Stain of Guilt

by Brandilyn Collins

  Jenna shot me a look of fierce pride. Fine. If she wanted to infer courage from my speech, she could go right ahead. But in truth I felt none at all. I just wanted my children safe.

  “Okay, Annie.” Sergeant Delft flexed his shoulders. “We certainly support you in that. As we said before, we’ll be happy to have your drawing just as soon as we can get it. Now let me tell you something.” His words fell even more sternly. The nearness of his twenty-year quarry had clearly raised his hackles. “With all these gambles, Bland is bound to slip up soon. And we’ll be there when he does. You hear? We will be there.”

  My sister made a little noise in her throat. She didn’t appear to be buying it. “So exactly what are you going to do for us right now, while Annie is finishing the drawing? She needs protection, and so do the kids. I think you should have somebody watching her at all times. If this drawing’s so all-fired important to you, you’ll find the resources.”

  “Jenna.” I ducked my head.

  “Don’t Jenna me, Annie. After all you’ve done for them the past year?”

  “Wait.” Chetterling held up a hand. He looked to Jenna. “I understand your feelings. Your sister has done a lot for our department, and we value her highly. We’ve never had the kind of manpower it would take to run three shifts of men for watching someone twenty-four hours a day. All the same, I am going to stick my neck out and make this happen for Annie.”

  “I’ll take a shift,” Delft put in.

  “Good, thanks. Let me think a minute.” Chetterling rubbed his jaw. “Okay. Annie, you said you’re going to do the drawing as soon as you can. I’m sure it’ll help to have some peace of mind while you work. How much time is it going to take to finish?”

  I closed my eyes, calculating. “I think by end of the afternoon tomorrow. Sooner, if I work late tonight.”

  “Great. So here’s what we’ll do. For the next twenty-four hours, while you work, we will have an unmarked sheriff’s car watch your house. It will follow you when you take the kids to and from school. I’ll get somebody on you soon. Delft, you can take over around dinnertime. And I’ll probably end up doing the all-night duty. It’s not going to be anything fancy, no SWAT team hiding behind tinted windows in some big van parked across the street. But you will have a deputy intent on watching you and your property.”

  I hardly knew what to say. What Chetterling had said was true—the Sheriff’s Department didn’t have the resources for such a thing. Especially when they’d need every person available to look for Bland. No one but Chetterling would have offered this to me. “Thank you.” I licked my lips. “But one thing. With a car following me around, even if it is unmarked, the kids will have to know what’s happening, right?”

  “Not necessarily. It can be parked across the street and down a ways. And when you’re on the road and at school, we can stay at a distance. However, the subject of what to tell your kids is an important one.”

  “Do you think I should?”

  Chetterling bounced one heel off the floor. “That’s up to you. But I would say yes, tell them. They’re old enough to handle it. You know how kids are. If they sense something’s going on and you deny it, they’re still going to be frightened. But they won’t know what to do about it. I’d rather they understand the need to be extra careful right now. No walking down the street, or off school grounds. Your whole family should be on high alert until this thing is over.”

  I nodded, sensing Chetterling’s experience as a parent. As much as we’d worked together, I knew little of his personal life. Only that he’d been divorced for a long time and he’d raised a niece after his sister, the girl’s mother, had been killed in a car accident.

  “You have a gun in the house?” Delft made eye contact with Jenna.

  “Yes. A two-inch barrel Chief Special. And I know how to use it.”

  “Fine. That’s a good firearm.” He looked to me. “Annie? You know how to use it?”

  I winced, avoiding the I-told-you-so expression on my sister’s face.“No. I don’t know anything about guns. I hate guns.”

  “I understand, but it’s time you learned.” Chetterling placed his palms on his thighs. “Delft’s right, that Smith & Wesson is a good, safe firearm. It’s a little smaller than others. Holds five bullets instead of six. It’s called a double-action revolver, meaning you don’t have to cock it to discharge it. In fact when it is cocked, it’s got a hair trigger, and you can too easily shoot someone by mistake.”

  Jenna nodded. “I never cock it.”

  Chetterling kept his eyes fixed on me. “I know right now you’ve got to work on your drawing. But when this is all over, you borrow your sister’s gun, and I’ll take you out to the firing range and teach you how to use it. Once you get used to a firearm, you won’t be so scared of it. You’ll see that it’s just a tool like anything else.”

  A tool? A screwdriver was a tool. A gun was a killing machine. My mind whisked back to the previous summer, and I shuddered.

  Chetterling gave me a half-smile. “Enough of that for now. Let’s get back to your children. I will be alerting the school principals that there is a safety issue with Kelly and Stephen. That way, they can watch the kids on the inside. When you take them to school, don’t leave until you see them disappear into the building. And, again, we’ll have a car watching too.”

  “Okay, except . . . we carpool with Erin Willit. Is that a problem?”

  “It’s okay if Erin rides with you. But I’d think for right now you’d want to be the one driving back and forth rather than letting another parent do it.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “I’ll do it, Annie,” Jenna said.“We’ll have to talk to Dave, let him know what’s happening. But if you stay up half the night working, you shouldn’t have to worry about getting up early to get the kids to school. I’ll just make sure the alarm’s on when we leave.”

  “Another thing.” Chetterling looked to my sister. “You mentioned to Sergeant Delft about a phone tap. We can’t really do a phone tap like you see in the movies, but I do think it’s a good idea to put in a recorder and a trace.” He turned to Delft. “What do you think, Justin?”

  “Agreed. Now that Bland’s getting sloppy, this might be the way to catch him.”

  My shoulders slumped. A phone tap—in my house. Or a trace, or whatever. Wouldn’t that still mean every call would be monitored? Not that I lived some wild existence, but the thought of strangers listening to my conversations was less than pleasant.

  Delft noticed my body language. “Of course, it will only be with your permission.”

  As much as I didn’t like the idea, what choice did I have? “I have two lines. One for business, and the house line. It’s the house number Bland called.”

  “Then that’s the one we’d put a trace on.”

  “What exactly would it entail?”

  The sergeant shifted on the couch. “For the recorder all we need to do is put a suction cup on your phone—say the one in your office—and set up a recording device. Just make sure when a call comes in that you answer from that location. Then if it’s Bland calling, you push a button on the recorder. It’s that simple.”

  “And the phone trace?”

  “We don’t even have to come into your house to set that up. We could have it in place probably by the end of the afternoon. We’d need to get back to the office and fax our report with a case number to the special agent at the phone company. He’ll put the trace on the line from his end. That doesn’t mean calls are monitored, understand. It does mean that every call you receive will be traced to its origin. We’ll get the actual phone number. So if you receive a call from Bland, first, you’d want to record it. Second, as soon as you hang up, you’d want to call us immediately so we can send a car to the location of origin. Better yet, if your sister’s home, have her call us with a cell phone while you keep Bland on the line. That’ll give us all the more lead time to get to him.”

  “Okay, that’s fine.” I spread my hands. “Do it.
”

  “All right.” Chetterling stood. “We’ll send a technician with the recorder back here as soon as possible.”

  Jenna and I walked the men to the door.

  “Oh.” Delft stopped on his way out. “Two things. First, I called the producer of American Fugitive. Told him we have reason to believe Bland’s in the area. The show’s being filmed now, except for the part when they display your update and give Bland’s statistics. The host will mention that Bland has recently been around Redding.”

  “Good. Thanks for telling me.”

  “Second, I’ve still got guys knocking on doors around the Roses by Redding flower shop. I’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

  “Thank you so much.” Delft didn’t have to keep me informed. I was grateful for his thoughtfulness.

  “You bet.”

  The sergeant strode down my front walk, a man on a mission. Chetterling hung back, one hand on the door frame. “The technician can answer any more questions you might have about the phone. Just remember you need to tell your kids not to answer any calls for now.”

  “Can he be out of here before school gets out?” I clasped my arms, chilled. “This is going to be hard with Stephen. He won’t be able to keep quiet about everything. Can’t you just see him, telling all his friends, ‘Hey, man, the Sheriff’s got a trace on our phone.’”

  Chetterling lowered his chin.“How’s he doing, by the way?”

  “Not good.”

  “More trouble with drugs?”

  “I . . . think so.”

  The detective pulled in a breath. “You know my offer from last year still stands. If you ever need any help . . .”

  “Thanks.” I gave him a grateful smile. “So much. I just hope I don’t have to take you up on it.”

  “Yeah.” He straightened, pulling the all-business mask over his expression. “All right. You know where I am. And I’ll have that car on you this afternoon. He’ll follow you from here to the school. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The detective clumped down my porch steps. Jenna closed and bolted the door.

  I slumped against the wall. “I’m going to have to tell the kids, aren’t I. Maybe not about the phone trace, but about everything else.”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid so, Annie.”

  I surveyed my feet, wishing for the millionth time I wasn’t a single mother. When I felt so overwhelmed like this, I just wanted to strangle Vic.

  “Go on now.” Jenna would not let me descend into depression. “You’ve got work to do.”

  My feet dragged as I crossed the great room. Somehow I would have to regain my concentration.

  And somehow I would have to greet Kelly after school without collapsing into sobs.

  Chapter 19

  Little good my plans for working that afternoon did me. I couldn’t concentrate. Mostly I sat at my desk, staring at Bland’s picture—the features I’d come to hate. When I could focus my thoughts, I saw him as he would be today. I visualized the droopier eyelids and mouth, the less defined jawline. But my mental projector constantly kicked into gear, flashing scenes of him stalking the school, watching Kelly as she got out of the SUV.

  To think that he’d been that close to her.

  More than once I shoved his photo away, disgusted, only to pull it back. I hated his face; I couldn’t get enough of his face. At least until I completed the update. Then I’d just as soon never look at it again.

  When I wasn’t bound up in Bland, I worried about whether or not to tell the kids what was happening. Practicality said I should. As Chetterling noted, Kelly and Stephen needed to be extra careful in the next few days. And they surely wouldn’t comply if I didn’t give them a reason. Especially Stephen.

  Anxiety voted I shouldn’t tell them. Stephen would hide his fear, whispering the news in morbid fascination to his friends. Kelly would hide nothing. She just plain wouldn’t sleep at night. Nor would she keep it from Erin. And really, she couldn’t. Right now I wouldn’t allow Kelly to so much as walk across the street alone to Erin’s house, nor even allow the girls to walk back together. How would I explain that to Erin—without the truth?

  And if Erin knew, Dave would have to know. I bent over the desk, feeling almost physically sick at the thought. How could I put the two of them through fear again, after what they’d endured? Ten months after seeing her mother murdered in their home, Erin was just beginning to heal. How far back psychologically might this push her? What would it do to Dave?

  What a horrible neighbor I’d turned out to be. Worse than someone in a Stephen King novel.

  Face it, Annie, you’ll never get over your guilt about Lisa’s death.

  Then again, why should you?

  The technician from the Sheriff’s Department arrived, recording device in hand. I hung back, hitting my knuckles against my chin, as Jenna and I watched him perform his duty. Afterward he explained the details and what we should do if a call from Bland came. In quick sequence my mental projector flashed scenes of my hearing Bland’s voice, punching on the recorder, then of Delft and Chetterling, leaning over the tape, listening intently to the rasp of Bland’s words, my hitched breathing . . .

  By the time the technician left, my nerves zinged with the sense of privacy defiled.

  I could not wait to see Bill Bland in jail.

  At three o’clock, Jenna and I headed out the door to pick up the kids. We spoke little in the car, except that she read my mind. Naturally.

  “You still haven’t decided how much to tell them, have you?”

  “No.”

  “When are you going to figure it out?”

  “When I see them.”

  “Oh.” She pondered my answer. “How will you know then?”

  “I won’t. It’s just that I’ll be out of time. So I’ll have to decide.”

  “I see.”

  Smart as Jenna was, she didn’t know everything. She wasn’t a mom. She could not understand what I was going through.

  Students spilled out the doors as I pulled into the parking lot at the middle school. Even knowing that Kelly was all right, even seeing the unmarked sheriff’s car tail us from home, I could not keep my eyes from darting about, searching for a sign of Bland. If I saw the man, I would know him. Something told me I’d feel him first.

  My cell phone was on, with direct access to our watchful deputy if I noticed anything amiss.

  “There she is!” A ball of fire rolled up my throat, tears springing to my eyes. What had ever made me think I could hide my emotions from my daughter?

  I hit the button to pop the trunk, then aimed an eagle-eye stare at the girls as they chattered their way toward the car.

  “You okay?” Jenna sat forward, hands on the dashboard, watching the girls with equal intent.

  Strange, how emotions can morph. Within a second my raw relief skidded into anger. This was my daughter. And her friend, who’d been through so much. Nobody, and I mean nobody, was going to threaten these girls. “Yeah.” The words ran low and determined. “I’m fine.”

  Through sheer willpower I stayed in the car instead of jumping out to bear-hug Kelly as she and Erin threw their backpacks into the trunk. Erin opened one rear car door and Kelly, the other. My daughter slid into the backseat with a “Hi, Mom,” took one look at my face, and hesitated.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I managed a shrug. “We’ll talk when we get home, okay?”

  Kelly looked at me askance. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Should you be?”

  Erin pulled down one side of her mouth, glancing from me to Kelly.

  “No.”

  “Good. Then you’re not.”

  Erin flicked a look at the ceiling. “Parents.”

  At the high school, Stephen scuffed out the door with his usual troop of baggy-pantsed, slumping friends. The sun shone on his scalp just right, lighting a patch of skin beneath his spiked hair. He reached the car, noticed his aunt in the front seat, and scowled.

 
“Well, greetings to you too,” Jenna muttered, but all I wanted to do was hug my son. I didn’t care at that moment that he was self-centered and negative and bent on his own destruction. At least he was safe.

  On the way home I checked the rearview mirror countless times. The unmarked car kept a fair distance, but never did I lose sight of it. When we reached home, Jenna stood outside the garage, watching Erin walk across the street and into her house. Kelly frowned, eyeing her aunt, then threw a questioning look at me.

  God, please help me tell them.

  Before Stephen could disappear into his cave, I asked him and Kelly to sit down in the great room. Jenna pointed to herself, and I motioned her over as well. We were all in this together.

  I did not relate the details. Stephen knew about the roses, but I saw no reason to mention them to Kelly. Nor did I speak of the unmarked car that would watch us for twenty-four hours. I said only that the man whose picture I was drawing wanted me to stop. Badly. That with the help of my drawing, he would soon be caught. (Which I could only pray was true.) And in the meantime we would have to be extra careful. I told them about the recorder on the home phone, that they should let me answer any calls. I left wide spaces between the lines, but Kelly read right through them.

  “He’s threatened you, hasn’t he?”

  I took a deep breath. I could not lie to her. “Yes.”

  She absorbed my answer. “Have you seen him?”

  “No.”

  She bit the inside of her lip. “How long until you get the drawing done?”

  “I’m hoping by dinner tomorrow.”

  Stephen sat low on his spine, jigging a leg up and down, arms crossed. Trying his best to look nonchalant. He gave me a penetrating stare, saying without words, I’ll bet there’s more than what you’re telling us, because you didn’t even mention the roses to Kelly. “I needed to go over to Jeff’s house tonight. He was supposed to come get me.”

  Right. “Out on a Monday night? Whatever for?”