Money Creek

by Anne Laughlin

  She pulled into the sheriff’s parking lot at nine thirty, hoping Ben had picked up some coffee on his way in. She entered their office and saw he’d not disappointed. A large cup and a bagel sat on her desk. He was huddled over his, looking over the sports section of the Chicago Tribune as if it were a case file.

  “I have news,” she said.

  He looked up, his eyes bleary from reading hockey box scores. “What?”

  She told him every detail of Clare’s confession, except for how it’d blown a hole in their relationship. He wasn’t a genius, but he’d figure that much out.

  “Holy Christ,” he said. “That makes her not only a witness but a possible suspect, too.”

  “You can’t seriously believe Clare murdered three people in cold blood.”

  “How do we know? Could you have guessed the things she just told you? We have to treat her as a suspect.” He gentled his voice. “I know she means something to you. You must feel awful.”

  She looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “You think?”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Why didn’t you bring her in with you?”

  “She’s coming in at ten. She wanted to take care of a couple of things first.”

  “You let a murder suspect walk away from you? You’re not thinking straight.”

  “She’s a witness, not a suspect. And she’ll be here. I could tell she was relieved to finally tell someone about it.”

  Freya’s phone rang and she picked up.

  “Freya, it’s Elizabeth Nelson.”

  “Hello, Elizabeth. What can I do for you?” She expected an earful about Henry.

  “I’m wondering if you know where Clare is. She hasn’t come into work yet, which has never happened before. She’s not answering her phone.”

  Freya felt a tug of concern. “Maybe she’s out running errands?”

  “Well, that would be strange on a weekday. I know you two have a relationship and thought you might know where she is.”

  She wasn’t about to talk about their relationship “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her lately.”

  “It’s very odd. Clare is always on time, if not early. While I have you on the phone, I wanted to let you know I’m arguing the habeas corpus motion in federal court this morning. I’m leaving for Bloomington in a few minutes.”

  “Good luck with that. You know we have a clean arrest.”

  “We’ll see,” she said before hanging up.

  Where was Clare? She was supposed to be talking to Elizabeth right now. Ben looked at her curiously and she told him what Elizabeth had said.

  “Let’s hope she hasn’t flown the coop,” he said. “Should we put out an APB?”

  “No, let’s give her some time.” She left it at that. “What we need to do right away is track down the man Clare said she saw leaving the scene.”

  Ben’s phone rang and it was a deputy telling him the prisoner Henry Nelson wanted to speak to them both immediately. They crossed over to the jail and met him in the interview room. Henry looked sallow and his eyes were darting all over the place. “I have something to tell you both.”

  “You’ve requested to see us without your attorney present?” Ben said.

  “That’s correct. I want to get you this information. You’ll probably let me go after you hear it.”

  “We’re all ears,” Freya said.

  “There was someone else at the murder scene, and she can corroborate that I left the house before the murders took place.”

  “You’re admitting you were there?”

  “I feel I don’t have any choice. The DNA says I am. But I can show you I wasn’t there when the murders happened.”

  “If you’re talking about Clare, we already know about it.”

  His face sagged like a fallen soufflé. “She told you?”

  “Yep. She told us everything, including your association with the victims.”

  “But I wasn’t there, not when the shootings happened. Didn’t Clare also tell you she saw someone leaving the scene after the shootings? That wasn’t me.”

  Henry’s eyes started darting around again. They knew it was unlikely Henry murdered his associates and the unfortunate woman who was with them. The man Clare said she saw was tall and lanky, while Henry was of average height and more solidly built.

  “Thank you for telling us this, Henry. You did the right thing.”

  “You’ll let me out now, won’t you? I mean, isn’t there reasonable doubt that I was the killer?”

  Freya almost smiled. For a young man with seemingly endless confidence, he was remarkable naive. “I’m afraid it’s the jury’s job to determine reasonable doubt. We provide the likely candidate, and that’s still you.”

  Henry slapped his open hand on the table. “You can’t keep me here! I didn’t do this.”

  Ben leaned back in his chair. “That’s something you might want to talk to your attorney about. For now, we’re sending you back.” He got up and went to the door to call a deputy.

  Freya looked at her phone. It was nearly ten o’clock. A deputy came in to remove Henry, who had tears in his eyes. She didn’t feel sorry for him. They stayed behind at the table.

  “He probably didn’t do it,” Ben said.

  “That may be true, but I’m sure as hell not releasing him until we’ve formally interviewed Clare and she’s signed a statement. It makes sense Henry didn’t do it—he knew Clare was in the house and would have finished her off before leaving.” Cavalier words for an idea that made her shudder.

  “Do you think we should arrest her for withholding evidence?”

  She’d been hoping Ben wouldn’t bring that up. “Let’s see if she’ll be a fully cooperating witness. I’m not inclined to make the arrest if she is. If she clams up, we will.”

  “Fair enough. I’m going to get more coffee. You coming?”

  They got up and left the room. Freya reminded the desk sergeant to call her as soon as Clare came in and they returned to their office. By ten thirty Clare had still not shown up and Freya called her for the third time. She didn’t know whether to be mad or alarmed. It didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t come in as she said she would, but what if she’d changed her mind? Left town? She called Clare’s office and spoke with the receptionist, who said she hadn’t come in yet. She drove by her house and saw her car was gone. She was growing sick with worry something had happened to her. The people she’d been involved with were unforgiving, revengeful. What if the killer got wind that Clare had been at the scene and decided to eliminate her? She put a BOLO out on Clare’s car and prayed she was right about her.

  * * *

  Clare was in agony. Her arms ached from being bound behind her. She longed to change position, every part of her body stiff. But the worst was she had to pee. Badly. She’d been strapped in the chair for hours and was ready to burst.

  “You’re going to have to let me out of this chair so I can go to the bathroom,” she said, not for the first time. Evan was lounging on the living room couch and looked like he’d ignore this request as well. “Honestly, I’m going to pee all over if you don’t.”

  A look of distaste flashed on his face. “You’re going to have to hold it.”

  “What planet are you from? There’s no holding it, you idiot.” She didn’t care if she antagonized him. This was an emergency.

  He threw down the video game controller he was holding, having been occupied for the past two hours with his Xbox. “Christ. What a pain you are.” He walked over to her and put his hands on his hips. “Are you going to try to run as soon as I untie you? Because I don’t want to have to shoot you. Not yet anyway.”

  She was too occupied with holding her bladder to feel any alarm at his words. “All I want to do is get to the bathroom. Pronto.”

  He put his gun in the pocket of his hoodie and pulled a knife out of his cargo pants. “I’m coming in with you,” he said as he cut open the ties at her ankles.

  “Suit yourself. I don’t even care.” He held her
by the elbow as they walked to the bathroom in the rear of the apartment. “But you’ll have to uncuff me. Unless you want to take my pants off and wipe me.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting your pants off, but this isn’t the scenario I had in mind.” He took off the handcuffs when they got to the bathroom and watched her as she went. It took a long time. She was embarrassed to wipe herself in front of him, but really what did it matter? He was probably going to kill her. The thought sank into her core, now that she could think straight. He put the cuffs back on and grabbed her elbow again.

  “I have to wash my hands, you philistine.”

  Evan pulled her out of the bathroom. “Shut up. You’re starting to piss me off.”

  “Where do you see this going, Evan? How long do you think we can stay here like this?”

  He pushed her back into the chair, cuffed her wrists, and put new plastic ties around her ankles. “It depends. I haven’t decided. The cops don’t have any reason to think I’m involved, so I can keep you here as long as Henry’s in jail. Or we might get in the car and go. It might be a better idea to kill you when we’re far away.”

  Now that she’d relieved herself she could feel the full complement of not only her fear, but also the withdrawal symptoms that were growing stronger as the day went on. She’d not had any drug in her system for nearly twenty-four hours and craved something. Anything. She wouldn’t be picky about the drug.

  “What can you give me?” she said. “I need some meth, or whatever you’ve got.”

  “Really? It didn’t take long to turn you into a meth head.”

  She flushed, even now feeling shame at her dependence. “If you’re going to keep me in this chair you’ve got to give me something. I’ll lose my mind if you don’t.”

  “No, I don’t imagine you’d be any fun to be around in full withdrawal. Let’s see what I have.” He disappeared down the hall and came back with an odd smile on his face. “This’ll fix you up.”

  Clare watched as he placed a packet of meth, a spoon, a lighter, a rubber tourniquet, and a syringe on the table. “Oh, no. I snort the stuff. You can put it right to my nose and I don’t have to be uncuffed.”

  “I think you’ll like this. Ups the intensity.” He uncuffed her and brought her hands to the front, cuffing them again. He reached for her shirt sleeve and pushed it above her elbow. Then he held her forearm and scrutinized it, looking for the best vein. “This’ll do. Now relax, I’m not going to kill you.”

  Bile rose in her throat. Shooting up was the one line she swore she’d never cross. It put you irredeemably into the category of lost cause. It meant you were dirty, broke, desperate, criminal, disgusting. She was none of those things. She watched with horror as he melted the crystals in the spoon and then pulled the liquid up into the syringe. With her bound hands, she hit him below the jaw with enough force to snap his head back and he instantly swung his hand and slapped her full on the cheek. Why did slapping people in the movies look more like insult than injury? This hurt like hell. He’d managed to split her lip on a tooth and blood started to roll down her chin, dripping onto her lap. Her cheekbone felt broken.

  “What the hell was that?” he said. He cradled his jaw in one hand while holding her arms down with the other. He tied one arm off above the elbow and tapped on her vein. As he reached for the syringe, she hit him again. She knew it was stupid, that he’d do something in retaliation, but she didn’t care. She was desperate to avoid the needle. He shot up from the table and cocked his arm as if he were going to slug her, but hesitated before lowering it.

  “I should kill you now. You’re nothing but a giant pain in my ass.”

  “I never claimed to be anything but.” She put her hands to her mouth and wiped the blood away. She could feel it continue to swell and flow.

  He grabbed her right arm in his strong hand and plunged the needle in. Almost instantly, her head exploded with sensation, like a race car was coursing through her system at two hundred miles an hour. Her body twitched and her head dropped forward, leaving her staring at her lap. It was the most intense high ever and she hated it. It was one thing to slowly kill herself using drugs voluntarily. It was something else to have them forced upon her. She raised her head and looked at Evan, who was sitting in a chair next to her, enjoying himself.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but it was unintelligible, the frustrated cry of someone who couldn’t get their tongue to work. She dropped her head again. All she could think through the static in her brain was he was probably going to kill her and how sorry she was Freya would be left thinking so little of her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “If we assume Clare is being held against her will, who would we look to?” Freya said. She was hunched over her desk, glaring at Ben.

  “That’s a large assumption. She could be on the run all by herself.” Ben popped two pieces of gum in his mouth and stared back at her.

  “Fine. We’re looking for her either way. But we have no clues where she would have gone. We only have the names of people we already know about. I say we go check out what Stingy’s up to.”

  “What motive would Stingy have for grabbing Clare? He’s not a suspect—he has a different body type from the man Clare described and he has an alibi. He has nothing to cover up.”

  Freya pushed away from her desk and stood, too anxious to stay still. “What if Stingy’s alibi isn’t as strong as we think? What if there were more than one man at the scene after the murders and Clare saw only one of them? We can’t not talk to him.”

  Ben looked resigned and stood as well. “Fine. Let’s take a ride.”

  She led the way out of the building, feeling strangely at odds with Ben. She knew he suspected her of giving Clare the benefit of the doubt without much cause to do so. What if he was right? But even when she took a cool look at the situation, she couldn’t see Clare as a murderer. She couldn’t see her on the run. No, someone had her and her life was in jeopardy.

  They drove her Jeep the twenty-five miles to Stingy’s rural property. There were no cars in the front drive when they arrived, no lights shining from the simple farmhouse. The paint had peeled down to the raw wood. The front yard was dirt and gravel. They approached the front door with their weapons drawn and then Ben made his way to the rear. She rapped on the door three times, pausing in between, but there was no response. She was about to knock a fourth time when Ben opened the front door from the inside.

  “The back door was unlocked,” he said. “It doesn’t look like he’s here.”

  Freya entered and immediately went into one of the bedrooms and looked in the closet. It was empty. The other bedroom closet was the same. There were no clothes in the dressers, no toiletries in the bathroom. The milk in the fridge was sour.

  “Shit. He’s run.” Ben holstered his weapon and looked at Freya.

  “I don’t like this. He could have taken Clare and have fifty miles on us by now. But in what direction?” Freya said.

  “I think we should head over to his mother-in-law’s. The family could have moved there.”

  Freya flipped through her notebook to get the name and address of Stingy’s mother-in-law and they pulled back onto the rural highway. They were silent as she drove. She didn’t expect to find Stingy there. She was convinced he had a gun on Clare right now, who would not have gone with him voluntarily. Unless Stingy was offering her drugs and she couldn’t resist them. She realized she didn’t really know how bad Clare’s drug use was, but it was bad enough to get her into the colossal amount of trouble she was in now.

  Mona Fisher’s double-wide was about fifteen minutes away from Stingy’s property. It stood in a small subdivision of other manufactured homes, with straggly trees growing in small patches of lawn separating the trailers. The neighborhood was ringed by cornfields, billboards on the highway the only sign they weren’t literally in the middle of nowhere. Number fifty-nine Myrtle Street had two cars parked in front. They could hear the sound of a television as they appr
oached the door. Freya knocked loudly and the television went silent. The door opened.

  Mona’s figure took up much of the width of the doorframe, her hips flaring out to the sides. She wore a floral short sleeve blouse and gray sweatpants that were stretched to capacity. Her face was pretty and nicely made up, but the look of suspicion was clear in her eye.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Freya identified herself and Ben and they held up their IDs. Mona scrutinized them, wrinkles appearing everywhere as she scrunched up her face to peer at their badges. She looked much younger with a bland expression, the plumpness of her face hiding the wrinkles for the most part.

  “Ms. Fisher, we’re looking for your son-in-law. Is he at home with you?”

  A young woman appeared behind Mona, peering around her shoulder to see who was outside. “What’s going on, Mama?”

  “These police are looking for Drew.” She turned to her daughter, whose face crumpled. “Go on back, now. I’ll take care of this.”

  Freya could see the daughter’s damp face and red eyes as she continued to gaze past her mother. “We don’t know where he is. He’s gone. If you find him, you can kill him for me.”

  “May we come in?” Ben said. He reached a hand toward the doorknob.

  “You cannot come in here without a warrant. I know that much.”

  “Ma’am, we’re trying to find your son-in-law, not arrest him. You might be able to help us.”

  “Let them in, Mama.”

  Mona reluctantly opened the door and stepped back so Ben and Freya could enter. They all stood in the small kitchen, uncomfortably close, but Mona didn’t invite them farther in. The trailer smelled like bacon. Ben turned to the daughter and explained about finding Stingy’s house deserted.

  “I’m Kirsten, by the way,” she said. “Drew’s wife, at least for now. Yesterday he wanted us to move all our things to Mama’s house and I was excited about staying here for a while.”