Hold Back the Dark (11 page)

It took him a long while to answer. “All right.”

They arranged a time to meet and hung up.

Aimee glanced up at the clock. She had a few minutes before her next client showed up, so she opened Taylor’s file again. She was convinced that here lay the key that would help her unlock Taylor from her prison.

L
ois Bradley had come with them docile as a lamb, murmuring a quiet protest as they’d cuffed her and put her in the back of the car.

Josh looked at her through the peephole in the interrogation room. They’d put her in one of the cushy rooms, one with a chair and carpeting and a table, but it was still an interrogation room, and Lois Bradley clearly knew what that meant. She sat at the table, her hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed down, the picture of defeat. Josh felt a stab of pity for the woman. What chance did you really have in life when your own sister would rat you out for sixty bucks?

Elise opened the door and strode in. “Hello, Ms. Bradley.”

Lois Bradley looked up, her eyes full of tears. “I didn’t do anything. I swear I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know what happened to those people.”

“Those people?” Elise said, sitting down across from Lois. “Which people would that be?”

A look of confusion passed over Bradley’s face. Josh read it all too easily. She was asking herself if she’d made a mistake already. She was thinking maybe she was protesting that she didn’t have anything to do with the wrong crime.

She wasn’t wrong, but it was good to let her sweat a little bit. Josh sat down next to Elise, who didn’t take her eyes off Bradley.

“Which people are you talking about, Lois?” Elise asked again.

“The D-d-dawkins,” Bradley stammered out. “This is about them, isn’t it? I swear I didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t even know what happened. I just know I got to their place to clean, and there was yellow tape and cops everywhere. I turned around and left. I didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened there.”

Josh leaned forward. “Those people are dead, Lois. That’s what happened there. Somebody killed those people. You know anything about that?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Lois moaned. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked. “Those poor people.”

“Poor?” Elise leaned in now, too. “Why do you say that? They look like they had it made. Big house. Big cars. A boat. A cabin in Tahoe. Poor, my ass.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem from the outside.” Lois Bradley leaned forward. “When you clean people’s houses, you learn more about them than most people see.”

“Like where they keep their spare checkbooks?” Josh asked. “Or what their credit card numbers are?”

“No! I swear, I am out of that kind of business forever. I never want to go back inside. Never.”

That was the opening Josh had been looking for. “You want to stay out of prison bad enough to kill somebody who caught you stealing, Lois? Is that what happened?”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “No, that’s not it. I’m working hard. I’m checking in with my P.O. I’m staying away from bars. I’m one hundred percent clean.”

Josh leaned back. Interrogation was a dance. You had to know when to lead and when to follow. “So how come you said the Dawkins were poor? What was so poor about them?”

Lois looked down at her hands. “They weren’t so happy. You’d think a house like that, a life like that, they’d be happy, but they weren’t. Mrs. Dawkin, well, she drank. I’m pretty sure of that. White wine isn’t a man’s drink, and there were an awful lot of empty Chardonnay bottles in their recycling.”

“A lot of people drink wine, Lois. That doesn’t mean they’re unhappy.”

Lois shook her head. “It wasn’t just that, either. She seemed…lonely. I don’t know.”

“You can tell whether someone is lonely by their garbage? What are you, the trash whisperer?” Josh shook his head.

“Not just their trash. Their sheets. Their magazines. Their shoes. Where their stuff is. You can just tell.” Lois looked from Elise to Josh and back to Elise again.

Josh knew what Lois meant. He’d learned a hell of a lot more about people from where their stuff was and what was in their garbage than from interviewing them. People lied. Garbage didn’t. “Okay. So Stacey Dawkin was lonely. Who isn’t, now and then? That still doesn’t tell me why you said they were poor people.”

“Well, there’s that daughter of theirs. That one’s trouble.” Lois nodded her head.

This could be interesting. “What made her trouble?”

“She was into all kinds of stuff. I found empty booze bottles under her bed. Roaches on the windowsill. Pecker marks on her window from her skanky boyfriends hanging around outside. That girl’s bad news. I’m telling you, if you’re looking for an inside job, you should be looking at that girl.”

Aimee had suspected sexual abuse from the start, given Taylor’s constellation of symptoms. Taylor had seemed completely baffled when Aimee brought up the subject, but many survivors of sexual abuse went years without any memory of what had happened, especially if the abuse occurred when they were children. The trauma and the confusion were so great that they blocked the event entirely. Then suddenly one day, something would trigger a memory. It might be a certain smell or going to a certain place or having a child of their own to protect, but the memories could come flooding back and be completely overwhelming.

Aimee believed that Taylor had been on the verge of having that flood come back, and she’d hoped to keep the memories from drowning Taylor when they rushed over the emotional dams she had built. Maybe the trauma of her parents’ murder had made them all come back at once, and without anyone there to help, Taylor had gone under the pounding waves. Could it have to do with those patterns of circles and squares? Aimee couldn’t figure that out without knowing what the symbols meant.

She did find one interesting item in her notes. During one session, she’d asked Taylor how she’d felt about moving to Sacramento. Taylor claimed not to really remember much from that time period. When Aimee had pressed, Taylor had said that Sacramento sucked then as much as it sucked now, a typical sentiment. Lots of things in Taylor’s life sucked.

Aimee tapped her pen against her teeth. Some kind of trauma had happened to Taylor around the time that her family had moved to California; she was sure of that. Marian Phillips’s comment about Taylor’s personality change, coupled with Taylor’s lack of memories, was like a giant red arrow screaming “look here.” And something had happened six months ago to bring it all back and send her into a tailspin.

Nothing in her interviews with the Dawkins seemed to help. When she had started probing their memories in that meeting, Orrin Dawkin had immediately gotten angry.

“What exactly are you getting at, Doctor?” Orrin Dawkin had countered, frowning. “If I knew something had happened to my daughter years ago, don’t you think I would have done something about it then?”

“Sometimes parents don’t know something has happened or can’t prove something has happened, and are reluctant to take action on just a bad feeling or a suspicion. Can you recall any moments like that? Moments that you were uneasy? Or when Taylor seemed frightened out of proportion about something or someone?”

“How about you stop beating around the bush, Dr. Gannon? What exactly are you implying here? Are you implying that someone has hurt my little girl?” Mr. Dawkin had leaned forward in his chair, his eyes narrowed into a squint. Mrs. Dawkin had reached out for her husband’s forearm.

To restrain him? Aimee had wondered. Or to calm him? Either way, it was an interesting response to her husband’s sudden aggression.

“Yes,” she had said, not backing down. “I’m concerned that someone could have abused Taylor sexually.”

“And you think it was me?” Dawkin was almost out of his chair, despite his wife’s restraining hand. “With my little girl?”

The fact that Dawkin had brought up sexual abuse himself made Aimee doubt that he was responsible, although fathers were generally the first people to come under suspicion for that kind of crime. It sickened Aimee how many men tried to justify raping their daughters, stepdaughters, granddaughters, and nieces, leaving a trail of destruction. But Mr. Dawkin didn’t look interested in justifying anything. He looked like he might be physically sick.

“Not necessarily you, Mr. Dawkin,” Aimee had said. “Is there anything that could have triggered Taylor’s recent behavior change that could be a reminder of something in the past?”

Mrs. Dawkin had shaken her head. “I’ve racked my brain. We lead a pretty boring life. We have a routine that works for us and it doesn’t vary much. I can’t think of anything that changed that could have sent Taylor reeling like this.”

They had left promising to keep thinking about what Aimee asked, in case something jogged their memories. That had been the last time she’d seen Orrin and Stacey Dawkin.

She shuddered. Could they have remembered something that started this whole terrible mess?

Elise and Josh left Lois Bradley cooling her heels in a holding cell. They’d check out her alibi—a woman named Joanne Crowley who’d been with Lois at the community college from six-thirty to nearly ten o’clock—as soon as they were done with Carl Walter.

Dawkin-Walter Web Consultant’s offices looked like pretty much every other set of offices for every other company whose purpose Josh couldn’t figure out. He decided it was the fault of the Management Consultants Gone Wild mentality of the nineties, with even itty-bitty businesses having mission statements about leveraging worth and maximizing potential that made it damn near impossible to figure out what anybody did for a living anymore. The police force was no exception. They were supposedly “striving to be proactive” and “anticipating trends,” among other things. At least “cop” was still a recognizable profession. For now.

He held the door to the glass and steel block open for Elise, glancing around the parking lot. Someone was doing okay. There was a red Mercedes CLK class convertible and a silver Lexus RX in the lot. Inside, the carpeting was beige. The walls were a slightly different shade of beige. A young woman with long, blond-streaked brown hair and tired eyes looked up from her computer. “Can I help you?”

Josh flipped open his badge. “We have an appointment with Carl Walter.”

Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “Is this about…Orrin?” Her chin quivered.

“I’m afraid so,” Josh answered. The receptionist was certainly going to miss old Orrin. In fact, it looked like she was going to miss him a lot. He wondered what that meant. He glanced over at Elise, who raised her eyebrows infinitesimally. Yeah, she’d caught it, too.

“We’re all crushed,” the receptionist said. “Crushed.”

“I take it you and Mr. Walter were close,” Elise said.

Josh let her take over; it seemed the right time for that woman-to-woman touch. It always impressed him how easily Elise could move from that girly compassionate stuff to being one of the guys. The woman was a chameleon.

“We were. He was awesome to me. Awesome.” The receptionist pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and blew her nose. “He was helping me figure out what I wanted to do, so I could go back to school. My dad’s so pissed at me for dropping out that he won’t even talk to me about it, but Orrin was amazing. Totally amazing.”

“How was he helping you….” Elise let her voice trail off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “My name is Caroline. Caroline Trevalayne.”

“I’m Elise Jacobs. It’s nice to meet you.”

Caroline smiled and ducked her head. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“So how was Mr. Dawkin helping you?” Elise shifted her weight onto one foot.

“Oh, he’d take me out for coffee a couple of times a week and we’d talk. I really felt like things were becoming clear. He had so much vision.” Caroline’s hands rose in the air like little doves attempting to wing away as she spoke.

Josh again got the infinitesimal eyebrow raise from Elise. CEOs of even small companies did not generally spend time taking their receptionists—their young, leggy receptionists—out for coffee to hear about their hopes and dreams unless they were looking for their phones to be answered in private.

“It’s like he could see people so clearly. Completely clearly.” Caroline’s face crumpled again. “I’ll really miss him.”

Elise put her hand on Caroline’s forearm and said, “We are so sorry for your loss, Caroline.”

Caroline sniffed and straightened herself. “Thank you,” she said as if she were Dawkin’s grieving widow. Josh thought about what Lois Bradley had said about Stacey Dawkin being lonely and sad. Would she have been as broken up over Orrin’s death?

“Do you think you could let Mr. Walter know we’re here?” Elise asked.

Caroline’s hand went to her mouth. “I’m so sorry! I totally forgot.”

Elise smiled. “That’s okay. It’s important that we know as much as we can about the victim in these cases. You were a big help.”

The big eyes went liquid again. “I was?”

“Absolutely,” Elise assured her.

Caroline hit some buttons on her phone and said, “The police are here to see Carl. It’s about Orrin.” She paused for a moment and said, “I’ll tell them.”

She hung up and looked up at Elise. “Carl will be right out to talk to you,” she said, as if a great honor were being bestowed.

“Thank you.”

Josh and Elise moved off to the side of the reception area to wait. “Think we should talk to some of the other female employees?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Couldn’t hurt. I wonder how many young women Orrin was totally, totally awesome to,” Elise said with a smirk.

A few moments later, Carl covered the reception area in a few long strides. “Detective Wolf,” he said and extended his hand to Josh.

“Mr. Walter, I’d like you to meet my partner, Elise Jacobs,” Josh said after shaking Walter’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure, Detective,” Walter said. “Or would be if it were under different circumstances.”

Elise nodded, noncommittal but polite.

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” Josh said.

“Anything to help you get to the bottom of this tragedy.”

The man was a little too good looking for Josh’s comfort. He’d thought his original reaction to him had been because of the way Carl had stood so close to Aimee at the hospital; he hadn’t liked the proprietary air with which Carl had placed his hand on Aimee’s arm. But his reaction here was just as negative as it had been the first time. He smothered it. It wouldn’t help get him what he wanted at the moment. “We appreciate it. Could we speak in private?”