Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  They are probably rehashing the case. Trying to understand why I went to the trouble to track down Marlene Bilek, when she isn’t my mother. Why I cling to a quilt handcrafted by a woman I’d never met.

  How I ended up with Vero’s fingerprints in my Audi.

  I don’t know the answer to the last question. It confuses me as much as it does them. As for the first two issues . . . I guess I was just trying to keep Vero alive, shore up her memory. Our imaginary visits weren’t enough to ease my pain, so I went to the next step of establishing a tangible connection in the form of her mother.

  Maybe, if I could make Vero real enough, her family real enough, then she wouldn’t be gone and I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.

  Because twenty-two years later, I still haven’t figured out the business of living. I survive, I suppose. I exist. I even got married and moved all around the country. But was that truly living or just another form of running? All those nights I woke up screaming. All those memories I suppressed time and time again, until my mind was a mixed-up mess way before the concussions began.

  I got out of the dollhouse but never escaped the past. The weight of my own guilt, a skill set I never learned? I don’t know. I feel like I want to be something more. I want to do something more. But I don’t know how to get there.

  I could run again, I contemplate now, curled up on the hotel room bed. Pick out a new state, new town, new identity. It’s what I’ve done before. Especially the first two years after my escape. Dragging Thomas from place to place, name to name, often on a weekly basis. Less a strategic bid for freedom than a clear case of hysteria. Thomas had begged me to slow down. At least try out a new location before casting it into the wind. At least pick one name, one identity, so we had some shot at building a normal life.

  Under his guidance, we’d done one last professional do-over, paying good money for proper IDs, vetted history. We’d become Thomas and Nicole Frank, identities he swore would keep us safe. And yet still, every two years I’d had to move again. Because the weight of November still became too much.

  Maybe I can take up drinking seriously this time, I ponder now. Brain trauma be damned. I’ll throw back scotch, burn out these terrible memories once and for all. I’ll tell myself I’m free and happy and independent. Fuck Thomas; fuck Vero. I will escape both of them. I will be a woman who has it all.

  A woman who is no one at all.

  Except that’s not completely true, I find myself thinking. More shadows, shifting and lurching in the back of my head. The taste of dirt. The feel of earth giving way beneath my fingertips. And that moment, that one savage moment when I realized I had done it. I was out; I was alive. I was free of the dollhouse.

  That moment, right before . . .

  Smoke. Heat. My house burning down in New Hampshire. Why did Thomas torch it? His workshop maybe, but our entire house? Why the need to burn it to the ground?

  How did Thomas become so good with fire?

  Vero, laughing in the back of my mind. “Is it your past you’re trying to escape, or the man you married?”

  I rein it all in. Force my eyes to focus on the here and now. The darkened hotel room. The empty bed beside me. I don’t want to feel so helpless anymore. Or lost or confused or overwhelmed.

  This is it. The moment of truth.

  I can spend the rest of my life being a dead woman’s roommate or a missing man’s wife.

  Then, in the next heartbeat.

  No. I’m more than either of those two things. I’m the one who wanted to move to New Hampshire, even when Thomas tried to convince me otherwise. I’m the one who hired a private investigator, even though Thomas tried to tell me to let it be.

  I’m a woman twice returned from the dead.

  And I’m not finished yet.

  Chapter 32

  WHILE WYATT WORKED with Kevin on the fingerprint riddle, Tessa got on the phone with D. D. Warren.

  The Boston detective was her usual charming self. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “My watch says midnight.”

  “I haven’t even agreed to work for your high-and-mighty investigative firm yet—”

  “But you did agree to a freelance assignment.”

  “I already achieved the high score on Angry Birds.”

  “You, an angry bird? Who would’ve thought?”

  “Shut up,” D.D. said.

  Which made Tessa smile. Because as interactions with the temperamental detective went, this was par for the course, and so far, the most normal conversation Tessa had had all night.

  “I’m sorry to call so late,” Tessa acknowledged. “But if memory holds, you’re one of those round-the-clock workers. As in you’ll sleep when you retire. Or the day you drop dead.”

  “Same diff,” D.D. replied.

  “Perfect, because this case feels like it’s spiraling out of control and we definitely could use some answers sooner versus later.”

  Wyatt had wrapped up his call. Tessa waved him over to join, putting her phone on speaker. Wyatt and D.D. had worked together on the Denbe case, so no introductions were required.

  “How’s your arm?” Wyatt asked.

  “Getting there.”

  “Got a date for the fitness-for-duty test?” he asked.

  “Getting there,” D.D. said, and this time her voice indicated end of discussion. “So the Veronica Sellers case. According to the always-in-the-know-and-never-wrong nightly news, you found the missing girl. Albeit thirty years late.”

  “Um . . . we’re not so sure about that,” Tessa said.

  A moment of silence. Then: “Well, I’ll be damned. Guess I’m happy I took your call after all.”

  Wyatt explained about the fingerprint confusion, filling in now: “Kevin just examined the latex gloves using a magnifying glass, and sure enough, there appear to be ridge patterns at the end of each finger. As in, Thomas Frank somehow fashioned a pair of fingerprint gloves, designed to leave Veronica Sellers’s prints all over his wife’s car.”

  “He wanted his wife identified as a missing girl from a thirty-year-old cold case?” D.D. asked in confusion. “But why?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question. Got any ideas?”

  “I’ve been reviewing the whole sorry case file,” D.D. said. “Can I just say, when you asked me to look into all the missing-kid and runaway-youth cases from thirty years ago in New England . . . What a shit assignment.”

  “It’s a major investigation,” Tessa informed her. “Is there any other kind of assignment?”

  “Touché. Look, I gave it my best go, but you have two fundamental issues when trying to track down a major sex-slave ring from that far back.”

  “Okay,” Wyatt prompted.

  “One, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was still in its infancy. So we don’t have one central database. I mean, kind of. Major departments, such as Boston, took the time to send in their documents. But if you consider all the small-town offices, remote sheriff’s departments, out there who were already way understaffed, the information collection in the beginning was hit or miss, particularly for the years you’re looking at.”

  “Then you go department by department,” Tessa stated, which was definitely a shit assignment, and yet, as all three of them knew, how things got done.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which brings us to problem number two. Garbage in. Garbage out.”

  Tessa was still contemplating that one when Wyatt got it.

  “You mean were the missing kids ever categorized as missing?”

  “Ding-ding-ding, give the man a prize. Ask any cop who works vice. Most of the underaged working girls are runaways. Some might have been declared missing, but the vast majority—”

  “Aren’t even in the system,” Tessa finished for her.

  “Exactly. So yeah, I can kill the next w
eek begging and pleading for every backwoods law enforcement agency to search their archives for missing persons cases going back at least thirty years, or I can actually do something productive with my time.”

  “I presume you’re going to dazzle us with your brilliance?” Wyatt spoke up hopefully.

  “Please. I fractured my arm, not my head. So first thing’s first. For the sake of argument, I did a broad-strokes statistical analysis. You want some numbers to keep you awake at night? There’s been a roughly sixfold increase in the number of missing persons cases in the past twenty-five years, from one hundred and fifty thousand to nearly nine hundred thousand. Now, a significant portion of that increase can be attributed to greater law enforcement attention and better national databases, much like improved cancer diagnostics lead to an increase in the number of cases of cancer. It’s not great to see those numbers go up, but it’s not as bad as it sounds either.

  “Breaking those numbers down, only so many of those cases involve youths under eighteen, and of those, two hundred thousand are considered custodial situations. Basically, boil it all down, and only about a hundred missing children’s cases each year are categorized as stranger abductions. Speaking as a mom, that’s still a hundred too many, and yet . . . that wasn’t as many as I would’ve thought.”

  Tessa considered the matter, had to agree. She and Wyatt shared a nod.

  “But that’s nationwide,” Wyatt spoke up. “It’s rare for a sex-trafficking ring to span that much geography.”

  “Exactly. So if I’m focusing on the New England region, I’m guessing I should find records for maybe a dozen, two dozen missing kids. But those are today’s numbers. Remember, in the nineteen eighties, our police departments weren’t as well versed in this game. So I’m thinking if I can find as many as a dozen missing children’s reports, then maybe there is some proof of an active sex-trafficking ring in that time period. Plus, I open it up to look at runaways, too, for obvious reasons.”

  Tessa found herself nodding; Wyatt, too. Neither of them spoke, simply waited.

  “I found three cases,” D.D. announced. “Of those, Veronica Sellers is one. But that’s it. Three kids went missing in that time frame. Two girls, one boy, Veronica Sellers being the youngest at six, the others being a twelve-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy.”

  Tessa couldn’t help herself. She frowned, stared at Wyatt beside her.

  “So assuming there’s this dollhouse, filled with dozens of working girls,” Tessa spoke out loud.

  “They’d have to be runaways,” D.D. answered. “Most likely recruited from back alleys, bought off other pimps. Except, you described a pretty high-end operation, right? A Victorian house, oriental rugs, crystal glasses, an elite clientele. I would think customers like those would have a certain expectation of the merchandise, so to speak. A young, fresh-faced girl, sadly, fits the bill. A washed-out runaway, on the other hand . . .”

  “Doesn’t seem the right match,” Tessa filled in. She considered the matter. “Nicky claimed she spent the first few years locked away in a tower bedroom, taking classes. Madame Sade appeared every day, educated her in both basic studies but also culture, entertainment, et cetera. Maybe she groomed the runaways, polished them up for her clients?”

  “Maybe,” D.D. conceded. “Time-consuming, though. If she’s spending all that time on one girl, how could she be recruiting any others?”

  Tessa and Wyatt didn’t have an answer for that.

  “I got another theory for you.”

  “By all means,” Wyatt prompted.

  “I’m a homicide detective. You want to know our secret to success? Play the odds. A wife meets a brutal end. Arrest the husband. Or, if you’re feeling frisky, the pool boy she just dumped because while he might’ve been good in bed, she still wasn’t givin’ up her mansion for him. Either way, you got a victim, odds are you got the perpetrator in the same room with the body.”

  “You mean Thomas Frank?” Wyatt asked. “Because trust me, I suspect the husband.”

  “Who’s Thomas Frank?” D.D. asked. “Look, my assignment was to investigate Veronica Sellers and other missing kids going back thirty years. I found three cases, which means either there was definitely not a sex-trafficking ring that specialized in abducting fresh-faced young girls. Or . . .” Long pause. “The other girls who disappeared were never listed as missing because they were never declared missing by their parents.”

  It took Tessa a moment to understand. Then she closed her eyes and leaned closer to Wyatt, simply because she needed to.

  “If this was a high-dollar operation,” D.D. continued, “discreet location, wealthy clients, high expectation for merchandise . . . Well, then, maybe the madam went about things the smart way: Why risk kidnapping your product when you can simply buy it instead?”

  “Children,” Wyatt said. “Madame Sade didn’t just abduct kids. She purchased them?”

  “Sure. It happens. Sadly, anywhere in this country, most days of the week.”

  “If the parents were the ones selling,” Wyatt finished the thought, “naturally they wouldn’t report their own child missing.”

  “Absolutely. Can’t call attention to their own crime. And if you’re a family living on the edge, or maybe a single parent, no family support network of your own, who’s gonna ask questions? You tell the neighbors little Sally went off to stay with your ex or is visiting your grandparents or, hell, got sick and died. You’d be amazed how few people will really push the issue, ask the pertinent questions. By and large, people don’t want to know what they don’t want to know.”

  “Vero’s abduction was the exception, not the norm?” Tessa asked. “Madame Sade grabbed her maybe because she fit a general type, brown hair, blue eyes, but probably even more to the point, was clearly unguarded in the park, as her mom was passed-out drunk. Vero’s abduction was a crime of opportunity, but for other girls, the madam took a more direct approach?”

  “Well, now, just to make matters more interesting,” D.D. said, “Vero’s mom wasn’t the one who reported her missing.”

  “What?” Tessa sat up straighter. Now D.D. had her and Wyatt’s complete attention.

  “I pulled the original file. Because frankly, it got me curious. I mean, so few missing children’s cases from that time period, and now here is one, suddenly back from the dead, and yet she never looked up her mom. Didn’t that bother you? ’Cause again, being a paranoid homicide cop, it bothered me.”

  “She said she wasn’t ready, looked nervous and scared on the subject . . .” Tessa shut up. Nicky Frank wasn’t even Veronica Sellers in the end, so what did it matter?

  “Report says Vero and her mother, Marlene, went to the park. Mom ended up falling asleep on the park bench. When she wakes back up, her six-year-old daughter is gone. Uproar ensues, cops are called. But here’s the deal. According to the individual witness statements, Marlene wasn’t calling her daughter’s name. She was just walking around the park. It wasn’t until another woman approached her, asking about her daughter, saying she’d seen Vero leave the park, wondering what had happened . . . That’s when things got off and running. Police came, Marlene gave a statement, a reward was hastily assembled, a local case was born. But you tell me, mom to mom”—D.D. was speaking to Tessa at this point—“would you walk around a playground, never calling your vanished child’s name?”

  Tessa didn’t have an answer. It was unfathomable to her.

  “Hold on,” Wyatt spoke up. “This was nearly thirty years ago. Missing children’s cases didn’t have the publicity they do now. It might not have occurred to Marlene to assume the worst.”

  “True. And the investigating officers at the time apparently agreed with you. Case was worked, ran out of steam, put away, taken back out, reworked, ran out of steam, and eventually, ten years ago, pulled again as a cold case. Because you never know, right?”

  “Sure,” Tessa
and Wyatt agreed.

  “Now, that detective, in his notes, raises some questions right off the bat about Marlene Bilek. And not just her behavior, or lack of urgency in the park. No, what caught his attention was that six months later, Marlene opened her first-ever savings account with five thousand dollars cash.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Now, by this time, Marlene had taken up with a fellow officer, Hank Bilek. He swore the money came from her abusive ex. Basically, this Ronnie guy had bashed in her face one too many times. Hank did the noble thing, stopped by, told Ronnie if he ever laid a hand on Marlene again, Ronnie would spend the next six months assembling all his broken body parts. To make it official, Ronnie would cover Marlene’s moving expenses, hence the five grand so she could leave him and get a place of her own.”

  “Okay,” Tessa interjected, “I gotta say I like Hank’s style.”

  “Sure, what’s not to love? One problem, though . . . Ronnie’s account never showed a five-thousand-dollar debit. And he had the money. He’d just finished up some major plumbing job. But while Marlene has a record of cash coming in, Ronnie has no record of cash going out. So where’d the money come from?”

  “You think Marlene might have sold her six-year-old daughter for five thousand dollars,” Wyatt said slowly.

  “It’s a question worth considering.”

  “But Marlene didn’t even get the money until six months later,” Tessa protested.

  “Case was front-page news. That kind of cash appearing in Marlene’s name within twenty-four hours of her daughter’s abduction? Please, they would’ve had her in handcuffs for sure. Six months later, however, with no leads, no suspects, no theories . . . Press had moved on. And so had the police.”

  “Any proof,” Wyatt asked now, “linking the money to Vero’s disappearance, or, say, a person of interest?”

  “Not that lucky. The deposit was in the form of cash, so no way to trace. And for that matter, Marlene has a clean record. A history of alcohol abuse, yes, but criminal mischief, no. So . . .” Tessa could hear the waffling in D.D.’s voice. “Marlene hardly made for a great suspect. Especially given the grieving-mother act that had already been filmed on TV.”