Deadly Ties (23 page)

“A Spider?” Gwen groaned. “Oh, this doesn’t sound good. Who was it? Do you know who he worked for?”

“No idea.” Lisa shrugged. “I’m only now remembering this at all.” Her hands shook. She laced them in her lap. “I—I guess I suppressed it. Trauma can do that, you know.”

“It can, and you were very young.” Selene squeezed Lisa’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard and you’re hurt and stunned and these aren’t the best circumstances, but you’ve got to keep it together and try to remember where the man took you. It’s a long shot that it’s the same place, but you could remember something that will help us.”

“Give her some time, for pity’s sake. This is a big shock.”

“I know that, Gwen.” Selene shone the flashlight on the truck’s wall near Gwen. “But think about it. We need to know all we can to avoid an even bigger shock. This is no time to fall apart. None of us has that luxury. Whatever happened happened, and she survived it. Now if we all want to survive, we have to do what must be done to make that happen. It’s that simple.”

“You’re right. We don’t have the luxury of falling apart.” Gwen sobered. “When you can, Lisa.”

Lisa agreed with Selene. To survive and reclaim their lives, remembering quickly was critical. “I’m trying. Really.”

Shoving past the pain, she sank deeper and deeper into her past. Planted herself back in that hotel room. The Spider lifted her off her feet, tucking her under his arm like a football, and then ran outside …

“It was a van,” she said. White. No windows in back. “He put something over my mouth.” She covered her lips with her fingertips. “It was silver. Duct tape. He bound my wrists behind my back with it too. He dumped me in the back and then drove away.”

“Was anyone else with him?” Gwen asked.

“No. Just him and me. I—I couldn’t move.” Panic burgeoning, her chest heaved and fell rapidly, her breathing blasted fast and furious. Hyperventilating, she blinked hard, wrapped herself with her arms and fought to control it. “He murdered my father and abducted me,” Lisa told them, her voice cracking. “And God help me, now it’s happened again.”

“I thought she was coming out of it.” Mark had prayed Annie was coming out of the coma.

Rose sent him a sympathetic look. “It happens sometimes. Patients twitch. It’s an automatic response.”

“But twice?” And twitching at precisely the right time? There had to be more to it. Annie heard him. He felt it in his bones.

“Excuse me.” Jeff Meyers claimed Mark’s attention. “You need to get out to the waiting room. Peggy Crane has uncovered something you’ll want to see.”

“Sam?” Mark glanced beyond Annie to the other side of her bed.

“Right here, bud.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll keep an eye on Annie and Rose. You go on.”

Mark left the ICU with Jeff, but Peggy wasn’t in the waiting room. “Where is she?”

“Sorry.” Jeff motioned to the door on the far side of the ICU waiting room. “She’s in the consult office. Thurman set us up in there right after Dutch called and threatened him because of the restraining order.”

“What does Peggy have? Do you know?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said she wanted you and me together when she broke the seal.”

Broke the seal?
“What is she talking about?”

Jeff raised his hands. “You know what I know.”

When they entered the consult office, Peggy was sitting at the desk, holding a file folder. “Finally. The suspense is making me crazy.” Peggy frowned.

“What’s this about, Peg?” Mark rounded the desk to face her.

“I went back to the office to check Lisa’s old files—the ones Susan Brandt kept on her from the time Lisa first came to her and moved into the Towers with Nora.”

“And?”

“And I got the shock of my life.” Peggy opened the folder, revealing a large sealed envelope. On it was a handwritten note.

“What does it say?” Mark twisted around so he could read it.

“It’s Susan’s handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere,” Peggy said.
“To be opened only in case of extreme circumstance directly related to the health and well-being of Lisa Marie Harper.”

Mark’s heart beat hard and fast. “You can’t get circumstances any more extreme than these. Open it.”

“Jeff, you’re witnessing me break the seal.”

“I am.”

Peggy opened the envelope and slid out a file folder. Her hand shook. On the outside of it CONFIDENTIAL was stamped in dark red ink.

Peggy peeled back the folder front and glanced at the words. “It is indeed a note from Susan.”

Mark’s knees threatened to buckle. He sat in the visitor’s chair. “Read it, Peggy.”

She straightened her glasses on her nose, then stared back down at the note.
“Under no circumstances is what I am about to tell you to be revealed to any outside party. I claim medical privilege and retain all rights to the contents of this file. Continuing to read this document attests to your acceptance of these terms and conditions. There are no exceptions I deem acceptable to violate the terms or conditions stated.”

“Can she do that in her capacity?” Mark asked Jeff.

“Unless Lisa killed someone, yes. Murder would have to be disclosed to authorities. Dutch Hauk’s alive,” Jeff said. “That tells me she hasn’t killed anyone. He’d be first on her list.”

Mark agreed and dared to hope what Annie had rambled to Jeff Meyers in the ambulance that she didn’t want Lisa to remember would be revealed in Susan’s note.

Peggy raised her eyebrows. “As director of Crossroads Crisis Center, I am asking both of you if you accept these terms and conditions. If you do, please state so by saying yes.”

“Yes.”

Playing it by the book. Vintage Peggy. “Yes.”

“Here we go then.” She adjusted her glasses on the tip of her nose, and then began reading aloud:

When Lisa Harper was seven years old, she witnessed her father’s murder and was abducted by the killer during the commission of that crime. Certain specifics in this murder-abduction case were withheld. At the time of this writing, which is nine years after the incident occurred, those specifics still have not been released.

Lisa was missing for nearly two weeks. Despite a massive manhunt, the police had no leads and little hope of ever finding her.

On day twelve, Lisa’s mother, Annie Harper, received a phone call from Lisa, who had escaped. The police retrieved Lisa, Annie flew down and picked her up, and they returned home. I was brought in to crisis counsel Lisa, but all of my attempts to assist her were futile. Lisa had no recollection of going to Disney World, of being in a hotel with her father, of his murder or her abduction, or of anything that had happened to her during the time she was held captive. She had no recollection of her escape, the police, or her mother retrieving her and returning home.

Physical examination revealed she had not been sexually abused. She did have bruises and scrapes, but nothing that wouldn’t heal. Shortly before Charles and Lisa took the trip to Disney, her father had gone to Haiti to treat the children at an orphanage and help put a new roof onto the building. Soon it became apparent that she mentally substituted what actually happened to her father with something she could emotionally bear. Even today, Lisa believes her father died falling off the orphanage roof.

Over the years, I have attempted many times to convince Annie to seek intensive therapy for Lisa, but Annie consistently refused. She had prayed on the matter and felt strongly that she was to leave it alone. That Lisa was fragile from whatever she had endured, and she would remember the truth when she was emotionally strong enough to cope with it. The matter was kept quiet, and few knew the circumstances surrounding Lisa’s situation. The media cooperated, as did the local authorities and those in the know, and Lisa was permitted to forget.

Be advised that in situations of extreme duress, repressed memories can surface. If this happens, Lisa will need professional assistance to cope constructively with the resulting challenges. Historically in these cases, those challenges have the potential to be devastating to the victim.

I have been sworn to secrecy, and I am honoring that request. But Annie has all of the details. Talk to her and, should circumstances warrant it, be prepared to provide extreme intervention.

—Dr. Susan Brandt, administrator, Crossroads Crisis Center and legal guardian of Lisa Harper

Peggy dropped the page and blinked hard, her jaw dangling loose. “I had no idea.”

Jeff sucked in a sharp breath. “I ran a check on Lisa, Mark. We have nothing on any of this.”

“Someone sealed the records.”

“No,” Jeff said. “We’d see that records exist and are sealed. There
are
no records. Not on the kidnapping or the murder.”

Peggy looked at Mark. “When Charles was alive, he and the coroner were good friends. They played couples’ bridge with their wives.”

Mark thought a second. “The coroner wouldn’t have access to Lisa’s records. Maybe the records of Charles’s death, though with that happening in Orlando, at most he’d have a courtesy copy since Charles was a resident here. But there should be a record of Lisa being missing. Something about the search for her.”

“Mark’s right, our coroner wouldn’t be involved at all.”

Peggy tucked her chin to her chest and frowned at them over the top of her glasses. “This is a village, okay? We’re a close-knit group, and Annie Harper has lived here her whole life. So had Charles. The coroner wouldn’t be involved, but his brother certainly could have been.”

John Green
. Mark stilled. “The mayor could have had the records sealed.”

“We’d have an order for that,” Jeff insisted.

Peggy sighed. “Now, you would. Back then, John probably called the chief and told him to lose the records, and that was the end of it.”

“He was a good man,” Mark said. “If John thought it was best for Lisa, he’d do it.”

“Yes, he would.” Peggy nodded.

“That doesn’t help much.” Jeff let out a grunt. “Considering John Green’s dead and can’t answer questions.”

Poor Lisa. Hot knives of fear stabbed Mark’s chest. To deal with something this awful once was bad enough. But twice?
God, what are You thinking?

“What do we do?” Mark paced the small office, lacing his hands behind his head. “Only Annie knows the details that could maybe lead us to Lisa, and she can’t tell us.”

“We know Karl Masson is involved.”

“That’s presumption, Peggy,” Jeff said. “He was here. That makes it likely, but it isn’t indisputable proof.”

Peggy stood. “Fine, you give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not. Common sense says if it looks and smells like a skunk, it’s a skunk. And if Karl Masson’s here and Lisa’s been kidnapped, then he’s involved. That tells me NINA is behind this. Dutch Hauk’s a bully and a coward. He wouldn’t dare come after Lisa on his own—and that tells me you two need to be calling in every favor you’ve got with everyone you know to find out what NINA is up to that could include kidnapping a woman.”

“Or a doctor.”

“Okay.” Peggy flipped the file closed. “A woman or a doctor.” She picked up the papers. “We have to be realistic. Annie might not wake up in time to help. Which means we have to do everything we can for Lisa on every other front. When Annie does wake up, I will
not
be telling her that we didn’t find her daughter.”

“We’re doing all we can, Peggy. We’re asking the questions. We’re checking with resources.”

“Well, Mark, I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be at the center. Maybe I can drum up something else on this.”

“She’s calling in the prayer warriors,” Jeff warned Mark.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jeffrey.” Peggy walked past them. “The prayer warriors have been in the chapel since we got word Annie was critical, before Lisa was abducted.”

The church ladies had immediately activated. Mark watched her go, hoping they had more of God’s favor than Lisa or he had. They did have the right idea, going to God first and not as a last resort. He was grateful for that. But honestly he’d have been more grateful if Lisa had been spared. “She’s right about Masson.”