“Man, I am sorry. Give me your address, and I’ll send a unit out ASAP.”
“That’s just it, I’m not sure if . . . Bryan, we had a bit of a fight last night. You know how women are. Molly’s ticked and just might be screwing with me, but I just can’t live with myself if I don’t do something. I thought maybe you could stop by. I need some advice, and I don’t want to blow this whole marital spat out of proportion if I don’t have to. You understand?” He spoke in the voice he used with other professionals. Smooth and calm, but just the right tone to indicate he was more than a little worried. He knew how the police worked. And he knew that if he played his cards right, Bryan Whitmore could start searching for Molly off the record. He’d promise braces for his homely daughter if he had to.
“All right. I’ll be right over. I just need an address,” the detective said.
Tanner gave him the address and began directing the cleanup to eliminate all traces of his earlier rampage.
Chapter Sixteen
Molly yawned and opened her last bottle of Coke, glad she had thought to toss them in the cooler with the water. There was a small coffee machine in the room, but she was saving that for the morning. She was a beast when she woke up and didn’t have coffee, a habit she developed when she had worked at Lou’s.
She wasn’t sure where to start, so she decided to Google her name. Her real name. She typed “Madeline Rose Carmichael” in the browser. The wireless in the hotel was slow, or else there were too many users. It took a full two minutes before her results flashed on the screen. There were more than six hundred thousand hits. She scrolled through, searching for what, she wasn’t sure, but when she saw it, she would know. After thirty minutes and twenty-three pages, she concluded that she wasn’t getting anywhere. There were way too many Madeline Rose Carmichaels in the world. It was late, and she was tired, but she needed answers to questions she should have asked a long time ago.
Next, she typed in “Blossom City, Florida, June, 1994.”
Her stomach was in knots as she waited for the results to appear on the screen. There were fourteen hits.
A fire in the early-morning hours at the tomato-canning factory. No injuries and minor damage.
Nothing new there, she thought. There were accidents at the factory all the time. She clicked on the next link.
Two graduating seniors had received college scholarships. Someone she didn’t remember, Cindy Ann Burkette, had received a four-year scholarship to Florida State University. Good for her, she thought, and tried to call up a face to match the name, but couldn’t. Maddy had been a loner, not too many friends except for Brett and Carla, and, of course, Cassie, but she’d moved away before high school. She continued to read the article.
Karen Clark had been granted a four-year full athletic scholarship to the University of Florida.
Oh my God!
She knew Karen, at least knew who she was. She’d been captain of the cheerleading team. Molly remembered how friendly she’d been to her on prom night. Not buddy-buddy friendly, but she’d waved at her that night when she’d walked into the gymnasium all alone.
Molly’s heart rate increased a bit with this knowledge. Had Karen become a career woman? Or had she married and had a family? Or had she done both? It didn’t matter, but Molly remembered her from a few classes. She hadn’t been especially smart, but she had been very athletic. Good for her, she thought, as she clicked on the next link.
This article contained a photo, so it took a few minutes to download. She decided to take a bathroom break while the page loaded. She washed her hands and looked in the mirror. Bluish-purple crescents had formed beneath her eyes, and her skin was pale and dull. She didn’t care at this point. She’d been scared out of her mind today, and add the beating from Tanner, the bruise on her cheek, and her lack of sleep, and really, she thought, given the circumstances, it’s a miracle she looked as alive as she did. She saw her makeup case on the bathroom counter and dotted a bit of concealer on the bruise. She couldn’t look at herself any longer. She returned to the small desk.
The link she’d been waiting to load was up. She rubbed her eyes, and began reading the article.
She began to shake as she read. Fear turned her stomach into knots, and a cold, icy fright gripped her heart like a sponge, squeezing out all thoughts of rationality. A panic unlike any she’d ever experienced welled in her throat. Her pulse beat so erratically, she feared she would suffer a heart attack. Her hands shook as she tried to scroll through the remainder of the article. She almost gave in to the tension that had been building in her all day, but she couldn’t. Not yet. She took a deep breath, yet there was no relief. Her hands felt numb, and the tips of her fingers started to tingle. She swallowed several times. Her throat felt as if she’d sucked dust through a straw. She reached for the bottle of Coke and gulped its contents down. She had to calm herself before she passed out. She rolled the desk chair away from the computer and closed her eyes. Taking slow, deep breaths, she forced herself to focus on something calming.
Kristen. She would be leaving for her first bike trip shortly. Molly imagined her long, muscled legs as she pedaled through the French countryside. Her long blond hair would be in a braid flying behind her as she made her way through the small villages. Charlotte would ride alongside her, and they would laugh about a boy they knew or some silly gossip.
Yes, Molly thought, I can do this. She took a deep breath, and slowly released it. She mentally forced herself to calm down. She’d had a panic attack, nothing more. She’d had them off and on when she’d first arrived in the Boston area, but it had been years since she’d experienced a full-blown one. She took another deep breath, then another, and released it slowly.
Focus, she thought as she inhaled again. This will pass. Another breath, exhale. She leaned back in the chair and did her best to clear her mind. Molly needed to get a grip or she wouldn’t be able to function. She was alone and had to take care of herself. She’d been in this same place many years ago and survived. She would do so again.
Determined yet still shaking, she rolled the chair back to the desk. Her screen saver, a beautiful mountain scene, filled the monitor. When she placed her index finger on the touch pad, the screen came back to life. The article she’d read flashed back at her like an evil serpent, daring her to continue.
She threw her shoulders back, stretched her arms out, then rolled her head from side to side in order to release the tension and kinks in her neck. Another deep breath, and she started reading the article again, from the beginning.
She read through it three times just to make sure she hadn’t imagined the facts or the face in the picture. It made sense now. Though it had been more than twenty-one years, his features were still the same. He had aged very well, she thought now, as she focused on the photograph of a person who had only recently been in her home. She had calmed down enough to plot her next move.
Clearing the screen for a new search, she Googled his name and the city where he lived. Several hits came up. She opened the first link. Again, his smiling face, though this time his wife stood beside him as he received a humanitarian award from a charity that helped survivors of sexual abuse. The article went on to say that the son of a bitch and his wife were among the top financial donors.
Her next Google search was for similar organizations. The first thing that came up was RAINN.
The article stated that RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, was the largest anti–sexual violence organization in the country and one of “America’s 100 Best Charities,” according to Worth magazine. It ended with a hotline number, adding that the hotline had helped more than one hundred thousand assault victims.
The organization was huge. She skimmed through the Web site, searching for his name, but it wasn’t there. As she was about to click out of the site, another GET INFO link caught her eye. It offered information on several topics: statistics, how to reduce your risk of sexual assault, the effects of sexual assault, reporting th
e crime to the police, and the one that really grabbed her: the aftermath of sexual violence. The Web site explained how one might wish to receive medical attention and about making a safety plan if you were living in a dangerous home environment, but what caught her attention was the contents of what constituted a rape kit.
DNA evidence was collected from a crime scene, but the article went on to explain that it could also be collected from your body. But what interested her the most was that DNA could also be collected from clothes and other personal belongings.
Though she’d sworn that she would burn that ugly teal prom dress, she never had. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept it all these years. She didn’t need a reminder of the night that had changed her life, but nonetheless, she’d preserved the dress as best she could after she’d taken the job with Tanner. Until then, she’d kept the dress in the original plastic wastebasket liner until she had moved in with Sarah. Because she didn’t want to see the ugly reminder, she’d then sealed the dress in a brown paper bag and kept the bag in a backpack she’d purchased. She didn’t know a lot about preserving DNA, but there was a small chance that one of her attackers had left behind some trace of DNA. She remembered waking up, her dress tattered and torn, and she remembered the dampness between her legs. Thinking of it caused her heart to hammer, but she distinctly remembered using the front of the dress to wipe off the slime between her legs. She told herself it was highly doubtful that any DNA was on the dress, and even more doubtful that after a little more than twenty-one years, it could be identified.
The dress in question was now stored in a safe place.
Before she shut down her computer, she had another idea. While Blossom City wasn’t much of a city, back in the day it had a weekly newspaper, the Blossom City Banner. It reported on church bazaars, births, deaths, weddings, and any crime, typically speeding tickets, drunk and disorderly conduct, and the occasional domestic call. Nothing that she now considered real news.
She Googled the paper and immediately came up with a hit. She clicked on the link, stunned that it was still in production, what with most small-town papers having succumbed due to the cyber world. She scrolled down the page until she came across the paper’s archives. “Really,” she muttered.
Amazed at the professionalism, she clicked on the link and saw that content went back as far as 1989. “Wow. Unreal.” Her voice was dry and scratchy.
She took another long swig of her Coke and clicked on the year 1994.
She clicked on the month of June.
Apparently it had been a quiet month. A couple of weddings, typical for the month of June. She found herself looking at the obituary page even though she knew it wasn’t a good idea. This could ruin her life. Given the woman she was now, she knew she would have to turn herself in for the crime she’d committed all those years ago, but she also knew that she had to know. She’d been in denial for all of her adult life. It was time to face the facts.
She surfed through the names of the deceased one by one.
Albert George Jameson, eighty-five.
Wanda Sue Goodman, sixty-seven.
Lenore Royer Carmichael, fifty-three.
She gasped when she saw the name. She was shocked, and it took her several minutes to calm herself. That was her mother. She glanced over the obit to see if it listed the cause of death. Nothing.
Again, her hands trembled, but she had to know. She read the brief obituary, and when she saw that her mother was survived by her son, Marcus William Carmichael, she was stunned. There was no mention of her. She tried to drum up some emotion for the loss of her mother, but couldn’t. While she’d been shocked at seeing her mother’s name, she hadn’t been surprised. She had most likely died of an overdose. And she’d only been fifty-three years old. Why had she thought her mother was much older? Because she looked twenty years older, given her years as a drug abuser. She hadn’t even known her mother’s real age.
Shaken, but not enough to stop, she continued searching the obits, looking for a name from that night long ago. There was nothing, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t killed one of those bastards. Not everyone put an obit in the paper, especially when they realized that there was a charge for doing so.
She continued to scan the archives, searching for car accidents, anything that would link her to that night, but she found nothing. She went back to the obits and read her mother’s again.
Lenore Royer Carmichael.
When she realized the enormity of her discovery, she was shocked. Did this mean what she thought it meant?
Part Three
And where the offense is, let the great axe fall.
—William Shakespeare
Chapter Seventeen
Detective Bryan Whitmore didn’t make a habit of going out on calls to file a missing person report, but he knew Dr. McCann wouldn’t have called him unless it was a true emergency. He hadn’t asked for details over the phone because it didn’t work that way, and the doctor hadn’t offered up anything other than that he’d had an argument with his wife and she was missing.
He looked at the address. Riverbend Road, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Goldenhills. The doctor charged a small fortune to crown a tooth, so he wasn’t surprised at the ritzy address. He drove down the long driveway, parking his unmarked Ford as close to the front of the house as possible. He gazed at the McMansion and shook his head. Some people. He walked up the small set of steps and rang the doorbell.
He’d barely had a chance to remove his hand from the doorbell before the door swung open. “Detective, please come in,” Tanner McCann said, stepping aside.
“Of course,” Bryan said. He removed a pad from inside his shirt pocket. He patted around searching for a pen with no luck.
“Let’s go into the den. We’ll be more comfortable there.”
Bryan wondered if the doctor was the one who felt more comfortable in his den, but he kept the thought to himself. He’d been to the doctor’s office in Goldenhills several times. Dr. McCann was an excellent dentist. He was professional, and he always had a great manner with him and, he assumed, with the rest of his patients. He recalled his being a bit sharp with his dental assistant, but he wasn’t judging him. Maybe his assistant was new to the job, who knew?
He followed him down a hall to a set of giant wooden double doors, the kind he saw in those old black-and-white movies he watched on Sunday afternoons when he was bored out of his mind. Since his divorce, weekends stunk. By mutual agreement, Paula, his ex-wife, had custody of their fifteen-year-old daughter, Marty. His job required him to be on call twenty-four-seven, while Paula’s job as principal at Golden Elementary was pretty routine as far as hours went. He hated not seeing his daughter every weekend, but he and his ex had both decided that their marriage wasn’t working and had divorced when Marty was eleven. Marty had been sad, but she made the best of the situation. As far as Bryan could tell, she hadn’t been damaged by their divorce.
“Detective, can I offer you something to drink?” The doctor poured himself a drink from a minibar on the far side of the room.
“No, I’m on duty, but thanks. Now, tell me about your wife.” If McCann had been that concerned, Bryan thought, there would be more of an emotional reaction, but as far as he could see, at least so far, the man acted like he’d invited him over to shoot the breeze. However, he knew from twenty years’ experience that people reacted differently in stressful situations.
The doctor motioned for him to sit in a burgundy-leather wing chair in front of his massive desk. As soon as he was seated, Dr. McCann seated himself behind the desk. Putting himself in a position of power, Bryan thought.
“Here.” The good doctor handed him a fountain pen. Apparently he’d been watching him.
“Thanks, now why don’t you tell me about this argument you and your wife had.” He flipped the small leather notebook open, preparing to take notes in a shorthand that only he could read.
Tanner smiled. “It’s almost embarrassing, but I wouldn’
t be able to live with myself if I didn’t follow the proper procedures. I’m—”
“Sorry to interrupt, but what exactly do you mean by ‘proper procedures’?”
“As I was about to say, Detective, I’m quite familiar with the proper procedures when filing a police report.”
“I don’t understand,” he replied. Let the good doctor talk.
“I lost my first wife, Elaine.”
Bryan scribbled the name in his notebook. “How long ago?”
“When the twins were toddlers. Over twenty-one years ago. It seems like yesterday.” He took a drink of the golden liquid in his glass.
“And you had to file a police report then?” he asked.
“Yes. She had an accident.” Tanner shook his head. “It was the worst day of my life when she died.”
Bryan rearranged himself in the uncomfortable chair. The doctor must’ve known how uncomfortable it was when he invited him to sit down. “What kind of accident?” he asked, wondering just how long the doctor planned on talking about his dead wife before he actually mentioned his current one, the one he claimed was missing.
“She fell down the stairs when the twins were just a few months old. I tried to revive her, but her skull was crushed. Still, I had to try. I just couldn’t . . . it was hard with two babies. I hoped to save her life so they wouldn’t grow up without a mother, but I met Molly when the boys were nine months old. When I met her, I knew right away that I’d met my soul mate. She’s younger by ten years. We have a seventeen-year-old daughter, Kristen. She’s in France right now. A high-school graduation trip.”
“Doc, have you been drinking?” He had to ask. The doctor wasn’t making sense, jumping all over the place.
He nodded. “I had a few drinks with a friend before I came home, and this.” He held up his glass. “I’m not inebriated, if that’s what you’re asking.”
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