Root of All Evil

by Hayden, Jennifer

  “Pretty much. She didn’t even stay long enough to eat. She just split.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t look at my watch.” Luke glared at him. “What is this? I know you don’t think I had anything to do with her disappearance. I didn’t hate her. I didn’t have any feelings for her at all, if you want the truth. At least nothing beyond a mild attraction in the beginning. That all changed when Kate came home.”

  “The roommate essentially told me the same story,” Archer relented.

  “So what do you think has happened to her?” Kate asked. She was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Something didn’t smell right.

  “We don’t know. She was talking to her roommate on the way home from your barbecue. After that, she was stopping at the store to pick up some ice cream. We’ve got her going as far as the store. That’s when she vanished. Her car, everything. When we checked with the Stop and Shop they said they found a bag in the parking lot on the night Ms. Hendrickson was there shopping. It had two videos in it that she had rented. They just assumed she dropped them on accident and put them back in stock.” Archer shook his head, obviously discouraged. “A lot of time has passed since then. If something happened in that parking lot, there’s no evidence of anything now.”

  Luke frowned. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I haven’t heard from her since she walked out of here. I’d be very surprised if I did. She was pretty angry. Hallie hasn’t been going to daycare so I’ve had no reason to cross paths with her. ”

  Archer appeared to believe him. He shut his black book.

  “You don’t think this has something to do with Louis,” Kate reasoned aloud.

  Archer didn’t commit either way. “Sara Hendrickson has a stalker ex-boyfriend we’re talking to. He’s back in Minnesota though so it’s unlikely he could have had anything to do with her disappearance.”

  “Louis would have no reason to harm Sara,” Luke said. “What would he gain from that?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” Archer shoved the notebook back into his suit pocket. “I’ll be in touch. If you think of anything else, let me know.” He turned at the last minute. “By the way, we located the apartment you were being held in back in Vancouver. Clean as a whistle to the naked eye. Not so much as a stain on the carpet.” He looked Kate in the eye. “Until we used luminal. Any idea whose blood is all over the place?”

  Kate blanched again. Her head began to ache as she struggled to go back to that dark, dingy closet that she had spent a good portion of the last three years in.

  Luke swore, stepping toward her. She shook her head at him, struggling with her memories. She’d heard screams. Sometimes she’d been able to block them out and other times not. As to who was doing the screaming, she didn’t know.

  “I don’t know,” she answered eventually. “I wasn’t out there with them most of the time. They kept me in a bedroom by myself. I spent most of the time in a closet because that was the only way I could keep him from chopping my hair off with his hunting knife. Louis doesn’t like dark, confined spaces.” She didn’t know where that came from but it was there and out of her mouth before she could think about it. Louis was claustrophobic.

  She heard Luke let out a vile curse. This was really the first tiny detail she’d given him of her captivity. He’d seen the scars on her head when he’d tried to fix her hair, shortly after she’d come home. He’d asked her about them and she’d lied, too terrified at that point to tell him the truth.

  “I’m gonna kill that bastard.” Luke’s words were low, but deadly.

  Though Archer didn’t look like he blamed him, he still gave Luke a piece of advice. “I don’t think making comments like that at this point is a good idea, Mr. Garrison. Let us do our job.”

  “Then go out there and do it.” Luke walked into his office and slammed the door angrily.

  “Anything else you remember?” Archer asked Kate. “I know it can be hard to talk about these things in front of a spouse.”

  “I remember things at weird times,” she admitted, running a hand through her hair. “I can’t be certain of my dreams because sometimes I don’t know if they’re real or not.”

  Archer studied her for a moment. “Mrs. Garrison, I like you. Believe it or not, I like your husband. I’d never tell him this because I think he and I work better with a love-hate relationship, but I was a huge fan of his when he played ball for Seattle. I’m not trying to be the asshole here but I have a society to protect out there. Louis Ferndale is apparently a very dangerous man. I need help if I’m going to catch him.”

  “You think he’s coming for me eventually, don’t you? That he’s going to try to take me again.”

  “I don’t even begin to claim to understand a scary bastard like that. My hunch is that he’s hell bent on getting that money and getting even with you for all the trouble this has caused him. That puts you and your daughter in some pretty extreme danger.” He indicated Luke’s closed office door. “It’s good that he’s angry like that. And it’s good that you’re scared. It will keep you both on your toes. That will likely keep you alive. In addition, I’ll have some extra patrols in the area.” He nodded at her. “I’ll be in touch if I have any news. If you remember anything else, let me know.”

  She showed him out, then went to Luke’s office door and knocked before opening it. He sat at his desk, his feet propped up on the wood as he leaned back in his chair. His expression was blank but his eyes were angry still.

  “I couldn’t talk about that before. I don’t know why it came out now.”

  “I probably wouldn’t want to talk about it either,” he said quietly. “I wish I could have helped you, Katie. It kills me to think you suffered like that for three years and no one helped you.”

  She felt the moisture fill her eyes and swiped a hand at it. “I got through it, Luke. I’m here now. I’m not perfect, but I’m here.”

  He shook his head, the sadness in his eyes nearly her undoing. “I would have come for you if I had known.”

  “I know that. We’ve been over this.” She walked over and forced him to put his feet on the floor so she could climb into his lap. Her fingers grasped his chin and she looked into his sad, blue eyes. “You told me when I first came home that if I wanted to talk to you about things, I didn’t have to be afraid. You told me you would be here to listen. What you just heard out there was probably the worst of it. But there’s more, Luke. And I’m not sure you can handle hearing it. That’s why I don’t talk about it.”

  “I want you to talk about it. I want you to heal.”

  “You’re hurting right now because of what I said to Detective Archer. I can’t handle seeing you hurt any more than you can handle seeing me hurt. That’s something we have to talk about.”

  “I can’t promise not to react to things, Kate.” He stared at her intently. “You’re my wife. When I hear the things that bastard did to you it makes me so mad inside that I feel like smashing something. I feel like hunting him down and killing him with my bare hands. I’m not an angry guy and you know that, but you’re my weakness. “

  “Luke, we have to work on this together for Hallie’s sake. Otherwise she’s going to have a psychologically destroyed mother and an angry father.”

  The realization that she was right obviously hit him because he nodded his head.

  “I’m worried about Sara,” she added softly. The truth was, she wanted to hate the woman now that she knew Sara had made a play for Luke right under her nose. But in the end, all she felt was pity for the girl.

  “I am too,” he agreed. “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “Louis would have no reason to take her. What would be the point?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what scares me. It’s just too random that she left our house and turned up missing the same day. I mean it’s still possible that she’ll turn up. She may have just taken off for a while, upset about what happened. It’s hard to say.”

&
nbsp; “You think he’s watching us?”

  “Probably. I’m sure Karen led him to us the day she showed up on our porch. For whatever reason, he’s staying at a distance for now.”

  “Hallie will be upset to hear about Sara.”

  “We’re not going to tell her. She knows Sara won’t be back here for now anyway, because of what happened at the barbecue. I explained to her that she would only see Sara at daycare when and if she went back.”

  “Which she isn’t going to,” Kate figured out.

  “Hell no. I’m not letting her out of my sight. I’m not letting you out of my sight either.”

  She leaned against him momentarily.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She looked up at him, waiting for the question.

  “Why’d he start cutting off your hair that way?”

  Visions of the apartment in Vancouver came back into her head and she forced herself to blink them away. “I couldn’t tell him where the money was so every day I didn’t tell him, he cut off a chunk of hair at my scalp. Finally I got smart and figured out he wouldn’t go into the closet. It was a deep closet with no windows and no lights.”

  He swore again, then wrapped his arms around her tightly. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, baby.”

  “God will punish him, Luke. I know that. He’s a bad person and people like him don’t go unpunished. I just want to get on with my life. I have to help the police catch him in order to do that. I have to keep Hallie safe.”

  “I know. I’m with you on this. I want you to be very careful though. I know we’re always together, but I’m even talking about answering the door. Let me handle it for now.”

  “I can’t be a prisoner again. I need to be able to go outside.”

  “You will. We’ll just do things together. Just until he’s caught.” He looked into her eyes. “I can’t lose you again, Blue. Do you understand that? It would kill me to lose you again.”

  “I can’t lose you again either.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Louis listened as his wife yelled in his ear. He regretted purchasing the pre-paid cell phone and giving her the number. She’d been howling at him for the past twenty minutes, calling him every name under the sun. So he hadn’t been in contact with her for a while. So fucking what.

  “Next time I will turn your sorry ass in to the police,” she yelled. “I’m sitting here with your stinkin’ kids and you’re off screwing God knows who and getting into trouble. I’m sick of it, Louie. This isn’t working for me anymore.”

  “Meaning what?” he asked, though he didn’t really care. It wasn’t like she could leave him. She didn’t have anyone else to turn to. No family and very few friends.

  “Meaning that if you don’t get this taken care of and get your ass back here I’m going to tell the police all about you.”

  “You’ll incriminate yourself if you do,” he warned. “I won’t go down alone.”

  “They’ll never believe you. Go ahead and try. You didn’t kill someone else, did you? It was bad enough you killed your trampy whore. You’ve got the cops on your tail big time now. I saw your sketch on TV. Good move.”

  He’d had to kill Karen. She’d become useless to him and was about to become a problem. As for Sara Hendrickson? He smiled. Now she’d been useful to him. Very useful. “Don’t you worry about what I’m doing,” he advised her. “You’ve got plenty of your own problems to deal with.”

  “What have you done?” His wife’s voice hollered through the phone and he grimaced. Why had he married her again? Oh, yes, for money. Only she didn’t have any. That had turned out to be a big fat farce.

  “I asked you a question. Damn it, answer me. I will call the cops, I swear it.”

  “I needed some information and I got it. Information does not come free.”

  “You’ve got to be shittin’ me. You killed her? Another one? God, you’re stupid, Louie. You’ve screwed this thing up from day one. Now you’re dropping bodies everywhere you go. You don’t think the cops are going to catch up to you?”

  “I have a plan now, sugar plum. Don’t you worry about that. I really need to go now. I’ll be in touch.” He disconnected the line while she was still yelling at him. Fuck her. He was tired of taking orders from her anyway. For years he had been taking her shit. Well, he was done. To hell with her.

  He’d needed Sara Hendrickson. She’d been feisty at first but after a while he’d been able to convince her to give him the information he needed. He now knew the entire layout of the Garrison house. And most importantly, he knew exactly where precious little Hallie Garrison slept. He knew her bedtime and he knew when she played outside. Yes, Sara had sung like a canary when he’d gotten nasty enough. Now it was time to put his plan into action. He was going to have a little fun with Luke and Kate Garrison—play a little game, leading up to the ultimate finale. First, he would send Kate a little message—le t her know the game was on. Then, once he had the one thing that would hit her where it hurt, she would lead him to that money. Soon, she would know the real feeling of painful loss, when she paid the ultimate debt with her daughter’s life.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Kate and Luke found solace in spending time with Hallie. They went to the zoo and to the Pizza Palace again. They went to the beach and to the Pike Place Market. They basically just spent time being a family. Kate soaked up as much sun as she could. She was so glad to be outside, so glad to be in the fresh air. Hallie was eating up the attention too. She’d moved on from the Sara ordeal, only mentioning the woman once when she asked why she couldn’t go to daycare anymore. Luke had explained to her that since Kate was home now she didn’t need to go to daycare and that she would go to school again in the fall. She appeared to accept that and she was appearing to accept Kate. It had been nearly five weeks since she’d gotten home, and in that time Hallie had eventually warmed up to her. She still wasn’t calling her Mommy. In fact, she really wasn’t calling her anything. If she wanted Kate’s attention, she just came over and took her hand.

  That didn’t bother Kate. She knew Hallie was adapting and that was all that mattered. As they began to settle into their familial routine, Kate began to feel slightly less needy toward Luke. She wanted him to be able to go back to work. She knew he needed to. His coaching staff had a training camp scheduled for the following week and they needed him there. When she tried to talk to him about it he just shut her out, telling her they could handle things.

  “What about your players? Don’t they need you?”

  He glanced up from the sports page he was reading, his morning cup of coffee in his hand. “I told you everything’s under control, Kate. Are you sick of me already?” He grinned as he took a sip of coffee.

  “I think you know better than that.” She swiped him with a towel. “I just feel like you’re babysitting me all the time. I can handle a couple of hours here by myself. Just two or three. I’ll keep the doors locked and stay inside. I promise.”

  He took another sip of coffee. “I’m not ready to leave you alone yet.”

  She hadn’t been prepared for that response. She frowned. “I’m fine, Luke.”

  “I know you’re better. But I’m not comfortable with the alone thing as long as Louis Ferndale is still out there.”

  “He could be out there forever. What if they never catch him?”

  He looked at her seriously. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” He turned back to the paper.

  He could be exasperating. But at the same time, she knew he was only looking out for his family. She couldn’t blame him. The only reason she felt secure at all right now was because he was there.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He didn’t look up from the paper. Apparently, he didn’t feel the conversation needed to continue.

  “Have you talked to Detective Archer at all?”

  He shook his head.

  “I wonder if he’s heard anything about Sara.”

  “He hasn�
�t called so I’m assuming she’s still missing.” They both knew what that meant. Likely, Sara was dead.

  “Don’t think about it, Kate. It’s not going to help matters. I feel just as badly about it as you do. The thing is, you don’t know if Louis had anything to do with her disappearance anyway. Her ex may have done something to her.”

  “From Minnesota?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do, okay? If there was anything I could do to help this, I would.”

  “Do you really think her ex may have taken her?” She wanted to believe that was true, because the alternative was too horrible to fathom.

  “It’s a likely possibility. Louis Ferndale wouldn’t have any reason to involve Sara in this. We hardly know her.”

  She supposed he was right.

  Hearing the phone ring, she answered it without thinking.

  “Well, well, well. Hello, Kate.” She froze at the sound of his voice.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” He snickered in her ear. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m watching you. Oh yes, I’m watching you real close.” He paused. “Go ahead and hide, little one. Don’t worry, I’ll find you.” He laughed now—a deep, scratchy sound that ate away at her soul. “Maybe you should go check on your daughter. She sure does like her dog a lot. Pretty smart mutt. Be a shame if I had to hurt him too.” The line went dead.

  Luke watched as the color drained from Kate’s face. He jumped from his chair and reached for the phone, instantly knowing who was on the other end of the line. “Listen, you mother-”

  “He’s gone. He hung up.” She reached up and scratched at the skin on her neck, something he hadn’t seen her do since the first night she’d been home. Then she clasped her locket tightly, a mixture of terror and anxiety on her face.

  “Damn it, Kate, I told you to let me answer the phone.”

  “You said the door,” she said, her voice hollow. “Where’s Hallie?”

  “I meant everything, the phone included,” he said stiffly.

  “Where is Hallie?” she repeated, raising her voice.