He phoned ahead to make the arrangements to visit Hubey Welles. No one gave him too much trouble about it, and that didn't surprise him. No one at the prison was overly concerned with protecting the rights of a convicted child killer.
He had to leave all weapons outside, of course, and a guard checked his I.D. before they even passed through the metal detectors. Holly seemed to fade a little bit with every step through the dull, cold facility. Like a ghost losing its substance. She jumped at every electronic buzzer, every unexpected sound. But she never stopped. She kept moving forward—slowly, determinedly forward. Like Joan of Arc walking to the stake. He found himself closing his hand around hers, in spite of himself.
Finally, they were escorted into the visiting area. A long line of straight-backed chairs sat one by one, facing unbreakable windows. Every one of those chairs was empty. Small speakers were mounted on either side for talking back and forth. There was no privacy. Guards stood on either end of the room, their eyes sharp and alert.
Holly closed her hand tighter around Vince's as they stood there, waiting for Hubey Welles to appear on the other side of the glass. Her hand was cold. Her grip firm, but shaking. She was reliving her worst nightmare, he knew that.
With a buzz and the sound of locks clanging open, a sturdily built man with crew cut gray hair, and a boxer's face was led to the window on the other side. He looked at Holly with a sneer, then shifted his gaze to Vince, but only briefly. He focused on Holly again, ignoring Vince as if he weren't there.
"They told me I had a visitor. A cop and a lady, they said. I take it you're not the cop."
The way he licked his lips and stared at Holly just to intimidate her made Vince want to smash through the glass and grab the bastard by his throat. He thought he kept the fact concealed. When he spoke he sounded cool, he thought. Official. "I'm Detective Vince O'Mally. This is Holly Newman. She has some questions and I want you to answer them."
Welles shrugged. "I got nothing better to do." Then he sat down in the chair on his side of the glass.
Vince nodded to Holly. She just looked at him for a moment. He held her eyes, tried to send silent encouragement to her without words. They were here now. She might as well go through with this. After a brief hesitation, she sat down in the chair, clearly thrown by Welles's behavior.
"So what did you bring me, Detective? Mm? A little treat for good behavior?"
"Just shut up and listen to what the lady has to say," Vince snapped.
"Yeah, I'll listen. Come on in here, little girl, and I'll give you something to remember me by."
She stiffened. Vince thought she would surge to her feet and run from the room. Instead, her face hardened by degrees. She raised her chin, met his eyes. "I'm a little bit old for your tastes, Mr. Welles. By about twenty years or so."
The convict spit with laughter, his head tipping back with it. His teeth were even and white. "That's a good one," he said. "She's good, your girlfriend. She this quick in bed, Detective?"
"Shut up, Welles." It was Holly who said it, jumping in before Vince could say a word. And her voice had taken on a harshness that surprised Vince. "I'm the one you're here to talk to, so pay attention. Eighteen years ago you confessed to the abduction and murder of my sister. Ivy Newman."
"So what?" His gaze kept jumping from Holly to Vince and back again.
"So, I want to know if you really killed her."
Now the man seemed shaken. He tried to cover it, but Vince saw through that. The man was nervous. "Hey, I said I did, right?"
She stared at him. "You said you did a lot of things."
Vince placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezed gently. She wasn't pale or fading now. Her color had risen in her cheeks. She looked as if she could kill the man on the other side of the glass without a second thought.
Vince spoke because she didn't. "I was thinking some of those confessions might have been made just to keep you off death row, Welles. I was thinking you might have confessed to anything they wanted just to save yourself from lethal injection."
He shrugged. "What if I did?"
"Then we need to know. Did you kill Ivy Newman?"
The man leaned back in his seat, taking his time. "There were so many, you know. I didn't get their names."
Welles leaned forward suddenly, spearing Holly with his eyes. "They liked what I did to them, all my little ones did. They liked it. Asked for it."
She sat utterly still for a moment, then she shot to her feet and drove her fist into the window so fiercely Welles jerked backward in reaction. He fell over in his chair on the other side. Guards moved forward even as Vince grabbed Holly. "It's okay, I've got her, I've got her," he told the officers quickly. Welles got up, laughing at her. Vince turned her away, so she wouldn't see that.
She didn't fight him. Her knees gave, and she would have fallen over if he hadn't been holding her. He managed to turn her toward him, held her against his body.
"It wasn't him," she whispered. Her voice was strained and hurting. Her head was against his shoulder so when she spoke, her breath fanned his neck.
"You can't go by anything he said."
"It wasn't him, Vince. It wasn't him."
He closed his eyes for a long moment before nodding to a guard to let them out. Hubey yelled at them as they left. "Come on, now, you dragged me all the way down here. The least you can do is visit with me. Come on, honey, I promise I'll be nice."
Ignoring the shouts, Vince took Holly with him back to his car. She sat like a statue as he began to drive them home. Still, and stiff, and silent.
Finally, he said, "Holly, how can you be sure?"
She turned her head to face him. She seemed so bleak, so lost. "His eyes," she said. "I remember looking right into his eyes. Hubey Welles has brown eyes. They're small and dark. Round. When he lunged at me like that, I remembered. I looked into the eyes of the man who took my sister. Those aren't the eyes I remember. They were blue. A very pretty blue, like the earliest ice on the lake, when it's so thin the color of the water still shows through. I remember that now," she whispered.
"I believe you."
Her eyes remained on him, riveted to him. "Do you?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
She stared at him a moment longer, then sighed and leaned her head against the seat "Because no one else will."
"Why won't they?"
She glanced sideways at him, very briefly, then shook her head. "I have a history, Vince. Come on, you read my records. You know."
"What I know is that for a kid to have gone through what you did and to still be functioning right now is pretty damned incredible."
"You call this functioning? I'm counting half the time, inside my head. The panic attacks are coming back. That one the other day at your place was just the beginning. There will be more. I can feel it. The nightmares are back...."
"Yeah, but there's a difference now, Red."
She looked skeptical, but waited for him to elaborate.
"When all this stuff hit you before, you were a little girl. A helpless little girl. You're not anymore. You're a grown-up woman now."
She shook her head. "You think that's going to make a difference?"
"You're stronger than the past is, Holly. You can break its hold on you this time. But you have to turn around and face it first. You can't keep running from it."
"Don't bet the farm on that."
"You telling me you're giving up? Even now that you know your sister's killer is still out there somewhere?"
"What the hell do you want from me?"
She was no longer speaking in a normal tone. She'd raised her voice, and he knew she probably needed to. To vent and yell and get some of the turmoil that prison visit had brought to life off her chest.
"I want you to stop being a victim, Red. I want you to stand up and fight the way I know you can. The way you did today when you insisted on looking that bastard in the eyes so you could know the truth."
"You give me one good reason why I sho
uld put myself through any more of this hell, and I'll think about it. Because I'll tell you, Vince, I can only think of one. And that would be if it could bring my little sister back to me. But it can't, can it?"
He couldn't lie to her. "No."
"Then, what is the point?"
"You want to know the point? You want the fucking point?" He pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the car. He then leaned forward, reached past her, and yanked open the glove compartment. He jerked the silver frame out of it and dropped it into her lap.
She glanced down at it. It was folded shut.
"Go on, look at it. Look at it, dammit."
Her hand was shaking when she reached for the frame, opened it like a book. She stared down at the angelic little faces. "Who ... who ... ?"
"Bobby and Kara Prague," he said.
Holly gaped at him, then back at the photo again, and then she burst into tears. Noisy, messy tears. But he didn't let up on her. "They're dead, and I'm pretty goddamn sure the guy who killed them is the same man who killed your kid sister. He's been killing little kids for eighteen years, and he's gonna keep right on killing them until somebody does something to stop him. And that, Red, is the point."
He had lost it with her. He hadn't meant to. She wasn't tough enough to endure his anger, and she hadn't done a damn thing to deserve it—except show signs of backing down. And why the hell did that set him off? It wasn't as if he hadn't expected it.
Or maybe it was. Maybe he'd been starting to think she wasn't one of those helpless, needy women that got him into so much trouble. Maybe he was starting to believe— or maybe to hope—she was more. That she was strong, able to fix her own life and not depend on him to do it for her. Because if she was, then what he was starting to feel toward her wasn't just a part of his recurring pattern, and to be avoided at all costs. Maybe it was something more.
She didn't talk to him for a while. She replaced the photo in the glove compartment, turned on the radio, leaned back in her seat, and stared out the window.
Finally, he said, “I'm sorry I did that. It was wrong of me.”
She said nothing.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Red."
"Don't be so vain, Vince. I just found out the man who killed my baby sister is still walking the streets. Your temper tantrum isn't even on my list of concerns." She looked at her hands, clenched tight in her lap, white and trembling. "I don't know what to tell my mother. This is going to kill her."
He felt like an assassin for having forced her to look at the photo that haunted his every thought. "Don't tell her anything, just yet. You don't have any proof."
"What do you mean?" She sent him a look out of wide, troubled eyes. "I was there. I looked into his eyes."
"I know that. But it's been years."
“It doesn't matter."
"You didn't say anything until now."
"I didn't remember until now. I thought you said you believed me?"
"I do. I'm just telling you what other people are liable to say."
She shook her head. "They have to reopen the case."
"They who, Holly?"
"The authorities. You, for God's sake. You keep telling me how I have to be strong enough to face this, and I have to take charge. Jesus Christ, Vince, it's not my job. There's a government, a system. They have to start looking for him again. Are you telling me my word won't be good enough to make them do that?"
"Holly..." he began.
"You know he was lying. You knew it before I did. Didn't you?"
"I had a feeling, yeah." He sighed deeply, flicking on the wipers as it started to rain. "Most of these types have an m.o. and they stick to it. They prey on kids of a certain age, coloring, and gender. It didn't make a lot of sense to think Hubey Welles would have both male and female victims. When I got to checking, I found all the solid evidence they had on him was related to murdered boys. The murders he confessed to, three of them, all unsolved, were little girls. No hard evidence beyond his confession ever surfaced."
"Then you were right. He cut a deal with the D.A. He'd confess to the murders, in exchange for a life sentence rather than the death penalty."
"I have to assume he was convincing. The D.A. must have honestly believed he could have done those crimes. And God knows it would have been at least some relief to the families to be able to have closure," Vince said slowly.
"It was false closure. Now they have to admit that and reopen the cases. All three of them."
"Holly, I'm not even supposed to be working this case, if you want to know the truth. This vacation I keep saying I'm on? It wasn't by choice."
She stared hard at him, and for the life of him he couldn't believe he was telling her any of this. "Why?" she asked.
"I suppose if you asked my chief, he'd say it was due to severe stress. He thought I showed signs of losing it after I found those two kids."
Her gaze fell to the closed glove compartment. "You cared too much. Didn't you? Got too involved."
He thought for a moment. "My life is my job. You know that?"
"No, I didn't."
"It is. I've never been married. I've never wanted to do much of anything else except be a cop. Most of my pay goes into the bank, not that I give a crap how much I have. No house. I live in an apartment, a decent apartment, but nothing too nice. It wouldn't be worth it. I don't spend enough time there to make it all that important"
"You have a nice enough car," she commented.
He smiled a little. "You want to know why I bought it?"
"Yeah."
"I was on my way to a crime scene last February in my beat-up Buick, and I got stuck on an icy hill. Had to wait for a sand truck to come by before I could get up and over, and by then the case had been assigned to someone else."
"And it pissed you off so much you went out and bought a Jeep?"
"All-wheel drive," he said. “I don't get stuck anymore."
She nodded. "You sound like a good cop."
"Been at it a long time."
"Then how did you manage to get so involved in this case?"
He glanced at her, then focused on the road again, saying nothing.
"I mean, an enforced leave of absence. Digging around in it when you've been ordered not to. Carrying the kids' pictures around with you. They don't sound like the kinds of things a seasoned detective would do."
He drew a breath, sighed. "I made a mistake."
"Must have been a big one."
He nodded. "I promised Sara Prague I'd find her kids for her, and that everything would be all right."
She turned wide eyes on him. "That was a tall promise."
"It was one I never should have made. She believed me, you know. She really believed me. And I..."
He didn't finish, concentrating on driving instead, and on pretending his eyes weren't burning like two hot coals.
"There's a lot more to you than I thought," she said softly.
"I'm a cop. That's all, Holly. That's all I am, and all I want to be."
He shifted uncomfortably under her penetrating gaze. She was seeing a lot more than he wanted to reveal. "Does it really matter what you want to be?" She shook her head slowly. "I don't think it does, you know. I want to be a normal, well-adjusted woman. I want to be able to get through a day without turning the light switches off in the right order, or moving the pencil holder on my desk half an inch to the left." She hesitated for a moment, then went on. "Most of all, I want to be the girl who saved her little sister from an attempted kidnapping eighteen years ago. But I'm not. I'm not any of those things."
He looked at her, looked real deep into her eyes. They seemed able to see straight through him, and they touched him in places that hadn't been touched in a long time. He didn't like that a bit. And he didn't like thinking they had a lot in common, the two of them. Because he wanted to be the cop-hero who'd saved the Prague kids in the nick of time. He wanted to be the man who didn't break promises to broken mothers.
***
; HOLLY WAS FRIGHTENED, more frightened than she had been on her way to Auburn to see Hubey Welles. More frightened than she had been in years, to be honest. She could feel the old terror creeping in like a dark shadow over her soul. And though the desire to face it, to fight it, as Vince kept insisting she must, was still strong, the fear was stronger. Her monster was still on the loose. The villain of her darkest nightmares was free. He could be anywhere. Anyone. She wasn't sure she could stand to go through her day-to-day existence knowing that. She'd only come as far as she had because she'd believed him behind bars. The case closed. Justice served. That was the foundation on which she'd rebuilt her life, her mind, her sanity. And that foundation had been ripped out from beneath her.
God, would she revert then? Would the panic attacks, and the nightmares, and the obsessive behavior slowly take over her life the way they had before?
Vince kept looking at her, searching her face with worry in his. He kept asking if she was okay. She didn't really know how to answer that.
As they rounded the corner toward Holly's house, a shadow caught Holly's attention, from the corner of her eye, and she felt an old dread in the pit of her stomach as she jerked her head toward it.
It was there, and then gone, all in the space of a heartbeat. The dark shape of the van had vanished around the bend just as she turned to look at it.
Her heartbeat slammed against her chest "Did you see that?" she asked Vince.
He glanced at her. "See what?"
Holly closed her eyes. Hell, she'd seen the van in her dreams. Maybe it hadn't even been there. Maybe she'd just...
"The front door is open. Vince, the front door is open!" Holly was wrenching her passenger door open before the vehicle had even come to a complete stop. She lunged out of the car and ran toward the house, with her heart in her throat. She surged up the steps, ran through the open front door, and saw her mother, lying on the sofa, one arm dangling limply, hand dragging the floor. She took a step toward her, then stopped when her foot hit paper. She looked down.
A copy of her sister's missing-child poster lay on the floor, face up.
Holly yanked it up, bit back a scream, and lunged across the room to where her mother lay. "Mom!" She fell to her knees, skidding on the carpet and grabbed her mother's shoulder. .
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