Too Close to Home (13 page)

Chad’s truck needed a muffler.

The big blue Dodge was his pride and joy, the kind of truck only a sixteen-year-old boy could love. It had a big four-eighty engine and oversize tires that were made for mud and off-roading. The truck was noisy enough that some folks
believed Chad had installed a custom glass-pack muffler. But the fact was, the old muffler had simply rusted out. Which made the truck rumble and roar, drowning out the birds and making conversation practically impossible.

“Shut your eyes,” Chad shouted. A necessity, even though he was in the driver’s seat right beside me. “Shut them now, Brooke, before we get there.”

I did as he said and also had the good sense to grab the handle mounted above the door frame and brace myself against the seat. The old Dodge jounced as he powered it through the shallow, weedy ditch that separated the road from the tree line. Then a quick correction brought it back parallel to the road. And he killed the engine.

Silence. And the ringing in my ears, already fading, was overlaid with the sound of the wind rustling through the tree branches.

“What is it that you want to show me?” I asked again.

“It’s a surprise.”

That’s exactly what he’d said when he’d picked me up from the Cherokee Rose. He hadn’t made any further explanation to Aunt Lucy when he’d apologized for taking me away from my chores, but had kept insisting that there was something he had to show me. Now. Please.

I was familiar enough with the roads around town that it hadn’t taken me long to figure out where we were going. It had been more than a year since I’d been out here last. And for good reason. There was nothing pleasant about visiting the ugly turquoise single-wide that had stood uninhabited for years, a rotting reminder of things best forgotten. Nothing pleasant about watching Chad stand and stare and rub the scar on his cheek. As if the old wound were still raw and hurting. But I was his friend, so whenever he asked me to go with him, that was what I did.

Today, however, he seemed more than happy. And that surprised me. It was as if some wonderful secret was bubbling up inside him, demanding to be set free.

“Keep ’em closed,” he commanded, “until I say open them.”

He spanned my waist with his hands, lifted me down from the truck, and then slipped his arm around my shoulders to guide me. I could tell by the way the dappled light danced across my eyelids that we were walking through a thick stand of trees. Toward the old trailer.

We stopped when there was hot sunlight on my face again.

“Okay. Now you can take a look.”

I opened my eyes.

Where the trailer had once stood, the ground was now cleared in all directions. Vines and scrub trees and brush and shadows were gone. In their place were rows of sunflowers planted to the distant tree line. All in bloom, their heads turned toward the sun. A field of glorious golden flowers.

Chad was smiling. Grinning. Almost laughing with pleasure.

“It’s great, isn’t it? I rented the land to a farmer down the road. Cheap, on the condition that he clear it. And this is what he planted. Isn’t it beautiful, Brooke? I think my mamma would like it, don’t you?”

A shadow blocked the sun.

“Hey, Brooke. Thought I’d find you here.”

I reacted instinctively. Illogically. Even as my eyes flew open, I was grabbing for the gun I was certain still hung at my waist. Somehow, I’d forgotten to take it off. I’d gone off duty, but left the SIG-Sauer available and unguarded while I slept.

Then, a heartbeat later, I realized that I had fallen asleep. Now, fully awake, I knew without doubt that I’d secured my weapon inside the SUV. Because I was well trained and
always careful. Because I knew what could happen when a gun fell into someone else’s hands.

I relaxed my arm, looked up into my sister’s face as I yawned and stretched.

“Sorry,” Katie said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I noticed your squad, saw you sitting here and assumed you were watching the river. I remembered that this was always one of your favorite places.”

“Still is,” I said, smiling.

I glanced at my watch, realized that I hadn’t been asleep for very long. But I felt refreshed and my headache was gone. With a sigh more internal than expressed, I decided I was as ready as I ever would be for lunch with my family. I braced one hand against the tree trunk to push myself into a standing position. But the weight of Katie’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.

“Let’s stay here for a minute,” she said. “So we can talk privately.”

I settled back against the tree, thinking that maybe I could avoid a nasty confrontation at lunch by talking with Katie now. By convincing her to accept the conditions she’d so readily agreed to when she’d returned to Maryville. At least until Gran, who was already talking about retiring, gave up her leadership of the Underground. Aunt Lucy, I was sure, would willingly reroute rescued women away from the Cherokee Rose. For Katie’s sake.

Katie lowered herself to a patch of nearby grass, spent a moment smoothing her tailored skirt and the white chef’s apron that covered it, and another moment concentrating on brushing back a few ash-blond tendrils that had escaped from her barrettes. Then, without warning, she flicked her hand against my hip, her fingers striking the place where my holster usually hung.

When our eyes met, hers—so much like our mother’s—were troubled.

“Did you really think I’d grab your gun and shoot you?” she said.

Her accusation surprised me, and my face undoubtedly reflected that surprise. It had never occurred to me that my sister—my long-time protector—would ever deliberately hurt me. The only concern I’d ever had was that she might hurt someone else.

“Of course not,” I blurted. “I’m a cop, and that was purely reflex.”

Though she didn’t look convinced, she shrugged dismissively, then looked out at the river. Not at all like the Katie I remembered from the past, who had often been reduced to tears or inspired to fury by an unintended slight.

No doubt the years away had been good for her, I thought. For the first time, I considered the possibility that Aunt Lucy was right. That Katie was not the only one wounded by childhood trauma. And I asked myself if my newest suspicions—based on finding the kind of inhaler that was prescribed to millions every year—had anything to do with evidence or instinct. Maybe it was another symptom of my chronic inability to trust those I loved.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked into the lengthening silence.

Katie turned her head to look at me again.

“I want a chance to prove to you that I’ve changed,” she said. “Aunt Lucy and Gran already believe it. That’s why they’ve agreed to let me help out with the guests. So the only one I have left to convince is you.”

I opened my mouth to offer my compromise, to ask her to give the situation just a little more time, to tell her that I
thought she was doing a fine job at the Cherokee Rose. But she cut me off.

“No, let me finish,” she said. “I want to do more than just help out with the regular guests. I want to be part of the Underground again. Just like you and Gran and Aunt Lucy. I’m a Tyler. I have that right.”

I lifted the ball cap that was part of my uniform, briefly ran my fingers through my hair. Short, brown and curly. Not like Katie’s hair, or our mother’s. I wasn’t like either of them. Or even much like Aunt Lucy. I took after Gran. Or, at least, I tried to. I did what needed to be done. And said what needed to be said.

“No, you don’t,” I said firmly. “I’m sorry, Katie. But you lost that right forever when you killed Missy Porter.”

She recoiled as if I had slapped her and abruptly moved her attention from my face to the patch of heat-scorched lawn between us. She frowned as she curled her fingers into the grass and combed her short nails through it, raking out dead blades. Distressed, but still definitely under control.

“I want you on my side, but if you’re not…” Her voice was calm as, once again, she shrugged dismissively. “My doctor said that it was up to me to make amends for what I did. So I’ve decided to devote the rest of my life to working for the Underground. But clearly, you have no intention of allowing me to do that. So maybe I should go to the police. The
real
police. And tell them everything about that night.”

My reaction to her threat surprised me. Concern, yes. Though we’d been juveniles when the crime had been committed, I’d always worried about what a trial and its verdict would mean for Katie and for me. But in that moment, I discovered I was mostly relieved. Finally, I thought, the exhausting burden of her secret—our secret—would be lifted from
my shoulders. I would be able to tell someone where Missy was and see to it that she was properly buried.

I tipped my head and looked into my sister’s model-pretty face.

“Okay,” I said slowly as I tried to figure out how to express my only reservation. “I’ll go with you, confess to my part in it. But maybe we could say that we met Missy by chance and helped her run away from her husband. All on our own. Then you killed her because she reminded you of our mother. And I dumped the body to protect you. That way, we keep Gran, Aunt Lucy and the Underground out of it.”

“Fuck Gran,” Katie said very clearly, “and Aunt Lucy.”

By now, the fingers on her right hand were repeatedly raking through the grass, almost as if they had a life and will of their own.

“You don’t mean that,” I said quietly, and I believed what I said. Katie adored Gran. She always had. And Aunt Lucy was more mother to us than Lydia Tyler had ever been. “I know you love them and would never do anything to hurt them.”

She dug her fingers into the sod, yanked out a handful of grass, flung it away from her. The blades scattered in the breeze coming up from the river. Then she scrambled to her feet and stood over me. Her eyes narrowed, her face flushed red and her whispery voice became a snarl.

“You think you know everything, don’t you? Gran’s little
pet.
So smart and brave and
perfect.
But I know a secret that you’ll never know.”

I stared up at my sister, distressed at seeing jealousy I’d never realized was there. But mostly appalled that I’d been right all along. That despite her years away from Maryville, Katie remained a dangerously angry young woman. She’d just gotten better at hiding it.

The jealously made no sense to me. But I understood her anger, knew that its roots were twisted deep into the earliest years of our childhood. I understood her anger, had always felt somehow responsible for it. But now, most of all, I feared it. Feared that tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, Katie would lose control again and direct all her pent-up rage at another innocent victim.

At the moment, that rage was directed at me.

Perhaps it was my expression, but something made Katie realize that she’d gone too far. That I’d glimpsed the demons still possessing her. Her anger vanished as quickly as it had come.

“I’m so sorry, Brooke,” she said urgently. “Please forgive me. I lied. I don’t really have any secrets. I just want so badly to be a member of this family again. To do something worthwhile, just like you. More than anything, I want you, Gran and Aunt Lucy to trust me. Like you did before—” She shook her head, pushing away that thought of the past. “I would never go to the police. Never do anything to hurt the Underground. Or our family. Especially not you.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She pulled the edge of the white apron she wore up to her face and, for a little while, she smothered anguished sobs in it.

As I had ever since I could remember, I ignored all my other concerns and focused my attention on my sister’s breathing. I listened carefully, alert for gasping or wheezing or for any other sign that she might be having a potentially deadly asthma attack. From where I sat, I could clearly see the outline of her albuterol inhaler in her skirt pocket. A tiny metal cylinder with a jointed blue plastic sleeve. If I had to, I could help her use it.

But despite her tears, Katie’s breathing remained normal. Her sobs turned to sniffles and, after a little while, she lifted
her reddened face from her apron and carefully blotted her eyes. She spent a moment adjusting her tearstained apron back over her skirt. Only then did our eyes meet again.

She flashed me a shaky smile, stuck out her hand.

I hesitated for just a moment before grasping it.

Always stronger than she looked, Katie pulled me easily to my feet.

“Sisters forever?” she asked as she put her arms around me.

It was the way most of our childhood fights had ended. No matter who had won. With me reassuring her that, unlike our mother, I would never abandon her. And I never would.

“Sisters forever,” I agreed as I returned my sister’s embrace.

I patted her on the back as I held her tight. And I wished—oh, how I wished—that I could trust her as I had when we were young. But I couldn’t help thinking about the secret she had claimed, couldn’t help remembering that I had a tiny asthma inhaler locked inside by glove compartment. And even as I wondered what secret my sister had kept from me, I feared that I might already know.

S
outhern Covenant Hospital was a regional medical center that drew patients from smaller clinics and hospitals in Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee. Among other things, they offered specialized services for women. Thanks to a nurse who’d been with the Underground for more than two decades, Gran and Aunt Lucy and I were familiar with the hospital. But this extraction promised to be more dangerous than any other we’d undertaken there.

“This girl’s in bad trouble,” the nurse had told Aunt Lucy the day before. “Some of the worst trouble I’ve ever seen. She’s tied in with a gangbanger. I almost didn’t call you, Lucy, because I’m afraid that this extraction may be too dangerous for even the Tylers to manage.”

When she’d phoned me, Aunt Lucy had quoted the nurse, then had repeated everything that she’d learned from her about the woman who needed rescue. Her name was Jackie
Townsend, and she’d been beaten, then dragged down a flight of concrete steps.

But that wasn’t the story that her husband had told when he and Jackie had arrived in the emergency room. He’d claimed she’d tripped and fallen on the way to get a soft drink from the vending machine near the apartment building’s laundry room. Once Jackie was in any condition to talk, she’d agreed with him.

“I’m just clumsy,” she had mumbled through swollen lips. “Cain’t hardly walk a straight line.”

The police didn’t buy it. But no witnesses had come forward to contradict anyone’s story. Hector Townsend, one world-weary cop had confided to the nurse, wasn’t the kind of man it was healthy to contradict.

Hector hardly left his wife’s side, even posting himself by her door when the nurses shooed him out of her room. Sometimes, they’d interrupted him as he’d sat on the bedside chair, leaned forward so his head was on the pillow next to hers, holding her hand and whispering to her.

“We’re praying together,” Hector had explained. “And planning the future. Once Jackie’s well, we’re going to Vegas. For a second honeymoon. Maybe we’ll make a baby while we’re there.”

Hector told anyone who was willing to listen how the accident was all his fault. Then he’d go on to explain that he’d left his precious Jackie alone just for a few minutes. To buy some smokes. And so hadn’t been there to get her that cold Dr. Pepper that she’d suddenly craved. If only he’d been there…

The note that Jackie had finally slipped the nurse made it very clear that he
had
been there.

I was running away, but he caught me. And did this. He’ll kill me if I try to leave again.

“You have to tell the police,” the nurse had whispered.

Jackie’s involuntary cry brought Hector immediately into the room. The nurse had palmed the note as she reached to readjust the blood-pressure cuff.

“Sorry, honey,” she’d said. “I must have pinched a bit of skin.”

When her husband left the room again, Jackie had added to the note. If he went to prison because of her, Hector had promised that his gang brothers would kill her. And she believed him.

Then Jackie scrawled a final line at the bottom of the scrap of paper.

Please, please help me.

The night before, after she’d told me about Jackie, Aunt Lucy had surprised me.

“You, Gran and I are a good team,” she’d said. “But for a while now, you’ve been the one directing the extractions. Gran’s decided to make it official, to put you in charge of extractions for this region. The board will have to vote on her recommendation, but I don’t see any problem there. So if you agree…”

For a moment, I’d been shocked into speechlessness, unable to answer Aunt Lucy’s implied question. Gran had never before relinquished control of any aspect of the Underground’s operations. Not even to Aunt Lucy.

“Yes,” I’d stuttered. “Of course.”

“Okay, then,” Aunt Lucy had said, sounding satisfied. “Now, about tomorrow. How do you want to handle things?”

This time, my brief silence had been filled with thinking.

“He sounds dangerously violent,” I’d said finally. “Not someone we want to confront, especially in a hospital. He probably has a criminal record. I have a contact in the Paducah PD. I’ll call in a favor, have Hector picked up tomorrow. For
questioning. If we extract Jackie while he’s away from the hospital, there’s no risk to anyone.”

Aunt Lucy had responded so quickly and so vehemently that I knew her reaction was pure reflex.

“No. We never involve the police.”

“I
am
the police,” I’d reminded her gently. “And so are some of our best volunteers. Besides, helping this woman find a safe place to live doesn’t break any laws.”

Aunt Lucy’s voice had remained urgent.

“But we’ve broken other laws. Our people have threatened abusers, even blackmailed a few. Provided forged documents. Helped noncustodial parents hide their kids from molesters. If the Underground is exposed, our volunteers are betrayed. Those we’ve helped are put at risk. And if the police ever begin to suspect that Katie—”

And there it was, I’d thought. The chronic fear. Not just for the Underground and its operation, but the fear that Missy’s murder might someday destroy everything that our family had built.

“Okay,” I’d said. “No cops.”

The six-floor hospital complex was a maze of structures that were heavy on glass, interconnecting walkways and modern lines. The women’s center was on the second floor, connected to the multistory garage by one of the hospital’s glass-enclosed pedestrian bridges.

I found a parking spot within a few rows of the bridge, near a bank of elevators and a flight of interior stairs. From the garage, Gran, Aunt Lucy and I walked across the bridge and into the hospital at the same time. But my manner and the distance I kept between me and them suggested to any observer that I wasn’t with them.

Before we’d left the Cherokee Rose, I’d changed into a summery blouse and a loose-fitting cranberry-colored jumper. Hidden beneath the jumper was a pair of white shorts. Tucked inside the canvas backpack I’d slung over one shoulder were the keys to my SUV, my wallet and ID, a snack, two curly wigs and a gun. Not my grandfather’s old revolver, which was hidden beneath a floorboard in Gran’s bedroom. But my own service pistol. A weapon that, as an off-duty cop, I had every right to conceal and carry.

Midafternoon, and visiting hours were in full swing. Swarms of men, women and children flowed across the glass-enclosed bridge, their arms filled with balloons and gifts.

The pedestrian bridge ended in a sunny second-floor lobby. Carpeting and upholstered furniture in shades of periwinkle and pink created a welcoming, homelike atmosphere. The kiosk at the center of the lobby had been designed to offer a three-hundred-sixty-degree view to anyone sitting behind its circular counter. But coordinating colors, a clutter of glossy informational brochures and a fresh flower arrangement gave the impression that the staff—two blue-uniformed security officers and a perky young woman wearing a tag inscribed Volunteer and Mindy—were there to guide, not to guard.

As soon as we entered the lobby, I settled down onto an unoccupied bench, opened up my backpack, and pulled out a bottle of apple juice and a granola bar. I used the snack as an excuse to linger as Gran and Aunt Lucy walked on past the kiosk and made their way slowly down the corridor.

Actually, Gran shuffled and Aunt Lucy hobbled, their gaits intended to make their disguises even more believable.

Below the hem of Aunt Lucy’s summery skirt was a shapely calf, a trim ankle and a sandaled foot with pink-polished toenails. But pink toenails were all that showed of
her other leg. From the knee down, it was encased in a thick layer of bandages that were supported by a Velcro-and-steel-rod brace. A bit hot for the weather, Aunt Lucy had judged it while we’d still been in the Suburban.

Gran had transformed herself into a frail senior. She’d left her short graying hair unstyled and frizzy and had dressed in a faded floral shift that was a couple of sizes too large. It hung from her wiry frame, its hem uneven and well below her knees, her bent shoulders and shuffling gait adding decades to her age. Over the dress, she wore the kind of sweater that only a thin-blooded elderly woman would wear in hundred-degree weather. Among the contents of the well-worn overnight bag she carried was an old terry-cloth robe.

After about fifteen minutes, I got up from the bench, tossed my crumpled wrapper and empty juice bottle into a nearby trash bin, and walked swiftly down the corridor into the hospital.

Gran and Aunt Lucy were nowhere in sight, so I followed the wall-mounted signs to the room number the nurse had given us. The corridor was empty, so when I reached E2-114, I flattened myself against the wall so that I could peer into the tiny room unobserved by its two occupants.

A compact bathroom was just inside the door. Beyond that, the room’s only bed was pushed almost against the window. A slight, young woman in a faded hospital gown was in the bed, which was cranked upward into a sitting position. I could see little of Jackie Townsend besides henna-red hair with chunky blond highlights and dark roots. Her face was turned away from the doorway and away from the man sitting in a chair between the bed and the door.

Hector Townsend was a short, burly man whose sleeveless, skintight Harley T-shirt did little to cover his tattoos, bull
chest and the bulging muscles on his neck and arms. His eyes were closed, but his beefy, muscular legs—clad in scarred biker leathers—were stretched out so that his wife would have to step over them to go anywhere.

My God, I thought as I looked at him. Even if I had a night-stick and a gun, the guy would be intimidating. And I had no problem imagining him dragging his wisp of a wife down a flight stairs.

As I continued down the hall, I thought of my grandmother, who was seventy-one. And my aunt, who was brave but not particularly strong. If something went wrong, Hector Townsend was more than capable of killing them with his bare hands.

With that thought very much on my mind, I continued down the hall. I found Gran and Aunt Lucy at a spot where two corridors met. Aunt Lucy had leaned herself and her crutches against a stretch of wall between a row of vending machines and a bank of phones. Across from her was an elevator. Gran was talking on a house phone—describing, I was sure, the first part of our plan to the nurse who was our Underground contact. Aunt Lucy smiled at me, but seemed intent on Gran’s half of the conversation.

I took a moment to step past them and glance up and down the other corridor. More patients’ rooms and a locked utility closet were to my right. Men’s and women’s restrooms and a door labeled Stairs were to my left. I took a couple of steps, confirmed that the stairwell door was unlocked, and then returned to my grandmother and aunt. For a moment, I dug through Gran’s overnight bag, confirming that it also held the tape, an indelible marker and sheets of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven card stock that I’d asked her to bring.

“Just pray that the easy way works,” I heard Gran say as I closed the bag again. “Or we’ll have to go to plan B.”

Then she hung up the phone and turned to me. The reflection of the overhead lights glinted off her thick glasses as she pointed down the corridor in the direction of Jackie’s room.

“The nurse’ll be talking with them in just a minute.”

“Okay. I’ll trot on back there and listen in. If the strategy works and Hector leaves Jackie alone in the room, I’ll get her dressed fast.” I tugged briefly at the jumper I wore. “I’ll drop this over her head, leave the way we came in, and get her into the car.”

Gran and Aunt Lucy nodded.

“You and Gran leave through the front door and walk over to that fried chicken place on Twenty-seventh and Washington,” I continued. “I’ll park there and wait for you.”

“And if he doesn’t leave voluntarily?” Aunt Lucy asked.

“Like Gran said earlier, we go to plan B.”

Hector didn’t leave.

“Good news,” the nurse said once she was back in Jackie’s room. “The doctor says you can go home today.”

I was eavesdropping just outside the door and heard the enthusiasm in Hector’s reply. Whatever Jackie said was murmured so quietly that I couldn’t make out her words. But I knew that she would be terrified by the prospect of going home with her husband. And perhaps devastated that, though she’d agreed to enter the Underground, no one had come to help her. For everyone’s safety, the nurse hadn’t dared tell Jackie that rescue was, very literally, just around the corner.

Then, as we’d agreed, the nurse suggested that Hector visit the business office to finish up paperwork. In the meantime, she would help his wife get dressed.

That was met by firm, but polite, refusal.

“Naw. But thanks anyway. Jackie doesn’t like it if I leave her alone. Do you, honey pie? I’ll just help her get dressed. Then we’ll go downstairs and do that paperwork together.”

The nurse put the alternate plan into action.

“No problem,” she said. “As soon as Jackie’s dressed, I’ll bring a wheelchair in for her.”

Hector objected vehemently enough that I suspected he planned on skipping out on the hospital bill.

“The doc said she’s doing okay. You said he’s released her. So we’ll leave on our own.”

A little steel crept into the nurse’s voice.

“Hospital policy, Mr. Townsend. It’d be my job if Jackie walked out of here under her own steam. So you’re stuck with me—and a wheelchair—at least as far as the waiting area for the business office.”

From there, her tone implied, the issue of the wheelchair was the business office’s problem. If Hector’s intent was to leave without paying, she’d offered him the opportunity he needed. Once the nurse was gone, it would be easy enough for the couple to walk right out of the hospital.

The nurse winked at me as she left the room. She was a surprisingly petite woman with strawberry-blond hair, probably weighing no more than one-twenty and closer in age to Gran than Aunt Lucy. But I was confident that the force of her personality was more than enough to keep Hector in line. At least temporarily.

All she had to do was get him as far as the elevator.