Dark Truth (21 page)

Wes tried not to think about the butchered young body that had been waiting on that cold steel table.

He’d promised the parents he’d find the man who’d taken their daughter, but it was a promise he’d made before. And that time—the last time he’d been so bold—he’d arrested and helped to convict an innocent man.

Of course, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Stephen Madden had been rightfully convicted. It had been the greatest shock of his life to discover how wrong they’d all been. And he’d still have to prove that to the chief, who wasn’t willing to hear a damned thing where the possibility of Madden’s innocence was concerned. Well, it was a talk they’d have to have first thing Monday morning.

He turned into Regan’s drive, and wondered why Nina hadn’t turned on the lights that illuminated the parking area. He parked next to an unfamiliar Buick, and walked across the darkened deck to the house, which was also dark.

An uneasy feeling spread through him. He went inside, and called Nina’s name.

Silence.

He took the steps to the second floor two at a time.

“Nina? Are you up here?”

Nothing.

He raced back downstairs, and noted the handbag on the kitchen counter. It was one he hadn’t seen before, so he searched through it for the wallet to look for identification. He found a New York driver’s license in the name of Nina Madden.

Where the hell was she?

He went out the back door, calling, then around the front, but there was no answer.

Wes went back to take a closer look at the other car that was in the driveway. A 1987 Buick. He walked around it. The car was in mint condition for a vehicle its age. He took out his cell phone and called into the station.

“Tony, give me a rundown on this license plate, would you? I don’t mind waiting . . . “

He read off the plate number, then waited while the dispatcher ran it through the computer.

“Got it, Detective.” The dispatcher returned in minutes. “The car is registered to an Olivia S. Madden, Stone River.”

“Thanks.”

I should have seen that one coming,
Wes told himself.
But where has he taken her?

Wes stood in the driveway, acclimating himself to the sounds of the bay at night. There was not so much as a whisper from the direction of the house, but there, from the water, was the faintest . . . something.

He walked down the path through the tall reeds to the bay, his gun drawn, following the hushed lapping of water on wood. Twenty feet out from the end of the dock, a boat drifted on the water. There were lights on in the cabin and across the side and back of the boat, but the motor was off and the boat bobbed up and down ever so slightly with the tide.

On the deck stood Nina, Kyle directly behind her. Her posture was ramrod straight, her head tilted slightly back. Wes stared for several seconds before it dawned on him what was going on. Nina’s arms were behind her back, and if Wes wasn’t mistaken, Kyle was in the process of tying her hands together at the wrists.

Dear God,
Wes realized,
he’s going to toss her overboard.

T
wenty-four

“I suggest you step out of those shoes,” Kyle said as he tugged Nina’s arms behind her back. He added sarcastically, “Unless you think you can tread water better in high heels.”

I’m not going in that water,
Nina told herself firmly, her old terror of drowning rising up and threatening to make her faint.
I do something now, or I die.

She felt herself begin to shake, and sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades. She willed the shaking to stop. This was no time to be weak. She had less than a minute to come up with something. The hero was not going to arrive to save the day. She was going to have to save herself.

Focus,
she demanded.
Focus . . .

Okay, he has a gun, I have garden snips. He has a rope, he’s about to tie my wrists together, and I have high heels . . .

It occurred to her then that in order to tie her up, he’d have had to put the gun down.

She turned her head slightly to the right, and saw the small handgun on the table. Instinctively, she turned her body to the left, feigning a loss of balance.

“Take the shoes off, Nina. You don’t need to look hot where you’re going.”

She could feel him begin to tie the first knot.

Another feigned wobble to the left. Another step farther from the table, another step between him and his weapon.

“Damn it, hold still,” he growled.

The knot tightened.

Now or not at all. Now or never . . .

She leaned forward momentarily, then thrust herself backward, head first, with all of her strength, smacking him square in the middle of his face with the back of her head.

“Ow! What the fuck . . . !” Kyle stumbled backward, then lunged for the table.

Twisting her wrists to slip off the untied rope, she slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the scissors. They weren’t much, but she attacked with a fury, and went straight for the only place she knew was totally vulnerable.

She went for his eyes.

Wes had stripped off his shoes and his jacket and, with great reluctance, his gun. A water-logged handgun would be of no use. He dove off the dock and tried to ignore the chilly shock as he began to swim for the boat. The Chesapeake in November was choppy and cold and dark, but the sight of Nina about to be tied up and tossed into it had left him no choice. As he swam, he planned his game. If she was in the water by the time he reached the boat, he’d untie her, and get her to one of the ropes dangling from the side of the boat where she’d just have to hang on while he pulled himself on board and took care of Kyle. Exactly how he was going to manage to get onto the boat unseen, or what he was going to do once he got there, well, he was going to have to play that by ear. The important thing was to keep Nina from drowning.

The night was split by an ungodly scream.

Jesus God,
Wes prayed,
what is he doing to her?

He increased his speed, the screams echoing in his ears. When he reached the boat, he pulled himself up onto the narrow diving platform that ran across the back and lifted himself onto the deck.

Nina stood in the doorway to the cabin, wearing a short tight skirt and high heels, a gun in her right hand, and the microphone for the boat’s radio in the other. On the deck, Kyle Stillman sobbed and writhed, blood pouring from between his hands, which were held to his face.

“What took you so long?” she said without turning around.

Without waiting for a response, she pointed to the radio. “You know how to use one of these? I’m trying to call the Coast Guard . . . “

“What the hell is going on here?” Regan cried when she got out of Mitch’s car and saw the police cars and ambulances in her driveway.

“Regan?” Nina called to her from the deck chair where she was wrapped in Wes’s jacket. “I thought you weren’t coming back until tomorrow.”

“Dolly ran out of things to say,” Regan told her as she ran onto the deck. “Honey, what happened here?”

“Kyle decided to take her for a boat ride,” Wes told Regan and Mitch. “She didn’t want to go.”

Regan’s jaw all but dropped as she watched the paramedics load the stretcher holding Kyle onto the ambulance.

“What happened?” Regan repeated. “What happened to him? Wes . . . ?”

“Wasn’t me.” He nodded toward Nina. “She took care of him all by herself.”

“Honey, what did you do?” Regan knelt in front of Nina’s chair.

“He was going to throw me into the bay,” she said solemnly, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m afraid of the water. I couldn’t let him throw me in . . . “

“Okay, honey, let’s take you inside where it’s warm. You are positively shivering,” Regan noted.

“Come on, Nina.” Wes reached out to her. “Let me give you a hand.”

He helped her out of the chair and pulled the jacket closed around her.

“And then I think someone had better fill me in on what went on here tonight,” Regan said.

Wes did so as they went into the house.

“So your father was right,” Regan said as she brought a tray holding four mugs and a pot of steaming tea into the sitting room. “Olivia was behind the whole thing.”

“You know, when I first read his letter, I assumed he was accusing Olivia of having committed the murders herself,” Nina said from the sofa where she was curled up in a cozy afghan. “Which of course made no sense if in fact the girls had been raped. And in the absence of DNA reports, it was something I felt we had to question, if for no other reason than to get the police to take another look at the file.”

“I have to tell you the truth, I wasn’t willing to do that,” Wes told her. “And frankly, if you’d come in alone, without Regan, I probably wouldn’t have given you the time of day.”

“I never liked to play off my father’s name,” Regan admitted, “but I must say, it came in handy this time.”

“Do you think your father realized exactly what Olivia had done?” Mitch asked Nina.

“I don’t know if he’d understood just how treacherous this woman was,” Nina replied. “God knows, I never did. I always thought she was cool, removed. But then, talking to Kyle, I was starting to think that maybe I’d misjudged her all along. I’d never felt there was any love lost between us. But then Kyle was saying things like, my mother wanted you to be the daughter she never had, things like that, and I thought maybe I’d just been too wrapped up in myself to see how she really was.”

“Well, that much is true. Apparently no one saw her for what she really was,” Regan said.

“Except for her son, and he didn’t seem to mind,” Nina reminded her. “He really had me fooled. I still can’t believe he killed those two girls this past week.”

Her voice dropped. “And he was going to kill me. He knew I’d always been afraid of drowning. He was going to do that to me.”

“And then there’s Dr. Overbeck. She certainly had him wrapped around her little finger,” Regan reminded them. “I can’t believe he got away with murder for all those years.”

“I can see looking to lay a dozen at his feet. Four in Stone River, eight more at the very least in other states,” Mitch commented. “I hope you don’t mind, buddy, but I’m going to have to take that one from here. I know I said I didn’t want the case, but we’ve got multiple jurisdictions, and it looks as if at least one of the victims was taken across state lines. That brings it into the Bureau. I’ll try not to step on your toes.”

“He’s all yours, as far as I’m concerned. The chief isn’t going to want to cough up the case, but in light of the fact that he was the lead detective at the time Stephen Madden was arrested, I think it should be in someone else’s hands, to be honest. I want this thing done clean. I don’t want to see it stalled anywhere along the way because Chief Raymond is in a snit.” Wes added, “You need anything from me, you just say the word.”

“I appreciate that,” Mitch told him.

“How do you think Father Whelan is going to feel when he realizes what Olivia did?” Nina was hunkered down with her head on a pillow, her eyes at half-staff.

“I think Father Whelan knows exactly what Olivia did,” Wes told them.

“You think Olivia confessed to him?” Nina asked.

Wes nodded. “I knew the entire time I was speaking with him that he was holding back something important. He all but admitted it to me when he said anything told to him in confession could never be revealed.”

“Well, that would have just about killed him, if she’d told him what she’d done,” Nina said. “All those years, he’d been very close to her, he’d been her friend. I’ll bet he was as shocked as I was to find out what she really was, and how she’d manipulated everyone around her.”

“Including him. By telling him in confession, he’d never be able to tell anyone,” Wes reminded her.

“If she’d told him about Dr. Overbeck being the killer, it must have driven Father Whelan near crazy to see that man walking around the campus every day,” Nina said sleepily. “Knowing Overbeck had gotten away with murder, knowing my father had been convicted of Overbeck’s crimes . . .”

“And knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.” Mitch said what the others were thinking.

Wes sat in thoughtful silence for a while, then patted Nina on the leg softly.

“Father Whelan says the seven o’clock mass at St. Benedict’s on Sunday. Think you’ll be up for an early ride into Stone River?”

Nina, out cold, never heard a word.

He tucked the blanket around her, and let her sleep. She’d more than earned it.

T
wenty-five

“Father Whelan,” Wes called to the priest who, having chatted with the last of that morning’s worshipers, was crossing the lawn next to St. Benedict’s Church on his way to his car.

The priest turned at the sound of his name.

“Good morning, Detective . . . Powell, was it? And Nina,” he greeted them. “Good to see you both here.”

“I was hoping to catch you before you saw it on the news,” Wes said.

“Before I saw what on the news?”

“Kyle Stillman was arrested last night for the murders of Allison Mulroney and Lanie Jacobs,” Wes told him.

“Kyle!” The priest appeared genuinely shocked.

“Were you expecting it to be someone else, Father?” Wes asked.

“I’m just . . . I’m just very surprised to hear this.”

“Well, Kyle was just full of surprises last night,” Nina said. “He told me about how his mother had convinced Dr. Overbeck to murder the girls my father’d been involved with. How she’d planned to have my father blamed. How she’d stood by and watched him arrested. Tried. Convicted. Sent to prison to serve a life sentence.”

“But of course, you’d already heard that story, hadn’t you, Father Whelan?”

Father Whelan’s sigh seemed to come from his soul.

“I’ve already figured out that Olivia had confessed her involvement in the murders, and her scheme to have Stephen sent to prison for them. But as her priest—as her confessor—you were bound to silence. She really knew how to get the most out of her relationships, didn’t she?” Wes jammed his hands in his jacket pockets. “She got Overbeck to kill for her, to punish her cheating husband—who once he figured out what she’d done, offered to take the blame for her—and then she got you to absolve her of her sins. What a woman.”

“You cannot imagine the despair I felt when I realized what she’d done. The extent of her treachery astounded me.” Father Whelan’s face was etched with sadness. “And I was helpless to do anything about it. All those years, I’d believed, as had everyone else, that Stephen Madden had killed those girls. And, as far as absolution is concerned, I’d like to believe Olivia’s confession was sincere, that she was truly contrite. But that’s between her and God.”

He appeared at a momentary loss for words. Finally, he said simply, “The truth has been a terrible burden on my soul, and on my heart, for the past several weeks.”

“So I know you must be happy to have that burden lifted,” Wes noted.

“I’m happy, yes, delighted, that the truth has finally been discovered.” Father Whelan took Nina’s hands in his. “You must be so relieved to have your father’s name cleared, after all these years. It’s truly a miracle.”

“A miracle of your making, Father.” She smiled up at him.

“Me?” His eyes darted from Nina to Wes and back again.

“If you hadn’t remembered to give that letter to Nina—the one Stephen had sent to Olivia—no one would have ever thought to take another look at that case. Olivia’s scheme would never have come to light. The real killer would never have been identified. And Stephen Madden would always have been known as the Stone River Rapist.”

“Well, it was certainly a lucky break, wasn’t it,” Father Whelan said.

“Was it now?” Wes smiled. “I think there was more at play than a little luck.”

Father Whelan looked away.

“I’ll tell you what I think, Father.” Wes lowered his voice as the altar boys raced around them to the parking lot. They called to the priest, and he waved to them absently before turning back to Wes.

“I think you planned all along for the truth to come out. I think once you realized what Olivia had done, your sense of justice tormented you. I think Olivia never looked in that box the prison sent her after Stephen died, so she’d never seen the letter, much less read it. If she’d read it, surely she’d have destroyed it.”

“But you read it, Father,” Nina said softly. “And once you did, you had to make sure it got into the hands of the one person you knew would do something about it. And that would be me.”

“I really didn’t know what else to do, Nina,” the priest said wearily. “I knew what had happened, yes. Right before she died, Olivia told me everything. She asked for absolution for her sins, and as her priest, I had to assume she was contrite. But the knowledge of what she’d done, the injustice of it all, ate at me every day. I couldn’t tell, and at the same time, I couldn’t live with the secret.”

“Why didn’t you bring the letter to me, Father?” Wes asked.

“And what would you have done with it, Detective?” Father Whelan replied. “I was afraid it would have been disregarded. You’d investigated the case once, you’d had your trial and gotten your conviction. Why would you have wanted to revisit the case, especially on the basis of a letter from a dead man—a dead man who’d already been convicted of the crime. Tell me, Detective, what would you have done if I’d brought the letter to you?”

Wes thought it over, then said, “I’d like to say I’d have looked into it, but honestly, I’d have tossed it in my desk drawer or the trash.”

“That’s what I thought you’d do.” He turned to Nina. “You were really the only hope to have the truth come out. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more to help you.”

“Father, what would you have done if I hadn’t read the letter?” Nina asked. “Or if I hadn’t gone to the police with it once I had?”

“I suppose I would have had to go to Plan B.” Father Whelan smiled weakly. “I’m not quite sure what Plan B would have been, but I’d have had to come up with something.”

“I’m grateful for what you did.” She shook his hand. “And I’m sure that my father is finally at peace.”

“You know, ever since Olivia’s confession, I’ve been haunted by that quote, that line about justice delayed being justice denied,” Father Whelan told them as they started to walk toward the parking lot. “It’s been a terrible weight on my soul.”

“Then you can be at peace now, too, Father.” Nina patted his arm. “In the end, justice delayed has been justice served.”