Truth and Consequences

by V. J. Chambers

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Frankie had never searched a room before, at least not for an investigation, not looking for evidence. She wanted to make sure that she did a good job, but she didn’t want to leave the place a wreck either. So, she was careful to put everything back where she had found it. She lifted clothing out of drawers piece by piece, piled it on the bed and then set it back. She was pretty sure that it would be more efficient to have more people searching the room besides her, but she also didn’t want to spook Lisa by having the entire CRU come in and start swarming the place.

  Frankie was nervous, though. This might be their one shot, and she didn’t want to screw it up. What if she didn’t find anything at all, after all this careful searching?

  The more that she looked, the more likely it seemed that was going to be the case.

  Holly didn’t have anything hidden. Not drug paraphernalia or secret lingerie. Everything was in its proper place and nothing was out of the ordinary. Frankie went through Holly’s desk, her dresser, her bookshelf, and her closet. But everything was fairly sparse. Holly wasn’t hiding things, but she also didn’t have a lot of keepsakes. Most girls might save artwork or old programs from school dances or even report cards. Holly had none of that.

  Frankie finished going through the last box in Holly’s closet, which contained summer clothes, packed away because they were out of season. She put it back, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  She hadn’t found anything. This had all been for nothing.

  Frankie sighed, surveying the room, trying to think of some other place to look. But she’d looked everywhere. How was she going to explain this to Elke and Iain? The two were not going to be satisfied, she just knew it. They’d want to look for themselves. And Frankie wasn’t sure they’d be allowed to get back in and look again. She guessed they’d all known this was a long shot, but she still felt as though she’d failed.

  She started toward the door.

  And then stopped.

  The bed. What about under the bed? Sometimes people stored things under the bed.

  Frankie went back into the room. She got down on the floor, lifted the bed skirt and looked underneath.

  But there was nothing under there except some dust bunnies and a dust-covered hair tie.

  She sat back up on her knees.

  In movies and books, girls were always keeping things under their mattresses. Like diaries and keepsakes.

  Frankie lifted the mattress.

  There it was.

  A ziploc bag, and inside were two objects. One was a blue baby blanket and the other was a long, sharp knife.

  “What are you doing?” said a voice from the doorway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Frankie whirled. She had the ziploc bag in her gloved hands.

  Holly was standing in the doorway. “You,” she said. “You’re the one investigating Allison’s case.”

  “Yes,” said Frankie. “I am.”

  Holly pointed. “Put that down.”

  “No,” said Frankie, fumbling in her shoulder bag for an evidence bag to deposit it in. It was probably not going to get contaminated, since she’d found it in plastic, but the extra layer of protection would only help things.

  “You can’t take things from my room,” said Holly.

  “I can,” said Frankie. “Your mother gave me permission to search.”

  “But it’s not hers.”

  “This is her house.”

  Holly crossed her arms over her chest. Then she turned and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Mom!”

  Frankie managed to get the knife and baby blanket into an evidence bag. She tucked it away in her shoulder bag and started for the doorway. She knew it wouldn’t be smart to stay and confront Holly.

  But at the doorway, Holly stepped into Frankie’s path. “Stop,” said Holly.

  Frankie could see into the hallway now.

  Lisa had appeared timidly at the end.

  Holly turned to glare at her. “What did you do?”

  “Sweetie, you need help,” said Lisa softly. “And I can’t let you do anything like this again.”

  Holly’s nostrils flared. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any idea at all?” Her voice had gone quiet and tight.

  Frankie tried again to get into the hallway.

  Holly turned on her. “Give it back. Give it back, it’s mine.”

  Frankie shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “You can’t take it.” Holly reached out for Frankie’s bag.

  Frankie took a step backward. She couldn’t get into an altercation with this girl. If she did, the evidence might be contaminated. Not to mention that Holly was desperate and dangerous. Who knew what she might do? She’d shown herself willing to commit very violent acts already.

  “Mom,” said Holly. “Tell her to give it back. Tell her that whatever permission you gave her, you take it back.”

  Lisa was closer now. “Holly, what did you do to Allison? What did you do to baby Peter?”

  Holly’s eyes widened. She looked at Frankie and then she looked at Lisa. Alarm was all over her face. She looked back at Frankie. Her breath was coming in faster and faster bursts. Suddenly, her face crumpled and she burst into tears. “I didn’t mean it, Mama,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just like Nibbles.”

  Lisa stepped closer to Holly.

  “I didn’t mean it,” Holly said again.

  Lisa wrapped her arms around her daughter. “I think you did mean it.”

  “No, no, I didn’t. It was an accident.”

  Frankie cleared her throat. “You accidentally stabbed your sister in the face twenty times?”

  Holly turned on her fiercely. “Give it back.” She looked back at her mother, tears streaming down her face. “Get it back. Get it back.”

  Lisa hugged Holly tighter. “Go,” she said over her shoulder, nodding at Frankie. “Go, now.”

  * * *

  “I do think she kept them like trophies,” Frankie was saying to Elke and Iain in the conference room.

  Frankie had dropped off the evidence at the lab where experts would examine it and try to see if the knife still had any traces of DNA or evidence on it. It probably didn’t. It looked as though it had been cleaned. Probably not as an attempt to hide evidence, since Holly was keeping the knife, but because she didn’t want the mess or the blood to get everywhere. There could be traces left, though, and if so, so much the better. But they would probably have to resort to proving that the blade was consistent with the injuries made in Allison’s body, which could be done by experts. It would take some time, however.

  “One for each of her siblings,” said Elke. She shuddered. “How awful.”

  Frankie nodded. “It’s horrific. That poor family. Her mother has been through so much. I just can’t even imagine…”

  “You did a good job convincing her to let you search,” said Iain. “I thought it was a long shot, honestly. Parents want to protect their children.”

  “That’s just it,” said Frankie. “I think she is protecting her in a way. She doesn’t want to allow Holly to hurt anyone else. She’s protecting Holly from herself.”

  “But to send her daughter to prison,” said Iain.

  “She’ll be declared mentally unfit, won’t she?” said Frankie. “She’s obviously not completely sane.”

  “I don’t know,” said Elke. “You think she’ll fit the criteria? In all your time as a lawyer, did you never claim someone was not guilty through reason of insanity?”

  “Actually, I never did,” said Frankie. “Those weren’t the kinds of cases I took.”

  “Well, I think to make it stick, you need to prove that she didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong,” said Elke. “And I’m not sure that’s going to be possible.”

  “I hope it is,” said Frankie. “I wouldn’t want Lisa to suffer any more than she already has. It will be awful for her as it is, dealing with the repercussions of all of this.”

&
nbsp; “I agree,” said Elke. “But working in this system as long as we have, we all know things aren’t perfect.”

  “That’s true,” said Iain.

  Frankie let out a long sigh. She had to agree. It wasn’t that she wanted Holly to be coddled. Obviously, she’d committed serious crimes and that had to be addressed. And clearly, the girl wasn’t the kind of person who should be allowed to go free. She was dangerous. But she wasn’t normal either. And punishing her harshly would only cause further pain and suffering for the survivors of her victims. It was quite a quandary.

  “The important thing to focus on is freeing Curtis Fisher,” said Elke. “We’ve got enough to say that he isn’t guilty at this point. What happens to Holly Ross is out of our hands. But Curtis’s future is in ours.”

  * * *

  Elke spent the rest of the day preparing. They would be presenting to the Conviction Correction Panel on Curtis’s case soon, and they needed to make sure they had everything together. She was happy that this case had come together as well as it had. Along the way, she’d had her doubts, but it had turned out that Curtis really had been innocent all along.

  She was pleased.

  But when she got back to her apartment that evening, she couldn’t think about the case anymore. She was only worried about Patrick. She’d hoped to hear from him by now, to find out what had happened when he’d contacted Jeremiah. However, she’d heard nothing from him. His cell phone was going to voicemail—but she knew that service was spotty at the lake. And the landline at the lake house just rang and rang and rang.

  She told herself not to worry.

  He was probably away from the phone. Maybe he’d gone out to buy groceries or to get more firewood or any number of things.

  But worry bloomed in her gut.

  Why wasn’t he answering?

  Had he left to go meet Jeremiah somewhere?

  If that was the case, why hadn’t he come for the duffel bag? She checked to make sure it was there in her apartment. It was, its nefarious content safe and sound.

  What if contacting Jeremiah had led them to be able to discover where he was? Hell, if he hadn’t been able to use his cell phone and had called from the landline, the area code and prefix would give away his location. How hard would it be then for Jeremiah to discover where her parents’ cabin was? Property records were public.

  So, that might mean that Jeremiah had her brother.

  Should she call Jeremiah? But if she was wrong, she might tip him off somehow.

  She tried calling Patrick again at both numbers. Nothing.

  That was the last straw. She couldn’t sit around here. She took the duffel bag and went to her car. She was driving out there. At the very least, she could give Patrick the drugs so that he could get them to Jeremiah. She was going to have to do that anyway, right?

  Twenty minutes into the drive, it started to snow. Up in this part of the state, in the higher altitudes, it snowed a lot more frequently than down in Haven Hills, and the situation could end up being much more treacherous. If it wasn’t really important, she would turn around and go back. The roads to the lake were going to be bad if it kept coming down like it was doing.

  But she couldn’t turn around.

  She tried calling Patrick again.

  Nothing.

  She kept driving and the snow kept coming. At times, she was driving in near white-out conditions. There weren’t many other cars on the road with her. Most of the others went just as slowly and carefully as she did. Only a few crazies who wanted to kill everyone zoomed through in the fast lane, spraying snow from their back tires in their wake. Those cars worried her more than the snow itself. What if they lost control and wrecked up ahead? No one would be able to see their stopped car in enough time to stop. There would be a pile-up, and who knew how long it would be before rescue vehicles could get out here?

  She drove extra carefully instead, which meant that it took even longer than it usually would to make her way toward the cabin.

  When she’d been on the road an interminably long time, her phone suddenly rang.

  She’d been driving in silence because she didn’t want anything to distract her from trying to make her way through the snow storm, and the jangle of her ringtone made her jump.

  She let out a shaky laugh and scooped up the phone. It was Patrick.

  She punched the answer button, and then hit the speaker button. “Patrick?”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “You have?” he said. “My cell doesn’t get service up here. I let it run out of batteries and buried it in my suitcase. Did you call this number?”

  “Yes, only a gazillion times.”

  “Well, I was outside,” he said. “I thought I heard something outdoors last night, and so I went looking today. I found a campsite out in the woods behind the house.”

  “What? In this cold?”

  “Yeah, pretty crazy, right?” he said. “There were guns there, El.”

  “Guns? What does that mean?”

  “I think it means Jeremiah found me.”

  “Okay,” said Elke. “So, why camp out in the woods and watch you? Why not confront you?”

  “I have no idea,” said Patrick.

  “All right, well, look. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes, so when I get there—”

  “Wait, what? Where are you?”

  “I’m on Route 30. When I couldn’t get in touch with you, I got in my car.”

  “Geez, El, it’s coming down like crazy out there.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Believe me, I am well aware.”

  “You shouldn’t be on the road.”

  “Too late,” she said. “Look, I’m going to hang up so that I can concentrate on driving. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But seriously, be careful.”

  She promised she would and hung up.

  The rest of the drive took more like thirty-five minutes instead of twenty. Once she got off the highway, the back roads were even worse than she’d predicted. In some cases, she was driving on virgin snow, her tires making the only tracks that had been made in it. She had to approximate where the road even was in those cases. She had to admit she was glad of her father’s Christmas present to her, a set of snow tires. At the time, she’d thought it was overkill, considering she lived in the city, which was always plowed and easy to navigate, but it had turned out to be a blessing.

  Finally, after a grueling drive, she pulled into the driveway of the cabin.

  The driveway was long and tree-lined, and all the branches were covered in snow, bowing down over the driveway like a canopy. She felt as if she were driving into some ice world, another dimension of frost and cold and white loneliness.

  She shivered despite having the heat in her car cranked.

  She went slowly over the driveway. Here, too, there were no tire tracks. No one else had been here. When she reached the house, she parked behind Patrick’s car, which was already covered in snow.

  She turned off the car and got out, bringing the duffel bag with the drugs with her. Immediately, an icy wind whistled through the trees, chilling her cheeks and neck. She hunched down in her coat and slammed her car door shut.

  The sound seemed to echo off the snow covered tree branches. It was loud, carrying through the frozen woods.

  Suddenly, Elke got a funny feeling, like she wasn’t alone. She turned in a circle, scanning the woods. It was dark, but the snow was bright white. She could see a lot of white. But the snow was coming down so thickly that she couldn’t see much else. Hell, anyone could be out there.

  She slowly maneuvered herself so that her back was to her car. If someone was going to come at her, she wanted to be able to see him.

  She listened.

  It was quiet. Silent like a tomb.

  And then the wind whipped up again, and there was an eerie whistle.

  She hunched into her
coat again. The wind sent icy needles of snow against her skin. She was freezing.

  She needed to get into the house.

  But the thing was, she didn’t want to move. Here, she had the car at her back, and she could see anything that came at her. If she walked toward the house, she’d leave herself open. She imagined someone walking behind her, stealthy in the snow, coming closer and closer. She imagined the cold circle of the barrel of a gun at her back.

  She took a deep breath.

  She was being ridiculous.

  She couldn’t stay out here all night. Besides, Patrick needed her. And once they were together, she’d feel better. The house was safe. She looked up at the chimney, pumping comforting smoke into the night sky.

  She swallowed.

  And then she took off at a run, sprinting through the snow for the door of the cabin. Her breath was loud, her heart beat louder. She puffed out clouds of steamy air as she hurried across the snow, kicking up billows of white behind her feet.

  She reached the steps up to the front porch and seized the railing with one hand, turning in a tight circle and swinging herself up onto the steps.

  One step up.

  And her foot slipped.

  She lost her balance and flailed forward. She reached out for something, having a strange sensation as if everything was going in slow motion.

  And then her chin glanced hard against the wood of the steps and pain bloomed through her jaw and neck and skull.

  She cried out.

  A moment passed. The pain ebbed out and faded into a dull ache and she managed to stand up.

  She let out a soundless laugh—forced. If she hadn’t been so worried, it would be funny, wouldn’t it? Falling in the snow like something from a slapstick comedy?

  Carefully, she started up the steps again.

  She kept her balance this time, going more slowly.

  And then she felt that sensation again, and she was sure there was someone behind her. Positive.

  She whirled.

  Nothing there. The snow at the bottom of the steps, mussed from where she’d fallen. Patrick’s car. Her tracks in the snow leading back to her car, which was already starting to become covered in snow. The snow was really coming down.