I’d broken the trust I’d developed with Bennett and found myself in an awful position. Trust was a funny thing—once lost, sometimes you could never fully regain it. I was at the mercy of Bennett and her willingness to let me back in, just as Sanders was at my mercy while he waited for me to let him back in.
Chapter Twenty-six
Day Twenty: 2:30 p.m.
I rapped my fingertips against the thick glass of the oversized window, and the female guard gave me a tired look until I pressed my badge against the glass. The guards, I figured, must have been exhausted from the press who’d camped outside the front door of the Wallace Lake County Jail. I’d had a difficult time weaving through the gaggle of reporters, and it didn’t take long for one of them to recognize me as the lead investigator on the serial case. Are you here to talk to Sadie Reid? What is Sadie saying about the case? Did she confess? The assault of questions and recordings went on until I found safety from them inside the jail doors. Everyone wanted Sadie Reid’s story. Since her arrest, Wilma Henderson had lost the limelight in the tabloids, and her daughter had taken over. Sadie was the subject of news broadcasts and internet reports across the country. Because Sadie refused to speak to the press or her lawyer, it led to reporters’ speculations of what her role could have been in the murders and the human trafficking case.
The jail had been busier in the last seventy-two hours than it had been probably in the last ten years. A guard with a mound of paperwork buzzed me through the heavy steel door. Once inside the locked gates, I placed three books and a pen on the counter and then removed my gun and badge. While I signed in, the guard locked my gun in a safe where it would stay until I checked out of the facility. No weapons were allowed inside the jail, a rule that always made me feel much safer inside those gated communities. Anything could happen when guards carried guns on the inside, and I always trusted my hands and body as my very best defense.
When the metal detector didn’t buzz, the female guard handed me my badge. “You here to see Reid?”
“Yes.” I took a temporary ID from her and clipped it to my shirt collar. “How is everyone holding up?”
The woman gave me a wave of her hand, thick with too much sitting behind a desk. “The media’s a bitch, but we’re getting on.”
“They’ll go away as soon as the next story hits. Won’t be long,” I said. “How is Reid?”
“No trouble from her yet. We moved her out of solitary and into general population.”
“That’s good news. A glimmer of it, anyway.” I hated that Sadie had to be held in solitary for the first forty-eight hours. Most incoming young inmates stayed in solitary longer than that, until they could be certain the inmate was ready to join the general population. Their decision to move Sadie told me that she was acclimating as well as could be expected, and she’d kept her mouth shut—a golden rule in America’s penal institutions. Sadie would only stay in the Wallace County Jail until her trial, and then she would move to one of the larger female prisons in Ohio once her case had been heard, a prison meant for long-term incarceration rather than only a few months’ stay.
The guard waved the wand detector over the books. She opened each, one at a time, and flipped quickly through the pages. She cleared them and pushed the books across the counter to me.
“There’s a visitation room down the hall and to the left.” She pointed the way. “I’ll alert a guard in Reid’s pod to bring her down.”
“Thanks. Where are the vending machines? I’d like a soda and a candy bar for Reid.”
“You’re mighty generous today, Special Agent.”
I shrugged her comment off. Most officers only doled out sugar when they needed answers to solve their cases, but I remembered seeing Sadie with a Mountain Dew before everything happened. I guessed she really could use one about now.
“Vending machines are outside the visitation rooms.”
I stepped into the first holding area and the heavy steel door banged shut behind me. I waited for the door in front of me to buzz and unlock. I knew somewhere in the jail complex an employee watched me through a camera and ID’d me through Ohio’s law enforcement system. Once I’d been cleared, the door buzzed and I pushed through.
After I had the goodies from vending, a guard in visitation led me to a small room lined with shatterproof windows used for inmate visits with lawyers or police. The rooms had a door that closed and a camera to monitor inmate behavior since some inmates were known to get violent when they didn’t receive positive news about their cases.
I waited inside the room for Sadie, uncomfortable on the hard steel stool secured to the floor. I thumbed through the books I’d brought—a Stephen King collection of stories that included the original story used for the film Shawshank Redemption, a small collection of essays and stories from female inmates who had served time in American prisons, and a new journal just waiting for Sadie to write her first words in it. She had a lot of time on her hands now, and it would move faster if she kept her mind busy.
It took a good fifteen minutes for a guard to finally appear with Sadie. She stood next to him in a crumpled orange jumpsuit with her wrists bound. A thick thatch of dark hair fell over her eyes. She shuffled along beside the guard in her thick-socked feet and thin prison flip-flops.
“You wanted Reid?” the guard grunted at me.
I nodded. “Take the cuffs off, please.”
The guard eyed me. “Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Once the cuffs fell away, Sadie rubbed her thin wrists where the heavy metal had been. The guard waited until Sadie was seated across from me.
“I’ll be outside. Any problems, just wave.”
I looked at Sadie, whose face I could hardly see through her curtain of hair, and then back at him. “There won’t be any problems.”
Once he left, we sat together in silence. Finally, after a few minutes, I pushed the Mountain Dew and candy across the table to her. “I figured you’d be hungry for anything resembling real food by now.”
Sadie looked up at me but said nothing. Her neck and arms revealed the bruises from our water battle, and in the orange jumper she looked much smaller than I remembered. Sadie reached for the soda can and wrapped her hands around its sweaty coldness.
“I’m leaving town today, and I wanted to see you before I left,” I said. “I brought along a few books and a journal for you. Something to pass the time.”
I didn’t know quite where to begin with Sadie. The two of us had been through so much, both in the lake and outside it. I felt guilty for not seeing the clues of Sadie’s involvement much earlier in the case. I kept going back to that leather bracelet Harvey had found in the river the day I arrived in Wallace Lake. Why didn’t I see it then, put the pieces together that matched Sadie? I couldn’t blame it all on Joan Marco. No law enforcement officer wants to find out a teenager has committed a crime, but I hadn’t given it enough consideration as a possibility. Ultimately, I let Sadie down by not doing my job—carefully considering every possible suspect.
“I’m sorry, Sadie.”
“For what?”
“The situation you’re in. You’ve had a rough go of it in life. That isn’t fair.”
She didn’t respond to me, but popped the can’s tab and took a full swig of the cold, bubbly liquid. The hint of a smile crossed her mouth. Her eyes made contact with mine for the first time. “I need to see Joan. Is she somewhere in this jail?”
Joan Marco. I should have guessed Sadie’s first questions would be about the woman who’d manipulated her into killing. Sadie was dependent on Joan, not much different than the girls we’d found in the farmhouse. I was looking at a true-blue loyalty, though sick and twisted through manipulation, in Sadie Reid’s devotion to Joan Marco.
“She and Henry have been moved to other facilities. Legally, the three of you must be separated. You aren’t allowed any contact with either of them until the trial is over. At that point, the judge will most likely rule that the three of you
are to have no contact for the rest of your incarceration.”
Sadie stared at me incredulously. “What? Why?”
Rather than answer her question, I switched tack. “You were stuck in this situation for a while, Sadie. Why didn’t you ask someone for help? Call 9-1-1 and leave an anonymous tip? Tell a teacher or Ava’s mom? Somebody. Anybody!”
“Really?” Sadie glared at me. “Joan Marco was my guidance counselor. Do you really think I’d tell another teacher where Joan worked?”
“There were opportunities to tell someone.”
Sadie shook her head. “You don’t understand. I need to talk to Joan.”
“You and Joan are done communicating. Period.”
“That’s stupid!” Sadie tossed her empty soda can against the wall.
The guard jumped at the sound, but I waved him off when he opened the door.
“What is it you need to say to her, Sadie?”
Her eyes welled up with tears, but she didn’t answer my question. Instead, she said, “What will happen to Joan?”
“I don’t know.” I wanted to tell her that whatever happened to Joan wouldn’t be enough. I wanted to say that sometimes the legal system isn’t fair, and that sometimes bad people get away with murder and rape and selling other humans despite our best efforts. At least we had one solid murder on Joan Marco—Rhonda Betterly would put Joan in prison for many years.
Sadie reached for her candy bar. “Joan has some health problems. She’s been complaining lately about the arthritis in her knees. Will they take care of her in here?”
“You have been worrying a lot about her.” I waited for Sadie’s nod and then said, “What about you? Aren’t you at all concerned about your trial and the murder charges against you?”
I shifted in the hard seat with my frustration. Close your mouth, I warned myself. The last thing I needed to do was alienate Sadie with my anger toward Joan. I wanted Sadie to know she could talk to me, and I had to remember that the brainwashing Joan did with this young woman ran deep. It took years to groom Sadie into the person she was today, and no one would be able to help Sadie break free of that in only a few days. Sadie needed intense therapy. She needed people around her she could trust. I had every intention of being one of them.
“Joan was like my mom.”
“But she isn’t your mom. You have a mother. Every press outlet in America billed Wilma Henderson as a hero,” I said. “Anyone who takes down a serial killer is a hero in my book.”
Sadie shook her head. “She’s an addict and a whore who never gave a shit about me.”
“She’s been working with police, Sadie. Give the woman a break—Wilma is doing the best she can by you right now.”
“Give her a break? Are you serious?” Sadie ripped open the packaging of the chocolate bar. “Where was she when I was little and needed her? Where was she for all my school functions or to pack me lunch everyday? What about when I graduated? I’ll tell you where: Wilma was high and with her johns. Joan Marco was there for me.”
I shook my head. “It was your grandmother who took your mother’s place. Not Joan.”
Sadie wasn’t listening; there was nothing I could say at this point that would change her mind. The intense pain of her mother’s betrayal showed on Sadie’s face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I stood and handed Sadie the box of tissues from the windowsill. Sadie took a tissue, and I waited patiently for her tears to stop.
When she finally blew her nose and wiped her eyes, I said, “It’s okay to love the people who have hurt you. It’s okay to love the people you trusted to take care of you even when they didn’t. You can love them, Sadie—that doesn’t mean those people shouldn’t receive consequences for their vile behavior.”
After a few minutes, Sadie swallowed the rest of her candy bar. The guards wouldn’t let her leave the room with any uneaten food or drink. “I won’t see you again, will I?”
“Why do you say that?”
Sadie shrugged. “It’s what people do.”
“I’ll be back to visit you, and I’ll be there for the trial. You can count on it.” I tapped the journal. “My address and cell number are inside.”
I’d inscribed the journal for her with the same Virginia Woolf quote I’d seen in Bennett’s office: Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Stay strong, Sadie.
“I doubt you’ll answer.”
“Give me a chance, Sadie.”
The guard rapped on the steel door and opened it. Our visit was over.
I watched as the guard shackled Sadie, a young woman who had been forsaken by so many people in her short life. I promised myself I wouldn’t be another one for her to add to that list.
“I have one more question for you,” Sadie said. She looked over at me. “Why didn’t you let me go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Out on the water. Why didn’t you let me drown?”
Her question took my breath away. It took me a minute to gather my words. “Everyone deserves a second chance, Sadie.”
Sadie shook her head slowly back and forth. She let her hair fall over her face when the guard reached for her arm for the escort to her cell.
“You should have let me go. You should have let me sink to the bottom of Wallace Lake.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Colby Sanders didn’t have an ounce of Irish in him, but most nights he could be found with a beer in hand watching a baseball or football game at our local Irish pub. He waited for me in the near-empty bar with the ever-present cigarette in hand. This pub had an underground reputation of ignoring the no smoking in public facilities law, so die-hard smokers like Sanders frequented it. I was able to survive the stale smoky smell because I met him before the bar got too busy. Generally, Sanders was the only smoker in the house early in the evening. Later the place would be foggy with smoke.
Sanders grunted hello as he pulled out the stool next to him. His silver hair shone ghost white in the bar’s lighting. “You eaten yet?”
When I shook my head, he signaled to the bartender for a menu and gave me a wink. “You can always count on the burgers here.”
Sanders and I were part of a diminishing crowd of meat-eaters in our office and we shared that like a dirty secret. It wasn’t only Harvey who had had her go at me about it. I understood the urgency to go vegetarian—everyone in our office saw too much death and destruction every day. We didn’t want to also face it on our plates. I gave it my best a few times, going meatless, but always found myself eventually craving a juicy burger or the salty crunch of bacon. Tonight Sanders and I had both: bacon cheddar burgers washed down with rounds of beer.
“You did good work on the Wallace Lake case, Hansen.” He nudged the half-full bowl of mustard-flavored pretzels toward me. “I should have trusted your judgment that the case wasn’t over.”
I took a swig of my beer and let the cold liquid coat my mouth. Finally, I said, “I haven’t given you much of a reason to trust me in the past few months. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
“For making you worry about me, but mostly for the royal grudge that’s been sitting on my shoulder ever since the Willow’s Ridge case. I’ve given you a really hard time, Sanders. You didn’t deserve that.”
He took a pull from his bottle and nodded acknowledgment that he’d heard me. Sometimes it was hard to read Sanders who was the proverbial hard-boiled detective with so many years on the job he’d lost count. As the director, he’d perfected the act of barking orders and asking questions later. With me, though, he’d always been generous with his time and knowledge. I assumed he felt he owed it to my father to keep me under his watch and make sure I didn’t completely self-combust. I appreciated his attention although I’d completely ignored it these past few months.
“We’ve come a long way together in a very short time, Hansen. You can be a pistol to work with, but you’re the best. I won’t forget that.”
“Forget?”
Sanders
reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope sealed with the FBI insignia. He pushed the envelope across the bar. The letter was addressed to both Sanders and me through our office address.
Sanders watched me closely. “Open it.”
I slid my finger along the sealed edge and unfolded the paper. I read the letter carefully, then once more. Amongst the praise for my work was the job offer I’d been waiting for. The FBI.
I stared at the letter a long time, as if I couldn’t make sense of the words. This job offer was the entire reason I’d wanted to become a serial profiler. This was the job I thought would make everything okay for me, the move that would finally make sense of my world. I folded up the letter slowly and slipped it into my back pocket.
“Congratulations,” Sanders said. “I’m going to miss you.”
The bartender placed steaming burgers in front of Sanders and me. The smell of bubbling bacon and cheese made my stomach growl. I folded a fry into my mouth. “I knew you wrote the recommendation for me.”
“I wasn’t happy about writing the letter, but I did it,” Sanders said. “We’d just wrapped up the Willow’s Ridge case, and I wanted to keep you onboard in Ohio. You asked for this, though, and I knew you really wanted it.”
“Thank you.” I flipped the cap of the ketchup bottle and offered it to him. The fact that Sanders thought beyond his needs and considered what I wanted meant the world to me. “I’ve given my work a lot of thought the last few days. I’ve decided to stay on in Ohio. I’m happy to be a part of your team.”
Sanders nearly choked on the bite of burger in his mouth. “What?”
“If you still want me, that is.”
“You wanted DC so much. What made you change your mind?”
“I’m an Ohio girl, Sanders, through and through. I’ve spent my entire life in this state and I belong here. Besides,” I said, “serial crimes are on the rise in the Buckeye State—my people need me as much as I need them.”
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