“How so?” Tori asked.
“Because I own the place and Gunther was a little too well-served, and I let him be too well-served. And then Genevieve…well, she was a looker.”
“You say that like you…have a history with her?” Braddock asked, picking up on the tone.
Eddie smirked. “We had a night or two once a few years ago.”
“Still like the chase, do you?” Tori asked.
“Maybe,” Eddie replied coyly. “In any event, Genevieve was at the corner of the bar being kind of loud and obnoxious, and she was wearing a bright two-tone pink thong and the top was visible just above the waistline of her white Daisy Dukes. I noticed it and clearly Gunther did. I think he was looking at that for an hour. I mean, she was from me to you, less than five feet away from him, so…” Eddie shook his head, and grinned slyly, “the dummy pinched her on the ass. Hell, I watched him do it. He wasn’t what I’d call sly about it, either.”
“And then what?”
“His timing wasn’t great. She was talking to a couple of big guys when he did it. She reacted, although it wasn’t over the top. I mean, Genevieve was someone who might invite the pinch.”
“If for example you did it?” Tori asked.
“Yeah, sure. But when she turned around and saw who it was, she wasn’t that happy. I jumped off my stool and got between them. Those guy friends stepped in between as well. A few salty words were exchanged. But then Kyle was there. He stepped in and…well, it’s like that old E.F. Hutton commercial from when we were kids. But if Kyle talks, people…”
“Listen,” Braddock replied, nodding.
“Right. So, with his presence it was over like that.” Eddie snapped his fingers. “It was really no big deal. To be safe we called a car service and had Gunther driven home. Kyle rightfully bitched me out for setting a real fine example with a drunk ass friend and then that was the end of it.”
They spoke with Eddie another ten minutes and then departed.
“What was the deal with him going home when you were kids? Why was that a problem?” Braddock asked.
“I sometimes forget you’re not from here,” Tori answered, admonishing herself. “Eddie’s old man Irv, who owned the restaurant on the lake, was a big drunken, miserable and abusive beast of a man. Bar none, the biggest asshole I’ve ever seen in my life. He’d knock his wife around and he’d beat Eddie and Kyle if they tried to step in. Or he’d whip up on those two, and especially Eddie who was smaller, for some other reason, or sometimes for no reason at all.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah, it was. My dad went out there a bunch of times and arrested Irv. A few times Big Jim got Irv back to the jail and worked him over, giving the bastard some of his own medicine, back when you could kind of get away with that stuff. Problem was Mrs. Mannion would never press charges.”
“That must have been rough for Eddie,” Braddock suggested.
“Yeah. I think he enlisted in the Marines after high school just to get away from Irv. He must be long gone now. Good riddance.”
Jeff Warner was their next stop, at the law offices of Wilson Day. Wilson Day had seventeen offices across the United States. Tori thought it an odd juxtaposition to see a law firm with offices in places such as New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Dallas also with an office in Manchester, Minnesota. Warner explained that he’d merged with Wilson Day four years ago. “Mannion Companies was getting so big that we needed more and more big law firm resources. Kyle, to his credit, was loyal and wanted my firm to remain as counsel to the company since I’d been there since day one. Heck, I went to work for him doing restaurant stuff when I was still in law school. Anyway, we’d worked with Wilson Day and they understood what Kyle wanted and proposed a merger, so we’d have their resources and they would have a client that was about to take off into the stratosphere. It’s a public company now, hell of a thing here in little old Manchester. But enough about all that, let’s talk about why you’re here. July 4th, 1999 and Genevieve Lash, I presume?”
“Good guess,” Tori replied.
“It seemed logical.”
“So, what do you remember?” Braddock asked.
Warner remembered what everyone else recalled. “I remember the bonfire at Tommy’s. I remember being a little angry that I had to go home earlier that night.”
“Why was that?” Braddock asked.
“My dad was out of town and my grandma was watching me and my sister. Grandma, God rest her soul, was firm and you did not cross her. She said be home by twelve. I complied. Eddie dropped me off and then, of course, he had to go home.”
“Yeah, Irv.”
“Fucking Irv,” Warner replied, shaking his head disgustedly. “What a worthless prick. I’m not sure how Eddie made it through all that. I’m not sure how anyone could.”
“We just saw Eddie. He seems okay now,” Tori remarked.
“Yeah, Kyle looks after him and Eddie has done well for himself with the restaurant business. That’s booming, too. They’re opening a new joint every six months or so, it seems.”
“We have another woman who’s gone missing,” Braddock said. “Anyone you know tie in between Jessie Hunter and Genevieve Lash?”
Warner thought for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “You know until this whole Lash business, more than anything else I just always figured that what happened to Jess was really bad luck.” He looked to Braddock. “If I recall, there were a bunch of people who reported their tires being damaged that night, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“So, when I’ve gone back to that night and thought about what happened, I’ve always kind of believed that Jessie’s car was one of the cars that got hit. Her tire blew out on 48 and she had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some guy came along and something bad happened. That’s the lawyer in me thinking it through.”
“I noticed you were at Mannion’s on the night Lash went missing,” Tori stated.
“How’d you know that?” Warner asked and then realized, “Surveillance video, right?”
Tori nodded.
“Yeah, I was there for a while having drinks and an appetizer with a lawyer and his wife from my firm after the big fireworks show. I saw Eddie and Gunther sitting at the bar. I went over to say hello as I was leaving.”
“Did you see Genevieve Lash standing there?”
Warner shook his head. “I know Jerry Lash. His company was the general contractor on the Mannion corporate campus. I’ve worked with him often and I knew he had a daughter, but until all this happened, I didn’t know who Genevieve was. I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a lineup. Now Eddie claims he had a little fling…”
“He mentioned that,” Tori replied. “As for Genevieve, I take it you didn’t see Gunther’s dustup with her later in the evening.”
“What dustup?”
Braddock explained.
“He must have been drunk.”
Their next to last stop was to finally track down Gunther Brule at his house back in the woods, west of Manchester.
“I heard you were in town,” Gunther bellowed from his porch as Tori and Braddock approached. He was sitting in a lawn chair, a Miller High Life in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. “I suppose you’re wondering why I pinched Genevieve Lash’s butt. The honest answer is, so am I.”
“Well, she did go missing later that night.”
Gunther offered a dismissive wave. “Hell, I was in bed. After I did that thing at the bar, Kyle shoved me into a car and I was home in ten minutes.” He gestured to his garage where a new Dodge Ram pickup truck was parked inside, along with a white van parked around the side. “The pickup stayed there in the parking lot overnight. I picked it up in the morning.”
“And why did you pinch her on the buttocks?” Braddock asked.
Gunther laughed lightheartedly. “Probably because she had a really nice ass. Not any more to it than that.”
<
br /> Tori pushed him back in time. “What do you remember about the night Jessie went missing?”
“Not that much, to be honest,” Gunther replied. “I didn’t hang around you guys all that often back then, although I would have liked to. You guys were all the cool kids. Eddie Mannion is a friend now, a good friend, but back then that was one of the first times I was with that big group of people. I went over to Tommy Peterson’s place with Webb, I think, which is where all of you guys were hanging out. He was all hot for Mickey so we kind of followed you all around that night. That’s what I remember but like I said, I wasn’t really part of the group.”
It was late in the day, the sun starting to work its way lower in the clear western sky when they left Gunther. As Braddock reached the end of the Brule’s long driveway he said, “That’s pretty much everyone.”
“No, there’s one more,” Tori said. “We need to go see Katy.”
“Anderson? You really think she can give us anything? She’s nuts.”
“She was the last one to see Jess alive.”
“And she hasn’t left the house in fifteen years so what possible connection could she have to Lash?”
“I can do this myself if you want.”
“No, no, no, I’ll go,” Braddock replied before whimsically adding, “This should be interesting.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Sorry.”
Twenty years ago, other than each other, Tori and Jessie’s best friend was Katy Anderson. The three of them sat at the same small table in preschool and, after Tori and Jessie’s mom died, it was Katy’s mom that often watched all the girls after school out at her house. Katy’s mom ran an in-home daycare and her dad ran a truck repair business out of a large pole barn on the back of the property. Back then there were business signs for both out front along the road, a busy and lively place.
Tori could tell that was no longer the case. The house was the same, but the signs were gone. A conspicuous amount of disrepair had overtaken the property. The raggedy yard needed mowing, the unkempt bushes needed trimming, the driveway looked as if it hadn’t been sealed in twenty years. The pole barn on the back of the property was closed and probably hadn’t been accessed in eons.
“Maybe hang back on this one for a few minutes,” Tori suggested. “I have no idea how this will go.”
“Copy that.”
Braddock waited by the Tahoe as Tori deliberately made her way up the front steps. At the front door Tori closed her eyes and took a breath before she lightly knocked on the door. After a few seconds she heard rustling sounds and then the door creaked open and Katy looked out, squinting into the late day sun and the person on the porch. After a moment her eyes went wide in recognition and her hands went to her mouth in shock.
“Hey Katy,” Tori greeted quietly.
“Tori?” Katy gasped, frozen in shock.
“Yeah,” Tori replied, trying to keep her own expression together.
When they were all kids Katy was a lively and pretty girl. She played soccer with them, was rail thin, attractive and outgoing. The Katy now standing behind the front door was a shell of her former self. She was far heavier now, wearing baggy sweats and her black hair was graying prematurely and was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her eyes were hidden behind dated gold-rimmed glasses. After a moment, Katy’s mom appeared behind her daughter to see who was at the door and was equally astonished to see Tori. She opened the door and stepped onto the porch to embrace Tori while Katy looked on, still too stunned to move.
“Why are you here?” Katy finally asked.
“The Genevieve Lash case,” Tori answered. “There are some things about it that brought me home, the similarities between it and Jessie’s disappearance. I wanted to come out and see you. And…well…I’m sorry, but—” she gestured over to Braddock standing by the Tahoe, “Detective Braddock and I need to ask some questions about the night Jessie went missing.”
Braddock joined them on the porch, let Tori introduce him, and then followed them all inside. Tori sat down with Katy on the couch. It took some time to get Katy talking, the initial surprise of Tori’s presence finally fading. But Katy didn’t want to talk about twenty years ago. It was challenging to keep her on topic and it was difficult for Katy to talk about Jessie’s disappearance. She was more interested in Tori, New York City, her job and life.
Slowly, over the course of an hour they fitfully worked through the details of that fateful night. Yet, despite those efforts, Katy didn’t remember anything new, or anything beyond what others reported or what she’d recalled twenty years ago.
“When she dropped me off it was like always,” Katy said. “I stood right out on the porch and I waved to her before I went inside. Jessie waved back and then pulled away and—” the tears welled again in her eyes. “I never saw her again.”
Katy knew of the Lash disappearance and knew it occurred on the anniversary of Jessie’s disappearance, but she didn’t see the connection. “I don’t know anything about her, Tori. I don’t get out too much.”
“I saw Corinne and Lizzy. They say they’ve tried to call you to invite you out.”
“They have but I…can’t go out,” Katy looked down to her hands, which she nervously rubbed together while rocking slightly, starting to shut down.
Tori slid closer to her, sliding an arm around her. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” Tori replied softly, tenderly massaging Katy on the back. “It’s okay.”
That ended the interview.
Katy’s mother, Gail, walked a rattled Tori, along with Braddock, out to the driveway.
Tori asked, “How long has she been—” before her voice trailed away.
Gail Anderson shook her head, “After Jessie disappeared, she tried to move on like everyone else but that whole thing just…impacted her in such a drastic way. She had—” she put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, “she had a breakdown, Tori, a really bad one.”
“When?”
“A few years after you’d left for college. She was in a mental hospital for a year and when Katy came out, she just wasn’t the same. At first, she just stayed home more but would leave and go out and try to work and go to college, but over time she couldn’t handle it. These days she doesn’t hardly leave the house.”
“Not at all?” Tori asked, flabbergasted.
“No. For a time she’d go places with me, shopping or out to eat, but after a while,” Gail sighed, “I couldn’t get her to do even that. I’d say she’s been this way for nearly ten years, maybe a little more. She has a driver’s license but the last time she left the house was probably three months ago. She went with me to a doctor’s appointment and drove.” Gail shook her head in resignation. “She just can’t seem to handle the world out there.”
“Does she work?”
“A bit. She does some remote data entry work. She reads lots of books, watches movies, and for a while she tended to the bushes and the gardens, but now she barely even leaves the inside of the house. It’s like her world just keeps shrinking and shrinking. I fear one day she won’t even leave her room. If something happens to me…” Gail just shook her head.
Tori looked to Braddock. “You were right.” She then turned to Gail, saying apologetically, “We shouldn’t have come out here.”
Gail shook her head. “No. I’m glad you did. You’ll find this hard to believe after what you just saw, but that’s the most vibrant I’ve seen Katy in quite some time. That was really hard for her to talk about and I don’t think she’d have done it for anyone else but you. Seeing you, Tori? That was good for her.”
Tori and Braddock left Katy’s and drove back into Manchester and to the government center in silence. Once they reached his office Braddock dropped down into his chair, exhausted. Tori sat in one of the guest chairs, looking blankly away.
For once it was Braddock who broke the silence. “You thought you’d come to town and just break t
his thing wide open, didn’t you?”
Tori snorted her reply, nodding lightly.
“There is a reason your sister’s case was never solved. There is a reason that after five days we’re nowhere on Genevieve Lash. Absolutely nowhere. Sometimes things happen, and we just can’t find the answers.”
“People don’t just vanish.”
“Yeah, sometimes they do,” Braddock answered plainly. “Be honest. You don’t solve every child kidnapping with the child returning home, do you?”
After a moment Tori shook her head.
“In this job there’s nothing better than saving a life. Problem is that the flip side is usually more the case and there’s nothing worse than having to tell someone their loved one is gone and it’s doubly worse when you can’t answer the question why. To me, delivering that message is the toughest part of being on the job. Because without the why, loved ones can’t get closure.”
“You think we’re there? That we won’t find the answers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone sent me that newspaper article. They want me here. We’re missing or not seeing something.”
“Or he’s just jerking you around and he’s not even here,” Braddock answered. “All I know is that right now we’re going nowhere fast. We’re striking out and—” He held up a message slip. “Steak and Eggs are striking out, too. They’ve got nothing new from Lash’s friends and at least initially, they’ve found nothing in the records at Lash Construction.”
Tori simply shook her head, looking away, not wanting to agree with anything Braddock just said but at the same time knowing he could possibly be right.
“Or maybe we have everything we need to crack it, but we just don’t know it yet,” Braddock added as he sat up in his chair, looked over his desk, checked his watch and said, “I’m calling it a night.”
“What? What about the case? How can you just leave?” Tori asked exasperatedly, unaccustomed to just going home if a case wasn’t solved. You worked until it was one way or another, personal life be damned.
“It’s almost eight. It’s been a fourteen-hour day. I’m going to my son’s baseball game. It’s under the lights and is starting now so I can catch most of it.”
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