Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  The two troopers were monitoring Maxine and David and fielding any phone calls that came in. News of Rebecca’s involvement in the police homicide earlier that morning hadn’t been released to the press yet, so the activity in and around the home was minimal. Just a few nosy neighbors who’d stopped by when they saw the patrol cars out front.

  Susan introduced herself and said she was there to talk about Rebecca.

  Maxine let her head fall back on the chair as she looked toward the ceiling. “My baby didn’t kill no cop,” she said. “She doesn’t have it in her. Rebecca’s a good girl. She’s a nurse. She helps people. No way she would ever do something like that. Her job is saving lives, not taking them.”

  “We’re just trying to figure out what happened at this point. We need to find her.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Susan took out her notepad and pen. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “Two days ago,” Maxine replied. “Called to check up on me like she always does. She’s a good girl.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Normal. We talked about my cirrhosis and how I was feeling. Had a bout in the hospital, so she wanted to make sure I was okay. We talked about our Netflix shows. She said she was going to stop by and see me this weekend.”

  “How was she doing at work?” Susan asked. “Everything okay there?”

  Maxine shrugged. “Don’t know. She didn’t say anything particular, and I didn’t ask. I don’t pry. If my kids wanna talk, they know where to find me. Otherwise, we just enjoy each other’s company.”

  Susan nodded as she wrote. “I understand you and David meet with Rebecca frequently. For dinner and visits?”

  “That’s right. Try to do it every week, but with this liver of mine, sometimes we can’t make it happen. But we always make it a point to spend time together. After my husband died, we realized how little we saw of each other. Rebecca wanted to change that, and she did. We reconnected after Earl passed, and it was the best thing to come of his death. Get to see my children on the regular again.”

  “Does she discuss her patients?”

  “Not really,” Maxine replied. “Like I said, I don’t pry. Sometimes she tells us little stories about the man she’s taking care of, Mr. James. She talks about helping him get about or tells us how she takes him food shopping or something mundane like that. I can’t think of anything she’s told me that would help you find her. You should ask Mr. James. See what he knows.”

  Susan pointed to David. “How about you? Rebecca ever tell you anything more about James Darville?”

  “No,” David replied, shaking his head. “Like Mom said, just little stories here and there. I know she likes him. They get along.”

  Susan turned her attention back to Maxine. “Do you know if Rebecca is seeing anyone romantically?”

  The old woman chuckled and shook her head. “Just Mr. James. Of course, I’m being facetious, but my daughter only has time for that man and no other. I should be up to my neck in grandbabies by now, but neither of my children are much in the romance department. My Rebecca is married to her patients, and this one is married to his writing career. What can I say?”

  “You’re a writer?” Susan asked David.

  “I write for an online magazine, and I’m working on a book.”

  “Working on that book for a decade,” Maxine quipped. “Never quite finished.”

  Susan turned back to Maxine. “How about close friends? Rebecca have any?”

  “Not that I know of,” Maxine said. “She’s always been a shy girl. Never knew her to have friends like you and I might think of it.” She looked up at her son. “You know any of Rebecca’s friends?”

  “No,” David replied. “Sorry.”

  Susan closed her notepad and leaned forward. “Mrs. Hill, a state trooper was bludgeoned to death on the side of the road this morning. He had a wife who was four months pregnant and a little boy who’s three years old. He was a son, a grandson, a husband, a father, a brother, a cousin, and a friend to more people than I can count. His life was stolen, and all he was trying to do was his job. I need to know anything and everything you can think of that might help us find your daughter and find out what happened on the side of that road. Please. Think.”

  Maxine looked at her as her thin lips pursed and her brow furrowed. “My baby’s no killer. You can keep your men here to listen to every phone call that comes in, and they can answer my door every time someone comes knocking, but you’ll never find an explanation that involves my Rebecca because there isn’t one. My baby’s a good soul. She wouldn’t hurt nobody, and she certainly wouldn’t kill nobody. I want you to find her as much as you do because I believe she’s in trouble. We need to get to the bottom of what happened. Rebecca is innocent. I just pray to God she’s still alive. Now go find her. Go.”

  8

  The Cortlandt State Police barracks was empty for the most part. There was a trooper working the dispatch desk in the front of the building and a few others milling about by the break room, but none of the other investigators were on the unit floor, and the building itself was quiet. Susan walked inside from the rear parking lot and made her way over to her desk. The serenity was a welcome surprise. She needed to think.

  The flat-screen television that hung on the brown paneled wall next to the rotation schedule and whiteboard was on, but the sound had been muted. Local news was replaying the scene on the Taconic, complete with footage of the closed road and an interview with the senior investigator who was in charge. It wouldn’t be long before they’d start running footage of family members and friends. By the end of the day they’d have information on Rebecca too.

  She put her bag down on her desk and sat in her chair. The empty desk across the way reminded her of her old partner who’d come and gone, and the chaos he’d left in his wake. Every time she looked at the empty seat, all she could think about was the trust she’d put in him and the betrayal that had cut so deep. Trooper Kincaid had fallen for that same kind of betrayal the moment he had pulled Rebecca Hill’s car over in the middle of the night. Trust that turned to carnage. The only difference was Susan had lived.

  The news on the flat screen changed over to the local weather, and Susan’s stomach rumbled. She realized she hadn’t really eaten anything before she’d gotten the call that morning and turned on her laptop. She was about to head over to the vending machine when Crosby walked onto the unit.

  “Adler, you’re back.”

  “I am.”

  “Fill me in. What are we looking at?”

  She waited until he’d reached her desk and sat in her partner’s old seat.

  “I’m not entirely sure yet. The old man Rebecca was caring for is missing, and his place was definitely tossed. We found some blood on the wall that forensics will try to match with Darville or Rebecca. I also found a small locket, which may or may not be something. And I found a tooth, which would further confirm there was a struggle. If there was money in the hole we found hidden in the floor, that could point to motive for Rebecca.”

  “How so?”

  “Her mom has liver disease. Cirrhosis. She could’ve taken it to help her mom. Maybe there was enough to split with whoever she was with.”

  “You think there’s a partner?”

  “Had to be. She’s too small to cause the type of struggle we saw, and her brother has the type of build who could overtake the old man and get him out of the house.”

  “Type of build to beat a cop to death.”

  “Possibly. I have two troopers on him at the mother’s house. I don’t want to show my hand just yet.”

  Crosby leaned back in the chair. “Next steps?”

  “I got some units doing door to doors in Verplanck and through Rebecca’s apartment building in White Plains. See if anyone saw or heard anything the last few nights. Also hoping one of Darville’s neighbors has a security camera on their property that might catch something. We have no traffic cams in that area, so we’
re blind. Forensics is going through the house picking up samples and pulling prints. Another team is taking samples from Rebecca’s apartment. I sent the tooth for DNA testing to see who it belongs to. Got hairs from brushes at Darville’s house and Rebecca’s apartment for the possible match. I’ll follow up with secondary interviews with Rebecca’s work and the places Darville went for his treatments.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Anything on your end?”

  Crosby sighed and shook his head. “Not much. Waiting on the dashcam video to come back to see exactly what we’re dealing with. Hopefully we can catch a clear image of Rebecca or her brother or whoever is responsible for what happened out there. We have a BOLO out for the old man. Details about Darville and Rebecca are being given to the press and surrounding departments in a fifty-mile radius. Maybe somebody saw something.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  Crosby got up from his seat. “You want some help with this? I got other investigators clamoring to assist. All hands on deck and whatnot. I can call Hawthorne or Manhattan and have them send us someone. Or, like I said before, I can pull Chris or Bill if you want to keep it local.”

  “No,” Susan replied quickly. “I’m good. Mel’s helping.”

  “Mel’s got his own troop to worry about. He’s a sergeant, not an investigator.”

  “I know, but it’s all hands, right?”

  “You’re going to need to take on a partner with these tougher cases. We all know what happened, and I’ve been trying to give you space, but on things like this, you need backup.”

  Susan looked at the empty desk across from her. She knew she was being foolish for refusing a partner, but she just wasn’t ready to trust anyone yet. Not after everything that went so horrifically wrong. Not after so many lives had been changed. It wasn’t time.

  “I’m good right now,” she said. “Seriously. If things ramp up and I need help, I’ll raise my hand. And after this case is done, we’ll talk about taking on a partner on the next one. Just let me run with this.”

  Crosby walked across the unit and stopped when he reached his office. He looked back at her and pointed, his large frame taking up the entire doorway. “This is the last big one you’re running solo on. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “You need help, you tell me. Mel has enough to worry about, and if I have to pay him overtime, the captain’s gonna get pissed.”

  “If I need help, I’ll tell you. I promise.”

  “Find these people.”

  Susan nodded. “You know I will.”

  9

  Trevor was sitting at the dining room table, huddled over his laptop, his back to her.

  “How is she?” he asked when he heard her come in.

  “Not great. I gave her a Valium.”

  “She better learn to relax. She’s making me nervous.”

  Cindy walked farther into the room. “What’re you looking at?”

  “The trooper story,” he replied. “It’s all over the news. All the major New York outlets are running with it. A few national websites picked it up too. Associated Press has a small article, but by tomorrow this is going to be all over the place.”

  “Do they know anything?”

  “They released Rebecca’s name and picture. That’s it so far.”

  “Nothing on James?”

  “No.”

  “No mention of the dashcam?”

  “Not yet.”

  Cindy sat down in a chair next to Trevor and looked at the screen. Patrick Kincaid. She had a mental image of his young face appearing in her window, explaining that the roads were too slick to be driving so fast and suggesting she look in the glove compartment for Rebecca’s registration. Fractured images kaleidoscoped in her mind. The blood on her hands. The sound the car door made when Trooper Kincaid opened it and instructed her to get out. The wet slop of the tire iron crushing that poor man’s skull. She looked away from the screen, afraid to read on, not wanting to know what loved ones he’d left behind because she already knew what being a loved one who was left behind meant. She knew what it felt like. The shock. The pain. The hurt. Her sister had left her behind. Then her mother. She knew what the trooper’s family would be going through in the days, weeks, and months to come. She’d lived it.

  “I got a text from Hagen.”

  Trevor stopped reading and looked at her. “What’d it say?”

  “He’s following the news like you are, and he’s not happy. It’s going to be more than two days before he can make it up here. He doesn’t want to draw attention by leaving when so much is going on. He told us to stay put and told me to work fast to get the truth from James. He’s not going to wait any longer than he has to. I told him I already started.”

  “I wouldn’t call feeding him chicken and talking about laundry detergent working on getting the truth.”

  “You can’t just go in with a bunch of questions. He’ll end up confused, and the dementia will kick in. This is a slow process. That’s why we’re here and not back in Verplanck, where everything would be a distraction. If Hagen just wanted him dead, he could’ve walked into the house and shot him or strangled him while he was sleeping. He’s giving me the opportunity to finally learn why James killed my sister and the other kids. I think he wants to know the truth too.”

  “So get it.”

  “I need to build trust, and then I need to extract the real stories carefully. I’ve been waiting a lifetime to learn why my sister disappeared. I can’t get this close and screw it up. It’s gonna take time.”

  Trevor fell back in his seat and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know how long I can last. I need to know my wife and son are okay. I need to know where they’re being kept. What’s happening to them? Are they in danger? Are they being taken care of? Is my son going to be okay after this? It’s driving me nuts. I need to help them.”

  “You help them by doing what we need to do. Once this is all done, you’ll see them again.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “What are their names?” Cindy asked. “We can talk about them. Maybe that’ll help.”

  Trevor pulled his hands away from his face. “You don’t need to know their names,” he snapped. “The less you know about me, the better. All you need to know is that I’ll stop at nothing to get them back. That son of a bitch took my family to force me to join this sick game, and now I’ve already done things that I can never go back and fix. He made me kill people. He broke me; he broke the man that I was. The husband and father that I was. He’s breaking my family as we speak. But I killed those people because my end game is getting my family back. That’s all it is, and they’re all that matter. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Cindy wanted to comfort him, but she knew it would do no good. Having been the left-behind loved one, there was no real comfort she could offer when someone’s family was in danger. All she could do was follow Hagen’s instructions and extract the truth she’d needed to hear for almost forty years. What Trevor was being forced to endure seemed unfair compared to what the rest of them had been promised. But he hadn’t needed anything, so it had come down to exploiting his love for his wife and son. The others needed something, and promises were made in order to get them to join the team. She felt guilty getting what she wanted while he was suffering with worry.

  “Did you upload the new podcast?” he asked.

  “Goes live at eight. Just a retread of some old news, but at least it’s posting.”

  “Make any calls?”

  “None to make. Besides, no one’s going to recognize the burner phone’s caller ID. They’d roll me to voice mail anyway.”

  “What about the old man?”

  “Almost time for bed. I’ll see where his head is at when I go down. I’ll press him if there’s an opportunity.”

  “I’ll go,” he said. “I want to get a better look at him now that we don’t have all the other distractions. I want to see what makes him so important.” Trevor turn
ed back to the laptop and clicked to another news story. “And I want to see how easy he’ll be to kill, if it comes to that. I’m guessing it’ll be easier than the cop.”

  10

  Icy droplets of rain tapped the windshield as Susan tilted her head back on the driver’s-side headrest. The engine of her car hummed in the background, heat streaming through the vents. Her mind churned. By now the trooper’s wife had been informed of what happened. She’d been brought down to the morgue to officially identify her husband’s body and was probably hosting well-wishers who would line the block offering support and a shoulder should she need it. His son was still too young to understand exactly what had happened, and the baby she was pregnant with would never know its father. Tomorrow Mrs. Kincaid would be brought to the funeral home to make arrangements for a service with every honor one could think of. That was standard protocol when a fellow officer went down in the line of duty. Susan wished she could be there but knew finding his killer was much more important than being the hundredth person to offer condolences. There wasn’t a minute to waste.

  From what she’d learned so far, she knew there had to have been a link between what happened to the trooper and what happened at James Darville’s place, and Rebecca Hill was that link. But if Rebecca had found what she was looking for in that hole in the floor, why did she take Darville? He was suffering from Alzheimer’s and would be a hindrance if she were on the run. Experience told Susan that he had to still be alive. If he’d been killed in the house, Rebecca and her accomplice would’ve most likely left the body. He’d be tricky to move without being noticed, and there would be no real point in risking transporting a body when the scene they left behind already pointed to foul play. So why take Darville? And what had been in that hole? Too many questions, and the top brass wanted answers.

  She shifted her body and listened as the sleet picked up outside. It appeared the old man had no family. No real friends other than some neighbors who looked after him every now and again. He’d arrived in town a decade earlier, but no one in the neighborhood knew where he’d come from. Google searches came up with 459,000 name matches. A needle in a haystack if there ever was one.