Cold Case Cover-Up

by Virginia Vaughan

  “I’ll call my dad and have someone else come watch the house. I can’t stay here. I have to leave.”

  He headed for the door, but she grabbed his arm and spun him to face her. “Quinn, I promise you that this was not my doing.”

  “I confided in you, Dana.” He scooped up his keys and marched out the door.

  She could play the innocent victim in this matter, but it didn’t make one bit of difference. His career as a security operator overseas was over.

  * * *

  Dana watched him climb into his car and speed away. She walked back inside. The newscaster was repeating the breaking news of another operative identified. She picked up the remote and clicked it off. Seeing it had been like a punch to her stomach. She could only imagine how it had felt to Quinn.

  It was true. His career was ruined. He could never go incognito overseas again when everyone in the world had seen his image on TV.

  She hadn’t told anyone what he’d told her in confidence, but she had a sickening feeling that she was indeed to blame for it. She picked up her phone and dialed Tracy’s number.

  “I saw the news,” she said when her friend answered. “What happened?”

  “I know you said not to look into this guy, Dana, but I couldn’t have my friend around some weirdo, could I? Besides, can you believe you were sitting on top of such a huge news story?” She was excited about this revelation and her part in breaking this story. Dana could hear it all in her voice.

  But she wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. “How could you do this to me, Tracy?”

  “Don’t worry. I gave you credit for the find. I tried to call you several times but you didn’t answer so Mason said to run with it.”

  Dana glanced at her phone and saw several missed calls from Tracy yesterday. She’d been too busy dealing with the exhumation that she hadn’t returned them.

  “And yes, every other journalist in town is green with envy. You were right. Feathers are being ruffled.”

  She didn’t want credit. She wanted to scream and holler and cry that her friend had ruined everything. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve ruined this man’s livelihood. He’ll never be able to work special ops again.”

  Tracy grew serious. “I thought this was what you wanted. You were the one pushing for the interview with Rizzo. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  She recalled Quinn’s horror-stricken face as he stared at the TV. “I didn’t want this,” she said. But she couldn’t really blame her friend, could she? It had been her ambition and her determination that Tracy had been following. A week ago, she would have jumped on this story and hounded Quinn for an interview. But she wasn’t the same person now that she was one week ago.

  “Dana, I’m sorry. I was only doing what I thought you’d want.” Her friend sounded genuinely sorry and Dana knew she had no idea why she was apologizing.

  “I know you meant well, but I think you cost me something amazing.”

  She hung up with Tracy and went out to stand on the porch. She took in the landscape and how beautiful it was here, but it was all ruined for her now. She wanted to scream out in pain and frustration. Where was Quinn’s God now when his life had been turned upside down because of her? Tears pressed against her eyes but she pushed them back. She deserved this. She’d gotten too close to Quinn and destroyed his life. It was no wonder she could never find happiness. She was truly unlovable, but this time instead of only her getting hurt, she was now including others in her pain.

  Her phoned buzzed inside and she hurried back in to grab it. Maybe it was Quinn calling. But as she swooped her phone from the coffee table, she realized the futility of her high hopes. She glanced at the caller ID and didn’t recognize the number. She wiped away a tear that slipped through. She wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with someone she didn’t even know. She pushed the button to send the caller to voice mail, set her phone back on the coffee table, then dropped onto the couch.

  She had to come up with some way to get them both out of this mess even though it seemed impossible.

  Her phone dinged, this time indicating a text message. She pushed away the hope that it was Quinn but glanced at the screen just in case. It wasn’t him, but the message did catch her attention. It was from the same number she’d sent to voice mail.

  I thought you wanted to talk. JE

  She sat up, realizing those initials belonged to Jay Englin. And she had listed her phone number in an email she’d sent to several old email addresses she’d found for him.

  Her phone rang again and this time, she snapped it up. “Hello.”

  “I understand you’ve been trying to find me.”

  Her heart jumped into her throat. Was this really Jay Englin on the phone with her? The only man left who could answer her questions? “Who is this?” she demanded, guarding her enthusiasm.

  “You know who I am. I know you have questions. I have the answers you’re seeking. Meet me at Winslow Gardens in an hour. I’ll answer all your questions.”

  He hung up without giving her an opportunity to question him further. She didn’t want to go without Quinn. Her logical side knew this might be a trap, but she couldn’t ignore it. What if it wasn’t? What if it really was Jay Englin and she blew him off? She couldn’t live with not knowing.

  She quickly dialed Quinn’s cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail. She groaned, angry at his childish response. He might be done with her, but he could at least take her call. She wanted to scream at him, but most of all, she wanted him by her side.

  She didn’t have time to wait for Quinn to get over his anger and decide to speak with her. By the time he did, Jay might be gone and with him all the answers to her questions. She called Quinn’s number again as she grabbed the keys to her car and hurried outside. It went right to voice mail again, but this time she left a message.

  “Quinn, it’s Dana. I received a phone call from Jay Englin. I’m meeting him at Winslow Gardens. Please come. I know you’re mad and I can’t blame you, but I really don’t want to be alone.” There was much more she wanted to say to him, to apologize and explain that she hadn’t meant to plant the seed in Tracy’s head to out him, but now wasn’t the time and she didn’t want to ask forgiveness on his voice mail.

  She waited for the phone to ring as she drove, but by the time she reached Winslow Gardens, it still hadn’t. She wondered if he’d even heard her message. He’d probably seen it was her calling and decided not to bother.

  Suddenly, a voice inside of her warned her away. She shouldn’t be here alone meeting someone she couldn’t even be sure was Jay Englin. This was most likely a trap and she was walking right into it. She spotted movement in the trees and a figure motioning to her and knew she was going to go despite her fears. It was a risk she had to take.

  Where are you, Quinn?

  * * *

  He ended up at his parents’ house, on their couch, his face covered by his arm. His life was in shambles and it was all his fault for believing that Dana was a woman first and a reporter second.

  “What have I done? I can’t believe I ever trusted her.”

  His mother sat beside him and stroked his arm. “You’ve always been a risk taker. You follow your instincts and they told you she could be trusted.”

  “My instincts were wrong.”

  His dad interjected. “Your instincts are rarely wrong, Quinn. I think you’re overanalyzing this. It’s obvious to everyone else that Dana cares for you and you for her. I find it hard to believe she would betray you this way.”

  “Then how do you explain it? My face, my name plastered all over the television?”

  “I don’t have an explanation. You’ll have to get that from her. What did she have to say about it?”

  “I don’t know. I was angry, and I stormed out before she could explain anything. I didn’t want to hear
her excuses. No one else knew about my involvement. It had to come from her.”

  “That’s not entirely true. We have an entire town that has some clue about what you’ve been doing. We were pretty worried about you when the news about the embassy attack came across the wire. It was no secret around town that you were involved. People dropped in to pray with us or bring food by.”

  His mom nodded. “That’s true.”

  He sat up. He knew that was true. Even Mayor Jessup, who he hardly knew, had commented on the embassy attack. “You think someone in town ratted me out to the news stations?”

  His dad shrugged. “You’ve been ruffling a lot of feathers with this Renfield investigation. Maybe you ruffled the wrong one and that person decided to keep you otherwise occupied with this. I mean, it’s worked, hasn’t it? You’re not thinking about the Renfield murders and you’re not even on speaking terms with Dana.”

  His dad was right. He’d fallen into the trap. “You think so?”

  “What I think is that you need to talk to Dana. Give her an opportunity to defend herself and you have to really listen. This is done. There’s no taking it back, Quinn, but what you and Dana have started here is important. You can’t let it go or else a murderer wins. They’ve already gotten away with this for thirty years. Don’t let them win again.”

  His parents both stood and left him alone to ponder his decision. He knew they were right. He at least owed it to Dana to listen to her explanation. She’d claimed to have no idea how his name had been linked to the embassy attack and she had seemed as surprised as he was. Had he jumped the gun? Allowed his anger to overshadow everything else?

  And fear. He’d fallen back on his fear of being hurt. He’d been expecting it and he was ready when he thought it had happened. He’d gotten close to her, fallen hard for her, but had never really trusted her.

  He jumped to his feet and headed for the door. He had to talk to her.

  * * *

  She got out of the car and walked under the overhanging branches. A trickle of water greeted her ears as did the chirp of the crickets. Again, she sensed this wasn’t a good idea, but it was too late. She was here and would see this through to the end.

  A figure approached from the trees, and she recognized the tall, thin man from the newspaper articles she’d seen proclaiming him a reluctant hero for finding Alicia. His hair was now grey and the lines around his eyes accentuated his increased age.

  “It’s only me,” he said. “You’re Dana Lang?”

  She nodded and he stepped closer, giving her a full view of him now. He appeared to be a middle-aged man in his fifties with blond hair greying at the temples and a full beard. Yet he was slim and fit, a man who took care of himself. “I’m Jay Englin.”

  She was so stunned to actually be talking to him that for a moment she couldn’t form any words. Finally, she held out her hand to him. “Thank you for responding to my email. I never expected you would come to town, but I’m glad you did.”

  “I shouldn’t have, but I felt you deserved answers after all these years. I’ve kept up with you through the years, watched you grow, made certain you were safe.”

  Suddenly, she was creeped out to know this man had been following her for years. She took a step backward from him. “What do you mean you’ve been watching me?”

  “I only meant—” He gave her a sharp look. “You’re an investigative journalist. I thought you would have figured it all out by now.”

  “That I’m Alicia Renfield? Yes, I have, but how do you know who I am?”

  “Because I’m the one who left you at that church thirty years ago. We had to make sure you were safe. After that, I followed your journey to being adopted. When I saw your first piece on television, I recognized your new name.”

  “But why did you leave me there? Why did you want everyone to believe I was dead? Do you know what happened to my father and who killed my mother?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know, but Sheriff Mackey never believed Paul killed his wife. He always thought Paul was probably dead. Bill thought you would be safer if people believed you were dead, but none of us ever thought it would take this long to solve the case.”

  “But how did I survive the fire?”

  “You were never in the fire, Dana. The Mackeys were babysitting you that night. Rene had brought you over to them an hour earlier. They were going to keep you for the weekend so she and Paul could have a romantic weekend. I was shocked when I arrived at their house and saw the baby playing on the floor.”

  She pushed a frustrated hand through her hair. “I don’t understand. Why keep my being alive a secret? Why the need to fake my death?”

  “Bill figured out pretty quickly that Paul wasn’t the killer. He suspected Jessup. He and Rene used to be an item and she’d confided in him that Jessup had gotten obsessed with her. He was always calling and accidentally running in to her. Some people in town even suspected that you were his child. Bill thought if he discovered you were alive, he might try to kill you again. The accelerant that was used to ignite the house was found upstairs in the hallway by your nursery, meaning that whoever set that fire intended for you to die in it as well. He thought you would be safer. Bill knew the preacher and I took you there and gave you to him.”

  How ironic. She’d felt alone all her life, her abandonment only the beginning of a lifelong struggle with loneliness even if she hadn’t known its origins.

  “You may think the sheriff didn’t do the right thing, but you’d be wrong. When we started trying to look in to the case, attempts were made on my life. Bill’s life was in danger, too. I finally left town hoping it would quiet down. I’ve tried to stay under the radar all these years because I feared for my life if whoever committed those murders found out what I knew and what I’d done.”

  As if to punctuate his fears, a shot rang out. She jumped and spun around. When she turned back to Jay, he had an odd look on his face. He grabbed his chest and only then did she notice blood pooling on his shirt. He fell to the ground and she ran to him.

  He grabbed her arm and dug into it, struggling to say his final word. “Run!” he softly yelled before he fell back and closed his eyes.

  Dana grabbed him and tried to wake him but she knew it was too late. He was dead. He was right about his life being at risk. He’d returned to West Bend after all these years only to finally be killed.

  Who would do this? And who had even known Jay was back in town?

  She heard footsteps and glanced up. Reed Jessup was running toward her, gun raised. She leaped to her feet and bolted into the brush, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dana screamed as he grabbed her from behind and tossed her to the ground. She landed hard on a rock, hitting her head. Blood splattered and a sick feeling rushed through her as her head began to swim.

  Her arms and legs refused to move, making escape impossible. Blood ran into her face and the world seemed to fade. This was it. She was going to die.

  But instead of shooting her, Reed put away his gun and lifted her, heaving her over his shoulder.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked him.

  “Someone wants to have a few words with you before I kill you,” he responded.

  She knew what was happening but she was helpless to stop it. All she could do was give a little cry as she lost consciousness.

  NINE

  His first indication that something was wrong was that Dana’s rental car was gone. He pulled up to the house and got out, quickly going inside. His pulse kicked up a notch when he saw she wasn’t there. He checked each room but she was gone. He also noticed her cell phone and purse were missing.

  He pulled out his phone to call her and saw he had two missed voice mails, one from her and one from his brother. He checked the volume and realized his phone was on silent. He’d missed both the calls and the voice mail notifications. His gut clenched as he listened to
her message. How could she do something as reckless as going to meet a stranger alone? With guilt, he realized he’d placed her in that situation by walking out on her.

  He dialed her number. It rang several times then flipped over to voice mail. “Dana, it’s Quinn. Call me. Let me know you’re okay.”

  He listened to Rich’s message and learned the deputy he’d sent over to watch Dana had left when he’d seen no one was home.

  Quinn picked up his rifle then grabbed his keys and walked back to his car. He headed for Winslow Gardens, continuing to try her phone as he drove. Each time, it went to voice mail. If anything happened to her, he didn’t know how he would handle it.

  He made it to Winslow Gardens, pulling up beside her car, which was still parked there. He glanced inside—the car was empty and her purse and phone were gone. He didn’t see another car. Whoever she was meeting must have already left or else hadn’t driven. Pushing through the brush, he called to her, but received no response and the clearing was empty.

  A hundred terrible images flashed through his mind of things that might have happened to her. He tried her phone again, but this time, he heard a ringing when he called it. He followed the sound and discovered her cell phone lying in the grass. She wouldn’t have left it behind on purpose.

  He scanned the area and spotted a figure on the ground behind the bench. His heart stopped as he panicked, wondering if it was Dana lying there and what he would do if it was. As he moved closer, he saw it wasn’t her. The figure was too large to be Dana and the hair was blond instead of her dark brunette.

  He pulled his gun then moved toward what he realized was a male figure. He aimed his gun at the figure then bent down to turn him over. He didn’t recognize the man. Was this the guy Dana had said she was meeting? Jay Englin?

  Whoever it was, he was dead from what looked like a gunshot to the chest.

  And Dana was nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  Quinn watched his brother process the murder scene, then have the body of Jay Englin moved. A small crowd had gathered near the park and the police were questioning onlookers about what they might have seen.