by Karen Rose
“To the day your mother died.” He slid his arm around her waist and walked her to a table by the coffee machine. “I need to talk to someone who talked to your mother after she found Alicia.” He pulled out chairs for her and Meredith.
“That would have been Sheriff Loomis, Craig, the coroner, and me,” Alex said, sitting down.
“And me,” Meredith added.
Daniel’s hands stilled on the coffeepot. “You talked to Kathy Tremaine that day?”
“Several times,” Meredith said. “Aunt Kathy called that morning to say Alicia was missing and my mom packed her suitcase. Her car wasn’t too reliable, so she decided to fly.” Meredith frowned. “My mom was guilty about that decision until the day she died.”
“Why?” Alex asked and Meredith shrugged.
“Her flight kept getting delayed because of storms. If she’d driven, she would have arrived hours earlier and your mom would have still been alive. And if Aunt Kathy had been alive, you would never have taken those pills.”
“I wish Aunt Kim were here to know the truth,” Alex said sadly.
Meredith patted her hand. “I know. Anyway, Aunt Kathy called later, hysterical, and that’s when I started talking to her. Mom had left for the airport already and back then nobody had cell phones. I was the go-between. Mom called from a pay phone at the airport every half hour and I’d tell her what Aunt Kathy had said. The first time I talked to Aunt Kathy, she’d gotten a call from a neighbor saying some boys had found a body.”
“The Porter boys,” Daniel said.
Meredith nodded. “Aunt Kathy was leaving to check it out.”
“And that’s when she found Alicia,” Alex murmured.
“When did you talk to her again, Meredith?” Daniel asked.
“When she came home from finding Alicia, before she went to identify the body. She was… past hysterical. She was sobbing, crying.”
“Do you remember what she said?”
Meredith frowned. “She was crying that her baby had been left in the rain.”
Daniel frowned as well. “It didn’t rain the night before. There was thunder and lightning, but no rain. I checked the weather report after we talked to Gary Fulmore.”
Meredith shrugged. “That’s what she said. ‘Just asleep in the rain.’ Over and over.”
Alex tensed, remembering the phrase. “No, that’s not what she said.”
Daniel sat beside her, looking her square in the eye. “What did she say, Alex?”
“When Mama came back from identifying Alicia, Craig gave her a sedative, then went to work. I put her to bed. She was crying so hard, and so was I… so I climbed in bed with her and just held on.” Alex pictured her mother lying in bed, a steady stream of tears running down her face. “She kept saying, ‘A sheep and a ring.’ That’s all she had to identify Alicia because her face was so destroyed. ‘Just a sheep and a ring.’ ”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and she saw the flash of triumph. “All right then.”
Alex looked down at her hands. “Alicia had a ring. So did I. Our birthstones. Mama gave them to us for our birthday.” Her mouth curved bitterly. “Sweet sixteen we were.”
“Where is your ring, Alex?” he asked softly, and her stomach turned over.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Her heart was suddenly racing. “I must have lost it.” She looked up, studied his eyes, and knew. “You know where it is.”
“Yes. It was in your old room. On the floor, under your window.”
A sense of dread stole inside her, darkening everything. Inside her mind, thunder rolled and a single voice screamed. Be quiet. Close the door. “That’s it, isn’t it? What I don’t want to remember.”
His arm tightened around her. “We’ll find out,” he promised. “Don’t worry.”
But she did.
Atlanta, Thursday, February 1, 10:55 a.m.
Daniel stopped by the team room, where Luke pored over a stack of spreadsheets.
“A sheep and a ring,” Daniel said with a nod.
Luke looked up, his eyes narrowed. “That sounds nasty, Daniel.”
“But it’s not.” He sat down at the table and pushed a stack of yearbooks out of the way. “Alex’s mother said it the day Alicia died. She meant because Alicia’s face was smashed, she could only identify her by her sheep tattoo and the ring on her finger. And she saw Alicia before the cops got there.”
Luke frowned. “Alicia had a sheep tattoo?”
“On her ankle. They all did-Bailey, Alicia, and Alex.”
“And a ring on her finger. So now you have independent corroboration that Fulmore was telling the truth,” Luke said. “And that the Dutton sheriff’s office wasn’t.”
Daniel nodded grimly. “Looks like. So what have you found?”
Luke pushed a sheet of paper across the table. “I’ve compiled the names of every male to graduate the same year as Simon, a year ahead and a year behind, from the public and the private schools.”
Daniel scanned the list. “How many?”
“After we cut minorities and dead people?” Luke asked. “Roughly two hundred.”
Daniel blinked. “Shit. Do all two hundred still live in Dutton?”
“No. Culling out everyone that’s moved away leaves only about fifty.”
“Better,” Daniel said. “But still too many to show to Hope.”
“Why would you show them to Hope?”
“Because she saw the man who abducted her mother. I have to assume whoever took Bailey did so because of the letter she got from her brother, Wade, or else Beardsley wouldn’t be missing now.”
“That makes sense. But then what? I hate to be a broken record, but we’re trying to solve the murders of four women left in ditches. How are you going to connect whoever took Bailey to whoever’s killing the women?”
“You assume it’s not the same person.”
Luke blinked. “I guess I did.”
“And you’re probably right. Whoever took Bailey doesn’t want anyone to know about the rapes and the pictures. Whoever’s killing the women wants us to focus on Alicia Tremaine. I don’t know how I’ll connect them. All I know is that this SOB doesn’t leave anything behind on the body or at the scene that can identify him. If I can find out who took Bailey, something else might shake out.”
“Fair enough,” Luke said. “So you want me to get these fifty photos down to five or six so we can show them to Hope. You’re going to have her talk to an artist, right? If she can give the artist some basic description, we can cherry-pick from the fifty.”
Daniel stood up. “I’ll tell Mary to get you whatever they come up with. I’ve got to get down to Dutton to talk to Rob Davis and Garth. But first I have to call the SA. Fulmore was telling the truth about the ring and he didn’t hit Alicia while she was alive, so the man is not guilty of murder. Abuse of a corpse, but not murder.”
“Chloe’s gonna love you,” Luke said, shaking his head. “Not.”
“As long as-” Daniel stopped himself short. As long as Alex does, he’d been about to say. But that was premature. Maybe. But he was still warm from the… rightness of holding her in one arm and a little girl in the other. It was certainly more than he’d ever had before. It could end up being nothing more than good sex.
Really, really, really good sex.
But he didn’t think so, and Daniel was a man to trust his instincts.
“As long as what?” Luke asked, one side of his mouth quirking up.
“As long as Chloe does the right thing by Fulmore,” Daniel said quietly. “But that’s not the biggest thing. If Fulmore is telling the truth about that ring, then the Dutton police planted evidence.”
“Chase already gave Chloe the heads-up on Frank Loomis,” Luke said.
“I know. They’re going to open a formal investigation.”
“Are you okay with that? I mean, the guy was your friend.”
“No, I’m not okay with that,” Daniel snapped, “but if he planted evidence, he sent an innocent man to prison for t
hirteen years and let a killer walk free, and I’m even less okay with that.”
Luke held up his hands. “Sorry.”
Daniel realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bark at you. Thanks for all of this. I gotta go.”
“Wait.” Luke pushed two yearbooks across the table, one stacked on the other, opened to the senior graduation pictures. “Yours and your sister’s. I thought you might like to have them.”
Daniel looked at the photo on the bottom row and his heart hurt. Susannah Vartanian maintained a cool, sophisticated air in her senior picture, but he knew she’d been silently miserable. He needed to call her before the press got wind of the rapes Talia Scott was investigating. He owed her that much. He owed her a great deal more.
Atlanta, Thursday, February 1, 11:15 a.m.
Most likely to be president of the United States. Daniel traced a finger over his senior picture in his high school yearbook. His classmates had voted him so because he’d been so serious and sober. So studious and sincere. He’d been the class president and captain of the debate team. He’d lettered in football and baseball every single year. He’d had straight As. His teachers had seen him as having integrity. Ethics. The son of a judge.
Who’d been a sonofabitch.
Who’d been the reason Daniel had pushed himself so hard. He’d known his father was not all everyone believed. He’d overheard the whispered conversations between Judge Arthur Vartanian and the late-night visitors to his office on the first floor of the house in which Daniel had grown up. He knew where his father had hidden things all over their old house. He knew his father kept a whole cache of unregistered guns and stacks of cash. He’d always suspected his father had been on the take, but he’d never been able to prove it.
He’d lived his life trying to make up for being Arthur Vartanian’s son.
His eyes moved to the other yearbook and stared sadly at his sister Susannah’s picture. She lived her life trying to forget she was Arthur Vartanian’s daughter. She’d been voted most likely to succeed and she had, but at what cost? Susannah harbored secret pain she’d share with no one… even me. Especially me.
He’d gone away to college, then he’d gone away to the police academy. Then after his father had burned Simon’s pictures, he’d just gone away. And left Susannah in that house. With Simon.
Daniel swallowed. And Simon had hurt her. Daniel knew it was true. He was afraid he knew how. He had to find out. With fingers that trembled, he dialed Susannah’s number at work. He knew all her numbers by heart. After five rings, he heard her voice.
“You’ve reached the voicemail of Susannah Vartanian. If this is urgent, please-”
Daniel hung up and called her assistant. He knew the assistant’s number by heart, too. “Hi, this is Agent Vartanian. I need to speak to Susannah. It’s urgent.”
The assistant hesitated. “She’s not available, sir.”
“Wait,” Daniel said before the woman hung up. “Tell her I have to speak to her. Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.”
“I’ll tell her.”
A minute later, Daniel heard Susannah’s voice again, live this time. “Hello, Daniel.” But there was no joy in her greeting. Only wary distance.
His heart hurt. “Suze. How are you?”
“Busy. Being out of the office for so long, I had stacks of work waiting for me when I got back. You know how that goes.”
They’d buried their parents, but immediately after the funeral Susannah had flown back to New York and he hadn’t talked to her since. “I know. Have you seen the news from down here?”
“Yes. Three women, found dead in ditches. I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“Four, actually. We just found the fourth. Jim Woolf’s little sister.”
“Oh, no.” He heard pain and surprise in her voice. “I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“We have something the news hasn’t reported yet, but will soon. Suze, it’s the pictures.”
He heard her exhale. “The pictures.”
“Yes. We’ve identified all the girls.”
“Really?” She sounded truly shocked. “How?”
Daniel drew a breath. “Alicia Tremaine was one of them. She was the girl murdered thirteen years ago, the one all these new murders are copying. Sheila Cunningham was another. She died in what we’re supposed to think was a robbery of Presto’s Pizza two nights ago. Some of the others Alicia’s sister has identified.” He’d tell her about Alex a different time. This call would not be one either he or Susannah would want to remember. “We’ve started interviewing them. They’re all around thirty years old now.” Same as you, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “They’re all telling the same story. They fell asleep in their cars. When they woke they were fully clothed, and-”
“And holding a whiskey bottle,” she finished woodenly.
His throat closed. “Oh, Suze. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were gone,” she said, her voice suddenly angry and harsh. “You were gone, Daniel, and Simon wasn’t.”
“You knew it was Simon?”
When she spoke again, she was back in control. “Oh, yes. He made sure of it.” Then she sighed. “You don’t have all the pictures, Daniel.”
“I don’t understand.” But he was very afraid he did. “Are you saying there was one of you?” She said nothing and he had his answer. “What happened to it?” he asked.
“Simon showed it to me. He told me to stay out of his affairs. He told me I had to go to sleep sometime.”
Daniel closed his eyes. Tried to speak past the constriction in his chest. “Suze.”
“I was afraid,” she said, speaking now in a logical, cool voice, and he thought of Alex. “So I stayed out of his way.”
“What affairs of his had you been in before?”
She hesitated. “I really need to go now. I’m late for court. Bye, Daniel.”
Daniel carefully hung up the phone, wiped the moisture from his eyes, then got up and prepared his mind to talk to Jim and Marianne Woolf. Jim would be grieving his sister, but grief or no grief, Daniel was going to get some answers.
Atlanta, Thursday, February 1, 1:30 p.m.
Alex stood at the glass, Meredith beside her. On the other side of the glass, Mary McCrady had relaxed Hope so that she was actually speaking in full sentences.
“Maybe she was finally ready to talk,” Alex said.
Beside her, Meredith nodded. “You helped.”
“I could have made things worse.”
“But you didn’t. Every child is different. I’m sure Hope would have been ready to talk soon either way. But she needed to feel safe and loved and you did that.”
“I should have made her feel safe and loved before.”
“Maybe you weren’t ready before.”
Alex turned her head to study Meredith’s profile. “Am I now?”
“Only you can answer that, but if the look on your face was any indication… I’d say yes.” She chuckled softly. “Heck, if he hadn’t looked back at you the same way, I might have wrestled you for him.”
“It was that obvious?”
Meredith met her eyes. “In the dark wearing a blindfold. You got it bad, girl.” She turned back to the glass. “At least Hope’s talking to the artist this time. Between her description and the pictures Mary got from that guy who works with Daniel, we might at least get a lead on who did this.”
Alex drew a breath. “Even if we never get Bailey back.”
“We may not, Alex. You need to start coming to grips with that.”
“I am. I have to. For Hope.” Her cell phone jingled in her purse and Alex grabbed it, frowning at the caller ID. It was an Atlanta number, but no one she knew. “Hello?”
“Alex, this is Sissy, Bailey’s friend. I couldn’t talk to you before. Not on my phone. I had to wait until I could use a pay phone. Bailey told me that if anything happened to her that I should talk to you.”
“Then why didn’t yo
u?” Alex asked, more sharply than she’d intended.
“Because I have a daughter,” Sissy hissed. “And I’m scared.”
“Has someone threatened you?”
Her laugh was bitter. “Does a letter under my front door saying ‘Don’t say a word or we’ll kill you and your daughter’ count?”
“Did you contact the police?”
“Hell no. Look, I told Bailey to pack her things and move in with me. She was going to, the next day. She called me Thursday night, said she had their things packed and loaded in her car. She said she’d see me the next day. But she never came to work.”
“So you went to the house and found Hope in the closet.”
“Yes. The house was trashed and Bailey was gone. There’s one other thing. Bailey told me that she’d mailed you a letter. That I was supposed to tell you that.”
“A letter. Okay.” Alex’s mind was spinning. “Why didn’t she just come that night?”
“She said she was meeting someone. That she’d come when she finished.”
“You don’t know who she was meeting?”
Sissy hesitated. “She was seeing a man. I think he might have been married. She said she needed to say good-bye. I have to go now.”
Alex looked at Meredith, who was impatiently waiting. “Bailey mailed me a letter the day before she disappeared.”
“Who’s been getting your mail?”
“One of my friends from the hospital.” She hit Letta’s speed dial on her cell phone. “Letta, it’s Alex. I have a favor to ask.”
Dutton, Thursday, February 1, 2:30 p.m.
Daniel’s conversation with the Woolfs had not gone well. Jim Woolf had lawyered up and Marianne had just slammed the door in his face. He’d gotten back to his car when his phone buzzed. “Vartanian.”
“Leigh told me you called,” Chase said. “I’ve been in a meeting with the captain for the last two hours. What’s the news?”
“I went to Sean Romney’s house and interviewed his mother. Apparently Sean was below average in cognitive ability as the result of a birth defect. He was too trusting and willing to please, according to Mrs. Romney. Because of this, she kept closer tabs on him than her other kids. Guess what she found in his room two days ago?”