. One day, Katherine and I would look back on this part of our life and we’d be able to say that we persevered, that we were okay despite what happened. It might take a while, but we’d be there. At least I hoped so.

  After hanging up, I had dinner at an Irish pub a few blocks from my office and then went home to watch some TV and then sleep. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to sleep very long, because at just before four in the morning, my phone rang, jolting me awake. Sweat moistened my hair and sheets, and my heart raced. I must have been having a dream, and judging by the state of the bed, it wasn’t pleasant. I glanced at the phone and rubbed my eyes.

  Unknown Caller.

  I snatched the phone from its cradle. “This is Steve Hale.”

  “I apologize if I woke you up. I know what an inconvenience these early-morning calls can be.”

  It was Leonard Morgan. The gears in my mind instantly began parsing his statement, looking for a hidden meaning.

  “Are Katherine and Ashley okay?”

  “Your wife and niece? I assume so. I’m not calling about them, at least.”

  My heart slowed. “Why are you calling?”

  “I wanted to give you some forewarning. A detective from my department is on his way to pick you up.”

  I hesitated. “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Nah,” said Morgan. “This isn’t that kind of call. If I were you, though, I’d get yourself cleaned up and put on some decent clothes. The first news van is already here.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “My officer will brief you on the way.” Morgan paused and inhaled deeply. “This is going to be awkward. Just to warn you.”

  He hung up before I could ask him to elaborate. I ran my hands across my face and rubbed my eyes, hoping to wake myself up. Within half an hour, a plainclothes detective in a navy blue suit stood at my door. I let him in and offered him a drink while I combed my hair and brushed my teeth. We left at 4:30, not even a trace of sunrise on the horizon.

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked, locking my front door.

  “No,” said the detective. “How much did Leonard tell you?”

  I pocketed my keys and turned to the detective. He could have passed for twenty-five, but he was probably in his early thirties. He had ruddy-colored skin, like he had just pushed himself hard on a run, and brown sideburns that were, perhaps, a little too bushy to be in accordance with departmental regulation. In contrast, his light blue oxford shirt was utterly without wrinkles and not a single hair on his head was out of place.

  “He said you’d brief me,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Steve Hale, by the way.”

  “Detective Traffort.”

  The detective’s hands, at variance with his neat dress, felt rough and callused, more like the hands of a construction worker than a guy who sat at a desk all day.

  “So where are we going?” I asked, heading toward the car.

  “Wentzville,” said Traffort. I started to open the back door, but the detective stopped me. “I’m not chauffeuring you around. Get in the front.”

  That told me something important. Had Traffort or Morgan suspected me of a crime, I would have been in the back, likely with my hands secured. I opened the front passenger door and sat down. Even though I wasn’t a big man, the entire car dipped half an inch or so.

  “What’s in Wentzville?”

  “The Super 8 Motel,” said Traffort, climbing into the driver’s seat. “We found Tess Girard.”

  I leaned forward. “Did you arrest her?”

  Traffort looked at me crosswise and then pulled away from the curb. “Of course not.”

  “She’s not dead, is she?” I asked.

  “No,” said Traffort cocking his head to the side and blinking at me. “Thanks to you, she’s alive and fine. We thought you’d be appreciative.”

  “I am,” I said. “What happened?”

  Traffort straightened and kept his eyes on the road. “After Leonard met with you tonight, he pulled my partner and me off a surveillance detail—thank you for that, by the way—and asked us if we could call area hotels to ask if anyone matching Tess Girard’s description had checked in. We checked out the Omni, but Lauren Hampton had checked out. We then faxed an old yearbook picture of Ms. Girard to every hotel within a hundred-mile radius. Got lucky and a manager at the Super 8 in Wentzville called us back.”

  I leaned back in the seat. “She didn’t have anything in the room that would give you cause to arrest her?”

  Traffort, again, looked at me crosswise. “I don’t know what you expected, but we found her handcuffed to the toilet with packing tape over her mouth.”

  I crossed my arms for warmth. “And how’d she explain that one?”

  Traffort flicked on his blinker light and turned into the parking lot of a bank about a block from the interstate. He looked at me, his brow narrowed. “I’m taking you to see a traumatized woman. She’s been through more than you can imagine, and for some reason, she wants to see you. If you’re disrespectful to her, I’ll make you regret it. Are we clear on that, Mr. Hale?”

  “I don’t know what Tess told you, but—”

  “All right,” said Traffort sharply, interrupting me. “You want to know what Ms. Girard told us? She said her father’s chief of security, Moses Tarawally, kidnapped her nine years ago and has held her in the basement of a house near Salt Lake City ever since.”

  “You guys actually believe that story?” I asked, raising my eyebrow. “Why would Tarawally, a guy who isn’t afraid to kill people, kidnap her and keep her alive for all this time?”

  “Aside from nightly sexual assaults, we have evidence that indicates Mr. Tarawally tried to extort twenty million dollars from Dominique Girard for Tess’s safe return.”

  “Moses sure chose the wrong mark. Dominique didn’t give two shits about his daughter.”

  “Is that what you think?” asked Traffort, his voice still sharp. “Because I have documents that show Mr. Girard liquidated everything he had to save his daughter.”

  “Stepdaughter,” I said. “Tess was his stepdaughter. And he was probably liquidating his assets to keep them from his wife.”

  “Whoever she was to him, he died protecting her,” said Traffort. “He could have brought this out in the open himself, but he didn’t because he knew Moses would kill Ms. Girard. He kept quiet, and he let us execute him because it was the only way to keep her alive. Guy was a fucking hero if you ask me.”

  Dominique was one of the vilest human beings I’ve ever met, but I doubted Traffort would be too interested in hearing that now.

  “And Tess told you this . . . story?”

  “What did I say about being respectful?” asked Traffort, his brow raised.

  I waited a moment. “Did Tess tell you this?”

  “She not only told us, she gave us bank documents and Moses’ phone. Its call history showed calls to the Potosi Correctional Institute once a month for the past three years.”

  I rarely used prisoners as research material, but I had a conversation with a convicted murderer at an Indiana prison once. Before the call even went through, a recorded voice warned me that all calls to the prison were recorded and reviewed. If Moses and Dominique actually did have conversations, Traffort would discover that Tess had lied about their content soon enough.

  “I’m glad she’s safe.”

  “You’d better be,” said Traffort, putting the car back into drive. “You can relax, too. Since we have Tarawa
lly in custody, your family’s safe.”

  I doubted that very much. “Moses was never my concern.”

  “He should have been. When he found out Ms. Girard talked to you on the phone, he broke into your house looking for you. When he couldn’t find you, he took your dog to the River des Peres and killed him in front of Ms. Girard. He told her that if she ever tried to contact you again, he’d do the same to you or your wife.”

  I nodded. “Let me guess. Tess told you that, too.”

  Traffort didn’t look at me. “Yes.”

  “Did you consider that she’s lying to you?”

  Traffort glanced at me and then back to the road. “She was handcuffed to a toilet. I think she’s earned the benefit of my doubt. Now shut up until we get to the hotel.”

  38

  I did as Traffort suggested. Eventually they’d discover Tess for who and what she was, but until then, I was on my own. At least someone else would be watching her now. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but Traffort had a tendency to jerk the steering wheel hard every time he switched lanes, keeping me awake.

  Eventually, we arrived at the Super 8 Motel in Wentzville. Built beside I-70 and sandwiched between a barbecue place on one side and a Rural King farm store on the other, it had three St. Louis news vans already broadcasting from its parking lot, likely preparing stories for their station’s morning shows. Traffort pulled past at least a dozen marked cruisers from various Missouri law enforcement agencies before coming to a stop beneath the carport in front of the motel’s lobby. Upon seeing us, several men, including Captain Morgan, stepped out of the building and into the early morning air, their breaths coming out in puffs of frost. I couldn’t see it, but a helicopter flew somewhere near overhead.

  “Morning,” I said, opening my door.

  “Mr. Hale,” said Morgan, nodding. He introduced each of the officers he was standing with, but I barely paid attention beyond noting that he had representatives from local law enforcement agencies that I didn’t even know existed.

  “Detective Traffort briefed me on the way,” I said, stepping a little closer to Captain Morgan. “Can I talk to you in private?”

  Morgan looked to the other officers. “I’ll drive you home and we can talk then. In the meantime, we’re a little pressed for time here, and there’s someone who would very much like to see you.”

  “Do I have to see her?”

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I understand that this is awkward considering the circumstances, but Ms. Girard has been through a lot. We asked if she’d like us to call her mother or her sister, but she asked for you. I’m asking you, as a favor to me, to see her.”

  I didn’t like the idea of seeing her again, but I didn’t think she could do much with so many other people around us.

  “Shouldn’t you be taking her to the hospital first?”

  “Paramedics have already checked her out,” said Morgan. “Aside from a few bruises, she’s physically in good shape.”

  “All right, then,” I said, nodding toward the front door. “Lead on.”

  “Thank you,” said Morgan, seemingly sincerely. He held open the motel’s glass front door and gestured for me to come inside. The lobby had a dark blue, checkered carpet and a pass-through window along one wall that served as the front desk. A chipped and painted wooden horse, the sort of thing I’d expect to find on a carousel, stood beside the staircase that led to the second floor. Morgan didn’t wait for me to take in my surroundings nor did he acknowledge the clerk behind the front desk. We simply walked up those stairs and down a long hallway to the left.

  Three uniformed officers stood outside an open door on the right side of the hallway, but we walked past them with nothing but a nod. I did manage to peek inside to see a simple hotel room with dated red carpet and furniture constructed of lightly stained oak. Someone had stripped the bed to the mattress, and a man about my age and wearing a navy blue vinyl jacket and hospital slipcovers over his shoes photographed everything. Even from the hallway, I could smell bleach, which made me doubt they’d find much inside.

  We stopped outside a nondescript room, four doors down and on the other side of the hallway. No police officers stood guard, but then there were so many police officers in the lobby and outside the building that nobody could enter or leave the premises without scrutiny. Morgan knocked and waited as Tess undid the latch. When she pulled the door open, she left the chain attached, limiting how far I could see into the room.

  Tess looked at Captain Morgan, but then she saw past him and focused on me. Her face seemed to fall, and fresh tears came to her cheeks. She wasn’t wearing makeup, I could tell that even from a glance, and it probably says what a sucker I am, but I felt for her in that moment, felt deeply for her. I wanted to protect her. But then I caught myself and held back, knowing that everything in front of me was a lie.

  Tess slammed the door shut and unlatched the chain before opening it again. She launched herself at me, tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she sobbed against my chest. I put my arms around her back, more because it felt awkward to stand with them at my sides than anything else. The police officers up and down the hallway were pointedly not watching us.

  “You’re safe now, Ms. Girard,” said Captain Morgan. “No one’s going to hurt you any more.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You’re safe with the police now.”

  Tess took a small step back from me, causing her hair to stick to the stubble on my chin like Velcro. “Can I have a moment alone with Steven?”

  Morgan hesitated and then looked at me. I wanted to shake my head no, but I knew that would set the police off.

  “Sure,” he said, nodding. “We’ll just wait outside.”

  “We’ll leave the door open,” I said. “So Tess can see the officers outside.”

  Tess reached out to me and brushed my cheek with her fingertips, her blue eyes shimmering with tears not yet wept. “I’m tired of people watching me.”

  Morgan grimaced and looked at me sympathetically. I had to hand it to Tess; she did know how to play a crowd. I put my hand on her wrist and gently took it from my cheek. When it was below the point that the officers would have seen it, I squeezed hard.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

  She looked at me right in the eye, blinking rapidly. “Are you really here?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  Morgan cleared his throat and took a step away from us. “My men and I will be at the other end of the hall. If you need anything, please let us know.”

  “Thank you,” said Tess, her voice so weak I could barely hear it.

  Morgan looked at his feet. “Yeah, well, good luck to you two.”

  He took another step back, and Tess took my hand and gently pulled me through the door. The room looked very much like the room we had passed earlier, except that it had two queen-sized beds, both of which had comforters still on them. Inside the room, she hugged me again, tears still periodically falling, but as soon as I shut the door, those tears stopped and she took a step back.

  “We were doing just fine on our own,” she said. “You had no reason to bring the police in, honey.”

  “Please don’t call me honey,” I said.

  “Fine, then,” she said, throwing up her hands and walking deeper into the room. She sat on one of the beds and patted the comforter beside her. I walked over, leaned against the dresser in front of the room, and crossed my arms. “Are you pouting?”

  “I’m pissed off,” I said.

  She reached behind her and leaned back on her hands. “Am I not giving you enough attention? Is that it?”

  “Are you out of your mind? You killed my dog and one of my best friends and then asked me to kill your mother.”

  Tess leaned forward and shook her head. “If you had just left with me when I asked, none of this would have happened. Isaac would be alive, your dog would be alive, Katherine and little Ashley would be safe. Everything would be
wonderful.”

  “And I could live my life in quiet wedded bliss with a murderer.”

  “I’m not a murderer, but we could have been together. It would have been nice.”

  I lowered my chin. “You don’t think you’re a murderer? I’m sure Holly Olson’s father would feel differently if he knew the truth.”

  Tess shook her head again. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life. I’ve thought about it, sure, planned it and wanted to, but I’ve never done it.”

  “But you’ve convinced others to do it.”

  She shrugged. “That’s different. I can’t control the actions of other people.”

  I walked to the window and opened the blinds. The sun threatened to peek over the horizon, turning the sky a deep mauve. I put my hands against the window frame and stared at my reflection, and at Tess’s. “This is your chance. You can stab me in the back now and be done with everything or you can leave town, but you can’t stay. Leonard Morgan is smarter than he lets on. He’s going to find out what you’ve done and where you’ve been.”

  “You’re worried about the things I’ve done?” she asked, crossing the room to stand beside me. “What about the things you’ve done? What about Dominique?”

  “I’m ready to face those consequences.”

  “Do you really believe that?” asked Tess. “Do you really believe you’re ready to lose everything you’ve ever cared about? To watch your life disintegrate around you? It’s not as easy as you’d think.” She paused, and I looked at her, waiting for her to continue. Her eyes were flat, emotionless. “Our timetable has changed. I want my mother’s will by tonight at five, and I want her dead by the end of the day tomorrow.”