Broken Places

by Sandra Parshall

  “I won’t stay a second longer than I have to.” Tom sat in a chair opposite the sofa. Brandon remained standing near the door, with his hands clasped behind his back. Glancing around at the heavy draperies and upholstery, the furniture that looked like well-maintained antiques, Tom was surprised to find such a curiously old-fashioned room in the home of a young man.

  His gaze settled on the big, longhaired cat that occupied the chair to his right. Tom recognized the animal as Hamilton, the cat in Hern’s comic strip. The cat stared back at him, unblinking.

  Returning his attention to Hern, Tom said, “I came to tell you that your mother’s car was found this morning. At the bottom of a ravine about fifty miles from here.”

  Tom watched the shock waves move over Hern’s face, bringing surprise, confusion, and finally a realization of what the news meant. “My mother—Did you—Was she—” He wobbled as if his legs were giving way.

  Brandon sprang forward, but Rachel and Angie reached Hern first. One on each side, they guided him to the sofa. He collapsed onto it, his face slack with dread. “Tell me everything,” he said in a hoarse croak.

  “We haven’t located your mother. There were no personal items in the car. But it is definitely her car.”

  “Oh, god,” Hern moaned. He slumped forward, clutching his head in his hands. “I knew it. I knew something had happened to her.”

  Angie leaned close to whisper. Rachel stroked Hern’s hair once, like a mother calming a child, then placed an arm around his shoulders. At the sight of these intimate, caring gestures, Tom’s gut twisted with jealousy.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning flared in the windows like flashbulbs every few seconds.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Hern’s reaction looked sincere, Tom had to admit. That kind of raw emotion, the overwhelming sense of loss that felt like being flayed alive, was something Tom remembered all too well. He’d never met anyone who could fake it convincingly.

  Hern’s head came up, his face animated by sudden hope. “You said it was at the bottom of a ravine? You mean it went off the road? She could have walked away—”

  “The ravine isn’t next to the road. It can only be reached by a track through the woods. The car was driven in there and rolled over the edge into the ravine. Then somebody tried to hide it by dragging tree branches over it.” Tom paused. “Big, heavy branches dragged down from the woods. Unless she was a bodybuilder, I don’t think she could have done it alone. If she was injured, it would have been out of the question.”

  No one spoke. When Tom thought Hern had absorbed the implications of the situation, he said, “I have to ask you what your mother’s blood type is.”

  “Her blood—Oh, no.”

  Rachel asked quietly, “You found blood in the car?”

  “Not much, just a smear,” Tom answered without looking at her. To Hern, he said, “Do you know your mother’s blood type?”

  “It’s A positive,” Hern said, his voice thick, his eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Is that what you found in the car?”

  Tom pulled in a breath, let it out. “Yes, it is.”

  Hern made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and buried his face in his hands.

  “There’s enough for a DNA test if you’ll give us a sample for comparison,” Tom said. “You don’t have to give blood. Just go over to Dr. Gretchen Lauter’s office first thing in the morning and they’ll do a cheek swab.”

  He expected Hern to object to this intrusion, but instead he dropped his hands and nodded.

  “DNA will take a while,” Tom said. “A week, at least—”

  Thunder cracked directly overhead, making Tom wince. Lightning lit the windows. The big cat shot off its chair and galloped out of the room. In the next instant rain poured from the sky like a river breaking through a dam. It beat against the window panes. The walls around Tom’s memories fell away, and he had a dizzying sensation of spinning, sliding out of control. He heard again the crunch and screech of metal as a massive tree flattened his parents’ van.

  Trying to drag himself back to the present, he drew a deep breath to slow his racing heart and gripped the chair arms to keep the others from seeing his hands shake. But Rachel saw. When he met her eyes, she looked back with sympathetic understanding.

  Ben Hern, oblivious to Tom’s struggle, seemed to be fighting to gain control of his own emotions but failing completely. Tears ran down his face. “She’s dead,” he choked out. “My mother’s dead.”

  For a crazy moment Tom heard an echo of his own voice, when he woke up in the ER after the accident. They’re dead? They’re all dead?

  “Whoever killed the Taylors,” Hern said, “they killed her too.”

  Concentrate. Tom yanked his attention back to the distraught man sitting across from him. “Don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know that anything has happened to your mother. Just let us do our jobs and we’ll get the answers you need.”

  Hern swiped at his wet cheeks with the back of a hand. “If I’d never come here, she wouldn’t have either. She never would have seen the Taylors again, and she’d still be alive.”

  “Was something going on between them that you haven’t told me about?” Tom asked. “Did she go to the Taylor house Friday morning? You need to be honest with me now.”

  Hern shook his head. “None of that matters now. If she’s gone, nothing matters anymore.”

  “Everything matters,”  Tom said. “Look, if you want me to find out who did this, you’ll stop obstructing the investigation.”

  “Leave him alone!” Angie cried. “Can’t you see you’re just making it worse?”

  Out of patience, Tom turned on her. “I’ve got a few questions for you too. How is it you just happened to take a day off from work on the same day the Taylors’ neighbor was killed?”

  Outrage flooded her face. “First my boss, then my father, now me. You think we were all in it together?”

  “This is crazy,” Hern protested. “Angie couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Really, Tom,” Rachel said, “you can’t be serious.”

  Tom ignored Rachel’s scolding and said to Angie, “Your father had a very good motive to kill the Taylors. And you’d do anything to protect him, wouldn’t you? You knew Lloyd Wilson might have seen something—”

  “That’s enough!” Rachel cried. “Stop this right now.”

  “I’m doing my job, Rachel.” Tom rose and looked down at Hern. “When you’re ready to cooperate and help us find your mother, let me know.”

  He walked out, signaling Brandon to stay. He was soaking wet by the time he reached his car and set off in the blinding rain.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “Do you want something to eat?” Rachel asked Ben. “Did you have dinner?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  Angie reacted the way Rachel hoped she would. Rising from the sofa, she said, “Well, I’m going to bring you something anyway. You need to eat.”

  With Angie on her way to the kitchen, Rachel had only Brandon to worry about. He leaned against a wall in the foyer, looking casual and a little bored, but he never took his eyes off Rachel and Ben.

  She spoke to Ben in a whisper. “Let’s go out on the porch where we can talk privately.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Ben said, his voice loud enough to make Brandon snap to attention.

  “Keep your voice down.” Rachel raised a hand to assure Brandon everything was okay. “Come on.”

  She stood and waited until Ben heaved a sigh and rose too. “We’re just going on the porch for a minute,” she told Brandon. “I’ll be right back in, okay?”

  Brandon didn’t look happy, but he nodded agreement.

  Rain pounded the porch roof, drowning out the night sounds of crickets and frogs. A firefly, taking refuge from the storm, clung to the outside of the screen and blinked off and on, off and on.

  Although security lig
hts illuminated the yard beyond, the porch was dark, and Rachel could barely make out Ben’s features when he faced her. “I know you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Ben.”

  “I hope to god they’ll find her alive somewhere,” he said. “I have to keep hoping she’s alive.”

  “I’m hoping for that too,” Rachel said. “You know I am. But—Ben, is there something you’re not telling Tom? You think your mother did go to the Taylor house Friday morning, don’t you?”

  Rachel heard the scratchy sound of his hand scraping over a day’s growth of chin stubble. “I’m pretty sure she did, yeah.”

  “Why can’t you tell Tom that?”

  “She wanted to pay off the Taylors, give them a big chunk of money, but I was afraid she’d just make the whole situation worse. Cam would’ve kept coming back for more. I’d never be rid of him. But I guess she tried it anyway. That had to be her car the neighbor saw.”

  ”She wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Rachel said. “Why not tell Tom?”

  Ben inhaled a shaky breath. “If she’s still alive, I’m not going to help the police pin the murders on her.”

  “What?” None of this seemed quite real to Rachel. But the murders were real. She had touched Cam Taylor’s dead body. “Ben, do you think your mother could have killed the Taylors?”

  She braced for an explosion of anger over the question. It didn’t come.

  Ben answered in a subdued voice. “She was furious about Cam trying to blackmail me. She didn’t let him see how mad she was, she laughed it off when she was talking to him, and she didn’t let Angie see it, but she was…enraged. She’s always had a temper, but I’ve never seen her that mad before. She was storming around here, saying she could kill Cam, who the hell did he think he was, she could throttle him with her bare hands—”

  “Oh, Ben, that’s the kind of thing a lot of people say when they’re angry. It doesn’t mean she did it.”

  “Tom Bridger would think that was exactly what it meant. And I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to believe she’s dead—but if she’s alive, where is she? What reason would she have to hide if she didn’t do anything wrong?”

  They stood side by side at the screen, damp wind blowing against their faces. Rachel knew what it was like to suspect a parent was capable of something unspeakable, and she wished she could erase that suspicion from Ben’s mind. But she also knew how it felt to lose a parent, and she understood why he would rather believe his mother was a fugitive than accept that she had been murdered. Now that Karen Hernandez’s car had been found, Rachel felt certain she was dead, and she couldn’t produce any soothing words that would help Ben.

  “I lied earlier,” he said. “I lied to you and Angie.”

  His admission brought a stab of disappointment. Ben had been utterly convincing when he’d poured out his version of what happened in New York. “Are you saying that you—”

  “Yes.” In the dark she heard Ben breathe in, breathe out. “I had sex with the underage girl who was posing for me. But it only happened three times, and I swear, at first I thought she was nineteen.”

  “So you went on…seeing her after you found out she was a minor?”

  “I don’t have an excuse, except that I was crazy and out of control. I’m ashamed of it. I never wanted you to know.”

  Rachel swallowed to push down the bile that soured her throat. Ben had sex with an underage girl and bought his way clear of criminal charges. Cam Taylor had known the whole truth, and his wife had probably known too. Of course Ben feared them. Of course his mother had been afraid for her son.

  Rachel had heard a lot of theories about the Taylors’ murders in the last few days, but she’d heard of no one with a stronger motive than Ben Hern and Karen Hernandez.

  ***

  Abandoning the idea of confronting Lindsay right away, Tom turned toward home. He tried to shut everything else out of his mind and concentrate on navigating the flooded road, but he couldn’t stop himself from reliving every minute he’d spent in Hern’s house.

  Tom had a gut feeling that Karen Hernandez was dead, she’d died the same day the Taylors did, but her son wasn’t sure, and he was withholding something, probably to protect her. The way Rachel blindly supported and protected Hern infuriated Tom.

  Lightning flashed and thunder sounded in the same instant, jolting Tom out of his thoughts and forcing his attention back to the road. He could swear the heart of the storm stayed directly above him all the way home. It made him feel like that woeful character with the unpronounceable name who trudged through the old L’il Abner comic strip with a black cloud perpetually hovering over his head.

  Tom had left lights on at home for Billy Bob, and as he approached the white clapboard farmhouse the windows shone bright and welcoming in the storm. He’d always hated coming home to a dark house. Something seemed wrong, though. He was sure he hadn’t left the upstairs lights on too, but now his bedroom window was lit up. Frowning, he turned into the driveway. Then he spotted Lindsay’s car parked at the end, next to the house. Had she broken in?

  “God damn it,” he muttered. He parked behind her car, stepped into the rain, and charged up the front walk to the shelter of the porch. In the light cast by a fixture next to the door, he sorted through his keys, but before he could find the right one, Lindsay opened the door. Billy Bob stood beside her, wagging his tail.

  “Oh, you’re soaking wet!” Lindsay exclaimed. “You poor thing.”

  Tom pushed past her and slammed the door shut. “How did you get in here? If you broke a window—”

  “Of course I didn’t break a window. Why would you think something like that? You need a towel. I’ll get you one.”

  Lindsay turned to head off down the hall, but Tom grabbed her arm and spun her back around to face him. “How did you get in here?”

  “I used my key, of course.” She pulled her arm free.

  “You don’t have a key. You gave it back to me, remember?”

  “Well…” She shrugged and wrinkled her nose, giving him an apologetic half-smile. “I gave back the original, but I’ve still got a copy I had made.”

  “Why did you have a copy made?”

  “You know, in case I lost my keys. You remember how I was always losing keys and Mom had to make sure we had extras. It’s just second nature to me by now, to make a copy of everything.” She added, “I didn’t realize I still had it until tonight. It’s not as if I deliberately held onto it.”

  “I want it,” Tom said. He unbuckled his gun belt and stowed it on the shelf in the hall closet. “If you’ve got any more copies, I want those too.”

  Lindsay’s silence made him turn to look at her, and he found her watching him with tear-filled eyes. “I can’t believe how hateful you’re being to me,” she said.

  “And I can’t believe some of the things you’ve been doing,” Tom shot back. “I thought I knew what you’re capable of, but you’ve really outdone yourself in the last few days.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she cried, sounding more wounded than angry.

  “What the hell were you thinking when you encouraged that lynch mob?”

  “Lynch mob? Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That meeting was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  Lindsay shook her head. “No. No, it wasn’t. They asked me to be there, but it was not my idea. Is it so hard for you to believe that people loved my parents enough to want their killer caught?”

  “And you’re happy to point a finger at the person you want to see arrested.”

  “Are you saying Ben Hern isn’t at the top of your suspect list?”

  “Whether he’s a suspect or not is beside the point. I don’t have enough evidence to arrest anybody, and I’m not letting a mob push me into doing the wrong thing. You, of all people, ought to know how crazy it would be to move ahead without solid evidence.”

>   “I don’t control those people,” Lindsay protested. “I don’t tell them what to say or do.”

  “No? Where did Beck Rasey get that stuff about Rachel?”

  Lindsay’s blue eyes sparked with fury, and her voice trembled when she said, “It all comes back to Rachel, doesn’t it? If you listen to her, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Her whole life is a lie.”

  “Give me a break, Lindsay. I’m not stupid, I can see what you’re up to.”

  “Tommy, you have to listen to me, you need to know.”

  He raised his hands. “I’ve heard enough from you.”

  “Just listen to what I’ve found out about her. To begin with, she’s lying about her birth date and her birthplace. There’s no record of a Rachel Goddard being born on that date in—”

  “Stop it. You’re not even making sense.” Tom strode down the hall to the kitchen, Billy Bob beside him. He reached for the dog’s water bowl, intending to fill it, but saw it was already full.

  “I gave him fresh water,” Lindsay said from the doorway. “I took him out too, and I cleaned his feet and dried him off when we came back in.”

  Tom brushed past her and headed up the hall again. He didn’t know where he was going. He ended up in the living room, staring out a window at the rain. He wondered if Rachel was out on the road now. Brandon would be right behind her, but if she tried to drive through standing water and spun out of control, Brandon couldn’t do anything to prevent an accident.

  Tom was aware of Lindsay entering the room, pausing somewhere behind him. “The rain’s easing up a little,” he said. “You can leave now.”

  “Rachel’s turned you against me completely,” Lindsay said to his back. “We can’t even be friends anymore because of her. What hurts the most is knowing how wrong she is for you. She’s going to hurt you, and I can’t do a damned thing to stop it.”

  Tom turned to see Lindsay’s stricken face. “Don’t you get it? I want you to stay out of my life.”

  She bowed her head, hiding her face from him. Her voice was sorrowful and so soft he barely caught her words. “Do you know how much I love you, Tommy?”