“Do you get any time with your husbands?”
All three of them laughed. “Not much,” Mickey remarked. “Jobs, kids, kid’s activities, collapse, day-after-day. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“Lizzy did get away with her husband for a vacation, just the two of them last winter. A week in Cabo,” Corinne reported.
Lizzy smiled. “We made up for a lot of lost time that week.”
“You two went on a fuckcation is what you did,” Corinne replied jealously.
“Corinne!” Lizzy protested.
“Oh whatever, you came home glowing from that thing.”
“I did not,” Lizzy replied and looked to Mickey. “Tell her I did not.”
“You totally did.”
“Oh my God.” Lizzy replied, shaking her head but then smiling. “What can I say, we got about a year’s worth in that week.” She looked over to Tori, looking to change the subject. “How about you, single girl looking all in shape and sexy? Who’s your guy?”
“There is no guy.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Mickey teased, shaking her head. “I heard you were all nice and cozy with Will Braddock the other night.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” Tori replied.
“You weren’t at JJ’s in Pillager? The two of you in a little out-of-the-way corner booth.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh please,” Lizzy replied with a wave, “Mickey has sources everywhere. The oracle knows all.”
“Well yeah, we were there, having a beer and pizza after working all day. But I…was not…all cozy with him. We sat on opposite sides of the table.”
“I received a report of hand-holding.”
“From who?”
“I don’t reveal my sources,” Mickey replied with a big grin. “Never.”
“Well, we were not holding hands,” Tori protested, “I was… Oh, never mind. It was not what you think.”
“It’s okay, Tori. This is us you’re talking to. I mean, you have to admit,” Lizzy took a quick look around the restaurant before saying in a low voice, “he is kind of hot.”
“Oh yeah,” Corinne agreed. “Come on, Tori, I know you’re all New York City and all now, but tell me you haven’t at least thought about it.”
“I…” Tori started to protest before letting a little smile slip. “It has not escaped my attention that he’s a good-looking guy.”
“I told you guys!” Mickey exclaimed. “I told you.”
They all laughed out loud.
“All I know is he was right when he said it’s still like a small town around here,” Tori mused, shaking her head ruefully. “Everyone knows everything. Everything. There are no secrets.”
“And all I know,” Corinne remarked, “is we’d all be doing baseball or soccer tonight but for —”
“You, girlfriend,” Mickey finished, toasting Tori with her wine glass. “This was such a treat.”
“It’s my treat,” Tori replied, holding up her credit card.
A little after nine Tori returned to her hotel, sat down on the bed, crossed her legs and opened her case file. She went through the evidence again, wanting, almost willing herself to trust and believe that Brule was the killer. When you boiled it down, all the actual evidence, physical and circumstantial, pointed to Brule.
Her phone rang. She recognized the FBI Crime Lab number.
“This should confirm it.”
Braddock wasn’t in a celebratory mood when he arrived home, reminded of his last several days by the massive misshapen black charred spot on his cement driveway and the visible scorching of the siding of his house.
Inside he took that long warm shower, letting the water stream over and steam his body. For an hour he relaxed on his deck, silently sipping a beer and gazing out to the lake, trying to empty his mind and failing miserably.
The case was heading inexorably in a direction that he was now certain was the wrong one. But Backstrom and Cal were calling the shots now; it was out of his control and he feared he wouldn’t be able to stop them.
That was the biggest reason he told Tori he wanted to be alone. She’d been through so much, was so consumed with the case and filled with guilt and fury that he dreaded having to be the one to disappoint her. He wasn’t ready to break that news to her and needed a night to steel himself up for it.
Eventually he went back inside, opened another beer and climbed the steps to his office. He sipped from the bottle while once again reading the contents of the manila file folder in front of him.
He had a large United States map pinned up on the wall opposite the desk. The colored dots on the map identified all the women missing and unaccounted for over the past twenty years. The first one was Jessie Hunter, followed by more than a four-year break. Then for the past sixteen years it seemed as if one to two women went missing per year. The four women whose bodies were found were included, marked by red dots, the missing women by green.
Were they all abducted by the same man? He thought they were.
So, as he reviewed the contents of the manila folder, of the records contained therein and compared them to the dots, the facts, the circumstances and the locations of the missing women the growing pit in his stomach ached more and more. The information in the folder, the circumstances of the missing women, and the facts as he knew them on Gunther Brule were in complete conflict. All of that was ruminating through his mind when there was a sudden urgent pounding at the back door. He hustled down the steps and then turned into the kitchen, racing to the urgent knocking. He opened the back door.
“He didn’t do it!” Tori exclaimed, barging inside before turning around, distraught. “It wasn’t Brule. He didn’t try to shoot me. I don’t think he tried to blow you up. He didn’t kill Jessie or Lash or even Katy.” She looked to Braddock, expecting him to ask her why. Instead he simply nodded.
“You know this? How?”
“You first.”
“The FBI Crime Lab. The DNA on the cigarette butts is not a match to Gunther.”
“Hmpf. That wasn’t necessarily the fact I was expecting, but it figures.” Braddock sighed, leaning back against the kitchen counter and tilting his head back and lightly shaking it.
“Why? Why does that figure?”
He turned his gaze back to her and then nodded his head toward the steps. “You better come upstairs.”
He led Tori up the steps and into his home office.
Tori froze, seeing the massive map up on the wall to the right and the manila folder opened on his desk to the left.
“I thought you left work at the office,” she remarked quietly.
“Not this case,” he replied quietly as he leaned against the desk, adding in a whisper, “Not this case.”
She’d seen the map on his computer back at his office and had a copy of it on her laptop. But seeing the map up on the wall like this with handwritten sticky notes detailing the facts of each disappearance was startling. She looked back to Braddock. The compartmentalizer was every bit as obsessed as she was. He handed the manila folder to Tori.
“What’s this?”
“Time clock records for Gunther Brule at the explosives factory. They go back ten years, that’s all they keep, although he’s been there for nearly sixteen years. I’ve eliminated him from ten of these women completely with those records. On four more I think it’s virtually impossible for him to have been the man who abducted them. The rest might be possible but only because I don’t have records going back far enough.”
Tori flipped through the records, printouts of attendance and time cards for Brule at Sidwell Explosives. “How’d you get all of this?”
“Kyle Mannion,” Braddock answered. “I picked them up this morning. I don’t care what Cal said about forgetting about the other women, I never really bought that. I still believe they’re all connected. That’s why I was here much of the day going through the records. And that’s how I eliminated Brule from many of these abductions. He could
n’t have been there. So, if all these disappearances, including your sister and Genevieve Lash are all connected, Brule didn’t do it. Does that mean he didn’t take your sister? Does it mean he didn’t abduct Lash? Does it mean he didn’t try to pop you and me? I suppose it’s still possible but…” He shook his head in frustration. “I just don’t think he did.”
Tori dropped her face into her hands. “I knew it was too good to be true.” She looked up. “How long have you had doubts?”
“Since last night at the cabin.”
“Last night? What did you see last night?”
“It was more something you said that got me thinking, about how he was defiant and now he was dead. That just didn’t add up to me. What? He does all these things, goes to the lengths he did to get you here and then kills himself at his cabin without any explanation?” He shook his head. “It didn’t buy it. These records tell me I’m right.”
Tori nodded her understanding, gazing at the map.
“Tori, I wanted it to be Brule. I stood in Cal’s kitchen Sunday night and I desperately wanted it to be Brule. I wanted to have that answer but something about him just doesn’t set right with me. He doesn’t fit as the killer. And I could tell in Cal’s office today you had your doubts.”
“What are you thinking?” Tori asked. “What’s triggering that?”
“All these women and no answers. All these pretty women and no answers. I’ve looked at the pictures, many pictures of these victims. They are attractive, educated, talented women. Every one of them.”
“It would take someone pretty cunning yet somehow also safe and trustworthy to abduct these women,” Tori observed.
“Right. Does Gunther Brule strike you as that kind of a mastermind? As someone able to evoke that kind of trust in all these women?”
“No. I could possibly see Gunther killing someone. I’m sure he did in Iraq and there was always something off about him, but you look at these women. They’re all attractive, pretty, but all of them might also treat Brule like…”
“Genevieve Lash treated Brule at Mannion’s,” Braddock finished. “They might not be as condescending as Lash, but they would likely reject him. Then I thought, maybe that’s what triggered him. The rejection. These women rejected him and in vengeance, he took them. So, that’s why I asked Kyle for Gunther’s employment records. Was it possible he was in all those places? Those records prove he wasn’t.”
Tori shook her head in frustration and then her jaw dropped. “Will, did we jack Gunther up on Saturday night, accuse him of all this shit such that he went up to his cabin and killed himself? Did we do that?”
“I don’t know,” Braddock replied softly. “I’ve been wondering about that, too.”
“The killer is still out there somewhere jerking us around.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“But we’re the only ones who think that. We need to keep working this. We have to.”
Braddock shook his head in resignation. “Tori, we can hold off Cal and Backstrom for only so long. I told them not to schedule a press conference, but you know they’re itching to. And if that happens,” he gestured to everything up on the wall, “I’m going to have to drop the case.”
“Hold on a second, you can’t just do that.”
“I will be forced to,” Braddock answered, his voice almost hoarse. “The sheriff is my boss, a boss I like very much and who has been really good to me. I have a son to look after and care for and I can’t do that without a job.”
“But what about the truth?”
“Sometimes the truth is a luxury.”
“I know you don’t believe that.”
“No. I…don’t. I am going to fight for this, Tori. I am. And I’m trying to think of how to do that. But I may get backed into a corner that I won’t be able to get out of.”
“I don’t operate that way,” Tori replied bitterly.
“You sure about that? You mean to tell me you haven’t been told a case is over when you don’t think it is? A child who’s been missing for months, no evidence and no signs of hope. You haven’t been ordered to stand down? To go home? Heck, last week you left this case, this case to go to Des Moines because you were ordered to.”
“But on this case, we have evidence that…”
“That what? If you take this map out of it, if you take these twenty-three other women out of the equation, even with the negative DNA results there is a very plausible, well-supported by evidence and convenient conclusion that Gunther Brule did it, even though you and I both know he didn’t.”
“I don’t have to accept it.”
“There is acceptance and there is belief—they’re two different things. I don’t believe it, you know I don’t, but I may have to accept it.”
“I don’t believe it or accept it,” she replied, but then picked up a small five-by-seven framed picture of Will and Quinn off the top of the small narrow bookshelf in the corner. It showed the two of them sitting arm-in-arm on the back seat of their speedboat, a happy father and son living an idyllic life. Who was she to imperil that?
Tori nodded and turned to face him. “But…I understand, Will. I do.”
The two of them stood in silence for a minute, taking the measure of each other, the tension long-existent between them now melted away. It was replaced with a common belief but the improbability of acting on it together.
Braddock wearily looked back to the map. “All these women. No evidence, no witnesses, nobody sees a thing,” he muttered dejectedly. “The families don’t know what happened to their daughters. You don’t know what happened to your sister. I don’t even want to think about what I’d be feeling if Quinn went missing and nobody had any answers.” He looked to her. “Tori, I can’t imagine what the last twenty years have been like for you, not knowing. And then last night…” His voice trailed off as he looked to the floor. “I hoped last night would’ve been your answer. I wanted it to be your answer in the worst way.”
Tori felt immense guilt for ever having questioned Will Braddock’s commitment to the case, to her cause. She wanted someone to be as invested as she was, and standing across the room was an exhausted and totally spent man who was in it all the way.
Their eyes locked on one another and they stood in silence, gazing upon each other.
Slowly Tori walked to Braddock, her eyes never leaving his. She stopped and stood in front of him before looking up into his weary deep blue eyes. Gently reaching up with her right hand, Tori cupped his right cheek tenderly, lightly brushing her thumb along his stubbled skin.
Braddock looked down into her eyes, her deep moistened green eyes, and for the first time he saw a softness in her, a vulnerability. “You have to be the most defiant and uncompromising woman I’ve ever met.”
Tori nodded gently in reply as she leaned up and kissed him, a light, soft, tender, lingering kiss. “You did say that fire can be a good thing.”
“When channeled properly.”
“That’s what I’m doing now,” was her hushed reply as she moved her arms down to first untuck his shirt, then push it up before he took over and lifted the shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor. She took a long moment to let her eyes drift over his long and toned torso before slowly reaching up to touch him. Lightly and ever so slowly, she brushed her fingers up and down, slowing working her way down his chest, savoring the feel of him. Her hands found their way down to his waist, moving her fingers to and then undoing the button on his shorts, but letting them just sit open. While looking up to his eyes, she sensually moved her hands teasingly along the top edge of his boxers, letting her fingers slide just lightly between the waistband and the skin, feeling his toned stomach quiver to her touch, relishing in the feel of his reaction, in the murmur of his voice. She slid her hands back up to his muscled chest; the fingers of her left hand tenderly lingered over the two oblong scars just above his right nipple, the wounds from Times Square. She softly kissed the wounds while sliding her arms around him, pulling him close, li
ghtly running her fingers up the smooth skin of his back.
Tori looked up to see him gazing down to her, looking upon her eagerly, yet his approach was tender. He reached with his hands to lightly caress the backs of her toned arms before easing his hands lower. Searching for the bottom of her untucked tank top, he started to gently lift it when she moved her hands down and leaning back, deliberately pulling it over her head, allowing him to admire her taut stomach and soft breasts. He exhaled a breath and his eyes locked on hers as he gently undid the button and then the zipper on her shorts before using his hands to slide them down and then let them fall to the floor, letting Tori step out of them. He took a half-step back, peering down admiringly.
Tori leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss him again, at first softly. Pecks on his lips, each one lingering a little longer before opening her mouth, kissing him deeply, hungrily, wrapping her arms around his neck, easing him down to her, his long arms slowly enveloping her into him.
“Let’s just forget about all of this tonight,” she murmured, her lips a centimeter from his. “I just want to let it all go. I want to let go.”
Braddock lifted her up, light in his arms, letting her wrap her legs around his waist as he carried out of the office, down the hallway and into his bedroom.
CHAPTER 24
“IS THAT THE FOUNDATION UPON WHICH YOU WANT TO BUILD YOUR HOUSE?”
T ori awoke to the hum of the house’s air conditioning kicking in. She glanced at her watch and it was ten minutes after six.
Awakening in a bed with a man in the morning was usually cause for Tori to make a quick and stealthy departure to avoid the potentially awkward emotional repercussions of the night. She immediately realized a hasty escape would prove exceedingly difficult.
Braddock’s long left arm was wrapped around her waist, gently but tightly holding her. And, a bit to her surprise she was okay with that, content to let her body comfortably and securely lay enveloped in his long massive one. She found herself wanting to stay in the moment, to hang onto it just a little longer.
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