Cutting Edge f-3

by Allison Brennan

  Nora had lived in SLO during the year before she turned FBI informant against her mother. It was where Lorraine had met Cameron Lovitz. A chill ran through her, as if her life was coming full circle. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in nearly twenty years, since the trial. She was in prison, and because a federal agent died during Lorraine’s terrorist act, she would be in prison the rest of her life.

  Nora rarely thought about it, but these last few days she couldn’t avoid it.

  Establishment.

  It was a word her mother used regularly. Along with Industrial Complex, which had sounded so out of place in Maggie’s letter. And the questions. Don’t you care?

  “Paso Robles,” Duke muttered.

  Nora swallowed uneasily. “That mean something to you?”

  “Russ lived there for most of his childhood.”

  One more connection to the area. “Which would give him a good reason to meet with her and not think that something was unusual,” Nora said.

  She looked back at the forms. “Father, David O’Dell, sixty-four. Mother, April Plummer, fifty-nine.”

  April Plummer. It had to be a coincidence.

  But even as Nora thought that there was no way in hell that Maggie O’Dell’s mother was the same April Plummer that Nora had known most of her childhood, Nora knew that it was.

  Paso Robles, so close to where April had lived for years in SLO. Same age as April would be.

  She remembered April at her mother’s trial. She wasn’t pregnant. She’d always been rail-thin. Nora would have noticed if she were pregnant, the hearings and trial went on for months and months … maybe April got pregnant after the trial. Though that would make Maggie a little young for college.

  But there had been one pregnant woman at the trial.

  “When was she born?” Nora cried out, a bit too loudly. “Dammit, where do they put the birthdays on these stupid forms?” She sounded panicked.

  Duke pointed to a box near the top of the form.

  December 12. Maggie would be twenty in December.

  The timing was right.

  Nora dropped the file, a hand to her stomach. She swallowed bile as she realized the unthinkable. This couldn’t be, but there wasn’t any other explanation.

  She shoved the file toward Rachel. “Call the SLO field office and have them send a pair of agents to talk to David O’Dell and April Plummer about Maggie. And find out where her sister is-the one she mentioned in the letter she wrote to Anya Ballard.”

  Rachel took it, looking at Nora as if her head was about to spin around. “Anything else?’

  “Just that. For now.”

  With Rachel gone, she breathed marginally easier.

  What if she was wrong? They could be going down the wrong path. They could be wasting time. Only, she didn’t think she was wrong. She knew she wasn’t wrong.

  Her mother had lied. Lying sounded exactly like something her mother would do.

  Nora hated Lorraine. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the waves of pain and anger that washed over her like the ocean hitting rocks during a storm.

  For seventeen years Nora had lived without a home, without a place to belong. For seventeen years Nora had tried to understand her mother, had wanted to please her, had done things she knew were wrong but didn’t know how to say no to the woman who’d raised her.

  Until Quin was in trouble; then Nora turned. When it was Quin in danger, Nora put herself on the line. And Lorraine went to prison. But that didn’t make the pain go away. It took years before Nora was able to truly make her own path. Quin never understood why Nora refused to let her visit Lorraine in prison, why Nora didn’t visit her. They’d often argued about it, but Nora had always won.

  Nora was determined that Quin would not be corrupted by their pathological liar mother.

  Duke put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. “Nora, what’s going on?”

  She took a deep breath and the truth spilled out. “When my mother went to trial, she asked for leniency because she was pregnant. I didn’t even know until the pretrial motions, but it was confirmed-she was five months pregnant by that time. She had the baby right before the trial, in December, and the judge told me that the baby was put up for adoption.

  “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to feel any connection to the baby. I asked for no details, because as long as my mother didn’t raise the baby, he’d have a decent life.”

  “He?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t know if the baby was a boy or girl. I didn’t ask. I never told Quin because there was no reason to. She didn’t have to testify at the trial, why should she be dragged into everything? She was a little kid. I didn’t want that for her. I didn’t want her to live with the pain and guilt I did for so many years.”

  Nora didn’t realize tears were running down her face. She was so angry-furious! — and emotionally wrung-out. Remembering the trial, what she said on the stand, the way her mother had looked at her. As if she’d cut her heart out. Betrayed her.

  “April Plummer was a friend of my mom’s. Single then, as far as I knew. April was truly a flower child. She took way too many drugs in her youth and ended up kind of simple, but very sweet. We lived with her for a while-a few weeks here, a month or two there. I always thought my mother used her, manipulated her. April would do anything you wanted her to, especially for my mom.”

  “And you think that this April adopted your mother’s child?”

  Nora nodded, wiping away the tears. She took a deep breath. She had to do this. She had to face the truth. “Fifty-nine-I don’t know how old she was, but my mother is fifty-seven. When Dr. Vigo said that the killer was pulling out only my old cases, those were cases my mother might have known about. At least the first two. I was an informant at Diablo Canyon. That’s where her boyfriend was killed, where she was arrested.” Her boyfriend, Cameron Lovitz. The father of Lorraine’s child, the father of Nora’s half sister.

  The father of Maggie O’Dell. And he was a psychopath, just like her.

  “The second case she mentioned in the letter I worked as an informant against Lorraine’s friends. They were planning to set oil wells in Kern County on fire.”

  Nora looked at Duke. “That was twenty years ago. Maggie O’Dell is nearly twenty now. April came to my mother’s hearings, I saw her several times, and I never saw her pregnant.”

  “It should be easy enough to find out,” Duke said.

  “I know I’m right.”

  “We need confirmation.”

  Duke was right, they had to confirm the facts, but Nora knew in her heart and soul that Maggie was the daughter of Lorraine and Cameron. Her life was being ripped apart and trampled. She’d have to tell Quin, and that hurt just as much. But the truth would get out as soon as Maggie O’Dell was caught, and Nora didn’t want Quin hearing about it from anyone but her.

  Nora would find Maggie O’Dell and stop her.

  “My past-it’s coming back. I thought it was over, but now-” She didn’t finish. What could she say? “I’m sorry.”

  Duke grabbed her by the arms and gave her a firm shake. “You had nothing to do with this. Nothing! Don’t even think for a minute that just because you share blood with someone that it means you’re guilty.”

  He pulled her into a tight hug. She accepted his embrace, needed it. Needed him.

  “You call your contacts, I’ll call mine,” Duke said, talking over her head. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Nora. I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Once again, having Dean Hooper as her ASAC ratcheted up everyone’s response time to Nora’s requests. Warden Jeff Greene called her less than ten minutes after she had explained the situation to her boss.

  “How can I help, Agent English?” the Warden asked.

  “You have a female prisoner, a lifer, Lorraine Wright. She was convicted of domestic terrorism which resulted in the death of a federal agent.”

&
nbsp; “Assistant Director Hooper filled me in on the basics.”

  Assistant Director? She didn’t correct the warden. “I need to know if Maggie or Margaret O’Dell has visited Wright in the last two years, or perhaps even before that. Do you have that information?”

  “All prisoner visits are logged into the computer. We go back fifteen years electronically. Anything older than that is on hard copy.”

  “Going back fifteen years should be fine.”

  “I can fax you the list of Wright’s visitors, if you’d like.”

  “Thank you.” She gave him her fax number. “Is it possible you could tell me right now if O’Dell was a visitor?”

  “Yes, she’s been visiting monthly as far back as we have. She’s listed as next of kin. You know that O’Dell is Ms. Wright’s daughter?”

  Though Nora had thought as much, the confirmation still took the wind out of her. “Yes,” she said, her voice low. “When was O’Dell’s last visit?”

  “September ninth.”

  Less than three weeks ago.

  “Thank you. I’ll wait for the fax.”

  “Agent Hooper said that this may involve a federal crime?”

  “O’Dell is wanted for questioning in an act of domestic terrorism that resulted in a death.” Nora didn’t feel a need to share all the details.

  “I’ll flag her name,” he said. “If she shows up to visit her mother, I’ll detain her.”

  “I appreciate it. Thanks, Warden.”

  She hung up. Duke asked, “And?”

  “She’s a regular visitor. Her daughter.” Before she could say anything else, Hooper walked in with a fax. At first, she was amazed at Warden Greene’s speedy response; then she saw the fax wasn’t from Victorville.

  “What’s this?”

  “A copy of Margaret O’Dell’s adoption records. It was an open adoption; the files aren’t sealed. Under the terms, the adoptees, David O’Dell and April Plummer, agreed to bring the child to visit Lorraine Wright at least one day each month until her eighteenth birthday.”

  Nora skimmed through the documents. They confirmed Hooper’s summary. She saw who’d signed the documents. “This isn’t the judge for her trial. He told me she gave the baby up for adoption.”

  Duke leaned over and looked at the name. He typed it into his laptop computer. A moment later he said, “Newman is a family court judge.”

  “But don’t they talk to each other?”

  Hooper said, “Family court would be county. Wright was tried in federal court. They’re not in the same building, and rarely have cause to interact.”

  “Why didn’t they tell me? I assumed they wouldn’t let that woman anywhere near a child, after-” Nora cut herself off. The system always tried to keep children with their parents, even criminals. She just didn’t know that twenty years ago.

  Duke asked gently, “Nora, what would you have done about it had you known? Tried to get custody? A seventeen-year-old without a high school diploma or job?”

  Nora looked at Duke, stunned that he would throw that out at her. It didn’t matter that it was true-she’d never have gotten custody in those circumstances-but it hurt that he’d publicly brought out something she’d told him in private.

  “I would have petitioned the court to deny the open adoption,” she said. “Obviously, Lorraine isn’t fit to be an influence on a child. Look at how Maggie turned out.”

  “You don’t know that Lorraine-”

  “You don’t know her, you didn’t grow up with her.” She jumped up and paced. She was humiliated in front of her boss, embarrassed at her outburst, distraught over what she’d just learned.

  Hooper changed the subject. “There’s more. Donovan’s team can’t locate Scott Edwards’s truck. We’re operating under the assumption that O’Dell has possession of it and have put out an APB on both the vehicle and O’Dell.”

  He stood and walked to the door. “I’d tell you to take the rest of the day off, but you won’t, so I’ll just admonish you to be alert and let me know if you need additional assistance.”

  “I appreciate it,” she said, and meant it.

  Hooper walked out, and Duke said, “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Nora.”

  “You used my past against me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “That’s not how it sounded.”

  He stood and walked across the room to her. “You would have seen the truth if you weren’t so upset. You were lied to, and that hurts. But you couldn’t have changed it then, and you can’t change the past now. All you can do is focus on finding the girl.”

  “She’s my sister.” Nora could barely get out the words.

  “You want Hooper to assign someone else?”

  She shook her head. “He probably should. I’m too close to this.”

  “That’s your greatest asset as well as your greatest weakness. You understand how Lorraine thinks, and therefore you understand how Maggie O’Dell thinks. No one else has those instincts. But you can’t think of Maggie O’Dell as your sister. She’s nothing like you.”

  “She doesn’t think like Lorraine,” Nora said. “She thinks like her father. Cameron Lovitz. He was a psychopath-methodical and organized.”

  Emboldened, getting a sense of Maggie O’Dell, the killer, Nora continued. “She’s different. She likely has his charisma in order to convince people to help her, but she has less control of her temper. She’s both organized and disorganized. She’s ruthless. And it’s all personal.”

  Nora paced, putting herself in Maggie’s shoes. What would it be like growing up knowing your mother was in prison for trying to blow up a nuclear reactor? Visiting her every month. Hearing the stories about saving these animals and those trees and stopping a developer from building on a pristine meadow practically single-handed. And the exaggerations …

  The stories.

  “Lorraine romanticized everything, exaggerated the good and the bad,” Nora said. “We’d be involved in some demonstration and she’d be pushed by a cop. That night the story turned into she was beaten with a billy club and she was lucky to be alive. Or if she freed research animals, it was fifty and she found homes for all of them, rather than twenty animals she’d released into the wild. All bait for larger predators.”

  And Cameron. Nora remembered exactly what Lorraine said on the stand.

  “Cameron didn’t have a gun. He despised guns, just like I did. Nora brought it with her, and Cameron took it.”

  A flat-out lie, but Lorraine likely believed it because she wanted to. She was a pathological liar, which had been proven during her trial. What had Lorraine told Maggie about her father? About what they’d done and how they’d lived? What had their mother said about Nora?

  “You think that Lorraine convinced Maggie that before the arrest, your family had an idyllic life?”

  Nora nodded. “And I stole that life from her. That’s why Maggie wrote that letter highlighting the cases where I was undercover. I had ‘betrayed’ the cause and the good people who’d trusted me. That’s also why Maggie killed her cohorts. Because they betrayed her. They wanted out, and she wouldn’t let them go. Couldn’t. If they didn’t do what she wanted, they deserved to die.”

  “And what about Professor Cole?”

  “He had turned Anya against her. Anya turned the others. Or at least Chris. Scott Edwards, I’m not so sure. Maybe Maggie felt if she killed the other two she had to kill him as well. Or he did something that irritated her.” She squeezed her temples.

  “Headache?” He crossed the room and massaged the sides of her head.

  His fingers felt incredible and she relaxed. “I’m out of my area of expertise here. I don’t understand psychopathic killers any more than I understand-” She searched her brain. “-how to launder money. Hooper gave us all a crash course when he got here, but I was completely lost.”

  “You understand more than you think.”

  Duke kissed her temple as if his lips could cure her pain. Maybe, with a little
time and privacy, they could. Nora leaned into him, giving in to his affection just for a moment.

  A rap on the conference room door had Nora jumping a foot away from Duke, blushing to the roots of her hair. The receptionist walked in without waiting for an invite and handed Nora a thick stack of paper. She mumbled a thanks and looked at the information to hide her embarrassment as the woman left. But Nora pushed her personal thoughts aside: The fax was from Victorville Federal Penitentiary.

  Each page had one line entry per visit. The name, date, relationship, time entering and time ending. The print was small and there were fifty or so entries per page.

  April Plummer and Margaret O’Dell. Over and over. Occasionally another name Nora recognized, a few she didn’t. Theresa Lovitz visited five or six times in the first two years. Nora didn’t know who she was, but she was likely related to Cameron. A few other people visited Lorraine in the early years: Glenda Chastain. Mina Ro. Roger Nelson. As time passed, the visits from revolutionaries diminished. April still came by, sometimes with David O’Dell. And always Maggie. By the time Maggie was ten, she was visiting on her own, sometimes more than once a month. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie …

  Quin Teagan. Daughter.

  Nora had to go back and look again. She couldn’t be reading the logs right.

  Quin Teagan. Daughter.

  Nora flipped rapidly through the pages in disbelief. She went back, counted. Counted again. Twenty-three visits in the last eleven years. Twice a year Quin visited Lorraine. The first time the month she turned eighteen.

  Nora wanted to believe it was a mistake. But of course it wasn’t. It was here in black and white. Quin had lied to Nora. She’d been seeing their mother all these years and had never said anything.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Duke asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Quin,” she mumbled. She shoved the papers at him, hitting the stack with her fist as he took them. Nora was shaking, her knuckles white. “My sister. All these years. Going down there to see her.”