by C. J. Lyons
Burroughs heaved his shoulder—either a dismissive shrug or a sigh, it was hard to tell. But then he said, “The tire iron wasn’t the murder weapon. It was planted there, wiped clean of any prints.”
Tommy brightened. “See? Why would I do that? Frame myself? And why use the tire iron from my own car when there was Charlotte’s car right there?”
“Yeah, we got that.”
“Not to mention how did I get Charlotte’s car there and back from Fiddler’s Knob to the river where it was found, and also get my car? Or did I call a cab from the middle of nowhere? Hitch a ride? It all makes no sense.”
“Maybe that’s what we’re meant to think,” Burroughs countered.
“Come on. You have to know I’m telling the truth. What are you looking up on your computer anyway?”
Burroughs scowled, but for once it wasn’t aimed at Tommy. “Another piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit.”
The desk clerk knocked at the door. Behind her stood Lucy and TK. “These folks said you were expecting them?”
“Yes, thanks.”
TK bounded past Lucy and Burroughs to hug Tommy. “You look terrible. What happened?”
“Guy tried to run Nellie and me off the road, then threatened us with a shotgun.”
Lucy moved to stand behind Burroughs and looked over his shoulder at his laptop. “What did you find on Putnam?”
Tommy looked up at that. “Who’s Putnam?”
Burroughs made an unhappy noise at the back of his throat. He turned his laptop around. “Ever see this guy?”
“I told you, with the rain, I couldn’t see—” He stared at the photo. It was a driver’s license belonging to a Walter Putnam. “Yes. He was at my house. This morning, taking pictures through the window. And I know that name.” He sank back in his chair. “No. I actually met him once. A few years ago. I had to tell him his baby had died.” He glanced at them in confusion. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Sarah is his wife,” TK said, practically bouncing with excitement.
“I never met the mother,” Tommy said, still lost in a fog. “I remember the baby. Such a tragedy. Parents brought him in themselves, didn’t wait for the paramedics. He’d been gone for a while—a long while. But the dad kept screaming at us to keep trying, wouldn’t let go. The mom… I never saw her, they took her up to OB, she was pretty sick herself.”
Then he jerked his head up. “Charlotte. Charlotte worked with her. At least that first day. Then she refused to talk to Charlotte, accused her of covering up my mistake, that I’d killed her baby. She had a raging infection, was feverish, out of her mind with grief. It wasn’t until months later when the insurance company told me about the lawsuit. It was dismissed almost immediately. That case, it was so sad. I always wondered, never knew what had happened to them.”
Burroughs pushed his chair back, gestured for Lucy to sit. It didn’t seem to be from any sense of chivalry, more like he just couldn’t sit still any longer. “Putnam is the witness who came forward, placed you with Sarah at Fiddler’s Knob right before her accident on Saturday.”
“If there was an accident,” Lucy said.
Burroughs nodded, his gaze aimed out the door. “I can’t believe…” He cut himself off. “Putnam also has a silver Jeep Cherokee registered to him. No wants or warrants, record’s clean.”
“Are we really thinking he and Sarah killed Charlotte?” TK said. “Why? To frame Tommy? Then why hide the body? Why all this charade a year later?”
Tommy couldn’t stop staring at Walter’s photo. It had been taken before his son’s death. In it, despite the harsh lighting of the DMV, the man looked happy, hopeful. One of those confident, got-the-world-in-my-pocket type of guys with everything to live for. Exactly the way Tommy had lived his life before Charlotte… “What do they want?”
“You,” Lucy answered. “They want you to suffer just as much as they have.”
A rush of cold flooded over Tommy as he shoved his chair back and reached for his phone. “Nellie.”
He stabbed the screen, dialing Peter’s cell then Gloria’s, then their landline. No answer.
Chapter 43
THE RAIN HAD slowed the tiniest bit, just enough to allow a dense fog to form on the mountain. Lucy drove with Tommy beside her, still trying to reach his in-laws. Poor guy was shivering despite her turning the heat to high. He didn’t even have a coat.
TK sat in the back seat, hunched forward, watching Burroughs’ taillights as they vanished then reappeared in the fog. The township only had one officer on patrol this time of night, but he was also heading this way, although it would take him twenty minutes or more.
“I’ve got a Remington 870 in the back,” Lucy told TK. “Fold the seat down beside you and you can reach it. Grab the flashlight from the pack as well.”
“Guns?” Tommy asked. “No. What if she has Nellie?”
“Exactly.” Lucy focused on the road ahead. There were no guardrails and the fog hid the steep drop-off down the side of the mountain, making each curve treacherous.
“I kinda understand Sarah,” TK said as she pulled the pump-action shotgun from the rear compartment and checked its chambers. “Post-partum psychosis combined with severe grief, I’d guess that could make anyone delusional. But her husband? Him I don’t get. How could he buy into her fantasy? Enough to kill?”
“I saw it once before,” Lucy answered. “A shared delusion. In a cult. They stole children from parents they considered unfit, raised them as their own. Really believed they were the children God meant them to have.”
“Folie à deux,” Tommy muttered. “That’s the clinical term.”
“Leave it to the French to have a name for it.” TK grabbed the Maglite from Lucy’s knapsack and slipped it into her pocket. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ll let Burroughs and the patrol officer clear the premises while we wait.” Lucy glanced at Tommy. His gaze was focused on his phone, tapping in a text. “Did you hear me, Tommy? We can’t go in right away. Not until the police are sure it’s safe.”
He said nothing, just shook his head.
She tried a different tactic. “How far to the turnoff?”
That got his attention. He looked up, eyes narrowed as he squinted through the fog, trying to get his bearings. “Just around the curve ahead.”
“And then how long is their drive? Before we get to the house?”
“Maybe half a mile.”
“TK, can you call Burroughs, let him know?”
TK nodded and pulled out her phone. Burroughs’ brake lights lit up as he slowed for the final hairpin turn. “He says the patrol car is behind us, just turned off 51. Wants us to hold off at the end of the drive.”
Before Lucy could reply, bright lights swung around the curve ahead, slashing through the fog, aiming right for Burroughs’ Impala. Instinctively she braked to give Burroughs more room to maneuver. Good thing, because a muzzle flash flared from the oncoming vehicle.
Even without TK’s phone being on speaker, Burroughs’ shout of “Shots fired!” echoed through the Subaru. Lucy braked even more. Burroughs steered the Impala away from the oncoming SUV and dangerously close to the drop-off. “It’s Putnam.”
“Does he have Nellie?” Tommy asked, craning his head to shout toward the phone TK held.
Burroughs didn’t answer right away. The SUV came close to hitting him and another flash from Putnam’s shotgun sparked off the rain. The fog closed in, giving the drama unfolding before them an intimate, almost claustrophobic surrealism.
Putnam’s SUV hurtled past the Impala and was now headed toward Lucy. Caught at the sharpest angle of the curve, there was nowhere for her to steer without risking the steep drop to her right. Ahead of her, Burroughs was able to regain control of his vehicle, spinning into a U-turn that almost rammed him into the mountain.
Lucy focused on the bright headlights aiming toward her. Instead of braking, giving Putnam longer to steer toward her, she hit the accelerator.
Gravel flew as her two outside tires went off the pavement and onto the narrow berm, but the all-wheel drive kept the Subaru steady. She yanked the wheel, steering directly at Putnam, counting on Putnam’s survival instincts to make him reflexively turn away.
The maneuver worked—almost too well. Putnam’s SUV screeched past them, swerving erratically as he fought to regain control, but now Lucy was across the center line and headed straight into Burroughs’ path. She yanked the wheel back to the right, gave the accelerator another nudge as they came out of the curve, and breathed again once Burroughs flew by, the Impala so close that if her window had been open she could have reached out and touched it.
“Where’s Nellie?” Tommy asked again, apparently unaware of the drama unfolding around him.
TK had one hand gripping the back of Tommy’s headrest, the other holding the phone. “You okay, Burroughs?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t see who was in the vehicle with Putnam, damn fog. I’m hanging up to call the patrolman. We’ll pursue Putnam.”
“Okay,” Lucy said into TK’s phone. “We’ll wait for you at the farm.”
Now that the danger was past, she slowed the car and squinted through the fog, searching for the turnoff to the drive leading to the farm.
“There.” Tommy pointed to a faint blip of red that caught her headlights. Reflector lights marking a mailbox and the end of the drive.
As she turned down the drive, the fog enveloped them in an impenetrable cloud of white. More reflectors marked the curves of the drive, but otherwise she was driving blind. Suddenly the house loomed up before them and she hit her brakes, coming to a stop much closer to the house than she’d intended.
TK’s seat belt clicked as she released it. Lucy undid her own and reached across Tommy to take a second flashlight from the glove compartment. “Tommy, you wait here. Do you understand?”
“No. What if Nellie’s in there, hurt?” He fumbled with his own seat belt. Lucy closed her hand over his and squeezed until he raised his gaze to meet hers.
“You will wait. Do you understand?”
He stared at her blankly.
“It won’t do Nellie any good if you get hurt—and you might endanger her.” Lucy kept her tone calm and steady, hoping to break through his panic. Finally he took a breath and nodded. “Wait here.”
“Okay.” He undid his seat belt. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
“In the back. You can access it from TK’s seat. Do not leave the car.”
“Right.”
TK hopped out, wielding the shotgun. Lucy followed her, closing the door carefully—not that anyone could hear it over the sound of the rain. She watched Tommy climb between the front seats to the rear.
“Visibility sucks,” TK said, stating the obvious. “How do you want to do this?”
“We stay together.”
“Good idea. I’d prefer not to risk friendly fire.”
Lucy drew her Beretta and studied the house. It sat at an angle, probably to take advantage of views that were invisible in the fog. The garage in front of them was to the left-hand side of what appeared to be the front. She could make out the faint waver of light—windows.
“Let’s check out the front, see if we have a line of sight inside. No lights, not yet.” Lucy didn’t want to make them an easy target for anyone on the other side of those windows.
TK took lead, Lucy placed one palm on her shoulder, and together they marched toward the front of the house, staying close to the ground, using the shrubs as cover. They both left their hoods down—better to maintain a wide field of vision for what little they could see between the dark, the rain, and the fog. Water sluiced down Lucy’s collar and matted her hair to the back of her neck, but she ignored everything except the area surrounding them, scanning the dark for danger.
The wind picked up, swirling the fog into thick tendrils that almost appeared as human figures racing through the night. TK startled at something, and Lucy spun with her to take aim. Silhouetted against the fog was a horse. Lucy felt TK release her breath as they returned to their slow advance.
They reached the corner of the house—not a ninety-degree angle, but wider, almost curving—and a wall of floor-to-roof windows appeared. There were a few shimmers of light inside, small circles braving the storm. Interior lamps. Another step and they could see a living room, with a fireplace along one wall, an armoire, sofa, and chairs. A loft area ran along the back wall, extending past an arch into a darkened foyer.
Another step closer and she felt TK jerk to a halt. Lucy looked past TK’s shoulder and spotted two bodies lying on the floor, partially hidden by the two club chairs. One, a woman, was moving, trying to help the motionless form of a man, but her hands were bound behind her and her mouth was duct-taped.
TK’s gait remained steady as they finished passing the window, staying low and out of sight of anyone on the inside by pushing against the shrubs.
“No sign of anyone else,” TK whispered. “But I don’t like that loft above the inside wall. Good sniper perch with the front door right there.”
“Once we’re in, I’ll go right into the dining room, you take the stairs and second floor.” Usually Lucy would prefer to stick together, but with at least one injured man, they needed to quickly secure the premises and sweep it for any obvious danger.
“Roger that.”
They reached the front door. It stood ajar. TK waited, listening, then raised her shotgun. Lucy tapped her shoulder to indicate that she was ready. TK pushed through the door into the dark interior and silently jogged toward the staircase while Lucy hugged the wall to the right, crossing into the black void of the dining room.
She found the light switch, stretched out as far away from it as possible, then flicked it on as she continued moving. The room held a large table, chairs for eight, a china cabinet, and a buffet. She scanned the area under the table and behind the china cabinet, the only places large enough for someone to hide, and continued back into the kitchen. Another table, this one more rustic, and a pantry that she quickly checked with her flashlight. She flipped open the lower cabinet doors too. No one.
As she circled through the passage at the rear of the foyer, behind the stairs TK had gone up, she was in time to see TK jogging down the steps. “Clear upstairs.”
“Clear down here.”
Together they moved into the living room. The woman had managed to get the man’s head propped up against an ottoman. He was bleeding from a deep cut to his scalp.
“Go get Tommy,” Lucy ordered as she pulled her folding knife and began slicing Gloria and Peter Callabrese free of the duct tape that restrained them.
Gloria gasped as the tape pulled at the skin around her mouth. “There were two of them. A man and a woman. They took Nellie.”
Chapter 44
TOMMY WAS USED to waiting. Myriad lab tests and X-rays. The anticipation of a trauma rolling in. But in the ER, he was in control. If the labs were late, he’d use his diagnostic skills to reassess the patient and decide on a course of action. When he and his team waited for a trauma, they prepared, rehearsed, and examined all scenarios, leaving them ready to jump into action.
But this. This was pure torture. Not knowing what was happening in the house. Were they alive or dead? Injured? Was Nellie there? Was she okay? What would he do if she wasn’t?
He busied himself inventorying Lucy’s emergency supplies. She had a nice stash in her go-bag including tourniquets, chest seals, trauma shears, several knives, duct tape, hemostatic agents to stop bleeding from open wounds, pressure wraps, even large-bore needles that could be used to create an airway or decompress a pneumothorax. The FBI must have sent her through a Basic Trauma Life Support course, which meant he’d have an extra pair of hands. And TK was also a certified trauma medic, so personnel wouldn’t be an issue—once he got inside and saw what he was dealing with.
The windows had fogged over. He wiped the nearest one clean with his palm, and the lights at the front of the house made the fog glow
eerily. He’d just about decided to disobey Lucy and join them in the house when he spotted movement. TK was running around the corner and beckoning for him to join them.
As soon as he leapt from the car, clutching Lucy’s knapsack to his chest, the rain slapped him, cold and stinging. He raced to TK. “Is Nellie all right?”
“She’s not in there.”
He faltered, his feet slipping on the wet flagstones. For a moment his vision blanked, erasing TK, the house, this moment from eternity. But then he regained control and continued forward.
“There’s no sign that they hurt her,” TK continued as they reached the front door. “But your father-in-law is pretty bad off.”
She led him inside to the living room. Both Peter and Gloria appeared bruised. Gloria was favoring her left arm—he wasn’t sure if it was dislocated or maybe a broken clavicle—while Peter was ashen, his skin pale against the dark blood matted at his scalp. His breathing was rapid and jugular veins distended.
“It’s not the scalp wound,” Tommy told them as he knelt beside Peter and took his pulse both at his neck and wrist. “It’s his heart. Gloria, is he on any medication?”
She didn’t answer; her gaze was bouncing around the room. TK said, “I’ll go check the medicine cabinets.”
“Gloria, did you hit your head? Or anywhere besides your shoulder?” Lucy asked, crouching in front of the older woman. She turned to Tommy. “I think she’s in shock.”
“No,” Gloria said slowly. “They didn’t hit me. But when he pulled my arms behind me I felt something pop. But Peter, they hit Peter. They didn’t have to, he wasn’t fighting back. Why did they do that?” She jerked and glanced behind her as if startled. “Where’s Nellie?”
“You said they took her,” Lucy said gently.
Gloria frowned. Then her tears began to flow. “I’m sorry, Tommy. We couldn’t—”
“We’ll find her,” Tommy said with determination. He hoped Burroughs and the other police officer were careful when they stopped Putnam. Thought about calling Burroughs to tell him Nellie was in the SUV, but decided the detective was already factoring that into things. “What medicine is Peter on?”