“Hello, I have to run some documents out to a—” I looked at my notepad and pretended to read. “Heather Dade. I was told to get her address from you.”
The brown-eyed receptionist smiled and started typing again. I made sure to cover my visitor badge with my purse and waited. Without a word, she wrote something on a sticky note and handed it to me. It was a long shot, but Heather’s name had come up too many times not to follow up, and Joshua had run into a dead end trying to find her.
Taking it, I thanked the woman and hurried out the front door.
Heather Dade
610 Mockingbird Lane
Eagle, ID 83713
I frowned as my mind reeled with questions. I jotted down a few of them right away before I forgot. There was only one thing on my mind now—to find this person and see what she had to say about Hank Williams.
As I walked to my car, I rolled my neck. The restless nights were getting to me. I needed to learn how to tame that nocturnal side or I might break.
I typed in the address on the GPS in my phone. It was on the other side of town. I wanted Joshua with me on this one—we could combine our information on the way there.
And he had a face anyone would trust. Those round cheeks and big brown eyes—most people were putty in his hands. No one suspected that he usually had multiple motivations behind each of his questions.
WILLIAMS HAD MONEY, HE had power, and this afforded him the means to hire out. But like his father used to say, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Hunting was a solo job. It was a sport, really, and one he enjoyed, but cleaning up the mess and doing the dirty work—that’s what he paid others to do.
“You see, Marco, if you’d done your job, if you’d just once done what I told you to do, this would not be happening.” Marco squirmed, but Williams held him down with a knee in the chest.
“I’m sorry. You said fix it, so I did.” Blood trickled from Marco’s nose, and his eyes darted to the eight-inch knife Williams was holding.
“No, Marco, you didn’t fix it—you fixed nothing. If you fixed it, why is she still snooping around, hmm? Tell me, Marco, why is she still alive if you fixed it?”
In a way, he was glad Marco misunderstood him. He needed this, needed to feel again, to see the fear. It fed him like a drug. He was addicted.
“No, boss, you said fix it, not fix them.”
Williams hit Marco in the neck with the palm of his hand. Marco gagged and tried to get free, but Williams was a strong man.
“Don’t tell me what I said. You failed me and now I have to do it. I have to do your job, Marco. How do you think that makes me feel?”
Marco couldn’t speak. He spit out more blood and Williams pressed harder into his chest, feeling a rib snap. This felt almost as good as an aged Scotch.
“Marco, Marco, Marco …” He lowered his tone as if calming a child. “You made a mistake. It’s okay.” Marco stopped struggling and looked up at Williams. A new hope filled his eyes. This was the best part—giving them hope, letting them think they might live.
“Just tell me, Marco, did you do your job? I just want the truth and this will all be over—you’ll be free. Just tell me the truth.”
Marco was crying now and the sight filled Williams with glee. “No, I didn’t. I failed you.”
“Lie!” Williams screamed and thrust the blade into Marco’s side. “You weak little man—you did just what I told you and now you’re lying to me?” Pulling the knife out, he stabbed Marco three more times, once in the left side and two in the right. Blood pooled out of Marco’s mouth and Williams stood to watch. Marco’s lungs would fill up and he would drown. It was not a fast way to die, which made it one of Williams’ favorites.
“You should have told me the truth, Marco, not let me push you around. But you were weak, and the weak deserve to suffer.”
“SO WHAT ARE WE hoping to find out from Heather?” Joshua asked. He rolled down the window and rested his arm on the sill.
“I don’t know. I just want to talk to her, see what we can find out. I want to know what made her change her name.”
“So we’re fishing?”
“Pretty much.”
“Got it.”
“Have we gotten anything back from the evidence in the barn yet?” I asked, needing something concrete to hope for.
“Nope, not yet,” he replied. “It’s a long shot—not sure the judge will even let us use it. It’s been in that barn a long time and it’ll look to the other side like it was planted.”
“I know. I need it more for my own motivation than anything else, proof in my own head.”
The whole case, from start to finish, didn’t make sense. The more I thought about it, the more messed up it seemed. The paid jurors, my kidnapping scare, the forensic cokehead, the witness flaking out, the way Hank Williams was so calm through the trial, the flowers and threats, Hannah’s reticence . . . it went on and on.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Joshua broke in to my thoughts and I snapped back to reality.
“Oh, just thinking about this case, the trial—all of it.”
“Kind of messed up.”
“Yeah.”
Joshua looked out the window. “I think he’s just a spoiled man who has a lot of money and has some guys on his payroll who do his dirty work. I think he gets off on it.”
“I agree. I feel like I’m missing something big, like he’s playing this game and I only have half the rules.”
“I feel just the opposite,” Joshua said. “I feel like we’re searching for rules that aren’t there. Does he seem to you like the kind of man who plays by rules?”
“No.” I sighed. “No, he doesn’t.”
HEATHER DADE LIVED IN the not-so-expensive part of Eagle. The whole town had been remade down to the cobblestone streets, but the old Eagle still had trailers and older homes from when all the stoners lived there twenty years ago before the housing boom.
I parked behind a beat-up Nova and walked to the door of the single-wide trailer. I could smell something funky coming from inside, and when a skinny girl with dark rings around her eyes opened the door, the smell hit me in the face, almost taking my breath away.
“What do you want?” Her voice was gruff and it sounded like she just woke up. She eyed me suspiciously, but her gaze softened when she saw Joshua. He was like a big teddy bear.
“Heather?” I asked in my kindest voice. Joshua smiled tentatively.
“Who wants to know? Are you reporters?”
“No, I’m with the DA’s office. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Not interested.” She started to shut the door, but I held up my hand and took a gamble that most of her information on law enforcement came from CSI: Miami.
“We can come back with a court order if you like, but then you’d have to talk to me down at the courthouse.”
Two court-order threats in one day. I was getting my money’s worth out of that one.
Heather looked at me through faded blue eyes. She was in her mid-twenties, but looked forty. I was guessing meth.
“Fine. What do you want?” she asked, opening the door a smidge.
“Can we come in?”
She opened the door all the way and we walked into her trailer. I couldn’t believe the mess—beer cans, cigarette butts, rotting food, animal feces, and trash littered every surface. My stomach churned. How could someone live like this? She lit a joint and I was about to protest until I realized the scent covered up the other smells in her house, so I decided not to say anything.
“This is my associate, Joshua.” I motioned toward Joshua, who stood with a fake smile on his face. His eyes watered and I had the feeling he was suffering from the smell a lot more than I was.
“Sorry about the mess. I don’t get many visitors.” Heather cleared a spot on the flowered couch and I sat down. She slouched on the arm of the couch and peered over at me. She looked like a crow perched on the edge of a headstone
.
“Heather, first I want to ask you why you changed your name.”
“I never changed my name,” she mumbled and took another draw from her joint.
I cleared my throat. “It was filed on July 7th.”
She tilted her head. “Don’t even remember.”
So this was the way it was going to go. She wasn’t going to sing so easily for me. Well, I could pull a song from just about anyone if you gave me enough time, bribed or not.
“Are you related to Hank Williams?” Joshua asked. I stiffened. If he ruined this for me, so help me . . .
The question clearly agitated her. She flushed, and her hands trembled so hard the ash crumbled from her smoke.
She wasn’t going to answer. Joshua looked at me and shifted uncomfortably. Taking out his handkerchief, he wiped the sweat from his brow.
I started with something easier. “Do you know a Glen Williams?”
Heather shot me a glare, and then she nodded as if the memory pained her.
“I understand why you don’t want to talk. I know how that works.” I thoughtlessly put my hand on the couch cushion, right into something white and gooey. I yanked my hand away, trying not to make a big deal of it, and wiped the goo on my pants. Hopefully it was just rotten yogurt and not something worse. “It doesn’t have to be about the name change, Heather.” I leaned back. “Just tell us a story.”
Joshua looked at me, confused. Heather finished her smoke and put it out in an ashtray shaped like a skeleton hand. She eyed me sideways. “A story?”
“Yep. A story. Any story.”
Heather suddenly looked like she was a million miles away. She stared at nothing, her eyes flashing with memories. I waited, trying not to tap my toe or shift or do anything that would distract her from her thoughts. Joshua looked around for a place to sit. He dragged out a kitchen chair, dusted off the seat with his handkerchief, and sat down heavily.
It pulled Heather from her reverie.
She took a deep breath and sighed. “I haven’t thought about him in a long time. This trial and the news just brought back a lot of bad memories.”
She seemed so breakable and her face was sunken in, as if she was dead but her body hadn’t received the memo.
“We want to hear a story, Heather,” I said.
“Okay, but all I know is a horror story. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“IT STARTED WHEN I turned twelve. My mother died and Hank lost it. He’s such a pig. I think he killed her, but that’s another story.”
So she was his … daughter?
“He gave me everything—I even had a frickin’ pony, just like in the movies. That was our life—parties, people always over, and then night after night of terror. He turned into a different person, mean and jumpy. He would get angry at the drop of a hat. I hated him, wanted to kill him, but I was scared.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Joshua asked.
“Yeah, my uncle Glen, but he did nothing. Said I was imagining things. That I was stressed because of my mother’s death. He said that if I told anyone my lies, I would lose everything. But a few nights after I told him what Hank was doing, he came into the room and … watched.”
“I’m so sorry, Heather.” I meant that with every fiber of my being.
Her eyes filled with tears and they spilled down her pale cheeks. I didn’t think she had seen kindness in a very long time and my heart broke for her. “I was Hannah back then. I made it to my eighteenth birthday and then I moved in with my boyfriend. I worked at Hank’s office every Saturday, filing papers. They paid me crap for wages. We did the best we could with the few pennies we had to rub together, but I had to pull from the money I’d saved for college. My guy left me a year later when the money ran out. Quitting work was the first thing I did after he left.”
“Did your dad look for you or try to find you?”
“No, that was the strange part. He just let me go, didn’t say a word. No police report, nothing. I was so sure he was going to bring me to his house again. I was going to run. I was too scared to talk to the cops. Hank would kill me—I knew he would. I started to imagine killing him, but even in my dreams, he was there with his stun gun.”
My heart jumped at the familiar weapon. So Heather had seen the end of one too.
“But I didn’t run—I was too chicken to face the unfamiliar. Glen told me he’d give me a stipend every month. I was using, and was in debt with some bad people. I needed the money and so I took it. And I was so scared that one day Hank would attack me again. But he traveled so much that I never saw him. Glen always went everywhere with him, but stayed in the shadows like a vampire. He’s so weird. And it was weird to see them together.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, it’s always weird to see identical people walking side by side.”
What the heck was she talking about?
Heather riffled through some magazines in a bookshelf and then took out a photo album. She flipped through the pages until she landed on what she wanted and handed it to me. My eyes widened in surprise. This case was getting stranger by the minute.
The picture was of a small family in front of a huge mansion. A young Heather stood in front of a squinty-eyed woman, who stood beside Hank, who stood beside a man who looked exactly the same as he did. Same shape of face, same build, same smile, same facial hair.
“Twins? Hank and Glen are twins?”
MY HEART BEAT IN my ears. They were identical twins, and in this picture I could not tell who was who.
“Yes, twins. But Glen was the quiet one, stayed in the background, never was one for the public eye. I don’t think he’s even publicly listed, so he can do whatever the heck he wants. He’s the one I thought I could trust, but we see how that worked out.”
My mind raced with the possibilities. Could Hank have switched places with Glen? Joshua leaned over and took the picture out of the album.
“Can we take this?”
“Sure. When I look at him, I see my father—I mean Hank. They’re different sides of the same coin.”
“Where is your uncle now?” I asked.
“Who knows? He’s never around. He lives in Hong Kong most of the time. And when he’s here, he doesn’t go out in public. I don’t think the things he does overseas are good.” Her eyes darkened. “Or decent. I heard him and Hank laughing about it once.”
The pieces were beginning to fall into place, but I still felt like something was missing. Why did he let his daughter leave without a word? And why isn’t Hannah in this family photo?
“I feel like you’re not telling me something—how did you end up here?”
Heather began to cry. I pulled her to me and held her as she wept. I tried not to care when she got tears and snot on my jacket sleeve. I held out my hand and gave Joshua a fierce look, and with a sigh he handed over his handkerchief. She blew her nose in it. After a time Heather calmed down and looked up at me. I could see the little girl in her eyes, so innocent and vulnerable, the girl she was before her father ruined her forever.
“I was getting back on my feet. I had a good job at Macy’s and I was going to stop using the stipend. I was even going to buy a little house. But then I got a letter.”
I waited for her to keep going. I felt for her—I could see her healthy, strong, and rising above all the hell of her past. I could see myself in her hollow expression.
“It was from no one, no return address, nothing. Just a note that said that I was not Hannah Williams—I was Heather Dade.”
“What do you mean? What happened to you, Heather?”
Through her sobs, she said, “I had been kidnapped!”
“WHAT? KIDNAPPED?” I EXCHANGED a look with Joshua. This story was getting too fantastic, and a sliver of doubt went through my mind.
“I was taken when I was three. Hank Williams is not my real father, and my mother is not even my real mother! That bastard took me and killed my real parents and then raped me when I turned twelve!”
�
�Slow down. What do you mean, he killed your parents?”
“After I got the letter, I started looking up everything I could find on the name Dade. I became obsessed. I found this old report of a missing girl, three years old, up in Washington. They never found her and the parents died a year later in a boating accident. I think Hank killed them.” Heather sucked in a heavy breath and blew her nose again.
“They died, and I have no other family. My grandparents are dead, they were both only children, and I’m the last. Once I discovered the truth, I was so sick that I lost it. A month later I was admitted to a mental ward in Boise and they got me hooked on drugs. The place just kept its patients under, medicated, and once I got out, I tried to tell the police. But it was my word against theirs. I don’t think I told the story well. They have money, power. And I have nothing but a broken mind.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “You have more than that. Blood can’t lie. You could have a DNA test done to prove who you are.”
“Then what? I was under a different name, I looked different, and all he has to do is claim that he never knew who I was, that I was just a crazy person who wanted money for drugs.”
I shook my head and said, “But you have this picture. You aren’t gone.”
“Oh, but I am. I’ve been replaced. The Hannah Williams at Williams, Inc. is my stand-in. You think they want the press asking questions about where his daughter went, why I’m not involved in the family business? She works for him—she’s the one in charge whenever Hank is away. Who do you think is running things now?”
I blew out a low whistle, trying to digest it all. If it was true, everything Hannah told me earlier today was hot air. She was in on it all. She wasn’t even Hannah Williams, and the plot was much more sinister. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t say anything,” she said with a hiccup. “If you do, you’ll end up like me, or worse. He doesn’t fight fair. My advice? Forget about him and pretend you never knew who Hank Williams was!”
The Steele Collection Books 1-3: Sarah Steele Legal Thrillers Page 7