Forsaken Trust

by Meredith Doench

  “She always told both of us if something ever happened, I was to take care of her daughter. She said that Gary’s Girls could get rough, and some of the johns she went with didn’t respect her rules. She tried to be selective, you know, but it didn’t always work out.”

  “How is Joan Marco related to Gary’s Girls?”

  Rebecca looked surprised. “Sorry, I thought you knew. Joan got my sister the job at Gary’s. She paid for the bartending course so that Rhonda could make more money and take better care of her daughter.”

  Rebecca had all my attention now. “What did Joan Marco want in return?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “Nothing that I know of.”

  “Come on, Rebecca. Marco must have wanted something. Tell me what your sister told you.”

  Rebecca started to protest, but then realized I was far beyond listening to any bullshit. “She complained to me a few times that Joan wouldn’t leave her alone. Joan insisted that Rhonda owed Heart to Heart for getting her sober. It was a large amount of money, and my sister didn’t have it. Eventually, Joan asked Rhonda to introduce her to the girls who worked at the club who were strung out without any family. I thought it was because Joan wanted to help these girls, you know? But my sister said she didn’t want to get involved because Joan was using the girls for money.”

  Rhonda knew Joan who knew Gary. Most likely it was Gary who’d informed Joan about my conversation with Rhonda. The pieces were finally adding up. “How did Joan make money from these girls?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “All I know is that Rhonda tried to stay out of it, but Joan threatened her. That’s when she made a will and the talk began about me caring for her daughter.”

  “She was scared.”

  Tears began to flow down Rebecca’s face once again. “My sister was terrified. She started drinking again and I didn’t know what to do to help her.”

  I reached across the table for Rebecca’s hand. “You’re caring for her daughter. You’ve helped her more than you’ll ever know.”

  I waited for Rebecca to collect herself before I asked, “Did you know the Marcos before your sister moved in with them?”

  “Mrs. Marco was our school counselor, but I didn’t really work with her because I knew I wanted to go to college. She worked with the kids who didn’t go on with college, so I only knew her name and face.”

  “What about Mr. Marco? I’ve heard he was disabled. Do you know if he ever worked?”

  Rebecca gave me a questioning look. “Disabled? That must have happened after my sister left their place. He was fine when I visited. He worked for some kind of insurance company.”

  Rebecca had all my attention. “He sold insurance?”

  She nodded. “I think so. That was how my sister was able to pay them for Heart to Heart.”

  “Henry Marco got your sister some sort of insurance coverage?”

  Rebecca nodded. “He had to. Rhonda was broke.”

  *

  It had been a long day, so long that one of the only restaurants still open in Wallace Lake was the Waffle House. Bennett sat across the booth from me, her curly hair tied back from her face in a faded red bandana. We were both exhausted, fed up with waiting on the warrant to dig in the Marcos’ yard, and starving—we finally had some time to eat our first meal all day.

  We’d both been strongly warned to stay away from the Marcos until Captain Riley had the warrant. Every bone in my body wanted to drive over to their home and tear it apart board by board. But I knew it would ruin everything, and the stakes were too high. One mistake on our part, and the Marcos could get away with everything.

  “You know what really bugs me about Rhonda’s case?” I asked, pouring more syrup on my waffle.

  “Hmm?” Bennett said between bites.

  “I wonder why she stayed in Wallace Lake. If she was so worried about her daughter’s safety and had gotten clean, why stay in this threatening place? Especially if the fear of it was so great it drove her to drink. She broke her sobriety.”

  Bennett chewed a bite of omelet and considered my question. “Her sister said she was threatened by Marco. She was afraid of losing her daughter and her sister.”

  I held up my cup for the waitress to give me a refill of coffee. Once she left, I said, “The threats indicate Rhonda knew something that could bring Joan Marco down.”

  “Well, if Rhonda helped her kill her husband, isn’t that enough to bring someone down?”

  I agreed. “It’s more manipulative than that. She needed dirt on Rhonda so she wouldn’t go to the police. She was probably physically forced to help Joan kill her husband. That way, if Rhonda did go to the police, she would also have to serve time for helping Joan. I think she played on Rhonda’s sense of guilt.”

  We were quiet a moment, focused on the food before us. Finally, Bennett said, “I keep thinking about when you talked to me at the very beginning of all this about the wandering spider case. How did you see the signs so early?”

  “I’m a profiler, remember?” I gave her a quick wink.

  “A good one, too.” She grinned at me, remembering our similar exchange on the Powell River. “This case is getting to you.”

  “It is.” I rubbed my tired eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I know the pieces fit, I just can’t see how yet. More players have to be involved in this than Joan Marco.”

  “Cody Allard?”

  I really could have used my dad’s help. This was exactly the sort of thing he would have loved talking through with me, and together we would have at least gotten closer to some sort of answer. Where was he? I understood that his ghost only came around when I needed help with cases, and this would have been a great time for his assistance. I wasn’t sure I would be able to put all the pieces together alone.

  “Allard,” I said, “seems to have a strong relationship with Joan Marco. He must know something.”

  “Maybe she helped him get that job so she could keep the connection with the school.”

  I smiled at Bennett across the booth from me. Talking through hypotheticals on the brink of exhaustion was never easy. She’d brought up a good point with Allard, though, so I continued. “What could Allard bring to her table?”

  “Well, he kept her connected. And he’s a weight lifter.”

  Something clicked. “Youth and strength,” I said.

  “Yes.” Bennett emptied her coffee cup. “She’s an older woman who leans toward frail. She needed the help with something…maybe moving the bodies? Allard’s a lot like Rhonda was when she lived there—young and strong.”

  I revisited a possible connection. “Rhonda went there to get clean. Allard could have needed Marco for the same reason, and he would have been indebted to her as well.”

  I understood why Joan needed the connection to Gary’s Girls to find marks, but why the high school? What was she looking for in the teenagers?

  “Maybe the focus shouldn’t be so much on the dead but the living,” Bennett said.

  “I need to talk to Allard.”

  I reached across the table for Bennett’s hand. Her fingers wound through mine. I wanted nothing more than to slip over to her side of the booth and kiss her, but my eyes burned with exhaustion, and what I really needed was some sleep. “You’re good at this crime reconstruction stuff, you know?”

  She chuckled. “I’m a detective of the dead, Special Agent Hansen, and a storyteller at heart. I can spin scenarios with you all night long, if you like.”

  I wished I had the night to give Bennett, one where I wouldn’t instantly fall asleep on her. Bennett fascinated me, and I felt the mistake I’d made with Harvey even more. My father’s presence would have helped me in so many ways with this case, but I began to see another possibility. Perhaps I was losing my dad as a partner to talk through various crime scenes, but it was possible he wasn’t completely abandoning me. Maybe, just maybe, he sent Dr. Harper Bennett to take his place.

  Chapter Twenty

  Day Twelve: 11:30 a.m.

  A col
lection of law enforcement officers from Wallace Lake County and the OBCI gathered on the Marcos’ lawn. Despite the blockaded neighboring roads, we were all on high alert for anyone who might have infiltrated the barriers. Everyone hoped to get the first photograph of the latest dead body found in Wallace Lake, and the story of the serial killer in small town Ohio had gone global, filling the lineup of crime shows like Dateline and 48 Hours. Our fears became reality when an aerial photograph surfaced of us removing Rhonda’s body from the fence. Those images only fanned America’s thirst for more details on the case, and we were bombarded with questions regarding Cooper. Was he really the killer? Had we gotten it all wrong? Was the general public really safe? The team resented these relentless questions, which not only implied that we were inept at our work, but also that the public could no longer trust us to solve the violent crimes. These questions only incited fear in an already simmering local environment, the air so charged it felt like the right word or accusation could ignite the entire town.

  Sanders had called in Dr. Frank Duffy, a forensic anthropologist and crime scene recovery specialist, with ground-penetrating radar. Duffy, who had a tuft of a bushy gray beard and an even longer ponytail, set up his boxy device that looked a lot like a manual lawn mower. An attached computer screen showed any anomalies or disturbances in the soil, which could be anything from a dog toy to a buried skull. Duffy used the computer to map the scene and document surface objects before he carried out the full scan of the earth below.

  Subpoenas of Henry Marco’s banking and insurance records verified that social security disability checks continued to be regularly issued to Henry Marco and deposited into a joint checking account held with Joan. Furthermore, in the last nine months there had been no insurance claims for medical visits or physical therapy submitted in his name, but prescriptions had been regularly refilled for Henry by mail and sent to their address of record.

  After issuing a tristate BOLO for Henry Marco, and now armed with a possible missing person and governmental fraud, Captain Riley requested, and obtained, a search warrant for the Marcos’ home and property.

  When the cavalry descended on the Marcos’ home, Joan answered the door and politely offered the crew coffee. Dressed in her usual grandmotherly attire with an adult Disney shirt, elastic-waist jeans, and rubber-soled shoes with great arch support, she rendered all sorts of stories about where her husband had been for the last year. Ultimately, she couldn’t produce her husband or give an account of his whereabouts; all the coffee and the homemade cookies didn’t change those facts. Joan eventually resorted to dramatic tears and claimed Henry had left her months ago, taking off like a thief in the middle of the night. Riley arrested her on the spot for fraud.

  Once Joan Marco was removed from the property, the search intensified. We started with the places Joan valued and tended to most. Her home had been well cared for and was the perfect picture of domesticity—a mirage meant to hide what simmered beneath. When we searched under the polished wooden floorboards and behind the bright floral wallpaper, we found only the cavernous hollow space of a false life. Everything was set up for show, including Henry’s house slippers tucked neatly beneath the edge of the bed and his crisp button-down shirts lined up in the closet. The home office revealed a collection of driver’s licenses under different names and a corresponding variety of insurance cards. Officers confiscated any records related to insurance, disability, or medical claims and packed up the computer to search for hidden files.

  “Be sure to leave a mess,” Harvey instructed, clearing a shelf of books onto the floor. “Let her know we’ve been through everything.”

  Commotion arose in the backyard, and the sound of voices filtered through the windows. Suddenly, every officer’s radio in the house crackled with the news: Dr. Duffy found something in the ground.

  The indoor search continued, and I joined Harvey and Bennett at the edge of the Marcos’ property. Harvey crossed her well-muscled arms over her chest. Dark sunglasses shaded her eyes. “Did you check back into the same hotel?” she asked.

  When I nodded, Harvey said, “They might as well have given you the same room. Too bad you took the murder board down.”

  Officers dug one shovelful at a time, each collection of earth sifted and searched thoroughly. Then, finally, a bone fragment turned up under the zucchini plants and another under the tomatoes. Excitement mounted across the yard, and crime scene techs photographed the dig from every angle. Techs complained of the hard earth and picked around the bones with small trowels. Once the bones were placed on a tarp, Bennett examined them.

  “These don’t appear to be human,” Bennett finally said. “I’d feel better if we could find the rest of the skeleton, though.”

  “We’ll keep going,” Duffy said.

  Bennett bagged and tagged the two fragments to send them with a tech to the lab. Duffy continued to sweep his machine along the yard, and Bennett scribbled a quick sketch to document where the bones had been located in relation to other objects on the property.

  “Scavengers make our work so much more difficult,” Bennett said.

  Captain Riley joined us. “Madame Marco won’t talk.”

  “Big surprise,” I said. “Is she in the holding tank?”

  Riley nodded. “With our smelliest and loudest Frequent Flyer. There will be an indefinite delay before we move her out to general population.”

  The thought of Joan Marco in such a situation brought a smile to my face.

  “It’s possible the kid gave us a false story about Henry,” Riley said.

  I shrugged. “It’s possible, but she seemed sincere. Of course she couldn’t see what was happening once everyone went outside.”

  “I just hope this isn’t all for naught and a complete waste of resources. We have so many eyes on us.”

  I felt those eyes, too, but Riley’s words made me consider something else: while the yard was secluded and most neighbors were away, it still seemed absurd to bury a body in the backyard of a neighborhood home. Joan Marco was brazen, but certainly not stupid. With her strategic planning, she knew her home and property would be searched, eventually. Were we simply falling into Joan Marco’s master plan?

  The fall sun beat down on us, and with each sweep of the yard, Duffy narrowed the space he still had left to search. Forty minutes after he found the two fragments, when we had all but lost hope he’d find anything more, Duffy gave a shrill whistle. Everyone who’d been fighting for a spot in the shade rushed into action. This time the shovels dug much faster.

  “It looks like the bones are all together,” Duffy said. “Don’t disturb them until we get a series of photographs.”

  Bennett squatted beside the hole, and then called out to the rest of us who couldn’t get close enough. “We have a skull, but it’s not human.” She threaded her pen through the eye socket and held up the skull for everyone to see. “A dog. From the looks of the skull and the depth of its burial, he’s been here a long time, probably before the Marcos moved in.”

  Groans erupted and Riley cursed beside me. Crime scene techs reburied the dog’s bones, and my thoughts turned to where we needed to go next as well as the techs’ complaints of the hard earth.

  “We need to check one more place before Duffy packs up.”

  “Come on, Hansen,” Riley said. “We need more evidence before we start scanning everything.”

  “The clearing,” I said. “Just give me the clearing, and I’ll let it go.”

  “The place where you found the teenagers and the teacher?”

  I nodded. “It was obviously a part of their plan to get rid of evidence. Why not another body? Bennett told me the ground is softer around the river, making it an easy hiding spot. The clearing is public property, but private, safer, and above all, much easier to dig into.”

  “Answer this for me, Hansen. Why would they go to the trouble of burying the body in the first place? Why not put it in the river like the others?”

  “Easy,” I said. “
We are dealing with two separate killers with different MOs. The killer who buried the body wanted to hide what they had done—shame dominated this killer. The other wanted the bodies found as soon as possible. This killer had a strong sense of compassion and wanted the bodies returned to the families.”

  Riley sniffed beside me and rocked back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet. He grunted after a moment and called out to the crew. “Wrap it up! We’re moving to one additional location.”

  *

  The clearing wasn’t large enough to hold the full crew, and most waited for any findings along the dirt road where I’d found Cody Allard and Sadie Reid. I followed behind Riley, Duffy, Bennett, and Harvey single-file down to the flattened section where the local teenagers hung out. When Bennett and I discovered the killer’s entry point to the river, we’d been looking for tracks and evidence someone had been along the water’s edge, but we didn’t look for a disturbance to the land that might indicate something or someone was buried. We fanned out across the land, and I pushed my way into the surrounding foliage.

  With the sun sinking in the sky, a shadowed darkness settled in around us making it even harder to detect any changes to the soil. From the clearing we could see Dead Man’s Point, that crazy bend where the river met Wallace Lake, as well as the nearby road where the bend caused so many accidents. From the clearing, there was also a direct line of vision to the land bars where the bodies had been found, and once again I thought about how perfect this location would have been to keep watch over the bodies. My theory that the killer had some level of compassion lent itself to the scenario that the killer sat in the clearing and watched over the victims. Had the killer been here that morning Ava Washington happened upon the two dead women?

  I thought about the history of this location and again about my theory about why the bodies were found on the land bars. The killer must have been a local and familiar with the history and folklore surrounding this area. More evidence that the killer was hoping for a quick recovery of the bodies, and quite possibly a peaceful passage into death. A compassionate killer, of sorts.