Silenced Girls

by Roger Stelljes

  “Gail, I’m…I’m…”

  Gail Anderson embraced Tori, holding her in her arms. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s my fault. If I wouldn’t have come back out here. If I didn’t talk about that trip. If…”

  “Shhh, no, sweetie, no,” Gail replied, hugging Tori. “No. Don’t say that. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

  Tori stared silently out the passenger window as Braddock spoke with Cal all the way back to Manchester.

  “The noose is getting tighter,” Cal stated. “Backstrom was in court this afternoon getting an order for us to get a DNA sample from Eddie. We’ll have it tomorrow and we can get a sample and test it against the sample from Sarah Craig’s car. If we have that and match it, that case gets tighter. Now that we’ve found Katy Anderson’s body, Tori is proven right. Katy Anderson’s disappearance was all part of this. And with these two cases, we can go to work on closing Jessie Hunter and Genevieve Lash. And Backstrom and I were discussing getting the FBI, along with the United States Attorney involved and letting them run wild on these other twenty-three cases.”

  “Agreed,” Braddock replied as he glanced to his right to Tori, who simply watched the countryside pass by.

  Braddock dropped her off at her hotel just before seven p.m. Tori wanted some time alone.

  “Are you sure? You can grab some things quick and come out.”

  Tori shook her head. “I’ll come out in a few hours, okay? I’ll even stop and buy a bottle of wine or two. Maybe we can sit around the fire or something? Just you and me.”

  “Sure.”

  Tori turned to get out of the Tahoe when he reached for her hand, holding in gently in his. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she replied softly with a nod. “Or at least…I will be.” She leaned back into the truck and kissed him softly before moving in to let him embrace her, letting herself be held, needing to be comforted. Will wrapped her in his arms again, quiet, just holding her.

  Tori let out a sigh and broke gently from the embrace before looking up and pecking him on the lips one more time. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Okay.”

  Tori took the two hours to decompress. She drew herself a long hot soapy bath, her eyes closed, soft music playing in her earbuds, letting the warm water work therapeutically through her body. She wanted this time for herself, to wrap her mind around—Eddie. She’d known him since middle school. For those six years, from sixth grade to graduation, he’d been ever-present at every party, dance and football game. He was part of their pack of friends, a good friend.

  For two hours she thought back to the time before Jessie disappeared. Was there something she should have seen? Were there signs? Was there a reason that she and Jessie should have been wary of Eddie? She drew a blank. There was nothing that said she should have seen it coming.

  She finally lifted herself out of the tub and dried off before slowly getting dressed in blue shorts, a light white linen button up sleeveless blouse and sandals. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail and quickly applied makeup. You do seem to work awfully hard at looking good for this guy, she thought to herself as she applied soft red lipstick.

  Tori walked out the front of the hotel and texted Braddock that she was on her way. First though, she needed to buy wine. She turned right out of the hotel parking lot onto Lake Drive and made her way to Knorr’s Liquor and Wine, which Mickey had informed her had the best wine selection in town.

  Mickey was right, Tori thought, as she patiently perused the many shelves. For some reason the Billy Joel song “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” was playing in her head as she picked her way through her options, a bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of rose instead.

  Eventually she settled on a Chardonnay and a Cabernet.

  She paid at the register and walked out the back of the store to her car, reaching for her phone, typing a text to Braddock as to what she’d bought and then hit send.

  The pavement scraped behind her.

  She spun left.

  Her body started spasming.

  Tori’s eyes fluttered open. Lying on her left side, she grunted as the left side of her body bounced hard against the unforgiving and uneven surface she was laying on. She couldn’t groan, at least out loud, not with the duct tape over her mouth. And she could barely move. Her wrists were bound so tightly behind her back that it felt like the restraints were knifing into the skin of her wrists. It was the same with her ankles, bound tight, leaving her only with the ability to bend her knees and nothing more. And then there was the burning sensation on her left lower back where her skin felt like it was on fire.

  Her senses coming back online, her heart beating rapidly in the pitch-black darkness, she tried focusing her eyes to look around and get a sense of the trunk. To see or feel if there was anything she could use to free herself. She contorted her restrained body to feel, mostly with her feet, but felt nothing. The trunk seemed empty, other than her own presence.

  She discerned that she was in the trunk of a car and it was driving along a smooth paved road, although she was jostled every time the rear tires hit a seam or imperfection in the pavement. That’s what her left side kept bumping against, it was the spare tire and jack underneath the thin fabric trunk cover beneath her.

  The car veered sharp left and then began to slow and then she heard the rhythmic clicking sound of the turn signal. Tori strained to turn her body to look back to her left, where she could see a small vertical sliver of yellow flashing light. A left turn was about to be made. To where? And how long had she been in this position?

  She never blacked out, but there was time where she was out of it, disoriented, as if she was paralyzed. The last thing she clearly remembered was coming out of the liquor store, texting Braddock, getting to the car and hitting the fob to unlock it and then sensing movement behind her. As she started to turn, she was stabbed in the lower left back and it was like electricity was shot through her. She seemed to faintly remember being picked up and then tossed into the trunk and being jostled around, but it was all a fuzzy blur.

  This is how it all went down, she thought, understanding her predicament. Joanie Wells, Genevieve Lash, Sarah Craig, Jessie, all the others. Immobilized, trapped, unable to escape or scream for help. Lying in the trunk of a car with nothing but time to imagine what horror and fate awaited before the brutal end came.

  The car began to decelerate and then stopped for a moment before slowly moving forward and then accelerating up a steep incline, causing her to take a half-roll back, crunching her right hip into the trunk latch. After a few seconds, the car leveled out and she tipped a half-roll back forward. The road was uneven now, the car jostling left and right, the tires crunching underneath on a rough gravel road.

  She felt the car veer slightly left. Tightly bound, she had little body control as she tipped forward as the car started down a gentle incline before again leveling out and then finally coming to a stop.

  The engine was turned off.

  Tori peered around again, listening for any sound, trying to get some sense of where she was. But there was no movement or sound for her to get such a sense. Instead, there was just an ominous eerie quiet.

  Then there was a click and the trunk latch released, letting in some sense of light. Tori strained to roll her body to look back to her right but could only see the trunk hood lightly bobbing.

  A car door opened. After a long moment, she heard footsteps behind her on the driver’s side, a slow deliberate walk to the back of the car. There was a long pause before the trunk was lifted fully open.

  “Hiya, Tori,” Jeff Warner greeted with a wicked grin.

  CHAPTER 32

  “WHAT WAS THIS INTERNAL INVESTIGATION ABOUT?”

  Braddock showered, shaved, and dressed in khaki shorts and a light blue soft cotton button down collared shirt that he left untucked. He even dabbed on a small dollop of cologne. You sure do seem to work hard at cleaning up for her, buddy, he
thought to himself as he evaluated himself in the long mirror on the back of his bathroom door.

  His phone pinged. It was a text from Tori that she picked up the wine, a red and a white. He slipped the phone into his pocket and ran his hand through his hair one more time. He walked out of his bedroom and into his home office. His laptop was still open to his email and he had two more messages from Sheila. The first email contained Eddie Mannion’s full cell phone history. Sheila had listed the name of the person Eddie had called or received a call from in the margins. He scanned back several days to the night Gunther called him, confirming the call was made. Then Eddie made a call ten minutes later. “Hmpf. That’s interesting.”

  He clicked out of the phone records and opened his last new email, which also was from Sheila. The last message explained that attached was a record of stun gun sales in the six-county area from four of the top manufacturers. Sheila noted that Eddie’s name didn’t show. He quickly scanned the names on the spreadsheet and recognized many names as police officers and sheriff’s deputies who had to buy their own equipment, although they often were reimbursed for the expense. There was a business name on the list that was intriguing. “Another way to cover his tracks, I suppose.”

  There was a knock on his back door. “That was quick,” he muttered as he went to the window for the office and looked down, but it wasn’t Tori. Kyle Mannion was standing at his back door, peering in the window.

  “What does he want?” Braddock muttered warily.

  Interesting timing, he thought. He went back to his bedroom nightstand. He took his Glock-17 out of the drawer, chambered a round and held it low to his side as he walked down the steps, peered around the corner to see Kyle Mannion looking in through the curtains framing the backdoor window. Kyle saw him and waved.

  Braddock cautiously approached the door and peeked out the window to see where Kyle’s hands were before he undid the deadbolt and stepped back to open the door, making sure Kyle saw the gun in his right hand.

  “Do you want to frisk me?” Kyle asked, holding his arms out, a thick manila folder in his left hand.

  “Walk in the door and place your hands on the island.”

  Kyle Mannion complied while Will patted him down with his left hand, keeping the gun in his right. He pulled out car keys, a cell phone and thick money clip, all tossed onto the center island. He stepped back and let Mannion put all of it back in his pockets. “Why are you here, Kyle? You sure as hell shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m not trying to burn you.”

  “I’m already feeling singed.”

  “This is off the record,” Kyle offered. “This conversation never happened if what I have here doesn’t…sway you.”

  “Come on, Kyle, you know that doesn’t work. You need to leave—now.”

  “This conversation never happened,” he insisted. “I’ll still use what I have here for Eddie’s defense. Worst case scenario for you is you’re getting an advance look at defense strategy.”

  “Kyle…”

  “I’m putting my neck on the line coming here, too. I could really be screwing Eddie far more than I’m compromising you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just hear me out,” Kyle pleaded. “The reason I came out is Ben Westlund said Tori…might have had some doubts. That was his read.”

  Will shook his head. “She doesn’t, Kyle. At least not anymore, not after we found Katy Anderson’s car on your brother’s hunting property.”

  “What if she was right, though?”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Look, I know it looks bad for my little brother. We were at Warner’s office today. I talked to Eddie and Ben Westlund about what happened today. Ben told me about the evidence that you and Tori put on the table in front of Eddie and him this morning and hell,” Kyle shook his head disgustedly, “I can get there. Eddie has had his issues over the years.”

  “It sure looks like it.”

  “He was beaten by my old man, that worthless SOB. I know you know Eddie has some history of abuse with women. It wasn’t just in the Marines down at Camp Lejeune, either. He smacked his first wife around pretty good.”

  Braddock nodded. “I know. We found the photos at his house today.”

  “Typical,” was Kyle’s annoyed response. “He was so stupid to keep those there. We kept that all quiet. We even hid it from the court. We used money to do it. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I did to protect him and my business. And like I said, you know about what happened when he was in the Marines.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Right,” Kyle replied. “When I learned that there is the map of our restaurants and these women are all missing, I could see how you get there, how it looks like Eddie killed those women. I looked at our business records myself today for all those restaurant openings and no doubt, my brother was there for all of them. With his history and all those links, I can see it. I really can.”

  “I sense a but coming.”

  “Eddie tries to project the image of being a big part of the success of our business. We do put him out front on all the restaurant openings. He’s technically the head of that part of our operation. He’s at the ribbon cuttings, gets quoted in the papers, signs the documents on behalf of the corporation and so forth. Eddie is good at that, too. He comes off as the outgoing, fun-loving, life of the party guy. But the reality is, Eddie is pretty…weak. He’s kind of broken. I think he chases all the women and drinks the way he drinks to project something other than what he really is. But here’s something else I know. He couldn’t kill anyone. He doesn’t have the stomach for it.”

  “Kyle, we shouldn’t be talking about this…”

  “Just give me a few more minutes. I’m not trying to compromise you. I’m not. Actually, I think I’m helping you and me,” Kyle added before he handed a manila folder over.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a file that has records on all of those restaurant openings. I know Eddie is at all the grand openings and you have all of that. But there’s a lot of other work that goes into opening those restaurants that Eddie plays very little role in. The licensing, the contracts, the hiring of employees, the negotiating with the local governmental authorities. Eddie doesn’t do that, he doesn’t possess the skill set, the education or the intellect. He’s listed as the owner, and he signs off on stuff and does some marketing and promotional work but really, Eddie’s biggest role is to fly in for a week or two when we open the joints. But someone who works for us does all that other work, travels to those towns repeatedly in the build-out and licensing phases and is also often there when the restaurants are opening.”

  “Are you going to tell me that person is Jeff Warner?” Braddock asked, reaching for the folder.

  Kyle did a double take. “How did you…know that?”

  “You first.”

  “Jeff started working for me back when he was in law school. He was clerking for Ben Westlund’s firm, which I used when we were a small business. Eddie liked the restaurant business and Jeff showed a real aptitude for what it took to get a new restaurant off the ground. In those early years, he was working with Eddie and I when we opened our first places in Bismarck, La Crosse and Sioux Falls. Then when he graduated law school, he came back and joined Ben’s firm for a couple of years and continued to do the work. Then, when he went out on his own, we stuck with him even though he was really a baby lawyer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jeff could do the work and I could tell he was going to be a damn good lawyer. He graduated at the top of his high school, college and law school classes. He’s fucking wicked smart.”

  “Why’d he come back here then?”

  “His mom. She was ailing. Otherwise, he’d have probably gone to some big city firm and killed it. But he was here, and I realized he was the real deal. I kept giving him work and he kept knocking it out of the park. As we grew, he grew with us. But the point is, he’s always been in th
e background, doing all the groundwork for when we open the restaurants. He still does. I mean, he’s involved in all of the other intricate technical work and businesses we operate, but he still does the restaurant work, too.”

  “I see,” Braddock replied as he flipped open the file, turning over the loose pages resting on top of a binder-clipped set of documents.

  “But that’s not all that’s in that file. The clipped set of documents there are for an internal investigation we conducted of Jeff.”

  “Internal investigation?”

  “A significant percentage, as much as eighty percent of all the business that Jeff has, is from my company. And historically, while he has his office in Manchester, he was embedded in our offices so he could be right there when we needed him. He had a corner office out at our campus. It was just easier that way, or at least it used to be.”

  “What was this internal investigation about?”

  “He got divorced for a second time a few years ago and it was a little messy. I thought at the time that it sent him into a bit of a tailspin. One night after the divorce he got a little too handsy with a pretty secretary in our office.”

  “Handsy?”

  “She reported that she was in a car with him one night after an impromptu happy hour.” Kyle shook his head angrily. “He demanded that she give him a blow job. She refused and he didn’t force it, but she felt harassed.”

  “I see.”

  “Now Jeff was in the middle of preparing us for going public for our drone business. He’d just gotten divorced and the secretary was quite pretty. I figured he had too much to drink and he made a bad mistake. But then another woman from my company came forward and she had the same experience with him. And then there was another.”

  “You had a problem.”

  “A sensitive one. I couldn’t just fire him, not at that time, anyway.”

  “It would have damaged going public. It would have been a financial problem for you.”