Shattered Secrets (16 page)

Keeping his voice calm, Gabe gave her instructions. “Please phone Jonas and tell him I’d like him to stop by my office before work tomorrow morning. Ann,” he added, putting his hand around her wrist as she started to write that down as if she would not remember it, “I’d like for us to be friends.”

“Strange how that word can hurt—
friends.
And please take that dog off my desk. I hate dogs. I’ve always hated their dogs.”

“It must have been painful to watch your brothers pit their dogs against each other.”

“I don’t know what you mean. And if I did ever see a dogfight, it wasn’t as bad as when people fight.”

He picked up the dog. “Tell Jonas he still owes John Hillman for his work, but, if he wants it, he has to pick up the dog here.”

Gabe ignored whatever Ann was muttering as he walked back to his office with the dead dog in his arms. He felt he was getting nowhere fast, but at least he hadn’t turned up any human bodies—yet.

16

O
n the highway to Chillicothe, Tess started to realize what else it meant to be a law enforcement officer, besides being on call all the time. Cars slowed down when they saw Gabe’s vehicle, though they were going the speed limit. Even huge semis moved out of their way, as if Gabe had the siren and light bar on. It was a strange kind of power she’d never experienced, though she was familiar with the feeling that people were looking at her. Yet everything about being with this man seemed new and amazing. Since she felt safe bouncing her deepest fears off him, she’d decided to share something else she was agonizing over.

“Gabe, I found something disturbing in one of the books Miss Etta loaned me. It’s called Stockholm syndrome. It means that sometimes hostages express sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors. They’re so grateful to be fed and kept alive that they come to need and like—even love—their abductors. Is that insane or what?”

“Sounds crazy, but it happens. Do you think it figures in what happened to you?”

“I’m not sure, but it makes me wonder if that could be a reason I can’t remember things. Could there be someone I think well of now who took me and hurt me years ago? I like almost everyone in Cold Creek except Dane and Bright Star Monson—which I realize doesn’t narrow suspects down one bit for you. And,” she added, eager not to dwell on the subject, “I meant to tell you I called my sister Char out in New Mexico and asked her if Mom and Dad ever used the word
smacking
when they punished us. She’d never heard it and had no memory of a scarecrow either. She about had a fit when I admitted I’d been thinking of calling our father.”

“I’m sure your mother and sisters were hurt by his desertion. As the youngest, you maybe don’t remember too much about it.”

“We were all devastated. I remember that. He must have been really upset or bitter about something to leave. I know he partly blamed Mom for not keeping me with her the day I was taken, but Kate and Char hinted it was more. I know all the jokes about traveling salesmen, but I never heard he had someone else. He met the woman he married out west after he moved there.”

“Yeah. Well, it might be rough to talk to him after all this time. You might want to put it off.”

She pulled her seat belt out a bit and turned toward him. “Gabe, he was never under suspicion for taking me himself to get back at my mother for something, right?”

Gabe looked as if she’d hit him. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared. He didn’t look at her but kept his eyes on the road. “Vic Reingold and my father considered it. But they decided no.”

“He had an alibi?”

“There were rumors he’d been out of town, but he’d gone for a walk near the falls. He took off work that day and wasn’t traveling. He told Vic, who interviewed him, he had some tough things to decide about his marriage. The parents are always looked at immediately in abuse or kidnap cases, but Vic believed him.”

“Your father did too?”

“Yeah.”

An awkward silence stretched between them. She thought he was going to say something more, but he didn’t, so she continued, “Anyway, it was great to talk to Char. She’s always good at calming me down. It’s the social worker in her. Kate says she’s a bleeding heart. Kate’s a lot more ticked off that Mom left the house to me alone, but they’re both still supportive in their way.”

“There are advantages and disadvantages to being an only child, like me. The youngest kid, the middle kid, the oldest and in between can all have problems, but when you’re the only kid, it’s all on you. You’re the firstborn, but you’re always the baby too.”

“You and your mother must miss each other.”

“We’re getting close now,” he said, as if he’d had enough family talk. He turned the cruiser onto the ramp to downtown Chillicothe. “Let’s go over this again. I’ll drive past Dr. Stevens’s house, then her vet clinic. They’re not in the same area. The clinic’s off Bridge Street near the hospital. Just take a good look at both places to see if anything prompts a memory. Behind her vet clinic, near the train tracks, she had an extension built out the back that’s evidently not used. It’s something my dad discovered and I’ve checked on periodically since. I’ll interview her while you look around, and if you see anything at all suspicious, just meet me back where I drop you off, and we’ll check it out together. Tess, are you okay? Got that?”

“I hear you. Agreed. It’s all a long shot, isn’t it? You have to just keep unraveling threads and hope that something really frays or tears loose.”

“That’s a sad way to look at police work, but I guess, at least in the case of the Cold Creek kidnapper, that’s right.”

She reached over to squeeze his shoulder. He covered her hand with his. At that smallest touch, her heart soared.

* * *

“This is certainly a surprise and, quite frankly, not a welcome one,” Dr. Linda Stevens told Gabe as she sat across her desk from him. “I was barely beginning my practice here when your father came calling with cloaked innuendoes that I might have something to do with a kidnapped child when I only had contact with Dane Thompson for business.”

The vet going on the offensive reminded Gabe of Dane’s attitude earlier. He felt deflated that Tess had not recognized this woman’s house or clinic from their drive-by, but he wasn’t giving up on this interview. He kept thinking his only chance without a solid lead was to rattle each possible suspect’s cage. It bothered him when there were so many caged animals nearby. He could hear the muted cries of dogs and cats, even with the office door closed. But he’d give about anything to hear a young girl’s cries from her place of imprisonment, so he could rescue her.

“Each time there’s another abduction,” he told her, “we need to go back over all former evidence. These crimes may well be linked.”

“But I gave no evidence, per se. I merely gave a deposition that Dane Thompson visited me the day of that first abduction for which he was wrongly suspected.”

The woman lit a cigarette then inhaled deeply. It surprised him, but then he knew all kinds of doctors smoked. He took it that she was nervous enough to light up in front of him without asking if he’d mind.

Linda Stevens was a good-looking woman in an icy way. Her blond hair was pulled away from her face into a twist. A face he’d call classic or aristocratic with high cheekbones and arched eyebrows. He could see why it was his father’s theory that Dane Thompson was interested in her for more than business reasons.

“So, what can I do to get rid of you?” she asked, tapping nonexistent ash from the end of her newly lit cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray.

“Make my day. Admit you covered for Dane by giving him a false alibi that he wasn’t in Cold Creek when Teresa Lockwood was abducted. You certainly won’t be prosecuted for misleading statements to my father from twenty years ago, whereas withholding information now that would be useful—that could be a different story.”

“All right, so I was seeing Dane socially at that time and didn’t want people to think I was dating a possible kidnapper.”

“I believe that much.”

“But I don’t think he was—a kidnapper.”

“I should tell you, however, that all kinds of law enforcement, even media, may be swooping in here with our new emphasis on the investigation. And one way to stop that is to level with me about the drugs you and Dane use to sedate animals.”

“What? Now, wasn’t that a non sequitur!”

He hoped she’d be upset enough to go for his bait-and-switch tactic. Maybe she’d want to get him off the topic of her earlier lies in her deposition and instead give him info about sedation drugs available to vets. He saw her quick mind follow exactly what he’d implied. She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette with such vehemence that her long fingernails went
rat-a-tat
against the ashtray.

“Drugs?” she said. “Ask him. Besides, all vets use sedation drugs. And yes, some are the same or similar to what would be used by doctors of Homo sapiens, if that’s where this is going.”

“A drug like Versed, for example?”

“You mean midazolam? That’s for humans. It’s an amnestic. With a dog or cat, unlike with a person, it isn’t necessary to suppress memories of a medical procedure. We use pain or knockout meds for animals. However, I will say one other thing, if you keep it off the record.” She hesitated, frowning.

He shifted slightly forward in his chair. “So far, this is all off the record.”

“Dane, at that time, not now, was my source for drugs. Vet drugs, not recreational drugs or medical drugs for humans like midazolam. He had some source on the East Coast, got them cheap from some clearing house, nothing illegal.”

That was intriguing, perhaps useful. But he decided to go for another quick change in topic. “Did he phone you to say I might be visiting today?”

She blinked, once, twice. “I don’t see him anymore. Haven’t for years.”

“That’s not what I asked. You want me out of here right now, answer the question.”

She pushed the ashtray away. Her hand was shaking. He heard a distant train coming closer and thought of Tess. The tracks were barely a block from here. Would that sound trigger a memory that she’d been kept near here, even for a short while? He wanted to be with her in case her memories came back. The problem was, he wanted to be with her more and more.

“Yes,” she said, not looking at him. “He phoned earlier to give me a heads-up you might stop by or that Reingold might. Look, Sheriff, I had nothing to do with the first abduction or this latest one of Sandy Kenton or anything!”

He stood. Maybe that was why Dane was so confrontational. He was afraid Gabe would uncover his drug pipeline, whether for animals—or young girls.

“I see you’re keeping up with details of the latest kidnapping,” he said. “You know Sandy Kenton’s name.”

“It’s been in the papers for several days, for heaven’s sake!”

“Thanks for the information. I’ll show myself out. And even though Dane phoned you, I’d advise you not to report this interview to him or take more of his calls, or it will look like current collusion, as well as twenty years ago. I’d advise you to steer clear of him.”

He walked away and opened the door, then turned back. She looked as if she was going to cry. He’d probably overstepped, but learning Dane was a drug supplier was important. And that search warrant he was going to apply for would give him the power to comb the man’s house and clinic for any trace of amnestic drugs.

17

“Y
ou won’t like this,” Tess told Gabe as he picked her up down the block from the vet clinic. “Despite that train going by—much closer than my memory of it—I looked in the windows of that wing she has built out the back.”

“Tess, I told you—”

“I know, I know, but I want to help, and we’ve got to find those girls. I think it’s meant to be a kennel for boarding dogs, but it’s empty. Maybe she built it, then decided not to expand that way. Did she say anything to help?”

“She gave me a lead on some drugs Dane might have access to.”

Tess rubbed her arms through her jacket until she realized she was trying to soothe the memory of injections she’d once had there. Gabe went on, “It will help me get a search warrant if there’s any problem with that. Since the guy’s supposedly such an upstanding member of society, the judge may balk. Would you do me a favor while I drive, partner, and look up a drug called Versed or midazolam on your phone, then read me the specs on it?” He spelled it out for her.

“She told you Dane uses that drug?” Tess asked as she leaned down to fish her phone out of her purse.

“Not exactly. It’s another of my wild-goose chases, I suppose.”

She selected Wikipedia, since it always covered the basics, while they drove through downtown Chillicothe, a city large enough to swallow twenty Cold Creeks. As she read aloud to him, she began to shiver.

“Midazolam is not a pain medication. The main effects are amnesia and patient compliance. Patients lose touch with reality, not knowing where they are or what is really occurring. Patients do not recall pain or a bad experience. Under the drug’s influence they can carry on a conversation but will remember nothing once it wears off. It can open the door to abuse!” she went on, her voice getting louder. “Some patients, during a procedure or later, experience a distorted, nightmarish version of actual events and later feel abandonment and panic. Gabe, that’s it! That’s how I felt! Abandoned. I’ve felt panic, deep inside for years, especially when I hear or see certain things.”

“Calm down. You’re okay now, safe with me,” he said, gripping her knee with his hand. “It’s still a stab in the dark, but maybe one that will find its mark. Dr. Stevens said Dane had easy access to and sold vet drugs, which do not need the property of amnesia, but who knows what else he had access to?”

He put his hand back on the steering wheel, then thumped it with one fist while he spoke. “Tess, as long as I’m here in Chillicothe, I still need to check into something else.”

“And this is about someone other than Dane, right?”

“When Mayor Owens talked to you at the police station, how did he seem to you? Glad to see you? Upset?”

“In a hurry to get me out of town. At first he acted kind of creepy, almost like he wanted to scare me away. Is this something about Reese Owens?”

“He is alleged to have molested a young girl years ago when he was a teenager and the girl was five.”

Tess gasped. “And when he started walking toward me in your conference room, I felt so...so oppressed. In danger. But how could he run for public office, even in such a small town?”

“Well, here’s the strange part. As far as Vic Reingold can tell, the records for the crime have disappeared, except for one he found that someone had missed expunging. But I need to get corroborating evidence of what happened years ago before I question him on this. I’m heading to the neighborhood where he grew up. I’m going to ask around, see what people recall.”

“Well, he did marry the former governor’s granddaughter, so that might be why it was erased, not just so he could run for mayor. Friends in high places—at least as high as that hill near Lake Azure with the mayor’s beautiful house on it,” she said.

“My thoughts exactly.”

He pulled onto a side street in an area that had seen better times, where the houses were night and day from the Owens mansion outside Cold Creek. In the distance the big paper mill loomed with its smokestacks stabbing the sky. The yards were small, the buildings close together. No garages, cars parked on the street. A couple of places had Halloween decorations, ghosts or a black cat cutout. A few garbage cans sat on the curb. Near dinnertime, it was almost deserted except for a couple of boys shooting baskets at a bare metal hoop attached to a pole. The moment the boys spotted the police cruiser, they disappeared.

“You weren’t going to bring me with you here at first, or even tell me you were checking into Mayor Owens, were you?” she asked.

He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, reading house numbers as he slowed even more, then parallel parked under a ghost tied to an old tree. It was made of a dirty sheet with a noose around his neck to make its head.

“I didn’t want to spook you,” Gabe said, “though I hate to put it that way, considering what’s hanging over us. It reminds me of the gift shop where Sandy was taken.”

He leaned toward her and looked at the dark green house out her side window. “Hard to believe Reese Owens grew up here,” he muttered, and turned off the engine. “As much as his wife’s a snob, I’m surprised he didn’t have someone erase records of this old address too. Sit tight. I’m going to see if anyone’s at his boyhood home, ask if there’s someone in the neighborhood who’s lived here a long time. Lock yourself in.”

Tess watched as he went up to the door, rang the bell, then talked to a young woman whose face was obscured behind the torn screen. He came back out to the car, unlocked and opened her door. Arms on the roof of the car, he leaned down toward her.

“Maybe things are finally going our way,” he said. “Mrs. Bowes, who lives right across the street, has been here for thirty years. The problem is, this woman says she’s a bit of a gossip, so isn’t that too bad?”

“I have a feeling I should not go with you,” she said.

“Be right back. And I’m not sure it’s a good thing you’re reading my mind,” he said, and winked at her. He closed the door, then motioned that she should lock herself in again.

It was a good thing, she thought, he wasn’t reading her mind. No man had ever gotten to her the way he did. His glance, his voice, his touch, made her tingle and tremble and in the most delicious way—even when things were supposed to be strictly business, maybe life-and-death business.

* * *

The two-story, gray house had tired-looking lace curtains in the windows, upstairs and down. The narrow sidewalk was sunken and cracked, and the porch boards creaked under Gabe’s feet. The two-seat swing on chains was atilt and moving slightly in the breeze as if ghosts sat there.

When he rang the bell, he saw the curtains twitch as someone looked out. He could hear a TV program blaring from inside. A short, elderly lady with some of her white hair on end and some matted down opened the door. The TV got louder. It sounded like some game show with a lot of applause. She must be hard of hearing. Gabe raised his voice.

“Mrs. Bowes, I’m Sheriff McCord from over in Falls County, just checking up on someone who grew up in this neighborhood. I understand you’ve lived here for years.”

“Thirty-five with my husband, Bob, who worked at the paper mill, but he passed. My daughter says I’m getting forgetful, but not about the past, no, sir. Want to come in? I’m watchin’ a rerun of
Family Feud,
but I can turn it down.”

He didn’t want to leave Tess alone, even locked in a police car. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask you a question or two from here. It concerns the Owens family, and the boy was named Reese.”

“Oh, him. Did real well for hisself, married up, he did. He’s even a mayor now in some little town down yonder.”

Gabe heard applause from the TV in the dim room behind her. It hit him that Reese might resent having to run such a small town, but in a way, he might be hiding out there. If Reese was mayor of a big town, that would bring more media attention, maybe a check of his past, hidden records or not. Maybe that’s why he ate too much, taking out his frustrations that way. And maybe Reese took little girls to prove he was clever, or to feed his sick fantasies that had started here in his teens. There were no doubt plenty of places in that huge house on the hill to hide a child. The Owenses were childless. Maybe they wanted a compliant, sweet little girl—several of them.

“Yes, that’s the man,” Gabe said. “Mrs. Bowes, do you recall anything about Reese Owens getting in trouble with the law?”

“Well,” she said, drawling her words and rolling her eyes. “They tried to cover it up then and after.”

“Who did?”

“His family at first. Then I’ll bet his wife’s people. You know who her granddaddy was, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. What sort of trouble was he in years ago?”

“I’ll tell you, young man, but I don’t want what I say showin’ up in the papers or on TV. My Bob took good money for promisin’ to keep quiet ’bout it once, though I was shopping at Kmart that day and never promised a thing. Just don’t you go getting poor little Reese in trouble for something bad he did long ago. People change, you know.”

“I won’t get him in trouble for that. This is about something that happened more recently.”

“Well,” she said, leaning closer to the screen and glancing past him as if there might be others hovering. “He got hisself accused of lewd acts on a minor, a kindergarten girl lived over on the next block back then, Ginger Pickett. I remember her name, all right. The evidence was iffy, least we thought so. At first we heard he could be sentenced up to two years in juvie prison. Then we heard eighteen months. Then he got nothing for it, but they moved away. And that’s the last we heard of him till his marriage—oh, not countin’ when a man came here to talk to Bob and the neighbors to keep quiet and handed out good money for it too. We spent it on fixin’ up things around the house here. You sure you don’t want to come in? I’ll turn the sound down.”

“I really can’t, Mrs. Bowes, but you’ve been very helpful.”

“And what you’re askin’, I’ll bet you couldn’t look it up in the old court records, right? I mean, if they’re gonna spend good money on the neighbors keeping a tight lip, they prob’ly wiped the record clean.”

“Please tell your daughter that I think you are sharp not only about the past but about the present,” Gabe said, touching his hand to his hat. She waved and smiled, showing one prominent gold tooth before the door closed behind her and the voices shouting on the TV stopped.

This was a good little field trip, he told himself as he walked toward the cruiser. Although he now had enough information to confront Reese Owens, he was going to target Dane again after all these years, just as his dad had done, but with new evidence. The drug connection was tenuous, what his father would have called “a blind hog finding an acorn.” It was sheer, dumb luck. He’d like to believe it was a gift from God, but anyway, he was going to run with it.

As for Reese, if the powerful, political family he’d married into could wipe out court records, who knew what else they could hide? Vic would be pleased they now had two persons of more than interest to pursue.

* * *

It was dark when Gabe dropped Tess off at her house, so he went in with her and looked all over, including the attic and basement, before walking around the perimeter of the place, especially the backyard. Tess could tell he was anxious to see Agent Reingold, whom he’d called from the car to set up a meeting at the police station in town.

“I’ll be home later,” he told her at the back door. “Lock up. Get a good night’s sleep, take it easy tomorrow, and I’ll see you at the farmers’ market on Saturday. Meanwhile, I’m going to serve Dane with the search warrant as soon as I can get my hands on it.”

She looked at his strong, big hands on the doorknob. Feeling awkward, wanting to kiss him goodbye, she just nodded and closed the door after his quick exit.

Missing him already, feeling drained, she poured herself a predinner, calm-down glass of wine from the new bottle she’d purchased with some other supplies at the Kwik Shop. She sipped the wine as she walked through the house, checking again to see that the curtains were tightly closed. The glass of Chardonnay went down well, so she poured a second. It had been quite a day, not only turning up information Gabe could use but helping him, being with him for several hours. Even if it was strictly business, she loved just breathing the same air he did.

She grabbed a few crackers and cut some skinny slices of the cheese Gracie had left for her. She figured she needed some food with the wine because it was going to her head. She was starting to feel funny. Not dizzy but floaty, and it was more than infatuation with Gabe. She’d better fix some proper food.

When she bent to look in the small refrigerator to get more food, a wave of dizziness slammed into her. How strange! Even though the refrigerator was fairly empty, it seemed to be full of corn leaves.

She knew something was wrong. Should she call Gabe? No, she’d better call her mother. She must be upstairs. “Mom? Mom!” a woman’s voice called nearby. Then she remembered her mother was dead. She’d seen her last alive sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital, waving after Tess had spent the afternoon with her.

Tess staggered against the wall, slid to the floor. The door to the cornfield was still open, wafting out cold air. She had to hide, had to hide or they’d find her, take her back to the house, smack her with Mr. Mean.

Tess sprawled flat on the floor, moving her hands from her eyes to over her ears. She heard the howl of a train coming closer. A monster roaring. She screamed and cried. She could not breathe. She saw bodies in graves, tear-streaked, muddy faces staring up at her, gesturing with their dirty hands.

“Help us. Find us,” they cried.

When the soil covered her face, Tess cried too.