by LS Sygnet
She nodded slowly. “I don’t have much time, ma’am. Ms. Sherman is gonna find out what I did, and send me away, just like she did my mama.”
“Florence, is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” so softly whispered, I thought I imagined it, had it not been accompanied by the slightest shake of the head.
“What is it?”
The nervous mousy girl returned, despite the fact that Florence was biologically old enough to be my mother. Her finger started tracing random patterns before picking at the edge of the tabletop.
“She’s gonna say she didn’t have anything to do with that little baby, Ms. Helen. That’s a lie.”
“All right. Can you tell me how you know it’s a lie, Florence?”
“She came over here, to the apartment where Mr. Sherman made me live when he said I had to be a nurse,” Florence said. “She said that Mr. Sherman wanted me to do something very important for him.”
“How long ago was that, Florence?”
She shrugged.
“You don’t remember?”
“When you said Mr. Sherman was… was dead …”
“What about it, Florence?” I asked gently.
“Um.” She stammered softly. “When did Mr. Sherman pass?”
I felt Crevan’s eyes burning through my back. Panic constricted my trachea. The recent doubts fueled the sensation. What if I replied with the wrong approach and Florence retreated again, wouldn’t tell me what it was she specifically requested to see me to say?
Gently, dipping a tip of the conversational toe into the pool of simmering acid, I said, “It’s been a few weeks, Florence.”
“More than two?”
Yes, in fact, it was closer to four weeks than two now. I nodded. “He passed away last month, Florence, before the middle of February.”
She retreated into the shell that had so discomfited me when I entered the interrogation room. My brain screamed in protest. How in the hell had my delivery been too brutal for her?
“Florence, I’m so sorry that Mrs. Sherman didn’t tell you that Eugene passed away. She shouldn’t have kept that a secret from you. Obviously, you cared for him after all the years that… well, you knew him.”
Her eyes focused. “I’m not sorry he passed, ma’am,” she said softly. “Ms. Sherman lied to me. But I lied to you too. They never said that baby was stolen from Ms. Sherman. They said it was bad people who didn’t deserve that little girl. She told me that Mr. Sherman was too busy to tell me to take that little baby away from the bad people himself, so he sent her.”
My heart hammered hard enough to make my skull feel like it would split open. “Florence, did Mrs. Sherman say why the bad people couldn’t have their little baby?”
“That girl’s daddy is going to prison.”
Not anymore.
“And her mama is too young to take proper care of a baby. No matter how much Mr. Sherman thought of her daddy, that baby needed good parents.”
“Mr. Sherman knew the baby’s father?”
Florence nodded. “They were friends for a long, long time, Ms. Eriksson. Mr. Datello used to come to Montgomery all the time to talk to Mr. Sherman about important stuff.”
Johnny’s investigation into illegal campaign contributions popped into my head along with rumors Devlin told me that swirled over Datello influencing the upcoming election, his desire to find a challenger to Joe Collangelo who would be amenable to maintaining the status quo in Darkwater Bay.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me, Florence?”
“No,” she whispered.
I waited. Push and risk another retreat after all.
“If Mr. Sherman died before Ms. Sherman came to see me, I know he didn’t ask for me to save that little baby.”
“How do you know that for sure, Florence?”
Florence clamped her mouth shut.
“This isn’t right, Florence. If you know something about who told you to save the baby, you need to tell me. It’s very important.”
A large tear rolled down Florence’s gaunt, pale cheek. “She’s gonna blame me for this, isn’t she? If I don’t tell the truth?”
“Yes. I want to help you, Florence. I believe you. I don’t think you would’ve taken the baby if someone hadn’t made you do it.”
“She promised me that she would bring my mother back if I did it, that Mr. Sherman promised to let Mama come home again.”
“And that made you believe that Mr. Sherman didn’t really want you to save the little baby?”
The flow from her eyes dripped in little puddles on the table. “I wasn’t supposed to hear. I wasn’t supposed to hide and listen to Mr. Sherman, ma’am, but I knew they couldn’t bring back Mama.”
All right. Now we were getting somewhere. I leaned forward and gently gripped one of Florence’s hands. “You must tell me what you overheard, Florence.”
“Mr. Sherman said where they buried my mother,” she whispered. “I knew she was dead.”
Chapter 25
That was the first huge revelation Florence Payette made. The second prompted a frantic phone call to Devlin. We needed cadaver dogs on the Sherman property. The old bastard buried his slave in the wooded area behind the house.
Crevan warned me that we should call Johnny before doing anything drastic.
In his opinion, removing any remains to Bay County would be a drastic move.
“Listen to me,” I hissed. “This is our case – OSI. We are here. Maya is already up to speed with the investigation. She understands why it was imperative to keep the Villanueva findings concealed from Agent Preston. As it turns out, he didn’t give a damn about that dead child. His mission was simple. Provide the loophole that would free Melissa Sherman.
“Now we’ve got a very limited amount of time before Sherman’s cagey lawyer finagles bail for her. Do you really want that to impede this investigation?”
He muttered a curse about me being the most stubborn woman he’d ever met and called Devlin back. “Ship any remains, should you find them, back to Winslow at the Bay County ME’s Office.”
I dialed Johnny’s cell phone.
“She what?” he growled after I divulged the substance of my conversation with Florence to him.
“Johnny, you’ve got to tell Zack now. If this Marcel gets his clutches into Florence, he’ll shut her up before she can tell me what else she may have overheard Eugene Sherman say. Call me back after you talk to him.”
I disconnected before he could argue with me. That was when the carpet abuse began. How long could it take to confer with one district attorney?
“Pacing faster won’t move the hands on the clock by sheer force of will, Helen,” Crevan said. “I know you have issues with patience, but really.”
“So I’m stubborn and impatient, huh?”
“A little bit,” he grinned. “For the record, Devlin said that he agreed with your instincts to keep all the autopsies under one scalpel. I think you could suggest that rolling naked through hot coals would be a good idea and he wouldn’t argue.”
“Crevan, please don’t start.”
He held up his hands in a defensive swipe. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Helen. Or him, for that matter. You’re the one who beat it through my skull that we can’t change who we love.”
“He doesn’t love me,” I muttered.
“I disagree, but even that isn’t what’s important.”
My eyebrow spoke the unuttered question.
“How you and Johnny feel about each other. That’s all I meant about importance.”
“You know I love him.”
“I know he loves you.”
We agreed (or at least I had insisted) that our most recent personal development be kept quiet for the time being. I hadn’t thought about when or how or even if we would tell anyone that I accepted Johnny’s marriage proposal.
“You’re not pacing anymore. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one,” he said.
“I
t’s not bad. I’m just not sure how pissed off Johnny will be if I steal his thunder and tell you before he does.”
Crevan’s eyes twinkled. “Who says I don’t already know?”
I doubted it. Johnny already told me that Crevan and Maya suspected the reason for my sudden and persistent queasiness, not to mention the wild mood swings.
“Johnny and I had a terrible fight the other day,” I said.
Crevan’s smile faded. “Helen –”
“I told him that he needs to move out.”
“Shit.”
“He’s not leaving,” I brushed aside the concern quickly. “In fact, he asked me to marry him.”
Eyes widened, but Crevan held his tongue. Maybe he was too wary of my emotional lability to ask.
“I said yes.”
“Oh, Helen, that’s fantastic news!”
“You have to act surprised when he tells you. He hadn’t already, I presume. Either that, or your acting skills are seriously Oscar worthy.”
“No, he never said a thing. That surprises me. I figured if he ever worked up the nerve to ask you, and you said yes, that he’d be screaming it in the streets.”
“The timing isn’t so great right now. The case, I mean. We’re trying to stay focused on quickly getting answers. I wonder why he hasn’t called me back yet.”
Crevan stepped in my path before the pacing reached fever pitch again. “Hey, you could you at least let your dearest Darkwater buddy give you a congratulatory hug?”
“I should be asking you to be my bridesmaid before Johnny steals you for his side of the aisle,” the well concealed buff arms of my friend wrapped around me for a hug. His laugh rippled into my ear.
“You’ve got Maya for that.”
“True, but she’s not the first person we told. I told. Whatever.”
Crevan’s cell phone rang. He slipped it out of his pocket without displacing me from the embrace and pressed it to his ear. “Conall. Oh, hey, Dev. Hang on. Helen’s here with me. Let me put you on speaker.” He flicked a button. “Go.”
“The cadaver dogs got into the woods behind the house and went absolutely friggin’ nuts, Helen. The crime lab from the state police brought them, of course, but their lieutenant is telling me that the dogs have identified no less than three hot zones.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “Is he certain?”
“Yeah,” Devlin said. “Pretty damn convinced. They’re getting ready to use some kind of ground penetrating radar to pinpoint remains before they start digging. Apparently, these dogs are trained to locate human remains and nothing else.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Devlin’s sigh hissed over the connection. “They think we ought to get Montgomery PD involved in this. He’s fussing about jurisdiction, that the state police can’t simply make this call –”
“Is he clueless?” Fuming, I started to pace again. “Do these buffoons have any idea who Johnny Orion is?”
“Well, my word that Johnny ordered this isn’t gonna cut it, Helen. Any chance that the big man can give the order himself?”
Why hadn’t he called me yet? “Dammit,” I muttered. “Let me call him again, Dev. He’s at this emergency hearing with Zack.”
“We’re gonna need that order sooner rather than later, Helen. This guy’s getting ready to examine the first potential grave.”
“Stall as long as you can,” I said. My phone was already in my hand, Johnny’s number poised for speed dial.
“Keep him on the line while I talk to Johnny.” Send.
“Now what?” Johnny growled into my ear. “You do realize that judges really frown on interruptions like this in court.”
I raced through the current crisis. “But this boneheaded guy with the state crime lab is balking over jurisdiction, because he didn’t get the order directly from you.”
“Because he knows I wouldn’t have given it, Doc. What’re you thinking?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I figured that keeping what we know and what we suspect as controlled within a tightly knit group was the most important aspect in our potential for getting some answers. If we’ve got eighty million crime lab people messing around in this, how long do you think it’ll be before somebody calls the FBI? What if some of those remains are more children? What if someone in Montgomery was on Sherman’s payroll, like it appears Alfred Preston was?”
“You make some valid points, but this is an election year too, Doc. We can’t simply ignore jurisdiction because it suits our purpose again. Joe is living under a microscope. Do you really want Terrell Sanderfield calling OSI the Gestapo during the election?”
“Politics,” spoken as the epithet it is. “That can’t be my concern, not if you’re really serious about solving this crime, Johnny.”
“I can’t ignore it. Joe, aside from being my boss, is a friend, Helen.”
That was when the brilliant idea popped into my head. I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got a reasonable compromise.”
“All right,” he drawled.
“You don’t have to sound so suspicious, Johnny.”
“Does this compromise involve you running off to Montgomery?”
“No, but that’s not a bad idea either.”
“Baby, do I have to remind you that I can’t say certain things without you running for the bathroom? How do you think you’d handle improperly buried human remains?”
My gut fisted into a tight knot. “Fine. As in you made your point.”
“Breathe through your nose. There’s a vending machine in the basement with 7-Up.”
“Johnny, do you want to hear my suggestion or not?”
“I’m waiting.”
“Devlin’s old partner, what’s his name.”
“Andy Gillette,” Johnny supplied what my hormone-saturated brain cells couldn’t summon.
“Right.”
“What about him?”
“If we need someone from Montgomery in on this, why not use the guy we already went to from the beginning?”
In the pause, I heard Johnny’s internal debate, saw him pinching the bridge of his nose. For the life of me, I could not comprehend his reluctance. It defied logic. If Dev trusted his former partner, that was enough for me.
Then again, it might’ve been the underlying cause of Johnny’s reluctance.
“Honey, if this is because you’re still pissed at Devlin –”
“It’s not,” he said. “I don’t trust Gillette. I can’t explain why, but there’s something about the guy that rubs me the wrong way. Don’t tell me you didn’t pick up on it too, Helen. He was more of an obstacle to you and Devlin returning the Datello infant to Darkwater Bay than I was, yet I’m the one you blamed.”
“I never said he was completely up to speed on the case. It was need-to-know. I didn’t think we needed to share a whole lot.”
“And you’re really comfortable with this guy?”
“Devlin trusts him. It’s good enough for me.”
“Fine. I’ll call Mackenzie and give the order myself, with the stipulation that this Detective Gillette be part of that crime scene,” he relented, much to my relief.
“Did my information help sway the judge?”
“Helen, how the hell would I know? You keep dragging me out of the courtroom. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. In the meantime, Zack says you should try to keep Payette talking. He’s not very hopeful about this situation.”
“Don’t forget to call Devlin,” I said quickly.
“My next task.”
I had no clue how my flash of brilliance would irreparably damage the investigation. Like most problems of my own creation, I wasn’t going to have to wait long for the revelation.
Chapter 26
Crevan and I worked in silent concert selecting photographs to display. My over-eager nature required a strong bridle from my friend. It would’ve suited my fancy entirely to march back into the interrogation room with only one photograph in my possession – that of Agent Alfre
d Preston. I was certain that Florence would identify him as the man who took Sofia Datello from her at Saint Mary’s Hospital.
“Helen, you know how this works. Please think of all the problems you’ll cause Zack if we don’t do this carefully,” Crevan warned.
I peeled a few more layers of skin off of my lower lip. It would bleed soon. “I thought we did hand him a perfect case, Crevan. And now look what’s happening. Some shyster attorney is hell bent on tearing down our evidence. I won’t allow Melissa Sherman to stroll out of here scot free.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know your alternative if the judge sees fit to dismiss the case.”
“Stop parroting Tony Briscoe,” I felt my patience thin again. “He doesn’t have a clue who I am. You have more than a clue, Crevan. You know me.”
He paused the arrangement of our impromptu photo array and pinned me with a probing stare. “Then what’s your alternative? Say Zack loses at the hearing this afternoon. What if Marcel comes back here with walking papers for Melissa Sherman, or prances in here asserting privilege on behalf of Payette? How do you plan to stop a court order, Helen?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered half under my breath, even though only a few days of the law enforcement fray had completely reawakened my darker urges. Yes, it occurred to me that a bullet to the head would solve a multitude of problems. And I’m not talking about a solution for the conundrum that Florence Payette presented. As far as I’m concerned, she’s every bit the victim Sofia Datello was. She didn’t have a Helen Eriksson to rescue her or her mother.
She didn’t have me then. She does now.
My slight tilt to Lady Justice’s scales for Scott Madden was fresh in my memory. Yes, psychology could offer a reasonable out for those who did the right thing regardless of what the law thought, or in Florence’s case, had no choice but commit a crime. I could easily and effectively argue that the poor woman suffered from Stockholm syndrome.
That little slip of the tongue I chastised myself over turned out to be a blessing in disguise now. Some of the confidence I lost ebbed again. If I hadn’t blurted out the news of Eugene Sherman’s death, Florence might not have reached the point that enabled her to talk to me. Once she realized that her true captor couldn’t hurt her anymore, she found a sliver of empowerment.