His wife never missed a beat, “Good, Maybe it will help their marriages. C’mon lover, leave the cash, let’s just go. I want you right now, detective.
Alone.”
As she dragged him from the table, Gallagher fumbled in his pocket for twenty dollar bills. He tossed two of them on the bread plate as they hugged and kissed and eagerly caressed each other all the way to the car.
They never made it to the hotel room.
They didn’t have to.
The dark parking lot behind the restaurant worked just fine.
Chapter Sixty-six--arch Erupts
Gallagher woke up the next morning with a crimp in his neck. His muscles were sore from the several positions he had used in seducing his lovely wife in the car.
He promised himself to take the roomier SUV to dinner in future dates with Alisha. He staggered to the shower and ran smack into the wall.
Laughing to himself, he ran the water and somehow managed to wash himself without any further collisions. As he prepared to leave to see Arch Taylor, he looked down and saw his wife still asleep in their bed.
He bent over and kissed her gently, “You are the love of my life, darling.” He saw the corners of her mouth smile slightly, “You bet your sweet ass, detective. Solve that case and get back to me.”
He laughed again. He was so lucky to have her and he knew it. He glanced back at her one more time before leaving. Her eyes opened to see if he was still there and she winked at him.
On his way to the hospital, he collected his thoughts and analyzed how he planned to question Archer Taylor on what Redding Shaw had told him. He mused to himself, “This is going to be a little tricky.”
He knew he was going into a verbal minefield and any misstatement could end the interview quickly.
Pulling into the parking lot, the detective noticed what a beautiful day it was. “Today would have been nice to take Alisha on a picnic.” There would be no cheese and wine today amongst the flowers.
Instead, he would have to settle for the smell of a hospital room and, hopefully, another piece of the puzzle in solving this complex and frustrating case.
Entering Arch’s room, he saw the entrepreneur sitting up reading the newspaper. The good news was that Mr. Taylor was doing physically better.
The bad news was that he would be more alert and more formidable as the detective tried to extract potentially incriminating information from him concerning his daughter’s disappearance.
“Here we go,” thought Gallagher. He was about to find out if Redding Shaw was an honorable man or not. The same conclusion would soon be true of Archer Taylor.
“Good morning, Arch, it’s good to see you up and almost about!”
The magnate smiled weakly over at him, “Well, I’m not quite ready to load one of my trucks, yet. But, I could probably sit on a lawn chair and supervise it!”
Gallagher laughed, “I thought that’s all you did anyway, mogul man.”
With that brief exchange out of the way, it was now time to introduce his sensitive approach to see who was telling the truth, Shaw or Taylor.
Step one, “You know, Arch, I don’t think I have met anyone who loved a child as much as you do. I truly believe that Allison is the most important person in your life. I can only imagine what her disappearance has emotionally done to you.”
Arch Taylor looked right at him. “Of course, you can imagine it, Gallagher. You have lost a daughter. It’s hell.”
The detective winced to himself, “You’re damn right it’s hell. It’s worse than hell. It’s an ongoing ache of unending pain.”
“Yeah, it is, Arch. So, here we are in the same kind of pain together. The only difference is that I can’t do anything about getting my daughter back. You can. That is, if you really want to.”
Arch Taylor eyed him carefully, “If I really want to? What in the hell does that mean, Gallagher?”
That statement produced another wince from the detective, “Damn! He’s not taking the bait,” he thought to himself. “Well, Arch, you told me that you were to blame for Allison’s disappearance. Maybe you could tell me what you know about what really happened here. I want to work with you if there is something we can do together.”
The father of the missing girl settled back and silently looked up at the ceiling.
“This could be it right here. Come on Arch, bare your soul,” Gallagher inwardly pleaded. The father seemed to be trying to find the right words to say.
No words came out.
“Arch, if there is something you did to affect her disappearance, even legally, it’s okay. I just want to know so we can make things right with everyone involved.
I have a girl who is locked up right now as a suspect in this case. If she is not supposed to be in jail, you can do her a great favor by shedding more light on the situation.
Do you have an idea where your daughter is?”
Another long pause, finally Taylor spoke, “This is hard for me, Gallagher. I did something terrible and I want to make it right. But, I don’t want to complicate matters for myself in doing so.”
The detective was flabbergasted at Arch’s wording here, “I don’t want to complicate matters for myself! Man, you have a missing daughter here. What about her complicated matter?”
Gallagher could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising up. His Irish temper was beginning to simmer. This was not a good time for it to reveal itself.
He decided to try and feel sympathy for Arch so he wouldn’t belt him, “I’m sure you want to protect yourself, Mr. Taylor. I am not sure what you are referring to, but if you tell me, we can work it out somehow. Right now, we need to think about your daughter and her situation more than your own.”
Arch nodded in agreement. “Well, I do believe that I am the one most responsible for her being gone and I want to rectify it.”
Gallagher leaned closer to the man and whispered to him, “Yeah, Arch, rectify it. That would be honorable. What did you do to cause this?”
As the owner and CEO of one of the South’s largest conglomerates began to speak, tears appeared in his eyes and started trickling down his cheeks.
He looked more like a little boy at that moment than a powerful man. “I had a little trouble with my finances and for awhile, it looked like I was going to lose everything…”
The detective nodded. This was coinciding with Redding Shaw’s story.
So far, so good.
Archer Taylor continued, “So, one night I had a talk with my partner, Redding Shaw, the bastard. He suggested that we cut a deal with some moneyed people who were looking to expand our business in Asia. I fought the idea because I didn’t want to give up any stock in the company, but Redding said we had little choice.
He said we could let them buy their way in and the money they invested would be enough for us to build five new superstores in Georgia and Florida, allowing us to not only salvage our cash flow problem, but put us in a great position to expand, as well.” More nods from Gallagher.
Redding Shaw was right on target.
“Okay. So, how did this situation affect your daughter?” he asked innocently acting as though this was the first time he had heard this information.
Taylor continued, “Allison was adamantly opposed to the idea. She didn’t trust Shaw and she didn’t want me to part with any of the company, to Japanese investors or anyone else. She got pretty emotional about it and when I saw how upset she was, I had second thoughts. I decided to take out a loan instead to ride out the crisis and it worked. But, Shaw and the investors were furious with me and especially with Allison…”
“How’d they know that Allison was the one who talked you out of the deal?” queried Gallagher.
“I don’t know. But, somehow they found out. My suspicions tell me it came from Justin Shaw. But, I can’t prove it.”
“So, you think Allison’s disappearance was orchestrated by Redding Shaw or this investor group from Japan as revenge on you and her for losing the deal?�
�
“I think it’s a good possibility, yes. Especially after I bought out Redding and told him we were finished as partners. He is now developing deals for them, but, nothing on the profitable level of what they could have had with my company.”
Gallagher whistled gently to himself. Arch’s story had matched up with Redding Shaw’s except for one significant fact.
Redding had told him quite the opposite tale. He insists that it was Arch who was reluctant to do the deal, but that Allison was in favor of it and had offered Shaw her help to push it through because there was no other financial way to save the company.
Father and daughter had a major confrontation on the company and their argument became quite heated the night before she disappeared. According to Shaw, Arch called them after he and Allison shouted at each other and told him to back off using her to get his way.
Therefore, Shaw believes that in order to avoid her father’s wrath and possible retaliation, she orchestrated her own disappearance to scare her father and lay low until he softened enough to take her back and forgive her.
That was Redding Shaw’s version of the story, not Arch’s.
Gallagher didn’t know who to believe. Both scenarios made sense. So, he asked one more question to see if a little more information would tip the scales to one side or the other,
“Arch, you don’t think there is any chance that your daughter disappeared voluntarily?”
Arch Taylor almost came off the bed in his attempt to grab the detective’s throat. “Why you, have you lost your mind!
My daughter is missing, you are the man trying to find her and now you think she did this on her own?”
Flailing away, he lost his balance and almost fell off the bed. The nurse ran in, “Mr. Taylor! Please calm down.” She called for a doctor who came in and helped hold him down while they administered a sedative.
Soon Arch was peaceful again, keeping the truth about what he knew or didn’t know, to himself. There was nothing more for the detective to do for now. The doctor turned to the detective, “I think you better go, Mr. Gallagher, another time, perhaps.”
As he walked past the gift shop, he stopped in for a delivery, “Please send a nice arrangement to Mr. Taylor in room 611. On the note, please write,
Arch, I’m trying to help you. Hang in there with me. Mike Gallagher.”
The lady, remembering the detective asked him sweetly, “Would you like another candy bar?”
Gallagher shook his head no. After his ugly encounter with Archer Taylor, he was in the mood for something far stronger.
Chapter Sixty-seven---Raven is ready to Talk
On his way back to the station, Gallagher got a call from one of his officers, “Hey Gallagher, Margaret Williams called and told us she has some information for you. You might want to stop and see what she has to say.”
The detective thanked the policeman and did just that.
As he waited in the interview room at the Clarke County jail, he wondered what kind of mood Raven would be in. When she slowly walked out, he realized her condition right away.
She was a mess.
Her beautiful raven hair was stringy and dirty, like it hadn’t been washed in a week. Her eyes were glazed over and lifeless. She shuffled towards him without any life in her body. As she sat down and looked at him, he felt the spirit of defeat emanating from her.
She spoke in a weakened whisper “Hey, Gallagher.”
It was the voice of someone who had little life left inside them. Some people do well in captivity. Margaret Williams was not one of them.
She would not psychologically survive being locked up.
It was apparent she had eaten very little, if at all, in the time she had been incarcerated. She acted as though she didn’t care about anyone or anything. She was definitely touching Gallagher’s heart with her vulnerability. He sensed correctly this was no act on her part.
“Margaret, are you okay?”
A slight smile, “Sure. I love being in a cell with a psycho who enjoys beating the crap out of me.”
For the first time, he noticed the bruises on her neck and arms. He could only imagine what lay underneath her orange jumpsuit.
It sickened him.
“Margaret, I’m really sorry. I am trying to solve a case here and when you wouldn’t cooperate…”
Raven cut him off. “You made your point. I’m ready to tell you what I know. I don’t want to go back in there. If I tell you the truth, will you consider releasing me?”
Her eyes were pleading with him. He looked away. She was breaking his heart.
“Gallagher. I don’t blame you for what is happening to me. I brought it on myself along with the bastard who is trying to frame me for what happened to Allison.”
He turned back and looked at her. She reminded him of Megan, at the age of five years, when he had to spank her for carrying a dead mole into the house.
He disciplined his daughter so she wouldn’t do something like that again. Raven had the same sad eyes his own daughter had that day. Gallagher suddenly felt remorse for spanking his child.
Neither of them fully understood why they were being punished.
Raven’s demeanor reinforced Gallagher’s belief that this girl was innocent and may be the victim of a set up by someone who was covering for themselves.
It was time to hear what she had to say. Her words would not only be critical for her own cause now, but for the future of the Taylor case.
“I was on campus the day Allison Taylor disappeared, Mike.” When he realized she had addressed him by his first name, a very personal reference, he realized she was reaching out to him to tell him all she knew.
She wanted to be his ally on the case for the first time. He was all ears now. “I saw her get into a car, a red Mercedes, voluntarily.”
Gallagher’s heart started pumping very fast. He couldn’t wait to ask the next question. The obvious question, “Did you see who was driving it?”
Her answer made his heart slow down considerably, “No.”
He pressed her, “Could you tell if it was a man or a woman driving it?”
“I couldn’t tell, Mike. I’m sorry.”
“Did you see anyone else in the car?”
“No.”
“Did she get into the front or the back seat?”
Raven paused as she thought to herself, “Back seat.”
Gallagher immediately deduced there were at least two other people in the car. A driver and a front seat passenger. There was a possibility there were more individuals in the back seat.
He shifted from the occupants in the car to another series of questions, “What was Allison’s demeanor as she got into the car, Raven?”
Finally, after several seconds, “She hesitated a moment. Then, she kind of shrugged her shoulders as if to say, ‘What the hell!’ and got in.”
The detective pondered the last statement from Raven. “So, she almost acted as if there was a question as to whether or not she was going with the people in the car?”
“Yeah, she didn’t just walk right up and get in. She was walking along the sidewalk and the car pulled up and someone inside said something to her. She seemed to think about it and then got in.”
“And you insist you never got into the car with her, Margaret?”
“I swear I never got into that damn car!”
“We have your fingerprints inside the car.”
“They were planted, Gallagher. I am being set up. I was never that close to the car that day.”
“Where were you standing, Margaret?”
“My friend, Samantha, and I were walking to Maggie Moo’s. I looked up, saw Allison coming towards us, saw the car pull up alongside and she got in. We were in the middle of the next block facing east towards the library on Tara Drive.”
“Okay, so your friend, Samantha was with you. What is her last name, Margaret?”
The girl looked perplexed at Gallagher. “Why do you need to know her last name? I was
the one who saw what happened.”
He looked at Raven. “Because she can not only verify what you said, she may be able to fill in a few details that can add to what happened that day, that’s why I need to talk to her.”
“Leave her out of this, Gallagher. She didn’t see anything. She was talking and had her head down. I was the only one who saw anything.”
“Well, if that’s true, then she can tell me that, not you. She may have noticed something. I need to talk to her, Raven.”
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