Closer Than You Think (12 page)

‘That truck,’ she said slowly. ‘It wasn’t there yesterday.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it was,’ Novak said evenly. ‘Arianna Escobar’s blood all over the driver’s seat was still wet.’

‘Arianna Escobar?’

‘The girl you found on the road. That’s her name.’

Faith stared at him. ‘How did her blood get on the truck’s seat?’ Her brain finally clicked into gear. ‘Are you saying that she was in that truck? That she was
driving
that truck?’

‘In the absence of DNA analysis of the blood, I can only say that it’s likely.’

‘Oh my God,’ Faith whispered as the pieces fell into place. The coat of arms . . . it was the logo of Earl Power and Light, the company she’d called to turn on her electricity. ‘That truck was at my house today. Where’s the driver? What happened to the driver?’

Novak just looked at her, waiting, and her horror doubled.

‘You think I know?’ Still he said nothing, and her heart began to pound in her chest, in her head, until it was all she could hear. ‘I called them to turn on my electricity. That’s all, I swear.’

She looked away, breathed through her nose. Tried to calm herself.
They think I know. They think I’m involved in whatever happened to the electric guy
.

And in whatever had happened to Arianna Escobar. She looked up, saw that Novak’s odd eyes were filled with concern. And apprehension.

‘Oh my God.’ It was a hoarse whisper that she couldn’t have held back had she tried. She lifted her hands to her mouth, the bandages rough against her lips. ‘I tried to save her. I didn’t hurt her. I couldn’t hurt her.’

Novak rubbed his forehead. ‘Dammit. I really want to believe you. Let’s see what the house has to say.’

Trembling, Faith lowered her hands to her lap, focused her gaze on the darkness of the trees that lined the road. The house had always had a great deal to say, she thought. And for the past twenty-three years, none of it had been good.

Chapter Six

Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 7.05
P.M.

J
ust in time
. He dragged one last limb across the entrance to the dirt road, then straightened with a grimace. No one driving down this stretch of highway would notice the entrance unless they were looking for it. The other end of the road emerged in the woods, a fair distance from the house in the opposite direction to the road that led to the interstate. He’d already hidden that entrance, but he didn’t think it would stay hidden. Not for long.

Because of Faith. That motherfucking little bitch. She’d ruined everything.
Brought the cops to my door. I wish I’d killed her when I had the chance
.

But he hadn’t, and now through the trees he caught strobing flashes of blue – a cruiser had pulled up in front of his house.
My house
. That the bitch’s name was on the deed didn’t matter. He’d fixed it up. He’d called it home.

He hadn’t been able to clean it all up – inside or outside. Hadn’t been able to get rid of the power tech’s blood. Or the locksmith’s.

And he hadn’t been able to move all his treasures out of the house. He’d only had time to rescue a small portion of his collection. He’d hidden the rest where no one would ever think to look. Now he needed to make himself scarce.

The only consolation was that he’d left nothing of himself behind. No DNA. No prints. He always wore gloves, and Roza cleaned religiously.

Looking both ways to be sure no one was coming, he walked back to the van he’d left idling on the shoulder, curbing the urge to check the cargo in the back. They’d still be there, either too drugged or too dead to run away. He briefly considered tossing them all in the river, but decided against it. Not here, anyway. With nothing to weigh them down, they’d float and be discovered.

Headlights off, he pulled out on to Kellogg Avenue heading east, the river now only a stone’s throw away. Kellogg ran parallel to and below the steep embankment where all the cruisers had gathered. He could take the river road east all the way to West Virginia if he wanted, but he had a different destination in mind. He crept along without his lights, waiting until he’d rounded the bend and was out of sight of the cruisers above before turning his headlights on.

When his cargo was safely buried, he’d make Faith sorry she’d ever left Miami.

Mt Carmel, Ohio, Monday 3 November, 7.35
P.M.

Deacon parked behind Adam’s sedan. The house was
huge
, an imposing structure that would have been perfect for the Addams family. It certainly wasn’t a house that seemed to fit the woman who stared out the window of his SUV, her bandaged hands lightly folded in her lap.

She hadn’t moved a muscle, yet her body vibrated with tension. Which was to be expected, Deacon thought. He had all but accused her of a terrible crime. She wasn’t involved. He knew it in his gut. But she kept too many secrets. Her arrival was too coincidental. And her newly discovered past appeared to be far from pristine.

Crandall’s call had rocked him. Dr Faith Frye, therapist.
To sex offenders.
Deacon had dealt with her breed before, the bleeding hearts who believed that the monsters who raped children could be rehabilitated. They were as bad as defense attorneys. Maybe even worse. At least defense attorneys could claim to be defending the accused’s constitutional rights.

Sex offenders could not be rehabilitated, and any therapist who believed they could was
—

Deacon reeled himself back in before he disintegrated into a mental rant. Faith Frye had paid for her association with child rapists, and paid dearly. One of her clients had attacked her, then stalked her after his prison release.

She’d submitted thirty complaints to Miami PD in the last year. That she’d changed her name and relocated a thousand miles away was understandable. That she wouldn’t have needed to if she’d chosen a different client population was undeniable.

But even after hearing her admit to her profession, he couldn’t believe everything Crandall had told him. Couldn’t believe Peter Combs’s stated reason for attacking her with a knife. Couldn’t believe Combs’s claims that she’d cheated on him, that she’d been having an affair with him.

That was simply . . . vile.
And if it is true?
It couldn’t be.
You just don’t want it to be
.

Still, he knew that Faith Frye, or Corcoran, or whatever she called herself, wasn’t involved in whatever had brought Arianna Escobar to this place. The woman who’d bloodied her hands, knees and feet to help a girl would never be in league with those who’d abused her.

Four years ago or now. He simply could not believe it.

‘This is your house,’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said bitterly. ‘Beautiful, ain’t it?’

Interesting. When she’d called his eyes beautiful, she’d been awed. But when she used the same word for the house, he heard hatred. ‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

A slight hesitation. ‘I was here when I was told that my mother had died. I was here when they buried her.’

‘So you have bad memories of the house? Then why did you decide to live in it?’

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ she said cryptically. ‘What are they looking for?’ she asked, pointing to ten arcing beams of light moving methodically away from the house.

‘The other victim,’ he said, needing to see her reaction.

She swung her head to stare at him, new horror in her eyes. ‘There were
two
girls?’

‘Yes. Arianna Escobar and her friend Corinne Longstreet. They disappeared from their college campus Friday night.’

‘Oh my God. And you think they were in my grandmother’s house?’

‘Possibly.’

Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. ‘The locksmith. Have you found him?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Do you have any other keys to the house?’

She shook her head. ‘The only key I had didn’t fit the front door. I told you that already. I got it from my grandmother’s attorney, and when I told him it didn’t work, he said it was the only key she’d given him. That’s why I called the locksmith.’

He believed her. ‘Let me see what’s what. Then we’ll talk some more. Stay here, please.’

She nodded slowly, reminding Deacon of a porcelain doll. Only her head moved, every other muscle and every feature on her face frozen. ‘Of course,’ she murmured, shaken.

From the corner of his eye he saw Adam coming across the front lawn, urgency in his step.

‘I’ll be back,’ Deacon said. He rushed through the antique wrought-iron gate that Adam held open. ‘What do we have?’

‘Nothing good, for the victims or us. We have signs of a fight and gunfire. On the side of the house and at the back corner. CSU found two bullets embedded in the wall, and four casings.’

‘More casings than bullets,’ Deacon said. ‘Some of his bullets could still be in his victims, then. Arianna has a wound in her leg. Was the bullet still in it when Faith found her?’

‘No clue. You want me to find out?’

‘Later. We’ll get Bishop to ask the ER doc. What else?’

‘This.’ Adam held out a sixteen-inch-long tube and a dart. ‘Found it in back of the house, along with a can of bear mace. Tanaka searched the Earl Power truck and found another tube about six feet long and a case filled with more darts. I called the power tech’s boss, who said that Ken Beatty was mauled by a dog a few years ago. He had no knowledge that his employee carried tranquilizer darts, but he wasn’t surprised.’

‘Then the power tech fought back,’ Deacon murmured. ‘What else?’

‘Someone drove a van from the driveway on the west side of the house across the grass. Stopped three times. Once at the kitchen door, once in the back, and once at the side. There are signs of a body being dragged across the back of the house, but only halfway. The trail stops at the same place the van stopped.’

‘He put the body in the van. Can CSU estimate the body’s size?’

‘Only that whoever it was, was big.’

‘Corinne Longstreet is five-six, a hundred thirty pounds.’

Adam shook his head. ‘We’re talking two-fifty big. Like Ken Beatty, the Earl Power tech. Plus, the meter’s back there and there’s blood spatter along the back wall.’

‘Shit. I was afraid of that. What about the third van stop?’

‘A lot of blood on the grass. Enough that the person probably bled out. No casings found.’

‘Any trail from the blood on the grass to the power meter?’

‘No, none. We’re talking two separate victims. Likely shed at different times. The blood on the grass isn’t fully dry. The blood found around the power meter is.’

‘So two victims. We’ve got Arianna Escobar and Ken Beatty. We also still have a possible locksmith and Corinne Longstreet unaccounted for. I have a bad feeling about the van’s first stop. He may have taken Corinne away through the side door, but let’s get inside and see what we find.’ Deacon started for the house’s front door, but Adam held him back.

‘Wait. What possible locksmith?’ Adam asked.

‘Faith said she called the power company to turn on her electricity and a locksmith to change the lock on the front door. The key she’d been given didn’t fit. Which makes sense if someone has been using her house to hide his victims. If it were me, the first thing I’d do is change the locks so nobody could come in and catch me.’

Adam gave him a hard look. ‘Faith?’

‘That’s her name, yes.’

‘You mean you believe her story?’

‘Yes. She’s still hiding something, but I don’t believe she hurt Arianna.’

‘Even after everything that Crandall told you about her changing her name?’

Adam’s tone had taken on an ugly, troubling edge. ‘I confronted her about that. She admitted it.’

‘
After
you confronted her. She didn’t offer it up. What about her trial?’

‘Faith Corcoran wasn’t on trial, Adam,’ Deacon said. ‘She was the victim. It was the sex offender who attacked her with a knife who was on trial.’

‘The sex offender she was sleeping with,’ Adam shot back, no longer hiding his contempt.

Deacon fought back the sudden surge of anger that took him by surprise. ‘Or so claimed the sex offender. Since when do we believe the word of a scumbag over a public servant? Crandall didn’t say that anyone believed him. There was never an indictment because there was no evidence to support it.’

Adam shrugged, his eyes harsh and angry. ‘Where there’s smoke . . .’

‘There’s fire?’ asked a voice from behind them.

Both Deacon and Adam turned to see Faith standing on the other side of the gate, her bandaged hands looking like white mittens as she clutched the iron bars. Her pale cheeks bore two streaks of crimson, her chin trembled. But her eyes flashed fury. Standing there, her red hair tumbled around her shoulders . . . 
She looks like a flame
.

Adam was regarding her steadily. ‘You have to admit that we have a remarkable set of coincidences here, Dr Frye.’

‘It’s Corcoran,’ she corrected crisply. ‘I thought you were going into the house.’

Deacon gave Adam a stand-down look. ‘We’re about to, aren’t we, Detective Kimble?’

‘We’ll need a warrant unless she gives us permission to break the door down. The key in her purse didn’t fit.’

Deacon barely contained his surprise. ‘You tried it already?’

‘After she gave you permission to search. I had one of Tanaka’s guys get her purse from the Jeep. She’s telling the truth about the key not fitting.’

The look Faith shot Deacon was like a jagged blade. ‘
This
is why I don’t trust cops. You were supposed to search only if I was present. If you need to break the door down, then do it. Better yet,
I’ll
do it.’ She pushed open the gate, but Deacon grabbed it to stop her.

‘Dr Corcoran, wait. Faith,’ he added when she continued to push the gate. ‘You don’t have any shoes. Stay here.’ When she didn’t listen, he hardened his voice. ‘
Stop.
That’s not a request.’

She was vibrating with fury. ‘You agreed that I’d go with you.’

‘That was before we found evidence of a gunfight around back,’ he snapped. That got her attention, thank God. She took a step back, her eyes wide with shock. ‘We don’t know what we’ll find inside,’ he said more gently. ‘I have to focus on finding the second girl. I can’t be worrying about your safety.’

‘Okay.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Have you found the power company man or the locksmith? They were here because I called them. I . . . I’m responsible for them. For their safety.’

Adam smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. ‘You are very good, Dr Frye. I almost believe you.’

‘Detective,’ Deacon warned.

‘No, Agent Novak,’ she said, ‘it’s quite all right. I’m accustomed to the innuendo, and familiar with the whole good-cop-bad-cop routine, so don’t waste your efforts. I’ll ask again – did you find those two men?’

‘No,’ Deacon told her, unwilling to say any more. Not because he didn’t trust her, but because she already looked so devastated. ‘We’re wasting time. Corinne might still be alive. Do I have to have an officer escort you back to the SUV?’

‘No.’ She took a step back. ‘I’ll go. Just find the other girl.’

‘Thank you. Detective, let’s go.’ He started walking, relieved when Adam cooperated. But then he heard his cousin muttering under his breath.

‘Just find the other girl,’ Adam mimicked.

Deacon grabbed his arm, yanking him to a halt. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘What’s wrong with
m
e? I’m not the one drooling over a possible suspect.’

Deacon stared at the man who seemed like such a stranger. ‘I am not drooling. And she’s not a suspect. Not yet, anyway. At this point she is a witness.’