Devil Smoke (20 page)

Lucy watched Sarah pay for gas and a soda, then walk out the front door. “Can you follow her on the other cameras? See her car?”

“Sure, hang on.” A few more clicks, and the view changed. “That’s her. Parked at the side of the building. A lot of kids like to park there, think it’s more private because they’re behind the ice machine, they never see the camera. You wouldn’t believe the things it picks up.”

“I’ll bet,” she said absently, leaning forward to get a better look. Sarah was getting into the passenger side of a vehicle, but it was an SUV, not her Prius. “Can you freeze it there?”

He clicked, and the image froze. The car was a silver Jeep Cherokee. And the driver was a man. Caucasian, nothing really to distinguish him. Not for the first time she wished Pennsylvania had front license plates.

“Can you send me that one frame?”

“Sure thing.” She gave him her email as he grabbed a screen capture. “Is he our bad guy?”

“Not sure. Can you see the car’s license plate when it pulls out?”

He forwarded the video, but it was useless. Still, it was more than she’d had when she walked in. He escorted her back through the store and out the front door. “Hope that helps.”

<><><>

AT LEAST BURROUGHS
didn’t handcuff him, Tommy thought as they drove past his neighbors. Some of them had their cell phones up, recording his humiliation for posterity—or to make a quick buck with the tabloids. Seems like nowadays everyone was a paparazzo, like the guy he’d caught earlier trying to take pictures through his dining room window with his cell phone. It’d been obvious he wasn’t a reporter. Maybe a neighbor? He’d looked kind of familiar.

Tommy didn’t turn away from the stares; he faced them all. He had nothing to hide, he told himself. Nothing to hide. It became his mantra, his last line of defense.

“Just tell me one thing,” Burroughs said as he steered the Impala around the throng of onlookers and the news vans. “Is Sarah safe?”

Tommy jerked his head around. “Sarah? What’s she got to do with this?”

“You tell me. I mean, at first when I met her at the hospital and she suggested using you guys to help—”

“Sarah suggested the Beacon Group? I thought it was because you and Oshiro know Lucy.”

“No. The nurses lent her a laptop to surf the web, try to jar her memory. She saw a story about that Texas case you guys’ve been getting a lot of press about.” He gripped the wheel, chin jerking as if he’d just now realized something. “But it wasn’t the Texas case that caught her attention, was it? There was a picture of the entire team in that story—including you. She recognized you, didn’t she? Wow. What must you have thought when she showed up at Beacon Falls yesterday along with me and Oshiro. Tell me, Worth, were you about ready to shit yourself? I mean, the girl who knew your secret shows up at your work?”

“I never saw Sarah before yesterday,” Tommy protested. “And I have no secrets.”

The smile that creased Burroughs’ face was not a kind one. Menacing would be more like it. “Sure you do. We all do.”

“What do you think Sarah knew?”

“For one thing, I’m guessing you attacked her on that mountain. She wasn’t running
to
the parking lot like everyone else when the car alarms started blaring. She was running
away
from you. Too bad the smash and grab interrupted things. Would you have bashed her head in like you did your wife’s?”

Fury mixed with pain as he visualized what had happened during Charlotte’s final moments. His mind was filled with the image of her face twisted in agony. “Go to hell, Burroughs.”

“You first, Worth. You first.”

LUCY’S NEXT STOP
was a nearby Eat ’n Park to meet with the director of the domestic violence coalition that ran all the county shelters and the woman in charge of the shelter Charlotte had volunteered at. In the police materials detailing Charlotte’s work as a domestic violence counselor, Lucy had found that all the names and addresses and any other pertinent details about the women Charlotte had helped had been redacted. When she called, the shelter director had refused to meet Lucy anywhere official and insisted that their discussion be “off the record.”

By the time Lucy arrived, the director, Thelma Pierce, and Charlotte’s immediate supervisor, Fran Wainwright, were already sipping coffee and waiting for her. The family-style restaurant was almost empty at this after-breakfast-not-quite-lunch hour, and they had chosen a quiet booth far away from any eavesdroppers.

“We already shared with the police all that we could about Charlotte’s work with us,” Pierce began as soon as Lucy had placed her order and the waitress had brought her a cup of coffee. Her posture was defensive and her attitude seemed to be that Lucy was wasting her time.

“I saw their notes, scant as they were,” Lucy said. “Am I correct in understanding that since you’re shielded by confidentiality, as are your clients’ identities, that none of Charlotte’s clients were actually interviewed?”

“We spoke to them,” Wainwright answered. She was younger, mid-thirties, and seemed eager to please. “On behalf of the police. With their consent, of course. No one had seen Charlotte since her last shift, a week before she went missing.”

“I saw that in the report.”

“Then the matter is closed.” Pierce set down her cup and seemed ready to leave.

“Not quite. What about any contact with Charlotte outside the shelter? Beyond her regular duties as a volunteer?” Lucy raised her cup and stared at Pierce.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about. Our shelters follow the guidelines set forth by the state—”

“I’m sure they do. But we both know that there are occasional clients who require additional services, above and beyond counseling.”

Wainwright jumped in to answer. “Charlotte was more than a counselor. She was a whiz at helping our clients navigate the state bureaucracy. Helped them get official non-residential addresses that the government would recognize but that couldn’t be traced to their real address. A few of them she even walked through changing their name and getting new social security numbers.”

Lucy knew that the tools available to help victims of domestic abuse had come a long way in the past few years, with a greater emphasis on protecting victims’ locations and identity. Ironically, much of the progress had occurred as a result of the epidemic of identity theft, a crime which had left its victims requiring similar governmental procedures.

“We loved Charlotte,” Pierce said. “She was more than a co-worker, she was our friend. She is dearly missed. But really, Ms. Guardino, I don’t think we have any information that might be helpful.”

Between the two of them Lucy felt like she was playing Red Rover. Time to tag someone else. She chose Wainwright, who seemed the more pliable of the two. “I’m not asking you to break any confidences. But we all know that every now and then a woman leaves an abuser who has the resources to find her despite the protective services you offer. And every now and then, those women need a little extra, off the record, type help. Like cash, disposable phones, maybe transportation, a way to start a new life. You both know Charlotte spent her last day buying disposable phones and collecting a nice nest egg of cash. Any idea who it was for?”

“The police seemed to think it was for herself,” Pierce said.

“Really? I thought she was your friend. Surely she would have come to you if something was wrong at home.”

“Confidentiality precludes me from—”

“It doesn’t preclude you from answering a simple question. Did she come to you or give you any hint that she might be leaving her husband?”

Pierce’s mouth twisted as tight as a lock missing its key. But Wainwright finally looked up from whatever had fascinated her at the bottom of her coffee mug and met Lucy’s gaze. “No. She did not.”

“If you knew the police believed that she was leaving her husband, why didn’t you—”

Pierce shifted her glare from her younger subordinate to Lucy. “Because we can never be suspected of breaking confidentiality. These women have placed their faith in us—they trust us with their lives. We cannot break that trust. Not ever.”

“Not even to help find whoever killed your friend?”

“Not even—” Pierce stopped herself, her cup rattling in the saucer. “Wait. Killed?”

“We think we found Charlotte’s body. Decomp would put her time of death at about a year ago.” Lucy wasn’t basing that on any official report—much too early for that at this point—but she’d seen enough dead bodies to make an educated guess. “So while the police were chasing a false trail, thinking she left voluntarily and covered her tracks…”

“The killer had her.” Wainwright’s eyes went round, and her hand stroked her throat. “Was she killed right away? Could she have been alive? I mean—did we, could we have—”

“It’s not our fault,” Pierce said, enunciating each word precisely. “We had no indication of what happened to Charlotte then, and we certainly don’t now. I’m sorry it’s ended this way. She will be missed.” She stood to leave, waiting for Wainwright to follow.

“I need a moment,” Wainwright said.

“Very well. I’ll see you on Thursday at the regular staff meeting. We can discuss a memorial for Charlotte at that time.”

“Actually, please wait until the police release the information to the public,” Lucy said. She couldn’t help but add, “I’m sure you understand how important confidentiality is in these cases.”

Pierce gave her a stiff nod, then pivoted on her heel and stalked away.

Wainwright held her coffee cup in both hands but didn’t drink any of it. She simply stared for several long moments. “You’re right, you know.”

“About what?” Lucy asked softly, approaching her as timidly as she would a wild doe.

“About the clients who sometimes need extra services. Thelma doesn’t like or want to know about them—she needs to keep everything aboveboard for the state regulators. But there’s a group of us who have banded together to help them.” She finally looked up. “It’s ironic. Most of them are afraid for their lives because their husbands are in law enforcement.”

“Which means you can’t use any of the official procedures to change their identity or address.”

“No. Government officials, the courts, and law enforcement still have access to those records. They’re sealed from the public, of course, but sometimes even banks and other private institutions can access them. Heck, in some counties, it doesn’t matter if the woman gets a new name and the judge seals the records. They’ll just cross out her old name on the birth certificate and write in all her new info—where anyone can access it if they know where to look. Happens more often than you’d think.”

“So around the time Charlotte went missing, was she helping one of these special clients?”

“Because the police know the locations of the shelters, clients like these tend not to come in in person. They’ll make contact via phone, and we’ll give them advice on how to best stay safe.” She glanced up and met Lucy’s gaze. “We don’t break the law. It’s just circumventing standard procedure.”

“Did Charlotte mention anyone who might need extra help?”

“Well, a few weeks before she left, she was asking a few of us questions.”

“Questions?”

“More like scenarios. Hypothetical worst cases.”

“Like?”

“Like what would we do if we were helping a client and the abuser was someone with access to law enforcement databases. Or, our absolute nightmare scenario—an IRS agent.”

Of course. You could change your name, address, get a new driver’s license and social security number, but none of that would hide you from the tax man. If Charlotte was facing a challenge like that, she might have been forced not just to bend the rules, but even break the law to help her client. A good reason for her not to share details with anyone else.

Lucy tried a different approach. “Where would you meet someone who needed help?”

“We’ve each set up a few bank accounts so we can access cash without arousing any suspicion. Bankers have a ton of access to information, so we try to be very circumspect. We’ll gather what cash and supplies we can, like disposable cell phones, and arrange to meet the client at a pre-arranged location. Usually someplace public but out of the way where three women chatting wouldn’t be noticed. And we always go with a partner to watch out for trouble.”

“So a convenience store off a highway might be used to meet a client?”

“Exactly. A lot of clients want to meet in really private places, but we have to protect ourselves. I mean, what if they weren’t for real and it was an abuser trying to get to us?”

“I’m glad you don’t take chances.”

“Well, I don’t. But Charlotte—sometimes we had clients who were just so terrified, truly fleeing for their lives, that she’d bend the rules.”

“Could she have been helping a client like this the day she died?”

“That’s what I don’t understand. If she was, why didn’t she tell anyone? That’s why we work together, so we can watch each other’s backs.” She gave a shake of her head. “I don’t think she could have been. Unless…”

Lucy raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Unless she thought the abuser was someone so dangerous that it might put us at risk. Then I can see her going it alone.”

“Has that ever happened before? Charlotte helping a client on her own?”

“Not that I know of—and certainly someone would have said something after she went missing if they’d suspected it.” Her lips tightened as if she was debating with herself. Finally she glanced up. “No. I think maybe Thelma was right. Charlotte’s disappearance has nothing to do with her work with the shelter.” She pushed her cup and saucer away and slid out of the booth. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. Please tell her family they’re in our prayers.”

THEY ARRIVED AT
the Zone 3 police station on the Southside, an old brick building that squatted on a busy corner wedged between a coffee shop and a vacant lot. Burroughs led Tommy upstairs to an interview room, explained the recording procedures and that he could leave at any time, had him sign paperwork saying he understood everything, asked if he wanted coffee—he didn’t—then left.