Killer Secrets
Page 18
There was something fishy about Manning and giving him too much information would make it harder to find out what. Elyse had given him just enough to bait him, not enough for him to have all the facts. And James had the feeling she had done a little investigating of her own while he’d been in the hall. He could hardly wait to find out what she had been up to.
“Well, Elyse,” Manning stated, “like I said, I’m glad to know you’re being housed at a safe house somewhere, and I’m sorry I didn’t take you more seriously when you told me you thought you were being followed. I can’t help but feel responsible for your attack. If I hadn’t assumed you had inherited your mother’s illness—I thought you were experiencing paranoia—we could have reported it to the police at that time, and you may not have been attacked at all. Please accept my deepest apologies.”
Strange. As her doctor, wouldn’t it have been Manning’s responsibility to check out every possible avenue before making a diagnosis of paranoia? Maybe he was getting a kickback from the drug companies, and diagnosing Elyse meant he could prescribe medication that would earn him money.
This was a state-run facility. Maybe his funding was related to the number of diagnoses he made. Both good possibilities, but no matter what the reason, James wanted to know why the good doctor had never considered the possibility she was telling the truth. Or maybe he had.
“Well, Elyse, Sheriff,” Manning stood and extended his hand to both of them. “I have another patient coming in a few minutes. I think it would be worthwhile to meet again and see if I can help you remember anything about the attack.”
“The police are working on the attack,” James stated.
“And I just want information about the nightmares,” Elyse added. “So, unless you can help me resolve those, I don’t—”
“Oh yes, I’m sure I can. Often times it’s a case of accepting the truth and moving forward. You’re a very strong woman, Elyse. You’ve already survived more than most in your young life. I’m sure, given time, you will be able to recognize that what happened that day was the tragic result of your mother’s mental illness. If you let me help you though, I think we can get you to that point in one or two sessions. I believe hypnosis may be helpful in your case.”
Hypnosis? James didn’t like the idea of Manning putting Elyse in such a vulnerable state. If she said yes, he could get more information on Manning, but knowing how stubborn she was, that wasn’t likely to happen. It didn’t matter. He could investigate the doctor without coming to the office.
His head whipped around to look at Elyse when he heard her agreeing to come back.
“You’re not going to hypnotize me. But I might come back for another session. I just want the nightmares to stop.”
James recognized the tone in her voice. It was the same tone she had when she had promised him she wasn’t going to try to leave the hospital. She was up to something.
Manning escorted them out of the office and then closed his door as they walked toward the exit. The doors slid closed behind them and James turned to Elyse, still hurrying her to the truck.
“As soon as we’re in the truck, you have to tell me what that was all about.” Elyse smiled coyly at him. He got her in and then got into the driver side.
She started the second his door closed. “When you were out in the hall, I looked through Manning’s files. James, my mom’s file is empty. There are no records of anything in it. If he’s been Momma’s doctor for so long, shouldn’t he have records? Transcripts of their talks, certainly of her confession, even just records of medications he prescribed? But there’s nothing. And I don’t even have a file. You would think, even if I had only seen him once, there would be a file for me.”
“He should have files,” James nodded. “I’m glad you agreed to go back. We need to get a look at his computer. Maybe the records are there.”
“Why didn’t you tell him more about the attack?” Elyse shifted in her seat to face him.
“DNA established your attacker is a relative. It’s possible your mother knew what was going on, and if she said anything to Manning, I want to know. I need to find out exactly what he knows, and I want to be sure he doesn’t know it because I told him.”
James turned his gaze away from the road for just a moment to smile at Elyse, then put his hand on her thigh.
“You were fantastic back there. You’re a great detective.”
“Thanks.” She flashed her smile back at him. “I thought we made a pretty good team. Who knows, maybe after all of this is over, I’ll become a cop.”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and he’d missed that. She looked happy, beautiful, and the thought of them being a team made his heart jump.
“Yeah. I think you’d be a great cop. And we do make a pretty good team.”
Chapter 16
James sat in his make-shift office at the safe house, going over old evidence in the Benson case. Elyse was in the living room with Pops, so he thought now would be a good time to look at the photos of the crime scene. They were gruesome, and he didn’t want her to see them. He pulled them out of the file, one by one, his stomach churning from what he was seeing.
Even now, as a twenty-nine-year-old cop, they were difficult to look at. He couldn’t imagine a teenage girl walking in on such carnage. And then to be shipped off to foster parents who beat her—it was too much for him to take. He set the photos down, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his head.
He squinted and cocked his head, leaning forward to get a better look at the photo on top of the pile. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it looked like very faint blood spots in a regular pattern heading toward the back of the room. He pulled a magnifier out of the desk drawer and examined the photo.
Judging by the size of the furniture and its placement, the spots were about eighteen inches apart. Close to the stride of a small adult. If Elyse’s dreams were actually memories, these spots could be proof there was someone else in the room.
James sighed and set the picture back on the desk. The spots could have been evidence, but it was too late now. After the evidence had been gathered from the scene, the house had been professionally scrubbed, remodeled, and sold right after Maggie was admitted into the hospital.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. He quickly slid the photo back into the file. “Come in.”
“What are you working on so diligently in here?” Pops stuck his head through the open door. James motioned for him to come in.
“I’m going over some of the old evidence from the Benson case. Elyse is certain her mother didn’t kill her family, and I’m starting to agree. It’s frustrating, because I have all these bits and pieces of a picture, but I can’t seem to put them all together. The answer has to be here somewhere.”
“Elyse said you took her to see a psychiatrist. How did that go?”
“Yeah, we went and saw Dr. Eldon Manning.” James rolled his eyes. “Weird guy, but he was Maggie Benson’s psychiatrist at the hospital, and we were kind of hoping he could shed some light on what happened the night of the murders.”
James rubbed his chin and shook his head. “It was odd, Pops. Elyse did a little searching through his office, and he doesn’t have any files for Maggie. She hasn’t been gone that long. Doesn’t it seem odd that he got rid of her files already?”
“Hmm.” Pops nodded. “Kind of seems like he’s got something to hide, maybe?”
“My thoughts exactly. Elyse was great, though. The second he was out of the office, she went for the file cabinet and started looking for any information she could find.”
Pops grinned. “You’re proud of her.”
“Well, of course I am. She doesn’t have any kind of training to know what to look for, just a fierce survival instinct. One that has served her well.”
Pops eyes glimmered, the corners pulled into the wrinkles created by years of smiles and laughter.
James couldn’t help smiling back. “What is that look?”
“You’re in lo
ve with her.”
“No, Pops, I’m…” He stopped. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore, and he definitely couldn’t lie to Pops. “Yeah,” he chuckled and reached his hand around to the back of his neck. “I am. And I think she feels the same way. I’m just not sure she’s ready to hear it—or say it.”
Pops rested his hand on James shoulder. “Tell her. Never let the sun set with something that important left unsaid. You never know if you’ll get another chance.”
James wrapped his arms around his grandfather and hugged him. “Thanks, Pops.” He released him and patted him on the arm. “I’ve got to keep working on this. Did you need me?”
Pops smile faded, his eyes confused. “I don’t know. I can’t remember what I was doing before I was here.”
James felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “You were in the living room with Elyse, working on a puzzle, maybe?”
“Elyse…yes, that’s right. She made lunch. I came to tell you lunch is ready.”
He headed for the door and put his hand on the knob, stopping suddenly and turning on his heel. “Maggie had a baby,” he said, his eyes looking upward, shifting back and forth. He looked at James and wagged his finger. “Maggie Benson had a baby. At least that was the rumor around town. She was only fifteen, sixteen—something like that. Anyway, you know how Gunderson is. She left for a year and the rumors flew. The one that stuck, though, was that she had gotten pregnant and had left town to hide the pregnancy.”
James’ thoughts reeled at the possibility of Elyse having a sibling. It made sense. The DNA from her attacker, the strange DNA from the murder scene—a sibling could account for both.
“Okay, let’s say that’s possible. Elyse said her mother was thirty-four years old when the murders happened. If she’d had a child at the age of sixteen, that child would have been about eighteen. Definitely old enough to have committed the crimes.”
His head spun, his pulse pounded in his ears. He walked to the chair behind the desk and dropped into it, putting his head in his hands. “Oh, Pops,” he shook his head. “If this means what I think it does, Maggie’s husband and daughter were killed by her own child. No wonder she went crazy. And it would explain why she sent Elyse away to live with foster parents. She was trying to hide her from her half-sibling. Is it possible Elyse has spent all of these years thinking her mother didn’t care about her, when she was really trying to save her life?”
He rubbed his face and then shook his head.
“We can’t say anything to Elyse until we find out if this is even true or not. Promise me you won’t say anything, Pops. Please.”
“I won’t. You’ll figure it out soon enough, I’m sure. I’ll head back down. We don’t want her coming in here looking for either of us.” Pops pointed at the pictures and grimaced. “She doesn’t need to see those.”
James nodded. “Yeah, good plan. Tell her I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Pops walked out and closed the door. James leaned back and put his hands behind his head. A child, born to a mentally unstable teen mother, out of wedlock. The birth probably wouldn’t be in any papers; Maggie’s parents would not have wanted that published. And it probably would have gone through a private agency to make tracking the child harder. If she’d even had a child.
James rubbed the back of his neck. This was going to be harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Then he remembered the articles. The seemingly random articles about The Goldman family. He grabbed the box, shuffling through the papers until he found them.
The car accident that killed The Goldman’s happened shortly before the Benson murders. The article said they were survived by their eighteen-year-old child. The article about the adoption was dated eighteen years earlier.
James took a deep breath and slid the papers into the file. He didn’t have proof yet, but the articles suggested that the Goldman’s had adopted Maggie Benson’s child.
Elyse’s attacker was male. If she was attacked by the same person who committed the murders, it meant Maggie had a son. It was just a hunch, but James suspected the Benson’s were not the first murders committed by Maggie’s child. The Goldman’s car accident had been due to faulty brakes, something easily tampered with, even for an eighteen-year-old. Especially if that eighteen-year-old was familiar with the curvy road where the Goldman’s crashed.
And then there was the case of Elyse’s foster parents’ poisoning. Was it possible they were murdered, too? The fact that she had run away because of the beatings may have saved her life.
James’ palms were sweaty against his phone as he dialed his cousin.
“Dryden,” Terry answered.
“Terry, I need a favor. A huge favor. And it’s not going to be easy.”
“Sounds serious. What’s up?”
“I need you to find information on a couple from Denver. Doris and Wendell Goldman. They adopted a child—a boy, I think. I need to know everything about that kid, including where he is now.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” she answered back.
“No, but that’s not the hard part. I need you to find out if there is any DNA from the Goldman kid on record.”
He paused, knowing Terry could get fired over what he was going to ask her to do next.
“And I need you to see if there is any DNA evidence left in the Benson case. If there is, I need you to have it run against the DNA from the Goldman kid, as well as the DNA from Elyse’s attacker.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, followed by a large exhale. “Do I want to know?”
“The less you know, the less you can be held accountable for. Are you okay with that?”
“You know I trust you, James. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Thanks, Terry. The second you get something—”
“I’ll call you. Talk to you soon.”
The other end of the phone went silent and James took a deep breath, trying to prepare himself to go downstairs and act like everything was okay, like nothing had changed.
Everything had changed. Not only was her attacker a relative, she was probably attacked by a half-brother she didn’t know she had.
A half-brother that possibly murdered her father and sister. James’ stomach convulsed and he closed his eyes, trying to calm the chaos running through his head. He dialed the psychiatric hospital.
“Gunderson State Hospital.”
“This is Sheriff Warrick. Can you please tell me how Maggie Benson died?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t usually disclose information like that unless it’s to family.”
He didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and he knew it. Hopefully the woman on the other end of the phone didn’t.
“I understand, but it’s part of an active investigation. Look, I can get a search warrant, but you know how that goes. Search warrants are public information. If the media were to find out that you’ve been served with a search warrant, well then, your fine hospital would be drug across the news, and—”
“Yes, alright. Please hold for a moment while I find her file.”
James paced the office while he waited. He hated lying, but he needed that information, and he couldn’t ask Terry to do one more thing for him.
“Hello, Sheriff?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Maggie Benson’s file says she died of natural causes.”
Natural causes? That couldn’t be right. She wasn’t even fifty years old. Much too young to die of natural causes.
“Was an autopsy performed?”
“No, Sheriff. Her guardian refused one.”
“Her guardian?”
“Most of our residents have one. The mentally ill need either a guardian or someone with power of attorney who can make major decisions for them.”
“Of course. Who was her guardian?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Sheriff, but I’ve already said more than I should have. I really cannot release any more information without a court order.”
“I’ll get back to you when I have that, but you’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”
He hung up the receiver and tried to digest what she’d told him. A middle-aged woman dies, and her guardian doesn’t want an autopsy. The hospital hadn’t said anything about her being sick, so it didn’t seem like an expected death. Why wouldn’t her guardian want to know how she died? Unless they already knew exactly how she died.
* * *
Elyse stood at the kitchen counter, cleaning up the mess she had made cooking lunch. She wiped down the countertop, then loaded the dishwasher. James hadn’t come down yet, so she’d put a plate together for him. She stopped for a minute and smiled, laughing to herself.
This was how she’d imagined her life from the time she was a little girl—before the murders, before the beatings, before the isolation of the cabin—and it made her happy. Not the dishes, but the fact she had someone to make dirty dishes with. Someone to share meals with. Someone to…love.
She shook her head, trying to make the hope go away. What if she lost it all? He said all she had to do was let him take care of her. She wanted to try.
Footsteps behind her made her turn around.
“Oh good, you’re back,” Elyse smiled at Pops. “Did you tell James about lunch?”
Pops stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head, as if attempting to clear a fog she couldn’t see.
“Lunch. Yes, I went up to tell James about lunch. I told him, and he…I think he said he’s coming.”
Pops knit his brow together and studied her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
Elyse threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, crying.
“Oh, sweet girl. Don’t cry. Elyse! There, see? I remembered. Come. Sit with me for a minute.”
Pops pulled out a chair for her and sat across from her. “I might forget names, but I will never forget the people who have been in my life. Gwendolyn, my kids…they’re all part of who I am. Don’t cry for me. I have James, and Helen, and you.”