by C. J. Lyons
“We fell asleep,” he said.
She reached for him with half-closed eyes, the way a lover would reach for their partner.
Gloria made a noise and stalked out, followed by Peter. Tommy pushed Sarah’s hand away and scooted down on the couch, beyond her reach. He knuckled his eyes, still not quite awake, but took his hands down when he realized there could only be one reason why TK, Lucy, and Burroughs would be here together.
“You found her. You found Sarah’s past,” he said excitedly. “Does she have family?”
Sarah’s eyes popped fully open and she sat up. “What did you find?”
To Tommy’s surprise, Lucy touched TK’s elbow and nodded to Sarah, giving a silent command. TK moved forward. “Sarah, why don’t we wait in the kitchen?”
Confusion clouded Sarah’s face, but she stood and followed TK from the room. Lucy took her place on the couch, facing Tommy.
“We need to talk,” she started, and he realized he’d been wrong, so very wrong.
The world grew dark around the edges, and for a moment he wondered if he was still asleep. He shook his head, trying to ward off her words, yearning to retreat back behind the protective shield of denial. Once the words were said—words he’d dreamed a thousand times, words that colored his every thought throughout the day—once spoken, those words could not be unsaid. His glance ricocheted from Lucy to Burroughs. Even the detective wore a mask of sympathy.
“You found Charlotte.” The words tasted of ash. They sounded foreign, like another language.
“We think so.” Lucy’s tone was soft and gentle. She’d done this before, he could tell, because it was the same tone he’d used in the ER when he had to give families bad news.
Reality crashed down on him. Charlotte had run away, hidden, hadn’t wanted to be found—by him. Tears choked his throat. She’d abandoned him and Nellie. She’d never loved them.
“Where is she?” he asked, the words feeling sharp, painful. “Is she all right?”
Burroughs made a low noise in the back of his throat and stepped back, leaving Lucy to take the lead. Lucy hesitated, didn’t meet Tommy’s eyes. And he knew.
Cold slapped him, stealing his breath—the truth asserting its cruel grip, tearing away his final shroud of denial. “She’s not alive?”
“No,” she confirmed. “We found skeletal remains that might be hers. It’s too soon to tell. We’ll need to finish searching, get the forensic anthropologist and medical examiner…”
He nodded. He knew the routine. He also knew she was spelling things out both to give him time to process and because a mind numbed by shock could not retain information.
“Where?” he asked. “How did she—did the woman—die?” Maybe it wasn’t Charlotte. They’d been wrong before—like in December when they’d found a body in the Ohio River, ruined their Christmas until they confirmed it wasn’t Charlotte. “Why do you think it’s… her?”
Something in him refused to use his wife’s name to reference a corpse.
“You were with Sarah today at Fiddler’s Knob. Had you ever been there before?”
Her question puzzled him. “I think so. A few years ago—Nellie was young enough I carried her in a baby backpack gizmo. Charlotte wanted to see the mountain laurel in bloom. But we were too early—late frost or something.”
He knew he was rambling but couldn’t help it. Anything to delay dealing with reality. No matter how much he wanted answers, an equal part of him desperately wanted to avoid the truth. Because everything would change once he knew. Not just for him, but for Nellie.
“I remember thinking today when Sarah and I were there, how much Charlotte would have loved it. There’s a tunnel, twenty feet high, made from mountain laurel. It’s so beautiful.”
Lucy and Burroughs exchanged a glance. “Have you been there more recently?”
“No. Not until today.” He sat up, stretching his fingers into his pants pocket—no, the charm was in his jacket. “Wait.” He left the couch and went to the coat rack beside the front door where his jacket hung, fished into the pockets. He emerged with the tattered leaf and its treasure. “We found this. Today.”
He held the leaf and charm on an outstretched palm for their inspection. Burroughs reached for it and Tommy flinched, hating the idea of anyone else touching something that he’d imagined had a connection to Charlotte.
“It was in one of Sarah’s photos,” Burroughs said.
“Right. It looks a lot like one Charlotte had—I think. Of course, it couldn’t be. Look how clean it is. No way it was on that mountain for a year.” Hope infused his tone, turning his statement into a question. A question he did not want answered.
Lucy slid her phone from her pocket while Burroughs took both the charm and the leaf from Tommy. To Tommy’s surprise, the detective pulled an evidence bag from his own pocket and slid them inside.
“No. Charlotte can’t be—” His voice faltered and his legs began to swim out from under him. He slumped down into a chair before he fell.
Lucy crouched beside him, holding her phone. The image was blurry until he blinked a few times, bringing it into focus. “Does this ring look familiar?”
Her voice had dropped even lower. Soothing, comforting, and preparing him for the worst. He glanced away from the image immediately, but it wasn’t fast enough.
“No.” The syllable emerged not as a word, but a primal warning. “No.”
“Look again. Please.”
He shook his head, looking past her to the stairs leading up to where Nellie slept. Blissfully unaware. How would he tell her? How could he tell her?
“No.” The word lost its magic, and somehow his gaze returned to Lucy’s phone—with its ugly, disastrous, heart-breaking, life-ending image of despair. “It’s the ring I gave Charlotte when I proposed. It belonged to my grandmother.”
Then he paused and waved his own words aside, denying them as traitors. “Maybe. It could be. Hard to tell with all the dirt. Who knows? There could be thousands of those rings sold every day in tourist traps across Ireland.”
Lucy nodded slowly, as if willing to grant him the asylum of denial for one last night. “We’ll get it cleaned up, show it to you again.”
She stood, looked to Burroughs.
The detective did not look pleased. “I’ll be back tomorrow with any more information we have. In the meantime, I’d ask you not to talk to the press, and stay here where we can find you if we need you.”
Tommy didn’t even bother nodding his agreement. Numbness had overtaken him. It was as if he floated above his body, watching the three of them play out their little drama on a stage. Nothing to do with his reality. He sat there, hands between his knees, head bowed, unable to look up at Lucy and Burroughs. They were too real, with their evidence bags and photos and tales of bodies found. How he wished he was still asleep, Charlotte’s arms wrapped around him, never letting go.
“Did she—” He hated himself for asking, but he had to know. “Did the body, the woman… Was it an accident? How did she die?”
Again Burroughs made that noise like a dog scenting a threat. Leaving Lucy to answer. “We’re not sure yet.” She touched Tommy’s shoulder, and he suddenly felt very small, like a child sitting in church, avoiding the gaze of an angry, all-knowing God, his sins revealed for all to see. “But it wasn’t an accident.”
Chapter 26
LUCY DROVE TK and Sarah back to Beacon Falls. The drive felt longer than normal as all three of them sat in silence, each enveloped in her own thoughts. Lucy was relieved when at last she dropped them off at the house and Xander, Valencia’s assistant who ran the household, met them at the door.
As she drove away, she called Nick. “I’ll be late, don’t wait for me.”
“Your amnesia victim? Anything I can help with?”
“Not her—Tommy’s missing wife.” She filled him in on Charlotte’s case and the events of the night, using the opportunity to organize the facts in her own mind.
“Is he a s
uspect?”
“Of course he is.” TK had asked the same thing. Was Lucy not being objective enough? Why were people questioning her ability to work the case as a neutral party?
“But he’s also on your team, and you feel protective.” As always, Nick nailed it.
“So you think I should stop working the case? I mean, it’s not as if I have any jurisdiction.” Hell, she had no police powers at all—a fact she was still getting used to.
“No. I think the opposite. You should work the case. You’re in a unique position to search avenues the police might ignore.”
“You mean if they get too focused on Tommy.” They both knew that one of the pitfalls of any investigation was investing in one narrative, developing tunnel vision, blocking out any evidence that didn’t fit that theory of the crime.
“That, and you have a chance to work an angle no one else seems to be investigating. The victim’s point of view.”
Of course. In the FBI, starting with the victim had always been Lucy’s opening salvo when jumping into an investigation. But here she’d gotten distracted—by helping Sarah, by worrying about Tommy’s feelings, by Burroughs and his obvious suspicion of one of her team members.
“Have I told you lately that you’re brilliant?”
She practically heard his smile over the airwaves. “Wake me when you get home,” he told her. “I want to hear everything. Good luck.”
It was almost nine o’clock and traffic was light as she drove back to Tommy’s house. She knocked softly, but he had the door open almost immediately, as if he’d been expecting her.
“Any news?” he asked, his face pinched with anxiety.
“Sorry, not yet. Can we talk?”
He thought about it, then moved aside to allow her in. His movements were stiff, guarded.
“I noticed your in-laws’ car is gone—did they take Nellie to stay with them?” They both knew that it wouldn’t take long for the press to learn of the discovery of the body at Fiddler’s Knob and connect it to Charlotte.
“No, she’s already asleep. They’re coming back in the morning and will take her home then.” He glanced up at the ceiling, whether praying or searching out his daughter’s room, she wasn’t sure. “Hopefully we can shield her from all this. But…”
“Sooner or later you’ll need to tell her.”
“After we know for sure. We’ve been down this road before. First, when they found her car at that overlook beside the Yough and dragged the river. Took a week before they gave up. And since then, every unidentified female body in the area… it’s like holding your breath when you’re drowning. You can’t tell if it’s better to let the water in or deny it.”
He sank into the couch, hands propped on his knees, face buried in his palms. Silence filled the room, but Lucy didn’t rush it. Instead, she took a seat on the chair closest to him and waited.
Finally he scrubbed his face against his palms and looked up, eyes bleary with despair. “What if it is… what will I… how will I tell Nellie?”
Lucy had no good answer, so she didn’t try to offer a poor one. She sat in silence, giving him time. After the pain had eased from his face, she said, “Tell me about Charlotte.”
He jerked up at that. “I’ve already told the police everything.”
“I don’t care about what you’ve told the police. I want to know her. Tell me about her. How did you meet?”
Tommy simply sat there, hands hanging between his knees, staring into nothing. But then slowly, very slowly, the faintest hint of a smile lit his face. He shook his head, shrugged, and met her gaze. “Best damn day of my life.”
“Tell me.”
“July first. Most dangerous day of the year. Because that’s the day all the new interns start work and new residents and fellows. So you can imagine that July fourth isn’t a whole lot safer. My first week running the peds ER as a fellow. I was so damn hot to trot, to prove myself—especially since I didn’t do my residency here, so none of the nurses or first responders knew or trusted me. Anyway, we get this kid. Five-year-old. Depressed skull fracture, epidural hematoma—that’s a small bleed between the skull and the brain. And a big old goose egg on his scalp to go along with it. Dad brought him in, saying he was washing the car while the kid was washing the puppy, and next thing he knew the kid had the goose egg, but the kid didn’t fall or anything. Then the kid started acting goofy and Dad freaked, brought him in. Good thing—for the kid. But me and the nurses, we’re looking at Dad.”
“You thought he hurt his son?”
“Sure. I mean, could you ask for a more vague story? A puppy? Seriously? But Dad never budged. Kid was already up in the OR with the neurosurgeons, so we couldn’t ask him for confirmation. And no way in hell was I going to let a possible child abuser walk, not when the nurses are telling me to call social services and I’m trying to look good to them.”
“Charlotte. She was the social worker?”
He nodded. “Charlotte was the social worker. Comes down, fire in her eyes like Joan of Arc, ready to defend and protect—until she sits down with Dad and listens, really listens to his story. She comes out from talking to him and I can see she’s not at all convinced, so I get all high and mighty about how we have a duty to report any suspicion of abuse. And she… she just laughs so hard, she can’t even talk. Which, of course, only makes me more mad and eager to prove that I’m right.”
“What happened?”
“She calms down long enough to invite me to join her and the dad. We all sit down in the family room, knee to knee, me seething about having to put up with this bullshit from a child abuser. When she puts her hand on my knee and suddenly there’s this feeling of calm like I’d never felt before. Like her hand touching me was something meant to be. And then she asks Dad to show me a picture of the puppy.” His smile turned wistful as he gazed past her. “It was a Lab that was only eight months old but probably weighed at least a hundred pounds. With a tail on it that you could only imagine. Easily enough force from that tail wagging to crack a skinny little kid’s skull if it hit the right place. Which it did.”
“So Dad was saved, the kid was okay, and—”
“And Charlotte let me take her out to dinner so I could apologize.” He shook his head, his expression growing serious. “Ironic. We got together because I believed the evidence more than the truth, and now everyone’s looking at me like I’m a monster for the same reason.”
Chapter 27
TOMMY WOKE TO Nellie’s frantic shaking, almost rolling off the couch. After spending most of the night talking with Lucy, he hadn’t had the energy to climb upstairs to bed. Not that he’d gotten much sleep, although it had come more easily than it had in months. Something about reliving the good times, talking about them out loud, had given his mind a chance to rest.
“Daddy, Daddy,” Nellie whispered in a voice so loud it would have wakened a sleeping elephant. “There’s strange men looking at me.”
That brought Tommy fully awake and up to a sitting position. “What? Where?”
Nellie tugged him to his feet, gripping his hand fiercely. She wore her favorite nightgown, the purple one with the yellow bananas and lime green monkeys, and was clutching Magpie, her tattered rag doll. She pulled him to the bay window in the dining room, the one without curtains because it overlooked their backyard with its trees and the creek that ran along the property boundary.
Two men pressed their faces against the glass. One held a phone up, and the other a large, professional-looking video camera. When they spotted Tommy, the one with the camera began to pound on the window and shout.
“Dr. Worth, do you know about the body—”
Tommy pulled Nellie back into the living room before she could hear the rest. At least he hoped it was in time. “How about you run upstairs and get dressed?”
“Who are those men? Why are they so mad at us?” She trembled, her lip pulling in and out.
“They aren’t mad at you, sweetheart.” He folded her into his arms. �
��I’ll never let them hurt you. I’ll never let anyone hurt you. You know that, right?”
Finally she nodded, her head bobbing against his chest. He kissed the top of her head and scooted her toward the staircase. “Get dressed and I’ll get rid of those men.”
She ran up without a word, but stopped at the top banister and looked down at him anxiously. “Daddy, will you be okay? They won’t hurt you, will they?”
“I’ll be fine,” he called back, fighting to keep his fury out of his voice. “You might hear me shout, but it’s just to scare them away.”
“Are they monsters?”
“No, sweetie. They’re reporters. Not as scary, but harder to get rid of.”
That seemed to satisfy her because she turned and left for her room.
Tommy went to the door, gathering his strength. Through the skylight he saw a local news van parked on his front lawn. The early birds, the ones who woke, ate, and slept to the sound of their police scanners. Others would be here soon, he knew.
He’d learned the hard way that dealing with the press was much like dealing with a recalcitrant toddler: you needed to set firm boundaries, ignore their tantrums, and never negotiate with terrorists. He hauled in a few deep breaths, fatigue buzzing through every cell, straightened his posture, and opened the door.
Before he could do or say anything, the cameraman from the bay window was there—a hyena scenting prey—joined by a woman dressed in a suit. The cameraman turned a high-powered light on, shining it directly in Tommy’s eyes, making him wince and squint—all the better to make him look either pitiful or menacing, depending on how they decided to edit things later.
“This is private property and you’re trespassing,” he said in a level voice, swallowing back his anger. “Also, there is a restraining order in effect, so if you don’t leave in the next thirty seconds, I’m calling both the police and my lawyer. I believe the judge set a fine of fifty thousand dollars?”