No One Needs to Know (52 page)

Had he been shot? Adam thought he’d heard a gun go off.

He didn’t see any sign of movement down there, no sign of his father either.

Adam’s eyes started to tear up. He told himself there was still a chance his dad was okay. He’d been in the back—and most of the damage was in the front section of the SUV.

He hurried back to his own car, reached inside, and grabbed the cell phone. He heard static. “Pop? Pop, are you there?” he asked.

No response.

He clicked off, and pressed 911. He anxiously counted two ring tones.

“Nine-one-one emergency,” the male operator announced.

“Yes, there’s been a bad car accident on Rural Route Seventeen—between North Bend and Snoqualmie.” He tried to get his breath. At the same time, he had to yell over the incessant blaring from the SUV’s horn. “It’s near Milepost Twelve—at least, that’s the last one I noticed. Three people are hurt. I think one of them is dead. There’s an elderly man in the backseat. The other two, they—they killed a cop just outside North Bend . . .”

The emergency operator told him to hold on the line, and kept asking him to repeat the information over and over again. “One of these people—a woman, black hair, thirtyish, and kind of severe looking—she could still be alive,” he told the man. “She’s dangerous. These two abducted my father. Could you send the police here—and an ambulance? I think my dad may be hurt . . .”

Though the operator expected him to stay on the phone, Adam couldn’t take any more. He needed to see if his father was down there.

He clicked off the line. Popping the hatchback of his Mini Cooper, he took out the tire iron. He figured he might need it to pry open the door on the SUV. He could also use it to defend himself. He started back down toward the gully.

He’d only been away for a couple of minutes. But when he looked down at the SUV again, he noticed one of the back doors was now open. He hurried down the slope, weaving around bushes and over rocks until he reached the wreckage. The car horn was earsplitting.

This close, he could see the driver was dead. A gaping hole was just above his right ear. He’d been shot. Adam realized his dad must have grabbed the gun from the woman—or at least, struggled for it with her while they’d sped to catch up with him. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the driver had caught a bullet in the head.

Adam glanced over his shoulder to make sure the woman wasn’t anywhere behind him. He knew she couldn’t be far. She could be seriously hurt, too.

The same could be said for his dad—if he wasn’t dead already.

“Pop?” he yelled over the blaring horn. He started crying. He hurried around to the open back door. “God, please. Pop . . . are you in there?”

All at once, the horn stopped wailing.

The sudden quiet was such a relief. Adam heard moaning.

He glanced in the back, and saw his father slumped across the seat amid bits of shattered glass. “Oh, Jesus,” he murmured, climbing into the vehicle.

He could see his dad was breathing. The old man had one hand over his face. Blood oozed between his fingers. In the other hand, he clutched a gun. It wasn’t Stafford’s Glock 19. It must have belonged to the woman.

“Pop, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

His father nodded feebly.

Adam brushed the bits of glass off of his father’s clothes and helped him sit up. “Can you move everything?”

He nodded again. “My nose, I think it might be broken. And my arm hurts. That woman—the strange-looking one—she got out. I think—I think she’s still around here.” His dad let go of the gun, and brought his hand up to Adam’s face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just sit tight and—”

He trailed off when he heard the sound of a car motor starting. It echoed in the small canyon. Adam climbed back outside the car. He listened to the tires screeching, and realized it was his Mini Cooper peeling down the road. The woman must have hot-wired it.

Adam told himself it didn’t matter. His dad was okay. They were both alive.

He started wondering and worrying about Laurie again.

He took his cell out of his pocket to call her. He’d need to call the police again, too, and let them know about his stolen Mini Cooper. He tried Laurie first. NO SERVICE AVAILABLE popped up in the window above his keypad. Down in the gully, he wasn’t able to get a signal.

He poked his head in the car again. “Pop, think you can make it up this hill with me? We need to get back up on the road. I had a better signal up there, and I need to call the police again . . .”

His father nodded. Then he turned to stare at the driver slumped in the front seat. “Is he dead?” he asked, wincing.

Adam nodded.

“I shot him,” he murmured. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

Adam thought about the deep, dark family secret, and those deaths at Biggs Farm. He might not ever know what had happened back then.

But he realized his father was telling him the truth.

“I’ve never killed anybody,” he repeated while Adam helped him out of the backseat.

“I know, Pop,” he whispered. “I know.”

“So what started you killing again? Was it when you heard about the screenplay?”

Shifting restlessly in the hard-backed chair, Gil Garrett gave her a weary look. Slowly, he shook his head. “Sweetheart, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about
7/7/70,
” Cheryl explained. She stood in front of him with the gun poised.

Laurie stayed off to the side, near a stack of boxes. She felt a constant chill, and wondered if she’d found the cold spot in the allegedly haunted room. She also wondered when all this would end. Both Gil and Cheryl looked utterly tired and on edge—as if they were reaching their breaking point. She couldn’t predict Cheryl’s next move. She seemed so volatile. She had the gun aimed at Gil’s head, and her hand was unsteady. Whether accidental or intentional, Laurie was almost certain the gun would go off at any moment.

“The murders you arranged were history, decades old,” Cheryl went on, her voice slightly hoarse. “You didn’t have to worry. You’d thought you’d covered all your tracks. But then earlier this year, a screenwriter announced he was working on a film version—with all sorts of new information. He was a threat to you—so you had him killed. That script was a threat, too. What did this writer have on you? It must have driven you crazy that the script was so closely guarded . . .”

“I may be semiretired, sweetheart,” he growled. “But I still have enough clout in this business that if I want to look at a film script—
any
film script—I just have to pick up a phone. I didn’t have any interest in that project. I could tell from the get-go those claims that he’d uncovered all this ‘new information’ were just so much hype. I remember discussing that with my wife. I told her it was utter bullshit, a way of jacking up the price of the screenplay. In fact, Shawna wanted me to option the script, but I . . .” He trailed off—as if another thought had just popped into his head.

“But what?” Cheryl asked.

“But as I said, I—I wasn’t interested,” he replied, still a bit distracted. “I thought a movie about that tragedy was in bad taste.”

“Well, someone else didn’t feel that way,” Cheryl argued. “In fact, they got very nervous about the project. They had the screenwriter killed, and they did what they could to mess up the film production. After murdering Freddie Rothschild, they went after me. They blew up my food truck, but by mistake, they killed my friend—my coworker. Anyone with any kind of inside information about the murders was a target. They were tying up loose ends. They killed Dean and Joyce Holbrook, and they threw Dolly Ingersoll down those stairs—”

“Oh, for chrissake, listen to yourself!” he bellowed. “You just said
someone else.
And
They . . . they . . . they . . .
You know it’s not me. You’re admitting as much. This
they
you’re talking about is someone who used my name to have Elaina killed. And if Arnie Shearer was truly involved in this, then they used my connections, too . . .”

Laurie noticed him trailing off again—as if lost in thought.

“My God . . .” he whispered to himself.

“What is it?” Cheryl asked, taking a step toward him.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he whispered.

But Laurie could see that he had tears in his eyes. She imagined he must have had the same look on his face when the doctor had told him about his cancer. He turned toward her. “Can I have some more water, sweetheart?”

She glanced at Cheryl, who nodded, but never took her eyes off Gil. The way they stared at each other, it was as if they’d suddenly reached an unspoken understanding. It was something between the two of them that Laurie didn’t feel a part of.

She retreated to the bathroom, where she refilled the Dixie cup at the sink. Laurie started back to the baby’s room, but then she stopped dead.

She heard her cell phone ringing downstairs.

Very few people had the number—the Cassellas, the Ellensburg Police, and Adam. A part of her wanted to take a chance, defy Cheryl, and run down there to answer it. And while she was at it, she could call the Seattle Police, and put an end to this.

Laurie glanced at her wristwatch. It was just after five-thirty. They’d abducted Gil two and a half hours ago. She stood in that hallway full of ghosts, uncertain what to do. The phone stopped ringing.

She heard Gil and Cheryl quietly conversing. She glanced at the Dixie cup of water in her hand. Had Gil sent her out so he and Cheryl could talk in private?

She heard something else—in the distance. It was a police siren.

Laurie figured Gil’s housekeeper must have awoken by now. It couldn’t have taken the police very long to connect Cheryl Wheeler and the Grill Girl II to this locale. She wondered if that phone call was from them.

She hurried back to the baby’s room to find Cheryl hovering over Gil.

“. . . but you can’t do anything about it,” Gil was saying.

“Can’t I?” she asked—as if accepting a challenge. She turned away from him and grabbed her big purse from the floor. She slipped the gun inside it, then fished out a pocketknife and handed it to Laurie. “If you can’t get him untied, use this to cut the ropes,” she said.

The police siren seemed to be getting louder—and closer.

Bewildered, Laurie gazed at her. “Then it’s over?”

Nodding, Cheryl threw the satchel over her shoulder. She touched Laurie’s cheek. “I’m really sorry I put you through all this, honey. Please forgive me.” She turned to Gil. “You, too, Gil.”

“Let me handle it,” Gil said to her, talking loudly over the siren’s wail. “Do you hear me?”

But Cheryl ignored him and hurried out of the room. She headed for the back stairs.

Moments later, Laurie heard the kitchen door unlocking. Cheryl was slipping out the back—as she had that night forty-four years ago.

“Come on, darling, untie your Uncle Gil,” he said in his gravelly voice.

Laurie set down the cup of water, crouched behind the chair, and started to untie Gil’s wrists. She struggled with the tight, sweat-covered knot.

The police siren seemed right outside the gate, but then it abruptly stopped.

Laurie glanced toward the hallway. The red flashers from outside reflected on the wall. She wondered if Cheryl had been able to get past the police.

“Listen, sweetheart,” Gil said. “You want to help your friend? Let me do all the talking with the police. And just back up everything I say. Do what your godfather says. Okay, gorgeous?”

“I don’t understand any of this,” she said, still tugging at the knot. “What just went on? What did you tell her?”

“Never mind, Laurie,” he said. “You don’t need to know. No one needs to know.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
SEVEN

Monday, July 14, 6:50
P.M.

Seattle

F
or the moment, the North Bend and Snoqualmie Police Departments and the Seattle Police had no idea the separate cases they were working on were actually connected. It just seemed like a coincidence that these two strange abductions had started in Medina at generally the same time on Saturday. The less serious case—but the one the news services really latched on to—was the bizarre abduction of film producer Gil Garrett by a caterer who seemed to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Gil announced he wasn’t pressing charges, and he wanted to help the woman get counseling once the police found her.

Deemed slightly less newsworthy was the still unexplained story behind Dean Holbrook, Sr.’s abduction, which resulted in the deaths of a North Bend traffic cop and the man who had killed him.

Still, Adam and the folks at Evergreen Manor found themselves besieged with press people once again. He spent most of Saturday night and Sunday subjected to a series of grilling sessions by detectives from Seattle, Medina, North Bend, and Snoqualmie.

Adam didn’t want his father directly implicated in the notorious Styles-Jordan murders. It really wasn’t necessary. He told police that his father had been abducted while the two of them had been enjoying the afternoon in Medina Park. He claimed he had no idea why it had happened, but stressed his belief that it had to do with the copycat murders of his brother and sister-in-law. This theory seemed even more viable when the police discovered in the wrecked SUV a thermos full of cyanide-laced lemonade and Adam’s laptop computer—with a bogus “suicide” note among the unsent e-mails.

The police also found that the driver of the SUV had several aliases, some underworld affiliations, and a long rap sheet. His fingerprints—as well as Adam’s—were on the Glock 19 used to shoot Todd Armbruster, the thirty-year-old police officer from North Bend.

Adam’s abandoned car was recovered Sunday morning in a sketchy part of Federal Way. There was no sign of the woman who stole it. Police were still searching for the dark-haired, narrow-faced suspect.