With the necessary calls made, the school bus gone, and Megan slumped against Rachel’s shoulder in the Range Rover, Tom had time to take a deep breath and think about what was happening. He stood at the top of the ravine, letting the drizzle soak his hair, staring down at the old mattress and the body it had concealed. He’d recognized Shelley Beecher instantly, even though slight bloating distorted the oval shape of her face. Long blond hair draped her shoulders, and the outfit on the body matched the description of what she was wearing when last seen: short blue jacket over a pink sweater, jeans, athletic shoes.
Tom had believed Shelley was dead since the day she disappeared in Northern Virginia, where she was a first year law student. So did the Fairfax County detective on the case. But she didn’t look as if she’d been dead a month. Bloating and decomposition were noticeable but not advanced. The plastic was still clean. If she wasn’t killed immediately after her abduction, where had she been for the last month? And, as one of the boys had asked, why did her body turn up here in her home county in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, hours away from the place where she went missing?
The sound of approaching vehicles broke into his thoughts. More deputies had arrived to secure the scene. Now Tom had to take Megan home to her parents and tell them their older daughter was lying dead in a ravine.
***
The Beechers’ two-story white house seemed eerily quiet and lonely when Tom turned Rachel’s Range Rover into the driveway. After weeks of friends and neighbors streaming in to comfort Dan and Sarah, people had run out of things to say and turned back to their own everyday lives.
The house sat on a quarter-acre lot carved out of a patch of pine woods. In the flower beds along the front of the house, dozens of gold and white daffodils bobbed in the light rain. A broad yellow ribbon circled a maple tree, its bow drenched and drooping. Only Sarah’s mini-van sat in the driveway. Dennis Murray hadn’t arrived with Dan yet.
The last thing Tom wanted to do was give Sarah the news without her husband by her side, but he had no choice.
The second Tom braked, Megan burst from the back seat and sprinted for the house. The family’s yellow Lab, Scout, rose from the porch, his tail wagging.
“Megan, wait!” Rachel pleaded, scrambling after her.
Climbing out of the vehicle, Tom called, “Megan, let me tell your mother—”
But she was already up the steps, wrenching the door open, screaming, “Mom! Mom, it’s Shelley!”
Tom and Rachel hurried after her. When they stepped into the living room, Sarah was coming down the stairs. She halted, her gaze falling first on Megan’s anguished face, then shifting to Tom and Rachel. A hollow-eyed waif, thin arms hanging at her sides, Sarah looked twenty years older than she had a month ago. Messy blond hair hung around her face. A stain that looked like egg yolk streaked her white t-shirt and the waistband of her jeans.
“I need to talk to you, Sarah,” Tom said. “Let’s sit down.”
Megan bolted up the stairs and almost knocked Sarah over when she threw herself into her mother’s arms.
Over Megan’s head, Sarah’s eyes met Tom’s. “She’s dead.” A flat statement.
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, Sarah.” He had nothing to say that would soften the blow. Every word he spoke would feel like a knife in her heart.
Sarah sank onto a step, pulling Megan down with her.
Beside Tom, Rachel turned away from the sight of the mother and daughter, a hand over her mouth.
Sarah’s eyes blazed when she fixed them on Tom again. “Why in god’s name did you tell Meggie first? What’s wrong with you?”
“I saw her,” Megan whimpered.
“What? What are you talking about? How did you—”
“We found Shelley while the kids were out on their field trip,” Tom said.
Sarah expelled a breath as if he’d punched her in the stomach. “You found her here? But how is that—They said it happened in Fairfax County.”
“We have a lot of unanswered questions. If I could have spared Megan—I’m sorry, but she was there at the time.” Tom knew Megan would tell her parents every detail of what she’d seen, how her sister’s body looked, how they’d discovered it under a filthy mattress. He felt helpless, knowing Megan would be haunted by the memory, that she would make her parents’ pain a million times worse by planting those images in their minds.
Hearing a vehicle pull up out front, Tom looked to the open doorway. Daniel Beecher exploded from a Sheriff’s Department cruiser and ran for the house. When he hit the porch the dog barked once and fell in behind him. Tom and Rachel stepped out of his way as Dan barreled through the door with Scout on his heels. Tom waved at the cruiser, letting Dennis know he could leave.
“You’re sure it’s her?” Dan’s stocky body quivered with tension. Tears ran unchecked down his face and soaked his short blond beard. In his face Tom saw Dan hadn’t given up hope, he wanted to hear that Tom still had doubts.
Tom laid a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m sorry.”
At Dan’s side, Scout barked again, begging for his master’s attention. Rachel dropped to her knees and distracted the dog by scratching his head and soothing him with murmured words.
Dan twisted away from Tom and mounted the stairs. Pulling Sarah to her feet, he enclosed her in a tight embrace. Megan wrapped her arms around both her parents and sobbed against her mother’s shoulder.
While the Beechers poured out their grief, Rachel slipped a hand into Tom’s. Everywhere Tom looked in the living room he saw reminders that Dan and Sarah’s lives centered on their daughters. Photos of Shelley and Megan, as alike as twins except for the five-year age difference, lined the blue walls and decorated the tabletops. Over the fireplace mantel hung a big picture of Shelley in her university graduation gown, flanked by her smiling sister and parents.
Forcing himself to disconnect from the scene emotionally, Tom focused on all the things he must do in the next few hours. He had to get back to the scene, but first he would drop Rachel off at home and collect his cruiser. He—
“I’m going out there,” Dan said, his arms still around his wife and daughter.
“I’m going too,” Sarah said. “She needs her family with her.”
Aw, god, Tom thought. “I know how you feel, but—”
“You don’t have any idea how we feel,” Dan said.
“I meant that I understand why you want to be there. But I have to ask you to stay away and let us do our work. You can see her later today, I promise.” One or both would have to formally identify their daughter’s body before it went to Roanoke for autopsy, but this wasn’t the time to tell them that.
“I’m going,” Dan said. “Sarah, Meg, you both stay here.”
“I’m her mother, Dan,” Sarah protested.
He kissed her forehead. “Honey, please just stay here with Meggie. Let me do this by myself. I’ll be back soon.”
No amount of gentle argument would deter him. Dan rode with Tom and Rachel a few miles down the road to Tom’s farm, where the two men switched to the cruiser. Not wanting to set off another outburst, Tom held back the questions that crowded his mind. Dan remained stone-faced and silent until they reached the place where Shelley’s body lay.
Chapter Three
Rachel sat on the screened porch, absently stroking her black and white cat Frank as he purred on her lap, while Cicero, her African gray parrot, squawked at a bluejay that taunted him from a nearby shrub. She wished she could erase the image of Shelley’s lifeless body from her mind. She wished she could go back and do something to keep Megan from seeing her sister that way. The sight would haunt Megan forever.
The sound of an approaching vehicle made her glance toward the driveway. “Oh, no,” she groaned. Ben Hern’s black Jaguar pulled in behind her Range Rover. He unfolded his tall, muscular body from the low-slung car and headed for the front door. Ben was a close friend, but Rachel dreaded facing him now. She hoped someone had already tol
d him about the discovery of Shelley’s body, so she wouldn’t have to break it to him. Nudging Frank off her lap, she rose and went to meet Ben.
As soon as she opened the front door, she realized that he knew. The effort of holding back tears twisted his handsome face into a mask of grief. Raking his thick black hair off his forehead, Ben choked out, “Is it true? She was wrapped in plastic and stuck under a dirty mattress?”
“Come in.” Rachel pushed open the screen door.
Ben stooped in the hallway to pet Frank, but his stunned expression didn’t change. He had the kind of Latin lover looks—his real name was Benicio Hernandez—that reduced a lot of women to simpering idiots, but an easily wounded heart beat behind that deceptive facade. He’d been a mentor of sorts to Shelley, and he was fond of the whole Beecher family.
“How did you hear about it?” Rachel asked.
“I was out at the horse farm when Dennis Murray came to get Dan.” Ben stood, jammed his fists into his jeans pockets, hunched his shoulders. “It was a nightmare. Dan didn’t want to believe it. He was yelling at Murray, saying it had to be a mistake, Shelley couldn’t be dead. Joanna was crying. I’ve never seen her cry before.”
Rachel felt a pang of pity for her friend Joanna McKendrick, who was Shelley’s godmother. Rachel had met the Beecher sisters when she was living in a cottage on Joanna’s horse farm, where Dan Beecher worked as a trainer. “I’ll stop by and see Joanna later. She’s probably gone over to the Beechers’ house by now.”
Ben wandered into the living room, his movements jerky with tension. Rachel followed, with Frank padding alongside her. “After Dan and Murray left, somebody called Joanna and told her all the details. Even offered to e-mail her some pictures of Shelley one of the kids took.”
“Oh, god.” It shouldn’t matter. Shelley was dead, and what the killer had done to her body after taking her life couldn’t hurt her anymore. Yet it deepened the wound immeasurably for those left behind.
“God damn it!” Ben’s words burst out of him in a shout. The startled cat shot from the room and ran down the hall. “Who would do something like that? She was a good girl, she really cared about helping other people.”
“I know. She had a good heart.” Shelley’s never met a stranger, Dan used to say, with obvious pride in his ebullient, friendly older daughter. Rachel wondered how he felt now about his daughter’s open, trusting nature. Taking Ben’s arm, she steered him toward the couch. “Come on, sit down.”
He dropped onto the couch beside Rachel. “That’s probably what got her killed, you know. She let a stranger get too close, she didn’t see danger coming. Girls like Shelley are natural targets for perverts.”
Rachel had no trouble imagining endless variations on Shelley’s abduction and murder. “If I ever have a daughter, I’ll make damned sure she looks at everybody with a healthy amount of suspicion. You don’t have to be cynical to be careful.”
“At least the waiting’s over for Shelley’s family. They know what happened to her.” Ben’s voice choked up again. “They can say goodbye now. Never knowing would have been a hell of a lot worse.”
Rachel didn’t answer. Ben had no idea how close to the bone his words cut. Although he’d been a friend since childhood, he didn’t know the truth about her life, the secret she lived with. Every day for the past month, with all of Mason County obsessed with Shelley’s fate, pictures of her smiling face posted everywhere, Rachel had been forced to think about the special brand of torment that followed a child’s disappearance. For some parents, answers never came. Parents like Rachel’s own.
Don’t, she told herself, blocking the memories before they fully formed, silencing the question—Have I done the right thing?—before it took hold in her mind like some old song that repeated endlessly and wouldn’t go away. Rachel had made the decision several years ago to leave things as they were. She couldn’t erase the past. She believed she had good reasons not to try.
Ben looked at Rachel, his eyes widening as if a horrifying thought had occurred to him. “Oh god. Am I partly to blame for this?”
“What? How could you be to blame?”
Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he clenched and unclenched his hands. “I was the one who encouraged her to volunteer with the innocence project. She might never have gotten involved if I hadn’t suggested it. And the project director might have turned her down if I hadn’t been pushy about it. I mean, when your project’s main source of money asks for something, you don’t say no.”
Ben was a serious artist, but he made his living—an extraordinarily lucrative living—by drawing a comic strip called Furballs, using his own cat and dog as inspiration. He gave away a lot of his money, and the Virginia Innocence Project was one beneficiary of his generosity.
“What does her work with the innocence project have to do with her death?” Rachel asked.
“She was making people mad by trying to get Vance Lankford out of prison. This whole county believes he’s guilty, he killed that guy. I tried to talk her out of taking on a local case involving people she knew, because I figured she’d get a lot of blowback. There were other cases she could’ve taken on. I should have made her listen to me.”
“Oh, Ben.” Rachel sighed and rubbed his back. “Don’t look for ways to make yourself feel bad. If somebody died of food poisoning at that soup kitchen you support, would you feel responsible? No, don’t answer that. Of course you would.”
“So would you. We’re just alike that way, and you know it.”
Rachel’s cell phone chirped in her shirt pocket. “I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of whoever it is.” She frowned when she saw the name on the screen: Michelle Goddard. Her sister almost never called her—Rachel was the one who worked at keeping their relationship alive. A call from Michelle might mean bad news. “It’s Michelle,” she told Ben. “I have to take this. Don’t leave. I’ll keep it short.”
Ben leaned back on the couch, blew out a sigh and nodded. “Tell her I said hello.”
Rachel tried not to sound alarmed when she answered. “Hi, Mish, what’s up?”
“It’s me, Rachel.” A man’s voice. Kevin, Michelle’s husband.
“Oh. Hi.” Now she was really worried. If calls from Michelle were unusual, calls from Michelle’s husband were, or had been until now, nonexistent. Suddenly Rachel couldn’t sit still. She stood and began pacing the living room. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Kevin paused. “Well, actually—”
“Has something happened to Michelle?”
Ben sat up straight on the sofa, alert and concerned.
“No, no,” Kevin said. “She’s right here.”
“Oh, good.” Rachel sagged with relief, and she shook her head to answer the question on Ben’s face. “You scared me for a minute.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Kevin’s strained voice, with its edge of anxiety, ruined his attempt to reassure Rachel. “I—We, that is—”
He broke off, and Rachel heard a fumbling noise from the other end. Then her sister’s voice. “Rachel, I need to see you. You’re the only person I can talk to.”
Another spurt of alarm. “Talk to me about what?”
In the background, Rachel heard Kevin protest, “You know you can tell me anything. I’m trying to understand, I just don’t—”
“That’s right, you don’t understand.”
“Michelle!” Rachel said. “You’re freaking me out here.”
“I don’t want to get into it on the phone. I want to tell you everything in person.”
Rachel hesitated. Michelle and Kevin lived in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., hours away. Rachel had visited occasionally, but to drive all that distance just to talk? What could be that urgent? That bad? “I’ll have to make arrangements to be away from work.”
“Could I come out there instead?”
For a second Rachel didn’t know what to say. Michelle had never been to Mason County, never shown any interest in visiti
ng in the two years Rachel had lived there. Her sister had never met Tom, although Rachel had moved in with him months ago.
“I know I’m imposing on you,” Michelle said into the silence, “but I’m desperate to get away for a while. If I could come and stay with you a few days—” Her voice broke and fell to a whisper. “I’m frightened, Rachel.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or do you want to leave it up to my imagination? Which is running wild right now, by the way.”
The response came from Kevin, who took the phone. “She says strange things are happening. She thinks somebody’s getting into her office at night, moving things around, and she says she’s getting anonymous phone calls. She believes somebody is stalking her.”
“My god,” Rachel exclaimed. “Have you called the police?”
Kevin sighed. “Yes, and they said they can’t do anything because there’s no proof. They pretty much said that unless somebody attacks her, she’s on her own.”
Rachel was silent a moment, registering the way Kevin had delivered the story: she says, she thinks, she believes. There’s no proof. “Answer me honestly. Just say yes or no—do you believe those things are happening?”
Kevin took his time, and when he finally replied he sounded reluctant to speak the words. “I’m…I’m not sure. I’m just not sure.”
***
Tom had never seen a grown man cry the way Daniel Beecher did, unashamed among other men, making no effort to keep up a stoic front. In the month since Shelley disappeared, he’d been the strong one in the family, going to work every day, refusing to give in to despair. Now, with Shelley lying dead in the ravine below him, sobs convulsed his body, and he leaned a hand against a tree trunk as if he needed the support to keep from collapsing.
The rain clouds had drifted off, and Tom and Dan stood in a splash of pale sunlight at the top of the slope. Below them, Dr. Gretchen Lauter looked on as two young men lifted Shelley’s body onto a stretcher and secured it with straps for the climb to the road and the waiting mortuary van. Several men wearing the brown uniforms of the Mason County Sheriff’s Department formed a motionless line along the road. Waiting for orders, struck dumb by the naked grief of the victim’s father. Some of them watched Dan with fear in their eyes, and Tom knew they were thinking of their own kids, imagining themselves in Dan’s shoes. Tom felt an answering wrench in his own gut, and for once he was glad he didn’t have children to worry about. To lose.
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 2