by Sandra Brown
“I think you’d better let us take it from here.” Charlie grabbed her by the arm. “This whole place is a crime scene now, and I don’t want there to be any questions later on.”
She got it. She was not only the fiancée of the investigating detective, but she was also an intended victim of the suspect.
Mallory backed off.
Charlie waved over one of the other officers. “Take Mallory’s statement, then make sure she gets home.”
“Be really easy with her, Charlie,” Mallory told him. “Lonnie had her convinced that her mother was dead and buried in the yard. Karen said her babies were buried there, too.”
“If they’re there, we’ll find them,” he promised.
* * *
“Tell me everything,” Mallory demanded when Charlie finally got home late that night. She’d been sitting on the sofa watching the door for what had seemed like an eternity. “Don’t leave a thing out.”
“Karen came home with Lizzie one day after school. Lonnie said he waited until his sister went into the house for something and left Karen alone. He told her to come into the barn to see their kittens. Then he grabbed her, tied her up, gagged her, hid her in the hayloft.”
“What did he tell his sister?”
“He told her that Karen had to leave to get home and that she’d see her around. Then he says he put something in Lizzie’s food to make her sick so she couldn’t go to school the next day and hear about Karen missing because he didn’t want her telling anyone that Karen had been at their house. Says he must have put too much in by accident because she started breathing funny, then she just stopped.”
“He killed his sister?”
“He said it was an accident,” Charlie said dryly.
“What did he do with her body? And where were their parents during all this?”
“The mother died when Lizzie was five, and the father was a long-haul trucker. He was in a bad crash ten years ago and has been in a nursing home ever since. Lizzie’s buried in the backyard. When the school called to ask about his sister, he said he was their father, and that he was taking Lizzie to stay with her grandparents in Maine because she was so upset about Karen’s disappearance.”
Mallory frowned, remembering all the other crosses. “What about all those other graves where Karen said her babies were buried?”
“They’re all empty,” he told her, “but it explains where Lonnie’s money was coming from.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Karen had a child almost every other year since she’s been captive. Lonnie told her they all died and he buried them in the backyard so she wouldn’t have to see them.”
“Oh, my God.” Mallory’s jaw dropped. “Were they all stillborn?”
“Nope. They were all nice healthy babies. Lonnie sold them. After she fell asleep, he’d take the baby to a contact he had in Reading and handed it over for cash. Healthy white newborns are worth their weight in gold. Literally.”
“I can’t believe this.” Mallory’s mind was a jumble of questions. “Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t she run away?”
“He’d already told her he’d killed her mother, said he’d kill her, too. He’d let her keep two of the babies because she’d gotten so depressed, but he told her if she tried to run away or tried to alert anyone, one of those babies would join the others in the backyard.”
“But what about the babies that he sold? Can Karen get them back?” She thought about the parents—the children themselves—whose lives would be turned inside out.
“So far he’s refused to give any information about that, but we’ll keep working on him.”
“Has Karen seen her mother?”
Charlie nodded. “Donna was at the hospital with Karen and the kids.”
“I wonder how her kids are going to cope. I’m guessing they’ve never been to school.”
“They’ll work it out.” Charlie sat next to her and rested her against his chest, her head on his shoulder. “I stopped in the hospital to see Joe. He said to tell you he’s really proud of you for not letting your instincts get rusty since you left the force.” Charlie paused. “So am I. And I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“You’ll pay later for your lapse in judgment.”
“I can hardly wait.” Charlie smiled and reached into his pocket for his phone. “So what’s it going to be tonight? Chinese or Italian?”
Mallory turned slightly to snuggle into the crook of his arm.
“Surprise me.”
* * * * *
EVEN STEVEN
D.P. Lyle
Putting a heart-wrenching spin on the vigilante theme, Lyle strains and sustains the tension to the last paragraph, last sentence, last word. ~SB
“I can still smell him.” Martha Foster inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.
Tim stood just inside the doorway and looked down at his wife. She sat on the edge of their son’s bed, eyes moist, chin trembling, as were the fingers that clutched the navy blue Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt to her chest.
Behind her, a dozen photos of Steven lay scattered across the blue comforter. A proud Steven in his first baseball uniform. A seven-year-old Steven, grinning, upper left front tooth missing, soft freckles over his nose, buzz-cut hair, a blue swimming ribbon dangling around his neck. A playful Steven, sitting next to Martha at the backyard picnic table, face screwed into a goofy expression, smoke from the Weber BBQ rising behind them. Tim remembered the day he snapped the picture. Labor Day weekend. Just six months before…that day. He squeezed back his own tears and swallowed hard.
Martha shifted her weight and twisted toward the photos. She reached out and lightly touched an image of Steven’s face. The trembling of her delicate fingers increased. She said nothing for a moment and then, “I’m taking these.”
Tim knelt and pulled her to him, her cheek nestling against his chest, her tears soaking through his shirt. He kissed the top of her head.
“He’s gone,” Martha said. “Everything’s gone. Or will be.”
Tim smoothed her hair as details from a room frozen in time raced toward him. A Derek Jeter poster, a photo of Steven’s Little League team, and his Student-of-the-Month certificate hung on the wall above his small desk. A crooked-neck lamp spotlighted a history text, opened to the stern face of Thomas Jefferson. His baseball uniform draped over the chair back, sneakers haphazard on the floor. Exactly as it had been the day their lives jumped the track.
They had been through this dozens of times. What they could safely take. What must be abandoned. What could be traced back here. They had scrutinized everything they owned. Their marriage license, birth certificates, engraved wedding bands, the calligraphed family tree Martha had painstakingly drawn and framed, and boxes of family keepsakes. Any photo that showed their home, cars, neighbors, family, Steven’s friends, teammates, or school, had to be abandoned. As did Steven’s Little League uniform. Each of these could undo everything if seen by a curious eye.
Tim had always won these what-to-take-what-to-leave arguments, but now, with the end so close, he knew he could no longer resist her.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“Thirty-six hours.” She eased from his embrace and looked up at him, swiped the back of her hand across her nose. “I can’t believe it’s here.”
“We can back out. Stay and risk it.”
She shook her head. “No. We can’t. Not with him around.”
“He might’ve just been blowing off steam.”
“You don’t believe that.”
No, he didn’t. He knew better.
“Besides, that’s just part of it. We can’t let that animal…” She screwed her face down tightly, suppressing another sob.
Tim touched her cheek, catching a stray tear with his thumb. “It’ll be okay. Keep the pictures.” He stood, walked to Steven’s desk, lifted the uniform from the back of the chair and tossed it onto the bed. “The uniform, too.”
“His uniform?” A sob escaped her throat. “He was so proud of it
.” She swallowed, looked up toward him and dabbed her eyes with her shirtsleeve. Her voice broke when she said, “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“But nothing else. Nothing that leads back here. This life is over. Finished. Tomorrow night Tim and Martha Foster no longer exist. But Robert Beckwith and Cindy Strunk will get a chance to live again.”
She shook her head, uncertainty lingering in her eyes. “What if they find out Robert and Cindy have been dead for a couple of decades?”
“Not likely.”
“Still…”
“It’ll work. We’re not the first to rummage through old obituaries and cemeteries. Lots of people have done it before us.”
“Most get caught.”
“Only the ones you hear about. Most just move on. Become someone else.”
“Let’s hope.”
He brushed a wayward strand of hair from her face and lifted her chin with a finger. “You’ll make a perfect Cindy.”
She smiled, weak and tentative, her face tear streaked, her nose reddened, but it was still a smile. There hadn’t been many of those lately.
“It’s not like we have another option,” Tim said. “We can’t simply move. We have to disappear. Become completely untraceable. Be reborn.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It will be like dying.”
“Except that we’ll have another chance. A new life.” He looked down at her. “And Steven will live on in our memories.”
“It’s not fair.” She hugged the sweatshirt again.
“Can you live with this? What we’re doing?”
She sat silently for a moment as if considering his question. The question that had plagued them for the past six months. Even as they pressed ahead with the planning, with getting the documents in order, with building their new life, their new identities, the question hung out there on the horizon. A horizon whose sharp edge dropped into an abyss. A horizon that rapidly approached. Could they do this? Could they really leave everything and everyone behind?
She sighed. “I’ll have to.”
“We’ll both have to.”
She swallowed against another burst of tears. “What now?”
He retrieved his to-do list from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “You have the new passports and the North Carolina driver’s licenses. Right?”
“In my purse.”
“The money from the house sale and our accounts is in the bank in Boone.”
They’d luckily found a buyer willing to pay cash for the house. At a big discount. He bought the story about them needing to sell quickly and head west to Arizona. Ailing mother. That was lucky but also easy. The hard part was closing down all their accounts, selling the bonds and emptying his pension plan without raising too much suspicion. You can’t simply take a couple of hundred thousand in cash from a bank without triggering scrutiny. Shutting down a pension plan is even more difficult. Tim had managed to move the money around to several banks and investment houses, each time bleeding off a chunk of cash.
“The rental house there is ready,” Tim said. “Tomorrow we’ll empty the last bank account.”
She stood. “I’ll finish packing and then we can take all this over to the new car.”
* * *
Tim turned the SUV into the mall’s parking deck and wound up to the roof of the structure. At 11:00 p.m. only a handful of cars remained on that level. He pulled into the space next to a blue sedan. The one owned by the newly minted Robert Beckwith.
While Martha rechecked the boxes in the back of the SUV, making sure each was securely closed and taped, Tim stepped into the lazy night air where thousands of stars peppered the clear sky. A perfect Alabama spring night. May was a good month here. The damp chill of winter gone and the heat and humidity of summer still a couple of months away. He would miss this. He’d never lived anywhere else. Neither had Martha. This was home. For another day anyway.
Tim popped the SUV’s rear hatch. He and Martha loaded the four suitcases into the sedan’s trunk and then wedged the three cardboard banker’s boxes into the backseat. Amazing that an entire life could fit into one car. But when cutting loose everything that came before, that’s the way it was.
* * *
Tim and Martha held hands while they waited for Anne Marie Bridges to finish helping another customer. When she waved a goodbye to the elderly lady and turned her smile toward them, they walked up to the teller’s window.
“How’re you two doing today?” Anne Marie asked.
“Fine,” Martha said. “You?”
“Other than my arthritic knee acting up, I suspect okay.”
“Time to close the last account,” Tim said.
“Is it May already?”
“Afraid so.”
“We’re so sorry to be losing you as customers,” Anne Marie said. “How long has it been? Ten years?”
“At least,” Tim said. “We’ll miss you and everyone else here.”
“You’re moving out West? California?”
“Arizona,” Martha said. “Phoenix.”
“I hear it’s hot there.”
Martha smiled. “They have air-conditioning.”
“And ice cream,” Tim added.
Anne Marie laughed. “Your balance is seven thousand six hundred thirty-two dollars and forty-four cents. You want a cashier’s check?”
“Cash,” Tim said. “Need some traveling money.”
“That’s a lot to carry around.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“I don’t have that much in my drawer. I’ll have to run to the vault. It’ll take a few minutes. Why don’t you have some coffee?” Anne Marie pointed toward the corner table that held a large coffeepot and a stack of foam cups.
Tim nodded and they moved that way. He poured two cups, handed one to Martha, added a pack of creamer to his and stirred it to a caramel brown. He took a sip. Not bad.
“Mr. and Mrs. Foster.”
Tim turned. “Detective.”
Detective Bruce McGill, today dressed in jeans and an open-collar blue shirt beneath a gray sport coat, had been the lead investigator into the evils of Walter Allen Whitiker. The animal that had taken Steven. He’d helped lock the bastard up. Not nearly long enough, but as long as the corrupt judge would allow.
“I understand you’re moving away,” McGill said. A statement, not a question.
“We have to,” Martha said. “We can’t stay in a community with that…that…”
McGill shoved his hands into his pockets, the butt of the gun strapped to his belt now visible. “Because he threatened you?”
“That’s part of it,” Tim said.
“You don’t think we can protect you?”
Tim shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s the not that’s the problem.”
“It’s mostly talk,” McGill said. “Just messing with your head. Doubt he’ll actually do anything.”
“He killed our son,” Martha said. “And got away with it. Why wouldn’t he try to kill us?”
“He hasn’t been exactly repentant,” Tim added.
McGill rattled what sounded like keys inside one pocket and rocked back on his heels a little. “When you heading out?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I take it that’s because he’s being released in the morning?”
“We don’t want to breathe the same air he does,” Martha said.
“Can’t say I blame you.” Again the keys rattled. “Where you going?”
“Phoenix,” Tim said.
“Been there once. Nice place.” When Tim didn’t respond he went on. “Anything I can do for you, just give me call.”
* * *
Tim and Martha spent the remainder of the day making final preparations. Loading what they would need into the SUV. Repeatedly going back over everything. Playing the “what-if” game. They decided that they’d done all they could. Planned for all the contingencies. Now with a little luck
everything would work out.
They ordered pizza and ate at the kitchen counter. Both quiet now, knowing this was their last night in the only house they had ever lived in together. There was the apartment when they first married, but this was their home.
Tim remembered the day they had moved in. Eleven years ago. Martha had been three months into her pregnancy, barely showing. He’d carried her across the threshold. They’d laughed and made love on the new carpet in the furniture-free living room.
The lump in his throat made swallowing the pizza difficult.
After they finished, Tim cleaned the counter and folded the empty pizza box into the trash compactor. He then found Martha, standing at the door to Steven’s room. Not an unusual position for her. Over the past three years she’d often stood there. Silently staring. As if waiting for Steven to materialize. Their towheaded son in his baggy pajamas, sitting at his desk doing homework, or sprawled on his bed in exhausted, innocent sleep.
Tonight was different. She was no doubt soaking in memories, knowing that in a few hours they would walk out of here forever. It was as if she wanted to burn the room’s image into her mind. The lump in his throat grew.
He went out back and walked around the yard, making a couple of laps. Smelling the flowers and touching the thick shrubbery that they had planted together. He could still see her dirt-smudged face, glistening with sweat. Could still hear six-month-old Steven squealing in his nearby playpen.
He migrated to the swing set. Steven’s fifth birthday present. He’d put it together with his own hands. Took twice as long as it should have, but he managed. He sat on one of the swings and began a slow to-and-fro motion. The rusty chain creaked in protest. He could almost hear Steven begging to go higher and higher as he pushed him from behind. Tears blurred his vision.
Martha came out. He stood and they hugged tightly. Her tears fell against his neck. God, he hated this feeling. His life ripped apart again. As it had been three years ago. A wound that would never heal.
* * *
“You look hot,” Tim said.
Martha turned from the mirror. “You like it?” Her shoulder-length blond hair was now clipped short and dyed a deep black. The transition from Martha to Cindy. She laughed. “Look at you. I love the military cut.”