“Maybe.” Turning her chair around to face him, Taylor leaned back and said, “Did you know that, among other things, St. Thomas More is the patron saint of adopted children?”
She’d lost him. Laredo looked at her quizzically, then remembered the mass card that had been found beside the last body.
“As a matter of fact, no, I didn’t. Must have escaped my required reading list.” He looked at the screen again, then shook his head. No bells were ringing for him. “Is that supposed to mean something to us?” he finally asked.
She wished she could say yes, but the hard truth of the matter was that she was still trying to connect the dots. “I don’t know yet. I just think it’s a little odd, given that the first two victims were connected because Stevens was pregnant with Crawford’s baby.”
He tried to connect that to the third victim. “So you think, what? That our homeless guy got Stevens pregnant, too?”
“No, but our homeless guy did get someone pregnant.” It was a thin, almost nonexistent thread, but so far, the only thread they had.
Laredo looked at her. All that from a mass card? He had to be missing something. “Come again?”
Taylor began to shuffle through the array of papers all spread out on the desk beside the computer. “It’s right here, in the pages that your friend e-mailed you,” she told him, excitement growing in her voice. Finding what she was looking for, she began to read, “It says here that Linda Lawson accused Dougherty of being the father of her baby and tried to take him to court to collect child support. They couldn’t find him. Shortly thereafter, Lawson gave the baby, a two-month-old girl, up for adoption.” Taking a breath, she looked up at him. “Think it means anything?”
So far, it was just a coincidence, albeit an uncanny one. “Other than, what, there’s some superhero out there avenging unwanted kids who were given away by their biological parents?”
Taylor bristled. He was laughing at her. “Not a superhero,” she retorted, “but, well—have you got a better idea?”
The corners of Laredo’s mouth curved. “That depends.”
The way he watched her told Taylor that he might not be talking about the same thing. “On what?” she asked gamely.
His smile grew, slipping into his eyes as they drifted down the length of her. Funny how he hadn’t realized sooner just how long her legs really were. “On whether or not you’re wearing anything under that baggy T-shirt of yours.”
Taylor valiantly ignored the hot shivers suddenly racing up and down her spine. “I’m serious,” she told him.
“So am I.” And then he sighed, relenting. For the moment. “But maybe your idea isn’t that off the wall—insofar as orphaned kids being a connecting factor. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few words with the kid that Stevens and Crawford gave up for adoption—if we can track him down,” he qualified.
They both knew it was a huge if. More and more adoptees were avidly tracking down their birth parents these days in an effort to connect with their roots. But that sort of thing usually took months if not years of diligent work and digging.
Taylor had this uneasy feeling that they didn’t have months, that if she was right, another victim was going to surface soon. Most likely, that victim would be Linda Lawson.
Taylor hit a few keys and closed down her computer. “Why don’t I get you breakfast,” she suggested, “and then we’ll see if we can locate this Linda Lawson?” She turned her chair around to face him again. “She might be able to direct us to the agency that took in her baby.” Taylor shrugged, anticipating that he would call it a waste of time. “It’s a start. Maybe.”
About to get up, Taylor found that her limbs were frozen in place. Laredo had begun to slowly run his hand up along her leg, starting at her knee. He was at her thigh now.
Her body tingled in response. “What are you doing?” she breathed.
His smile began to unravel her. Again. “You offered me breakfast,” he replied.
“Yes.” She had to push the word out as it had gotten stuck in her throat.
“This is what I want for breakfast.” “This” being her, she assumed.
Before she could protest, or tell him that he was going to need something more substantial to see him through the day, Laredo swept her up to her feet and against him in one smooth motion.
“Any objections?” he asked.
Because he’d asked rather than taken, he’d melted her resolve and any protest she might have had.
“No.”
It was the last word Taylor uttered for quite some time.
A quick search through DMV records told them that Linda Lawson was now Linda Morrow, living not that far away from where she had originally grown up. They lost no time in getting to her.
Linda Morrow answered the door after Taylor had rung the bell twice. The onetime captain of the cheerleading squad looked as if she had found life after high school hard and unforgiving.
She reminded Taylor of a flower that had bloomed for too long and was now beginning to wilt.
“We have a few questions we’d like to ask you,” Taylor told her after introducing herself and Laredo. The woman seemed unwilling to step aside and allow them in. “It won’t take long,” Taylor pressed.
Instead of inviting them in, Linda slipped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her in the furtive manner of a woman attempting to keep her home separate from what had been dropped on her doorstep.
Linda ran her tongue nervously over her lips. “My husband’s home today. Sick,” she explained. “I can’t talk to you,” she added in a lowered, pleading voice.
Taylor took a guess. “Your husband doesn’t know, does he?”
“Know? Know what?”
“That you gave a baby girl up for adoption,” Laredo answered.
The thin, mousy-looking woman’s eyes widened, surprised by the question. And then she shook her head. “No, he doesn’t know,” she said in a flat voice. “And I want to keep it that way. He’s a very jealous man. I don’t want to set him off.”
Because of her father, Taylor immediately jumped to a conclusion. “Is he abusive?”
Again, Linda licked her lips, shaking her head. “No, no, but he’s hell to live with when he gets in one of his moods.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the door, as if she expected her husband to drag her inside at any second. “Please, just go away.”
Taylor didn’t want to put the woman in any danger, but then again, if she saw any sort of abusive behavior—whatever Linda wanted to call it—she could arrest the woman’s husband.
“We’ll leave just as soon as you tell us which agency you gave your baby to.”
Linda shook her head. It was obvious that she couldn’t remember the exact name. “I gave the baby to a social worker. I don’t remember her name.” Nervously, she shrugged. “She was with some government agency.”
“You mean Social Services?” Laredo asked, peering at the woman’s face for recognition.
Linda Morrow had the desperate manner of a woman who would grasp at anything. “Yes, that was it. Social Services. Now please, you have to go,” Linda begged. Nervously, she looked over her shoulder toward the closed door again. Fear radiated from every pore.
This just wasn’t right, Taylor thought. She was dying to put this woman’s husband in his place. No one should have this kind of power over another human being, to make them so afraid.
“Just one more question,” she pressed. “Have you seen Hank Dougherty recently?”
At the mention of the name, Linda paled visibly. “No, not since I gave up the baby. Now I really have to get back.” Not waiting for a response, the woman quickly darted back into the house, firmly closing the door behind her.
Laredo made no move to leave. “You believe her?” he asked, looking at the closed door.
Taylor shrugged, turning from the door. “For now, we have no other choice.” She gazed up at him, curious. “Why? Don’t you?”
“I don’t know yet,” Laredo said honestly.
“She seemed awfully jumpy to me.”
Taylor laughed shortly. There was no humor in the sound. “Marriage to an abusive husband’ll do that to you every time.”
Laredo turned away from the house. They began to walk back to the curb where Taylor had parked her vehicle. “She said he wasn’t.”
“Abused women lie, Laredo. All the time. They don’t want the world to know just how bad things really are. A lot of them think that it’s all their fault. That if they were perfect, their husbands would have no reason to be ‘displeased’ with them.”
Laredo stopped walking and looked at her for a long moment. He felt a wave of anger rising. Anger not directed at her but at whoever had shown her this ugly side of life.
“Is that just theory, Detective?”
She shook her head. He’d misunderstood. “I haven’t been in an abusive relationship, if that’s what you’re asking. I would never let anyone get close enough for that to happen,” she added firmly. “Doesn’t mean I haven’t seen one, up close and personal.”
He wondered if he was included in that emotional embargo and was now on notice. She was suddenly challenging him. More questions occurred to him. He wanted to dig deeper in this stretch of soil she’d just exposed to him.
But for now, he kept his questions to himself. He’d already learned that Taylor was the type who immediately circled the wagons if she perceived an attack coming. Better to just wait and let her volunteer the information on her own. In the meantime, they had a crime to solve.
“You know,” he told her, looking back at the house, “you could call that probable cause—thinking she was in some kind of danger because her husband was home.” He, of course, needed no such excuse.
She followed his thinking to its logical conclusion. “And just come in like gangbusters, breaking down the front door?”
Laredo shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” he said affably.
Maybe he could do it, but she couldn’t. “You’re a P.I., Laredo. Everything I do has to be by the book.”
His smile was wicked. “Everything?”
But just then they heard a woman’s scream coming from the house. The moment vanished. He looked at Taylor expectantly. “You were saying?”
“The hell with the book,” Taylor retorted, pulling out her handgun and releasing the safety.
He grinned, taking out his own weapon. “Now you’re talking.”
Measuring the necessary space with his eyes, Laredo took a step back and then kicked in the door, hard. The lock splintered and the door hung drunkenly from the frame with only one hinge holding it up.
Taylor rushed in half a step ahead of him, her adrenaline surging. Laredo, she noted, had his gun drawn, too. She hoped he knew how to hit what he aimed for.
Nothing but eerie silence met them as they swept first one room, then another.
“Linda?” Taylor called out. “Linda, can you hear me? This is Detective McIntyre. We heard you scream and we’re here to help you.” Still nothing. She exchanged looks with Laredo. He nodded toward the back of the house. She raised her voice even higher. “Where are you?”
No one answered.
Something was very, very wrong. Taylor could feel all her senses going on high alert. Cautiously, they moved from one room to the next. Encountering no one.
“Linda, if you can hear me, say something,” Taylor coaxed. “If your husband has hurt you in any way, you can have him arrested. We can keep you safe. He’ll never get to you again. You have my word.”
There was still no indication that anyone was in the house. They were almost out of rooms. Only one more left in the single-story house. The door to that room, a second bedroom, was closed.
Linda and whoever had made her scream had to be in there.
Taylor exchanged glances with Laredo, indicating that she intended on going into the room first. In response, Laredo nodded. But as she reached for the doorknob to slowly test it, Laredo suddenly rammed his shoulder against the door, causing it to fly open.
Rushing in, Laredo trained his weapon on the center of the room. Just above Linda’s head.
The woman was on her knees in the middle of the room. She trembled and sheer terror shone in her eyes. A fresh strip of duct tape stretched across her mouth, sealing in her screams and turning them into whimpers.
Another woman, younger than all of them, stood behind her. Tall, thin, with mousy brown hair that hung limply on either side of her gaunt face, there appeared to be nothing remarkable about her.
Except for the gun she held in one hand and the strip of wet leather she was holding in the other. A drop of water slid down the length of the strip and dripped onto the carpet.
In its own way, the look in the younger woman’s eyes was just as terrified as Linda’s.
She waved her weapon at the two of them. “Get the hell out of here!” she demanded, her voice cracking at the end of her order.
Laredo’s eyes never left the young woman’s. “I don’t think so.” He took a step forward.
“Stay back,” she threatened, raising her gun so that it pointed at his chest. Her hand was shaking. “I mean it! This doesn’t involve you.”
“Oh, but it does,” Taylor told her, her voice low, almost soothing. Following Laredo’s lead, she took a step toward the young woman as well. “I took an oath that said I couldn’t just stand by and watch someone get killed.”
“Then turn around and don’t watch,” the young woman snarled.
“Sorry, can’t do that, either. Look—” It occurred to Taylor that she didn’t even know the young woman’s name. But she thought she had a pretty good idea who the woman was. “What is your name, anyway?”
Suspicion and hatred entered the dark brown eyes. “Why? You want to be my best friend?” she asked nastily.
“Not particularly,” Taylor admitted. “But I need a name. Otherwise, I’m going to have to start referring to you as ‘hey you.’”
The bony shoulders beneath the shabby yellow sweater rose and fell in a careless, dismissive shrug. “Why not? I’ve been called worse,” the young woman retorted. And then her eyes narrowed as she looked down at the woman she held at gunpoint. “And it’s all this bitch’s fault. Every damn bit of it.”
Clearly frightened, Linda began to babble as a sob tore from her throat.
“Now is that any way to talk about your mother?” Laredo asked, shaking his head in exaggerated disapproval.
The brown eyes immediately darted in his direction. “How do you know that?” the young woman demanded. “Why did you just call her my mother?”
“Well, isn’t she?” Laredo asked. “I saw it right away. The same eyes. The same hair. The same penchant for making mistakes, except that yours carry much bigger consequences for what you’re about to do. This is a big mistake,” he told her.
“What’s a bigger mistake than throwing away your baby like it was yesterday’s trash? No, worse than trash,” she amended.
“She didn’t throw you away,” Taylor was quick to point out. “She gave you up so that you could have a better life than what she could give you. It was a huge sacrifice for her to give you up.”
The hatred in the young woman’s eyes as she looked down at the back of Linda’s head deepened. “You believe that crap?” she demanded.
“It’s not crap,” Taylor countered, as calm as Linda was agitated.
The young woman’s head jerked up. “Yes, it is. You want to know how much ‘better’ my life was because of this bitch’s ‘sacrifice’? I got to be passed around from one foster home to another. Treated like a servant instead of a kid. Or more like a slave,” she corrected, “because at least servants are paid.”
Her breathing became audible as she relived the experience. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. When I was thirteen, I was sent to the Dobers. Mrs. Dober was an airhead, but she was okay. She even tried to be nice. When she wasn’t drunk.” Angry tears gathered in her eyes. “Her husband told me it was his job to educate me about the ‘pleasures’
of life. Every night, after his wife took her sleeping pills, he’d come into my room to give me another ‘lesson.’ I ran away four times,” she said bitterly, “but every time, they’d bring me back.” There was agony in her eyes. “And it just got worse.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Laredo asked gently.
“I did,” she shouted. “Nobody would believe me. Dober was a judge. His big thing was family values.” The torment melted from her face as her expression darkened. “After I kill this bitch, he’s next on my list.”
Chapter 14
C learly terrified, Linda Morrow began to whimper. Her trembling became almost violent, as if she were undergoing a seizure. Huge, frightened brown eyes shifted from Laredo to Taylor and then back again, like dark marbles that couldn’t come to rest. They fairly pleaded for help.
“Shut up,” the young woman snapped when Linda continued to whimper. She raised the wet strip, holding it in front of Linda like an unfulfilled promise. “It’s time for you to pay for what you did.”
Trying to divert her attention from Linda, Taylor asked the young woman, “Did you kill that homeless man they found in the alley yesterday?”
Dark, malevolent eyes shifted toward Taylor. “You mean ‘Daddy’?” The woman’s mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Yeah, I did.” She paused, as if reliving the experience. “I probably did him a favor, really. The miserable drunk was so out of it, I don’t even think he knew what was happening.”
Realizing that Taylor was stalling, Laredo followed her lead. “Why did you kill those other two people?” he asked the woman.
The woman scowled. “What other two people?”
“Eileen Stevens and Terrance Crawford,” Taylor answered. As she talked, she took in the room, trying to decide their next move. If she and Laredo separated and made their way toward the younger woman slowly enough for her not to notice, one of them might be able to catch her off guard.
The names Taylor said appeared to mean nothing to the young woman. Impatience echoed in her voice. “Who the hell is that?”
The Cavanaugh Code Page 14