“They couldn’t just let them out,” he told Kenzie.
But he knew it wasn’t true. He just wanted it to be true. He wanted to help Burton to recover, to be able to reconcile with his past, as horrific as it was. He wanted Allen to rest in peace, and maybe for Burton to be able to connect with extended family. The idea that the people who had forced him to live like an animal in a pen were walking around free was just too much.
“Maybe it’s time to put all of this aside and relax for a while before bed,” Kenzie suggested.
“Yeah. I’ll clean up.” But Zachary didn’t move. He stayed leaning against Kenzie, taking comfort in her warm, soft body molded against his. He didn’t want to move.
She rubbed his back in circles, not pushing him to tidy his things away or telling him he had to finish eating his pizza and put the plate in the dishwasher. He closed his eyes and just felt what it was like to be with her.
35
He didn’t remember anything that happened after that. Probably not much actually happened. They just cuddled and talked quietly about things other than Burton and his abusive parents walking around free like they’d never done anything wrong. He must have cleaned up at some time and they had gone to bed, because that was where he found himself at two o’clock in the morning, wide awake after another nightmare.
“It’s okay,” Kenzie murmured sleepily, giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before falling back asleep with her head on his chest.
He stared into the darkness, trying to focus on the good things. On how nice it was to be there with her and have her comforting him. To lie there with her asleep on his chest, all warm and cozy. That he was in a better relationship now than he’d ever been in with Bridget, even in those early, honeymoon days.
He tried not to think about Bridget, when that was the subject that kept rising to the surface.
Kenzie had suggested before that when Zachary had dreamed about twins, it had been because of Bridget. Knowing that she was expecting multiples weighed heavily on his mind when he had wanted so desperately to have children with her himself. If he could change things around so that he was the one with Bridget and so that both Gordon and Kenzie had partners who made them happy and satisfied… and if the babies that Bridget was carrying were his and Bridget’s, conceived in a loving, tender moment. Or in a lab after Bridget’s fight with cancer, he didn’t care.
He just couldn’t let go of that dream.
He should have been thinking about his nightmare instead of the dreams he’d had with Bridget. Twin boys again, not four years apart like Allen and Bobby. Twin boys, both looking exactly like Bobby had in the picture that Kathy had taken. Except that they were dressed in clothes that hung off their bodies in rags. Like zombies in a B-movie. But they hadn’t been zombies, they had been children. Children that Zachary had forgotten about, left alone and neglected when it was his responsibility to keep them fed.
He didn’t know how anyone could do that. How had Elizabeth and Sam Dougherty consigned their children to the dungeon beneath their house while they walked around above, clothed and well-fed, free to come and go as they pleased, living out a perfectly normal life in a neighborhood that knew nothing about what was going on? How could they act like normal people when their children languished in the basement?
Had they ever felt that sickening guilt that Zachary had felt when he woke up, left over from the dream, still reaching out to help them before they dissolved from reality? Had they ever felt one twist of guilt and regret over what they had done? Or had they only felt like victims, sure that everybody else was out to get them, misjudging them, not understanding that it wasn’t really their fault at all?
He shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. Kenzie’s head was grinding against his sternum, a bone that had been broken more than once before and was letting him know it with flares of pain. He loved having her against him; he just needed her to move a little bit to ease the pain radiating from his chest into his ribs.
“Are you okay?” Kenzie murmured. She hugged him, moving closer to his shoulder. Zachary breathed and rubbed his sternum tenderly.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“No. But it’s okay. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m okay. I don’t mind staying up with you for a bit.”
“You need your sleep.”
“So do you. You want to talk for a few minutes? Would it help?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m just… restless.”
“You had a dream?”
“Yeah.”
He wondered if he’d cried out in his sleep. He knew he could be pretty loud when he was fighting his demons.
“What about?”
“Nothing. The fire,” he lied, not wanting to tell her it had been twins again, and to think that he was pining after Bridget. He was devoted to Kenzie. Bridget had her own life now. Another man in it. Another man’s babies growing inside her.
He felt suddenly nauseated and lurched up to a sitting position.
“Zachary?”
Zachary knew it was too late to calm his body. After getting his feet free of the covers, he made a dash for the ensuite bathroom and reached the toilet just in time. He hit the floor on his knees. It was a long time before the vomiting and retching ceased and he was able to rest his head for a moment and try to catch his breath.
Kenzie waited until he had splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth and blown his nose. Then she tapped on the door he had slammed behind him. “Are you okay? You got a bug?”
“I’m fine.” Zachary wiped his mouth and nose with toilet paper, trying to eliminate all evidence of being sick. He rinsed his mouth with mouthwash. “Sorry, it’s okay. Just go back to sleep.”
“I’m worried about you. Is it something you ate?” She laughed at herself. “Of course it wasn’t something you ate; you barely touched your dinner.”
Zachary shut off the light before pushing the door open, so as not to blind her. Instead, he was nearly blind himself. Kenzie put a sympathetic hand on his arm.
“Probably just my meds.”
“If they’re making you sick, you should talk to the doctor about adjusting them. Lower the dosage or look at a different medication.”
“Most of the time it’s okay; I just get nauseated. Just this time…”
She stroked his arm and guided him back toward the bed.
And then the car alarm sounded.
36
Zachary froze for an instant. And then he was to the bedroom window, sure that it was his alarm sounding. Even as he took the few strides to the window, he knew he would get there and there would be no reason for his anxiety. It would be someone else’s car, a proximity sensor that was too sensitive and had been set off by a tree blowing in the wind or an animal. Nothing to panic about.
But when he peered between the slats of the blinds, he saw that it was his car. The lights had come on as well as the siren blaring. And his alarm was not a proximity sensor. It was a break-in alarm that would only be set off by someone lifting the handle, putting a key in the lock without disarming it first, or breaking the glass.
There was a man standing beside the car. Zachary didn’t recognize him. He was too far away to be sure of the details, but he seemed to be an older man. In his sixties or seventies, but the type who still looked vigorous and strong. A tough guy Zachary would not want to tangle with or come face to face with in a dark alley.
“Zachary?”
“Can you hand me my phone?”
He could hear Kenzie moving around behind him. She picked up his phone and handed it to him. “Is there someone there?”
The man was already moving away and, by the time Zachary got his phone turned on and switched into camera mode, there was not much to see but the man’s retreating form. There was no point in calling 9-1-1; he would be long gone by the time the police managed to get there.
He lowered his phone and watched the man disappear from sight.
“No one I recognized. A man. Trying to get into my car or messing with it. I need to go out and take a look.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“He’s gone. It’s fine.”
“He could come back. He could have a partner.”
Zachary turned and watched out the window for another minute. But he couldn’t see any other sign of life. “I’ll be careful.”
“It’s times like this that I wish you carried.”
“A gun doesn’t help in a situation like this. Like you said, he could have a partner, and they could be armed. Me walking out there with a gun would just escalate things. If I’m not armed, I’m less likely to be shot. Besides… well you know…” He couldn’t vouch for his own safety with a gun in the house.
Kenzie sighed and didn’t argue it any further. “You could at least take a baseball bat. A kitchen knife.”
Zachary looked out the window one last time. “There’s no one out there.”
Before she could argue any further, he headed for the front door. Kenzie disarmed the burglar alarm. He slipped his shoes on without untying them and they flopped under his heels as he walked up to his car. He looked around him carefully, then examined the car. No glass was broken. So the man must have tried to open the doors or messed with it in some other way. Zachary clicked his fob to disarm the security system and unlock the doors, and had a quick look inside. Nothing appeared to have been touched.
It was too dark to see anything underneath the car; he’d have to take it to Jergens, his mechanic, for a quick look before he did any driving around. He brought up his bug sweeping app on his phone, but it didn’t detect any radio transmissions or magnetic distortion. Other than the vehicle recovery module he’d installed himself. If the man had put a tracker on the car, it wasn’t transmitting yet.
Zachary locked the car and rearmed the security system. He returned to the house. Kenzie had pulled on her robe and was waiting for him, arms crossed and looking anxious. Her phone was in her hand. Ready to place an emergency call if something went wrong.
“Everything is fine,” he assured her. “I’m okay.” He looked down at himself as he kicked off his shoes. It might have made sense to pull something on before going outside in his boxers. He cleared his throat, face warm.
“You think it was just a random thing? Someone checking for unlocked cars or something valuable left on a seat?”
“Probably.” But Zachary’s mind went back to the motorcyclist who had followed him. First a tail, and now someone trying to break into his car? It was probably just a coincidence, but he didn’t like coincidences.
“It’s not like you’re hunting some serial killer.” Kenzie gave a weak laugh. “Not this time.”
“No. Burton is probably my biggest case right now, and that’s something that happened decades ago. I can’t see how I could have stirred anything up with my inquiries.”
“And it isn’t the guys who had Madison? It could be, couldn’t it?”
“It’s possible, but I can’t see why they’d have any interest in me since Madison and Noah are both supposed to be dead. Or why they would come here and then not do anything. If it was those guys… there probably would have been bullets through the door.”
Kenzie seemed reassured by this. “Yeah.”
Zachary approached Kenzie and offered a hug. She cuddled into his arms, and he gave her a reassuring hug. She had tried to calm him earlier, and now it was his turn to make her feel better. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“You too.”
Zachary shook his head. “I’m going to… keep an eye on things.”
“You said he won’t come back.”
“And he won’t. But I won’t be able to get back to sleep. I’ll just keep you up. Better if I keep myself busy.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to either.”
“You will.” He gave her a nudge in the direction of the bedroom, and they walked down the hall together.
Kenzie climbed into bed, and Zachary sat on the edge.
“Are you going to read me a bedtime story?” Kenzie teased.
“Shh. No more questions. It’s time for sleep. Be a good girl.”
Kenzie closed her eyes, holding his hand. “Reminds me of putting Amanda to bed,” she murmured.
Zachary didn’t say anything, waiting for sleep to take her.
37
Zachary made the decision to reach out to Elizabeth Dougherty’s parents to see if they could be of any help. He figured that between the two parents, Elizabeth was the more sympathetic figure and her family would be more likely to help him if he showed some compassion toward her and claimed to want to hear her side of the story.
What he really wanted, of course, was information about Allen. Had they known about him? Had they seen him? Did they know what had happened to him? Hopefully, whatever they could provide, together with the little bit of information that Zachary had with Allen’s birth certificate and the few details they knew would be enough to convince the police to try for a warrant to search the house, including breaking up the basement floor. They had x-rays or radar they could use to look through concrete, so they might be able to see whether there was anything down there before beginning.
Elizabeth Dougherty had been born Elizabeth Johnson. Her parents, Sylvester and Edith, were still alive, as far as Zachary could tell. He didn’t call ahead, but went to their door and rang the doorbell. It was a pleasant little house. Not the best neighborhood, but not the worst, either. Better than the one Elizabeth had lived in with Sam, Allen, and Bobby. She had, presumably, grown up there or in a similar house.
A woman came to the door after a couple of doorbell rings, opening it slowly and peering out at Zachary. She was bent and white-haired, but her eyes seemed clear and alert. “Yes? Who are you?”
“Mrs. Johnson, my name is Zachary Goldman. I’m here to ask some questions about Elizabeth and her children.”
Her face was immediately shuttered. She started to push the door closed. “No comment.”
“I’m not a reporter.” Zachary put his hand against the door. She could still shut it, but it did stall her for a split-second. “I know Bobby.”
She stared at him. Eventually, she opened the door again and motioned for him to enter. Zachary was directed to the living room and sat down. He looked around. Books. Displays of china. Pretty furniture. A feminine, grandmotherly room. Little male influence, if any. Edith didn’t say that her husband would be joining them or that he was lying down. The doors to the closet at the front door were closed, so he couldn’t see if there were any men’s clothing or shoes.
Edith sat down in an upholstered chair. “You know Bobby?”
“His name now is Ben. He came looking for the house he grew up in. He’s been… unraveling his story, trying to remember what happened and to put it all together. I’m helping him with that, and I thought you might be able to answer some of his questions.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with any of that business. I don’t know anything.”
“What do you think it would be like, not to know the things that had happened to you when you were younger, in a different life? You would still react to things, but not have any idea why. You would have vague, shadowy memories, visceral reactions, but not know any of your origins. Your heritage.”
“I can’t help any of that.”
“You can, because you can provide some of the pieces he is missing. Not everything, maybe, but you can still help him. He wants to know more about what happened. About the family he came from.”
“Why would he want to know about anything that happened back then? It was horrible business. Nothing that anyone should have to hear, let alone go through. That poor boy. To have something like that in your family…” She shook her head, looking angry. “It’s a black spot on our name.”
“I know it is. Maybe we can start this from
another direction, and that would make it easier. You haven’t had any contact with Bobby, of course, with all that happened. Social Services never offered kinship care?”
“No. They never tried to contact us. Never tried to place him with family.”
“I guess in a case like this… they wanted to make a clean break. Make sure that Elizabeth and Sam would never have any more contact with him.”
Edith shrugged.
“What about Allen? Had you met him?”
Edith’s eyes widened. “Allen?”
“Bobby’s older brother. That was his name, wasn’t it?”
She nodded automatically.
“Mrs. Johnson,” Zachary leaned toward her slightly. “What happened to Allen? Do you know?”
She looked around the room, not meeting his eyes. Zachary waited. It was awful for him to expect her to answer questions like this about her own child and grandchild. To admit to what had happened and the fact that they had not been able to stop it.
“We kept expecting someone to talk about him. To say what had happened… but no one ever mentioned him. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Zachary had been afraid she was going to relate some fiction about Allen being adopted by another family, maybe informally. She would claim he was still alive out there somewhere; they just weren’t sure where he had ended up.
The clean break was better. They had known about him, and then he had disappeared and no one had ever mentioned him again.
“Did you ask Social Services about him? You must have been confused.”
He Never Forgot Page 20