Finding Claire Fletcher (6 page)

When he was done, he collapsed beside me, his head on my shoulder. “You’re mine now,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you and we’ll be together forever. Your name is Lynn now. That’s what I’ll call you.” He stroked my skin. “My sweet Lynn.”

Afterward, I turned my head and vomited. He dressed slowly, as carefully as he had undressed, and without a word left the room.

Beneath the covers, my whole body recoiled. I had tried so many times to expunge that memory from my mind’s record, but I never succeeded. Maybe it didn’t really matter because forgetting wouldn’t make it un-happen.

I got out from under the covers and wedged a chair under the handle of the trailer door. It was about as flimsy as the door itself, but it made me feel better. It might not stop him from coming back, but it sure would piss him off.

I padded into the kitchen and peeked out the window again. Across the road, I saw him standing on the porch of the brown house, facing off with Tiffany. It was an unusual sight to see her outside of the house. Something was wrong. I could only see their profiles, but I could tell by the rigid lines of their bodies and Tiffany’s crossed arms that they were arguing. The car keys in his hands jingled nervously.

I leaned over the sink for a better look, as if getting closer to the glass panes would enable me to hear them. But I didn’t need to hear what they were arguing about. The arguing was not my concern. Tiffany’s incessant whining and clinginess caused daily arguments between them. He had created his Frankenstein, and his consequence was to put up with her every day.

It was the fact that their argument had carried itself outside that concerned me. I watched his keys drum against his thigh. A tingling began in the pit of my stomach, always a precursor to another beating or some violation—trouble.

He was a nervous type. He had reason to be after all the things he’d done. But this was his domain. This tiny stretch of road that lay between my trailer and his dilapidated shack was the kingdom he had created, and here he was in total control. He made sure of that.

He moved off the porch, gripping his keys with both hands and fumbling with them, glancing back over his shoulder at Tiffany. She stomped her feet on the wooden floor of the porch, her face caught between a pout and a scowl. A familiar sight. He had stunted her growth literally and figuratively the day he brought her to live with us.

Tiffany had the emotional acumen of a thirteen-year-old, and even though she was now twenty years old, she still looked like an adolescent. Clothes hung on her bony frame. Her skin was pale and sallow, her dark hair lank and dull from poor nutrition. She starved herself to stay so thin. She ate so little that she’d ceased to menstruate, a fact for which he was grateful.

Unlike me, Tiffany was a runaway whose mind he filled with delusions of grandeur. It didn’t matter to Tiffany that she had to perform disgusting sexual acts with a man who could conceivably be her father. In the house of “Daddy,” Tiffany was number one, and no matter how he mistreated her, she would not trade all that attention for anything—not even an innocent person’s life.

Repulsion washed over me like a cold wave of stinging ocean water. He flew off in his old car, obviously relieved to be free from Tiffany’s cloying presence. He’d fidgeted with the buttons on his shirt this morning while he questioned me for being fifteen minutes late getting home from work. Something he no doubt found out from Tiffany, who loved to make my life even more hellish than I imagined it could be under the circumstances.

I turned away from the window and got a drink of water from the tap. I tried to think of the last time he’d barged in on me the way he had this morning, suspicious to the point of being flustered. It had been months, a year perhaps.

My heart pounded as Connor Parks filled my head. I still smelled him—sweat, cologne, and scotch. In the last few days, I had tried without success to banish him from my thoughts. Had my abductor found out about Connor? Had Tiffany somehow realized that I wasn’t home that night and ratted me out? I had taken every precaution. I had been so careful.

Connor’s sleepy smile played on a film screen in my mind. I ached in places I never knew I had and in places I thought were long dead. Flashbulb memory: He sighs in his sleep. His feet twitch. His arms tighten around me. Sleep without nightmares.

The illusion of safety I had when with him was almost too real to turn away from. If only my life was normal. If only I was normal, I could see him again, date him, and talk to him. The girl I used to be could do it. She could call him on the telephone and say something trivial like, “I had such a good time with you the other night.”

Maybe she could cook him dinner, barbecue in his backyard. She could curl up easily in his arms as they lay together in a foldout lawn chair, soaking up the last rays of sunshine, maybe reading a book together, drinking wine, or whatever it was that normal people did on a date.

I was not that girl any longer. I was not normal nor would I ever be. This was my life, and it did not have room for someone as beautiful as Connor.

Still, if something happened to him as it had the others, I would be responsible. I was already responsible for so many lives that I could not bear another murder on my conscience. I had to find out how much my abductor and his pet knew, if they were on to Connor. I dressed hastily in jeans and a sweatshirt and stomped across the road to the little house.

Mitch Farrell’s office was located in a small pocket of an old strip mall whose former businesses had moved onto more highly trafficked areas of the city. The square block of storefronts were dilapidated, most of the windows yawning empty, the signage above them leaving ghostlike letters of businesses past. All that was left was Farrell’s office and a Laundromat, which was unoccupied at the moment.

The only sign that Farrell did business among the empty shops was simple gold lettering on the front door bearing his name and title. There was a tiny waiting room with a few scruffy chairs and a battered table bearing some very out-of-date magazines. There was no receptionist, just a small hallway to Connor’s right.

“Hello?” he called. “Mr. Farrell?”

“You must be the detective.” Farrell’s voice arrived a split second before he did.

The man was in his sixties with salt-and-pepper hair and worry lines surrounding his dark brown eyes. He was tall, dressed casually, but with the bearing of someone who’d spent time in the military.

“Connor Parks.”

Farrell eyed him from top to bottom. “The Fletchers called me. Come into my office.”

Connor followed the man down the hallway and took a seat in the chair opposite Farrell’s desk.

Farrell’s office was the polar opposite of Captain Riehl’s. It was neatly kept and smelled like Pine-Sol. There were two large filing cabinets and a large oak bookcase lined with books. Not a single scrap of paper littered any surface in the room. The walls were decorated with framed photos, various certificates and Farrell’s private investigator license. Farrell’s desk boasted only a phone, computer, and ink blotter. The office was simple and well organized.

Farrell arranged himself behind the desk and folded his hands, regarding Connor with an air of skepticism. “So you had an encounter with a woman claiming to be Claire Fletcher.”

“I saw Claire Fletcher,” Connor corrected.

Farrell sighed, pulled a notepad and pen from one of his desk drawers and said, “Tell me what happened.”

Connor recounted the salient points of his encounter with Claire, leaving out the intimate hours they’d shared in his bed. Farrell did not look at Connor while he spoke. He kept his eyes on the notepad. His pen moved slowly, as if he were doodling while Connor talked, wholly disinterested in the story.

“She left me a note with the address 1201 Archer Street on it. So I went to see her but—well you know the rest,” Connor concluded.

At this, Farrell’s eyes rose to meet Connor’s. “A note?”

Connor shook his head. “No. Not exactly. Just a piece of paper with her name and the address on it.”

“Do you have it with you?” Farrell asked.

Irritated, Connor replied he did not, although the piece of paper in question rested in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He just didn’t want Farrell to have it, although he wasn’t sure why.

Farrell nodded indifferently. “Did you sleep with her?”

“What?” Connor said, more loudly than he’d intended. He felt an uncharacteristic flush rise from his collar to his forehead.

Farrell eyed him. “Did you have sexual intercourse with this woman?” he asked.

Connor shook his head. “No.”

Farrell seemed genuinely surprised. “You didn’t?”

“No,” Connor repeated.

“You meet a woman in a bar. She hits on you. You chase her outside, take her home, ingest large quantities of scotch, and the two of you don’t have sex?”

Connor shrugged, affecting the same indifference Farrell had displayed up to then. “No, we didn’t have sex.”

Farrell stared at him for a long time. Finally, he said, “And you expect me to believe that?”

“Look,” Connor said coolly, sitting up straight and giving Mitch his best imposing glare. “I don’t give a shit what you believe. I’m not here to sell anything. I’m here as a courtesy to the Fletchers, who wanted me to speak to you, and because I want to know what the fuck’s going on.”

A slow, appreciative smile spread across Farrell’s face. He put his pen and notepad away and leaned toward Connor. “Well, all right,” he said.

Connor did not let his hard exterior slacken. A moment passed between the two men. Then another. And another. Farrell smiled and Connor glared. Neither spoke, but in the air between them an intense and invisible flood of communication roared. This had happened to Connor before. Indeed, his mastery of this unspoken language between men was one of the things that made him a good detective—that is, when he wasn’t firing off his weapon indiscriminately.

They were like two alpha wolves scenting each other warily, testing the ether for any sign of threat or weakness. Pushing each other, nipping collars, baring teeth, circling. Each one assessing the other’s strength and trying to draw out the other’s true intentions without expressing his own.

Connor played the game well and got his way, as he usually did. The next words out of Farrell’s mouth were, “Do you want something to drink?”

Connor relaxed and smiled. “God, yes,” he said.

Both men laughed, dispelling the tension in the small room.

“Come on then,” Farrell said.

He led Connor into another room much the size of his office, although in slightly more disarray. It looked exactly like someone’s living room, although it was evident by all the surveillance equipment stacked along the far wall that this was not Farrell’s home. There was a mid-sized black leather couch and a small coffee table which faced a large television and VCR ensconced in a modest entertainment center. Behind the couch was a larger table with some files neatly stacked on its surface. Beside the table was a small refrigerator from which Farrell plucked two bottles of Corona.

He motioned for Connor to sit. Connor sat on the edge of the couch and removed his jacket. Mitch popped the caps off the beer bottles while Connor studied a framed photograph in the center of the coffee table. It was a young woman, probably mid-twenties with long red hair, delicate features and a wide smile.

“My daughter,” Farrell said, handing Connor a freshly opened beer. “Holly Louise. She’s on the east coast in medical school now. I can’t believe it. My little girl in medical school.”

Connor smiled. “Is she why you took the Fletcher case as a favor?”

Farrell frowned at the photo, his bushy gray eyebrows meeting above the bridge of his nose. “Yeah,” he said. “In part. Holly was only a couple years younger than Claire but I’d known the Fletchers—Mr. and Mrs.—for quite some time. It was terrible, you know?”

The older man shivered but not from cold. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, losing a child and never knowing what happened. The department here did good work on the case, and I didn’t interfere. I told Jen and Rick to let them do their job. But after a year or so, the trail gets mighty cold and the police have lots of other crimes piling up. Cases with better leads and tangible evidence. You couldn’t blame them for backing off.”

Connor sipped his Corona slowly, enjoying the taste. “You used to be on the payroll?” Connor asked.

Farrell kicked one foot onto the coffee table and took a long swig from his bottle. “Yeah,” he answered. “But not here. I worked homicide in Atlanta for twenty years. Ten on Special Victims in Oakland after that. Then I moved to Crescent City. I met the Fletchers when I moved there.

“Rick was a public relations guy for some local corporation and he and Jen came to all kinds of functions—banquets and benefits and the like. They were a great couple. Real down to earth and funny. Rick and I used to fish together. Our kids were near the same age—I have a son too, he’s in college in Colorado. So I used to bring mine down sometimes and they’d hang out with Claire, Bree, and Tom while me, Rick and Jen shot the shit. My wife died shortly before I came out here, and Rick and Jen were great friends to me. I needed it then. Jen helped me a lot with Holly. With her mother gone, someone had to do the woman-to-woman stuff and I wasn’t exactly fit. A few years after I met the Fletchers, I retired, went private.”