Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  “Is it true?” Maxine asked, her gaze fixed on the placid body of water in front of her. “I know it’s a stupid question. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t true, and the police wouldn’t have come to my house if it wasn’t true, but they won’t let me see her yet, so I need to hear it from you. Is it true? Is my Rebecca dead?”

  Susan nodded. “It’s true.”

  “They stuck her in the trunk of her own car?”

  “I can’t really talk about particulars.”

  “I understand.” The elderly woman looked out across the lake. “That’s what the young officer who showed up with the news told me too. But I got a little off-the-record information. A mother needs that kind of thing sometimes.” Maxine closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and wiped a tear. “My baby used to love to come to this park. Of course, back then they didn’t have all these fancy slides and wave pools. It was just a park with a community pool, and that was enough. I’d bring her here to go swimming. Her father taught her how to fish just off this very spot. She’d play and we’d have picnics. Now she’s gone. Just like that. But at least now you know that she didn’t have nothing to do with that trooper man’s murder. Now you know for sure.”

  Susan watched a hawk circling in the sky above the water. It looked so graceful. “I realize we went over my questions when we first met,” she said. “But James Darville is still missing. His body wasn’t found with Rebecca. Any idea where he could be?”

  “We didn’t know the man,” Maxine replied. “I told you that.”

  Susan looked at David. He shrugged and shook his head. “I have no idea. All we know about him is what my sister told us, and it wasn’t much. She was his primary caregiver and had been his only friend since she had him as a patient at the hospital.”

  Susan took a step forward. “I didn’t know Rebecca worked at a hospital. Which one?”

  “Phelps. In Sleepy Hollow.”

  “She was on staff?”

  “Worked per diem in the med-surg unit. That’s where she met Mr. James.”

  Susan stared at David, furious that he hadn’t brought this up the last few times they’d talked. “How long was she employed by the hospital?”

  “About fifteen years. Had the home care job for a little less than that. Once Mr. James’s condition got worse, she spent more time with him and less at the hospital. I think she was only down to one shift a month on the weekends. Something along those lines.”

  Susan let the information process. Rebecca had met James Darville as a patient at Phelps Hospital prior to her becoming his full-time nursing aide. Rebecca had requested Darville, and now Susan knew why. Phelps Hospital was the connection.

  Susan motioned toward David. “Walk me to my car.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She extended her hand toward Rebecca’s mother. “I appreciate your help, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Don’t think we helped much,” Maxine said, taking her hand and shaking it. “Just find who did this. Find them and punish them. That’s all I ask.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  David followed Susan back over the guardrail. As soon as they were far enough away from Maxine, he let out the breath he was holding. “Thank you for not saying anything about me being at Mr. James’s house. I don’t think she can handle all of this as it is.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your sister was a nurse at Phelps?”

  “It never came up. I would’ve mentioned it.”

  “You should have. It’s important.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just answering the questions you were asking. I wasn’t thinking in terms of backstory. It just didn’t come up until just now.”

  Susan looked at David, long and hard, trying to determine if this was a man she could trust or if he knew more than he was letting on. She raised her finger and pointed it at him. “You better not be playing me.”

  “Why would I be playing you? I was trying to find my sister and prove to all of you that she didn’t kill that trooper. And now we’ve done both.”

  TRANSCRIPT

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I simply couldn’t believe it. She was lying on her bed, a pillow over her face, her blonde hair sticking out from beneath the pillow, her arms hanging over the edge of the mattress.

  Sonia Garland was dead.

  Noreen was sitting at the foot of the bed, crying silently, her tears dripping from the bottom of a chin that I’d kissed a hundred times. The house was empty but for the three of us. Jackson was still at work, and her other daughter wouldn’t be home from school for another hour. I stood in the doorway, half in the hall and half in Sonia’s room, just staring, mouth wide open, not trusting what I was seeing.

  “Noreen, what’s going on?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “I had to,” Noreen replied without looking up. Her tears dripped from her chin to the carpet. “She knew. My baby girl is smart like me, and she has this need to find out the truth about things.”

  “What things? What are you talking about?”

  “She didn’t like the fact that people were starting to give up on finding Tiffany. She kept saying it’s only been a few months and that we had to keep looking. She started digging around on her own, trying to find whatever she could about Tiffany’s disappearance. Said she wanted to help the police because it felt like the grown-ups were throwing in the towel.”

  “My god.”

  “At first I let her have her fun. I didn’t think she’d come up with anything. I tried pushing her off the scent to get her to focus on school or sports or even boys. But she’s so relentless. I love that about her. Her tenacity is a gift.”

  I walked into the room, my eyes fixed on the body on the bed. Tiffany had been missing for a few months at this point, and the investigation was in the final stages. We were almost in the clear.

  “She found things,” Noreen continued. “I don’t know how, but she found your time sheet from that day. She knew you were still in the building when Tiffany disappeared, and she knew Tiffany stayed after school that day to decorate her friend’s locker for her birthday.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” I replied. “The police know all that too. I was never a suspect.”

  “She had pictures. She took them with my Polaroid. They were of you and your house and your car and your license plate. For some reason, she was onto you, which meant it was only a matter of time before she’d be onto us. Maybe she already knew. I couldn’t take the chance.”

  I stood in front of Noreen and took her by the shoulders. “What did you do?”

  Noreen shrugged and looked up at me. Her eyes were vacant, flooded with tears. “I spiked her juice with some of my sleeping pills, and when she fell asleep, I saved us.”

  A wave of fear and anger and confusion spilled over me. I began shaking her, looking at Sonia’s body on the bed. That poor girl.

  “You didn’t have to do that!” I screamed. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “She knew too much!”

  “She didn’t know anything!”

  Noreen started crying harder. “Why didn’t you just check if the door was shut in your classroom? Why didn’t you check? If you just checked, none of this would be happening, and I’d still have my little girl!”

  The words hurt, each one of them stabbing at me with their truth. If I’d just checked the goddamned door to make sure it was locked.

  I let go of her, and she fell on top of her daughter. “Why didn’t you check the lock?” she sobbed, hugging her dead child. “Why didn’t you check it?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, pacing the room. “What do you want from me?”

  “Take her where you took Tiffany,” Noreen replied. “Take her away, and she’ll be another missing victim. I’ll get rid of the things she found out about you, and we’ll let the police investigate. They’ll think they have a serial kidnapper or something, and we’ll play along.”

  “No,” I snapped. “We can�
��t keep doing this! This is crazy! You just killed your own daughter.”

  “For you! I did it for you! To protect you.”

  “From what? I didn’t kill Tiffany. You did.”

  The room fell silent, and Noreen suddenly leaped off the bed and slapped me hard across the face. Her vacant eyes came alive with a fury I’d never seen before. “We’re in this together,” she hissed. “You put her in your car and buried her. You let her parents wonder what happened to their daughter. You’re keeping secrets just like I am. And now this. You made me kill my own child to protect us. Can you imagine a mother killing her baby?” She slapped me again. “I did it for us. And now we have to make things right again.”

  “We can’t,” I said quietly. “This has to stop. We need to go to the police and tell them what we’ve done. It’s the only way.”

  “No,” Noreen replied before I’d even stopped talking. She was focused now. Determined. “If you go to the police, I’ll lose you forever. I can’t have that. I need you. I love you. I did this for us. So we can be together. Sonia’s disappearance will be the crack in my marriage that I’ll need to leave Jackson. Then we’ll finally be able to live the rest of our lives together. Please. Do this one last thing. For us. We can be a family.”

  I can’t explain why, but I found myself nodding, ensorcelled by her words and the thought of us finally being together. I loved her so much. And, truth be told, I knew I was just as guilty as she was, and she was right: all of this had been my fault. If I’d just locked the classroom door.

  “Take her,” she said, pointing at Sonia’s lifeless body. “I’ll say that she never made it home.”

  “The bus driver will know he let her off.”

  “Then I’ll say she didn’t make it to the house. Somewhere between the bus stop and here, she disappeared. That’ll be my story. Take her and bury her, and we’ll move on. It’s the only way out.”

  I found myself nodding again. God help me, I did what I was told.

  32

  It was dark now. The moon sat halfway up the night sky, full and bright. Cindy was sitting at the desk in the dining room, surfing the internet on Trevor’s laptop for news about the trooper’s death and the investigation. All she’d ever wanted was to know what happened to her sister. Now everything was speeding so far past the point of no return. She didn’t know what to do, and she was scared. Two people were dead, and she knew James would be the third. Hagen had made that clear. But he’d also offered her an opportunity to learn the truth she’d sought since she was a little girl. How could she say no? She couldn’t’ve anticipated the plan going so far off the rails. She wondered if there would be more death to come—namely hers.

  The basement door opened, and she heard Trevor approaching.

  “How is he?”

  “Got him changed into his pajamas. He’s fine.” He walked into the dining room. “Any updates?”

  Cindy spun around in her seat. “You could say that. The police found the car in the lake.”

  The sentence hung between them.

  Trevor took a jagged breath and pushed his hair out of his face. “How?”

  “We ditched it in a shallow part. Some guy in a boat ran it over.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I thought you said you knew the lake.”

  “I do. I didn’t have depth charts, for Christ’s sake. It was dark. I figured the cliff would work, and the bottom would be deep enough for the car to sink.”

  Cindy looked toward the floor. “They found the body in the trunk.”

  Trevor sat down at the dining room table and put his head in his hands. “None of this was supposed to happen.”

  “I know.”

  “We didn’t do a good enough job wiping the car down because we didn’t think it would ever be found.”

  “Hopefully the water will take away anything that was left behind.”

  He slammed his hands against the table. “Things are falling apart, and my wife and son are in danger! How do we fix this?”

  “We just have to stay on plan,” Cindy replied. She tried to be encouraging, but she knew he was right. Too many things had already gone wrong. The knot in her stomach told her she should get out of the house and run as far as she could, but she couldn’t leave without confronting the monster she’d been seeking almost as long as she’d been alive. She was in too deep now. They all were.

  “Why did you ever call me to take part in this?” Trevor asked. His voice was trembling. “I just wanted to be left alone to live my life. Why did you have to rope me in?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “Hagen made me.”

  He chuckled. “Hagen. We have no idea who this person even is. How is he connected to the old man? He wants him dead, sure, but how are they connected? Hagen suddenly lands in our lives out of nowhere, blackmails us into doing things we would never even think of doing, and now we’re kidnappers and murderers, and none of us have the expertise to get out of this without being killed or arrested.”

  “I know.”

  “He abducts my family while I’m meeting with you. He hangs Mrs. Hill’s liver transplant over Rebecca to get her to cooperate. He’s bargaining with people’s lives.” He stopped and looked at her. “Did you know they were going to take my wife and son when you were meeting with me? Tell me the truth.”

  “Of course not,” Cindy snapped. “I would never be part of something like that. Never.”

  Trevor looked her up and down. “Funny how everyone’s being held for ransom except you. Hagen just gives you what you’ve always wanted. Doesn’t take a thing. Doesn’t ask for anything. How fortunate.”

  Cindy got up from her seat and walked across the dining room to say something, but the back door opened. As soon as she heard it, tears welled in her eyes. David Hill appeared in the entranceway, a backpack slung over one shoulder. The three of them stared at each other.

  “Why are you crying?” David asked.

  The distraction of the car in the lake, the question of Hagen’s identity, all of that quickly faded. For a moment, Cindy’s conviction—that the only thing that mattered was forcing a confession from her sister’s killer—wavered. She took a deep breath, then said, “It’s Rebecca. Something’s happened.”

  33

  Susan shut the door to Crosby’s office and sat down. Outside in the barracks, the shift supervisor was taking roll call during changeover and going through the usual assignments for the night tour. The troopers were gathered in a semicircle around their sergeant, listening intently, no one other than the man in charge making a sound.

  Crosby was behind his desk typing something on his computer. “Did you get anything to go on from the ME?”

  “Blood type we found on the wall in the old man’s bedroom matches Rebecca’s. And Emily said the body has wounds consistent with the blood on the wall. COD looks to be strangulation, though. We’re waiting to see if the tooth found at Darville’s house is from the same mouth as the tooth found in Rebecca Hill’s hand, but we know neither of them belongs to Rebecca. She has all her teeth intact. They could be Darville’s.”

  “What about the nurse’s car?”

  “Brookfield PD released it to us, and we got it towed back to the garage at the lab, so forensics is working on that. The locket I found at Darville’s house got dusted, but Emily said finding a print we can use is unlikely.”

  Crosby stopped typing and folded his hands on his desk. “Does it strike you as weird that no one’s come around asking about Darville except his physical therapist, who called it in? I get that he has no family, but what about friends? I thought he was supposed to get help overnight from one of the neighbors.”

  “He does,” Susan replied. “Mel followed up on that and found the neighbor.” She flipped through her notes. “Glen Dawkins. He’s lived next to Darville for six years. Mr. Dawkins just flew to Texas to see his daughter and grandkids for two weeks. Mel talked to him on the phone, and Mr. Dawkins said he worked it out with Rebecca. The nurse was going to
stay with him full-time until he got back. I checked with the staffing agency, and they had no record of Rebecca’s plans and said she’d need to put in for initial approval since it would be overtime.”

  Crosby nodded. “This is definitely sounding like an inside job. They knew exactly when the neighbor wouldn’t be there and when the nurse would. Rebecca let them in and got double-crossed.”

  “I agree. But I also think killing her might’ve been a spontaneous, last-minute thing. The way her body was stuffed in the trunk of her car, it seemed forced, panicked. If I knew I was going to kill someone ahead of time and had to transport a body, I think I would’ve planned better. Maybe not leave such a mess and maybe get a bigger car. I could be off, but it just seems like killing Rebecca was not part of the original plan. So many cleaner ways to do it if you had time to map it out.”

  “Anything else?”

  Susan flipped to another page in her notebook. “Should be getting the video-surveillance footage from the marina and dock tomorrow. Hopefully we can get a lead from when the nurse’s car was dropped. I also had a few units ask about neighbors’ cameras during their door-to-doors in Verplanck, but no one had any, so we have no footage of the actual night Darville was taken.”

  Roll call was wrapping up, and Susan could hear the stampede of troopers heading out toward the parking lot. The evening shift was officially on.

  “I’m waiting on the judge to sign off on warrants to get Darville’s medical records as well as Rebecca Hill’s employment records. She worked at Phelps as a per diem nurse, and Darville was her patient. As soon as he needed long-term care, she cut her hours at the hospital and got a job with the staffing agency and specifically requested Darville. That seems odd to me.”

  “Okay, stay on it.”

  Susan folded her notepad closed. “That’s all I got for now. Everything’s a possibility, and this guy is still missing.”

  “You’re heading to Philly tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be back by dinner.”

  Crosby got up from his seat. “Have your cell on you. If anything comes up, we’ll contact you.”