Finding Claire Fletcher (5 page)

I let out a sigh and my body relaxed back to its natural state. Mentally, I coaxed my pulse to slow, perspiration to cease and the sound of blood rushing in my ears to ebb. I willed my muscles to loosen and my stomach to stop churning. I went to the window over the kitchen sink and pushed aside the curtain. I watched him walk briskly across the deserted road and disappear into the tiny clapboard house opposite my trailer.

Then I locked the door again.

Connor had no recollection of being invited into the living room, but there he was minutes later, ensconced on the Fletchers' couch, a cup of coffee in his hand, staring at the two remaining Fletcher siblings.

“It can’t be,” he blurted.

Not even his skills as a detective prepared him for this kind of shock. This was a woman he’d seen—touched—in the flesh. In all of her flesh. He’d kissed her, smelled her. She was real.

Brianna Fletcher sat across from him, arms folded tightly across her thin chest. Her cold blue eyes chilled him. He was glad looks couldn’t kill, because from the glare he was getting, only the coffee table between them stopped her from castrating Connor and leaving him for dead.

“If this is your idea of a sick joke, I’m calling the police,” she spat.

Tom rested a hand on her knee. “Brianna,” he said softly.

“I am the police,” Connor muttered.

“What?” Tom said.

Connor set his coffee down and fished his ID and badge out of his pocket. He tossed it onto the table. Brianna snatched it up and studied it before handing it to Tom. The harsh lines of her face softened somewhat. Tom looked at it and slid it back to Connor. “Detective,” he said.

“Connor. Please.”

Tom smiled grimly. “Connor. Our sister, Claire, has been missing for ten years. The woman who gave you this address was mistaken.”

Connor shook his head. “No,” he said. “She said her name was Claire Fletcher.”

“Maybe she just didn’t want to see you again,” Brianna sneered.

The wheels in Connor’s head started turning again, slowly. “But why give me the name and address of a missing woman? She could have just given me a fake phone number.”

Claire’s face flashed in Connor’s mind.

“I think we should call Mitch—before Mom gets home,” Brianna said to Tom.

Let’s toast to being found, she said.

Interesting, he said.

Indeed.

Which of us has been found? he asked.

That remains to be seen.

“No,” Connor said abruptly. “She sent me here.” He looked beseechingly at Tom.

Tom shook his head. “It wasn’t her.”

Brianna rose. “Dammit, Tom. Call Mitch right now.”

“But she talked about being found. She said—”

“Stop it!” Brianna screamed, putting her hands to her ears. “It wasn’t Claire. It wasn’t.”

Connor swallowed and looked at Tom. “Could I just see a picture? Please?”

Tom nodded and left the room. He returned with a framed five-by-seven photo. He handed it to Connor. “She was fifteen,” he said. “On her way to school. There was one witness who said she saw a man pushing a girl who matched Claire’s description into a blue station wagon about the time she should have been arriving at school. They never found any man or the car or Claire. I’m sorry, Mr. Parks.”

Connor held the photo with both hands. He needed only a glance to recognize that the girl in the picture was indeed the woman he’d spent the night with. In the photo, the face was rounder, the skin more pristine. The hair was much shorter but had the same color and the same unruly curls. The fifteen-year-old smile was brighter, but it was the same curvy, wide mouth.

“Her eyes were different,” Connor mumbled, almost to himself.

“See!” Brianna said. “It wasn’t her.” She snatched the photo from his hands.

“No,” Connor said. “She looked just the same—well, older of course—her eyes were the same color and shape, they were just different.”

Her eyes had lost their innocence. Connor had felt panicked looking into them, as if he might fall in and get trapped on the other side. If the world had had eyes since the moment of its creation and witnessed all manner of natural and manmade violence and destruction, its eyes might never match the despair Connor had seen in Claire Fletcher’s eyes.

“Call Mitch,” Brianna demanded again. She hugged the photo to her and eyed Tom fiercely. “Mitch will deal with him, just like he did with the others.”

Connor’s head snapped up. “The others?”

Tom pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it to Connor.

“That number is for Mitch Farrell. He’s a private investigator. He’s worked on Claire’s case as a favor to my family for years,” Tom explained.

Connor stood and looked from Tom to Brianna and back. “What others?” he asked.

Tom ushered Connor to the door. “I’m sure you can see why this is difficult for us to discuss, but Mitch will want to talk to you, check out your story.”

They were standing on the broken-down front stoop. Connor looked at Tom. “What others?” he asked again.

Tom glanced back at the door to be certain his sister couldn’t hear him. He sighed and drew closer to Connor. “Over the last eight years, there have been three other men, and like you, they showed up here out of the blue to see Claire. They all said they’d recently spent the night with her and that she left them this address.”

In the shower, I made the water so hot it scalded my skin. I scrubbed my throat raw where he had touched me. When I finished, I put on a pair of sweat pants, two pairs of socks, a tee shirt and an oversized sweatshirt. I climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets all the way over my head.

“Five minutes,” I whispered, and as always, my actual voice sounded much calmer and more controlled than the voice in my head. As if it was not really me speaking but some other woman who knew what to do, knew how to handle things, knew how to live in the strange wasteland of Lynn Wood’s life.

“Just five minutes,” she said.

I concentrated on my breathing, inhaling deeply through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. I put one hand on my abdomen and felt it rise and fall with each breath. “Five minutes,” the woman said again. “All you need is five minutes. The door is locked. You’re safe. For the next five minutes no one can hurt you. No one can get to you. You don’t exist except right here where it’s warm and cozy and no one can get to you.”

I breathed deeply and slowly and tried to make my mind as blank as possible. This was an exercise I’d done for years. My way of coping. I’d had to smuggle my freedom and security secretly in small five-minute increments.

Sometimes I did it at the local veterinarian’s office where I worked. All I really did there was grunt work, but the animals soothed me. Sometimes I took my five minutes with them. Sometimes it was in a bathroom or the truck. But it always worked best when I was under the covers. It was there I felt truly hidden from the world—from my bereaved family, my broken life, the memories I almost couldn’t bear, from who I’d become, and most all, from him.

I still remembered those first months as if they had just occurred. I snuggled deeper under the blankets, shivering. Those first months I would have done anything for a blanket. I was so cold, so scared.

He took me right from the street. That part seemed so fuzzy now, so unimportant. He used some clever ruse. He was crouched beside his car when I walked by, the backdoor ajar. He was looking under the car—that much I remembered. What had he said? A dog or a cat was underneath it. Something like that. I don’t remember how he looked. Or even the color of the car. I don’t remember what I said or if I even felt threatened by him. The how of it seemed so inconsequential now.

I must have crouched beside him because I had a vague recollection of rough hands at the back of my head, my face meeting steel, and the world fading to black as he pushed me inside the car.

The next thing I remembered was being in the room. It was dark and I was lying on a bed. He’d stripped me naked and tied my hands and feet to the bed posts. I looked like a four-point star in the stifling darkness. I was cold and there was no give to the ropes he had bound me with. Instinctively, my body tried to curl into itself but could not. My head ached.

Before I was even fully aware of where I was or even that I was awake, I struggled violently to break free. My voice took a long time to come. My throat was dry and my mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. There was a lot of gasping before my voice finally came to me.

I don’t remember what I cried out. Did I yell for help? Did I ask the darkness where I was? I could not remember. It was fuzzy, a memory I’d long tried to hem in without success. I knew that I had screamed. I knew that I had screamed for what seemed like days. I screamed until my throat was so raw and swollen that I could barely breathe through my mouth.

I remembered his disembodied voice in the blackness, cooing and issuing soothing words. He touched my face and my hair. He kept saying, “It’s okay, Daddy’s here.”

It confused me because I knew it was not my father’s voice or his touch, although he sounded every bit as sincere as any adoring father.

That was one of the things that had always sickened me most—he really believed he loved us. It wasn’t just an act. He wasn’t trying to manipulate us. He didn’t have to. He had ropes, duct tape, and hand cuffs.

The first several times he came to me, I begged him to let me go. I swore I would never turn him in, without ever thinking about what that really meant. Would I return to my family and never speak a word of what had happened to me?

I tried everything I could think of but he didn’t respond. He just kept stroking my hair, telling me it was okay. “Daddy” was there and he was going to take good care of me. It was like pleading with a tape recording.

I don’t remember how many days or weeks it went on, but he came and fed me, gave me milk and water. He untied me so I could relieve myself in a large bucket he kept in the corner of the room. I was stiff and unable to move well from being bound. He had to help me because I was too weak to sit up or clean myself. Sometimes I thought that was the worst humiliation of all.

I begged for clothes—for a blanket—but he said nothing.

He gave me sponge baths, and I sobbed with shame because the hot water and his gentle touch felt wonderful after being so cold for so long. He always whispered, “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

I tried to keep track of the days, but there was no window in the room, and he kept it dark except when he was there. Whenever he came, he turned on a single lamp on the scuffed table beside the bed. It didn’t light the room very well, but I could see that the room was mostly barren. It held only my bed, the table, the lamp, and the bucket.

He was relatively young. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was only thirty-seven when he stole me. He was thin and wiry but tall with sandy brown hair. He looked so average. The first time I remember seeing him, really seeing him, was the first time he raped me.

I heard him come in. I began squirming earnestly against the ropes that bound me. By then my wrists and ankles bore deep welts that were scabbed over and bled anew each time I struggled.

He turned on the light.

I began my endless entreaties. Why are you doing this to me? Please. I want to go home. Let me go. Please just let me go.

He ignored me as he always did. Then he started taking his clothes off. A new terror gripped me. I was suddenly aware of my own stink and the fear that rose from within me, popping out on my skin as fat beads of sweat. I stopped protesting and watched him with growing alarm. He undressed slowly and carefully. I was young, and while I’d kissed boys and fooled around, I was a virgin. I never saw a naked man before.

“No,” I said, but he climbed onto the bed with me.

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I begged. Oh, how I begged him not to do it.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

“Don’t do this,” I said.

“It will be okay. I’m going to make you feel good. You’ll see.”

I started to gag. It was involuntary. He sat up quickly and watched until I had control of myself.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. He stared at me differently. Up to that point, he’d been gentle, adoring, even tender. This time there was something else. Something raw, something explosive barely held in check.

“
You’re going to be mine now,” he said. “You will do as I say. You will give yourself to me and you will enjoy it.”

Through clenched teeth, I replied, “I will never enjoy it. I hate you.”

He slapped me then, hard across the face. My arms strained instinctively to cover my face, but they were bound tight.

What I remembered was how quiet it was. Eerily so. I turned my head and focused on the lamp beside the bed. The sound of the bed squeaking was like a sonic boom.