Scar Tissue

by Patricia Hale

  “It did then and it does every day, but I did it for him. I loved him so much. I still think of him as mine.”

  “Mike never suspected?”

  “No, he thinks I wasn’t watching him and someone came in and took him. No one ever suspected that I was involved. Mike being on the force helped, they looked at us a little in the beginning, but not for long. I guess you could say I got away with it, but it hasn’t left me, not even for a second.”

  “The first time we came and looked at the house,” I said, “I thought I heard someone in the woods calling for Jonathan.”

  She smiled a weary smile. “Sometimes I walk in the woods and talk to him so Mike won’t hear me. I sing him songs and tell him how much I love him.”

  She started to cry and I held her while she struggled with a sadness I could only imagine. Giving up a child she cherished to live with a man she hated. All in the name of love.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go inside. You get in the bath and I’ll clean up.”

  I considered all that Rhea had told me as I pushed a mop over the kitchen floor. I think I would have opted for running away after the first punch, but I also understand the fear that’s involved with escaping an abuser and how many women are killed in the midst of leaving. It’s easy to say what you’d do when you’re not in the position. I’d just come back inside from delivering the trash bag with the mirror and glass to the barrel in the garage when Rhea came downstairs in her bathrobe.

  “I can’t thank you enough for all this,” she said.

  “No need to.” And then I asked the question that had been nagging at me since she’d gone upstairs. “What about this one?” I placed my hand on her stomach and looked at her. “What will you do?”

  “I’m leaving Mike this time. I’ve had nine months to plan it. I’m going to disappear with my baby. I’ve put away money. I’m not afraid anymore. I won’t give up another child because of him. I just have to wait until I’m strong again.”

  “I’ll help you when the time comes,” I said.

  She put her hand over mine. “I’m counting on it.”

  Twenty-Three

  I was sautéing shrimp and vegetables on the stove for dinner when I first heard what sounded like someone turning the knob on the back door. Griff had called an hour earlier to tell me he was taking Allie out for pizza. I’d opted for a quick stir-fry for myself. I glanced at the back hallway. A stack of five or six boxes we’d yet to unpack stood against the door. No one was getting in that way.

  I heard the noise again, lowered the heat under the wok and moved cat quiet toward the backdoor trying to dismiss the pounding of my heart. I flipped on the outside light fast and peered through the darkened glass, hoping to catch an intruder by surprise. There was no one there. I exhaled, reminding myself that out here, noises on your porch didn’t necessarily mean a break in. More likely, a visit from the neighborhood raccoons.

  I poured a glass of Pinot Grigio and spooned some of the stir-fry onto a plate. Sitting at the kitchen counter alone my eyes wandered to the back hallway and I wished I’d taken Griff up on his offer to join him and Allie. I was still getting my country feet under me, still getting comfortable with the dark and the quiet. Or not. I glanced toward the back door again.

  “Okay, cut the shit,” I coached myself. “There’s nothing out there.”

  After the last bite of cashew shrimp, I put my plate in the sink and went to the refrigerator for another splash of liquid courage. Then I headed to the stairs for a shower and my yoga pants before settling in to wait for Griff. I still hadn’t decided whether or not to fill him in about Jonathan. Griff was as trustworthy as they came, but a crime had been committed, an illegal adoption, and there was abuse happening right next door. He might feel it his obligation as a law-abiding PI to lay things on the table.

  I stepped into the shower stall and put my head under the spray of hot water. There’s nothing like a hot shower to relieve anxiety. I poured my new mango body wash onto a loofa and ran it over my skin washing off the day’s grime. I’d installed a gauzy curtain that ran the length of the shower’s glass wall. It didn’t hurt the unique layout, but it blurred the view from the outside. Amy had said only a crazy person would be hanging around in the woods peering into our shower. In my line of work, I knew she was right. I leaned my head under the spray rinsing shampoo from my hair and tipped my face letting the suds slide off my cheeks. When I opened my eyes, I saw the light. One beam flickering between the trees and moving through the woods at the edge of our backyard.

  I grabbed a towel from the hook at the end of the stall and slipped around the tiled partition. Staying well behind the wall, I leaned back around to look into the yard. The light flashed over the deck, up the side of the house and past the gauzy curtain into the shower stall. My heart dropped to my stomach. Whoever it was, was coming toward the house.

  I slipped into my yoga pants and pulled a Red Sox sweatshirt over my head. My cell phone was in my bag in the kitchen. I needed to get to it before whoever was out there came inside. I ran down the stairs trying to remember if I’d locked the front door when I got home. In the kitchen, I dumped my bag onto the counter and reached for my phone just as the knob turned on the back door.

  I watched as whoever was on the other side pushed the door with enough force so that the boxes stacked in front of it moved smoothly over the tiles as the door opened.

  Mike clicked off his flashlight and stepped into the dim light of our back hallway. “Hey neighbor,” he said and swayed, his shoulder bouncing off the wall beside him.

  “Locks these days really suck.” He laughed and held up the Swiss Army knife in his hand. “You can open ‘em with next to nothing. I keep tellin’ people, you gotta have a deadbolt if you want to keep the riff-raff out.”

  “What do you want Mike?” I tried to keep my voice steady and not betray the fear spiking through me. This guy beat the shit out of his wife. What would he do to me?

  “I want you to stay the hell out of my life,” he said taking a few steps into the kitchen.

  I stood my ground wishing I had my Charter Arms Pink Lady with me, but I’d locked it in the safe at work. “Your wife needed help,” I said.

  “When my wife needs help, I’ll take care of her.”

  “It looked like you already did.”

  “You little bitch, know-it-all.” He took a step and swayed again, reached out for the counter and steadied himself.

  “Mike, go home. You’re drunk.”

  “What you don’t know is that my wife is a loser.” He said the last word with such force his body jerked against one of the stools causing it to rock on its wooden legs. “She loses things…like children. Anybody who loses their kid deserves this.” He raised a fist.

  “She didn’t lose Jonathan. Someone took him.”

  “How the hell do you know his name?”

  “I read the papers. I know what happened. Someone kidnapped him from your house.”

  “She was home.”

  “You look away for a second and someone can steal your kid. It happens all the time. You’re a cop. You know that.”

  “It doesn’t happen to my kid. Not in my house.”

  “Being a cop doesn’t make you immune.”

  “It makes me anything I want it to.”

  “Like an abuser? You beat your wife and then hide behind your badge?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No Mike, fuck you. If Rhea needs help, I’m going to help her. You’re not going to scare me away.”

  “No?”

  He walked across the kitchen to where I was standing and put his hand around my neck pushing me backwards. I reached out to grab something and knocked a stool to the floor. He shoved me hard against the wall. I turned my head away from his booze breath.

  “Stay the fuck outta my house. Or we can play that little shower scene again only this time in person. That curtain you put up doesn’t do you justice.”

  I brought my knee up fast and h
ard not sure where my aim was going to land. But he’d touched a nerve. I caught him off center. Not the direct hit I’d hoped for, but it caused enough pain to make him let go of my neck and take a few unsteady steps back.

  “Get the fuck out of my house,” I said grabbing the flashlight from the floor where he’d dropped it.

  Both his hands were on his crotch. I hammered the flashlight into his chest hard enough to leave a bruise and he stumbled backwards thrown off balance by the abundance of booze in his gut. If he hadn’t been drinking I’d have never gotten the upper hand. He grabbed the counter, but before he could steady himself I drove the flashlight into his chest again. This time he landed against the back door.

  He grabbed for the knob and got his feet under him then raised his wild eyes to me. “You fucking come near my house again, you’ll wish for the rest of your life you hadn’t.”

  He backed out the door and onto the porch, his eyes still holding mine. I threw the flashlight onto the porch with him.

  “Ditto,” I said and slammed the door.

  My fingers trembled with the lock. Knees giving out, I sank to the floor. Long slow breaths I coached, remembering what the doctor had told Rhea. The shaking subsided and my heart settled back to a normal beat. An hour later Griff walked in. I hadn’t touched anything. The stool was still on the floor. So was I.

  “What the hell…Britt.” He knelt down next to me and put his arms around me. “What happened?”

  On the couch with another glass of wine, I went over the whole day with him. I left nothing out. I’d told Rhea that I wouldn’t tell, but after Mike’s visit tonight, Griff needed the full story. And I would have told him anyway. No secrets.

  “I’m going to nail him,” Griff said standing up. Nobody comes into this house threatening you.”

  “No Griff.” I stood and took his arm. “You can’t.”

  “I can and I am. That bastards going to pay.”

  “He’ll take it out on Rhea. She’ll be the one to bear the brunt of it, not him. If you call the police, it’s her word against his. Who’re they going to believe?”

  “It’s our word too.”

  “I kneed him in the groin and hit him twice with a flashlight. He’ll charge me with assault.”

  “It was inside our house. You were protecting yourself.”

  “And he’s a cop. The whole thing will be a fucking mess. It’s not worth it. Not right now. Rhea has a plan to leave him. Anyway, we want to look at him for his involvement in Ashley’s death. If we find a connection none of this will matter. He’ll be put away for a long time and Rhea will be safe. We keep digging. He’s involved somehow, regardless of what Gwen says.”

  “Rhea can at least get a restraining order. Maybe we should too.”

  “You think he won’t break it if he wants to?”

  Griff stuffed his fists into the pockets of his jeans as though trying to keep them contained. “She gave her kid away?” He looked at me incredulous.

  “Because she loved him. She didn’t want him to have the life she has.”

  “I can’t understand why women don’t leave these bastards.”

  “No one can, but being beaten does a number on your head. And the fear can be immobilizing.”

  “So, we let him beat the shit out of her right next door? I can’t do that.”

  “She has a plan to leave him as soon as the baby is born. We help her get away and when she’s safe in a place where he won’t find her then we go after him. She’s due any day. We’ll get him when the time is right and he’ll pay. Believe me, he’s not walking away from this. But we need to play it right so Rhea gets out safely.”

  Twenty-Four

  The next morning my neck was sore, and I winced with each swallow of coffee, but I didn’t let on to Griff. Why beat a dead horse? Things had to stay status quo for now. The more routine everything seemed, the less suspicious Mike would be. But I sure as hell wasn’t staying away from Rhea. If she called I’d be there.

  “I’m heading over to talk to Coach Massett,” Griff said tossing the crust from his toast into the sink.

  “Crust is good for your teeth.”

  He picked it back out of the sink and held it up. “You want it?”

  I curled my lip at him. “I ate mine.”

  “You want to come?” he asked tossing the crispy edge into the disposal.

  “Are you upset with me?”

  “Not with you, with everything else.”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist. “You’re a good man.”

  “I hate not retaliating for the way he treated you. I also hate leaving Rhea over there alone. I don’t feel like a good man on either count.”

  “Mike’s at work now. She’s safe for today.”

  “I don’t want him to think he’s getting away with what he did to you last night.”

  “I’m sure in the back of his mind he knows you won’t let that slide. So maybe not doing anything right now is better. It’ll make him squirm.”

  “Thanks for pointing out the silver lining, Pollyanna, but I’m not sure it helps.”

  I ignored his remark. Even Griff gets to have a bad day once in a while. “C’mon, let’s go see the coach, that’ll take your mind off Mike McKenzie.”

  On the way to Fensworth College we passed the Royal Oaks new development.

  “Looks like they’ve almost finished the pool,” I said. “Just have to pour the cement.”

  “Better hurry up or they’ll have to wait until next summer to use it.”

  “That’s when we’ll be using ours.” I smiled at him.

  “Got that right. We’ll break ground in the spring.”

  “Something to look forward to when the snow’s up to my knees.”

  “A miserable winter makes us appreciate summer that much more.”

  “Is that a silver lining?”

  Griff laughed. “Wise ass.”

  At Fensworth we pulled straight back to the athletic complex. It was early so the track and surrounding grounds were still empty. Inside the field house we wandered the corridor reading the embossed names on each door. Third door on the left was Coach Massett, Track and Field. We knocked.

  “Yeah.” Came from the other side.

  Griff opened the door and the coach looked up from a desk piled high with magazines and spiral notebooks.

  “Hey, Coach,” Griff said. “We’ve got a few more questions. You mind?”

  “Have a seat.” He motioned to a green vinyl couch pushed against the wall. A pile of jerseys took up one of the cushions.

  “Shove those on the floor,” he said. “They’re dirty anyway.”

  I sat on the edge of the couch and Griff took the arm.

  “Toxicity screen came back,” Griff said.

  Massett raised his eyebrows.

  “Ashley Lambert had amphetamines in her system and there’s a question of EPO or blood doping because her hematocrit was higher than the normal range.”

  Coach Massett took off his glasses and tossed them onto his desk. “Not on my team.”

  “The tests don’t lie.”

  “Labs have been wrong before.”

  “How often was she tested at competitions?”

  “I told you, once in a while at a tournament, but testing is relatively rare in college sports.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  Coach Massett stood and took a breath then walked to the small window in his office overlooking the soccer field. “People don’t want to know at the college level. You get a pro that’s better than everyone around him and nobody trusts him. Professionals are tested up the yin-yang. But a college kid who’s doing great? Everyone just wants to cheer them on. It’s psychological. We still think of college athletes as our kids. And we all want to support our children’s success. Testing is sporadic at best.” He turned and looked at Griff. “EPO? You sure?”

  “The test was inconclusive, but the suspicion is there because of the high hematocrit. No question on the amphetamines thoug
h.”

  Coach Massett shook his head and stared at the pile of dirty jerseys still on the couch. “Jesus,” he said. “This gonna come out to the public?” He looked up, the concern plain on his face.

  “That’s up to the family,” Griff said. “But I doubt it. Only by word of mouth, I suspect. Her death is still ruled a suicide. This doesn’t change that.”

  “Is this a courtesy call or you got questions?” Massett asked, the gruff edge returning to his voice.

  “Just wondering if you have anything to add? Any idea where she could have gotten them?”

  I wondered if Griff was going to mention the large cash withdrawal Ashley made every month, but there was no reason the coach needed to know about that.

  Massett shook his head. “I thought I knew my girls, but this…this I never would have guessed. Not in a million years. Not Ashley, especially not Ashley.”

  “Well, if you think of anything that might help we’d appreciate a call.”

  Coach Massett nodded. “Fair enough.”

  I feel sort of bad for the guy,” I said as we walked back down the corridor. A blemish on his perfect girls.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Griff said.

  “A lot of what?”

  “Perfect girls. Let’s go see Mitzi.”

  We pulled into the brown ranch’s driveway and parked in front of an empty garage.

  “Guess Gary got his pickup running,” I said.

  “For the time being.”

  At the door, we were about to knock when it swung back about a foot. A woman in a gray sweat suit with a flowered apron tied at the waist looked out.

  “Help you?”

  She was early fifties with brittle hair that had been dyed red at some point, but was now a mix of gray and brown at the roots. Around her neck a gold chain held a crucifix and a medal of the Immaculate Conception.

  “Hi,” I reached my hand out. “I’m Britt Callahan. We’re here to see Mitzi. We have a couple of questions about her teammate Ashley Lambert.”

  “The girl who jumped?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You cops?”