Forsaken Trust

by Meredith Doench

  I couldn’t help but to smile at Bennett. A woman after my own heart—I didn’t believe in coincidences, either.

  “These women were probably only a few weeks into recovery,” I said. “Unless they were in some sort of ninety-day program that the state paid for, they were probably living with a relative or friend and doing an outpatient recovery group.”

  “Or a twelve-step program,” Harvey said. “The meetings in this area are well attended and very popular. Even if these women were in an outpatient program, most require twelve-step meetings as part of recovery.”

  “Let’s dig into the arrest records of those in the county dealing heroin and meth. If these women were long-term customers, their sudden sobriety isn’t in a dealer’s best interest. I doubt they had regular transportation, so their buys were most likely local.” I looked at Harvey. “The twelve-step meetings will be a good start,” I said. “My guess is you’ll have better luck with this than I will, Harvey. You’re a local, and people will recognize you from around town.”

  “Possibly, but it’s a catch-22. Word spreads very fast around here, particularly about who’s a cop and who isn’t, who to trust and who to avoid.” Harvey shrugged. “Besides, most of Ohio is infested with that shit.”

  Harvey was right—Wallace Lake County was notorious for its heroin addiction and meth cooking arrests. Out in these cornfields and the beautiful Midwestern scenery, there were scores of people of all ages fighting against the pipe and smoking themselves silly on Saturday night only to crawl into church on Sunday morning. The epidemic touched all in the area in some way or another, and most weren’t willing to acknowledge the problem let alone talk about it.

  The dealer angle could be a long shot for us. Dealing meth and heroin didn’t come close to the experience of dealing cocaine. The dealers made money, sure, but not nearly as much as those who sold other hard drugs. Losing a longtime customer to sobriety might hurt a dealer’s finances, but would he really be willing to kill over this loss? It didn’t seem likely.

  And then there was the fact that all of these women were from somewhere else. Perhaps they’d received a kinder reception into the Wallace Lake community than most, particularly if they were here for the drug trade. But I grew up in a small Ohio town and knew that outsiders aren’t easily trusted, no matter what their backstories might be. Drugs, in particular meth and heroin, might be what linked these female victims together, but my gut told me there was something else going on, something much bigger and worth killing for. A secret, perhaps, or a dark truth that rooted itself into the very fabric of the town. I’ve learned that given enough time, the earth will reclaim everything as its own—blood and bones and, most of all, secrets.

  *

  Mothers and daughters—I never understood the tight bond. My own mother left when I was two to become a famous actress in Hollywood. As far as I knew, she never became an actress, let alone famous. Once she drove out of our driveway and disappeared into the horizon, I never saw or heard from her again. My father morphed into a version of both parents, a job he devoted himself to with more determination than he gave to law enforcement. No matter how much I loved him, though, no matter how often he was there when I needed him, there were times when a girl simply needed her mother. No matter how hard he tried, he could never be the mother I sometimes craved. I sometimes wondered whether or not I would accept my mother if she suddenly reappeared in my life. Would I excuse her behavior and welcome her into my home? Or would I turn my back as if I’d never met my mother the same way she’d forsaken me so many years ago?

  As a detective, I have regularly seen a strong bond between a mother and a daughter. No matter what might have happened between the two or what sort of abuse a mother might have doled out to her daughter, it was rare for one to turn on the other with law enforcement. It was even more uncommon for a mother or a daughter to completely cut off all emotions regarding the other, no matter what the past might have held in their relationship. Jill Chamberlain and her deceased mother were no different. As Jill waited to see the body and identify Janice Dawn Taft, I understood that she must have been fighting against a lifetime of emotions and betrayals from a mother she couldn’t help but love.

  Harvey, Jill, and I stood inside the morgue’s small viewing chamber. The stark white walls and the bright overhead lighting of the morgue revealed Jill’s tension. Her lips were pursed tight, and the hollowness of her cheeks accentuated the dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in weeks. Her dyed blond hair was thinning, which made her look older than her years. She clasped her hands tight in front of her soft belly as if this position somehow held her together.

  I put my arm around Jill’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “It’s all right,” I told her.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she leaned into me. Her voice cracked when she said, “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  Harvey handed Jill tissues as I kept my arm around her, holding her tight. “Think of this as a way to honor your mother’s life, a way to give her some much needed peace.”

  After a few moments of anxious tears, Jill finally wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  “You can do this,” I said.

  Jill responded with a half-hearted smile.

  My cell vibrated against my hip. I ignored it. “You ready?” I asked.

  Jill finally nodded.

  “Your mother will look a little different under these bright lights. The doctor has brushed her hair away from her face, and you may see what looks like bruising around her cheekbones and eyes. It’s a normal part of the body’s death process.”

  Jill nodded and stared hard at a white curtain that covered the plate-glass window.

  “Ready,” I called out to Bennett, who stood on the other side of the window and heard everything in the viewing room. Slowly, she pulled back the heavy fabric and revealed Taft’s body. A white sheet covered Taft up to her breasts. Jill took in a sharp breath of air—the first sight of a loved one deceased on a gurney almost always caused that reaction. No matter how many attempts the ME and staff took to make the body and face look presentable, there was almost always initial alarm at first sight. It took a few moments for the shock to wear off before recognition set in.

  Jill finally let go of her breath. “It’s Mom.”

  “You’re sure?” Harvey asked.

  “Yes.” Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. “It’s her.”

  I signaled for Bennett to close the curtain.

  Three of the four victims had now been formally identified.

  My cell vibrated again on my hip. This time, I pulled it from my belt and lit the screen. I almost lost my footing when I noticed the sender’s name.

  Rowan.

  The first text read, We need to talk, followed by another that said, When can we meet?

  It had been months since Rowan and I had spoken. Now, suddenly, Rowan was wedging herself into my life as though she still belonged there, as though she’d never left.

  *

  Harvey handed Jill a steaming cup of coffee and shut the door behind her. We sat around the conference room table with an unused tissue box between us. Jill wrapped her hands around the Styrofoam coffee cup and tried to give us a smile. She looked as though she’d aged another year since I’d met her.

  “I didn’t know my mother well, you know?” She gave a laugh and dried her eyes with the edges of her sleeve. “Not at all, really. But she was my mother.”

  “It’s quite a shock,” I said, opening the fresh box of tissues for Jill. “No one expects something like this to happen to a parent.”

  Jill took a few tissues from me and kneaded them in her lap. “Can I ask? I mean…it’s all over the news. Was my mom one of the victims of that serial killer?”

  Jill paused for my response. The questions from loved ones were always the hardest part for me, particularly when we hadn’t yet closed the case. Harvey’s rookie status allowed her to simply observe the situa
tion. I was the one who had to find the perfect mixture of information to give the family some level of peace without giving away anything that might compromise the ongoing investigation. Later, once the case closed, I’d meet with all the families of the victims and answer more of their questions. It was always a fine line to walk between telling the family too many details, which could cause distress, and leaving their questions unanswered.

  “We don’t know very much yet, Jill, but it seems likely. Your mother’s death fits the pattern of the murders we are attributing to a serial killer, and she was found in a similar location as the other women.”

  My words confirmed Jill’s worst fear. “Do you know who the killer is?”

  “We are working hard on that, I promise you.”

  “I heard that a kayaker found my mother with another body on the river. How long were they out there? The thought of my mom dumped along the river like trash…” Her voice caught. “She didn’t deserve that.”

  “No one deserves that.” I reached for her arm. “The medical examiner thinks that the kayaker found your mother only a few days after her death.”

  Jill took a noticeable breath and seemed relieved.

  “When did you last see your mother?”

  “She was arrested in Dayton a few months ago, and she called me. I paid the bail but refused to pick her up from the jail, told her I was changing my phone number. I just wanted her gone.”

  Fresh tears began with Jill’s admission that she wanted her mother gone. She was struggling with the same mixed feelings as so many others who love addicts: they want to support their loved one and believe all the promises that this will be the very last time, and they’ll finally get clean. A person can only take so many broken promises, so many empty lies, and so many gifts of money before that reservoir runs dry. Loved ones of addicts faced a constant emotional struggle between loyalty to the addict and the tough love so many addicts needed to finally kick their habits. Jill made a common mistake; she’d paid her mother’s bail because Jill didn’t want her mother to suffer. The sad reality, though, was that jails provided a place where active addicts, like Jill’s mother, could sometimes find protection from their worst enemy: themselves.

  “I’m so surprised by her death because Mom told me she was doing better. I was thinking about that phone call on my drive here today.”

  “Better?” I asked.

  “She called me out of the blue about two weeks ago. I picked up the cell and there she was. She said she was calling me from a bar in Wallace Lake.”

  “How did she get your number?”

  Jill sighed. “I never changed it. I guess somewhere deep inside, I hoped she’d call me one day.” Tears seeped from the corners of Jill’s eyes, and I handed her a fresh tissue.

  “Do you think she knew?”

  “Knew what?” I asked.

  “That I never really gave up on her. That I always had hope she’d get clean no matter what happened.”

  I nodded. “I think she did, Jill. From what I can see, she never gave up trying to get better. And she always remembered you by staying in touch.”

  Harvey interrupted us, clearly impatient with my coddling. She hadn’t learned yet that you can get so much more information out of a person if you took the time to get to know them. “I’m sorry, but what did your mother say? When she called?”

  “I assumed Mom called for money. That’s what she always wanted, you know? Not this time. She said she was in recovery and wanted to tell me how sorry she was for being a bad mom. I was making dinner for my own daughter, and I didn’t know what to say.”

  Harvey and I shared a knowing look. Making amends. Janice Taft had been following the twelve-step recovery program by acknowledging her wrongdoings and taking responsibility. The program suggested no one take this step until they had at least a few solid months of sobriety under their belt, but many attempted it much too early. It was a difficult step that called for recovering addicts to use a brutal honesty that didn’t always have a happy, sober ending.

  “Did she tell you where she was doing her recovery?” I asked.

  “She mentioned a group of some kind. She said she was working with other women on her recovery and living with them. She never tells me much, you know?”

  Typical behavior of an addict: telling loved ones only enough to stop their questions. I wondered if this might also indicate that Janice Taft’s recovery was paid for through a donation or scholarship. Sometimes recovery centers had large donations to cover patients who couldn’t pay for recovery themselves or donors who covered the costs of particular patients for whatever reason. It was possible Janice kept the location of her recovery a secret in order to protect some sort of an agreement she’d made.

  “Do you recognize this tattoo?” I showed Jill the image on my cell phone. “We found it tattooed on the inside of her left wrist.”

  Jill shook her head. “I’ve never known my mom to have a tattoo.”

  I nodded to Harvey who then placed photographs of the other three victims on the table. “Do you recognize any of these women?” she asked. “Anyone look familiar to you at all?”

  Jill leaned forward. Her fingertip caught the edge of one photograph and pulled it closer. “Are these the other women in the river?”

  I nodded.

  She examined each closely. “They could all be my mother.”

  “There are many similarities.”

  Finally, Jill shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize them.”

  As we wrapped up the questioning, I asked, “Do you know if your mom spent time with any long-haul truck drivers?”

  “My dad was a trucker, but I don’t know anyone else in her life that was. Then again, I didn’t know anyone in my mom’s life. She had a lot of secrets.”

  We closed up the interview with condolences and cell numbers where Jill could reach us. Captain Riley stood waiting for us in the main lobby of the police station. He handed Jill a psychologist’s business card. “I know these situations can be incredibly painful. Mike’s a friend of mine over in Dayton. He’d be happy to help anytime.”

  Jill took the card, nodded, and then pushed through the glass doors.

  Riley waited until Jill had made it down the front steps of the building, then asked, “Any news?”

  “We expected most of it. She did get a call from her mother, from the Wallace Lake area, claiming she was in recovery,” I said.

  “As is half the county. Any connection with the tattoo?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Before Riley could say another word, Harvey interjected. “There might be a connection with the long-haul truckers.”

  “The daughter said that?”

  Harvey backpedaled at Riley’s question. “Not exactly. The victim’s ex was a long-haul driver, so perhaps she still hung in those circles. We are located on a major thoroughfare, and the murders could be on a trucker’s normal route. Easy in, easy out.”

  “We’ve examined that theory, Harvey. Officers have canvassed the lots around Gary’s Girls and questioned truckers. We can’t devote any more manpower until you bring me something new.”

  I bit back a snicker. Harvey was willing to do about anything to be acknowledged by the captain. She was full of impulsivity, and those types of acts usually came from insecure officers who weren’t always loyal team players. This was exactly why I preferred to work alone. I couldn’t fault Harvey for her hunger to climb the food chain of command in our business—I was guilty of that as well. But there were other ways to impress a superior, such as finding the killer. And Harvey was in my way.

  “Well, then,” Riley said to Harvey, “you have a day ahead of you looking into the area’s twelve-step meetings. Other than the hospital, we don’t have any treatment centers in the area, but look into churches and other places where people might go for help with addiction.”

  Before Harvey could say anything to me, I headed for the doors out of the building. “I’ll regroup with you later,” I
called to her over my shoulder.

  After I pushed through the front doors and made my way down the cement stairs, Harvey called out to me. “Hansen? Where are you going?”

  I made it into the parking lot before Harvey called to me again. I needed to get far away from her. I felt that familiar surge of emotion rise inside me—some of my doctors had called them panic attacks, but I always thought of it as the moments when my bullshit meter jammed past overload. It had been difficult enough to navigate an interview with a person who’d lost a loved one to a serial killer with an impatient rookie in the room, without the added intrusion of the demanding texts to meet from Rowan. I needed to get to a space where I could clear my head and focus on what mattered most—solving the case before anyone else became a victim.

  I fumbled with the door to my truck and fell into my seat as the familiar swell of water rose around me. Water, my safe space, even if only in my mind. It was the quiet of the water and its heaviness that drew me in time and again.

  Sinking deeper, air bubbles streamed from my nose in the crystal blue water of my imagination. Deeper, where everything was cooler and time felt as though it ceased. I sunk like a rock until I finally settled on the sandy bottom, my legs and arms outstretched floating about me.

  Breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  Breathe in.

  I needed my father. I needed his ghost to appear and help me navigate these unfamiliar waters of the case when I had so very little to go on. Where had he gone, and how the hell could I get him to come back?

  Chapter Six

  Day Two: 2:00 p.m.

  The Powell River glimmered long and wide in the late afternoon sun. The current flowed downstream at a steady pace, and I stood at the water’s edge with Bennett and two kayaks at our feet. She’d surprised me with her willingness to meet at the river and kayak alongside me to where the bodies had been found. Bennett hadn’t taken part in the investigation of how the bodies were transported along the river, an oversight by the detectives. Because Bennett grew up in the Wallace Lake area, she’d been recreating on these waters her entire life and had a working expertise that neither I nor many on the local police department had. With a map of the river, I was able to determine a possible trajectory the killer took to move the bodies down the river. I hadn’t figured out the killer’s exact entry point to the waterway, but I figured if Bennett and I started about ten miles out from the land bars, it might give me some possible locations to look into.