Relative Malice (13 page)

She looked toward Nash, who’d been staring at a TV set mounted on the wall opposite the bed. He turned. “So Hank, when are they going to spring you from this spa?”

“Not soon enough for me,” he grumbled. “I’m sick of being poked and prodded, but at least they took the tube out of my dick.”

Nash winced.

Hank said, “They must be really short-handed if they have Kenny working alone. I need to get back to work and keep her out of trouble. Word of advice? Don’t overlook the baby-brokers. It’s a thriving business. Young girls don’t believe in abortion anymore—they keep the kid and then wake up to how hard it is to raise it alone. They sell to the highest bidder for up to a mil.”

“We’re starting with the pedophiles because her life is in jeopardy if she’s with one of them,” Nash explained. “If a broker sold her, chances are she’s safe until we find her.”

Hank humphed. “Just saying—keep an open mind, check out everything.”

20

Saturday

Kendall and Nash drove south from Eau Claire until they pulled onto a street of typical Midwest homes. Modest, wood-framed, two-story bungalows, well-kept and graced with mature oak and pine trees. She’d called ahead to the local police department in Greenfield, Minnesota, a small town north of Rochester, to notify them she’d be in town to question John Traynor, the next sex offender on their list. They gave her the go-ahead without insisting on joining them when they questioned Traynor.

Nash, driving his wife’s beige Malibu because it was less conspicuous than his or Kendall’s car, stopped two doors down from Traynor’s address. “You sure that’s the right place? There’s two kids in the front yard.”

Kendall wanted to believe it was a mistake, but the house number was the one printed on their list. “It’s a holiday weekend, maybe the kids are just visiting.”

“What’s wrong with our freakin’ system? These offenders can’t live within a thousand feet of a school or a playground, but if they move in with someone with kids, then that’s okay?” Nash spouted.

She opened the car door. “Let’s not pre-judge. Those kids might live next door.” They didn’t have time for debating the inadequacies of the system. “Come on. We’ll surprise him.”

The children, a boy about ten and a girl who looked two years younger, were riding away from the house on their bikes when Kendall and Nash reached the porch. A woman barely over five feet tall answered the door wearing faded jeans and a man’s flannel shirt hanging to her knees. She had a fat-cheeked baby balanced on one hip, a baby with black hair bearing no resemblance to Philly Glausson.

“Does John Traynor live here?” Kendall asked.

The woman’s eyes shifted from Kendall to Nash.

“I’m Detective Kendall Halsrud from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and this is Adam Nashlund. We need to speak to Mr. Traynor.”

The woman kept staring. Kendall wondered if there was something wrong with her when a man’s voice called out from the rear of the house. “Who’s at the goddamn door?” When he appeared behind the woman seconds later, Kendall held out her badge.

“What the fuck? Can’t you people let me live my life? That arrest was nothing but a mistake. Just ask my wife, here. Mary Ellen, tell them.” But when his wife opened her mouth to speak, he stopped her with a harsh glare. “I got a job and pay my taxes like everyone else around here. Don’t need you cops busting my chops every time a kid goes missing.”

Kendall stepped forward. “Who said anything about a missing child?”

“That’s what it always is.” Traynor whispered something to his wife. She left with the baby, who’d started crying when Traynor raised his voice. Stepping to the side, he opened the door all the way.

“Go ahead. Look the place over. I got nothin’ to hide. The only baby here is my kid, and I can show you her papers.”

Her papers. Dogs have papers. Is that how this piece of shit thinks of his child?
Kendall wanted to toss him in a cell and throw away the key.

They toured the house as quickly as possible, noting baby things in most of the rooms. Kendall’s skin crawled as Traynor followed her, his marble-hard, dark eyes on her every move. What were the chances he wasn’t abusing his baby? She wondered if it were possible for a monster like him to love his daughter enough to protect her from his own disgusting urges.

Two of the upstairs bedrooms obviously had occupants under the age of twelve. Nash had been right. The kids they’d seen in the yard lived there. She kept combing the house, going over and over every nook and cranny until Nash pulled her out of Traynor’s range of hearing.

“She’s not here.”

“We might have missed something,” Kendall insisted.

“We haven’t missed anything. Come on. We have other stops to make.”

She hated leaving the creep with three children. In a voice loud enough for Traynor to hear, she said, “I want to stop at the Greenfield station and see if they’re aware of the living situation here.”

Nash looked at her with resignation. “Let’s do it.”

Kirk DeForrest, a professor in the economics department at the UW campus in Madison, was the third name on Kendall’s list. Another atrocity, but at least he wasn’t working with young kids. He’d never been convicted of molestation thanks to a loophole in the law; DeForrest, who wore a hearing aid, had claimed his device wasn’t working on the day of his arrest. A tenacious attorney successfully argued the police should have given him the opportunity to get the device repaired before reading him his Miranda rights. What a crock. Kendall had to admire Brynn’s search skills in finding DeForrest without a conviction.

He lived in a rural area northwest of Madison. Kendall called the county sheriff’s department to notify them of her impending visit. The deputy who answered sounded put out at the interruption and with a minimal amount of conversation, gave them the go-ahead to visit DeForrest.

She frowned. “He hadn’t heard of the incident with DeForrest, said it was before his time.”

“So? Things will go smoother for us without the locals butting in.”

“I know, but you’d think they’d at least pretend to be interested.”

“You already forgot about Greenfield? They’re gonna bust Traynor for having his wife’s kids living with them.”

“I know, but there’s the baby. She’s the one most at risk, and there’s nothing they can do about that.”

The GPS took them to a two-story brick home, set into a hillside adjoining a neat farm whose buildings were well-kept and freshly painted. Outlined with white fencing, a pasture between the house and the outbuildings held a group of American Saddlebred horses huddled together against the wind.

“They must be paying academics well these days,” said Kendall, looking over the grounds. “I think I’m in the wrong line of work.”

Nash pulled into a long, curved drive leading to the house. “Hey, you’re doing what you love and the bennies are good. Who needs all this?”

“Might be nice to have a place to hang my hat.” Would it? She was still wrestling with whether to stay in the apartment. Something about signing a lease made her nervous, and her one-week trial ended today. The reasons for her resistance to a permanent residence were complicated, but she’d have to give Morrie an answer soon.

DeForrest came to the door neatly dressed in khakis and a maroon crew neck over a white, button-down collar shirt.

Kendall introduced herself and Nash and explained why they were there, expecting to get the door slammed in their faces. Like Traynor, DeForrest surprised her by inviting them in. “I have nothing to hide. The incident I’m sure brought you here was a long time ago. It was an unfortunate miscarriage of justice.”

It was a miscarriage of justice all right—for the people. Stepping into a wide foyer decorated in startling black and white, Kendall bit back what she wanted to say, words that would have gotten them thrown out.

“I understand you feel that way, but you need to understand we have a job to do. There is a baby missing, and we have to find her.”

“You won’t find the child here.” He waved his hand toward the interior of the house. “Be my guest. Look around.”

They didn’t wait for DeForrest to change his mind, and moved through the rooms quickly. The black and white theme dominated the interior of the house, accessorized with brilliant touches of red. The master bedroom, done entirely in white on white, was decorated with Asian style furniture, lacquered in shiny ebony black.

“This guy must come from money,” Nash muttered.

Kendall looked in the closets. “He’s anal as hell. I’ve never seen a closet this perfect, have you?”

“Not mine.”

The house had no sign of a child having been there. She hadn’t expected they would find anything, but the neatness glared.

They returned to the living room, where DeForrest waited, a smug smile on his face. “Satisfied?”

“The outbuildings. Are they yours?” Kendall asked.

“Yes. I rent them out.”

“All of them?”

He smirked. “Yes. All the buildings are being used by other parties.”

After they took their leave of DeForrest, Kendall got in the car, irritated. “What a prick.”

“He let us in, didn’t he?”

“The guy gave me the creeps. It’s like he was waiting for us and had everything set up.”

“I don’t see how he could have known we were coming. The sheriff’s office wouldn’t have tipped him off.”

“Something
was off,” she said. “Did you notice he didn’t have any computer equipment?”

“I saw a laptop.”

“Yeah. On a built-in desk where he puts his mail into neat little keyholes and pays his bills.”

“What did you expect?”

He wasn’t getting her point. “Here’s the thing. Assuming his arrest was spot-on and the guy’s a pedophile, he’s been off the grid for what? Four years?” She checked the sheet from Brynn. “Yeah, four years. So what’s he doing for kicks? He’s not married. There were no signs of a woman in that house except maybe a cleaning lady. How’s he getting his jollies?“

“If you’re thinking it has to be through the Internet, it doesn’t take fancy equipment for that.”

“I know. But a guy with that much money? It doesn’t play.”

“Maybe he has an elaborate system at work.”

“Sure, but he wouldn’t dare use it for
that.”

Nash grunted assent. “I think I saw a diner in that small town we passed through on the way here. Let’s get something to eat. I think better on a full stomach.”

21

Brynn spent the day visiting chat rooms and coming up with nothing, her search limited by the capacity of Kendall’s laptop. She needed more power and a second machine, a system like the ones at the college.

Sneaking into a few classes had been easy for her until the instructor caught up to her in the hall one day and suggested she sign up to audit the course. She’d broken away from him as quickly as possible and never gone back. Observing the computer class had been the closest she’d come to violating her probation, but she’d wanted to keep up with the latest technology.

It was Saturday of a holiday weekend. If the lab was open, how many people would even be around? She packed up a few things, including Kendall’s laptop, and left the apartment.

There were two students in the computer lab, totally absorbed in what they were doing. Neither looked up as she quietly took a place in a workstation at the back of the room. Her fingers raced across the keyboard. In seconds Brynn had logged in as a student.

In their last conversation, Kendall told her they hadn’t found any phone communication between the freaks on the list Brynn had given them. If they were staying in touch with each other, it had to be online. The darker sites changed URLs often enough to make monitoring them nearly impossible, but those would be the ones they’d gravitate toward. Using two computers, she searched the chat rooms where pedophiles hung out; it took her nearly an hour to zone in on two sites she thought might be productive.

Next, she had to trace whether the pedophiles on their list were using one of the sites to communicate with each other; unfortunately, finding them while they were active would require constant surveillance. And it would only be possible after she’d identified at least one of their usernames. Brynn was up for it, but after a few hours, she needed a break. And food.

She left the computer lab feeling an odd sense of accomplishment, even though all the ground she’d covered hadn’t borne fruit. It didn’t matter. The elation she felt working with computers again made it worth every minute she searched.

As Brynn moved toward the exit, she noticed a student bulletin board packed with flyers. One of them caught her eye. It advertised an after-hours night walk for anyone interested in winter constellations. Participants were encouraged to bring portable astronomy gear. She’d been on these excursions before, not as a stargazer, but to have company on her evening strolls. This one started at nine that night, which would give her time to eat dinner and begin her surveillance of the websites before she left.

Better equipment would make the job a lot easier. Kendall had offered only her laptop. Brynn couldn’t afford to buy herself a new system; she barely met her expenses from month to month. She could ask her mother to fund it, but that would cost her; the last thing she wanted was to become indebted to the woman.

Funny her mother hadn’t contacted Brynn about her possible early release from parole. Maybe she was out of town on one of her bridge cruises. Now there was a trip for the idle widows. Her mother, in Brynn’s opinion, was the epitome of the Jewish princess made famous by one-liners spewed out by stand-up comedians. Her obsession with the game of bridge spiked when Brynn’s father died suddenly of a stroke five years ago. Strangely, the game hadn’t replaced her obsession with her daughter.

Brynn knew how to play her mother; she couldn’t just ask when she wanted something from her. The next time Monica Zellman came lurking around, as she would sooner or later, Brynn would find a way to slyly encourage the gift of a new computer. Or not, if the woman still carried a grudge.

The stargazers were bused from a pickup spot downtown to a county park north of Eau Claire. In Brynn’s experience, walks like these were usually made up of retirees who’d discovered the art of astronomy as a late-life hobby. Apparently all of them didn’t just sit on their fannies around bridge tables. When she arrived she was dismayed to find in addition to the usual attendees, a group of giggling teenage girls huddled together, most of them clutching their phones, madly texting while they waited. Judging by their level of enthusiasm, the astronomy walk fulfilled a class requirement. Brynn considered leaving, but she rarely spent much time with the rest of the group on these excursions, anyway.

The walk itself covered a distance of about a mile, winding through the park following an asphalt trail before moving into an elevated meadow to observe the heavens. It was a cold, moonless evening, perfect for picking out constellations in the star-filled sky. There was snow on the ground, but not enough to deter the walkers.

When they were all gathered in the center of the meadow, a few of the serious gazers mounted telescopes on tripods. Brynn kept walking, careful to stay in view of the others. The area was too formidably dark to wander out of calling distance, even for Brynn, who was used to walking alone at night.

A half hour passed. From a distance, Brynn noticed the group getting ready to leave, the group leader flashing his light her way, signaling her to join them. She started to move toward the center of the meadow, when she heard a noise behind her that sounded like someone moaning. She stopped and turned her flashlight in the direction of the sound. No mistake—someone was in trouble not far from where Brynn stood. She followed the voice to a stand of pine trees and discovered a young woman lying inside, only partially dressed. She edged close enough to see a knife protruding from the girl’s abdomen. Making an effort not to panic, she remembered taking out the knife could be dangerous.

The girl spoke in a thready voice. “Help me.”

Brynn knelt next to her and took her hand. “I’ll get help.”

“No, don’t leave me. He’s still here.”

Whoever hurt her was still around? Fear nearly overcame her, but Brynn had to get help. “I won’t go far. Just far enough so they’ll see my light.”

Brynn took a few steps out of the trees and began to wave her light in circles, screaming, “Over here.”

She saw an answering light. “Call 911!”