The Mother
The Mother
BEVERLY BARTON
Prepare to lose sleep with this shocking and utterly engrossing thriller, for fans of Karen Rose and Karin Slaughter.The crime scenes are horrifying: the victims arranged with deliberate care, posed to appear alive despite their agonized last moments and the shocking nature of their deaths.For grief counsellor Audrey Sherrod it’s clear the murders are the work of a deranged serial killer. At first, the only link is the victims’ physical appearance. But then another connection emerges, tying them to a past series of horrifying crimes – crimes that hit all too close to home.As the truth is unravelled, its more twisted and terrifying than anyone could ever imagine.
Don’t Cry
Beverly Barton
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the U.S.A by Kensington Publishing Corp as Don’t Cry New York, NY, 2010
DON’T CRY. Copyright © Beverly Barton 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9781847562487
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007452460
Version: 2018-07-23
Dedication
To Billy, for a million and one reasons, but most of all
because he loves me
&
In memory of Pelham, Alabama,
Police Officer Philip Davis,
who lost his life in the line of duty, December 4, 2009
Contents
Cover (#ua7aa0ee6-b92d-5445-bbb8-62476870c8f7)
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
The Humpty-Dumpty night-light cast a soft, honey-white glow over the…
Chapter 1
J.D. Cass listened to his breakfast date’s end of the…
Chapter 2
Charlie Scott kept his arm clutched tightly around his wife’s…
Chapter 3
For most of her life—certainly after the car wreck that…
Chapter 4
Audrey had spent a restless night, tossing and turning, waking…
Chapter 5
After Audrey’s arrival at his home that morning, Mayor Don…
Chapter 6
Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time.
Chapter 7
Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He…
Chapter 8
After they had made love, while he held her close,…
Chapter 9
Audrey balanced her briefcase in one hand and a mocha…
Chapter 10
After her uncle’s phone call that morning, Audrey had asked…
Chapter 11
The hot, humid summer breeze did little to cool the…
Chapter 12
Jeremy caught a glimpse of the dark-haired waitress at the…
Chapter 13
Wayne Sherrod hadn’t seen or talked to Steve Kelly in…
Chapter 14
J.D. left the Chattanooga Funeral Home’s East Chapel with the…
Chapter 15
Audrey had waited until she and Zoe had arrived at…
Chapter 16
Tam had left Marcus sleeping when she crept out of…
Chapter 17
All J.D. wanted to do was pick up his daughter…
Chapter 18
J.D. had immersed himself in work, leaving the situation with…
Chapter 19
“Was that Porter Bryant you were talking to?” Hart asked…
Chapter 20
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Grace Douglas…
Chapter 21
J.D. dropped Zoe off at Audrey’s town house Saturday night…
Chapter 22
Eileen Campbell came straight from morning church services to her…
Chapter 23
J.D hadn’t slept worth a damn. And it was more…
Chapter 24
Hart had used the interview with TBI Special Agent Cass…
Chapter 25
J.D. had kept tabs on Jeremy Arden and Hart Roberts…
Chapter 26
Somer Ellis enjoyed her part-time job as a salesclerk at…
Chapter 27
Tam had known Garth Hudson most of her life. She…
Chapter 28
“Is he gone?” Zoe asked as she walked up beside…
Chapter 29
Somer Ellis’s head hurt. Maybe she should get up and…
Chapter 30
The sketch artist had drawn a picture of the person…
Chapter 31
Jeremy had needed a fix last night. Had needed one…
Chapter 32
Hart pumped into the woman lying beneath him, his thrusts…
Chapter 33
Driving like the proverbial bat out of hell, J.D. arrived…
Chapter 34
Somer heard his footsteps.
Chapter 35
Within an hour after Porter Bryant’s arrest, the small, dilapidated…
Chapter 36
A week later the test results came back from the…
Chapter 37
What could have been an awkward moment after they made…
Chapter 38
Hart had been awake all night. Thinking. Praying. He needed…
Chapter 39
Garth unlocked the front door and walked into the living…
Chapter 40
Tam came and took Audrey home from the hospital that…
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Beverly Barton
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Thirty years ago
The Humpty-Dumpty night-light cast a soft, honey-white glow over the nursery, from the 5' x 7' Mother Goose rug on the wooden floor to the fluffy clouds painted on the ceiling. A large Raggedy Andy doll, with a mop of red hair and a perpetual smile, sat atop a brightly decorated toy box in the corner. Billowy blue and white gingham curtains covered the double windows that overlooked the backyard, and a matching gingham quilt, neatly folded, lay at the foot of the baby bed in the center of the small room.
Humming quietly, Regina Bennett sat in the white spindle rocking chair, her precious little Cody asleep in her arms. Even in sleep, he still clutched his favorite toy, a little yellow teddy bear. Earlier that evening, he had been terribly fussy, crying incessantly, the sound of his pitiful gulping sobs breaking her heart. But after she had given him his medication, he had gradually quieted and gone to sleep.
But for how long? An hour? Two hours? The medication’s effects seemed to wear off more quickly with each passing day. Eventually, the medication wouldn’t ease his pain.
She brushed aside his damp blond curls, leaned down, and kissed his warm forehead. Before the chemotherapy treatments, his hair had been thick and shiny, but the new growth was thin and dull. “You won’t suffer anymore, my precious darling. Mommy promises.”
Rocking back and forth, she cuddled Cody protectively against her breast. Still humming “Hush Little Baby,” an old Southern lullaby, Regina slid her hand down to the side of the rocker and grasped the small pillow she had placed there earlier that evening.
“Mommy loves her little boy. Mommy’s going to do what’s best for you.”
Regina lifted the pillow off the floor.
Rocking.
Humming.
Smiling sadly.
Tears misting her eyes.
Singing softly.
“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry.”
Regina laid the handmade pillow over her son’s nose and mouth. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and cascaded down either side of her face. She pressed her hand in the center of the pillow and held it in place until she was certain Cody was at peace. She lifted the pillow, tossed it aside, and looked at her tiny two-year-old son.
No more pain. No more suffering.
Chapter 1
J.D. Cass listened to his breakfast date’s end of the telephone conversation and knew it was bad news. In his profession, bad news was the norm, as it was in Holly’s, so he wasn’t surprised. When a guy was dating an assistant district attorney, even in an on-again/off-again relationship, he became accustomed to their dates being interrupted by business. Of course, it worked both ways. How many times had one of Holly’s meticulously planned romantic evenings ended abruptly when he’d gotten an urgent call?
They hadn’t managed to get together for the past three weeks, and J.D. was way past horny. So, yeah, his invitation for them to share an early breakfast today was his selfish way of wooing her back into his bed, and the sooner the better. Since he and Holly were both early risers, a 6:30 A.M. breakfast date had seemed the perfect chance to see each other and the least likely time that their professional lives would intrude. So much for great ideas.
“My God!” Holly Johnston’s big blue eyes widened and her full lips parted in a silent gasp. “Who found her? Hmm … When? Is the press already there?”
Curious about the identity of the person who had been found and eager to hear the details, J.D. frowned when his own cell phone rang. He checked caller ID and grunted.
He hit the On button. “Cass here. What’s up?”
“They found Jill Scott.” His boss, Special Agent in Charge Phil Hayes, had a deep baritone voice made even rougher and throatier from a lifetime of smoking.
“Alive?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“How close are you to Lookout Valley?”
“Why?” J.D. got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Because we’re fixing to get dragged into this mess, so I want you to head on over to the crime scene pronto.”
“Shit! Why is the TBI getting involved?”
“Because the DA wants us to be on standby. It turns out that there is a second missing woman. Debra Gregory, the mayor’s wife’s cousin, disappeared sometime late last night.”
“Doesn’t the mayor think his own police force can handle the investigation? This isn’t our—”
“His Honor wants to use every resource available to him,” Phil said. “And that includes us, buddy boy. The mayor called the DA and then Everett Harrelson called me personally fifteen minutes ago. Last night, the Chattanooga PD had two missing persons cases. This morning they have a murder case and a suspected kidnapping case. Since both women fit the same profile, there’s a chance the same guy kidnapped Jill and Debra.”
“When I show up at the crime scene, just how official am I?”
“You’re unofficial for the time being. We’ll ease into this gradually. Tell the investigators you’re there in an advisory capacity. Assure them that the TBI isn’t taking over their case.”
“Yeah, sure. Like they’re going to believe that.”
After J.D. returned his phone to the belt holder, he looked across the table at Holly. She slid her phone into an outer pocket on her shoulder bag and shrugged.
“Bad news?” he asked.
She nodded. “What about you?”
“Yeah. That was Phil. They believe they’ve found Jill Scott, the woman who’s been missing for the past two weeks.”
Scott, a local middle school teacher, beloved by students and parents alike, had mysteriously disappeared two weeks earlier. Her parents, her fiancé, and her friends assured police that Jill would never leave without a word to anyone. They were convinced that she’d been abducted. Thanks to local media coverage, there probably wasn’t a man, woman, or child in Hamilton County who didn’t know the teacher’s name.
“It seems our calls were about the same case,” Holly told him. “Of course, I’m not actually involved with the case, not yet, but—”
“But your nephew was in Jill Scott’s seventh-grade class and her murder is semipersonal for you, right?”
Holly nodded. “So, did the TBI get drafted to—?”
“Unofficially at this point,” J.D. said. “But that status can change at any time.” He offered Holly a life-sucks-sometimes frown. “I have to head over to the crime scene.” He stood, pulled out his wallet, and laid down a couple of twenties to pay for their meal, plus a generous tip.
“Mind if I go with you?” she asked.
When he gave her an inquisitive stare, she said, “I’ll stay out of the way. I know that I’m nothing more than a concerned citizen.” She smiled. “Okay, a nosy concerned citizen.”
“And I’m a TBI agent sticking my nose in where I may not be wanted and probably won’t be welcomed.”
Audrey Sherrod swallowed her tears. Although she would never apologize to anyone for her emotional involvement with her clients, she did her best not to let the empathy she experienced override her professionalism. Caring about people was a plus in her business. Allowing her personal feelings to affect a patient’s treatment was unacceptable, so she walked an emotional tightrope, balancing the two sides of her personality.
Mary Nell Scott’s daughter Jill had been missing for fifteen days. The Scott family was surviving on hopes and prayers. Mary Nell’s husband had turned to their parish priest for solace and advice. Jill’s sister, Mindy, relied on her best friends for comfort. Mary Nell had chosen to seek the help of a mental health therapist. She had chosen Audrey because several years ago, she had been one of Audrey’s first clients. At that time, Mary Nell had been dealing with her husband’s infidelity. After months of counseling, she had come to terms with what had happened and realized she wanted to save her marriage.
“I can’t bear to hear Father Raymond’s voice,” Mary Nell had confessed when she had first arrived at Audrey’s office today. “I know the man means well, but my faith isn’t strong enough to simply leave everything in God’s hands.”
Mary Nell had been raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism when she had married Charles Scott. She had brought up both of their daughters in the Catholic faith, but she seldom attended mass and readily admitted that she had doubts about God’s existence.
When the one-hour session ended, Mary Nell sat there calmly, with her head bowed and her folded hands resting in her lap. Audrey got up and retrieved a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in her office.
She truly understood the hell Mary Nell and her family were living in right now. Not knowing what had happened to a loved one was heartbreakingly unbearable. And yet they had to bear it. They had no other choice.
But that’s not true. Mary Nell does have one other choice. A selfish, unthinkable choice.
Audrey pushed aside the memories from her own past about the choice her stepmother had made when she had found life unbearable. A choice that had destroyed a family already in crisis.
“I don’t have another client until regular office hours at nine this morning, so if you’d like to stay longer, you may.” Audrey handed Mary Nell the bottled water. She had come in early to see Mary Nell, who had left her a frantic phone message at five o’clock that morning.
“No, no.” Mary Nell shook her head. “I’m meeting Charlie at seven-thirty and some of our neighbors are going to help us put up new posters all over Hamilton County. We’re offering a reward of twenty-five thousand to anyone …” Pausing, her upper teeth biting down into her bottom lip, she closed her eyes as fresh tears trickled down her cheeks.
Suddenly Mary Nell’s cell phone rang. When she struggled to open her purse, Audrey eased the leather clutch out of her trembling hands and retrieved the phone for her.
“Want me to answer it?” Audrey asked.
Mary Nell shook her head, and then reached out and took the phone.
“Hello,” Mary Nell said. “What? Yes, I’m still with Audrey. Why? Oh, all right.” She held out her phone. “It’s my daughter, Mindy. She wants to speak to you.”
Eying the phone in Mary Nell’s outstretched hand, Audrey instinctively knew that whatever Mindy had to say would not be good news.
“Hello, Mindy, this is Audrey Sherrod.”
“Dr. Sherrod, they’ve found her. They’ve found Jill. She’s dead.”
“Who contacted you with this information?”
“No one, not yet.” Mindy whimpered softly. “It’s already on the news, on the TV and the radio. They found a body. The newscasters are saying it’s probably Jill, that the woman fits her description and she’s wearing a gold cross. Jill always wore the gold cross Daddy gave her for her sixteenth birthday.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
“It’s her. I know it is. Dad knows it is. I just didn’t want Mom to be alone and see it on the news or hear about it on the radio. Dad and I are coming by there to pick up Mom. We’re driving out to Lookout Valley where they found the body. They haven’t moved her yet. She’s still there. Oh, please, Dr. Sherrod, please come with us. Mom’s going to need you. We all are.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll have my secretary cancel my morning appointments, just in case,” Audrey said.
When she returned the cell phone to Mary Nell, her client looked at her pleadingly. “Don’t lie to me. Tell me what Mindy said. It’s Jill, isn’t it? She’s … oh, God, she’s dead, isn’t she?”
Audrey dropped down on her haunches in front of Mary Nell and grasped the woman’s clutched hands. Their gazes met and held.
“The police have found a body that fits Jill’s general description,” Audrey explained. “The information is on the TV and radio. Mindy didn’t want you to hear it and assume the body is Jill’s. She and Charlie are on their way here now. They want me to go with y’all to the crime scene. They want to make sure it isn’t Jill.”
Just one little white lie to ease Mary Nell into the situation and allow her a few final moments of hope.
When half an hour later, at approximately 7:45 A.M., J.D. and Holly arrived on the scene at 50 Birmingham Highway in the Lookout Valley area, they found semicontrolled bedlam. They had missed the initial frenzy, the first responders’ attempt to secure the site, the wail of sirens, and the rush of emergency vehicles. The area around the Cracker Barrel restaurant buzzed with official personnel, the first of many yet to come. Before the end of the day, the scene would be investigated by as many as fifty law enforcement and civilian specialists. The police had roped off the crime scene and strategically placed officers to keep the foot traffic to a minimum. One way in and one way out. News crews, barely held at bay by the uniformed officers, kept cameras zeroed in on the cordoned-off area and reported live to their television audience.
J.D. gained immediate entrance to the sealed area as soon as he flashed his badge. When he glanced back at Holly, she smiled and nodded, letting him know she’d be fine on her own. He’d never doubted it for a minute. Holly was a modern, I-can-take-care-of-myself woman.
Careful not to disrupt the ongoing investigation, J.D. took in the crime scene with a subtle visual inspection. He recognized a lot of the personnel, including the Hamilton County ME, Dr. Peter Tipton, and a couple of members of his team, one taking photos and another talking to two CPD investigators. J.D. knew the guy he assumed was the lead detective. He and Sergeant Garth Hudson had worked a case involving a gang-related murder eleven months ago, shortly after J.D. had been transferred from Memphis to the TBI Chattanooga Field Office. Hudson was a decorated, twenty-five-year veteran of the CPD. A smart guy, a good cop, a little on the cocky side. J.D. didn’t know the officer with Hudson, an attractive African American woman with a dark caramel complexion and petite, curvy body. As he approached them, she turned and glowered at him, her coffee brown eyes surveying him from head to toe.
“Who sicced the TBI on us?” Hudson growled the question as he glared at J.D. “The mayor, no doubt.”
“I’m here strictly in an advisory capacity,” J.D. assured him. “This is the CPD’s case.” J.D. smiled at the pretty lady with Hudson. “Introduce us.”
Hudson grunted. “Officer Tamara Lovelady, my partner. Tam, meet TBI Special Agent J.D. Cass.”
Tam nodded, her expression neutral.
“So, how about letting me take a look at Jill Scott,” J.D. said, then added, “if it is Jill Scott.”
“There’s a good chance it is Ms. Scott’s body, but no positive ID. Not yet.” Hudson glanced at his partner. “Tam will go with you. Look all you want, but don’t touch.”
J.D. wanted to remind Hudson that he wasn’t some rookie who needed instructions, but he kept quiet. For now, he wasn’t assigned to this case, and any privileges Hudson afforded him were at his discretion. He had worked with police and sheriffs’ departments throughout the state and understood how territorial local law enforcement could be. Trying not to step on any toes was just part of his job. A part he damn well hated. He wasn’t known for his diplomatic abilities. He supposed that was one reason he was still a field agent. That and a hot temper he’d been trying to control all of his life.
The TBI’s role was to assist local law enforcement in investigating major crimes, the operative word being “assist.”
When Officer Lovelady motioned to J.D., he followed her past the swarm of investigators and onto the restaurant’s wide porch.
Peter Tipton spotted J.D. and Tam heading his way. He paused in his examination of the body and moved aside to give J.D. a complete view of the corpse.
The victim—not yet positively identified as Jill Scott—sat upright in one of the numerous rocking chairs on the Cracker Barrel porch. Her eyes were shut and at first glance she seemed to be sleeping. Something swaddled in a delicate blue baby shawl lay nestled in her lap. J.D. strained to get a better look at the object.
He took a step closer, and then stopped.
“We thought at first it was a doll,” Tam told J.D. “But it’s not.”
Good God almighty!
“It’s real,” J.D. said.
“Oh yeah, it’s real all right,” Tipton replied.
J.D. had seen some weird sights in his time, as well as several sickeningly gruesome scenes, but never anything like this.
“It’s a first for me,” Tipton said.
“Yeah, me, too. Any idea who … what …?” J.D. found himself stammering, something he never did. But then he’d never seen a fresh corpse cradling the skeletal remains of a small child. He cleared his throat and asked, “Any idea how either of them died? The woman—?”
“Asphyxiation.”
J.D. studied the dark-haired victim sitting so serenely in the wooden rocking chair. Traffic from the nearby interstate hummed over the din of voices, conversations blending with news coverage and bystanders’ comments. Overhead the September sky was clear, the morning sun warm, the temperature somewhere in the high seventies. The beginning of a perfect pre-autumn day. But not so perfect for Jill Scott.
“Method of asphyxiation?” J.D. asked.
“Probably suffocation,” Tipton replied. “There’s no sign of strangulation.”
“How long do you think she’s been dead?”
Tipton glanced at the corpse. “She’s in full rigor. Time of death—six to twelve hours ago. I’d guess eight to ten.”
“You don’t think she was killed here, do you?” J.D. asked.
“She was probably killed somewhere else sometime before midnight and then brought here while it was still dark so it would be less likely anyone would see what was happening.”
“Yeah, not much chance anyone saw something.”
“Whoever killed her staged this little scene,” Tam Lovelady said. “He painted us a picture.”
“Mother and child,” J.D. surmised.
“He’s a sick son of a bitch, whoever he is.” Tam stared at the victim. “She looks so damn peaceful.”
“He went to a great deal of trouble to dispose of her body in such a dramatic fashion.” J.D. remembered a bizarre case in Memphis when he was a rookie agent where the killer had placed his victims by the river, sitting up in a camp chair and holding a fishing pole. Weirdest thing he’d ever seen. Until now. “He’s telling us something. We just have to figure out what it is.”
“He’s telling us that he’s fucking crazy,” Garth said, his voice a low grumble, as he came up behind them.
“What about the child?” J.D. asked.
“At this point, nothing more than the obvious—that the woman and the child didn’t die at the same time. So, if that’s all, J.D., I need to get back to work,” Tipton said. “We’re about ready to bag the body and the skeleton.”
“Yeah, sure thing.” As Tipton walked away, J.D. called to him. “We’ll talk again later.”
Tipton threw up his hand in a backward wave as he walked off.
“Are you hanging around?” Garth asked J.D.
“I thought I would, if you have no objections.”
Garth shook his head. “My crime scene is your crime scene.”
With a hard, craggy face, deep-set hazel eyes, and thinning gray hair, Garth Hudson looked every one of his fifty-some-odd years. Borderline butt-ugly, the sergeant wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but he was neat as a pin. Whenever J.D. saw the man, Garth was wearing neatly pressed slacks, a jacket, and a tailored shirt.
J.D. and the investigators watched quietly while Tipton slipped the blue baby blanket and its contents into a body bag and then carefully handed the tiny unknown child to one of his assistants. That done, he went back to the woman in the rocking chair. He covered the victim’s head, feet, and hands with individual bags and secured them with tape.
They stood by respectfully until the body was bagged and removed from the scene.
Before they could resume their conversation, a series of ear-piercing screams and mournful cries stopped everyone in their tracks.
“What the hell?” Garth’s gaze traveled around the crime scene and beyond, searching for the source of the noise.
“I want to see her!” a female voice shouted. “If it’s my baby, I want to see her!”
A uniformed officer rushed over to Garth. “It’s the mother. Jill Scott’s mother.”
“Damn!” Garth huffed. “How the hell did she find out?”
“My guess is from the live TV coverage.” Tam motioned past the crime scene tape to the horde of reporters chomping at the bit for a closer view.
“The whole family just showed up,” the officer said. “Mom, Dad, and kid sister. The mom’s screaming her head off.”
“Keep her out of here,” Garth said. “But tell the guys they’re to handle the family with kid gloves.”
“Want me to take care of it?” Tam asked. “I can go talk to the family.”
“Yeah,” Garth said. “You can handle a hysterical woman a lot better than I can.”
When Tam gave her partner a you’re-a-chauvinist-pig glare before walking away, J.D. fell into step beside her.
“Do you do that a lot?” J.D asked.
Without slowing her pace, Tam said, “Do what?”
“Handle the unpleasant tasks for your partner?”
“Sergeant Hudson and I have been partnered for less than a month. I’m the new investigator on the homicide squad. But before then, yeah, I usually handled anything my partner thought was woman’s work. Other women. Kids. Anything that had to do with emotional issues.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind. I don’t have anything to prove. I know I’m a very good police officer and I’ll be a very good detective. And I don’t think of it as a negative thing that I’m capable of handling some of the most difficult aspects of being a police officer.”
“And one of those difficult aspects is dealing with the victim’s family.”
“Can you think of anything more difficult than telling a mother that her child is dead?”
Debra Gregory tugged on the ropes that bound her red, chafed wrists to the arms of the rocking chair. Her seemingly useless struggles to free herself had eaten away skin, leaving her wrists and ankles bruised and bloody. He had secured her feet together and tied her wrists before he had left her. She had screamed for help until she was hoarse, but had soon realized no one could hear her and that’s why he hadn’t gagged her. Wherever he was holding her captive was so isolated that there was no danger of anyone hearing her screams.
Dark and damp. And as silent as a grave.
Terror had given way to frustration, and frustration to anger.
She had lost count of how many hours she’d been in this horrible, obsidian hell. He had left her alone for what seemed like days, alone in the pitch-black darkness. She didn’t think she’d been here days. Not yet. Only a few hours. Maybe a little longer. God help her, she wasn’t sure.
The last thing she remembered before waking up here was coming out of the gym late Tuesday night. Days ago? Hours ago? She’d been one of the last to leave shortly before closing at eleven and noticed that only two other cars remained in the parking lot. She had hit the Unlock button on her keypad before reaching her Lexus, and just as she’d opened the door, someone had grabbed her from behind. It had happened so quickly. A strangely sweet odor coming from the cloth he cupped over her nose and mouth. Her senses dulling as the anesthetic took effect. The weightless feeling as he lifted her off her feet. And then unconsciousness.
The police are looking for me. My family is doing everything possible to find me. I’ll be rescued soon. I can’t give up hope. I have to stay alive, no matter what.
When would he come back?
She was alone in the darkness, strapped to a chair, unable to escape, going slowly out of her mind. Suddenly a dim light instantly obliterated the darkness.
She turned her head sideways, but couldn’t see the source of the light. It came from somewhere across the room. A candle? A lantern? Maybe a night-light?
Light had to mean that he had returned. Not enough light to see anything clearly, just enough to make out shapes and shadows.
Debra’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her fear escalated quickly as she sensed him moving toward her. Closer and closer.
“Did you have a nice rest while I was gone?” he asked from where he stood behind her.
“Please … please let me go.” Her voice quavered. “I haven’t seen your face. I don’t know who you are. I can’t identify you.” She was bargaining for her life, pleading with this unknown, unseen devil.
He stroked her hair, his touch terrifyingly tender. “You’re talking nonsense. Of course you know who I am.” He untied her left hand and rubbed her chafed, bloody wrist before pulling her arm inward toward her waist.
“I don’t …” She drew in a sharp breath when he reached over her head and around her shoulder and placed something in the curve of her arm. She looked down at the bundle lying in her lap and was able to make out the form of what she thought might be a baby wrapped securely in a blanket.
No, no, it couldn’t be a baby. It wasn’t moving, wasn’t crying. It wasn’t warm and alive.
“He needs you,” the man told her. “He won’t rest unless you sing to him.”
She swallowed the fear lodged in her throat. Was she holding a doll, a very large baby doll? As her vision adjusted to the semidarkness, she looked right and left, then upward, trying to catch a glimpse of her jailor. All she saw were his legs clad in jeans and the sleeves of his dark jacket.
“Sing to him. You know the song he likes,” he told her, his voice soft yet stern. “Rock him to sleep the way you do every night.”
“I—I don’t remember the song.”
“Of course you do. Now sing to him.”
She forced out the words of the most familiar lullaby she knew. “Rock-a-bye baby—”
“That’s not the right song!” he shouted. “Sing the right song. He wants you to sing the song you always sing. You know the words!” And then he sang the first verse. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word …”
On the verge of screaming hysterically, Debra somehow managed to sing as she held the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She vaguely remembered the tune, but not the lyrics. Sing, damn it. Make up the words. Improvise! Your life could depend on it.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s going to buy you a golden ring.” Her voice quivered. “If that golden ring don’t shine, Mama’s going to sing, sing, sing.”
“You’re mixing up the words.” Leaning over her, watching her, his breath warm against her neck, he whispered, “But he loves the sound of your voice. We both do. Keep singing.”
Debra forced the words, making them up as she went along, trying her best to fit them to the tune she barely remembered. She tried not to cry, not to panic, not to say or do something that would upset her captor. He held her life in his hands. As long as she cooperated and played his little game, she had a chance of staying alive.
Why she chose that moment—midsong and midthought of doing whatever was necessary to stay alive—to glance down at the doll, she would never know. With her eyes fully adjusted to the dim, distant light, she was able to see the object in her arms. Not a doll at all.
The song died on her lips, and the scream vibrating in her throat remained trapped there by sheer paralyzing horror.
Chapter 2
Charlie Scott kept his arm clutched tightly around his wife’s shoulders, the strength of his hold the only thing stopping her from breaking through the yellow barricade tape that separated the onlookers from the crime scene. While Mary Nell pleaded with her husband to release her, Audrey held eighteen-year-old Mindy’s damp, shaky hand as she tried to talk to Mary Nell. But Mary Nell was beyond listening, beyond anyone helping her at this point. There would be a time, later on, days from now or perhaps weeks or months, that Audrey might be able to help her. But not today.
“Why won’t someone tell us if it’s Jill or not?” Mindy’s soft voice was barely audible over her mother’s loud, pitiful cries.
“The police probably haven’t identified the victim,” Audrey said. “Until they do, we cannot lose hope that the woman they found isn’t Jill.”
“I can’t stand it.” Mindy gripped Audrey’s hand. “Mom’s falling apart and …” Unable to control her tears, Mindy jerked away from Audrey and dropped her head, hunched her trembling shoulders, and covered her face with her hands.
As Audrey turned to comfort Mindy, she spotted her friend Tamara Lovelady, lifting the crime scene tape, walking under it, and heading in their direction. She and Tam had been friends all their lives. Both of their dads had been Chattanooga policemen. Oddly enough, she and Tam had been born exactly two days apart. How many birthday parties had they shared over the years? Their last party had been four years ago when they turned thirty, an event hosted by Tam’s parents.
Tam’s eyes widened with a hint of surprise when she saw Audrey. Despite Mary Nell reaching out to Tam, she passed by Jill’s mother and came straight to Audrey.
“Are you here with the Scott family?” Tam asked.
“Yes. Mary Nell—Mrs. Scott—was with me when we got the news about the body being found here in Lookout Valley.” Audrey leaned down and whispered, “Is it Jill Scott?”
Tam, who stood five-three in her bare feet, looked up at Audrey, who towered over her at five-nine, and replied, “We’ll need a family member to officially ID the body, but, yes, we’re pretty sure it’s her.”
“What are y’all talking about?” Mary Nell demanded, her eyes wild with fear. “Tell me! I have every right to know if …” She gulped down her hysterical sobs. “If it’s Jill, I want to see her.”
“Mrs. Scott, I’m Officer Lovelady.” Tam’s gaze settled sympathetically on Mary Nell. “The body is being taken to the ME’s office. We’d appreciate it if a member of the family”—Tam looked directly at Charlie Scott —“would identify the body.”
Mary Nell keened shrilly, the sound gaining everyone’s immediate attention.
“Isn’t there some way that Mr. and Mrs. Scott could see the body now?” Audrey asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll check with Garth—”
“Please, let me see her,” Mary Nell whimpered.
“Why don’t y’all give me a few minutes,” Tam said. “Audrey, want to come with me?”
“Sure.”
When they were out of earshot of the Scott family, Tam said, “Mrs. Scott is going to fall apart if she sees her daughter’s body.”
“I’ve already called her GP to alert him that she’s going to need medication.”
“Good.”
Tam took Audrey with her past the tape barricade as she rushed to catch up with Pete Tipton’s assistants, who were carrying the body bag toward the ME’s van parked in the restaurant’s back parking lot.
“Wait up, guys,” Tam called to them.
Tipton, who was still talking to Garth and another man, someone Audrey didn’t know, quickly ended his conversation and threw up his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Tam said. “I just need y’all to wait a couple of minutes.”
Tipton, Garth, and the stranger came over to where Tam and Audrey stood only a few feet away from the body bag.
“Look, the parents want to see the body now,” Tam explained. “The mother is hysterical as it is. I don’t think letting her see the body can make it any worse.”
“If anything, it might help her.” Audrey injected her opinion. “The not knowing is often far worse than the knowing.” She glanced at Garth, her step-uncle, and saw the flash of painful memories in his eyes. “If it is Jill, then why make her parents wait any longer to find out the truth?”
“And you are?” The tall, rough-around-the-edges stranger looked right at Audrey. The midday sun turned his salt-and-pepper hair to black-streaked silver.
Garth looked questioningly at Audrey and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here with—” Audrey said, but Tam interrupted her and rushed straight into introductions.
“Audrey, this is Special Agent Cass with the TBI.”
Garth added, “J.D., this is my niece, Dr. Sherrod.”
Audrey and J.D. Cass exchanged quick, intense inspections. She wasn’t sure exactly what he thought of her and really didn’t care. As a general rule, people tended to like her and she liked almost everyone she met. But there was something about the way this man looked at her, as if he found some flaw she wasn’t aware of, that annoyed her.
His black-eyed gaze settled on her face and then he smiled. “You’re not an M.D., are you?” He rubbed his chin. “Hmm … Let me guess—”
“Doctorate of philosophy in psychology,” Audrey told him. “I’m a mental health therapist.”
“Audrey is Mary Nell Scott’s counselor,” Tam explained. “She came here with Jill Scott’s family because Mrs. Scott is one of her patients.”
“Damn,” Garth grumbled under his breath.
“Is it your professional opinion that Mrs. Scott can handle seeing her daughter’s corpse?” J.D. asked, his gaze intensely focused on Audrey
“It’s my opinion that seeing her daughter’s body—if indeed that’s Jill”—she nodded toward the body bag—“will harm her less than not knowing.”
Audrey glared at J.D. Cass. Admittedly, she found him attractive. Who wouldn’t? He was about six-three, broad shouldered, and extremely masculine, although not classically handsome. But for some reason, he irritated her. Maybe it was because of the almost condescending way he’d said, “You’re not an M.D.” Or it could be because she sensed that he found her lacking in one way or another?
And that bothers you, doesn’t it?
Damn right it did. After all, she was reasonably attractive, some even said pretty. She was highly intelligent and well educated and possessed more than competent social graces. Who was he to look down his imperfect nose at her?
“Let’s get this over with,” Pete Tipton said. “Bring the parents over and let them ID the body.” He motioned to his assistants.
“Thank you.” Audrey focused on the ME, offering him a genuine smile.
“I’ll tell the Scotts.” By the time the statement left her lips, Tam was in motion.
Garth received a phone call, excused himself, and left Audrey and the TBI agent standing side by side. Usually quite adept at conversation, even idle chitchat when necessary, Audrey suddenly found herself unnaturally silent.
Sensing the TBI agent looking at her, she turned back around and faced him. “Is there something you wanted to say, Special Agent Cass?”
With a sly smile curving his lips, the man shrugged. “No, ma’am, Dr. Sherrod.”
“Here they come,” Pete Tipton said as the Scott family approached. “No matter how many times I’ve done this, it doesn’t get any easier.”
Tam escorted the Scotts, Charlie with his arm around Mary Nell, and Mindy following her parents.
“May we see her, please?” Charlie asked.
Tipton nodded. Tam led the family to where the ME’s assistants held the body bag. Tipton unzipped the bag, removed the small, protective bag covering the victim’s head, and stepped back to allow the family an unobstructed view.
Mary Nell gasped and then burst into tears as she crumpled right before their eyes. Weeping uncontrollably, she doubled over in pain. Charlie held her, his arms circling her waist, supporting her twisted body. Mindy stood silent and alone a few feet behind her parents. She had turned an ash gray, her glazed eyes overflowing with tears.
Charlie pulled Mary Nell up and into his arms. He looked Peter Tipton right in the eye. “It’s our daughter. It’s Jill.”
Tam and her husband Marcus, an engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, met Audrey and her current boyfriend, Porter Bryant, for dinner that evening. Audrey and Tam arrived late, less than two minutes apart, so they paused outside J. Alexander’s for a quick chat before entering the upscale restaurant on Hamilton Place Boulevard. Neither had changed clothes from earlier that day. Tam still wore black slacks, a lightweight camel blazer, and sensible but stylish one-inch pumps. She had discarded her shoulder holster, something she had forgotten to do a few weeks ago when the foursome had met for dinner. Of course, it had been her first week as a detective.
How Tam could look so good with practically no makeup at the age of thirty-four, Audrey would never know. Maybe it was her flawless golden brown skin or her large, luminous, dark chocolate eyes and thick black lashes.
Although Audrey hadn’t taken time to change from her tailored navy pin-striped slacks and matching jacket into something more femininely casual, she had added fresh blush and lipstick, which she kept in her handbag. She had almost phoned Porter and canceled, but a girl had to eat, and what better company could she find tonight than three good friends? The last thing she wanted to do after a day like today was go home to an empty house. She kept thinking about getting a pet, a cat or a dog or even a goldfish. She thought about it, but never did it.
“You look beat,” Tam said. “Have you been with the Scotts all this time?”
She nodded. “Yes, I stayed and talked to Charlie and Mindy after Dr. Jarnigan’s nurse practitioner came by and gave Mary Beth an injection. A strong sedative. And I helped Charlie deal with countless phone calls and an endless parade of family and friends who came and went all afternoon. Their priest is there with them, as well as Charlie’s sister and her husband and several cousins.”
“It’s been a difficult day all around,” Tam said. “I left your uncle Garth at headquarters. No wonder he’s been divorced four times. What woman would put up with a man married to his job?”
“Every missing persons case is personal for him.”
“Because of Blake,” Tam said. “Garth is a dedicated policeman for the same reason you’re a dedicated counselor. You both want to help people in pain.”
Although Audrey managed to go days, often weeks, without thinking very much about Blake, any missing persons case stirred up old memories. And when she was personally involved in the case, a counselor to someone with a missing family member, she occasionally still had nightmares, decades-old nightmares, about her little brother Blake’s disappearance. The two-year-old had been abducted twenty-five years ago and was still missing. Missing and presumed dead.
“I know you can’t talk about evidence and all that,” Audrey said. “But can you tell me one thing—do y’all think that whoever kidnapped and killed Jill Scott is the same person who abducted Debra Gregory?”
“Possibly. It’s common knowledge that the two women are both in their mid-twenties, both average height and weight, both white females, both brunettes with long dark hair. The Chattanooga Times Free Press ran their photographs side by side on the front page this morning. At the mayor’s insistence, I’m sure. Did you see it?”
“I saw it. And before you ask, yes, I thought there was a resemblance.”
“Enough of a resemblance that they could pass for sisters,” Tam said. “Debra Gregory looks more like Jill than her own sister Mindy does.”
“But the CPD is downplaying the resemblance, aren’t they? The fact that the women resembled each other wasn’t mentioned in the press conference.”
“We don’t want to panic all the young, dark-haired women in Hamilton County who fit the same description. Not when we can’t be a hundred percent sure the two cases are connected. Debra hasn’t been missing twenty-four hours.”
“Then why bring in the TBI?” Audrey asked.
“They’re not officially involved. Not yet.” Tam forced a smile. “We’d better find our dates. We’re already twenty minutes late. Marcus has called me twice since he arrived.”
As they entered the restaurant, Audrey asked, “How well do you know Special Agent Cass?”
Tam spoke to the hostess, who offered to show them to their table.
“I never met him before today,” Tam replied. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious.”
“There they are.” Tam waved at Marcus and Porter, who were seated in a booth halfway across the restaurant. “FYI—the DA called in the TBI. We did not request assistance.”
“He seems like the type who’d expect to take over.”
“Who? Special Agent Cass? What makes you think that?” Tam’s smile widened. “Yeah, I know. He was sending out some powerful He-Man vibes, wasn’t he? And I noticed the way you two kept looking at each other. What was that all about?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Audrey lied.
When they approached the booth where their dates sat, both men stood, gentlemen that they were. Marcus gave Tam a quick kiss on the mouth and a big I’m-glad-to-see-you smile. Porter gave Audrey a peck on the cheek. She and Porter had been dating for nearly six months now and she suspected he was ready for more than the friendship they shared. He hadn’t pushed her into a sexual relationship and she was grateful, although she knew that it was only a matter of time. More than once recently, he had hinted about them moving in together, but she had ignored the hints. She had no desire to live with Porter or any other man. And marriage was out of the question. No way, no how.
“Sorry I’m late,” Tam said. “We’re in the middle of—”
“No shop talk this evening,” Marcus told her. “We’re going to have drinks and a nice dinner and relax.”
“Sounds good to me.” Tam picked up her husband’s glass of Chardonnay and took a sip. “This could be the last halfway relaxing evening I have for quite some time.”
J.D. dropped his keys on the kitchen counter as he entered his Signal Mountain rental house through the door that led inside from the two-car garage. By the time he reached the living room, he had removed his jacket and his hip holster. He tossed the jacket over the back of the nearest chair and dumped the holster down on the coffee table. It had been a long, seemingly endless day and he was tired. And still horny. He had hoped his breakfast date with Holly that morning would lead to an invitation for him to come over to her place that night. So much for well-laid plans. Per his boss’s instructions, he had stuck with the lead investigators on the Jill Scott case all day and had finally left Sergeant Hudson at the police station half an hour ago. The man was dedicated beyond the norm for any officer.
It wasn’t that J.D. didn’t give his all to his job. He did. But he didn’t live and breathe his job 24/7. There had been a time when he had. Now he couldn’t even if he wanted to. He had other responsibilities, ones in his personal life that required his time and attention.
Just as he kicked off his shoes and wiggled his sock-clad toes, he heard the phone ring. Not his phone. The ringtone belonged to his daughter. Some idiotic song titled “Boom Boom Pow” by a group Zoe had informed him was called the Black Eyed Peas.
Even now, after she’d been living with him for more than a year, he still sometimes forgot he had a kid. A fourteen-year-old daughter. A teenager with an attitude. Zoe was far too pretty and looked way too mature not to gain male attention. When he had told her that she was too young to date, she’d thrown a hissy fit. The girl had a temper. And as much as he’d like to blame her mother for that genetic defect, he couldn’t. Carrie Davidson had been promiscuous, self-centered, vain, and sexy as hell, but not once during their brief affair had he ever seen her lose her temper. No, Zoe had inherited that personality flaw from him.
J.D. traipsed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and retrieved a bottle of beer. Just as he removed the cap and took his first sip, he heard a loud crash, followed by a string of equally loud curse words. Carrying the beer with him, he went through the living room and down the hall and stopped outside his daughter’s closed bedroom door. He knocked.
“Go away!” she screamed.
“What’s going on in there?”
“Not a damn thing. All my friends are together and having a good time tonight and I’m stuck here in my room, a virtual prisoner.”
“It’s a school night,” J.D. reminded her. “I hardly think all your friends are out partying tonight.”
“A bunch are studying together over at Presley’s house. They ordered pizza and are having fun. Fun that I’m missing, thanks to you.” Zoe eased open her bedroom door and peered out into the hall. “Hi. How was your day?”
“Rough,” he replied. “How was yours?”
“It was okay, but it could end really good.” She opened the door all the way and plastered a big smile on her gorgeous face.
What the hell was she wearing? They’d had more than one row about her clothes. Tonight it was green tights, suede knee-high boots, a too short, too tight knit sweater, and a skirt that barely covered her butt. All the clothes she had brought with her last year when he’d moved her in with him had looked like they belonged to a hooker. She’d promptly informed him that her clothes were what girls were wearing these days, as opposed to when he’d been a kid, back in the Dark Ages.
“What do you want?” J.D asked. From his experience, whenever Zoe was pleasant to him, she wanted something.
“Let me go over to Presley’s. Please, please. I promise I’ll be back by eleven.”
“I don’t think so. It’s after eight now. Besides, I’m too tired to drive you over to—”
“That’s okay, J.D.” Zoe came out of her room, her leather shoulder bag slung over her arm. “Presley’s brother Dawson will pick me up. All I have to do is call her back right now.” Zoe held up her bright pink cell phone. “Please.”
He didn’t like playing the stern, disciplinarian parent, but God knew it was way past time that someone did. Apparently Carrie had allowed Zoe to do whatever she wanted to do. And now that she was forced to live with a parent who more often than not said no to her demands, she was a miserable young girl.
“Not tonight,” J.D. told her. “It’s a school night. You know the rules.”
“Screw your rules! I hate you! I hate living here with you!” She scrunched up her face, glowered at him, and then went back into her room, slamming the door behind her.
J.D. heaved a deep, labored breath.
What had he ever done to deserve this?
You got Carrie Davidson pregnant, that’s what.
J.D. took a hefty swig from the beer bottle as he walked back to the kitchen. He wasn’t cut out to be a father. Although he was doing his best with Zoe, his best wasn’t good enough. She was miserable and she made him miserable. She was his daughter. The DNA tests proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He should love her. She should love him. But she hated him and he tolerated her.
He finished off the first beer as he made himself a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and then drank another beer with his meal.
He wondered what Dr. Audrey Sherrod would think of his relationship with Zoe. They were a dysfunctional family if ever there was one. Neither had known the other existed until eighteen months ago when Carrie, dying from breast cancer, had called J.D. to say, “Congratulations, you’re the father of a bouncing baby girl.”
Burrowing into his worn leather lounge chair, J.D. picked up the remote and channel surfed, finally pausing on CNN.
Why was he thinking about Audrey Sherrod? Why had she suddenly popped into his head?
He had gotten the distinct impression that the lady didn’t like him. She certainly had looked down her nose at him. And she had a cute little nose and a rather pretty face. Not beautiful, but pretty enough if you liked her type, which he didn’t. She was tall for a woman, a good five-nine. Slender, but not quite skinny. He had noticed the way her breasts filled out the neat pin-striped jacket she had been wearing. Sufficient but not large by any means.
If you had gotten laid recently, you wouldn’t find Audrey Sherrod the least bit attractive.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Just because he had always preferred his women hot and eager didn’t mean it might not be interesting to see just what it would take to defrost Dr. Sherrod’s icy façade.
What the hell was he thinking? He sure didn’t need another woman in his life. The casual relationship he shared with Holly suited them both just fine. He didn’t think Audrey Sherrod was the type for casual, and that’s all he wanted from a woman, all he could ever offer, especially now that he had Zoe in his life.
J.D. was ashamed of the way he felt, that he considered Zoe a nuisance. What kind of parent was he?
Think about what the Scotts are going through tonight. They’ve lost their daughter, and here you are moaning and groaning about your kid. You should be thankful that she’s alive and well and creating havoc in your life. I’d bet Charlie Scott would tell you that you’re one lucky SOB.
Two hours later, after consuming his third beer and falling asleep in front of the TV, J.D. woke, gathered up his shoes, jacket, and holster, and headed down the hall. He paused outside of Zoe’s closed door. He knocked softly. She didn’t respond. He turned the doorknob and to his surprise found the door unlocked. He eased open the door and peered inside the semidark room. With her hair still damp from her recent shower and wearing an oversized Jeff Gordon NASCAR sweatshirt, she lay asleep atop the covers.
J.D. slipped into the room, freed one hand from the load he was carrying, and then drew the folded bedspread up and over his daughter. He stood there for a few minutes and watched his little girl sleep. In the looks department, she’d gotten the best of Carrie and him. Actually, she looked a lot like J.D.’s sister Julia.
I’m sorry I’m not a better father. I’m sorry that I never knew you existed. I’m doing the best I can, kiddo. I promise that I’ll try not to screw things up too bad.
He reached down and ran his fingertips across her forehead, brushing aside a strand of long black hair.
You deserve better than me, Zoe. But you’re stuck with me. Like it or not, I’m your dad.
Chapter 3
For most of her life—certainly after the car wreck that had claimed her mother’s life when she was six—Audrey had enjoyed a close bond with Tam’s parents, Geraldine and Willie Mullins. Geraldine was the type of mother every little girl should have—loving, caring, attentive, putting her child’s needs before her own. A mother to her child, not a girlfriend. Tam had been raised with a strict set of rules and regulations, but at the same time her parents had trusted her completely.
“I trust Tam to always do the right thing,” Geraldine had said. “And until she proves to me that I can’t trust her, I will always believe what she tells me is the truth.”
Audrey was pretty sure that Tam’s parents felt that she had never disappointed them. She’d been salutatorian of her high school graduating class, graduated magna cum laude from UT, and had gone on to graduate first in her class at the police academy. Although Geraldine would have preferred her daughter choose a less dangerous profession, Willie had been a very proud papa when his only child chose to follow in his footsteps and join the CPD. Willie had worked his way up the ladder from patrolman to chief of police.
Audrey envied her best friend her parents and the nurturing environment in which she had grown up. And even if they had known about Tam’s one and only fall from grace, they would have forgiven her and not loved her any less. Audrey’s earliest memories were of her parents arguing. Wayne Sherrod’s job as a Chattanooga policeman had come first with him. His wife and daughter had come in a distant second. Why the bubbly, sweet-natured social butterfly Norma Colton had married a stoic, cynical, hard-nosed cop, no one understood, least of all Audrey. Maybe it had been nothing more than opposites attracting.
She had always believed that if she’d been a boy, her father would have paid more attention to her. And that theory, one she had formed early on, had been proven correct when his second wife had presented him with a son. From the moment he was born, Blake had been the center of Wayne’s life, even more important to him than his job.
She had been jealous of her baby brother and had sometimes resented him terribly. But she had also loved him. Blake had been so sweet, so adorable, so very precious. When, a month before his second birthday, he had disappeared—assumed kidnapped—she had been consumed with guilt. Had it been her fault in some way because she had resented that her father so obviously loved Blake more than he did her? In her nine-year-old mind, she had felt somehow at fault. It hadn’t helped that, in his desperate grief, her father had accused her and her stepbrother Hart of being glad that Blake had been abducted.
As an adult, she had come to realize that her father had known what he’d said wasn’t true, that later, he had probably regretted the harsh, unjust accusation. And although her father had never apologized, Audrey had long ago forgiven him for lashing out at two innocent children. But she hadn’t forgotten, couldn’t forget no matter how much she wished she could. She wasn’t sure her father even remembered that day in detail. But that one moment in time, that one unjust accusation, had erected a barrier between father and daughter that still existed.
Audrey saw her dad infrequently—holidays, mostly. She called him occasionally—on his birthday and on her birthday—but he seldom called her. Her dad’s relationship with his stepson Hart wasn’t any better, but at least Hart had his uncle Garth, who had stepped in and become a surrogate father to him. And even though she thought Garth was a brash, cocky, womanizing SOB, she respected him for being a dedicated policeman and for looking after Hart, for always being there for his nephew. Her stepbrother practically worshipped the man.
Audrey would have felt completely alone in the world if not for the love and attention Tam and her parents had shown her over the years. But that was only one of the many reasons she adored Geraldine and Willie Mullins.
It was her love for Tam’s parents that had brought her there tonight despite the emotionally grueling day she’d had. Nine days after her murder, Jill Scott had been laid to rest. Audrey had cleared her afternoon schedule so she could attend the funeral and be available if Mary Nell needed her. But it had been obvious to everyone that Mary Nell had been medicated, possibly overmedicated. She had done little more than sleepwalk through the church service and the burial ceremony.
It had been nine days since Jill’s parents learned their daughter’s fate. Nine days since Jill’s body had been found in a rocking chair on the Cracker Barrel porch in Lookout Valley. Nine agonizing days, and the police still didn’t have a suspect. Nine days, and Debra Gregory was still missing.
When Audrey entered the Read House in downtown Chattanooga, she searched the lobby area for Porter. They had agreed to meet there instead of him picking her up at home. He wasn’t difficult to find since he was waiting right inside the front entrance.
Spit and polish. That was Porter Bryant to a T. Always dressed impeccably, clean-shaven, styled hair, manicured nails buffed to a gloss finish, and wearing a delicate hint of expensive men’s cologne.
Porter was to the manor born, so to speak. His father had been a wealthy, high-profile lawyer and his mother a socialite who had dabbled in interior design. Audrey suspected that Porter’s mother and her mother would have gotten on famously.
“Sorry I’m late,” she told him. “After I left the Scotts, I barely had time to go home and change clothes.”
“You missed Chief Mullins’s grand entrance and the big surprise moment.” Porter’s tone held a note of censure. When she gave him a screw-you glare, he quickly added, “You look lovely, so it was worth the wait. And I’m sure with so many people here, the chief and Mrs. Mullins weren’t aware of your absence.”
When he held out his arm for her to take, Audrey graciously accepted and they walked across the lobby and entered the Hamilton Room. Geraldine and Tam had rented that room and the adjoining River City Room for the surprise sixtieth birthday party they were hosting for Willie. The moment the door opened, music, laughter, and the roar of at least two hundred voices enveloped them.
“My God, I know Geraldine didn’t invite half of Hamilton County,” Audrey said. “She wanted it to be a close friends and family event.”
“Well, if only a third of the invited guests brought a date, that would dramatically increase the number of people attending tonight. Considering that Willie Mullins is the Chattanooga police chief, one would expect a large gathering. Certain things are expected of a high-ranking public servant.”
“I’m sure Geraldine was pressured into expanding the guest list.” No doubt by some well-meaning bureaucrat whose opinions matched Porter’s. Tam had told her there were rumors circulating that the state Democratic Party was interested in backing Willie for the U.S. Congress in the next election.
“If so, then she was a wise woman to agree. What the Mullins family does now can affect his political future,” Porter said as if Audrey was clueless about how the game of politics was played. “And Mrs. Mullins showed remarkable good taste in adhering to acceptable social etiquette for such a huge party by requesting no gifts.”
Audrey had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at Porter. His last comment had come across as a backhanded compliment if she’d ever heard one.
Dating Porter had become a habit, one she needed to break sooner rather than later. He was handsome and could, on occasion, be charming, but he was such a snob. He seemed to be every woman’s dream—intelligent, well-mannered, attentive, and handsome. Everyone said that he was a young man with a bright future. Even Tam had liked him when he and Audrey had first started dating, but had revised her opinion within a few weeks.
“Porter’s okay,” Tam had told her. “If you like the stuffed-shirt type. But, girlfriend, he’s so not the man for you.”
Despite Tam’s opinion and her own nagging doubts, Audrey had fallen into a comfortable routine with Porter. And what she had liked most about dating him was the fact that he hadn’t been demanding. Whenever she had to break a date, he was more than understanding. When she continuously told him she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, he accepted the fact that she wasn’t ready, that she wanted to wait.
But wait for what? She hadn’t been specific. He hadn’t asked.
What are you waiting for, Audrey?
As Porter led her through the throng of celebrators, he said, “This is a come-and-go thing, so we don’t have to stay the entire four hours. I thought you could make your presence known, wish happy birthday to Chief Mullins, grab a few tidbits from the buffet table, drink a glass of bubbly, and then—”
“I intend to stay for a good while,” Audrey informed him.
“How long? I had hoped—”
“Porter, do not go there. Not tonight of all nights. You have to understand what a difficult day this has been for me.”
He pouted like a petulant child who had been sent to bed without his supper. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. No pressure, darling.”
She paused alongside the dance floor and turned to the ever-accommodating Porter. “Willie Mullins is my dearest friend’s father. I love the man. I think of him and Geraldine as family. I’m not going to make a brief appearance at his sixtieth birthday party and just disappear.”
“Yes, of course, I really do understand.” Porter released his hold on her elbow. “Why don’t I find a waiter and get us some champagne.”
“Thank you. That would be nice.”
As if from out of nowhere, Tam appeared the minute Porter left. Wearing a lemon yellow silk dress that clung to her rounded curves and a pair of dewdrop pearl earrings as her only jewelry, Tam was stunningly beautiful.
She slipped her arm around Audrey’s waist. “Look at Mom and Dad. It must be wonderful to still be that much in love after all these years.”
Audrey gave her friend a squeezing hug and then glanced at the dance floor where Geraldine swayed dreamily in Willie’s big, strong arms. “Your parents are proof that there really is such a thing as happily-ever-after.”
“Your dad’s here,” Tam said. “He and your uncle Garth. And Hart.”
“Hart’s here?”
Tam nodded.
“How is he?” Audrey asked.
“Clean and sober, at least for tonight. He looks nice. I think he’s wearing that new suit you bought him for his last job interview.”
Audrey forced a smile. She loved her stepbrother. After Blake’s disappearance twenty-five years ago, they had bonded as siblings. They had both known that they were the expendable kids, the ones who would never be as important to her father and his mother as Blake had been. And each of them had dealt with their family’s tragedies in different ways. Audrey had focused all her energy on a profession where she could help other people deal with their own tragedy, with grief, with suffering of any kind. Hart had sought solace in drugs and alcohol. He’d been in and out of rehab half a dozen times during the past two decades, and he’d never held down a job for more than six months at a time.
“I wish I could do more to help him than just buying him a new suit.”
“My God, you’ve done all you can. And you’ve done it over and over again. What more could you do? I’m not saying Hart’s a lost cause, but …” Tam grimaced. “Hart’s got problems that you can’t fix, problems that maybe nobody can fix.”
“I know. In here”—Audrey tapped her head—“I know. But in here”—she patted her chest—“I want to believe that somehow, some way, someday …”
“Fairy Godmother Audrey.” Tam smiled. “Always wishing you could wave a magic wand and make everything all right for everyone.”
Audrey snorted, the sound quite unladylike. “Yeah, all the good that wishing does me when my damn magic wand is broken.”
Tam laughed.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” Audrey said. “Neither of us has done much of that recently, have we. You know, in a way, it seems strange to be enjoying such a happy occasion tonight when only a few hours ago I was at Jill Scott’s funeral.”
“I try to keep my professional life and my personal life separate,” Tam said. “Most of the time, I can, but sometimes … He’s still out there, the guy who kidnapped and murdered Jill Scott. We’re no closer now to catching him than we were nine days ago. And unless all the experts are wrong, there’s a good chance that the same man abducted Debra Gregory and will kill her, too.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned Jill tonight,” Audrey said. “I’m afraid I’m seldom able to separate myself from my client’s problems. What does that say about my professionalism?”
“Screw your professionalism. Caring too damn much about everyone else is what makes you you, and I wouldn’t change that or anything else about you.”
“Only because you love me like a sister.”
“Got that damn straight.” Tam’s gaze fixed on something or someone behind Audrey. Her eyes widened and a quirky smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t look now, but tall, dark, and could-eat-him-with-a-spoon is here, right behind us and coming this way.”
“Who are you talking about?”
When Audrey started to turn around, Tam grabbed her by the forearms. “Don’t turn around. Not yet,” Tam said under her breath. “Damn, he’s not alone.”
“For goodness sakes, who are you—?”
“Well, hello there,” Tam said to the person standing behind Audrey. “How are you tonight?”
Why was Tam acting so odd? Audrey turned and, despite her six-foot height in her three-inch heels, had to look up slightly to be face-to-face with the man. J.D. Cass, the TBI agent she’d met nine days ago when she had accompanied the Scott family to the Lookout Valley Cracker Barrel, smiled at her. He was the guy whose “you’re not an M.D.” comment had irritated her. Not only that, but the way he’d looked at her had irritated her, too. And the fact that she had found him attractive irritated her. Hell, everything about the man irritated her.
“Audrey, you remember Special Agent Cass, don’t you?” Tam glanced from the TBI agent to the bosomy woman hanging on his arm.
For some reason, Audrey disliked the lovely blond on sight. It wasn’t like her to feel instant hostility toward someone. Maybe it was because the woman was so gorgeous and obviously sexy, her attitude all but screaming, I’m prettier than you are. Ha-ha-ha.
Okay, so she still had a few hang-ups about her looks, especially whenever she compared herself to someone as blatantly feminine and sexy as J.D. Cass’s date. Audrey had always been big for her age. Above average height, small breasts, big feet, and at best moderately attractive instead of beautiful. And she’d certainly never filled out a dress the way this woman did.
“Nice to see you again, Tam,” J.D. said, but he was looking at Audrey. “And you, too, Dr. Sherrod.” Without taking his eyes off Audrey, he introduced the woman at his side. “You both know Holly Johnston, don’t you?”
“Ms. Johnston and I have met,” Tam replied.
Before Audrey could mention that she didn’t know Ms. Johnston, Porter reappeared with their champagne. When he saw the other couple, he smiled at the voluptuous blonde in the slinky red dress. The dress barely reached the woman’s knees, revealed a great deal of cleavage, and dipped to her waist in the back.
“You’re looking beautiful, as always, Counselor,” Porter said, his glance blatantly enjoying the scenery. “Holly, have you met my date, Dr. Audrey Sherrod?” He placed his arm possessively around Audrey’s waist. “Sweetheart, you’ve heard me mention Holly. We work together.”
“We were just getting around to introductions.” Audrey did her best to smile. She had learned over the years how to put on a pleasant face and act agreeable regardless of how she actually felt.
So, Holly, the blond goddess, was an assistant district attorney, just as Porter was. She vaguely remembered him mentioning this drop-dead-gorgeous woman in the DA’s office who was a real barracuda in the courtroom. Audrey suspected that J.D. Cass’s date was a barracuda in the bedroom, too.
“Y’all will have to excuse me,” Tam said. “I see my husband motioning for me. I think it’s almost time to bring out Dad’s birthday cake.”
Within minutes of Tam’s departure, DA Everett Harrelson joined them and the conversation quickly turned into shop talk with Porter, Holly, and their boss. Audrey took several discreet steps back and away from the foursome, hoping she could inconspicuously slip away so that she could wish Willie a happy birthday before they presented him with his cake. Audrey thought she wouldn’t be missed for several minutes and was about to make her escape when Special Agent Cass smoothly maneuvered himself away from Holly, who didn’t seem to notice that she was losing her date. At least temporarily.
J.D. came up beside Audrey. “Looks like our dates are ignoring us.” He held out his hand. “Would you care to dance, Dr. Sherrod?’
Audrey hesitated for half a second. “I … uh …”
“It’s just a dance, not a lifetime commitment,” he said jokingly.
“Thank you, Special Agent Cass, I’d love to dance.”
She took his hand and he led her onto the dance floor.
“My name’s J.D.,” he told her as he slipped his arm around her.
“I’m Audrey.”
“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“What?” She eyed him quizzically.
“Our getting on a first-name basis.”
“Are we playing some sort of game, J.D.? If we are, clue me in.”
He chuckled, and damn it, she liked the sound. Deep and robust and genuine.
“You have a nice smile,” he told her.
She hadn’t even been aware that she was smiling. “Do you always flirt with every woman you meet?”
“Who says I’m flirting?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing, flirting with me because you’re aggravated that your date is distracted by her boss and coworker?”
He chuckled again, as if he found her comment highly amusing.
Audrey felt a flush of heat warm her from head to toes. She hoped her sudden awareness of just how close her dance partner was holding her didn’t show on her face.
“You’re an open book,” Tam had once told her. “Everything you’re feeling shows on your face.”
“Holly and I don’t have that kind of relationship,” J.D. said.
“What kind is that?”
“The kind where I’d be aggravated or jealous that she’s ignoring me in favor of spending time with her boss and her coworker.”
“Then you two aren’t seriously involved?”
“I’m never seriously involved. Not since my divorce six years ago. What about you—are you and Beau Brummell engaged, going steady, or just sleeping together?”
Audrey laughed spontaneously, thoroughly amused by J.D. dubbing the fastidious Porter with the name of the best-known dandy of all time.
“Porter and I are not engaged,” she said. “And we’re a little too old to go steady. Besides, I think that term is passé, but I have no idea what teenagers call it these days.” She gave her last statement several moments of consideration before saying, “And whether or not we’re sleeping together is none of your business.”
J.D. grinned.
Damn if the man wasn’t dangerously sexy. And he probably knew it. Guys like that always did, didn’t they?
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It would be my business only if you and I were—”
“And we are not!” Audrey, Audrey, why did you finish the man’s sentence for him? Why such an adamant statement of fact?
With that damn sexy smile unwavering, he agreed. “No, we aren’t.”
As if on cue the music stopped, the dance ended, and J.D. led her off the dance floor. She pulled away from him.
“I’m going to find Willie and wish—”
Too late. The waiters wheeled out an enormous six-tier cake placed in the center of a serving cart and the band played “Happy Birthday.” The partygoers, including Audrey and J.D., joined in the song. As the well-wishers crowded together around the guest of honor, J.D. eased his arm around Audrey’s waist. Ambivalent feelings toward the man warred inside her and a damn army of butterflies did a war dance in her belly.
Debra didn’t know if it was daylight or dark outside in the real world. Here in the macabre otherworld in which she existed, it was always night. It could be twelve noon or twelve midnight for all she knew. It could be Monday or Friday. Perhaps she had been here for a week, or it could have been a month.
What did it matter?
“Rock him to sleep,” the voice told her. “Lovingly. Tenderly. He needs a mother’s gentle touch.”
She held the bundle in her arms and immediately began crooning the lullaby she knew he expected her to sing to the object wrapped in the soft blue blanket. How many times had they repeated this ritual? Dozens? Hundreds? She had lost count. Odd how rocking and singing to the skeleton of a small child had become a routine, one she no longer viewed with utter horror. Her entire world was now confined to this small space, an area with hard floors and walls too distant to see in the semidarkness in which she now lived. As far as she knew, the rocking chair where she was confined was the only piece of furniture in the room.
He had not harmed her, at least not physically. He kept her feet loosely bound so that even when she was allowed to move around, she had to hobble. And whenever he left her, he tied her wrists to the chair arms. He brought her food and water. He allowed her to wash herself and even brush her hair; and he provided an old-fashioned slop jar for her to use. But the indignity of having to bathe in front of him and even relieve herself with him standing nearby had added to the emotional trauma she had endured every moment of her captivity.
In the beginning, she had been afraid that he would rape her, but it soon became apparent that his reasons for abducting her and holding her prisoner had nothing to do with sex. Then she’d wondered if he would eventually torture her. He hadn’t. But the psychological torment was just as bad as physical torture would have been, perhaps worse.
She felt him move away from his stance behind the rocker, where he always stood when she performed. And that’s what it felt like—a performance. Where was he going? His leaving while she still held the blanket-wrapped bundle was not part of the normal routine.
Her voice momentarily faltered.
“Keep singing,” he told her.
She continued with the lullaby, repeating the words over and over, making up new verses as she went along.
Within minutes, he came up behind her again, but instead of standing guard over her, he reached around her and laid a small pillow across her lap. Since that first time when he had placed what she had thought was a doll in her arms, she had avoided glancing down at it, but she looked at her lap, at the age-yellowed white satin pillow trimmed with tattered blue ribbons. It was a baby’s pillow.
“Do what you know you must do,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You must send him to heaven where he’ll be one of the little angels.”
“What? I don’t know what you mean. What do you want me to do?”
“Pick up the pillow.”
She did.
“Lay it gently over his face.”
She did.
“Hold it there and keep singing and rocking him until he goes to sleep.”
Until he goes to sleep?
Realization dawned. Until he’s dead.
“You want me to smother him?” she asked.
“You don’t want him to suffer any longer, do you?”
She lifted the pillow and placed it over the bundle she held.
“It’ll all be over soon,” the man’s voice whispered softly … sadly.
Believing he meant the make-believe child in her arms would soon stop breathing, she felt a sense of immediate relief when he lifted the pillow, put it in her lap, and took the bundle from her. For now, it was over. He would tie her wrists to the chair and leave her here. Until the next time.
In the beginning, she had tried to get away from him, but each time he’d caught her before she had gotten more than a few feet. After being shoved onto the floor, face down, several times, she had stopped trying to escape.
She waited there in the rocking chair, waited for him to tie her wrists to the arms and then leave her. But when he reached around her from behind, there were no ropes in his hands.
Instead, he lifted the pillow from her lap and brought it up and over her face. She didn’t realize what he intended to do, not until he pushed the pillow against her face and held it there.
Chapter 4
Audrey had spent a restless night, tossing and turning, waking every hour or so from the time she had finally fallen asleep at midnight until a few seconds ago when she had shot straight up in bed. She glanced at the bedside clock—5:40 A.M.—and groaned. Damn it, she’d been dreaming. Crazy dreams. The kind that didn’t make any sense, but that were nevertheless all too real and somewhat unnerving. As a child, she had been prone to nightmares, especially after Blake’s disappearance. Jumbled, chaotic, frightening dreams. But as an adult, she rarely remembered her dreams.
Unfortunately, she recalled exactly what she’d been dreaming when she awoke so suddenly. She and J.D. Cass had been dancing, just as they had been last night at Willie’s birthday party. Except in the dream, they had been alone, just the two of them, and he had kissed her.
It would never happen. Not in a million years.
If and when you see him again, you’ll be cordial to him and yet distant. Whatever was going on last night between the two of you meant no more to him than it did to you. It was nothing more than a harmless flirtation.
But her unwanted attraction to J.D. Cass was minor compared to what was really troubling her. If only she could lay all the blame for her restless night on her encounter with J.D., it would be easy enough to dismiss. In the course of that one evening, she’d come face-to-face with far more than an unwanted attraction to a man she instinctively disliked. Troubled family relationships and personal insecurities were far more to blame for her discontent.
She couldn’t dismiss her concerns about Hart or her regrets about her relationship with her father. Until last night, she hadn’t seen her stepbrother in weeks, not since she had bought him the new suit for his job interview. When she hadn’t heard from him and he hadn’t answered her phone calls, she had contacted Garth. He’d told her that Hart had gotten cold feet at the last minute and had blown off the interview.
“He can’t face you right now,” Garth had said. “He feels pretty lousy about disappointing you again, especially after you not only lined up the interview for him, but bought him some new duds, too.”
Uncle Garth always made excuses for Hart, always played the role of protector. They had disagreed more than once on what to do to help Hart. She had finally given up trying to persuade Garth that maybe a little tough love would do more good than continuously enabling Hart to make poor choices.
Garth Hudson had his faults, but no one could accuse him of not loving his nephew. He had gone that extra mile for Hart so many times she’d lost count. He had paid for Hart’s repeated rehab treatments. He’d given him a place to live when he’d been between jobs, which he was on a regular basis. And he’d called in favors several times to keep Hart out of jail.
Hart had faced her last night with a shy smile and a sincere apology. He’d been apologizing to her for one thing or another since they were kids. And she always forgave him for whatever misdeeds he’d committed. With his big blue eyes, so like little Blake’s, and his sweet, boyish smile, Hart could be irresistibly convincing.
God knew Hart was his own worst enemy. If only he could get his act together and not keep screwing up. And if pigs had wings, they could fly.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, sis. You and Uncle Garth,” he’d said last night during their brief conversation. “I don’t know why either of you put up with me.”
“Because we love you.”
She did love Hart. He was family. They shared a history. They had survived Blake’s kidnapping, Enid’s suicide, and her father’s complete emotional withdrawal. They were irrevocably bound by the scars of their childhood tragedies.
Hart had promised they’d get together soon, that he’d drop by or they could meet for lunch one day. “I’ve got a line on another job,” he’d told her. “It’s minimum wage, but at least I could start paying Uncle Garth some room and board.”
That indefinite promise from Hart that they’d see each other again soon had been more than she’d gotten from her father during their brief conversation. Her dad had mentioned how pretty her dress was and told her he was glad to see her. But he hadn’t looked her in the eye, hadn’t smiled at her, and certainly hadn’t hugged her. She had asked how he was enjoying his retirement and he’d mentioned that he was doing a lot of fishing. Audrey couldn’t remember one time in her thirty-four years that she and her father had ever had a meaningful conversation.
Enough introspection, especially this early in the morning.
She might as well get up. There wasn’t much chance she’d go back to sleep. She needed her morning cup of hot tea, something she looked forward to every day.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, Audrey headed for the kitchen. She filled the white enamel kettle with fresh water and placed it on the Jenn-Air range to heat. A hint of daylight peeked through the closed blinds of her Walnut Hill town house as she padded around on the Brazilian cherry hardwood floor, set out her favorite teacup on the granite countertop, and removed a bag of Earl Grey from the maple cupboard. If anything, Audrey was a creature of habit. She lived her life on a flexible schedule, appreciating the peace that the familiar gave her on a daily basis.
As a child, she had experienced enough drama to last her a lifetime. She supposed that was why she craved normalcy, why she chose to live a quiet, uneventful life. Beginning with her parents’ divorce, her childhood had been riddled with tragedy. Only a year after her parents’ bitter divorce when she was five, her mother had been killed in a car wreck when a drunk driver swerved into oncoming traffic. Then her baby brother Blake—her father’s pride and joy—had mysteriously disappeared. And a few months later, her distraught stepmother had committed suicide.
Just as Audrey opened the blinds to let in the morning light, the kettle whistled and the phone rang. On her way to take the kettle off the stove, she grabbed the portable phone and hit the On button without checking caller ID. It was barely six o’clock, so odds were that the caller had bad news.
“Hello.” Audrey tipped the kettle and poured boiling hot water into her tea cup.
“Audrey, this is Don Hardy.”
Why is the mayor calling me? “Good morning, Mayor Hardy.” She set the kettle on the counter and dunked her tea bag down into the steaming water.
“My wife is going to need you this morning,” he said. “Can you come to our house as soon as possible?”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t understand. Why does—?”
“I just got off the phone with Sergeant Hudson. He thinks they’ve found my wife’s cousin, Debra.”
Audrey swallowed. Instinctively she knew without asking that the police had not found Debra Gregory alive.
“I see. It’s not good news.”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Our worst fears have been confirmed,” Don Hardy said. “Sergeant Hudson was on the scene when he called me. A passerby on his way to work just happened to see something he thought was odd and called the police. The officers first on the scene found a dead woman sitting in an old, broken rocking chair at an illegal dump site out in Soddy-Daisy.”
“And Garth believes the woman is your wife’s cousin?”
“Yes. She fits the general description, and your uncle said that she looks exactly like the photo the police have of Debra. If it is Debra, and I’m pretty sure it is, Janice is going to fall apart. They were very close. Debra was like a kid sister to my wife.”
“Do you want me to come to your home or—?” Audrey asked.
“Yes, please, as soon as possible. I … uh … I haven’t told Janice yet, but I can’t put it off much longer. I’ll have to leave her to go ID the body. Janice is Debra’s closest relative here in Chattanooga.”
“If you’ll give me your address and directions, I’ll be there within the hour.”
“Thank you.” He hurriedly rattled off the street address and then went over the driving directions with her twice.
Audrey laid the portable phone on the counter, picked up her cup, took two quick sips, and then dumped the tea into the sink before heading straight back to her bedroom. There was no time for breakfast or even a leisurely cup of morning tea.
J.D. had left Zoe a note stuck to the refrigerator with an orange and white UT emblem magnet. They had pretty much fallen into a routine during the past year, each giving the other plenty of space, neither able to truly connect with the other. Most weekday mornings, they ate breakfast together and he dropped her off at Baylor—the outrageously expensive private school she attended—on his way to the office. But whenever he was called out before breakfast—weekdays or weekends—he’d leave her a note as he had done this morning. Since it was Sunday, he wouldn’t have to make arrangements for someone to take her to school, and at fourteen, she was old enough to be left alone without adult supervision during the day.
After several come-to-Jesus talks with Zoe, he pretty much trusted her to do what she was told. She didn’t like it, but that’s just the way it was. She was a kid. He was her father. He made the rules. She followed them or else.
Or else what?
Damn it, sometimes he had no idea how to handle her.
She had pushed him to the limit more than once. He had grounded her, taken away certain privileges, and tried to talk sense to her. Only once had he threatened to send her packing. The fear he had seen in her eyes that day was something he never wanted to see again. As much as she hated living with him, as often as she grumbled and complained about how much she disliked him and what a piss-poor excuse for a father he was, Zoe knew he was the only game in town. Nobody else wanted her. If not for him, she would be living in foster care.
The thought unnerved him more than a little. He had heard the horror stories. He’d run across more than one juvenile delinquent who had come out of the system the worse for wear, neglected, and occasionally abused. If Carrie hadn’t gotten in touch with him before she died, if she hadn’t told him he had a daughter …
Pushing aside thoughts of how bad he sucked at being a father, J.D. took the Soddy-Daisy/Hixson Pike exit off US-27 North and followed Garth Hudson’s directions to the illegal dump site in Soddy-Daisy. After taking TN-319 and following Tsati Terrace, he veered off onto what appeared to be little more than a winding, narrow paved lane. Within minutes, he saw the row of emergency vehicles lined up along the roadside and the swarm of personnel already on site. He carefully parked his ’68 Dodge Charger at the end of the line, got out, and then walked a good two hundred yards before reaching the edge of the crime scene. Ordinarily, he didn’t use his dad’s old car as a daily driver, but his ’07 Chevy Camaro convertible was in the body shop. Some goofball had rear-ended him last week.
In a semiwooded area, less than twelve feet from the road, a band of investigators milled around a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot pile of discarded items. An old refrigerator. A ratty, seen-better-days love seat. A twin-size mattress. Empty paint cans. Several overflowing plastic garbage bags. And one old, broken rocking chair, the floral cushions faded with age and stained from exposure to the weather.
Tam Lovelady turned just as J.D. flashed his badge to the officer guarding the entrance to the cordoned-off area. She threw up her hand and motioned to him. As he approached Officer Lovelady and Sergeant Hudson, his gaze focused on the woman in the rocking chair. Her body sat upright, rigid, as if made of stone. Her pretty face was unblemished, her long, dark hair had been draped about her shoulders, and a small skeleton, wrapped in a blue baby blanket, lay nestled in her lap.
“Looks familiar, doesn’t it?” Tam said.
“Yeah,” J.D. replied. “This is too similar to the scene at the Lookout Valley Cracker Barrel to be a coincidence.”
“You think?” Garth Hudson said sarcastically.
J.D. grunted. “So, are you sure she’s Debra Gregory?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure,” Garth replied. “Mayor Hardy will ID the body. But for now, we’re working under the assumption that whoever killed Jill Scott killed Debra Gregory. Two abductions. Two murders. The skeletal remains of two babies left with the murder victims. It’s the same MO.”
J.D. took a step closer to the body and paused beside ME Peter Tipton. Pete watched while the photographer, working under his supervision, snapped shot after shot of the body and the skeleton.
“Asphyxiation,” Pete said.
“Huh?”
“Cause of death. She was probably smothered. Just like Jill Scott.”
J.D. pointed to the bundle in the victim’s lap. “Not a doll this time, either.”
“No, not a doll. Another child. About the same size. Probably about the same age.”
“So far, we don’t have any idea who the first child was, only that it was a male about two years old,” J.D. said. “Once we get the DNA results back … Hell, we haven’t identified the first child, and now we have another one.”
Pete glanced away from the body in the rocking chair and looked at J.D. “I hate to say it, but it appears we may have a really bizarre serial killer on our hands. A little profiling hoodoo”—Pete gestured with his hands—“might be in order about now.”
“Are you suggesting we involve the Feds?”
“Not unless you state boys can’t handle it,” Pete said. “I heard you’ve got some experience in that department.”
“Where’d you hear something like that?”
“Word gets around.”
“I’m just an amateur compared to the real thing.”
Only when Tam cleared her throat was J.D aware that she was standing nearby. “Sorry to interrupt, but I overheard the tail end of what y’all were saying, something about Special Agent Cass being familiar with profiling.”
“I know a little something,” J.D. admitted. “But if the CPD wants a profile of the killer, then I can put in a call to a buddy of mine at the Bureau or either of you can call the BSU.”
“I’ll run that by Sergeant Hudson.” Tam glanced at her partner, who was talking to one of the uniformed officers. “I don’t think he’ll object. As long as both the TBI and the FBI keep in mind that this is a CPD case and we’re in charge—”
“Enough said.” J.D. knew the drill.
Local law enforcement could be territorial, even if they wanted and needed assistance. When he’d been assigned to the Memphis field office, he’d had a bad run-in with a local county sheriff. The sheriff, a good old boy with a lot of influential friends, had come out of the confrontation smelling like a rose. J.D. had come out of it smelling like shit. He had learned his lesson the hard way, one of many. Not the first, of course, and God help him, probably not the last either.
“Unofficially, the three of us just talking among ourselves, do you have any gut feelings about this guy—a man who abducts pretty, young, dark-haired women, holds them hostage for a couple of weeks, smothers them, and then poses them in a rocking chair with the skeletal remains of a toddler?” Tam’s gaze connected with J.D.’s.
“Just the three of us talking among ourselves, I’d say this guy’s got some kind of mommy problem.” J.D. looked at the body in the rocking chair. “Maybe some sort of mommy and baby thing. Think about it—a rocking chair, a blue baby blanket, a dead child …”
“Makes sense,” Tam said. “But what you just said is pretty much a given, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, sure, but why put a dead child in her arms?” Pete asked. “What does that mean?”
J.D. shrugged. “Beats me. Unless, in his mind, he’s mimicking something.”
“What I want to know is where he got the two little skeletons,” Tam said. “There are no reports in Tennessee or any of the surrounding states about the graves of any children being dug up, no bodies reported being stolen.”
“Which leaves us with what?” J.D. asked.
Tam and Pete stared questioningly at J.D.
“The bodies probably belong to missing children.”
“Are you saying you think our killer murdered these little boys years ago and kept their bodies hidden away?” Tam asked.
“Possibly,” J.D. said. “Either that or he knew where whoever killed them had buried the bodies.”
Chapter 5
After Audrey’s arrival at his home that morning, Mayor Don Hardy had left his wife in Audrey’s capable hands—his assessment, not hers—and gone to the Forensics Center on Amnicola Highway to ID Debra’s body. Although understandably distraught over her cousin’s murder, Janice Hardy had managed to hold it together and not fall apart completely. What she had needed was to talk about Debra, about their close sisterlike relationship and how very much she would miss her cousin. Naturally, Janice had questioned how something so horrible could have happened. Why would anyone want to kill Debra? Or Jill Scott? Two lovely young women apparently killed without rhyme or reason, simply because they fit a certain profile. Young, slender, attractive, brown-eyed brunettes.
An hour ago, shortly before leaving the mayor’s home, Audrey had received a call from Tam. She had told Audrey that their lunch plans were unfortunately canceled, and then she had asked her to stop by headquarters that afternoon.
“Dad’s here with us,” Tam had said. “We’re putting our heads together and trying to make sense of things. Dad wants to talk to you, so would you mind dropping by as soon as you can?”
Audrey was supposed to have Sunday dinner with Tam and Marcus and Tam’s parents, but the discovery of Debra Gregory’s body that morning had changed everyone’s plans. Assuming that no one else had eaten lunch either, Audrey had stopped by the River Street Deli downtown and bought lunch for four. She figured the “we” Tam had referred to were Tam and Garth and Willie.
Audrey parked her cocoa brown Buick Enclave in the civilian parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center, across the highway on Wisdom Street. She hoisted her em-bossed black leather Coach bag over her shoulder and picked up the large sack from the passenger seat. Using the crosswalk between Amnicola Highway and Wisdom Street, she approached the 911 Center and the CPD headquarters housed in the two-story gray buildings.
Everyone at the police department knew Audrey. The old pros had known her all her life and there actually were a few of those still around, men like her uncle Garth and Willie Mullins. Some of the young guns were her friends and a few of them were childhood buddies, as Tam was. Others were acquaintances. She had worked, in an advisory capacity, with the CPD in the past, so no one raised an eyebrow when she showed up at headquarters on a Sunday afternoon. Normally, visitors had to be accompanied by police personnel beyond the front information center desk lobby area.
Audrey went up to the second floor of the PSC, where the patrol squad rooms were located. The door to the office that Garth now shared with Tam stood wide open. Just as Audrey approached, Garth must have sensed her presence. He turned and glared at her, not looking all that happy to see her. She held up the sack and waved it slowly back and forth to let him know that she came bearing gifts. Shaking his head as if reluctantly agreeing for her to join him, he motioned to her. Tam, who stood in the corner of the office, was on the phone. She glanced at Audrey and forced a weak smile.
Willie—Police Chief Mullins—sat behind Garth’s desk, his attention focused on the papers and photographs lying on the desktop in front of him. As a general rule, the chief didn’t come to headquarters on a Sunday afternoon. But there was a good chance the CPD was dealing with a serial killer and not your regular run-of-the-mill murderer. Both the mayor and the DA were probably breathing down Willie’s neck.
She often wondered if Willie missed being an investigator, if he missed working with his old partner, her dad. Of course, no one had forced him to take the police chief position. He could have taken the route her uncle Garth had and turned down chances for promotion just so he could stay in the field.
“I don’t want a desk job,” Garth had said more than once. “And I sure as hell don’t want to play politics.”
But Willie excelled in his new position. He had an even temper, an easygoing manner, and a keen intelligence that made him an excellent diplomat and a great leader. Garth was smart—street smart and book smart—but he was also temperamental, moody, not easy to get along with, and known for his hard drinking and womanizing.
“Thanks,” Tam said to the person on the other end of the line just before she ended their conversation. “Pete Tipton said that if or when another similar murder occurs, the TBI will send in a crime scene vehicle, either from Nashville or Knoxville. A third murder would erase all doubts about our having a serial killer on our hands.”
“Is there any doubt now?” Garth grumbled.
“He’s killed twice that we know of,” Willie said. “He’ll kill again. It’s only a matter of time before he kidnaps another woman.”
“And we don’t have a clue who he is or when and where he’ll strike again.” Tam looked from her father to Audrey. “What’s in that sack?”
Audrey placed the sack on Tam’s desk. “Sandwiches from the River Street Deli. One for each of us.”
“You’re not part of this investigative team,” Garth told her. “We’ve got a job to do. So thank you for the sandwiches. Leave them with us and go.”
“No,” Willie said. “Stay. We can take a break, long enough to eat together.” He looked right at Garth. “I want to talk to Audrey. I had Tam ask her to stop by. There are things she needs to know.”
Garth mumbled under his breath, but didn’t contradict his boss. Instead he said something about getting coffee and disappeared around the corner.
“He’s frustrated,” Willie told Audrey. “We all are. You know how Garth is.”
“Yes, I know only too well,” Audrey replied.
Tam opened the sack and removed the four sandwiches, but before handing them out, she looked to Audrey for information.
“Here, let me do that.” Audrey handed Willie a sandwich. “Roast beef, rare.” Then she placed a sandwich in front of Tam and laid another aside for herself. “A couple of their Elana Ruz sandwiches for us—turkey, cream cheese, and strawberry preserves.”
Tam sighed deeply. “If you weren’t already my best friend, you would be now.”
Audrey and Tam exchanged smiles.
Garth returned with two cups of coffee, gave one to Willie, and kept the second cup. “I figure you girls will want to doctor up your coffee to suit yourselves. I’ve got no idea how either of you want it.”
“I’ll get us both a Coke,” Tam said. “Does that suit you?”
“A Coke’s fine,” Audrey replied
“I’ll make yours regular and mine diet.”
Audrey nodded. She and Tam had different body types and different metabolisms. Tam was always dieting. Audrey had never dieted. But she suspected that eventually, probably in her fifties, that would change.
When Tam walked off, Audrey noticed that Willie was once again engrossed with some of the papers and photos spread out on Garth’s desk.
“Would I be out of order to ask what you’re looking at?” she asked.
“You know better than to ask,” Garth told her.
“Sorry.” Audrey eased away from the desk.
“It’s something we chose not to share with the media.” Willie glanced from Garth to Audrey. “But Audrey isn’t the media.”
“She’s not one of us, either,” Garth reminded the chief.
Choosing to ignore Garth’s comment, Willie said, “It’s something that we all find odd about how both bodies were staged.”
“Everything’s odd,” Garth said. “There’s nothing normal about it either.”
Willie glowered at Garth before turning back to Audrey. “It’s about what the two women held in their laps.”
“Jill Scott was holding a doll, right? Or at least that’s what everyone assumes. That’s what the reporters said. So, what was Debra Gregory holding?”
“The media present at the scene where Jill Scott’s body was discovered were kept at a distance and assumed they saw a doll lying in her lap.” Willie shuffled through the photos in front of him, chose two, and held them up to show Audrey. “It wasn’t a doll.”
Audrey stared at the crime scene photograph of Jill Scott. It took her brain several seconds to grasp the reality of what she saw. Her mouth parted to release a soft, startled gasp.
“It’s a … a skeleton.” Audrey took the photo from Willie and studied it more closely. “Oh my God! The killer laid the skeleton of a small child in Jill’s lap.”
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Tam said as she came back into the office.
“Then it’s real,” Audrey said, barely believing her own eyes. “It’s the actual skeletal remains of a human child?”
Tam set two colas on the desk, one by her sandwich and the other by Audrey’s. “All too real. We’re waiting on DNA results in the hopes we can identify the child, but the UT Body Farm has identified the remains of the child found with Jill Scott as a white male, probably between the ages of twenty and thirty-six months.”
“What about Debra Gregory? Was there a …?” Audrey couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“Yes, there was another child found in her lap,” Tam said. “About the same size.”
Willie stood and placed his big hand on Audrey’s shoulder. “Pete Tipton will examine the remains, take DNA samples from bone and teeth, and forward them to the lab.”
Audrey suddenly felt as if someone had dealt her a body blow hard enough to knock the wind out of her. For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t allow herself to accept the impossible possibility. Not now. Not after twenty-five years.
“Is there any chance that one of those little bodies could be …” She swallowed hard. “Could be …” She couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t say the unthinkable.
“It’s possible,” Tam said. “We’ll know as soon as the DNA testing is completed.”
“Oh, God, does my father know?” Audrey asked.
Whitney Poole hated her job, especially when she drew the Sunday lunch shift at Callie’s Café. Crowds of churchgoers descended on the restaurant in droves, and many of those good Christian people treated the waitresses as if they were unemotional robots. As if being yelled at, ordered around, and occasionally cursed wasn’t bad enough, the cheapskates who ate at Callie’s because they could buy a meat and three vegetables for $5.99 were definitely not big tippers.
Whitney glanced at her wristwatch—4:15 P.M.—and smiled when she realized her shift would end in fifteen minutes. Her feet ached, her head hurt, and she probably had a bruise on her butt from where a customer had pinched her. The son of a bitch had actually pinched her ass. When she’d given him a nasty look and told him to keep his hands to himself, he and his two buddies had whooped loudly in her face.
After going from table to table and refilling coffee cups and tea glasses, she hurried to print out the bills for her two remaining tables. One was a blond guy sitting all alone. He seemed quiet and shy and hadn’t said another word to her after placing his order. He had simply answered when asked if he wanted more tea or a dessert. He had declined both. He’d been pleasant enough, although he hadn’t smiled at her or anyone else, but she had caught him staring at her a couple of times, and the way he’d looked at her had sent chills up her spine. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was about him that spooked her; she just knew that he did, despite the fact that he was young and good-looking.
She laid his check on the table, asked if he wanted anything else, and turned to go to the next table.
“Wait,” he called to her.
She hesitated, feeling a sense of dread spreading quickly through her; but she turned, smiled, and said, “Yes, sir?”
He held up a five-dollar bill. “I just wanted to make sure you got your tip.”
She stared at the money in his hand for a couple of seconds, then snatched it away from him and said, “Thank you.”
He rose to his feet so quickly that before she had time to move, he was facing her, only a couple of inches separating their bodies. Instinctively, she moved backward, forced another smile, and rushed to the next table. By the time she laid down the check and glanced back, the man was walking out the door. She released a heavy breath, glad to see him leaving.
But suddenly he stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and smiled at her.
The only thought that came to mind was something her grandmother had said whenever she got a peculiar feeling. I feel as if somebody just walked over my grave.
Get real, Whit. Just because that guy was sort of creepy doesn’t mean you should freak out or anything.
By the time 4:30 rolled around, she had all but forgotten her weird customer. The only thing on her mind was her Sunday night date with Travis. He was bringing over pizza and a DVD. They’d eat, watch the movie, and then do the nasty. They’d been dating a couple of months. Nothing serious. At least not yet. But neither of them was seeing other people. That meant something, didn’t it? He hadn’t said the L-word and neither had she, but she already knew she loved him. And she knew better than to push him. She’d done that before, with disastrous results. Danny had walked away and never looked back, leaving her with a broken heart. That had been nearly two years ago. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Travis. She’d wait for him to make the first move, to say “I love you,” and take their relationship to the next level.
Whitney dug the car keys out of her Wal-Mart red purse and slung it over her shoulder as she exited Callie’s Café through the back entrance. When she reached her Honda Civic, a reliable used car she’d bought last year, she paused when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was watching her. She could feel it.
Play it cool. Don’t panic. It’s broad daylight. You aren’t alone. There are people inside the restaurant and probably out here, too.
She glanced around casually, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. Besides the other employees’ vehicles, she counted three other cars, all three empty. And she didn’t see another soul anywhere in the parking lot. No one was following her. No one was watching her.
After hurriedly unlocking her car, she slid behind the wheel, closed the door, locked it, and tossed her purse into the passenger seat. While starting the engine, she surveyed the parking lot again and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But just as she drove into the street, she spotted an older-model car parked across the road at the nearby Kangaroo gas station and mini-mart. A man stood beside a white Lincoln, the driver’s door open, and he was looking right at her.
My God, it was the weirdo from the restaurant, the one who had given her the five-dollar tip.
Her heartbeat accelerated.
What would she do if he followed her?
You’ll drive to the nearest police station, that’s what you’ll do.
For the next few blocks, she kept looking in her rearview mirror to see if he was following her. He wasn’t. No sign of his big old car or one that even vaguely resembled it.
If that guy ever came back to Callie’s Café, she’d ask one of the other waitresses to take his order. And if he ever dared to follow her when she left the restaurant, she’d sic the cops on him.
She was the one. He had known the minute he saw her. Everything about her was familiar, everything from her long, dark hair to her young, slender body and full, round breasts.
Her name tag had read Whitney.
But she couldn’t fool him.
He knew who she was.
He always recognized her.
I’m going to take you home, where you belong. I need you. We need you, Cody and I.
A child needs his mother. Someone to love him. Someone to rock him and sing to him. Someone to ease his suffering when he’s in pain.
I’ve taken very good care of Cody. I’ve made sure you will be with him forever so he will never be alone again. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll help you make everything right.
It’s what you need in order to rest in peace. It’s what Cody needs so that his little soul can go to heaven and the two of you can be together for all eternity.
He drove out of the parking area there at the gas station/mini-mart and slipped unobserved into the late Sunday afternoon traffic. His plans to follow her to wherever she was staying now went up in smoke the minute he realized that she had recognized him standing there across the street from Callie’s Café. Why she always resisted when he tried to take her home, he didn’t know. She always pretended she was someone else, someone who didn’t know him, someone who had no idea why she was so desperately needed.
Now that he had found her again, all he had to do was wait for the right moment to approach her when they could be alone. Just the two of them.
Chapter 6
Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time. They came at life from two different angles. Always had and always would. Her step-uncle was relentlessly stubborn and refused to accept anyone else’s viewpoint. He felt that he was right and everyone else was wrong. No opinion mattered except his. Audrey could be stubborn and fought for what she believed in, but she tried to keep an open mind and was willing to listen to other opinions and be proven wrong in any argument.
“Wayne doesn’t need to know about this,” Garth repeated adamantly. “We have no proof that either of those toddler skeletons is Blake.” His brow furrowed deeply as he scrunched his face in a surly scowl.
“I think my father should be told,” Audrey said, keeping her voice calm and even. “If he finds out that we kept this information from him, he’ll be very upset. He won’t appreciate us trying to protect him.”
“God damn it, Audrey, there’s nothing to protect him from!” Garth shouted. When Willie gave him a concerned glance, Garth lowered his voice. “The odds of either child being Blake are slim to none. Why put Wayne through hell all over again?”
“But what if this turns out to be a one-in-a-million coincidence and somehow—”
“Neither of them is Blake!” Garth cut her off midsentence. “The very idea that those two little skeletons might somehow be connected to a string of toddler kidnappings more than twenty years ago is a far-fetched notion. We are not digging up ghosts that are better left buried. We are going to keep Wayne out of this. Do you hear me?”
“Wayne Sherrod is one of my closest friends,” Willie said. “He has been for a good thirty-five years, and I think I know him as well as anybody.” Willie glanced from Audrey to Garth. “I’m calling him. We’ll tell him together, the four of us. No matter what, he would want to know, even if there’s only a slim possibility that either of those poor little boys is Blake.”
Garth grumbled a string of partially incoherent obscenities so quietly that the words were barely audible, but his disapproval came through loud and clear.
When Garth stomped off, went downstairs, and headed toward the exit, Audrey followed him, leaving Willie to telephone her father. She caught up with her uncle in the parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removed one, and stuck it in his mouth. After replacing the pack, he lifted a lighter from his pants pocket and lit the cigarette.
Audrey walked up beside him. “Are you okay?”
Garth puffed on the cigarette, his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched. “Yeah, sure.”
“I almost wish one of those skeletons would turn out to be Blake.”
Garth took several more drags off his cigarette, tossed it on the pavement, and ground it into pieces with the toe of his shoe. He gave Audrey a sideways glance. “Do you really think that would make it any easier for Wayne?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. In most cases, closure is a good thing.”
“Closure my ass. That’s psycho mumbo jumbo. How’s it better to know for sure your son is dead than to hold on to hope that he’s still alive out there somewhere?”
“Because we both know that statistics, logic, and hard, cold facts tell us that there is practically no chance that Blake is still alive,” Audrey said. “You and Willie and Dad and everyone on the force, back when Regina Bennett was arrested, said that more than likely Blake was one of her many victims. Of the six toddler boys who were abducted, only one survived. The last one. And only because he was rescued before she killed him.”
“Yeah.” Garth lifted his gaze and faced Audrey. “Blake probably was one of her victims, but we have no proof that the skeletons found with Jill Scott and Debra Gregory belong to any of those missing toddlers.”
“No, not yet.”
Audrey’s gut instinct told her that there was a connection, that after twenty-five years, they were finally going to bring Blake home.
J.D. kept the different parts of his life separated as much as possible. Of course, there were times when the various parts of a guy’s life overlapped whether he wanted them to or not. His job as TBI agent J.D. Cass comprised the bulk of his waking hours, five days a week and sometimes on Saturday and Sunday. The man J.D. was a loner for the most part who ventured into short-term relationships for a little female companionship in and out of the bedroom. The family guy J.D. had lost his parents years ago, but he kept in touch with his kid sister, Julia, and usually spent Christmas with her in Nashville. And now J.D. had to include fatherhood as a sub-compartment under the family guy heading. Admittedly the role of parent didn’t come easy to a confirmed bachelor who had sworn off committed relationships when his shipwreck of a marriage finally sank.
Just when a man thought he had everything under control was usually when fate threw him a curveball. Zoe had sure as hell been one of those totally unexpected pitches. And he had a stomach-knotting feeling that Dr. Audrey Sherrod just might be another one.
Holly Johnston, on the other hand, was exactly what he wanted, a woman who wasn’t any more interested in a commitment than he was.
Holly had invited him to a late lunch today, lunch that she had assured him would include dessert.
“Something hot and spicy and oh so sweet,” she’d promised. “I’ll serve it to you au naturel on silk sheets.”
Since Holly hadn’t phoned him until ten o’clock that morning, he’d already halfway promised Zoe that they’d go to the movies that afternoon. Lucky for him, a group of her classmates was going to Hamilton Place to shop until the mall closed, and she’d been happily surprised when he’d changed his mind and told her she could go. Since Jacy Oliver’s aunt was chaperoning, he figured the woman would keep an eye on the girls.
With Zoe off with friends and far happier than she would have been spending the afternoon with him, J.D. had the rest of the day for himself since, at that point, he wasn’t officially assigned to either Jill Scott’s or Debra Gregory’s murder case. Until his boss told him anything different, he wasn’t going to stick his nose any farther into CPD business.
When he arrived at Holly’s, as promised, she provided a late gourmet lunch—no doubt ordered from a nearby restaurant—and did indeed deliver a delectable dessert in her bed, on her hot pink silk sheets. The lady sure did have a way with her hands and mouth. Years of experience had honed her bedroom skills. If there was one thing Holly Johnston did well outside of her profession as an ADA, it was sexually pleasing a man.
After a second vigorous round of hot and heavy, J.D. lay there completely spent, his hips and legs tangled in the top sheet. Holly rested beside him, her luscious body uncovered, a fine sheen of perspiration glistening on her skin from forehead to knees. As she sighed contentedly, she turned over and propped her elbow on the pillow as she looked down at J.D.
When she continued staring at him without saying anything, he grinned. “What?” he asked.
“If I were a different kind of woman, I think you would be on my top ten list of candidates.”
If he didn’t know Holly so well, her statement might have unnerved him. “Candidate for what?”
She laughed. “For a husband, of course.”
“God forbid.” He lifted his hand and ran his index finger over her throat and down between her large, round breasts. “I tried that once. I made a lousy husband.”
She caught his caressing hand and lifted it off her naked body. “I have no doubt of that.” She sat up, twisted around, and placed her feet on the carpeted floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she ran her tongue across her lips in a playfully seductive manner. “If all I wanted in a husband was a big dick and mind-blowing sex, you’d be my number one candidate, but when I eventually get married, it won’t be for sex or even for love.”
Holly got out of bed, picked up the satin robe lying on the floor, and slipped into the semisheer knee-length garment.
“I believe that was a backhanded compliment.” J.D. untangled his legs from the sheet and shot up off the bed. When he reached out and grabbed Holly from behind, she didn’t protest.
Just as she turned in his arms and lifted her face for a kiss, his phone rang. He eyed the pile of clothes on the floor where his phone lay atop his slacks.
“Let it go to voice mail.” Holly rubbed herself against him.
“I would, but I’ve got a kid, remember?”
Holly moaned. “You have my sympathy.” She disengaged herself from his loose hold and headed toward the bathroom.
J.D. bent down and picked up his phone. The caller I.D. read Cara Oliver. Damn! He figured Cara Oliver was Jacy Oliver’s aunt, the one who was chaperoning Jacy, Zoe, and their friends at the mall.
So help me, Zoe, if you’ve done something stupid, I’m going to—!
The incessant ringing reminded J.D. that instead of assuming the worst about his daughter, he should simply answer the phone and find out what was what.
“J.D. Cass,” he said when he took the call.
“Mr. Cass, this is Cara Oliver,” the soft, concerned voice said. “I’m Jacy’s aunt.”
“Is something wrong, Ms. Oliver?” Please, God, please let her say no.
“I—I don’t know quite how to say this, but … well, Zoe is missing.”
“What!”
“I take full responsibility,” Cara Oliver said. “The girls were sitting in the food court. We’d just gotten ice cream and … I went to the restroom and when I came back, the girls were gone.”
“Are all the girls missing?”
“No. I found Jacy, Presley, and Reesa, but when I asked them where Zoe was, they swore they didn’t know. But …”
“But?” J.D. demanded.
“But I think they know something.”
“Are you still at the mall?”
“Yes. We’re here at the food court.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.”
“It’s not your fault, Ms. Oliver. Zoe is a very resourceful girl and if she wanted to slip away from your watchful eye, she’d have found a way regardless of what you did or didn’t do.”
J.D. tossed the phone on the bed, picked up his clothes, and dressed quickly. He didn’t have time for even a quick, much-needed shower. Just as he slipped the phone into the belt holder, Holly came out of the bathroom.
“Leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry, babe. Fatherhood duties call.”
Holly raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Zoe’s pulled a disappearing act. I have to go find her.”
“I hate to hear that. Since our acts one and two were so exciting, I was really looking forward to act three.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then swatted her behind. “I’ll call you later.”
“And I may or may not be available.”
J.D. chuckled as he walked toward the door, but by the time he exited Holly’s apartment, his thoughts had turned completely to his daughter.
Damn it, Zoe, what are you up to now?
At sixty-one, Wayne Sherrod was still a good-looking man. Tall, robust, broad shouldered. He kept his thick, silvery white hair cut short and was, as he always had been, clean-shaven and neat. A medic in Vietnam when he’d been barely nineteen, Wayne never spoke of what had to have been a horrific experience. Audrey could never remember a time in her entire life when she’d heard her father talk about his past. Nothing about being a child, a teenager, or a soldier. During her lifetime, he’d always been a police officer, and according to those who knew him best, he’d been a damn fine lawman.
But he’d been a terrible father, especially after he and her mother had divorced. Maybe, if Blake had lived …
When her father entered the second floor of the PSC, she wanted to rush to him, put her arms around him, and tell him she was there for him. How stupid was that? After a lifetime of being mostly ignored and often neglected by her dad, a part of her still longed for a genuine father/daughter relationship. Just once, she wanted to hear Wayne Sherrod tell her that he loved her.
Head held high, shoulders squared and straight, he marched toward Garth’s office, the door open and the four of them waiting anxiously as he approached.
Willie cleared his throat. “Let me do the talking.”
“For the record, I’m against doing this,” Garth told them for the umpteenth time since Willie had phoned Wayne.
Standing at her side, Tam reached down and grasped Audrey’s clenched fist. Audrey looked at her best friend, relaxed her fingers, clutched Tam’s hand, and gave it a hard squeeze.
Wayne paused in the doorway, surveyed the foursome, and settled his gaze on Willie. “What’s this about?”
“Come on in and close the door,” Willie said.
Hesitating only momentarily, Wayne did as his old friend had asked. Once they were enclosed privately in Garth’s office, he glared at Audrey. Instead of averting her gaze, she stared right back at him. The days when her father could intimidate her with a hard, cold glare were long gone.
“Take a seat.” Willie indicated a wooden chair to the right of the desk.
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“We’re not all in agreement about this,” Garth said. “If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
“Doing what?” Wayne’s brow furrowed with curiosity and concern as he focused on Garth. “What the hell’s going on? Whatever it is, just spit it out.” Wayne narrowed his gaze and directed it toward Willie.
“We’ve had two young women abducted and murdered,” Willie said.
“Two?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah. Debra Gregory’s body was found this morning. Same MO as the Jill Scott murder.”
“I hate to hear that, but what does either murder have to do with me?”
“Not a damn thing!” Garth stomped across the room until he stood in front of his brother-in-law.
Puzzlement clear in Wayne’s brown eyes, he ignored Garth and asked Willie again, “What do the murders of these two women have to do with me?”
“The information I’m going to share with you hasn’t been released to the public and it won’t be for as long as we can possibly keep it under wraps,” Willie said. “Both women were found sitting in rocking chairs, as everyone knows. Both were holding blanket-wrapped bundles in their arms. The press has stated that they assume the women were holding dolls.”
“But they weren’t, were they?” Wayne glanced at Audrey.
She forced herself not to look away, to hold her gaze steady and not to back down from the coldness in her father’s eyes.
“No, both women were holding the skeletal remains of what have been identified as human males, probably between two and three years old.”
Wayne didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink. He stood there so quiet, so rigid, that he could have been mistaken for a marble statue.
“Wayne?” Willie called his name.
He didn’t respond.
“Daddy?” Audrey said. And when he didn’t reply, she walked over and laid her hand on his arm. He stiffened instantly. “They haven’t identified the remains,” she told him. “Not yet. It’s possible that neither—”
“You think one of them could be Blake, don’t you?” Her father glanced at where her hand rested on his upper arm. He pulled away from her and confronted Willie. “That’s what this is about. You think …” He gulped hard. “You believe it’s possible that one of the bodies—one of the skeletons—is my son.”
“I tried to tell them that there’s no way in hell that either could be Blake.” Garth gripped Wayne’s shoulder.
Wayne took a deep breath. “No one can be that certain. And if there’s one chance in a billion … I want to know. You’ll need a DNA sample. I assume mine will do. If not, I still have …” He closed his eyes for half a second. “I have Blake’s hairbrush, his toothbrush ….”
Oh, Daddy … Daddy.
Tears choked Audrey, tears that threatened to escape and overflow.
Poor Daddy. Poor little Blake.
If he hadn’t been so damn pissed at Zoe, he might have appreciated what a lovely woman Cara Oliver was. Late twenties, big brown eyes, and a mane of thick auburn hair that framed a face blessed with attractive features. Even in jeans and an oversized cotton sweater, she couldn’t hide the appeal of her slender yet curvy body.
“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.” Cara gazed up at him pleadingly.
J.D. offered her a forced smile. “Don’t blame yourself.
It’s not your fault. Zoe’s a handful. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled a stunt like this.”
“I’ve spoken to the girls again and I’m sure they know something. But they’re not talking.” She glanced at the threesome, who sat with eyes downcast at a nearby table in the food court.
“Mind if I talk to them?”
“No, please, be my guest.” Cara huffed in exasperation.
When J.D. approached the girls, they scooted their chairs closer together. He looked from one to another. Jacy had the same dark red hair and brown eyes as her aunt, but was not as pretty. Presley was cute as a button, with curly brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her pert little nose. And blond, blue-eyed Reesa possessed the promise of becoming a real femme fatale in the tradition of a long list of bosomy Hollywood blondes.
J.D. grabbed an empty chair, turned it around, and sat down, straddling his legs around the back and resting his arms on the top of the frame. “Where’s Zoe?”
Silence.
“Jacy, where’s my daughter?”
Jacy hazarded a glance at J.D. “I don’t know.” She quickly cast her gaze downward again.
“Presley?”
She stared at him, a look of sheer terror in her hazel eyes. “I—I don’t know where she is, Mr. Cass. I don’t.”
“Reesa?”
She smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the long sleeves of her colorful T-shirt, then lifted her head and smiled at him. “Zoe’s all right. You don’t have to worry about her. She’ll come home when she’s ready to.”
“Hush,” Jacy warned.
“You promised,” Presley chimed in simultaneously.
“Oh, get over it,” Reesa told her friends. “I didn’t promise Zoe anything. You two did. And I’m not going to be given the third degree by her dad, who I’m sure knows all kinds of ways to make us talk since he’s a TBI agent.” Reesa batted her eyelashes at J.D.
Good God, the child is actually flirting with me.
“Aunt Cara,” Jacy wailed. “You won’t let him give us the third degree, will you?”
Cara managed to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’ve already given Mr. Cass … uh … Special Agent Cass permission to do just that, if he believes it’s necessary.”
Tears filled Presley’s eyes. Jacy whimpered.
Reesa snorted. “You two are pathetic. He can’t do anything without your parents’ permission.” She looked at J.D. “Can you?”
“Is that what you girls want?” he asked. “You want to involve your parents?”
“Zoe’s with my brother Dawson,” Presley blurted out.
J.D. grimaced. His daughter was with some boy doing God only knew what. “How old is Dawson?”
“He’s sixteen,” Presley said.
Well, at least the boy was just that—a boy. “Where did Zoe and Dawson go?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Presley looked him in the eye.
He could tell that she wasn’t lying. She was too frightened to lie.
“They just went for a ride in his new car,” Reesa said. “They wanted to have some fun, to be alone together. There’s no crime in that, is there?”
Reesa was a little smart aleck, but she was not his problem. Zoe was.
“He’ll take her home,” Presley said. “It’s not as if they’ve eloped or anything like that.”
“Thank God for small favors,” J.D. grumbled under his breath, then told Presley, “Call Zoe. She won’t answer her phone if she sees I’m the one calling her. Tell her that her father said to get her butt home ASAP if she knows what’s good for her.”
“Er … ah … yes, sir.”
Presley placed the call and they all waited for Zoe to answer. And then Presley gasped, “What? Oh my God, no! Are you okay? Is Dawson okay?”
“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, his heart beating ninety-to-nothing. When Presley stared at him wide-eyed and her mouth agape, he snatched her phone out of her hand and said, “Zoe, this is your father. What the hell is going on?”
“Oh, J.D., please help us.” Zoe sounded desperate.
“Are you all right? Where are you? What’s happened?”
“Don’t be angry. Please don’t be angry.”
“Zoe!”
“We’re in jail.”
Chapter 7
Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He had hated the pity he’d seen in Willie’s eyes and the sympathetic expression on Tam’s face. He hated that Garth was in denial and preferred to dismiss the possibility that one of the dead toddlers might be Blake. He understood that Garth simply couldn’t accept the fact that Blake was dead. It had taken Wayne years to accept the truth. Yeah, sure, somewhere deep down inside him a glimmer of hope still existed, but he knew only too well how illogical that hope was. Blake was dead. The odds were that he had been one of Regina Bennett’s victims. Wayne had visited the crazy bitch in the mental hospital twice, and both times he had come away with more questions than answers.
Just as he started to open the door to his Chevy Silverado, he heard footsteps behind him and knew without turning around that Audrey had followed him.
Go away, girl. Go away and leave me alone.
“Daddy …?”
He gripped the door handle with bone-crushing strength.
Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your sympathy or your comfort.”
“No, you never did, did you?”
Without so much as glancing over his shoulder, Wayne climbed up into the cab of his truck and slammed the door. After starting the engine, he buckled his seat belt and put the gear into reverse. As he drove out of the parking area, he caught a glimpse of his daughter in his peripheral vision. She stood alone, tall, slender, and elegant, and looking so much like her mother.
I’m sorry, little girl. Sorry I’ve been such a worthless father. I’m sorry for so many things.
If he could go back to when Audrey had been a baby, to when he’d been madly in love with Norma, there were so many things he’d do differently. But he couldn’t go back. A guy didn’t get any second chances in this life. He had loved two women and he’d lost them both. And he’d fathered two children and had lost both of them, too. Death had taken Blake from him. And his own stupidity had lost him his daughter.
As he made his way down Amnicola Highway and hit 153, his mind swirling with memories and an ache in his gut growing more painful by the minute, Wayne wanted only one thing—to forget. He didn’t want to remember Norma Colton. How beautiful she’d been. How he had adored her. How she had felt lying beneath him. How sweet her lips had tasted. How badly he had disappointed her by being unable to give her all the love and attention she craved. He hadn’t understood why she’d had to be so possessive, so demanding. The more she had clung to him, the more he had pulled away.
I’m sorry, Norma. God, I am so sorry. I wish I had been able to give you what you needed. I wish I had realized that you were the love of my life. I wish I’d had the chance to tell you.
The late-afternoon sun sank low on the eastern horizon, a blaze of color spreading across the sky. Wayne sucked in a long, hard breath. He had made more than his share of mistakes, and others had paid the price. Not that he hadn’t suffered, wasn’t still suffering, but he deserved it. Neither of his wives had. And God knew, neither of his children had.
Where Norma had been effervescent, giggling and talkative and loving all the time, Enid had been a quiet, reserved woman with a gentle nature. He had fallen in love with her and her son, Hart, too. In the beginning, they’d had a good marriage—or so he’d thought—and he’d been content. But even before Blake’s birth, he had begun to notice little things about Enid’s behavior, things that he later realized were signs of her mental illness. But he had chosen to ignore those signs. After all, his life had been good, hadn’t it? There had been no need to make mountains out of molehills.
If only … Famous last words. If only he had paid more attention to Enid’s strange behavior. If only he had admitted that after Blake’s birth, she had needed professional help. But a quarter of a century ago, people didn’t talk much about the various types of mental illnesses, about things like bipolar disorder or postpartum depression.
I’m sorry, Enid. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were sick, that you had suffered with mood swings and severe bouts of depression since childhood. Sorry that I didn’t realize until it was too late.
Wayne turned onto Meadow Hill Drive and slowed his truck to the neighborhood speed limit of twenty-five as he drew near his destination. The three-bedroom, two-bath red brick ranch house with the neatly manicured lawn and rose bushes lining one side of the concrete drive beckoned to him as it had for so many years. Inside this house, he would find, as he always did, warmth and caring, understanding, and a few hours of forgetfulness.
He had already rung the doorbell before he thought that maybe he should have called first. But when Grace Douglas opened the door and stood there smiling up at him, every thought except what a wonderful sight she was left his mind.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Grace said as she stepped back to allow him into her home. When he remained silent, simply looking at her, drinking her in, her smile disappeared. “Wayne, what’s wrong?”
The moment he closed the door behind him, she opened her arms and wrapped them around him. When she laid her head on his chest, he enclosed her soft, womanly body in a tender embrace and the weight of the world dropped from his overburdened shoulders.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Grace said as she lifted her head from his chest and gazed lovingly up at him.
He reached down and cradled her face with both hands. “Have I told you lately how very important you are to me?”
Her lips curved in a fragile smile. “Not lately, no, but you don’t have to tell me for me to know, because I feel the same way.” She took his hand in hers and led him through the living room and into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Sit down and I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee.”
When she pulled away from him to prepare the coffee, he grasped her wrist. She looked back at him.
“I guess the coffee can wait,” she said.
He slid out a chair from the table, sat down, and then eased her onto his lap. She draped her arm around his neck.
Grace Douglas was round and plump, with wide hips and full breasts. She was a kind, giving woman with a heart as big as Texas. He doubted most folks ever noticed the sadness in her pretty blue eyes, a sadness that he understood in a way no one else in her life did.
He ran the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She closed her eyes and quietly sighed.
“Could we talk, later?” he asked. “I promise I’ll explain everything. But right now …” He glided his hand down her neck, across her shoulder, and opened his palm to cup one breast.
Right now, he needed to forget. He needed to lose himself in this beautiful, loving woman. There would be time enough later that evening to tell her about the unidentified skeletons of two toddler boys. Skeletons that might be the remains of his son Blake and her son Shane.
The minute J.D. entered police headquarters, he spotted his daughter. She rose from the chair where she sat alongside a tattooed, nose-ringed boy with scraggly brown hair and a surly expression.
When a uniformed police officer said something to her, Zoe cried, “But it’s my father. Please, let me tell him what happened.”
The officer nodded. Zoe came running toward J.D. and hurled herself at him. Instinct took over and he put his arms around her in a comforting, fatherly way.
“I wasn’t drinking,” Zoe told him. “I swear to God, I wasn’t drinking. Not even a beer.”
The young officer, who looked all of twenty-five, lean, blond, and clean-cut, walked over to J.D. “Special Agent Cass?” He offered J.D. his hand. “I’m Officer Karns. Ryan Karns.”
“Yeah, I’m J.D. Cass.” He shook the man’s hand. “So, what’s going on here?” He glanced from Zoe to Officer Karns.
“Your daughter isn’t under arrest, but we had to hold her, of course, until a parent could pick her up,” Karns said. “The boy she was with was speeding not two miles from here, and when a patrolman tried to pull him over, he raced off doing close to a hundred. Lucky for him and your daughter, he didn’t wreck.”
“Dawson just panicked, J.D.” Zoe grabbed his arm. “He’d been drinking a beer and he didn’t want to get a DUI. That’s why he ran.”
J.D. glowered at his daughter.
“Whatever possessed you to go off with that boy?” J.D. glanced at the sulking young hunk who glared back at him.
“Dawson’s my boyfriend,” Zoe snapped angrily.
“Like hell he is. You’re fourteen. You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, J.D. gave her a warning stare and said, “Not another word out of you.”
“Young lady,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Is my daughter free to go?” J.D. asked Officer Karns.
“Yes, sir, she is.”
“No, damn it, I won’t leave without Dawson.” Zoe planted her hands on her slender hips and shot her father a challenging glare.
“You’ll leave,” J.D. told her. “Either under your own power or thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Your choice … young lady.”
“I’m afraid Dawson isn’t free to go,” Officer Karns explained. “Not only was he speeding, but he was driving under the influence, endangering himself and others. He failed the breathalyzer test. He had a BrAC of 0.09.”
“He was just drinking beer,” Zoe told them, adamant in Dawson’s defense.
“Whatever he was drinking doesn’t matter,” J.D. informed her. “A reading of 0.08 is considered intoxicated, and the number drops even lower for anyone under the age of twenty-one. Dawson’s sixteen.”
“We’ve contacted Dawson’s parents. They’re out of town, so we’ll be holding him at the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center until they get back in town.”
When J.D. refused to help Dawson, Zoe began mouthing off again, threatening all sorts of outlandish things. The wayward teen was his parents’ problem, not J.D.’s. He had enough trouble with Zoe.
In the middle of his daughter’s tirade and just as J.D. was at his wits’ end, he heard a calm, soothing female voice ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Evening, Dr. Sherrod.” Officer Karns’s shoulders drooped wearily, as if he, too, were at the end of his rope. No doubt he had counted on J.D. being able to control his fourteen-year-old daughter since he wasn’t sure how to deal with the hysterical girl.
Apparently, Audrey Sherrod had been visiting her uncle and had just walked out of his office. However, it wasn’t Garth Hudson who accompanied her, but Chief Mullins. The chief gave Audrey a quick, fatherly peck on the cheek and whispered something to her, then nodded to Officer Karns and headed for the exit.
Dr. Sherrod’s question had startled Zoe into complete silence. She stood there staring at the woman as if she were an alien who had just stepped out of a spaceship from Mars.
“I … uh … I don’t know if you can help.” Karns looked from Audrey Sherrod to J.D. “It’s up to you, Special Agent Cass.”
J.D. surveyed the woman from head to toe. Sublimely cool and controlled, Audrey looked him right in the eye. Despite the unseasonably hot and humid September day and the warm pink flush on her cheeks, she was perfectly groomed, not a silky brown hair out of place, her makeup flawless, her slacks and sweater unwrinkled.
J.D. didn’t want her help. Didn’t need her help. But he was in no position to be rude. All he wanted was to take Zoe home and ground her for the rest of her life. Well, at least until she was thirty. Apparently Dr. Sherrod was well-known and respected here at police headquarters and no doubt on as friendly terms with the chief as she was Officer Lovelady, the chief’s daughter.
“If you think you can help, then by all means help.” J.D. resented Dr. Sherrod’s interference. Resented it like hell. “I didn’t realize that your area of expertise included soothing smart-mouthed, disrespectful teenage girls.”
Audrey’s hazel brown eyes glimmered as she settled her gaze on him, a sure sign she recognized his comment as an insult as well as a challenge. Turning up her haughty little nose, she said, “There is usually a reason behind such behavior.” She turned to Zoe. “Hi, I’m Audrey Sherrod. I’m a professional counselor and occasionally I work with the police in an advisory capacity. If you think I can help you, then tell me how and I’ll see what I can do.”
Zoe kept staring at Audrey for several moments as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Finally, she said, “I’m Zoe Davidson.”
“Nice to meet you, Zoe. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Dawson is the one who needs help, but my father won’t help him.”
“I see.” She glanced at J.D., a questioning look in her eyes. “And what do you expect your father to do?”
“Get Dawson out of this mess,” Zoe replied. “My dad’s a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent. He could take care of this for Dawson if he wanted to, but he doesn’t like Dawson because he thinks I’m too young to have a boyfriend.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Hmm … I had a boyfriend when I was fourteen, and my father didn’t like him.”
Zoe smiled at J.D. triumphantly. Great. Just what he needed. A damn female shrink who apparently agreed with his daughter.
“Ryan, what are the charges against Dawson?” Audrey asked.
Officer Karns rattled off a list of offenses, everything from reckless driving to resisting arrest, with half a dozen other complaints in between, including DUI, resisting stop and frisk, and reckless endangerment.
“I see. I assume you’ve contacted his parents.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And is there anything Special Agent Cass can do for Dawson, any way he can take the boy with him when he and Zoe leave?”
“No, ma’am. Dawson Cummings is going to be spending the night in juvenile tonight. Once his parents arrive and his bond is posted, he’ll be released into their custody.”
“Zoe’s very concerned about Dawson,” Audrey told Officer Karns. “Can you give her some kind of reassurance that he’ll be well treated and no harm will come to him until his parents can arrange for his release?”
J.D. watched and listened, completely dumbfounded by the way Zoe was reacting to Audrey Sherrod. Hadn’t he been saying pretty much the same things to her? Why was she paying attention to a stranger when all she’d done was scream at her own father?
“Yes, ma’am.” The young policeman looked directly at Zoe. “I give you my word that Dawson will be okay until his parents can take him home. He’s drunk and belligerent and he’s mouthed off and, yes, he’s in big trouble. But his folks will get him a good lawyer and since this is his first arrest, he’ll probably wind up with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.”
“There, Zoe, Officer Karns has given you his word.” Audrey placed her hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “I’m sure if you go home with your father now and apologize to him for some of the things you said to him, you and he will be able to come to an understanding about Dawson.” Audrey looked at J.D. “Isn’t that right, Special Agent Cass?”
J.D. snorted. Damn her. She’d put him on the spot. He nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
When Audrey turned to go, Zoe called, “Wait. Don’t leave.”
Audrey paused and glanced over her shoulder.
“Uh … J.D. and I, we don’t communicate all that well. We both always wind up saying the wrong things.” Zoe gazed pleadingly at Audrey. “Was it like that for you and your dad?”
J.D. noted the slight hesitation and the quickly concealed odd expression as it crossed Audrey’s face.
“Yes, Zoe, it was. My father and I had communication problems, too.”
“Are all fathers like that? I mean, do all of them think you’re still a baby when you’re not? Do they all try to run your life and assume they know what’s best for you even when they’re wrong?”
“Yes, to some extent all fathers are like that, so it’s up to daughters during their teen years to be patient and understanding and do their best not to give their fathers a heart attack. Of course, giving him a few gray hairs is a different matter. That’s a given.”
Zoe looked at J.D., and she and Audrey laughed.
Yeah, funny. He hadn’t missed the joke. His hair had already begun turning prematurely gray before Zoe came to live with him, but he had to admit that it was getting grayer every day.
Zoe went over and stood in front of J.D. “If I apologize to you, will you let me say good-bye to Dawson before we leave?”
Letting his daughter anywhere near that young hoodlum was the last thing J.D. wanted to do, but when he glanced at Audrey, she gave him a cautionary meet-your-child-halfway stare.
“Yeah. Okay,” he said reluctantly.
“I’m sorry I said all those awful things to you. I—I didn’t mean them.” Zoe gulped. “Well, I didn’t mean most of them.”
J.D. nodded. At least she was truthful. That alone was a step in the right direction. “Apology accepted.”
“Now, may I say bye to Dawson?”
“Make it quick.”
“I will.”
Everything was going along just fine. Everybody was calm and rational, even Zoe. And J.D. managed to keep his resentment of Audrey Sherrod’s interference under control. Okay, so the woman had worked some kind of magic on Zoe, but she’d had no right to—
God damn it. What the hell?
Zoe stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around Dawson’s neck, and kissed him. Kissed him on the mouth. And both his mouth and hers were wide open!
J.D. growled like the papa bear he was and felt like ripping Dawson apart, limb from limb. Just as he moved forward, intending to grab Zoe, Audrey reached out and clamped her hand over his forearm.
“Don’t,” Audrey whispered. “It’s just a kiss. Give her that much.”
J.D. snapped his head around and glared at Audrey. “She’s a child. My child.”
“She’s a child on the verge of womanhood. And unless I miss my guess, your daughter is strong-minded and stubborn, and the more you object to something, the more appealing it is to her. The harder you push, the harder she’ll push back.”
J.D. clenched his teeth. He wanted to tell Audrey Sherrod to go to hell. But he didn’t. As bad as he hated to admit it, she was right. Zoe was just like him, God help them both. She was as strong-willed and stubborn as he was, and she reacted just as he did to being issued orders.
The kiss ended before J.D. could explode. And when Zoe came back to him and said, “I’m ready,” he noticed that Audrey’s long, slender fingers still circled his forearm.
“You can let go now,” he told her.
She jerked her hand away as her gaze flashed from his face to Zoe’s. “If you ever need someone to talk to, give me a call.”
J.D. barely managed to keep from telling Audrey to back off and leave his daughter alone.
“Thanks,” Zoe said. “I just might do that, Dr. Sherrod.”
Audrey smiled warmly before turning and walking away.
“I like her,” Zoe said. “Why can’t you date somebody like Dr. Sherrod instead of that stuck-on-herself-because-she’s-so-wonderful Holly Johnston?”
“Whom I date is none of your business,” J.D. told her as he escorted her downstairs and out of the police station.
“That should work both ways,” Zoe said.
“It will when you’re twenty-one.”
Zoe groaned and rolled her eyes skyward.
Damn. Fatherhood should come with a how-to book.
Chapter 8
After they had made love, while he held her close, Wayne had told Grace about the two toddler skeletons found with the bodies of the two murdered women. He hadn’t needed to say more than that. She had guessed what he had dreaded telling her. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t said much. But he knew she was as torn up inside as he was.
Now she lay cuddled against him, her breast pressing into his side and her head resting on his shoulder. He had known her for almost twenty-five years, but they hadn’t become lovers until ten years ago. They had met under the most horrific circumstances—Grace’s two-year-old son, Shane, had been abducted not long after Blake had been kidnapped. Their mutual hurt and anger and unbearable grief had created a bond between them, a bond that intensified because they each not only lost a child, but lost a mate. Enid had committed suicide, leaving Wayne alone and lost in his agony. Grace’s husband had become an alcoholic and drank himself to death less than five years after Shane’s disappearance, leaving her to raise their older son Lance alone.
Over the years Wayne and Grace had stayed in touch. In the beginning, it had been nothing more than Wayne sharing information with her whenever he heard about anything that might possibly be remotely connected to their sons’ abductions. Eventually, they started meeting for coffee, and that led to getting together for dinner, and after fifteen years of gradually becoming dear friends, they had become lovers.
Grace was a part of his life that he didn’t share with anyone else. Willie and Geraldine knew about Grace and he was pretty sure Garth did, too. But the kids didn’t know, Audrey and Hart. Hell, they didn’t know much of anything about his life, and he knew very little about theirs. And it was his fault that things were the way they were. He had been the one who had abandoned them. Emotionally abandoned. While they were growing up, he had kept them housed, fed, and clothed, and had paid the bills, but he had ceased being a father to either of them years ago.
Grace eased out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. He watched her, enjoying the view. No longer young, firm, or slender, her body still looked damn good to him. She was a giver, his Grace, not a taker. Looking back over the past twenty-five years, he wasn’t sure he would have survived without her.
He got out of bed and joined her in the bathroom. She had already freshened up and slipped into a floor-length blue cotton robe.
“While you’re cleaning up, I’ll go fix us some supper,” Grace said.
“Don’t go to any trouble, honey.” He nuzzled the side of her neck as he pulled her backward against him.
She rested there in his arms for a couple of minutes, then pulled away from him. “How about scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast?”
“Sounds good.”
When she left the bathroom, Wayne stared at himself in the vanity mirror over the sink. His brow was deeply furrowed and his eyes and mouth were framed by wrinkles. And his once-dark hair was now light gray, almost white. How the hell had he gotten so old so fast? Sometimes it seemed as if it had been only yesterday that he’d been twenty-one, his whole life ahead of him. Now he was sixty-one, most of his life behind him.
He turned on the cold water, cupped his hands to catch the water, and tossed it into his face. Then he filled the sink with warm water, picked up the soap, and lathered his genital area. Afterward, he retraced his steps, picked up his discarded clothing, and dressed.
Entering the kitchen, he found Grace at the stove. With the bacon sizzling on one electric eye, she busily poured whisked eggs into a hot skillet.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Put on some coffee and fix the toast.”
As he set about preparing the coffeemaker, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She kept stirring the eggs, focusing her attention on the job at hand. “What more is there to say?”
“I guess you’re right. Until we know for sure if those little bodies are Blake and Shane, then …” He didn’t know whether he hoped they were his son and Grace’s son or if he hoped they weren’t.
She lifted the skillet and spooned the scrambled eggs onto two plates, then set the skillet aside. “You’d think that after all these years, it wouldn’t still hurt so much.”
Wayne poured fresh water into the reservoir and punched the On button to start the coffee brewing. He moved closer to Grace and slid his arm around her waist.
She closed her eyes. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
Wayne turned her in his arms, reached up, and wiped away the tears with his fingertips. He leaned down and kissed her closed eyelids as his unshed tears caught in his throat.
Zoe hadn’t said a word all the way home, and the minute they entered the house, she headed for her room.
“We need to talk,” J.D. told her.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Too bad. Come back here and sit down.”
Zoe plodded reluctantly from the hallway into the living room and slumped down on the sofa.
God, he didn’t want to do this. But he had to do it. He was Zoe’s father.
“What you did today—running off with Dawson—was not only irresponsible and thoughtless, it was dangerous,” J.D. said, doing his level best not to raise his voice.
Zoe remained sullen and silent.
“I expect you to acknowledge what I just said,” he told her.
She lifted her downcast gaze, her eyes bright with anger and a hint of tears. “It’s all your fault.’
Stunned by her accusation, he stared at her as he tried to figure out her illogical reasoning. “How is it my fault that you slipped away from Jacy’s aunt, who, by the way, was worried sick about you, and ran off with a boy who’d been drinking? How is it my fault that you could easily have been killed in a car wreck because he was driving drunk? And how is it my fault that you and Dawson were picked up by the police?”
“Because … ’cause …” She swallowed her tears. “If you’d just let me date Dawson, let him come here and let me go out with him—”
“You are fourteen years old. That’s too young to be dating.”
“My mother was dating when she was fourteen!” Zoe shouted.
“Yeah, and see how she turned out.” The moment the words left his mouth, J.D. wished them back. Maybe Carrie had been a very untraditional parent, maybe she’d been irresponsible and flighty, but she had been Zoe’s mother.
“How dare you say that about my mom!” Zoe shot up off the sofa. “She was a better parent than you are. At least she loved me.”
When Zoe ran out of the room, he cursed softly and called himself a few choice names, idiot heading the list. Why was it that no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing where Zoe was concerned, he always wound up making a mess of things?
Because you don’t know the first thing about raising a teenage girl. Because Zoe knows that you really don’t want her and that even though you should love her because she’s your daughter, you don’t.
Tam didn’t like it when Marcus was away, but in his job as a TVA engineer, he had to travel on a fairly frequent basis. Their apartment seemed so empty without him. He had phoned to let her know he had arrived safely and promised to call again in the morning before she left for work. The luckiest day of her life was when she met Marcus Lovelady, and the second luckiest day was the day they got married. He was such a good man. Kind, considerate, and reliable. And he loved her with his whole heart.
They had discussed having children and she knew that at thirty-four, her biological clock was ticking faster and faster. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to try to combine motherhood with a career. Although Marcus would be as wonderful a father as her own dad had always been, she doubted she could ever be half the mother her mama was. Besides, she wasn’t sure she deserved to be a mother. Not after …
That was over fifteen years ago. You were barely eighteen.
Tam poured herself another glass of Merlot, flipped on the TV, and kept the sound muted as she sat in her favorite easy chair. She glanced down at the wedding band and one-carat diamond on her ring finger.
She admired and respected Marcus. And she loved him. But had she cheated her husband by marrying him when she would never be able to love him with her whole heart? If she could give him a child, would that make up for the fact that she would always be in love with another man?
Oh, dear Lord, don’t think about him. He isn’t a part of your daily life and hasn’t been for a long, long time.
What was wrong with her tonight? Why was she in such a melancholy mood? Why was she thinking about him, remembering …? She didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to remember the child she had aborted, a child who would be nearly fifteen now, almost as old as she had been when she’d gotten pregnant.
It had all been so hopeless, so impossible. And she had been so completely in love.
The saddest part of all was that he had loved her, too, just as much as she had loved him.
Tam gulped down the remainder of her wine and let the empty glass fall from her hand onto the carpeted floor beside her chair. She closed her eyes and allowed the memories to wash over her, warm and sweet like low tide in the heat of summer.
She could almost feel his lips on hers, feel their naked bodies joined, feel him buried deep inside her. She could hear his voice, deep and sultry, saying her name, telling her how much he loved her.
Tears escaped from the corners of her closed eyelids and crept slowly down her cheeks.
Tam wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself as she sucked back the tears. Don’t do this to yourself. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
If only Marcus were there she wouldn’t be wallowing in self-pity. But Marcus wasn’t there to reassure her, to make her smile, to remind her of all her many blessings.
Tam got up, grabbed the receiver from the portable phone on the nearby desk, and dialed her best friend’s number.
Audrey answered on the third ring. “Hey there.”
“Are you busy?”
“Not really. What’s up?”
“Marcus left on another business trip this afternoon and I’m lonely,” Tam said. “I’ve been sitting here downing a couple of glasses of wine and am on the edge of a self-pity jag.”
“Want me to come over?”
“Would you?”
“Give me thirty minutes.” Then Audrey asked, “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
“No, I—”
“Drinking on an empty stomach?” Audrey clicked her tongue to make a disapproving noise. “You know better.”
“I have salad fixings.”
“Good. Why don’t you take a shower and put on your pajamas and when I get there, I’ll prepare the salad. I have leftover chicken I’ll bring with me to add to the salad. But until you eat something, no more wine for you. Promise?”
“I promise.”
Tam hung up the phone. Audrey always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do to help her. Maybe it was because they knew each other so well, because they’d been close friends since childhood. If Audrey thought that Tam wasn’t completely in love with Marcus, she had never said a word. However, she suspected that her best friend knew the truth. She needed to talk to someone, to admit the truth out loud, and who better to be her father confessor than Audrey, her best friend who just happened to be a shrink? Well, a counselor, which was the next best thing to a shrink. Maybe even better.
Audrey parked her Buick Enclave, unbuckled her seat belt, and reached for the shoulder bag and the plastic sack containing the cold chicken she had promised to bring for their salad. Her phone rang. After retrieving it from an outer slot on her purse, she checked the caller ID. Zoe Davidson.
“Hi, Zoe,” Audrey said when she answered.
“Hi, Dr. Sherrod.” Zoe’s girlish voice sounded even younger than her fourteen years. “I—I … uh … You said if I needed to talk, to call you. You probably didn’t expect to hear from me, at least not this soon, but …”
“It’s all right,” Audrey assured her. “I don’t mind that you called. What can I do to help you?”
“You can get me a different father.”
“Oh, I see. I had hoped maybe once you and your dad got home, you might have been able to talk things out and—”
“He doesn’t want to talk things out. He just wants to issue orders. I hate him. And I hate living with him. And he hates me, too. He doesn’t want me. He just keeps me because he knows I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Oh, Zoe, you poor, sweet girl.
The similarity between the way J.D. Cass’s daughter felt now and the way Audrey had once felt about her relationship with her own father was too obvious to ignore. Audrey understood how it felt to believe your father hated you, that he tolerated you because it was his duty, not because he loved you.
“My guess is that your father doesn’t hate you,” Audrey said. “And even if you hate living with him and having to adhere to his rules, you don’t really hate him.”
Silence.
“Zoe, do you think your father would allow you to set up an appointment with me?”
“You mean as one of your patients?”
“Although my specialty isn’t family counseling, I am qualified—”
“J.D.’s the one who needs counseling,” Zoe said.
“That’s probably true and ideally I would counsel both of you, together and separately. But, honey, you need someone to talk to, someone who’ll listen and—”
“And care about me. About how I feel and what I think. Could you do that, Dr. Sherrod? Could you care about me, even just a little?”
A hard knot of emotion formed in the center of Audrey’s chest. She drew in and released a deep, cleansing breath. Would it be a mistake to counsel Zoe Davidson when she knew, even now, that she would become emotionally involved with this young girl?
“Zoe, if I counsel you, it would be my job to care about what you think and how you feel. And I already like you, you know.”
“You do?”
“Well, of course I do.”
“I—I like you, too.”
“Would you like for me to phone your father and ask his permission for us to set up your first appointment?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What if it pisses him off?”
“Why don’t you leave your father to me? I’ll call him in the morning from my office and either he or I will let you know the outcome.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sherrod. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, Zoe.”
Ending her call, Audrey slipped her bag over her shoulder, picked up the plastic sack, and opened the car door. Before Zoe’s phone call, Audrey’s main concern had been her best friend. She’d heard an odd hint of desperation—almost panic—in Tam’s voice. Now not only was she concerned about Tam, but her conversation with Zoe Davidson had aroused a barrage of mixed emotions. She felt a sense of kinship with Zoe, seeing some of herself at fourteen in the rebellious, unhappy teenager. Her desire to help Zoe went beyond the professional and into the personal realm. Would it be better if she referred J.D. and his daughter to another therapist? Yes and no. It would be better for her not to become involved with either the daughter or the father. But Zoe trusted her. She might not trust another counselor so easily.
All the while Audrey went from the parking area to Tam and Marcus’s apartment, her mind focused on one thing—making the correct decision where Zoe was concerned. It wasn’t until she rang the doorbell several times, waiting a minute or two between rings, that Audrey’s full attention returned to her friend. Tam was expecting her, so why wasn’t she answering the door?
Maybe she’s still in the shower.
Audrey rang the bell again. No response. Just as she reached down into her purse to find her key ring, intending to use her key to Tam’s apartment, the door swung open and Tam stood there smiling, the phone to her ear.
“It’s Marcus.” Wearing her pajamas and a matching knee-length robe, Tam mouthed the words as she motioned for Audrey to enter.
Audrey returned her friend’s smile. While Tam continued her conversation with her husband, Audrey headed for the kitchen. She placed her purse on one of the two bar stools and laid the plastic sack containing the chicken on the counter. After removing an unopened bag of fresh spring-mix greens from the refrigerator, along with cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, and bottled ranch dressing, Audrey set about preparing their salads. She sliced the chicken into small chunks, added it to the salads, and sparingly sprinkled the dressing over her creation.
When she heard Tam laugh, she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t often that Tam went into a blue funk, but when she did, it was usually a doozie. The last time had been more than a year ago and had been precipitated by two factors—Marcus was out of town and Tam had come face-to-face with her teenage sweetheart—factors that Audrey realized hadn’t been repeated until quite recently.
Still smiling, Tam came into the kitchen. “Marcus said hello and sends his love.”
“Feeling better?”
“Much, thanks.”
Audrey studied Tam briefly, then set their salad plates atop the placemats on the small kitchen table. “Do you prefer herbal tea or water with lemon or another glass of wine?”
“Before Marcus called, I’d have said more wine. But now, I think water with lemon. You get the crackers out of the pantry and I’ll take care of our water.”
Half an hour later, with their meal eaten and the dishwasher loaded, Audrey and Tam curled up together on opposite ends of the plush chenille sofa in Tam’s living room. Each held a cup of herbal tea.
“Want to tell me?” Audrey asked.
Tam glanced down at the cup of tea that she cradled in both hands. “No. I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to admit what a stupid, ungrateful bitch I am. I don’t want to say it out loud.”
“If you don’t want to, then don’t. But if you think it will help, maybe release some pent-up emotions, then tell me. Whatever you say, you know I won’t repeat it to another living soul. And I won’t judge you.”
“You never have,” Tam said. “My parents think I’m practically perfect. And Marcus … oh, Audrey, he does think I’m perfect.”
“No one is perfect, but you come mighty damn close.”
“How can you say that when you know …? Oh God, you know me better than anyone else on earth. You know how far from perfect I am. If my parents knew how I’d let them down, they’d be so disappointed. If Marcus knew …”
“You have never disappointed Geraldine and Willie, and if they knew, they would be loving and supportive. And if Marcus knew, he would understand. You were barely eighteen. You did what you thought was best for everyone involved. And I was right there with you, agreeing with your decision and holding your hand.”
Tam looked at Audrey, her brown eyes filled with unshed tears. “If you had been in my situation, would you have …? Would you have killed your own baby?”
Audrey set aside her tea, then took the cup from Tam and set it beside hers on the coffee table. She scooted across the sofa, draped her arm around Tam’s shoulders, and leaned her head over against Tam’s.
They sat there in silence for quite a while, two friends remembering a tragedy from the past. Audrey understood that even after all these years, Tam still felt regret, remorse, and guilt. She managed to keep that long-ago heartbreak buried deep inside her, but occasionally it resurfaced.
“What do I tell Marcus when he wants to have a baby?” Tam asked. “He hasn’t come right out and said he’s ready, but he’s dropped a few subtle hints.”
“Tell him the truth. Tell him about the abortion.”
Tam inhaled deeply and exhaled strongly. “I don’t know if I want a baby. Hell, I don’t even know for sure I can have one.”
“There is no reason to think that because of the abortion, you can’t get pregnant,” Audrey assured her. “But being able to get pregnant and wanting to have a baby are two different things. If you don’t want a baby because of what happened when you were a teenager, then I recommend some counseling to help you—”
Tam laughed, but when Audrey glanced at her face, she saw tears running down Tam’s cheeks.
“Well, that was a really impersonal and rather condescending statement, wasn’t it?” Audrey said. “I’m sorry, Tam. I let Dr. Sherrod inject herself into a situation where she had no business being. This talk is between you and me, Tam and Audrey, best friends since we were babies.”
“It’s all right,” Tam said. “And it’s not as if you haven’t been trying to get me into counseling for years.”
“I’m a bossy know-it-all.”
“Yes, you are, but I love you anyway.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“Audrey?”
“Hmm …?” She didn’t know if she was prepared for whatever Tam wanted to tell her. They had shared all their secrets over the years, trusting each other completely, but Audrey suspected there was one secret that Tam hadn’t shared with anyone.
“You know that I love Marcus. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He makes me so happy.”
“I know, and I’m very grateful to him. I love seeing you happy. I want only good things for you because you deserve only good things.”
“Do I?”
Audrey took Tam’s hands in hers. “Yes, you do.”
“I love Marcus, but …”
“But?”
“I don’t know if I can say it out loud. I don’t know if I dare.”
She squeezed Tam’s hands.
“A part of me—that stupid teenage girl—is still in love with Hart.”
Audrey released the breath she’d been holding and wrapped her arms around Tam, who clung to Audrey as she cried.
“How stupid does that make me?”
Oh, Tam, I knew. I knew, but I didn’t want to know.
And she also knew that no matter how much Tam and Hart had loved each other, how much they still loved each other, there was absolutely no hope for them as a couple. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter 9
Audrey balanced her briefcase in one hand and a mocha latte in the other as she approached her office. At the locked door, she maneuvered the latte out of her right hand into her left, then removed the key ring dangling from her clenched teeth and inserted the door key into the lock. Most mornings, she arrived before her receptionist, Donna Mackey, who usually arrived by eight-thirty, once she had dropped her twin grandsons at preschool. Her son-in-law, an army corporal, was stationed in the Middle East and her daughter worked the morning shift as a Burger King assistant manager. One of the reasons Audrey had hired Donna was because her grandmotherly appearance and personality immediately put patients at ease.
After making her way through the small waiting room and into her private office, Audrey dumped her briefcase in her swivel chair and set the latte on her desk. Just as she opened the window blinds to let in the morning sunlight, the phone rang. Before Donna arrived to take calls, the answering machine picked up and recorded messages, so Audrey continued moving through her office and back into the waiting room opening blinds and getting things in order for a busy Monday work schedule.
After the recorded message ended, a male voice said, “Dr. Sherrod, this is J.D. Cass.”
Audrey stopped and listened.
“I … uh … I was wondering if I could set up an appointment to talk to you.”
Audrey walked over to the telephone on her desk and laid her hand atop the receiver.
“It’s about Zoe,” J.D. said. “She seems to have taken a shine to you, and since she did … well, I thought maybe you could help her.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Help us.”
Just let the answering machine take the call. Donna can contact Special Agent Cass later and arrange for an appointment. J.D. and his daughter are simply potential clients. Nothing more.
Her hand tightened on the receiver and before she could stop herself, Audrey disregarded what her common sense had told her.
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BEVERLY BARTON
Prepare to lose sleep with this shocking and utterly engrossing thriller, for fans of Karen Rose and Karin Slaughter.The crime scenes are horrifying: the victims arranged with deliberate care, posed to appear alive despite their agonized last moments and the shocking nature of their deaths.For grief counsellor Audrey Sherrod it’s clear the murders are the work of a deranged serial killer. At first, the only link is the victims’ physical appearance. But then another connection emerges, tying them to a past series of horrifying crimes – crimes that hit all too close to home.As the truth is unravelled, its more twisted and terrifying than anyone could ever imagine.
Don’t Cry
Beverly Barton
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the U.S.A by Kensington Publishing Corp as Don’t Cry New York, NY, 2010
DON’T CRY. Copyright © Beverly Barton 2010. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9781847562487
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007452460
Version: 2018-07-23
Dedication
To Billy, for a million and one reasons, but most of all
because he loves me
&
In memory of Pelham, Alabama,
Police Officer Philip Davis,
who lost his life in the line of duty, December 4, 2009
Contents
Cover (#ua7aa0ee6-b92d-5445-bbb8-62476870c8f7)
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
The Humpty-Dumpty night-light cast a soft, honey-white glow over the…
Chapter 1
J.D. Cass listened to his breakfast date’s end of the…
Chapter 2
Charlie Scott kept his arm clutched tightly around his wife’s…
Chapter 3
For most of her life—certainly after the car wreck that…
Chapter 4
Audrey had spent a restless night, tossing and turning, waking…
Chapter 5
After Audrey’s arrival at his home that morning, Mayor Don…
Chapter 6
Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time.
Chapter 7
Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He…
Chapter 8
After they had made love, while he held her close,…
Chapter 9
Audrey balanced her briefcase in one hand and a mocha…
Chapter 10
After her uncle’s phone call that morning, Audrey had asked…
Chapter 11
The hot, humid summer breeze did little to cool the…
Chapter 12
Jeremy caught a glimpse of the dark-haired waitress at the…
Chapter 13
Wayne Sherrod hadn’t seen or talked to Steve Kelly in…
Chapter 14
J.D. left the Chattanooga Funeral Home’s East Chapel with the…
Chapter 15
Audrey had waited until she and Zoe had arrived at…
Chapter 16
Tam had left Marcus sleeping when she crept out of…
Chapter 17
All J.D. wanted to do was pick up his daughter…
Chapter 18
J.D. had immersed himself in work, leaving the situation with…
Chapter 19
“Was that Porter Bryant you were talking to?” Hart asked…
Chapter 20
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Grace Douglas…
Chapter 21
J.D. dropped Zoe off at Audrey’s town house Saturday night…
Chapter 22
Eileen Campbell came straight from morning church services to her…
Chapter 23
J.D hadn’t slept worth a damn. And it was more…
Chapter 24
Hart had used the interview with TBI Special Agent Cass…
Chapter 25
J.D. had kept tabs on Jeremy Arden and Hart Roberts…
Chapter 26
Somer Ellis enjoyed her part-time job as a salesclerk at…
Chapter 27
Tam had known Garth Hudson most of her life. She…
Chapter 28
“Is he gone?” Zoe asked as she walked up beside…
Chapter 29
Somer Ellis’s head hurt. Maybe she should get up and…
Chapter 30
The sketch artist had drawn a picture of the person…
Chapter 31
Jeremy had needed a fix last night. Had needed one…
Chapter 32
Hart pumped into the woman lying beneath him, his thrusts…
Chapter 33
Driving like the proverbial bat out of hell, J.D. arrived…
Chapter 34
Somer heard his footsteps.
Chapter 35
Within an hour after Porter Bryant’s arrest, the small, dilapidated…
Chapter 36
A week later the test results came back from the…
Chapter 37
What could have been an awkward moment after they made…
Chapter 38
Hart had been awake all night. Thinking. Praying. He needed…
Chapter 39
Garth unlocked the front door and walked into the living…
Chapter 40
Tam came and took Audrey home from the hospital that…
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Beverly Barton
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Thirty years ago
The Humpty-Dumpty night-light cast a soft, honey-white glow over the nursery, from the 5' x 7' Mother Goose rug on the wooden floor to the fluffy clouds painted on the ceiling. A large Raggedy Andy doll, with a mop of red hair and a perpetual smile, sat atop a brightly decorated toy box in the corner. Billowy blue and white gingham curtains covered the double windows that overlooked the backyard, and a matching gingham quilt, neatly folded, lay at the foot of the baby bed in the center of the small room.
Humming quietly, Regina Bennett sat in the white spindle rocking chair, her precious little Cody asleep in her arms. Even in sleep, he still clutched his favorite toy, a little yellow teddy bear. Earlier that evening, he had been terribly fussy, crying incessantly, the sound of his pitiful gulping sobs breaking her heart. But after she had given him his medication, he had gradually quieted and gone to sleep.
But for how long? An hour? Two hours? The medication’s effects seemed to wear off more quickly with each passing day. Eventually, the medication wouldn’t ease his pain.
She brushed aside his damp blond curls, leaned down, and kissed his warm forehead. Before the chemotherapy treatments, his hair had been thick and shiny, but the new growth was thin and dull. “You won’t suffer anymore, my precious darling. Mommy promises.”
Rocking back and forth, she cuddled Cody protectively against her breast. Still humming “Hush Little Baby,” an old Southern lullaby, Regina slid her hand down to the side of the rocker and grasped the small pillow she had placed there earlier that evening.
“Mommy loves her little boy. Mommy’s going to do what’s best for you.”
Regina lifted the pillow off the floor.
Rocking.
Humming.
Smiling sadly.
Tears misting her eyes.
Singing softly.
“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry.”
Regina laid the handmade pillow over her son’s nose and mouth. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and cascaded down either side of her face. She pressed her hand in the center of the pillow and held it in place until she was certain Cody was at peace. She lifted the pillow, tossed it aside, and looked at her tiny two-year-old son.
No more pain. No more suffering.
Chapter 1
J.D. Cass listened to his breakfast date’s end of the telephone conversation and knew it was bad news. In his profession, bad news was the norm, as it was in Holly’s, so he wasn’t surprised. When a guy was dating an assistant district attorney, even in an on-again/off-again relationship, he became accustomed to their dates being interrupted by business. Of course, it worked both ways. How many times had one of Holly’s meticulously planned romantic evenings ended abruptly when he’d gotten an urgent call?
They hadn’t managed to get together for the past three weeks, and J.D. was way past horny. So, yeah, his invitation for them to share an early breakfast today was his selfish way of wooing her back into his bed, and the sooner the better. Since he and Holly were both early risers, a 6:30 A.M. breakfast date had seemed the perfect chance to see each other and the least likely time that their professional lives would intrude. So much for great ideas.
“My God!” Holly Johnston’s big blue eyes widened and her full lips parted in a silent gasp. “Who found her? Hmm … When? Is the press already there?”
Curious about the identity of the person who had been found and eager to hear the details, J.D. frowned when his own cell phone rang. He checked caller ID and grunted.
He hit the On button. “Cass here. What’s up?”
“They found Jill Scott.” His boss, Special Agent in Charge Phil Hayes, had a deep baritone voice made even rougher and throatier from a lifetime of smoking.
“Alive?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“How close are you to Lookout Valley?”
“Why?” J.D. got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Because we’re fixing to get dragged into this mess, so I want you to head on over to the crime scene pronto.”
“Shit! Why is the TBI getting involved?”
“Because the DA wants us to be on standby. It turns out that there is a second missing woman. Debra Gregory, the mayor’s wife’s cousin, disappeared sometime late last night.”
“Doesn’t the mayor think his own police force can handle the investigation? This isn’t our—”
“His Honor wants to use every resource available to him,” Phil said. “And that includes us, buddy boy. The mayor called the DA and then Everett Harrelson called me personally fifteen minutes ago. Last night, the Chattanooga PD had two missing persons cases. This morning they have a murder case and a suspected kidnapping case. Since both women fit the same profile, there’s a chance the same guy kidnapped Jill and Debra.”
“When I show up at the crime scene, just how official am I?”
“You’re unofficial for the time being. We’ll ease into this gradually. Tell the investigators you’re there in an advisory capacity. Assure them that the TBI isn’t taking over their case.”
“Yeah, sure. Like they’re going to believe that.”
After J.D. returned his phone to the belt holder, he looked across the table at Holly. She slid her phone into an outer pocket on her shoulder bag and shrugged.
“Bad news?” he asked.
She nodded. “What about you?”
“Yeah. That was Phil. They believe they’ve found Jill Scott, the woman who’s been missing for the past two weeks.”
Scott, a local middle school teacher, beloved by students and parents alike, had mysteriously disappeared two weeks earlier. Her parents, her fiancé, and her friends assured police that Jill would never leave without a word to anyone. They were convinced that she’d been abducted. Thanks to local media coverage, there probably wasn’t a man, woman, or child in Hamilton County who didn’t know the teacher’s name.
“It seems our calls were about the same case,” Holly told him. “Of course, I’m not actually involved with the case, not yet, but—”
“But your nephew was in Jill Scott’s seventh-grade class and her murder is semipersonal for you, right?”
Holly nodded. “So, did the TBI get drafted to—?”
“Unofficially at this point,” J.D. said. “But that status can change at any time.” He offered Holly a life-sucks-sometimes frown. “I have to head over to the crime scene.” He stood, pulled out his wallet, and laid down a couple of twenties to pay for their meal, plus a generous tip.
“Mind if I go with you?” she asked.
When he gave her an inquisitive stare, she said, “I’ll stay out of the way. I know that I’m nothing more than a concerned citizen.” She smiled. “Okay, a nosy concerned citizen.”
“And I’m a TBI agent sticking my nose in where I may not be wanted and probably won’t be welcomed.”
Audrey Sherrod swallowed her tears. Although she would never apologize to anyone for her emotional involvement with her clients, she did her best not to let the empathy she experienced override her professionalism. Caring about people was a plus in her business. Allowing her personal feelings to affect a patient’s treatment was unacceptable, so she walked an emotional tightrope, balancing the two sides of her personality.
Mary Nell Scott’s daughter Jill had been missing for fifteen days. The Scott family was surviving on hopes and prayers. Mary Nell’s husband had turned to their parish priest for solace and advice. Jill’s sister, Mindy, relied on her best friends for comfort. Mary Nell had chosen to seek the help of a mental health therapist. She had chosen Audrey because several years ago, she had been one of Audrey’s first clients. At that time, Mary Nell had been dealing with her husband’s infidelity. After months of counseling, she had come to terms with what had happened and realized she wanted to save her marriage.
“I can’t bear to hear Father Raymond’s voice,” Mary Nell had confessed when she had first arrived at Audrey’s office today. “I know the man means well, but my faith isn’t strong enough to simply leave everything in God’s hands.”
Mary Nell had been raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism when she had married Charles Scott. She had brought up both of their daughters in the Catholic faith, but she seldom attended mass and readily admitted that she had doubts about God’s existence.
When the one-hour session ended, Mary Nell sat there calmly, with her head bowed and her folded hands resting in her lap. Audrey got up and retrieved a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in her office.
She truly understood the hell Mary Nell and her family were living in right now. Not knowing what had happened to a loved one was heartbreakingly unbearable. And yet they had to bear it. They had no other choice.
But that’s not true. Mary Nell does have one other choice. A selfish, unthinkable choice.
Audrey pushed aside the memories from her own past about the choice her stepmother had made when she had found life unbearable. A choice that had destroyed a family already in crisis.
“I don’t have another client until regular office hours at nine this morning, so if you’d like to stay longer, you may.” Audrey handed Mary Nell the bottled water. She had come in early to see Mary Nell, who had left her a frantic phone message at five o’clock that morning.
“No, no.” Mary Nell shook her head. “I’m meeting Charlie at seven-thirty and some of our neighbors are going to help us put up new posters all over Hamilton County. We’re offering a reward of twenty-five thousand to anyone …” Pausing, her upper teeth biting down into her bottom lip, she closed her eyes as fresh tears trickled down her cheeks.
Suddenly Mary Nell’s cell phone rang. When she struggled to open her purse, Audrey eased the leather clutch out of her trembling hands and retrieved the phone for her.
“Want me to answer it?” Audrey asked.
Mary Nell shook her head, and then reached out and took the phone.
“Hello,” Mary Nell said. “What? Yes, I’m still with Audrey. Why? Oh, all right.” She held out her phone. “It’s my daughter, Mindy. She wants to speak to you.”
Eying the phone in Mary Nell’s outstretched hand, Audrey instinctively knew that whatever Mindy had to say would not be good news.
“Hello, Mindy, this is Audrey Sherrod.”
“Dr. Sherrod, they’ve found her. They’ve found Jill. She’s dead.”
“Who contacted you with this information?”
“No one, not yet.” Mindy whimpered softly. “It’s already on the news, on the TV and the radio. They found a body. The newscasters are saying it’s probably Jill, that the woman fits her description and she’s wearing a gold cross. Jill always wore the gold cross Daddy gave her for her sixteenth birthday.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
“It’s her. I know it is. Dad knows it is. I just didn’t want Mom to be alone and see it on the news or hear about it on the radio. Dad and I are coming by there to pick up Mom. We’re driving out to Lookout Valley where they found the body. They haven’t moved her yet. She’s still there. Oh, please, Dr. Sherrod, please come with us. Mom’s going to need you. We all are.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll have my secretary cancel my morning appointments, just in case,” Audrey said.
When she returned the cell phone to Mary Nell, her client looked at her pleadingly. “Don’t lie to me. Tell me what Mindy said. It’s Jill, isn’t it? She’s … oh, God, she’s dead, isn’t she?”
Audrey dropped down on her haunches in front of Mary Nell and grasped the woman’s clutched hands. Their gazes met and held.
“The police have found a body that fits Jill’s general description,” Audrey explained. “The information is on the TV and radio. Mindy didn’t want you to hear it and assume the body is Jill’s. She and Charlie are on their way here now. They want me to go with y’all to the crime scene. They want to make sure it isn’t Jill.”
Just one little white lie to ease Mary Nell into the situation and allow her a few final moments of hope.
When half an hour later, at approximately 7:45 A.M., J.D. and Holly arrived on the scene at 50 Birmingham Highway in the Lookout Valley area, they found semicontrolled bedlam. They had missed the initial frenzy, the first responders’ attempt to secure the site, the wail of sirens, and the rush of emergency vehicles. The area around the Cracker Barrel restaurant buzzed with official personnel, the first of many yet to come. Before the end of the day, the scene would be investigated by as many as fifty law enforcement and civilian specialists. The police had roped off the crime scene and strategically placed officers to keep the foot traffic to a minimum. One way in and one way out. News crews, barely held at bay by the uniformed officers, kept cameras zeroed in on the cordoned-off area and reported live to their television audience.
J.D. gained immediate entrance to the sealed area as soon as he flashed his badge. When he glanced back at Holly, she smiled and nodded, letting him know she’d be fine on her own. He’d never doubted it for a minute. Holly was a modern, I-can-take-care-of-myself woman.
Careful not to disrupt the ongoing investigation, J.D. took in the crime scene with a subtle visual inspection. He recognized a lot of the personnel, including the Hamilton County ME, Dr. Peter Tipton, and a couple of members of his team, one taking photos and another talking to two CPD investigators. J.D. knew the guy he assumed was the lead detective. He and Sergeant Garth Hudson had worked a case involving a gang-related murder eleven months ago, shortly after J.D. had been transferred from Memphis to the TBI Chattanooga Field Office. Hudson was a decorated, twenty-five-year veteran of the CPD. A smart guy, a good cop, a little on the cocky side. J.D. didn’t know the officer with Hudson, an attractive African American woman with a dark caramel complexion and petite, curvy body. As he approached them, she turned and glowered at him, her coffee brown eyes surveying him from head to toe.
“Who sicced the TBI on us?” Hudson growled the question as he glared at J.D. “The mayor, no doubt.”
“I’m here strictly in an advisory capacity,” J.D. assured him. “This is the CPD’s case.” J.D. smiled at the pretty lady with Hudson. “Introduce us.”
Hudson grunted. “Officer Tamara Lovelady, my partner. Tam, meet TBI Special Agent J.D. Cass.”
Tam nodded, her expression neutral.
“So, how about letting me take a look at Jill Scott,” J.D. said, then added, “if it is Jill Scott.”
“There’s a good chance it is Ms. Scott’s body, but no positive ID. Not yet.” Hudson glanced at his partner. “Tam will go with you. Look all you want, but don’t touch.”
J.D. wanted to remind Hudson that he wasn’t some rookie who needed instructions, but he kept quiet. For now, he wasn’t assigned to this case, and any privileges Hudson afforded him were at his discretion. He had worked with police and sheriffs’ departments throughout the state and understood how territorial local law enforcement could be. Trying not to step on any toes was just part of his job. A part he damn well hated. He wasn’t known for his diplomatic abilities. He supposed that was one reason he was still a field agent. That and a hot temper he’d been trying to control all of his life.
The TBI’s role was to assist local law enforcement in investigating major crimes, the operative word being “assist.”
When Officer Lovelady motioned to J.D., he followed her past the swarm of investigators and onto the restaurant’s wide porch.
Peter Tipton spotted J.D. and Tam heading his way. He paused in his examination of the body and moved aside to give J.D. a complete view of the corpse.
The victim—not yet positively identified as Jill Scott—sat upright in one of the numerous rocking chairs on the Cracker Barrel porch. Her eyes were shut and at first glance she seemed to be sleeping. Something swaddled in a delicate blue baby shawl lay nestled in her lap. J.D. strained to get a better look at the object.
He took a step closer, and then stopped.
“We thought at first it was a doll,” Tam told J.D. “But it’s not.”
Good God almighty!
“It’s real,” J.D. said.
“Oh yeah, it’s real all right,” Tipton replied.
J.D. had seen some weird sights in his time, as well as several sickeningly gruesome scenes, but never anything like this.
“It’s a first for me,” Tipton said.
“Yeah, me, too. Any idea who … what …?” J.D. found himself stammering, something he never did. But then he’d never seen a fresh corpse cradling the skeletal remains of a small child. He cleared his throat and asked, “Any idea how either of them died? The woman—?”
“Asphyxiation.”
J.D. studied the dark-haired victim sitting so serenely in the wooden rocking chair. Traffic from the nearby interstate hummed over the din of voices, conversations blending with news coverage and bystanders’ comments. Overhead the September sky was clear, the morning sun warm, the temperature somewhere in the high seventies. The beginning of a perfect pre-autumn day. But not so perfect for Jill Scott.
“Method of asphyxiation?” J.D. asked.
“Probably suffocation,” Tipton replied. “There’s no sign of strangulation.”
“How long do you think she’s been dead?”
Tipton glanced at the corpse. “She’s in full rigor. Time of death—six to twelve hours ago. I’d guess eight to ten.”
“You don’t think she was killed here, do you?” J.D. asked.
“She was probably killed somewhere else sometime before midnight and then brought here while it was still dark so it would be less likely anyone would see what was happening.”
“Yeah, not much chance anyone saw something.”
“Whoever killed her staged this little scene,” Tam Lovelady said. “He painted us a picture.”
“Mother and child,” J.D. surmised.
“He’s a sick son of a bitch, whoever he is.” Tam stared at the victim. “She looks so damn peaceful.”
“He went to a great deal of trouble to dispose of her body in such a dramatic fashion.” J.D. remembered a bizarre case in Memphis when he was a rookie agent where the killer had placed his victims by the river, sitting up in a camp chair and holding a fishing pole. Weirdest thing he’d ever seen. Until now. “He’s telling us something. We just have to figure out what it is.”
“He’s telling us that he’s fucking crazy,” Garth said, his voice a low grumble, as he came up behind them.
“What about the child?” J.D. asked.
“At this point, nothing more than the obvious—that the woman and the child didn’t die at the same time. So, if that’s all, J.D., I need to get back to work,” Tipton said. “We’re about ready to bag the body and the skeleton.”
“Yeah, sure thing.” As Tipton walked away, J.D. called to him. “We’ll talk again later.”
Tipton threw up his hand in a backward wave as he walked off.
“Are you hanging around?” Garth asked J.D.
“I thought I would, if you have no objections.”
Garth shook his head. “My crime scene is your crime scene.”
With a hard, craggy face, deep-set hazel eyes, and thinning gray hair, Garth Hudson looked every one of his fifty-some-odd years. Borderline butt-ugly, the sergeant wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but he was neat as a pin. Whenever J.D. saw the man, Garth was wearing neatly pressed slacks, a jacket, and a tailored shirt.
J.D. and the investigators watched quietly while Tipton slipped the blue baby blanket and its contents into a body bag and then carefully handed the tiny unknown child to one of his assistants. That done, he went back to the woman in the rocking chair. He covered the victim’s head, feet, and hands with individual bags and secured them with tape.
They stood by respectfully until the body was bagged and removed from the scene.
Before they could resume their conversation, a series of ear-piercing screams and mournful cries stopped everyone in their tracks.
“What the hell?” Garth’s gaze traveled around the crime scene and beyond, searching for the source of the noise.
“I want to see her!” a female voice shouted. “If it’s my baby, I want to see her!”
A uniformed officer rushed over to Garth. “It’s the mother. Jill Scott’s mother.”
“Damn!” Garth huffed. “How the hell did she find out?”
“My guess is from the live TV coverage.” Tam motioned past the crime scene tape to the horde of reporters chomping at the bit for a closer view.
“The whole family just showed up,” the officer said. “Mom, Dad, and kid sister. The mom’s screaming her head off.”
“Keep her out of here,” Garth said. “But tell the guys they’re to handle the family with kid gloves.”
“Want me to take care of it?” Tam asked. “I can go talk to the family.”
“Yeah,” Garth said. “You can handle a hysterical woman a lot better than I can.”
When Tam gave her partner a you’re-a-chauvinist-pig glare before walking away, J.D. fell into step beside her.
“Do you do that a lot?” J.D asked.
Without slowing her pace, Tam said, “Do what?”
“Handle the unpleasant tasks for your partner?”
“Sergeant Hudson and I have been partnered for less than a month. I’m the new investigator on the homicide squad. But before then, yeah, I usually handled anything my partner thought was woman’s work. Other women. Kids. Anything that had to do with emotional issues.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind. I don’t have anything to prove. I know I’m a very good police officer and I’ll be a very good detective. And I don’t think of it as a negative thing that I’m capable of handling some of the most difficult aspects of being a police officer.”
“And one of those difficult aspects is dealing with the victim’s family.”
“Can you think of anything more difficult than telling a mother that her child is dead?”
Debra Gregory tugged on the ropes that bound her red, chafed wrists to the arms of the rocking chair. Her seemingly useless struggles to free herself had eaten away skin, leaving her wrists and ankles bruised and bloody. He had secured her feet together and tied her wrists before he had left her. She had screamed for help until she was hoarse, but had soon realized no one could hear her and that’s why he hadn’t gagged her. Wherever he was holding her captive was so isolated that there was no danger of anyone hearing her screams.
Dark and damp. And as silent as a grave.
Terror had given way to frustration, and frustration to anger.
She had lost count of how many hours she’d been in this horrible, obsidian hell. He had left her alone for what seemed like days, alone in the pitch-black darkness. She didn’t think she’d been here days. Not yet. Only a few hours. Maybe a little longer. God help her, she wasn’t sure.
The last thing she remembered before waking up here was coming out of the gym late Tuesday night. Days ago? Hours ago? She’d been one of the last to leave shortly before closing at eleven and noticed that only two other cars remained in the parking lot. She had hit the Unlock button on her keypad before reaching her Lexus, and just as she’d opened the door, someone had grabbed her from behind. It had happened so quickly. A strangely sweet odor coming from the cloth he cupped over her nose and mouth. Her senses dulling as the anesthetic took effect. The weightless feeling as he lifted her off her feet. And then unconsciousness.
The police are looking for me. My family is doing everything possible to find me. I’ll be rescued soon. I can’t give up hope. I have to stay alive, no matter what.
When would he come back?
She was alone in the darkness, strapped to a chair, unable to escape, going slowly out of her mind. Suddenly a dim light instantly obliterated the darkness.
She turned her head sideways, but couldn’t see the source of the light. It came from somewhere across the room. A candle? A lantern? Maybe a night-light?
Light had to mean that he had returned. Not enough light to see anything clearly, just enough to make out shapes and shadows.
Debra’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her fear escalated quickly as she sensed him moving toward her. Closer and closer.
“Did you have a nice rest while I was gone?” he asked from where he stood behind her.
“Please … please let me go.” Her voice quavered. “I haven’t seen your face. I don’t know who you are. I can’t identify you.” She was bargaining for her life, pleading with this unknown, unseen devil.
He stroked her hair, his touch terrifyingly tender. “You’re talking nonsense. Of course you know who I am.” He untied her left hand and rubbed her chafed, bloody wrist before pulling her arm inward toward her waist.
“I don’t …” She drew in a sharp breath when he reached over her head and around her shoulder and placed something in the curve of her arm. She looked down at the bundle lying in her lap and was able to make out the form of what she thought might be a baby wrapped securely in a blanket.
No, no, it couldn’t be a baby. It wasn’t moving, wasn’t crying. It wasn’t warm and alive.
“He needs you,” the man told her. “He won’t rest unless you sing to him.”
She swallowed the fear lodged in her throat. Was she holding a doll, a very large baby doll? As her vision adjusted to the semidarkness, she looked right and left, then upward, trying to catch a glimpse of her jailor. All she saw were his legs clad in jeans and the sleeves of his dark jacket.
“Sing to him. You know the song he likes,” he told her, his voice soft yet stern. “Rock him to sleep the way you do every night.”
“I—I don’t remember the song.”
“Of course you do. Now sing to him.”
She forced out the words of the most familiar lullaby she knew. “Rock-a-bye baby—”
“That’s not the right song!” he shouted. “Sing the right song. He wants you to sing the song you always sing. You know the words!” And then he sang the first verse. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word …”
On the verge of screaming hysterically, Debra somehow managed to sing as she held the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She vaguely remembered the tune, but not the lyrics. Sing, damn it. Make up the words. Improvise! Your life could depend on it.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s going to buy you a golden ring.” Her voice quivered. “If that golden ring don’t shine, Mama’s going to sing, sing, sing.”
“You’re mixing up the words.” Leaning over her, watching her, his breath warm against her neck, he whispered, “But he loves the sound of your voice. We both do. Keep singing.”
Debra forced the words, making them up as she went along, trying her best to fit them to the tune she barely remembered. She tried not to cry, not to panic, not to say or do something that would upset her captor. He held her life in his hands. As long as she cooperated and played his little game, she had a chance of staying alive.
Why she chose that moment—midsong and midthought of doing whatever was necessary to stay alive—to glance down at the doll, she would never know. With her eyes fully adjusted to the dim, distant light, she was able to see the object in her arms. Not a doll at all.
The song died on her lips, and the scream vibrating in her throat remained trapped there by sheer paralyzing horror.
Chapter 2
Charlie Scott kept his arm clutched tightly around his wife’s shoulders, the strength of his hold the only thing stopping her from breaking through the yellow barricade tape that separated the onlookers from the crime scene. While Mary Nell pleaded with her husband to release her, Audrey held eighteen-year-old Mindy’s damp, shaky hand as she tried to talk to Mary Nell. But Mary Nell was beyond listening, beyond anyone helping her at this point. There would be a time, later on, days from now or perhaps weeks or months, that Audrey might be able to help her. But not today.
“Why won’t someone tell us if it’s Jill or not?” Mindy’s soft voice was barely audible over her mother’s loud, pitiful cries.
“The police probably haven’t identified the victim,” Audrey said. “Until they do, we cannot lose hope that the woman they found isn’t Jill.”
“I can’t stand it.” Mindy gripped Audrey’s hand. “Mom’s falling apart and …” Unable to control her tears, Mindy jerked away from Audrey and dropped her head, hunched her trembling shoulders, and covered her face with her hands.
As Audrey turned to comfort Mindy, she spotted her friend Tamara Lovelady, lifting the crime scene tape, walking under it, and heading in their direction. She and Tam had been friends all their lives. Both of their dads had been Chattanooga policemen. Oddly enough, she and Tam had been born exactly two days apart. How many birthday parties had they shared over the years? Their last party had been four years ago when they turned thirty, an event hosted by Tam’s parents.
Tam’s eyes widened with a hint of surprise when she saw Audrey. Despite Mary Nell reaching out to Tam, she passed by Jill’s mother and came straight to Audrey.
“Are you here with the Scott family?” Tam asked.
“Yes. Mary Nell—Mrs. Scott—was with me when we got the news about the body being found here in Lookout Valley.” Audrey leaned down and whispered, “Is it Jill Scott?”
Tam, who stood five-three in her bare feet, looked up at Audrey, who towered over her at five-nine, and replied, “We’ll need a family member to officially ID the body, but, yes, we’re pretty sure it’s her.”
“What are y’all talking about?” Mary Nell demanded, her eyes wild with fear. “Tell me! I have every right to know if …” She gulped down her hysterical sobs. “If it’s Jill, I want to see her.”
“Mrs. Scott, I’m Officer Lovelady.” Tam’s gaze settled sympathetically on Mary Nell. “The body is being taken to the ME’s office. We’d appreciate it if a member of the family”—Tam looked directly at Charlie Scott —“would identify the body.”
Mary Nell keened shrilly, the sound gaining everyone’s immediate attention.
“Isn’t there some way that Mr. and Mrs. Scott could see the body now?” Audrey asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll check with Garth—”
“Please, let me see her,” Mary Nell whimpered.
“Why don’t y’all give me a few minutes,” Tam said. “Audrey, want to come with me?”
“Sure.”
When they were out of earshot of the Scott family, Tam said, “Mrs. Scott is going to fall apart if she sees her daughter’s body.”
“I’ve already called her GP to alert him that she’s going to need medication.”
“Good.”
Tam took Audrey with her past the tape barricade as she rushed to catch up with Pete Tipton’s assistants, who were carrying the body bag toward the ME’s van parked in the restaurant’s back parking lot.
“Wait up, guys,” Tam called to them.
Tipton, who was still talking to Garth and another man, someone Audrey didn’t know, quickly ended his conversation and threw up his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Tam said. “I just need y’all to wait a couple of minutes.”
Tipton, Garth, and the stranger came over to where Tam and Audrey stood only a few feet away from the body bag.
“Look, the parents want to see the body now,” Tam explained. “The mother is hysterical as it is. I don’t think letting her see the body can make it any worse.”
“If anything, it might help her.” Audrey injected her opinion. “The not knowing is often far worse than the knowing.” She glanced at Garth, her step-uncle, and saw the flash of painful memories in his eyes. “If it is Jill, then why make her parents wait any longer to find out the truth?”
“And you are?” The tall, rough-around-the-edges stranger looked right at Audrey. The midday sun turned his salt-and-pepper hair to black-streaked silver.
Garth looked questioningly at Audrey and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here with—” Audrey said, but Tam interrupted her and rushed straight into introductions.
“Audrey, this is Special Agent Cass with the TBI.”
Garth added, “J.D., this is my niece, Dr. Sherrod.”
Audrey and J.D. Cass exchanged quick, intense inspections. She wasn’t sure exactly what he thought of her and really didn’t care. As a general rule, people tended to like her and she liked almost everyone she met. But there was something about the way this man looked at her, as if he found some flaw she wasn’t aware of, that annoyed her.
His black-eyed gaze settled on her face and then he smiled. “You’re not an M.D., are you?” He rubbed his chin. “Hmm … Let me guess—”
“Doctorate of philosophy in psychology,” Audrey told him. “I’m a mental health therapist.”
“Audrey is Mary Nell Scott’s counselor,” Tam explained. “She came here with Jill Scott’s family because Mrs. Scott is one of her patients.”
“Damn,” Garth grumbled under his breath.
“Is it your professional opinion that Mrs. Scott can handle seeing her daughter’s corpse?” J.D. asked, his gaze intensely focused on Audrey
“It’s my opinion that seeing her daughter’s body—if indeed that’s Jill”—she nodded toward the body bag—“will harm her less than not knowing.”
Audrey glared at J.D. Cass. Admittedly, she found him attractive. Who wouldn’t? He was about six-three, broad shouldered, and extremely masculine, although not classically handsome. But for some reason, he irritated her. Maybe it was because of the almost condescending way he’d said, “You’re not an M.D.” Or it could be because she sensed that he found her lacking in one way or another?
And that bothers you, doesn’t it?
Damn right it did. After all, she was reasonably attractive, some even said pretty. She was highly intelligent and well educated and possessed more than competent social graces. Who was he to look down his imperfect nose at her?
“Let’s get this over with,” Pete Tipton said. “Bring the parents over and let them ID the body.” He motioned to his assistants.
“Thank you.” Audrey focused on the ME, offering him a genuine smile.
“I’ll tell the Scotts.” By the time the statement left her lips, Tam was in motion.
Garth received a phone call, excused himself, and left Audrey and the TBI agent standing side by side. Usually quite adept at conversation, even idle chitchat when necessary, Audrey suddenly found herself unnaturally silent.
Sensing the TBI agent looking at her, she turned back around and faced him. “Is there something you wanted to say, Special Agent Cass?”
With a sly smile curving his lips, the man shrugged. “No, ma’am, Dr. Sherrod.”
“Here they come,” Pete Tipton said as the Scott family approached. “No matter how many times I’ve done this, it doesn’t get any easier.”
Tam escorted the Scotts, Charlie with his arm around Mary Nell, and Mindy following her parents.
“May we see her, please?” Charlie asked.
Tipton nodded. Tam led the family to where the ME’s assistants held the body bag. Tipton unzipped the bag, removed the small, protective bag covering the victim’s head, and stepped back to allow the family an unobstructed view.
Mary Nell gasped and then burst into tears as she crumpled right before their eyes. Weeping uncontrollably, she doubled over in pain. Charlie held her, his arms circling her waist, supporting her twisted body. Mindy stood silent and alone a few feet behind her parents. She had turned an ash gray, her glazed eyes overflowing with tears.
Charlie pulled Mary Nell up and into his arms. He looked Peter Tipton right in the eye. “It’s our daughter. It’s Jill.”
Tam and her husband Marcus, an engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, met Audrey and her current boyfriend, Porter Bryant, for dinner that evening. Audrey and Tam arrived late, less than two minutes apart, so they paused outside J. Alexander’s for a quick chat before entering the upscale restaurant on Hamilton Place Boulevard. Neither had changed clothes from earlier that day. Tam still wore black slacks, a lightweight camel blazer, and sensible but stylish one-inch pumps. She had discarded her shoulder holster, something she had forgotten to do a few weeks ago when the foursome had met for dinner. Of course, it had been her first week as a detective.
How Tam could look so good with practically no makeup at the age of thirty-four, Audrey would never know. Maybe it was her flawless golden brown skin or her large, luminous, dark chocolate eyes and thick black lashes.
Although Audrey hadn’t taken time to change from her tailored navy pin-striped slacks and matching jacket into something more femininely casual, she had added fresh blush and lipstick, which she kept in her handbag. She had almost phoned Porter and canceled, but a girl had to eat, and what better company could she find tonight than three good friends? The last thing she wanted to do after a day like today was go home to an empty house. She kept thinking about getting a pet, a cat or a dog or even a goldfish. She thought about it, but never did it.
“You look beat,” Tam said. “Have you been with the Scotts all this time?”
She nodded. “Yes, I stayed and talked to Charlie and Mindy after Dr. Jarnigan’s nurse practitioner came by and gave Mary Beth an injection. A strong sedative. And I helped Charlie deal with countless phone calls and an endless parade of family and friends who came and went all afternoon. Their priest is there with them, as well as Charlie’s sister and her husband and several cousins.”
“It’s been a difficult day all around,” Tam said. “I left your uncle Garth at headquarters. No wonder he’s been divorced four times. What woman would put up with a man married to his job?”
“Every missing persons case is personal for him.”
“Because of Blake,” Tam said. “Garth is a dedicated policeman for the same reason you’re a dedicated counselor. You both want to help people in pain.”
Although Audrey managed to go days, often weeks, without thinking very much about Blake, any missing persons case stirred up old memories. And when she was personally involved in the case, a counselor to someone with a missing family member, she occasionally still had nightmares, decades-old nightmares, about her little brother Blake’s disappearance. The two-year-old had been abducted twenty-five years ago and was still missing. Missing and presumed dead.
“I know you can’t talk about evidence and all that,” Audrey said. “But can you tell me one thing—do y’all think that whoever kidnapped and killed Jill Scott is the same person who abducted Debra Gregory?”
“Possibly. It’s common knowledge that the two women are both in their mid-twenties, both average height and weight, both white females, both brunettes with long dark hair. The Chattanooga Times Free Press ran their photographs side by side on the front page this morning. At the mayor’s insistence, I’m sure. Did you see it?”
“I saw it. And before you ask, yes, I thought there was a resemblance.”
“Enough of a resemblance that they could pass for sisters,” Tam said. “Debra Gregory looks more like Jill than her own sister Mindy does.”
“But the CPD is downplaying the resemblance, aren’t they? The fact that the women resembled each other wasn’t mentioned in the press conference.”
“We don’t want to panic all the young, dark-haired women in Hamilton County who fit the same description. Not when we can’t be a hundred percent sure the two cases are connected. Debra hasn’t been missing twenty-four hours.”
“Then why bring in the TBI?” Audrey asked.
“They’re not officially involved. Not yet.” Tam forced a smile. “We’d better find our dates. We’re already twenty minutes late. Marcus has called me twice since he arrived.”
As they entered the restaurant, Audrey asked, “How well do you know Special Agent Cass?”
Tam spoke to the hostess, who offered to show them to their table.
“I never met him before today,” Tam replied. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Just curious.”
“There they are.” Tam waved at Marcus and Porter, who were seated in a booth halfway across the restaurant. “FYI—the DA called in the TBI. We did not request assistance.”
“He seems like the type who’d expect to take over.”
“Who? Special Agent Cass? What makes you think that?” Tam’s smile widened. “Yeah, I know. He was sending out some powerful He-Man vibes, wasn’t he? And I noticed the way you two kept looking at each other. What was that all about?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Audrey lied.
When they approached the booth where their dates sat, both men stood, gentlemen that they were. Marcus gave Tam a quick kiss on the mouth and a big I’m-glad-to-see-you smile. Porter gave Audrey a peck on the cheek. She and Porter had been dating for nearly six months now and she suspected he was ready for more than the friendship they shared. He hadn’t pushed her into a sexual relationship and she was grateful, although she knew that it was only a matter of time. More than once recently, he had hinted about them moving in together, but she had ignored the hints. She had no desire to live with Porter or any other man. And marriage was out of the question. No way, no how.
“Sorry I’m late,” Tam said. “We’re in the middle of—”
“No shop talk this evening,” Marcus told her. “We’re going to have drinks and a nice dinner and relax.”
“Sounds good to me.” Tam picked up her husband’s glass of Chardonnay and took a sip. “This could be the last halfway relaxing evening I have for quite some time.”
J.D. dropped his keys on the kitchen counter as he entered his Signal Mountain rental house through the door that led inside from the two-car garage. By the time he reached the living room, he had removed his jacket and his hip holster. He tossed the jacket over the back of the nearest chair and dumped the holster down on the coffee table. It had been a long, seemingly endless day and he was tired. And still horny. He had hoped his breakfast date with Holly that morning would lead to an invitation for him to come over to her place that night. So much for well-laid plans. Per his boss’s instructions, he had stuck with the lead investigators on the Jill Scott case all day and had finally left Sergeant Hudson at the police station half an hour ago. The man was dedicated beyond the norm for any officer.
It wasn’t that J.D. didn’t give his all to his job. He did. But he didn’t live and breathe his job 24/7. There had been a time when he had. Now he couldn’t even if he wanted to. He had other responsibilities, ones in his personal life that required his time and attention.
Just as he kicked off his shoes and wiggled his sock-clad toes, he heard the phone ring. Not his phone. The ringtone belonged to his daughter. Some idiotic song titled “Boom Boom Pow” by a group Zoe had informed him was called the Black Eyed Peas.
Even now, after she’d been living with him for more than a year, he still sometimes forgot he had a kid. A fourteen-year-old daughter. A teenager with an attitude. Zoe was far too pretty and looked way too mature not to gain male attention. When he had told her that she was too young to date, she’d thrown a hissy fit. The girl had a temper. And as much as he’d like to blame her mother for that genetic defect, he couldn’t. Carrie Davidson had been promiscuous, self-centered, vain, and sexy as hell, but not once during their brief affair had he ever seen her lose her temper. No, Zoe had inherited that personality flaw from him.
J.D. traipsed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and retrieved a bottle of beer. Just as he removed the cap and took his first sip, he heard a loud crash, followed by a string of equally loud curse words. Carrying the beer with him, he went through the living room and down the hall and stopped outside his daughter’s closed bedroom door. He knocked.
“Go away!” she screamed.
“What’s going on in there?”
“Not a damn thing. All my friends are together and having a good time tonight and I’m stuck here in my room, a virtual prisoner.”
“It’s a school night,” J.D. reminded her. “I hardly think all your friends are out partying tonight.”
“A bunch are studying together over at Presley’s house. They ordered pizza and are having fun. Fun that I’m missing, thanks to you.” Zoe eased open her bedroom door and peered out into the hall. “Hi. How was your day?”
“Rough,” he replied. “How was yours?”
“It was okay, but it could end really good.” She opened the door all the way and plastered a big smile on her gorgeous face.
What the hell was she wearing? They’d had more than one row about her clothes. Tonight it was green tights, suede knee-high boots, a too short, too tight knit sweater, and a skirt that barely covered her butt. All the clothes she had brought with her last year when he’d moved her in with him had looked like they belonged to a hooker. She’d promptly informed him that her clothes were what girls were wearing these days, as opposed to when he’d been a kid, back in the Dark Ages.
“What do you want?” J.D asked. From his experience, whenever Zoe was pleasant to him, she wanted something.
“Let me go over to Presley’s. Please, please. I promise I’ll be back by eleven.”
“I don’t think so. It’s after eight now. Besides, I’m too tired to drive you over to—”
“That’s okay, J.D.” Zoe came out of her room, her leather shoulder bag slung over her arm. “Presley’s brother Dawson will pick me up. All I have to do is call her back right now.” Zoe held up her bright pink cell phone. “Please.”
He didn’t like playing the stern, disciplinarian parent, but God knew it was way past time that someone did. Apparently Carrie had allowed Zoe to do whatever she wanted to do. And now that she was forced to live with a parent who more often than not said no to her demands, she was a miserable young girl.
“Not tonight,” J.D. told her. “It’s a school night. You know the rules.”
“Screw your rules! I hate you! I hate living here with you!” She scrunched up her face, glowered at him, and then went back into her room, slamming the door behind her.
J.D. heaved a deep, labored breath.
What had he ever done to deserve this?
You got Carrie Davidson pregnant, that’s what.
J.D. took a hefty swig from the beer bottle as he walked back to the kitchen. He wasn’t cut out to be a father. Although he was doing his best with Zoe, his best wasn’t good enough. She was miserable and she made him miserable. She was his daughter. The DNA tests proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He should love her. She should love him. But she hated him and he tolerated her.
He finished off the first beer as he made himself a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and then drank another beer with his meal.
He wondered what Dr. Audrey Sherrod would think of his relationship with Zoe. They were a dysfunctional family if ever there was one. Neither had known the other existed until eighteen months ago when Carrie, dying from breast cancer, had called J.D. to say, “Congratulations, you’re the father of a bouncing baby girl.”
Burrowing into his worn leather lounge chair, J.D. picked up the remote and channel surfed, finally pausing on CNN.
Why was he thinking about Audrey Sherrod? Why had she suddenly popped into his head?
He had gotten the distinct impression that the lady didn’t like him. She certainly had looked down her nose at him. And she had a cute little nose and a rather pretty face. Not beautiful, but pretty enough if you liked her type, which he didn’t. She was tall for a woman, a good five-nine. Slender, but not quite skinny. He had noticed the way her breasts filled out the neat pin-striped jacket she had been wearing. Sufficient but not large by any means.
If you had gotten laid recently, you wouldn’t find Audrey Sherrod the least bit attractive.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Just because he had always preferred his women hot and eager didn’t mean it might not be interesting to see just what it would take to defrost Dr. Sherrod’s icy façade.
What the hell was he thinking? He sure didn’t need another woman in his life. The casual relationship he shared with Holly suited them both just fine. He didn’t think Audrey Sherrod was the type for casual, and that’s all he wanted from a woman, all he could ever offer, especially now that he had Zoe in his life.
J.D. was ashamed of the way he felt, that he considered Zoe a nuisance. What kind of parent was he?
Think about what the Scotts are going through tonight. They’ve lost their daughter, and here you are moaning and groaning about your kid. You should be thankful that she’s alive and well and creating havoc in your life. I’d bet Charlie Scott would tell you that you’re one lucky SOB.
Two hours later, after consuming his third beer and falling asleep in front of the TV, J.D. woke, gathered up his shoes, jacket, and holster, and headed down the hall. He paused outside of Zoe’s closed door. He knocked softly. She didn’t respond. He turned the doorknob and to his surprise found the door unlocked. He eased open the door and peered inside the semidark room. With her hair still damp from her recent shower and wearing an oversized Jeff Gordon NASCAR sweatshirt, she lay asleep atop the covers.
J.D. slipped into the room, freed one hand from the load he was carrying, and then drew the folded bedspread up and over his daughter. He stood there for a few minutes and watched his little girl sleep. In the looks department, she’d gotten the best of Carrie and him. Actually, she looked a lot like J.D.’s sister Julia.
I’m sorry I’m not a better father. I’m sorry that I never knew you existed. I’m doing the best I can, kiddo. I promise that I’ll try not to screw things up too bad.
He reached down and ran his fingertips across her forehead, brushing aside a strand of long black hair.
You deserve better than me, Zoe. But you’re stuck with me. Like it or not, I’m your dad.
Chapter 3
For most of her life—certainly after the car wreck that had claimed her mother’s life when she was six—Audrey had enjoyed a close bond with Tam’s parents, Geraldine and Willie Mullins. Geraldine was the type of mother every little girl should have—loving, caring, attentive, putting her child’s needs before her own. A mother to her child, not a girlfriend. Tam had been raised with a strict set of rules and regulations, but at the same time her parents had trusted her completely.
“I trust Tam to always do the right thing,” Geraldine had said. “And until she proves to me that I can’t trust her, I will always believe what she tells me is the truth.”
Audrey was pretty sure that Tam’s parents felt that she had never disappointed them. She’d been salutatorian of her high school graduating class, graduated magna cum laude from UT, and had gone on to graduate first in her class at the police academy. Although Geraldine would have preferred her daughter choose a less dangerous profession, Willie had been a very proud papa when his only child chose to follow in his footsteps and join the CPD. Willie had worked his way up the ladder from patrolman to chief of police.
Audrey envied her best friend her parents and the nurturing environment in which she had grown up. And even if they had known about Tam’s one and only fall from grace, they would have forgiven her and not loved her any less. Audrey’s earliest memories were of her parents arguing. Wayne Sherrod’s job as a Chattanooga policeman had come first with him. His wife and daughter had come in a distant second. Why the bubbly, sweet-natured social butterfly Norma Colton had married a stoic, cynical, hard-nosed cop, no one understood, least of all Audrey. Maybe it had been nothing more than opposites attracting.
She had always believed that if she’d been a boy, her father would have paid more attention to her. And that theory, one she had formed early on, had been proven correct when his second wife had presented him with a son. From the moment he was born, Blake had been the center of Wayne’s life, even more important to him than his job.
She had been jealous of her baby brother and had sometimes resented him terribly. But she had also loved him. Blake had been so sweet, so adorable, so very precious. When, a month before his second birthday, he had disappeared—assumed kidnapped—she had been consumed with guilt. Had it been her fault in some way because she had resented that her father so obviously loved Blake more than he did her? In her nine-year-old mind, she had felt somehow at fault. It hadn’t helped that, in his desperate grief, her father had accused her and her stepbrother Hart of being glad that Blake had been abducted.
As an adult, she had come to realize that her father had known what he’d said wasn’t true, that later, he had probably regretted the harsh, unjust accusation. And although her father had never apologized, Audrey had long ago forgiven him for lashing out at two innocent children. But she hadn’t forgotten, couldn’t forget no matter how much she wished she could. She wasn’t sure her father even remembered that day in detail. But that one moment in time, that one unjust accusation, had erected a barrier between father and daughter that still existed.
Audrey saw her dad infrequently—holidays, mostly. She called him occasionally—on his birthday and on her birthday—but he seldom called her. Her dad’s relationship with his stepson Hart wasn’t any better, but at least Hart had his uncle Garth, who had stepped in and become a surrogate father to him. And even though she thought Garth was a brash, cocky, womanizing SOB, she respected him for being a dedicated policeman and for looking after Hart, for always being there for his nephew. Her stepbrother practically worshipped the man.
Audrey would have felt completely alone in the world if not for the love and attention Tam and her parents had shown her over the years. But that was only one of the many reasons she adored Geraldine and Willie Mullins.
It was her love for Tam’s parents that had brought her there tonight despite the emotionally grueling day she’d had. Nine days after her murder, Jill Scott had been laid to rest. Audrey had cleared her afternoon schedule so she could attend the funeral and be available if Mary Nell needed her. But it had been obvious to everyone that Mary Nell had been medicated, possibly overmedicated. She had done little more than sleepwalk through the church service and the burial ceremony.
It had been nine days since Jill’s parents learned their daughter’s fate. Nine days since Jill’s body had been found in a rocking chair on the Cracker Barrel porch in Lookout Valley. Nine agonizing days, and the police still didn’t have a suspect. Nine days, and Debra Gregory was still missing.
When Audrey entered the Read House in downtown Chattanooga, she searched the lobby area for Porter. They had agreed to meet there instead of him picking her up at home. He wasn’t difficult to find since he was waiting right inside the front entrance.
Spit and polish. That was Porter Bryant to a T. Always dressed impeccably, clean-shaven, styled hair, manicured nails buffed to a gloss finish, and wearing a delicate hint of expensive men’s cologne.
Porter was to the manor born, so to speak. His father had been a wealthy, high-profile lawyer and his mother a socialite who had dabbled in interior design. Audrey suspected that Porter’s mother and her mother would have gotten on famously.
“Sorry I’m late,” she told him. “After I left the Scotts, I barely had time to go home and change clothes.”
“You missed Chief Mullins’s grand entrance and the big surprise moment.” Porter’s tone held a note of censure. When she gave him a screw-you glare, he quickly added, “You look lovely, so it was worth the wait. And I’m sure with so many people here, the chief and Mrs. Mullins weren’t aware of your absence.”
When he held out his arm for her to take, Audrey graciously accepted and they walked across the lobby and entered the Hamilton Room. Geraldine and Tam had rented that room and the adjoining River City Room for the surprise sixtieth birthday party they were hosting for Willie. The moment the door opened, music, laughter, and the roar of at least two hundred voices enveloped them.
“My God, I know Geraldine didn’t invite half of Hamilton County,” Audrey said. “She wanted it to be a close friends and family event.”
“Well, if only a third of the invited guests brought a date, that would dramatically increase the number of people attending tonight. Considering that Willie Mullins is the Chattanooga police chief, one would expect a large gathering. Certain things are expected of a high-ranking public servant.”
“I’m sure Geraldine was pressured into expanding the guest list.” No doubt by some well-meaning bureaucrat whose opinions matched Porter’s. Tam had told her there were rumors circulating that the state Democratic Party was interested in backing Willie for the U.S. Congress in the next election.
“If so, then she was a wise woman to agree. What the Mullins family does now can affect his political future,” Porter said as if Audrey was clueless about how the game of politics was played. “And Mrs. Mullins showed remarkable good taste in adhering to acceptable social etiquette for such a huge party by requesting no gifts.”
Audrey had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping at Porter. His last comment had come across as a backhanded compliment if she’d ever heard one.
Dating Porter had become a habit, one she needed to break sooner rather than later. He was handsome and could, on occasion, be charming, but he was such a snob. He seemed to be every woman’s dream—intelligent, well-mannered, attentive, and handsome. Everyone said that he was a young man with a bright future. Even Tam had liked him when he and Audrey had first started dating, but had revised her opinion within a few weeks.
“Porter’s okay,” Tam had told her. “If you like the stuffed-shirt type. But, girlfriend, he’s so not the man for you.”
Despite Tam’s opinion and her own nagging doubts, Audrey had fallen into a comfortable routine with Porter. And what she had liked most about dating him was the fact that he hadn’t been demanding. Whenever she had to break a date, he was more than understanding. When she continuously told him she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, he accepted the fact that she wasn’t ready, that she wanted to wait.
But wait for what? She hadn’t been specific. He hadn’t asked.
What are you waiting for, Audrey?
As Porter led her through the throng of celebrators, he said, “This is a come-and-go thing, so we don’t have to stay the entire four hours. I thought you could make your presence known, wish happy birthday to Chief Mullins, grab a few tidbits from the buffet table, drink a glass of bubbly, and then—”
“I intend to stay for a good while,” Audrey informed him.
“How long? I had hoped—”
“Porter, do not go there. Not tonight of all nights. You have to understand what a difficult day this has been for me.”
He pouted like a petulant child who had been sent to bed without his supper. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. No pressure, darling.”
She paused alongside the dance floor and turned to the ever-accommodating Porter. “Willie Mullins is my dearest friend’s father. I love the man. I think of him and Geraldine as family. I’m not going to make a brief appearance at his sixtieth birthday party and just disappear.”
“Yes, of course, I really do understand.” Porter released his hold on her elbow. “Why don’t I find a waiter and get us some champagne.”
“Thank you. That would be nice.”
As if from out of nowhere, Tam appeared the minute Porter left. Wearing a lemon yellow silk dress that clung to her rounded curves and a pair of dewdrop pearl earrings as her only jewelry, Tam was stunningly beautiful.
She slipped her arm around Audrey’s waist. “Look at Mom and Dad. It must be wonderful to still be that much in love after all these years.”
Audrey gave her friend a squeezing hug and then glanced at the dance floor where Geraldine swayed dreamily in Willie’s big, strong arms. “Your parents are proof that there really is such a thing as happily-ever-after.”
“Your dad’s here,” Tam said. “He and your uncle Garth. And Hart.”
“Hart’s here?”
Tam nodded.
“How is he?” Audrey asked.
“Clean and sober, at least for tonight. He looks nice. I think he’s wearing that new suit you bought him for his last job interview.”
Audrey forced a smile. She loved her stepbrother. After Blake’s disappearance twenty-five years ago, they had bonded as siblings. They had both known that they were the expendable kids, the ones who would never be as important to her father and his mother as Blake had been. And each of them had dealt with their family’s tragedies in different ways. Audrey had focused all her energy on a profession where she could help other people deal with their own tragedy, with grief, with suffering of any kind. Hart had sought solace in drugs and alcohol. He’d been in and out of rehab half a dozen times during the past two decades, and he’d never held down a job for more than six months at a time.
“I wish I could do more to help him than just buying him a new suit.”
“My God, you’ve done all you can. And you’ve done it over and over again. What more could you do? I’m not saying Hart’s a lost cause, but …” Tam grimaced. “Hart’s got problems that you can’t fix, problems that maybe nobody can fix.”
“I know. In here”—Audrey tapped her head—“I know. But in here”—she patted her chest—“I want to believe that somehow, some way, someday …”
“Fairy Godmother Audrey.” Tam smiled. “Always wishing you could wave a magic wand and make everything all right for everyone.”
Audrey snorted, the sound quite unladylike. “Yeah, all the good that wishing does me when my damn magic wand is broken.”
Tam laughed.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” Audrey said. “Neither of us has done much of that recently, have we. You know, in a way, it seems strange to be enjoying such a happy occasion tonight when only a few hours ago I was at Jill Scott’s funeral.”
“I try to keep my professional life and my personal life separate,” Tam said. “Most of the time, I can, but sometimes … He’s still out there, the guy who kidnapped and murdered Jill Scott. We’re no closer now to catching him than we were nine days ago. And unless all the experts are wrong, there’s a good chance that the same man abducted Debra Gregory and will kill her, too.”
“I shouldn’t have mentioned Jill tonight,” Audrey said. “I’m afraid I’m seldom able to separate myself from my client’s problems. What does that say about my professionalism?”
“Screw your professionalism. Caring too damn much about everyone else is what makes you you, and I wouldn’t change that or anything else about you.”
“Only because you love me like a sister.”
“Got that damn straight.” Tam’s gaze fixed on something or someone behind Audrey. Her eyes widened and a quirky smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t look now, but tall, dark, and could-eat-him-with-a-spoon is here, right behind us and coming this way.”
“Who are you talking about?”
When Audrey started to turn around, Tam grabbed her by the forearms. “Don’t turn around. Not yet,” Tam said under her breath. “Damn, he’s not alone.”
“For goodness sakes, who are you—?”
“Well, hello there,” Tam said to the person standing behind Audrey. “How are you tonight?”
Why was Tam acting so odd? Audrey turned and, despite her six-foot height in her three-inch heels, had to look up slightly to be face-to-face with the man. J.D. Cass, the TBI agent she’d met nine days ago when she had accompanied the Scott family to the Lookout Valley Cracker Barrel, smiled at her. He was the guy whose “you’re not an M.D.” comment had irritated her. Not only that, but the way he’d looked at her had irritated her, too. And the fact that she had found him attractive irritated her. Hell, everything about the man irritated her.
“Audrey, you remember Special Agent Cass, don’t you?” Tam glanced from the TBI agent to the bosomy woman hanging on his arm.
For some reason, Audrey disliked the lovely blond on sight. It wasn’t like her to feel instant hostility toward someone. Maybe it was because the woman was so gorgeous and obviously sexy, her attitude all but screaming, I’m prettier than you are. Ha-ha-ha.
Okay, so she still had a few hang-ups about her looks, especially whenever she compared herself to someone as blatantly feminine and sexy as J.D. Cass’s date. Audrey had always been big for her age. Above average height, small breasts, big feet, and at best moderately attractive instead of beautiful. And she’d certainly never filled out a dress the way this woman did.
“Nice to see you again, Tam,” J.D. said, but he was looking at Audrey. “And you, too, Dr. Sherrod.” Without taking his eyes off Audrey, he introduced the woman at his side. “You both know Holly Johnston, don’t you?”
“Ms. Johnston and I have met,” Tam replied.
Before Audrey could mention that she didn’t know Ms. Johnston, Porter reappeared with their champagne. When he saw the other couple, he smiled at the voluptuous blonde in the slinky red dress. The dress barely reached the woman’s knees, revealed a great deal of cleavage, and dipped to her waist in the back.
“You’re looking beautiful, as always, Counselor,” Porter said, his glance blatantly enjoying the scenery. “Holly, have you met my date, Dr. Audrey Sherrod?” He placed his arm possessively around Audrey’s waist. “Sweetheart, you’ve heard me mention Holly. We work together.”
“We were just getting around to introductions.” Audrey did her best to smile. She had learned over the years how to put on a pleasant face and act agreeable regardless of how she actually felt.
So, Holly, the blond goddess, was an assistant district attorney, just as Porter was. She vaguely remembered him mentioning this drop-dead-gorgeous woman in the DA’s office who was a real barracuda in the courtroom. Audrey suspected that J.D. Cass’s date was a barracuda in the bedroom, too.
“Y’all will have to excuse me,” Tam said. “I see my husband motioning for me. I think it’s almost time to bring out Dad’s birthday cake.”
Within minutes of Tam’s departure, DA Everett Harrelson joined them and the conversation quickly turned into shop talk with Porter, Holly, and their boss. Audrey took several discreet steps back and away from the foursome, hoping she could inconspicuously slip away so that she could wish Willie a happy birthday before they presented him with his cake. Audrey thought she wouldn’t be missed for several minutes and was about to make her escape when Special Agent Cass smoothly maneuvered himself away from Holly, who didn’t seem to notice that she was losing her date. At least temporarily.
J.D. came up beside Audrey. “Looks like our dates are ignoring us.” He held out his hand. “Would you care to dance, Dr. Sherrod?’
Audrey hesitated for half a second. “I … uh …”
“It’s just a dance, not a lifetime commitment,” he said jokingly.
“Thank you, Special Agent Cass, I’d love to dance.”
She took his hand and he led her onto the dance floor.
“My name’s J.D.,” he told her as he slipped his arm around her.
“I’m Audrey.”
“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“What?” She eyed him quizzically.
“Our getting on a first-name basis.”
“Are we playing some sort of game, J.D.? If we are, clue me in.”
He chuckled, and damn it, she liked the sound. Deep and robust and genuine.
“You have a nice smile,” he told her.
She hadn’t even been aware that she was smiling. “Do you always flirt with every woman you meet?”
“Who says I’m flirting?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing, flirting with me because you’re aggravated that your date is distracted by her boss and coworker?”
He chuckled again, as if he found her comment highly amusing.
Audrey felt a flush of heat warm her from head to toes. She hoped her sudden awareness of just how close her dance partner was holding her didn’t show on her face.
“You’re an open book,” Tam had once told her. “Everything you’re feeling shows on your face.”
“Holly and I don’t have that kind of relationship,” J.D. said.
“What kind is that?”
“The kind where I’d be aggravated or jealous that she’s ignoring me in favor of spending time with her boss and her coworker.”
“Then you two aren’t seriously involved?”
“I’m never seriously involved. Not since my divorce six years ago. What about you—are you and Beau Brummell engaged, going steady, or just sleeping together?”
Audrey laughed spontaneously, thoroughly amused by J.D. dubbing the fastidious Porter with the name of the best-known dandy of all time.
“Porter and I are not engaged,” she said. “And we’re a little too old to go steady. Besides, I think that term is passé, but I have no idea what teenagers call it these days.” She gave her last statement several moments of consideration before saying, “And whether or not we’re sleeping together is none of your business.”
J.D. grinned.
Damn if the man wasn’t dangerously sexy. And he probably knew it. Guys like that always did, didn’t they?
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It would be my business only if you and I were—”
“And we are not!” Audrey, Audrey, why did you finish the man’s sentence for him? Why such an adamant statement of fact?
With that damn sexy smile unwavering, he agreed. “No, we aren’t.”
As if on cue the music stopped, the dance ended, and J.D. led her off the dance floor. She pulled away from him.
“I’m going to find Willie and wish—”
Too late. The waiters wheeled out an enormous six-tier cake placed in the center of a serving cart and the band played “Happy Birthday.” The partygoers, including Audrey and J.D., joined in the song. As the well-wishers crowded together around the guest of honor, J.D. eased his arm around Audrey’s waist. Ambivalent feelings toward the man warred inside her and a damn army of butterflies did a war dance in her belly.
Debra didn’t know if it was daylight or dark outside in the real world. Here in the macabre otherworld in which she existed, it was always night. It could be twelve noon or twelve midnight for all she knew. It could be Monday or Friday. Perhaps she had been here for a week, or it could have been a month.
What did it matter?
“Rock him to sleep,” the voice told her. “Lovingly. Tenderly. He needs a mother’s gentle touch.”
She held the bundle in her arms and immediately began crooning the lullaby she knew he expected her to sing to the object wrapped in the soft blue blanket. How many times had they repeated this ritual? Dozens? Hundreds? She had lost count. Odd how rocking and singing to the skeleton of a small child had become a routine, one she no longer viewed with utter horror. Her entire world was now confined to this small space, an area with hard floors and walls too distant to see in the semidarkness in which she now lived. As far as she knew, the rocking chair where she was confined was the only piece of furniture in the room.
He had not harmed her, at least not physically. He kept her feet loosely bound so that even when she was allowed to move around, she had to hobble. And whenever he left her, he tied her wrists to the chair arms. He brought her food and water. He allowed her to wash herself and even brush her hair; and he provided an old-fashioned slop jar for her to use. But the indignity of having to bathe in front of him and even relieve herself with him standing nearby had added to the emotional trauma she had endured every moment of her captivity.
In the beginning, she had been afraid that he would rape her, but it soon became apparent that his reasons for abducting her and holding her prisoner had nothing to do with sex. Then she’d wondered if he would eventually torture her. He hadn’t. But the psychological torment was just as bad as physical torture would have been, perhaps worse.
She felt him move away from his stance behind the rocker, where he always stood when she performed. And that’s what it felt like—a performance. Where was he going? His leaving while she still held the blanket-wrapped bundle was not part of the normal routine.
Her voice momentarily faltered.
“Keep singing,” he told her.
She continued with the lullaby, repeating the words over and over, making up new verses as she went along.
Within minutes, he came up behind her again, but instead of standing guard over her, he reached around her and laid a small pillow across her lap. Since that first time when he had placed what she had thought was a doll in her arms, she had avoided glancing down at it, but she looked at her lap, at the age-yellowed white satin pillow trimmed with tattered blue ribbons. It was a baby’s pillow.
“Do what you know you must do,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You must send him to heaven where he’ll be one of the little angels.”
“What? I don’t know what you mean. What do you want me to do?”
“Pick up the pillow.”
She did.
“Lay it gently over his face.”
She did.
“Hold it there and keep singing and rocking him until he goes to sleep.”
Until he goes to sleep?
Realization dawned. Until he’s dead.
“You want me to smother him?” she asked.
“You don’t want him to suffer any longer, do you?”
She lifted the pillow and placed it over the bundle she held.
“It’ll all be over soon,” the man’s voice whispered softly … sadly.
Believing he meant the make-believe child in her arms would soon stop breathing, she felt a sense of immediate relief when he lifted the pillow, put it in her lap, and took the bundle from her. For now, it was over. He would tie her wrists to the chair and leave her here. Until the next time.
In the beginning, she had tried to get away from him, but each time he’d caught her before she had gotten more than a few feet. After being shoved onto the floor, face down, several times, she had stopped trying to escape.
She waited there in the rocking chair, waited for him to tie her wrists to the arms and then leave her. But when he reached around her from behind, there were no ropes in his hands.
Instead, he lifted the pillow from her lap and brought it up and over her face. She didn’t realize what he intended to do, not until he pushed the pillow against her face and held it there.
Chapter 4
Audrey had spent a restless night, tossing and turning, waking every hour or so from the time she had finally fallen asleep at midnight until a few seconds ago when she had shot straight up in bed. She glanced at the bedside clock—5:40 A.M.—and groaned. Damn it, she’d been dreaming. Crazy dreams. The kind that didn’t make any sense, but that were nevertheless all too real and somewhat unnerving. As a child, she had been prone to nightmares, especially after Blake’s disappearance. Jumbled, chaotic, frightening dreams. But as an adult, she rarely remembered her dreams.
Unfortunately, she recalled exactly what she’d been dreaming when she awoke so suddenly. She and J.D. Cass had been dancing, just as they had been last night at Willie’s birthday party. Except in the dream, they had been alone, just the two of them, and he had kissed her.
It would never happen. Not in a million years.
If and when you see him again, you’ll be cordial to him and yet distant. Whatever was going on last night between the two of you meant no more to him than it did to you. It was nothing more than a harmless flirtation.
But her unwanted attraction to J.D. Cass was minor compared to what was really troubling her. If only she could lay all the blame for her restless night on her encounter with J.D., it would be easy enough to dismiss. In the course of that one evening, she’d come face-to-face with far more than an unwanted attraction to a man she instinctively disliked. Troubled family relationships and personal insecurities were far more to blame for her discontent.
She couldn’t dismiss her concerns about Hart or her regrets about her relationship with her father. Until last night, she hadn’t seen her stepbrother in weeks, not since she had bought him the new suit for his job interview. When she hadn’t heard from him and he hadn’t answered her phone calls, she had contacted Garth. He’d told her that Hart had gotten cold feet at the last minute and had blown off the interview.
“He can’t face you right now,” Garth had said. “He feels pretty lousy about disappointing you again, especially after you not only lined up the interview for him, but bought him some new duds, too.”
Uncle Garth always made excuses for Hart, always played the role of protector. They had disagreed more than once on what to do to help Hart. She had finally given up trying to persuade Garth that maybe a little tough love would do more good than continuously enabling Hart to make poor choices.
Garth Hudson had his faults, but no one could accuse him of not loving his nephew. He had gone that extra mile for Hart so many times she’d lost count. He had paid for Hart’s repeated rehab treatments. He’d given him a place to live when he’d been between jobs, which he was on a regular basis. And he’d called in favors several times to keep Hart out of jail.
Hart had faced her last night with a shy smile and a sincere apology. He’d been apologizing to her for one thing or another since they were kids. And she always forgave him for whatever misdeeds he’d committed. With his big blue eyes, so like little Blake’s, and his sweet, boyish smile, Hart could be irresistibly convincing.
God knew Hart was his own worst enemy. If only he could get his act together and not keep screwing up. And if pigs had wings, they could fly.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, sis. You and Uncle Garth,” he’d said last night during their brief conversation. “I don’t know why either of you put up with me.”
“Because we love you.”
She did love Hart. He was family. They shared a history. They had survived Blake’s kidnapping, Enid’s suicide, and her father’s complete emotional withdrawal. They were irrevocably bound by the scars of their childhood tragedies.
Hart had promised they’d get together soon, that he’d drop by or they could meet for lunch one day. “I’ve got a line on another job,” he’d told her. “It’s minimum wage, but at least I could start paying Uncle Garth some room and board.”
That indefinite promise from Hart that they’d see each other again soon had been more than she’d gotten from her father during their brief conversation. Her dad had mentioned how pretty her dress was and told her he was glad to see her. But he hadn’t looked her in the eye, hadn’t smiled at her, and certainly hadn’t hugged her. She had asked how he was enjoying his retirement and he’d mentioned that he was doing a lot of fishing. Audrey couldn’t remember one time in her thirty-four years that she and her father had ever had a meaningful conversation.
Enough introspection, especially this early in the morning.
She might as well get up. There wasn’t much chance she’d go back to sleep. She needed her morning cup of hot tea, something she looked forward to every day.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, Audrey headed for the kitchen. She filled the white enamel kettle with fresh water and placed it on the Jenn-Air range to heat. A hint of daylight peeked through the closed blinds of her Walnut Hill town house as she padded around on the Brazilian cherry hardwood floor, set out her favorite teacup on the granite countertop, and removed a bag of Earl Grey from the maple cupboard. If anything, Audrey was a creature of habit. She lived her life on a flexible schedule, appreciating the peace that the familiar gave her on a daily basis.
As a child, she had experienced enough drama to last her a lifetime. She supposed that was why she craved normalcy, why she chose to live a quiet, uneventful life. Beginning with her parents’ divorce, her childhood had been riddled with tragedy. Only a year after her parents’ bitter divorce when she was five, her mother had been killed in a car wreck when a drunk driver swerved into oncoming traffic. Then her baby brother Blake—her father’s pride and joy—had mysteriously disappeared. And a few months later, her distraught stepmother had committed suicide.
Just as Audrey opened the blinds to let in the morning light, the kettle whistled and the phone rang. On her way to take the kettle off the stove, she grabbed the portable phone and hit the On button without checking caller ID. It was barely six o’clock, so odds were that the caller had bad news.
“Hello.” Audrey tipped the kettle and poured boiling hot water into her tea cup.
“Audrey, this is Don Hardy.”
Why is the mayor calling me? “Good morning, Mayor Hardy.” She set the kettle on the counter and dunked her tea bag down into the steaming water.
“My wife is going to need you this morning,” he said. “Can you come to our house as soon as possible?”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t understand. Why does—?”
“I just got off the phone with Sergeant Hudson. He thinks they’ve found my wife’s cousin, Debra.”
Audrey swallowed. Instinctively she knew without asking that the police had not found Debra Gregory alive.
“I see. It’s not good news.”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Our worst fears have been confirmed,” Don Hardy said. “Sergeant Hudson was on the scene when he called me. A passerby on his way to work just happened to see something he thought was odd and called the police. The officers first on the scene found a dead woman sitting in an old, broken rocking chair at an illegal dump site out in Soddy-Daisy.”
“And Garth believes the woman is your wife’s cousin?”
“Yes. She fits the general description, and your uncle said that she looks exactly like the photo the police have of Debra. If it is Debra, and I’m pretty sure it is, Janice is going to fall apart. They were very close. Debra was like a kid sister to my wife.”
“Do you want me to come to your home or—?” Audrey asked.
“Yes, please, as soon as possible. I … uh … I haven’t told Janice yet, but I can’t put it off much longer. I’ll have to leave her to go ID the body. Janice is Debra’s closest relative here in Chattanooga.”
“If you’ll give me your address and directions, I’ll be there within the hour.”
“Thank you.” He hurriedly rattled off the street address and then went over the driving directions with her twice.
Audrey laid the portable phone on the counter, picked up her cup, took two quick sips, and then dumped the tea into the sink before heading straight back to her bedroom. There was no time for breakfast or even a leisurely cup of morning tea.
J.D. had left Zoe a note stuck to the refrigerator with an orange and white UT emblem magnet. They had pretty much fallen into a routine during the past year, each giving the other plenty of space, neither able to truly connect with the other. Most weekday mornings, they ate breakfast together and he dropped her off at Baylor—the outrageously expensive private school she attended—on his way to the office. But whenever he was called out before breakfast—weekdays or weekends—he’d leave her a note as he had done this morning. Since it was Sunday, he wouldn’t have to make arrangements for someone to take her to school, and at fourteen, she was old enough to be left alone without adult supervision during the day.
After several come-to-Jesus talks with Zoe, he pretty much trusted her to do what she was told. She didn’t like it, but that’s just the way it was. She was a kid. He was her father. He made the rules. She followed them or else.
Or else what?
Damn it, sometimes he had no idea how to handle her.
She had pushed him to the limit more than once. He had grounded her, taken away certain privileges, and tried to talk sense to her. Only once had he threatened to send her packing. The fear he had seen in her eyes that day was something he never wanted to see again. As much as she hated living with him, as often as she grumbled and complained about how much she disliked him and what a piss-poor excuse for a father he was, Zoe knew he was the only game in town. Nobody else wanted her. If not for him, she would be living in foster care.
The thought unnerved him more than a little. He had heard the horror stories. He’d run across more than one juvenile delinquent who had come out of the system the worse for wear, neglected, and occasionally abused. If Carrie hadn’t gotten in touch with him before she died, if she hadn’t told him he had a daughter …
Pushing aside thoughts of how bad he sucked at being a father, J.D. took the Soddy-Daisy/Hixson Pike exit off US-27 North and followed Garth Hudson’s directions to the illegal dump site in Soddy-Daisy. After taking TN-319 and following Tsati Terrace, he veered off onto what appeared to be little more than a winding, narrow paved lane. Within minutes, he saw the row of emergency vehicles lined up along the roadside and the swarm of personnel already on site. He carefully parked his ’68 Dodge Charger at the end of the line, got out, and then walked a good two hundred yards before reaching the edge of the crime scene. Ordinarily, he didn’t use his dad’s old car as a daily driver, but his ’07 Chevy Camaro convertible was in the body shop. Some goofball had rear-ended him last week.
In a semiwooded area, less than twelve feet from the road, a band of investigators milled around a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot pile of discarded items. An old refrigerator. A ratty, seen-better-days love seat. A twin-size mattress. Empty paint cans. Several overflowing plastic garbage bags. And one old, broken rocking chair, the floral cushions faded with age and stained from exposure to the weather.
Tam Lovelady turned just as J.D. flashed his badge to the officer guarding the entrance to the cordoned-off area. She threw up her hand and motioned to him. As he approached Officer Lovelady and Sergeant Hudson, his gaze focused on the woman in the rocking chair. Her body sat upright, rigid, as if made of stone. Her pretty face was unblemished, her long, dark hair had been draped about her shoulders, and a small skeleton, wrapped in a blue baby blanket, lay nestled in her lap.
“Looks familiar, doesn’t it?” Tam said.
“Yeah,” J.D. replied. “This is too similar to the scene at the Lookout Valley Cracker Barrel to be a coincidence.”
“You think?” Garth Hudson said sarcastically.
J.D. grunted. “So, are you sure she’s Debra Gregory?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure,” Garth replied. “Mayor Hardy will ID the body. But for now, we’re working under the assumption that whoever killed Jill Scott killed Debra Gregory. Two abductions. Two murders. The skeletal remains of two babies left with the murder victims. It’s the same MO.”
J.D. took a step closer to the body and paused beside ME Peter Tipton. Pete watched while the photographer, working under his supervision, snapped shot after shot of the body and the skeleton.
“Asphyxiation,” Pete said.
“Huh?”
“Cause of death. She was probably smothered. Just like Jill Scott.”
J.D. pointed to the bundle in the victim’s lap. “Not a doll this time, either.”
“No, not a doll. Another child. About the same size. Probably about the same age.”
“So far, we don’t have any idea who the first child was, only that it was a male about two years old,” J.D. said. “Once we get the DNA results back … Hell, we haven’t identified the first child, and now we have another one.”
Pete glanced away from the body in the rocking chair and looked at J.D. “I hate to say it, but it appears we may have a really bizarre serial killer on our hands. A little profiling hoodoo”—Pete gestured with his hands—“might be in order about now.”
“Are you suggesting we involve the Feds?”
“Not unless you state boys can’t handle it,” Pete said. “I heard you’ve got some experience in that department.”
“Where’d you hear something like that?”
“Word gets around.”
“I’m just an amateur compared to the real thing.”
Only when Tam cleared her throat was J.D aware that she was standing nearby. “Sorry to interrupt, but I overheard the tail end of what y’all were saying, something about Special Agent Cass being familiar with profiling.”
“I know a little something,” J.D. admitted. “But if the CPD wants a profile of the killer, then I can put in a call to a buddy of mine at the Bureau or either of you can call the BSU.”
“I’ll run that by Sergeant Hudson.” Tam glanced at her partner, who was talking to one of the uniformed officers. “I don’t think he’ll object. As long as both the TBI and the FBI keep in mind that this is a CPD case and we’re in charge—”
“Enough said.” J.D. knew the drill.
Local law enforcement could be territorial, even if they wanted and needed assistance. When he’d been assigned to the Memphis field office, he’d had a bad run-in with a local county sheriff. The sheriff, a good old boy with a lot of influential friends, had come out of the confrontation smelling like a rose. J.D. had come out of it smelling like shit. He had learned his lesson the hard way, one of many. Not the first, of course, and God help him, probably not the last either.
“Unofficially, the three of us just talking among ourselves, do you have any gut feelings about this guy—a man who abducts pretty, young, dark-haired women, holds them hostage for a couple of weeks, smothers them, and then poses them in a rocking chair with the skeletal remains of a toddler?” Tam’s gaze connected with J.D.’s.
“Just the three of us talking among ourselves, I’d say this guy’s got some kind of mommy problem.” J.D. looked at the body in the rocking chair. “Maybe some sort of mommy and baby thing. Think about it—a rocking chair, a blue baby blanket, a dead child …”
“Makes sense,” Tam said. “But what you just said is pretty much a given, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, sure, but why put a dead child in her arms?” Pete asked. “What does that mean?”
J.D. shrugged. “Beats me. Unless, in his mind, he’s mimicking something.”
“What I want to know is where he got the two little skeletons,” Tam said. “There are no reports in Tennessee or any of the surrounding states about the graves of any children being dug up, no bodies reported being stolen.”
“Which leaves us with what?” J.D. asked.
Tam and Pete stared questioningly at J.D.
“The bodies probably belong to missing children.”
“Are you saying you think our killer murdered these little boys years ago and kept their bodies hidden away?” Tam asked.
“Possibly,” J.D. said. “Either that or he knew where whoever killed them had buried the bodies.”
Chapter 5
After Audrey’s arrival at his home that morning, Mayor Don Hardy had left his wife in Audrey’s capable hands—his assessment, not hers—and gone to the Forensics Center on Amnicola Highway to ID Debra’s body. Although understandably distraught over her cousin’s murder, Janice Hardy had managed to hold it together and not fall apart completely. What she had needed was to talk about Debra, about their close sisterlike relationship and how very much she would miss her cousin. Naturally, Janice had questioned how something so horrible could have happened. Why would anyone want to kill Debra? Or Jill Scott? Two lovely young women apparently killed without rhyme or reason, simply because they fit a certain profile. Young, slender, attractive, brown-eyed brunettes.
An hour ago, shortly before leaving the mayor’s home, Audrey had received a call from Tam. She had told Audrey that their lunch plans were unfortunately canceled, and then she had asked her to stop by headquarters that afternoon.
“Dad’s here with us,” Tam had said. “We’re putting our heads together and trying to make sense of things. Dad wants to talk to you, so would you mind dropping by as soon as you can?”
Audrey was supposed to have Sunday dinner with Tam and Marcus and Tam’s parents, but the discovery of Debra Gregory’s body that morning had changed everyone’s plans. Assuming that no one else had eaten lunch either, Audrey had stopped by the River Street Deli downtown and bought lunch for four. She figured the “we” Tam had referred to were Tam and Garth and Willie.
Audrey parked her cocoa brown Buick Enclave in the civilian parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center, across the highway on Wisdom Street. She hoisted her em-bossed black leather Coach bag over her shoulder and picked up the large sack from the passenger seat. Using the crosswalk between Amnicola Highway and Wisdom Street, she approached the 911 Center and the CPD headquarters housed in the two-story gray buildings.
Everyone at the police department knew Audrey. The old pros had known her all her life and there actually were a few of those still around, men like her uncle Garth and Willie Mullins. Some of the young guns were her friends and a few of them were childhood buddies, as Tam was. Others were acquaintances. She had worked, in an advisory capacity, with the CPD in the past, so no one raised an eyebrow when she showed up at headquarters on a Sunday afternoon. Normally, visitors had to be accompanied by police personnel beyond the front information center desk lobby area.
Audrey went up to the second floor of the PSC, where the patrol squad rooms were located. The door to the office that Garth now shared with Tam stood wide open. Just as Audrey approached, Garth must have sensed her presence. He turned and glared at her, not looking all that happy to see her. She held up the sack and waved it slowly back and forth to let him know that she came bearing gifts. Shaking his head as if reluctantly agreeing for her to join him, he motioned to her. Tam, who stood in the corner of the office, was on the phone. She glanced at Audrey and forced a weak smile.
Willie—Police Chief Mullins—sat behind Garth’s desk, his attention focused on the papers and photographs lying on the desktop in front of him. As a general rule, the chief didn’t come to headquarters on a Sunday afternoon. But there was a good chance the CPD was dealing with a serial killer and not your regular run-of-the-mill murderer. Both the mayor and the DA were probably breathing down Willie’s neck.
She often wondered if Willie missed being an investigator, if he missed working with his old partner, her dad. Of course, no one had forced him to take the police chief position. He could have taken the route her uncle Garth had and turned down chances for promotion just so he could stay in the field.
“I don’t want a desk job,” Garth had said more than once. “And I sure as hell don’t want to play politics.”
But Willie excelled in his new position. He had an even temper, an easygoing manner, and a keen intelligence that made him an excellent diplomat and a great leader. Garth was smart—street smart and book smart—but he was also temperamental, moody, not easy to get along with, and known for his hard drinking and womanizing.
“Thanks,” Tam said to the person on the other end of the line just before she ended their conversation. “Pete Tipton said that if or when another similar murder occurs, the TBI will send in a crime scene vehicle, either from Nashville or Knoxville. A third murder would erase all doubts about our having a serial killer on our hands.”
“Is there any doubt now?” Garth grumbled.
“He’s killed twice that we know of,” Willie said. “He’ll kill again. It’s only a matter of time before he kidnaps another woman.”
“And we don’t have a clue who he is or when and where he’ll strike again.” Tam looked from her father to Audrey. “What’s in that sack?”
Audrey placed the sack on Tam’s desk. “Sandwiches from the River Street Deli. One for each of us.”
“You’re not part of this investigative team,” Garth told her. “We’ve got a job to do. So thank you for the sandwiches. Leave them with us and go.”
“No,” Willie said. “Stay. We can take a break, long enough to eat together.” He looked right at Garth. “I want to talk to Audrey. I had Tam ask her to stop by. There are things she needs to know.”
Garth mumbled under his breath, but didn’t contradict his boss. Instead he said something about getting coffee and disappeared around the corner.
“He’s frustrated,” Willie told Audrey. “We all are. You know how Garth is.”
“Yes, I know only too well,” Audrey replied.
Tam opened the sack and removed the four sandwiches, but before handing them out, she looked to Audrey for information.
“Here, let me do that.” Audrey handed Willie a sandwich. “Roast beef, rare.” Then she placed a sandwich in front of Tam and laid another aside for herself. “A couple of their Elana Ruz sandwiches for us—turkey, cream cheese, and strawberry preserves.”
Tam sighed deeply. “If you weren’t already my best friend, you would be now.”
Audrey and Tam exchanged smiles.
Garth returned with two cups of coffee, gave one to Willie, and kept the second cup. “I figure you girls will want to doctor up your coffee to suit yourselves. I’ve got no idea how either of you want it.”
“I’ll get us both a Coke,” Tam said. “Does that suit you?”
“A Coke’s fine,” Audrey replied
“I’ll make yours regular and mine diet.”
Audrey nodded. She and Tam had different body types and different metabolisms. Tam was always dieting. Audrey had never dieted. But she suspected that eventually, probably in her fifties, that would change.
When Tam walked off, Audrey noticed that Willie was once again engrossed with some of the papers and photos spread out on Garth’s desk.
“Would I be out of order to ask what you’re looking at?” she asked.
“You know better than to ask,” Garth told her.
“Sorry.” Audrey eased away from the desk.
“It’s something we chose not to share with the media.” Willie glanced from Garth to Audrey. “But Audrey isn’t the media.”
“She’s not one of us, either,” Garth reminded the chief.
Choosing to ignore Garth’s comment, Willie said, “It’s something that we all find odd about how both bodies were staged.”
“Everything’s odd,” Garth said. “There’s nothing normal about it either.”
Willie glowered at Garth before turning back to Audrey. “It’s about what the two women held in their laps.”
“Jill Scott was holding a doll, right? Or at least that’s what everyone assumes. That’s what the reporters said. So, what was Debra Gregory holding?”
“The media present at the scene where Jill Scott’s body was discovered were kept at a distance and assumed they saw a doll lying in her lap.” Willie shuffled through the photos in front of him, chose two, and held them up to show Audrey. “It wasn’t a doll.”
Audrey stared at the crime scene photograph of Jill Scott. It took her brain several seconds to grasp the reality of what she saw. Her mouth parted to release a soft, startled gasp.
“It’s a … a skeleton.” Audrey took the photo from Willie and studied it more closely. “Oh my God! The killer laid the skeleton of a small child in Jill’s lap.”
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Tam said as she came back into the office.
“Then it’s real,” Audrey said, barely believing her own eyes. “It’s the actual skeletal remains of a human child?”
Tam set two colas on the desk, one by her sandwich and the other by Audrey’s. “All too real. We’re waiting on DNA results in the hopes we can identify the child, but the UT Body Farm has identified the remains of the child found with Jill Scott as a white male, probably between the ages of twenty and thirty-six months.”
“What about Debra Gregory? Was there a …?” Audrey couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“Yes, there was another child found in her lap,” Tam said. “About the same size.”
Willie stood and placed his big hand on Audrey’s shoulder. “Pete Tipton will examine the remains, take DNA samples from bone and teeth, and forward them to the lab.”
Audrey suddenly felt as if someone had dealt her a body blow hard enough to knock the wind out of her. For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t allow herself to accept the impossible possibility. Not now. Not after twenty-five years.
“Is there any chance that one of those little bodies could be …” She swallowed hard. “Could be …” She couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t say the unthinkable.
“It’s possible,” Tam said. “We’ll know as soon as the DNA testing is completed.”
“Oh, God, does my father know?” Audrey asked.
Whitney Poole hated her job, especially when she drew the Sunday lunch shift at Callie’s Café. Crowds of churchgoers descended on the restaurant in droves, and many of those good Christian people treated the waitresses as if they were unemotional robots. As if being yelled at, ordered around, and occasionally cursed wasn’t bad enough, the cheapskates who ate at Callie’s because they could buy a meat and three vegetables for $5.99 were definitely not big tippers.
Whitney glanced at her wristwatch—4:15 P.M.—and smiled when she realized her shift would end in fifteen minutes. Her feet ached, her head hurt, and she probably had a bruise on her butt from where a customer had pinched her. The son of a bitch had actually pinched her ass. When she’d given him a nasty look and told him to keep his hands to himself, he and his two buddies had whooped loudly in her face.
After going from table to table and refilling coffee cups and tea glasses, she hurried to print out the bills for her two remaining tables. One was a blond guy sitting all alone. He seemed quiet and shy and hadn’t said another word to her after placing his order. He had simply answered when asked if he wanted more tea or a dessert. He had declined both. He’d been pleasant enough, although he hadn’t smiled at her or anyone else, but she had caught him staring at her a couple of times, and the way he’d looked at her had sent chills up her spine. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was about him that spooked her; she just knew that he did, despite the fact that he was young and good-looking.
She laid his check on the table, asked if he wanted anything else, and turned to go to the next table.
“Wait,” he called to her.
She hesitated, feeling a sense of dread spreading quickly through her; but she turned, smiled, and said, “Yes, sir?”
He held up a five-dollar bill. “I just wanted to make sure you got your tip.”
She stared at the money in his hand for a couple of seconds, then snatched it away from him and said, “Thank you.”
He rose to his feet so quickly that before she had time to move, he was facing her, only a couple of inches separating their bodies. Instinctively, she moved backward, forced another smile, and rushed to the next table. By the time she laid down the check and glanced back, the man was walking out the door. She released a heavy breath, glad to see him leaving.
But suddenly he stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and smiled at her.
The only thought that came to mind was something her grandmother had said whenever she got a peculiar feeling. I feel as if somebody just walked over my grave.
Get real, Whit. Just because that guy was sort of creepy doesn’t mean you should freak out or anything.
By the time 4:30 rolled around, she had all but forgotten her weird customer. The only thing on her mind was her Sunday night date with Travis. He was bringing over pizza and a DVD. They’d eat, watch the movie, and then do the nasty. They’d been dating a couple of months. Nothing serious. At least not yet. But neither of them was seeing other people. That meant something, didn’t it? He hadn’t said the L-word and neither had she, but she already knew she loved him. And she knew better than to push him. She’d done that before, with disastrous results. Danny had walked away and never looked back, leaving her with a broken heart. That had been nearly two years ago. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Travis. She’d wait for him to make the first move, to say “I love you,” and take their relationship to the next level.
Whitney dug the car keys out of her Wal-Mart red purse and slung it over her shoulder as she exited Callie’s Café through the back entrance. When she reached her Honda Civic, a reliable used car she’d bought last year, she paused when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was watching her. She could feel it.
Play it cool. Don’t panic. It’s broad daylight. You aren’t alone. There are people inside the restaurant and probably out here, too.
She glanced around casually, doing her best not to draw attention to herself. Besides the other employees’ vehicles, she counted three other cars, all three empty. And she didn’t see another soul anywhere in the parking lot. No one was following her. No one was watching her.
After hurriedly unlocking her car, she slid behind the wheel, closed the door, locked it, and tossed her purse into the passenger seat. While starting the engine, she surveyed the parking lot again and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But just as she drove into the street, she spotted an older-model car parked across the road at the nearby Kangaroo gas station and mini-mart. A man stood beside a white Lincoln, the driver’s door open, and he was looking right at her.
My God, it was the weirdo from the restaurant, the one who had given her the five-dollar tip.
Her heartbeat accelerated.
What would she do if he followed her?
You’ll drive to the nearest police station, that’s what you’ll do.
For the next few blocks, she kept looking in her rearview mirror to see if he was following her. He wasn’t. No sign of his big old car or one that even vaguely resembled it.
If that guy ever came back to Callie’s Café, she’d ask one of the other waitresses to take his order. And if he ever dared to follow her when she left the restaurant, she’d sic the cops on him.
She was the one. He had known the minute he saw her. Everything about her was familiar, everything from her long, dark hair to her young, slender body and full, round breasts.
Her name tag had read Whitney.
But she couldn’t fool him.
He knew who she was.
He always recognized her.
I’m going to take you home, where you belong. I need you. We need you, Cody and I.
A child needs his mother. Someone to love him. Someone to rock him and sing to him. Someone to ease his suffering when he’s in pain.
I’ve taken very good care of Cody. I’ve made sure you will be with him forever so he will never be alone again. I’ll keep my promise. I’ll help you make everything right.
It’s what you need in order to rest in peace. It’s what Cody needs so that his little soul can go to heaven and the two of you can be together for all eternity.
He drove out of the parking area there at the gas station/mini-mart and slipped unobserved into the late Sunday afternoon traffic. His plans to follow her to wherever she was staying now went up in smoke the minute he realized that she had recognized him standing there across the street from Callie’s Café. Why she always resisted when he tried to take her home, he didn’t know. She always pretended she was someone else, someone who didn’t know him, someone who had no idea why she was so desperately needed.
Now that he had found her again, all he had to do was wait for the right moment to approach her when they could be alone. Just the two of them.
Chapter 6
Audrey disagreed with Garth. And not for the first time. They came at life from two different angles. Always had and always would. Her step-uncle was relentlessly stubborn and refused to accept anyone else’s viewpoint. He felt that he was right and everyone else was wrong. No opinion mattered except his. Audrey could be stubborn and fought for what she believed in, but she tried to keep an open mind and was willing to listen to other opinions and be proven wrong in any argument.
“Wayne doesn’t need to know about this,” Garth repeated adamantly. “We have no proof that either of those toddler skeletons is Blake.” His brow furrowed deeply as he scrunched his face in a surly scowl.
“I think my father should be told,” Audrey said, keeping her voice calm and even. “If he finds out that we kept this information from him, he’ll be very upset. He won’t appreciate us trying to protect him.”
“God damn it, Audrey, there’s nothing to protect him from!” Garth shouted. When Willie gave him a concerned glance, Garth lowered his voice. “The odds of either child being Blake are slim to none. Why put Wayne through hell all over again?”
“But what if this turns out to be a one-in-a-million coincidence and somehow—”
“Neither of them is Blake!” Garth cut her off midsentence. “The very idea that those two little skeletons might somehow be connected to a string of toddler kidnappings more than twenty years ago is a far-fetched notion. We are not digging up ghosts that are better left buried. We are going to keep Wayne out of this. Do you hear me?”
“Wayne Sherrod is one of my closest friends,” Willie said. “He has been for a good thirty-five years, and I think I know him as well as anybody.” Willie glanced from Audrey to Garth. “I’m calling him. We’ll tell him together, the four of us. No matter what, he would want to know, even if there’s only a slim possibility that either of those poor little boys is Blake.”
Garth grumbled a string of partially incoherent obscenities so quietly that the words were barely audible, but his disapproval came through loud and clear.
When Garth stomped off, went downstairs, and headed toward the exit, Audrey followed him, leaving Willie to telephone her father. She caught up with her uncle in the parking lot adjacent to the Police Service Center. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, removed one, and stuck it in his mouth. After replacing the pack, he lifted a lighter from his pants pocket and lit the cigarette.
Audrey walked up beside him. “Are you okay?”
Garth puffed on the cigarette, his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched. “Yeah, sure.”
“I almost wish one of those skeletons would turn out to be Blake.”
Garth took several more drags off his cigarette, tossed it on the pavement, and ground it into pieces with the toe of his shoe. He gave Audrey a sideways glance. “Do you really think that would make it any easier for Wayne?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. In most cases, closure is a good thing.”
“Closure my ass. That’s psycho mumbo jumbo. How’s it better to know for sure your son is dead than to hold on to hope that he’s still alive out there somewhere?”
“Because we both know that statistics, logic, and hard, cold facts tell us that there is practically no chance that Blake is still alive,” Audrey said. “You and Willie and Dad and everyone on the force, back when Regina Bennett was arrested, said that more than likely Blake was one of her many victims. Of the six toddler boys who were abducted, only one survived. The last one. And only because he was rescued before she killed him.”
“Yeah.” Garth lifted his gaze and faced Audrey. “Blake probably was one of her victims, but we have no proof that the skeletons found with Jill Scott and Debra Gregory belong to any of those missing toddlers.”
“No, not yet.”
Audrey’s gut instinct told her that there was a connection, that after twenty-five years, they were finally going to bring Blake home.
J.D. kept the different parts of his life separated as much as possible. Of course, there were times when the various parts of a guy’s life overlapped whether he wanted them to or not. His job as TBI agent J.D. Cass comprised the bulk of his waking hours, five days a week and sometimes on Saturday and Sunday. The man J.D. was a loner for the most part who ventured into short-term relationships for a little female companionship in and out of the bedroom. The family guy J.D. had lost his parents years ago, but he kept in touch with his kid sister, Julia, and usually spent Christmas with her in Nashville. And now J.D. had to include fatherhood as a sub-compartment under the family guy heading. Admittedly the role of parent didn’t come easy to a confirmed bachelor who had sworn off committed relationships when his shipwreck of a marriage finally sank.
Just when a man thought he had everything under control was usually when fate threw him a curveball. Zoe had sure as hell been one of those totally unexpected pitches. And he had a stomach-knotting feeling that Dr. Audrey Sherrod just might be another one.
Holly Johnston, on the other hand, was exactly what he wanted, a woman who wasn’t any more interested in a commitment than he was.
Holly had invited him to a late lunch today, lunch that she had assured him would include dessert.
“Something hot and spicy and oh so sweet,” she’d promised. “I’ll serve it to you au naturel on silk sheets.”
Since Holly hadn’t phoned him until ten o’clock that morning, he’d already halfway promised Zoe that they’d go to the movies that afternoon. Lucky for him, a group of her classmates was going to Hamilton Place to shop until the mall closed, and she’d been happily surprised when he’d changed his mind and told her she could go. Since Jacy Oliver’s aunt was chaperoning, he figured the woman would keep an eye on the girls.
With Zoe off with friends and far happier than she would have been spending the afternoon with him, J.D. had the rest of the day for himself since, at that point, he wasn’t officially assigned to either Jill Scott’s or Debra Gregory’s murder case. Until his boss told him anything different, he wasn’t going to stick his nose any farther into CPD business.
When he arrived at Holly’s, as promised, she provided a late gourmet lunch—no doubt ordered from a nearby restaurant—and did indeed deliver a delectable dessert in her bed, on her hot pink silk sheets. The lady sure did have a way with her hands and mouth. Years of experience had honed her bedroom skills. If there was one thing Holly Johnston did well outside of her profession as an ADA, it was sexually pleasing a man.
After a second vigorous round of hot and heavy, J.D. lay there completely spent, his hips and legs tangled in the top sheet. Holly rested beside him, her luscious body uncovered, a fine sheen of perspiration glistening on her skin from forehead to knees. As she sighed contentedly, she turned over and propped her elbow on the pillow as she looked down at J.D.
When she continued staring at him without saying anything, he grinned. “What?” he asked.
“If I were a different kind of woman, I think you would be on my top ten list of candidates.”
If he didn’t know Holly so well, her statement might have unnerved him. “Candidate for what?”
She laughed. “For a husband, of course.”
“God forbid.” He lifted his hand and ran his index finger over her throat and down between her large, round breasts. “I tried that once. I made a lousy husband.”
She caught his caressing hand and lifted it off her naked body. “I have no doubt of that.” She sat up, twisted around, and placed her feet on the carpeted floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she ran her tongue across her lips in a playfully seductive manner. “If all I wanted in a husband was a big dick and mind-blowing sex, you’d be my number one candidate, but when I eventually get married, it won’t be for sex or even for love.”
Holly got out of bed, picked up the satin robe lying on the floor, and slipped into the semisheer knee-length garment.
“I believe that was a backhanded compliment.” J.D. untangled his legs from the sheet and shot up off the bed. When he reached out and grabbed Holly from behind, she didn’t protest.
Just as she turned in his arms and lifted her face for a kiss, his phone rang. He eyed the pile of clothes on the floor where his phone lay atop his slacks.
“Let it go to voice mail.” Holly rubbed herself against him.
“I would, but I’ve got a kid, remember?”
Holly moaned. “You have my sympathy.” She disengaged herself from his loose hold and headed toward the bathroom.
J.D. bent down and picked up his phone. The caller I.D. read Cara Oliver. Damn! He figured Cara Oliver was Jacy Oliver’s aunt, the one who was chaperoning Jacy, Zoe, and their friends at the mall.
So help me, Zoe, if you’ve done something stupid, I’m going to—!
The incessant ringing reminded J.D. that instead of assuming the worst about his daughter, he should simply answer the phone and find out what was what.
“J.D. Cass,” he said when he took the call.
“Mr. Cass, this is Cara Oliver,” the soft, concerned voice said. “I’m Jacy’s aunt.”
“Is something wrong, Ms. Oliver?” Please, God, please let her say no.
“I—I don’t know quite how to say this, but … well, Zoe is missing.”
“What!”
“I take full responsibility,” Cara Oliver said. “The girls were sitting in the food court. We’d just gotten ice cream and … I went to the restroom and when I came back, the girls were gone.”
“Are all the girls missing?”
“No. I found Jacy, Presley, and Reesa, but when I asked them where Zoe was, they swore they didn’t know. But …”
“But?” J.D. demanded.
“But I think they know something.”
“Are you still at the mall?”
“Yes. We’re here at the food court.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way.”
“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.”
“It’s not your fault, Ms. Oliver. Zoe is a very resourceful girl and if she wanted to slip away from your watchful eye, she’d have found a way regardless of what you did or didn’t do.”
J.D. tossed the phone on the bed, picked up his clothes, and dressed quickly. He didn’t have time for even a quick, much-needed shower. Just as he slipped the phone into the belt holder, Holly came out of the bathroom.
“Leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry, babe. Fatherhood duties call.”
Holly raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Zoe’s pulled a disappearing act. I have to go find her.”
“I hate to hear that. Since our acts one and two were so exciting, I was really looking forward to act three.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and then swatted her behind. “I’ll call you later.”
“And I may or may not be available.”
J.D. chuckled as he walked toward the door, but by the time he exited Holly’s apartment, his thoughts had turned completely to his daughter.
Damn it, Zoe, what are you up to now?
At sixty-one, Wayne Sherrod was still a good-looking man. Tall, robust, broad shouldered. He kept his thick, silvery white hair cut short and was, as he always had been, clean-shaven and neat. A medic in Vietnam when he’d been barely nineteen, Wayne never spoke of what had to have been a horrific experience. Audrey could never remember a time in her entire life when she’d heard her father talk about his past. Nothing about being a child, a teenager, or a soldier. During her lifetime, he’d always been a police officer, and according to those who knew him best, he’d been a damn fine lawman.
But he’d been a terrible father, especially after he and her mother had divorced. Maybe, if Blake had lived …
When her father entered the second floor of the PSC, she wanted to rush to him, put her arms around him, and tell him she was there for him. How stupid was that? After a lifetime of being mostly ignored and often neglected by her dad, a part of her still longed for a genuine father/daughter relationship. Just once, she wanted to hear Wayne Sherrod tell her that he loved her.
Head held high, shoulders squared and straight, he marched toward Garth’s office, the door open and the four of them waiting anxiously as he approached.
Willie cleared his throat. “Let me do the talking.”
“For the record, I’m against doing this,” Garth told them for the umpteenth time since Willie had phoned Wayne.
Standing at her side, Tam reached down and grasped Audrey’s clenched fist. Audrey looked at her best friend, relaxed her fingers, clutched Tam’s hand, and gave it a hard squeeze.
Wayne paused in the doorway, surveyed the foursome, and settled his gaze on Willie. “What’s this about?”
“Come on in and close the door,” Willie said.
Hesitating only momentarily, Wayne did as his old friend had asked. Once they were enclosed privately in Garth’s office, he glared at Audrey. Instead of averting her gaze, she stared right back at him. The days when her father could intimidate her with a hard, cold glare were long gone.
“Take a seat.” Willie indicated a wooden chair to the right of the desk.
“I’ll stand, thanks.”
“We’re not all in agreement about this,” Garth said. “If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
“Doing what?” Wayne’s brow furrowed with curiosity and concern as he focused on Garth. “What the hell’s going on? Whatever it is, just spit it out.” Wayne narrowed his gaze and directed it toward Willie.
“We’ve had two young women abducted and murdered,” Willie said.
“Two?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah. Debra Gregory’s body was found this morning. Same MO as the Jill Scott murder.”
“I hate to hear that, but what does either murder have to do with me?”
“Not a damn thing!” Garth stomped across the room until he stood in front of his brother-in-law.
Puzzlement clear in Wayne’s brown eyes, he ignored Garth and asked Willie again, “What do the murders of these two women have to do with me?”
“The information I’m going to share with you hasn’t been released to the public and it won’t be for as long as we can possibly keep it under wraps,” Willie said. “Both women were found sitting in rocking chairs, as everyone knows. Both were holding blanket-wrapped bundles in their arms. The press has stated that they assume the women were holding dolls.”
“But they weren’t, were they?” Wayne glanced at Audrey.
She forced herself not to look away, to hold her gaze steady and not to back down from the coldness in her father’s eyes.
“No, both women were holding the skeletal remains of what have been identified as human males, probably between two and three years old.”
Wayne didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink. He stood there so quiet, so rigid, that he could have been mistaken for a marble statue.
“Wayne?” Willie called his name.
He didn’t respond.
“Daddy?” Audrey said. And when he didn’t reply, she walked over and laid her hand on his arm. He stiffened instantly. “They haven’t identified the remains,” she told him. “Not yet. It’s possible that neither—”
“You think one of them could be Blake, don’t you?” Her father glanced at where her hand rested on his upper arm. He pulled away from her and confronted Willie. “That’s what this is about. You think …” He gulped hard. “You believe it’s possible that one of the bodies—one of the skeletons—is my son.”
“I tried to tell them that there’s no way in hell that either could be Blake.” Garth gripped Wayne’s shoulder.
Wayne took a deep breath. “No one can be that certain. And if there’s one chance in a billion … I want to know. You’ll need a DNA sample. I assume mine will do. If not, I still have …” He closed his eyes for half a second. “I have Blake’s hairbrush, his toothbrush ….”
Oh, Daddy … Daddy.
Tears choked Audrey, tears that threatened to escape and overflow.
Poor Daddy. Poor little Blake.
If he hadn’t been so damn pissed at Zoe, he might have appreciated what a lovely woman Cara Oliver was. Late twenties, big brown eyes, and a mane of thick auburn hair that framed a face blessed with attractive features. Even in jeans and an oversized cotton sweater, she couldn’t hide the appeal of her slender yet curvy body.
“Mr. Cass, I am so very sorry about this.” Cara gazed up at him pleadingly.
J.D. offered her a forced smile. “Don’t blame yourself.
It’s not your fault. Zoe’s a handful. This isn’t the first time she’s pulled a stunt like this.”
“I’ve spoken to the girls again and I’m sure they know something. But they’re not talking.” She glanced at the threesome, who sat with eyes downcast at a nearby table in the food court.
“Mind if I talk to them?”
“No, please, be my guest.” Cara huffed in exasperation.
When J.D. approached the girls, they scooted their chairs closer together. He looked from one to another. Jacy had the same dark red hair and brown eyes as her aunt, but was not as pretty. Presley was cute as a button, with curly brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her pert little nose. And blond, blue-eyed Reesa possessed the promise of becoming a real femme fatale in the tradition of a long list of bosomy Hollywood blondes.
J.D. grabbed an empty chair, turned it around, and sat down, straddling his legs around the back and resting his arms on the top of the frame. “Where’s Zoe?”
Silence.
“Jacy, where’s my daughter?”
Jacy hazarded a glance at J.D. “I don’t know.” She quickly cast her gaze downward again.
“Presley?”
She stared at him, a look of sheer terror in her hazel eyes. “I—I don’t know where she is, Mr. Cass. I don’t.”
“Reesa?”
She smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from the long sleeves of her colorful T-shirt, then lifted her head and smiled at him. “Zoe’s all right. You don’t have to worry about her. She’ll come home when she’s ready to.”
“Hush,” Jacy warned.
“You promised,” Presley chimed in simultaneously.
“Oh, get over it,” Reesa told her friends. “I didn’t promise Zoe anything. You two did. And I’m not going to be given the third degree by her dad, who I’m sure knows all kinds of ways to make us talk since he’s a TBI agent.” Reesa batted her eyelashes at J.D.
Good God, the child is actually flirting with me.
“Aunt Cara,” Jacy wailed. “You won’t let him give us the third degree, will you?”
Cara managed to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’ve already given Mr. Cass … uh … Special Agent Cass permission to do just that, if he believes it’s necessary.”
Tears filled Presley’s eyes. Jacy whimpered.
Reesa snorted. “You two are pathetic. He can’t do anything without your parents’ permission.” She looked at J.D. “Can you?”
“Is that what you girls want?” he asked. “You want to involve your parents?”
“Zoe’s with my brother Dawson,” Presley blurted out.
J.D. grimaced. His daughter was with some boy doing God only knew what. “How old is Dawson?”
“He’s sixteen,” Presley said.
Well, at least the boy was just that—a boy. “Where did Zoe and Dawson go?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Presley looked him in the eye.
He could tell that she wasn’t lying. She was too frightened to lie.
“They just went for a ride in his new car,” Reesa said. “They wanted to have some fun, to be alone together. There’s no crime in that, is there?”
Reesa was a little smart aleck, but she was not his problem. Zoe was.
“He’ll take her home,” Presley said. “It’s not as if they’ve eloped or anything like that.”
“Thank God for small favors,” J.D. grumbled under his breath, then told Presley, “Call Zoe. She won’t answer her phone if she sees I’m the one calling her. Tell her that her father said to get her butt home ASAP if she knows what’s good for her.”
“Er … ah … yes, sir.”
Presley placed the call and they all waited for Zoe to answer. And then Presley gasped, “What? Oh my God, no! Are you okay? Is Dawson okay?”
“What’s wrong?” J.D. asked, his heart beating ninety-to-nothing. When Presley stared at him wide-eyed and her mouth agape, he snatched her phone out of her hand and said, “Zoe, this is your father. What the hell is going on?”
“Oh, J.D., please help us.” Zoe sounded desperate.
“Are you all right? Where are you? What’s happened?”
“Don’t be angry. Please don’t be angry.”
“Zoe!”
“We’re in jail.”
Chapter 7
Wayne Sherrod couldn’t get away from headquarters fast enough. He had hated the pity he’d seen in Willie’s eyes and the sympathetic expression on Tam’s face. He hated that Garth was in denial and preferred to dismiss the possibility that one of the dead toddlers might be Blake. He understood that Garth simply couldn’t accept the fact that Blake was dead. It had taken Wayne years to accept the truth. Yeah, sure, somewhere deep down inside him a glimmer of hope still existed, but he knew only too well how illogical that hope was. Blake was dead. The odds were that he had been one of Regina Bennett’s victims. Wayne had visited the crazy bitch in the mental hospital twice, and both times he had come away with more questions than answers.
Just as he started to open the door to his Chevy Silverado, he heard footsteps behind him and knew without turning around that Audrey had followed him.
Go away, girl. Go away and leave me alone.
“Daddy …?”
He gripped the door handle with bone-crushing strength.
Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t need your sympathy or your comfort.”
“No, you never did, did you?”
Without so much as glancing over his shoulder, Wayne climbed up into the cab of his truck and slammed the door. After starting the engine, he buckled his seat belt and put the gear into reverse. As he drove out of the parking area, he caught a glimpse of his daughter in his peripheral vision. She stood alone, tall, slender, and elegant, and looking so much like her mother.
I’m sorry, little girl. Sorry I’ve been such a worthless father. I’m sorry for so many things.
If he could go back to when Audrey had been a baby, to when he’d been madly in love with Norma, there were so many things he’d do differently. But he couldn’t go back. A guy didn’t get any second chances in this life. He had loved two women and he’d lost them both. And he’d fathered two children and had lost both of them, too. Death had taken Blake from him. And his own stupidity had lost him his daughter.
As he made his way down Amnicola Highway and hit 153, his mind swirling with memories and an ache in his gut growing more painful by the minute, Wayne wanted only one thing—to forget. He didn’t want to remember Norma Colton. How beautiful she’d been. How he had adored her. How she had felt lying beneath him. How sweet her lips had tasted. How badly he had disappointed her by being unable to give her all the love and attention she craved. He hadn’t understood why she’d had to be so possessive, so demanding. The more she had clung to him, the more he had pulled away.
I’m sorry, Norma. God, I am so sorry. I wish I had been able to give you what you needed. I wish I had realized that you were the love of my life. I wish I’d had the chance to tell you.
The late-afternoon sun sank low on the eastern horizon, a blaze of color spreading across the sky. Wayne sucked in a long, hard breath. He had made more than his share of mistakes, and others had paid the price. Not that he hadn’t suffered, wasn’t still suffering, but he deserved it. Neither of his wives had. And God knew, neither of his children had.
Where Norma had been effervescent, giggling and talkative and loving all the time, Enid had been a quiet, reserved woman with a gentle nature. He had fallen in love with her and her son, Hart, too. In the beginning, they’d had a good marriage—or so he’d thought—and he’d been content. But even before Blake’s birth, he had begun to notice little things about Enid’s behavior, things that he later realized were signs of her mental illness. But he had chosen to ignore those signs. After all, his life had been good, hadn’t it? There had been no need to make mountains out of molehills.
If only … Famous last words. If only he had paid more attention to Enid’s strange behavior. If only he had admitted that after Blake’s birth, she had needed professional help. But a quarter of a century ago, people didn’t talk much about the various types of mental illnesses, about things like bipolar disorder or postpartum depression.
I’m sorry, Enid. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were sick, that you had suffered with mood swings and severe bouts of depression since childhood. Sorry that I didn’t realize until it was too late.
Wayne turned onto Meadow Hill Drive and slowed his truck to the neighborhood speed limit of twenty-five as he drew near his destination. The three-bedroom, two-bath red brick ranch house with the neatly manicured lawn and rose bushes lining one side of the concrete drive beckoned to him as it had for so many years. Inside this house, he would find, as he always did, warmth and caring, understanding, and a few hours of forgetfulness.
He had already rung the doorbell before he thought that maybe he should have called first. But when Grace Douglas opened the door and stood there smiling up at him, every thought except what a wonderful sight she was left his mind.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Grace said as she stepped back to allow him into her home. When he remained silent, simply looking at her, drinking her in, her smile disappeared. “Wayne, what’s wrong?”
The moment he closed the door behind him, she opened her arms and wrapped them around him. When she laid her head on his chest, he enclosed her soft, womanly body in a tender embrace and the weight of the world dropped from his overburdened shoulders.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Grace said as she lifted her head from his chest and gazed lovingly up at him.
He reached down and cradled her face with both hands. “Have I told you lately how very important you are to me?”
Her lips curved in a fragile smile. “Not lately, no, but you don’t have to tell me for me to know, because I feel the same way.” She took his hand in hers and led him through the living room and into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Sit down and I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee.”
When she pulled away from him to prepare the coffee, he grasped her wrist. She looked back at him.
“I guess the coffee can wait,” she said.
He slid out a chair from the table, sat down, and then eased her onto his lap. She draped her arm around his neck.
Grace Douglas was round and plump, with wide hips and full breasts. She was a kind, giving woman with a heart as big as Texas. He doubted most folks ever noticed the sadness in her pretty blue eyes, a sadness that he understood in a way no one else in her life did.
He ran the back of his hand gently across her cheek. She closed her eyes and quietly sighed.
“Could we talk, later?” he asked. “I promise I’ll explain everything. But right now …” He glided his hand down her neck, across her shoulder, and opened his palm to cup one breast.
Right now, he needed to forget. He needed to lose himself in this beautiful, loving woman. There would be time enough later that evening to tell her about the unidentified skeletons of two toddler boys. Skeletons that might be the remains of his son Blake and her son Shane.
The minute J.D. entered police headquarters, he spotted his daughter. She rose from the chair where she sat alongside a tattooed, nose-ringed boy with scraggly brown hair and a surly expression.
When a uniformed police officer said something to her, Zoe cried, “But it’s my father. Please, let me tell him what happened.”
The officer nodded. Zoe came running toward J.D. and hurled herself at him. Instinct took over and he put his arms around her in a comforting, fatherly way.
“I wasn’t drinking,” Zoe told him. “I swear to God, I wasn’t drinking. Not even a beer.”
The young officer, who looked all of twenty-five, lean, blond, and clean-cut, walked over to J.D. “Special Agent Cass?” He offered J.D. his hand. “I’m Officer Karns. Ryan Karns.”
“Yeah, I’m J.D. Cass.” He shook the man’s hand. “So, what’s going on here?” He glanced from Zoe to Officer Karns.
“Your daughter isn’t under arrest, but we had to hold her, of course, until a parent could pick her up,” Karns said. “The boy she was with was speeding not two miles from here, and when a patrolman tried to pull him over, he raced off doing close to a hundred. Lucky for him and your daughter, he didn’t wreck.”
“Dawson just panicked, J.D.” Zoe grabbed his arm. “He’d been drinking a beer and he didn’t want to get a DUI. That’s why he ran.”
J.D. glowered at his daughter.
“Whatever possessed you to go off with that boy?” J.D. glanced at the sulking young hunk who glared back at him.
“Dawson’s my boyfriend,” Zoe snapped angrily.
“Like hell he is. You’re fourteen. You’re not old enough to have a boyfriend.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, J.D. gave her a warning stare and said, “Not another word out of you.”
“Young lady,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Is my daughter free to go?” J.D. asked Officer Karns.
“Yes, sir, she is.”
“No, damn it, I won’t leave without Dawson.” Zoe planted her hands on her slender hips and shot her father a challenging glare.
“You’ll leave,” J.D. told her. “Either under your own power or thrown over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Your choice … young lady.”
“I’m afraid Dawson isn’t free to go,” Officer Karns explained. “Not only was he speeding, but he was driving under the influence, endangering himself and others. He failed the breathalyzer test. He had a BrAC of 0.09.”
“He was just drinking beer,” Zoe told them, adamant in Dawson’s defense.
“Whatever he was drinking doesn’t matter,” J.D. informed her. “A reading of 0.08 is considered intoxicated, and the number drops even lower for anyone under the age of twenty-one. Dawson’s sixteen.”
“We’ve contacted Dawson’s parents. They’re out of town, so we’ll be holding him at the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center until they get back in town.”
When J.D. refused to help Dawson, Zoe began mouthing off again, threatening all sorts of outlandish things. The wayward teen was his parents’ problem, not J.D.’s. He had enough trouble with Zoe.
In the middle of his daughter’s tirade and just as J.D. was at his wits’ end, he heard a calm, soothing female voice ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Evening, Dr. Sherrod.” Officer Karns’s shoulders drooped wearily, as if he, too, were at the end of his rope. No doubt he had counted on J.D. being able to control his fourteen-year-old daughter since he wasn’t sure how to deal with the hysterical girl.
Apparently, Audrey Sherrod had been visiting her uncle and had just walked out of his office. However, it wasn’t Garth Hudson who accompanied her, but Chief Mullins. The chief gave Audrey a quick, fatherly peck on the cheek and whispered something to her, then nodded to Officer Karns and headed for the exit.
Dr. Sherrod’s question had startled Zoe into complete silence. She stood there staring at the woman as if she were an alien who had just stepped out of a spaceship from Mars.
“I … uh … I don’t know if you can help.” Karns looked from Audrey Sherrod to J.D. “It’s up to you, Special Agent Cass.”
J.D. surveyed the woman from head to toe. Sublimely cool and controlled, Audrey looked him right in the eye. Despite the unseasonably hot and humid September day and the warm pink flush on her cheeks, she was perfectly groomed, not a silky brown hair out of place, her makeup flawless, her slacks and sweater unwrinkled.
J.D. didn’t want her help. Didn’t need her help. But he was in no position to be rude. All he wanted was to take Zoe home and ground her for the rest of her life. Well, at least until she was thirty. Apparently Dr. Sherrod was well-known and respected here at police headquarters and no doubt on as friendly terms with the chief as she was Officer Lovelady, the chief’s daughter.
“If you think you can help, then by all means help.” J.D. resented Dr. Sherrod’s interference. Resented it like hell. “I didn’t realize that your area of expertise included soothing smart-mouthed, disrespectful teenage girls.”
Audrey’s hazel brown eyes glimmered as she settled her gaze on him, a sure sign she recognized his comment as an insult as well as a challenge. Turning up her haughty little nose, she said, “There is usually a reason behind such behavior.” She turned to Zoe. “Hi, I’m Audrey Sherrod. I’m a professional counselor and occasionally I work with the police in an advisory capacity. If you think I can help you, then tell me how and I’ll see what I can do.”
Zoe kept staring at Audrey for several moments as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Finally, she said, “I’m Zoe Davidson.”
“Nice to meet you, Zoe. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Dawson is the one who needs help, but my father won’t help him.”
“I see.” She glanced at J.D., a questioning look in her eyes. “And what do you expect your father to do?”
“Get Dawson out of this mess,” Zoe replied. “My dad’s a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent. He could take care of this for Dawson if he wanted to, but he doesn’t like Dawson because he thinks I’m too young to have a boyfriend.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Hmm … I had a boyfriend when I was fourteen, and my father didn’t like him.”
Zoe smiled at J.D. triumphantly. Great. Just what he needed. A damn female shrink who apparently agreed with his daughter.
“Ryan, what are the charges against Dawson?” Audrey asked.
Officer Karns rattled off a list of offenses, everything from reckless driving to resisting arrest, with half a dozen other complaints in between, including DUI, resisting stop and frisk, and reckless endangerment.
“I see. I assume you’ve contacted his parents.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And is there anything Special Agent Cass can do for Dawson, any way he can take the boy with him when he and Zoe leave?”
“No, ma’am. Dawson Cummings is going to be spending the night in juvenile tonight. Once his parents arrive and his bond is posted, he’ll be released into their custody.”
“Zoe’s very concerned about Dawson,” Audrey told Officer Karns. “Can you give her some kind of reassurance that he’ll be well treated and no harm will come to him until his parents can arrange for his release?”
J.D. watched and listened, completely dumbfounded by the way Zoe was reacting to Audrey Sherrod. Hadn’t he been saying pretty much the same things to her? Why was she paying attention to a stranger when all she’d done was scream at her own father?
“Yes, ma’am.” The young policeman looked directly at Zoe. “I give you my word that Dawson will be okay until his parents can take him home. He’s drunk and belligerent and he’s mouthed off and, yes, he’s in big trouble. But his folks will get him a good lawyer and since this is his first arrest, he’ll probably wind up with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.”
“There, Zoe, Officer Karns has given you his word.” Audrey placed her hand on Zoe’s shoulder. “I’m sure if you go home with your father now and apologize to him for some of the things you said to him, you and he will be able to come to an understanding about Dawson.” Audrey looked at J.D. “Isn’t that right, Special Agent Cass?”
J.D. snorted. Damn her. She’d put him on the spot. He nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
When Audrey turned to go, Zoe called, “Wait. Don’t leave.”
Audrey paused and glanced over her shoulder.
“Uh … J.D. and I, we don’t communicate all that well. We both always wind up saying the wrong things.” Zoe gazed pleadingly at Audrey. “Was it like that for you and your dad?”
J.D. noted the slight hesitation and the quickly concealed odd expression as it crossed Audrey’s face.
“Yes, Zoe, it was. My father and I had communication problems, too.”
“Are all fathers like that? I mean, do all of them think you’re still a baby when you’re not? Do they all try to run your life and assume they know what’s best for you even when they’re wrong?”
“Yes, to some extent all fathers are like that, so it’s up to daughters during their teen years to be patient and understanding and do their best not to give their fathers a heart attack. Of course, giving him a few gray hairs is a different matter. That’s a given.”
Zoe looked at J.D., and she and Audrey laughed.
Yeah, funny. He hadn’t missed the joke. His hair had already begun turning prematurely gray before Zoe came to live with him, but he had to admit that it was getting grayer every day.
Zoe went over and stood in front of J.D. “If I apologize to you, will you let me say good-bye to Dawson before we leave?”
Letting his daughter anywhere near that young hoodlum was the last thing J.D. wanted to do, but when he glanced at Audrey, she gave him a cautionary meet-your-child-halfway stare.
“Yeah. Okay,” he said reluctantly.
“I’m sorry I said all those awful things to you. I—I didn’t mean them.” Zoe gulped. “Well, I didn’t mean most of them.”
J.D. nodded. At least she was truthful. That alone was a step in the right direction. “Apology accepted.”
“Now, may I say bye to Dawson?”
“Make it quick.”
“I will.”
Everything was going along just fine. Everybody was calm and rational, even Zoe. And J.D. managed to keep his resentment of Audrey Sherrod’s interference under control. Okay, so the woman had worked some kind of magic on Zoe, but she’d had no right to—
God damn it. What the hell?
Zoe stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around Dawson’s neck, and kissed him. Kissed him on the mouth. And both his mouth and hers were wide open!
J.D. growled like the papa bear he was and felt like ripping Dawson apart, limb from limb. Just as he moved forward, intending to grab Zoe, Audrey reached out and clamped her hand over his forearm.
“Don’t,” Audrey whispered. “It’s just a kiss. Give her that much.”
J.D. snapped his head around and glared at Audrey. “She’s a child. My child.”
“She’s a child on the verge of womanhood. And unless I miss my guess, your daughter is strong-minded and stubborn, and the more you object to something, the more appealing it is to her. The harder you push, the harder she’ll push back.”
J.D. clenched his teeth. He wanted to tell Audrey Sherrod to go to hell. But he didn’t. As bad as he hated to admit it, she was right. Zoe was just like him, God help them both. She was as strong-willed and stubborn as he was, and she reacted just as he did to being issued orders.
The kiss ended before J.D. could explode. And when Zoe came back to him and said, “I’m ready,” he noticed that Audrey’s long, slender fingers still circled his forearm.
“You can let go now,” he told her.
She jerked her hand away as her gaze flashed from his face to Zoe’s. “If you ever need someone to talk to, give me a call.”
J.D. barely managed to keep from telling Audrey to back off and leave his daughter alone.
“Thanks,” Zoe said. “I just might do that, Dr. Sherrod.”
Audrey smiled warmly before turning and walking away.
“I like her,” Zoe said. “Why can’t you date somebody like Dr. Sherrod instead of that stuck-on-herself-because-she’s-so-wonderful Holly Johnston?”
“Whom I date is none of your business,” J.D. told her as he escorted her downstairs and out of the police station.
“That should work both ways,” Zoe said.
“It will when you’re twenty-one.”
Zoe groaned and rolled her eyes skyward.
Damn. Fatherhood should come with a how-to book.
Chapter 8
After they had made love, while he held her close, Wayne had told Grace about the two toddler skeletons found with the bodies of the two murdered women. He hadn’t needed to say more than that. She had guessed what he had dreaded telling her. She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t said much. But he knew she was as torn up inside as he was.
Now she lay cuddled against him, her breast pressing into his side and her head resting on his shoulder. He had known her for almost twenty-five years, but they hadn’t become lovers until ten years ago. They had met under the most horrific circumstances—Grace’s two-year-old son, Shane, had been abducted not long after Blake had been kidnapped. Their mutual hurt and anger and unbearable grief had created a bond between them, a bond that intensified because they each not only lost a child, but lost a mate. Enid had committed suicide, leaving Wayne alone and lost in his agony. Grace’s husband had become an alcoholic and drank himself to death less than five years after Shane’s disappearance, leaving her to raise their older son Lance alone.
Over the years Wayne and Grace had stayed in touch. In the beginning, it had been nothing more than Wayne sharing information with her whenever he heard about anything that might possibly be remotely connected to their sons’ abductions. Eventually, they started meeting for coffee, and that led to getting together for dinner, and after fifteen years of gradually becoming dear friends, they had become lovers.
Grace was a part of his life that he didn’t share with anyone else. Willie and Geraldine knew about Grace and he was pretty sure Garth did, too. But the kids didn’t know, Audrey and Hart. Hell, they didn’t know much of anything about his life, and he knew very little about theirs. And it was his fault that things were the way they were. He had been the one who had abandoned them. Emotionally abandoned. While they were growing up, he had kept them housed, fed, and clothed, and had paid the bills, but he had ceased being a father to either of them years ago.
Grace eased out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. He watched her, enjoying the view. No longer young, firm, or slender, her body still looked damn good to him. She was a giver, his Grace, not a taker. Looking back over the past twenty-five years, he wasn’t sure he would have survived without her.
He got out of bed and joined her in the bathroom. She had already freshened up and slipped into a floor-length blue cotton robe.
“While you’re cleaning up, I’ll go fix us some supper,” Grace said.
“Don’t go to any trouble, honey.” He nuzzled the side of her neck as he pulled her backward against him.
She rested there in his arms for a couple of minutes, then pulled away from him. “How about scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast?”
“Sounds good.”
When she left the bathroom, Wayne stared at himself in the vanity mirror over the sink. His brow was deeply furrowed and his eyes and mouth were framed by wrinkles. And his once-dark hair was now light gray, almost white. How the hell had he gotten so old so fast? Sometimes it seemed as if it had been only yesterday that he’d been twenty-one, his whole life ahead of him. Now he was sixty-one, most of his life behind him.
He turned on the cold water, cupped his hands to catch the water, and tossed it into his face. Then he filled the sink with warm water, picked up the soap, and lathered his genital area. Afterward, he retraced his steps, picked up his discarded clothing, and dressed.
Entering the kitchen, he found Grace at the stove. With the bacon sizzling on one electric eye, she busily poured whisked eggs into a hot skillet.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Put on some coffee and fix the toast.”
As he set about preparing the coffeemaker, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She kept stirring the eggs, focusing her attention on the job at hand. “What more is there to say?”
“I guess you’re right. Until we know for sure if those little bodies are Blake and Shane, then …” He didn’t know whether he hoped they were his son and Grace’s son or if he hoped they weren’t.
She lifted the skillet and spooned the scrambled eggs onto two plates, then set the skillet aside. “You’d think that after all these years, it wouldn’t still hurt so much.”
Wayne poured fresh water into the reservoir and punched the On button to start the coffee brewing. He moved closer to Grace and slid his arm around her waist.
She closed her eyes. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
Wayne turned her in his arms, reached up, and wiped away the tears with his fingertips. He leaned down and kissed her closed eyelids as his unshed tears caught in his throat.
Zoe hadn’t said a word all the way home, and the minute they entered the house, she headed for her room.
“We need to talk,” J.D. told her.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Too bad. Come back here and sit down.”
Zoe plodded reluctantly from the hallway into the living room and slumped down on the sofa.
God, he didn’t want to do this. But he had to do it. He was Zoe’s father.
“What you did today—running off with Dawson—was not only irresponsible and thoughtless, it was dangerous,” J.D. said, doing his level best not to raise his voice.
Zoe remained sullen and silent.
“I expect you to acknowledge what I just said,” he told her.
She lifted her downcast gaze, her eyes bright with anger and a hint of tears. “It’s all your fault.’
Stunned by her accusation, he stared at her as he tried to figure out her illogical reasoning. “How is it my fault that you slipped away from Jacy’s aunt, who, by the way, was worried sick about you, and ran off with a boy who’d been drinking? How is it my fault that you could easily have been killed in a car wreck because he was driving drunk? And how is it my fault that you and Dawson were picked up by the police?”
“Because … ’cause …” She swallowed her tears. “If you’d just let me date Dawson, let him come here and let me go out with him—”
“You are fourteen years old. That’s too young to be dating.”
“My mother was dating when she was fourteen!” Zoe shouted.
“Yeah, and see how she turned out.” The moment the words left his mouth, J.D. wished them back. Maybe Carrie had been a very untraditional parent, maybe she’d been irresponsible and flighty, but she had been Zoe’s mother.
“How dare you say that about my mom!” Zoe shot up off the sofa. “She was a better parent than you are. At least she loved me.”
When Zoe ran out of the room, he cursed softly and called himself a few choice names, idiot heading the list. Why was it that no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing where Zoe was concerned, he always wound up making a mess of things?
Because you don’t know the first thing about raising a teenage girl. Because Zoe knows that you really don’t want her and that even though you should love her because she’s your daughter, you don’t.
Tam didn’t like it when Marcus was away, but in his job as a TVA engineer, he had to travel on a fairly frequent basis. Their apartment seemed so empty without him. He had phoned to let her know he had arrived safely and promised to call again in the morning before she left for work. The luckiest day of her life was when she met Marcus Lovelady, and the second luckiest day was the day they got married. He was such a good man. Kind, considerate, and reliable. And he loved her with his whole heart.
They had discussed having children and she knew that at thirty-four, her biological clock was ticking faster and faster. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to try to combine motherhood with a career. Although Marcus would be as wonderful a father as her own dad had always been, she doubted she could ever be half the mother her mama was. Besides, she wasn’t sure she deserved to be a mother. Not after …
That was over fifteen years ago. You were barely eighteen.
Tam poured herself another glass of Merlot, flipped on the TV, and kept the sound muted as she sat in her favorite easy chair. She glanced down at the wedding band and one-carat diamond on her ring finger.
She admired and respected Marcus. And she loved him. But had she cheated her husband by marrying him when she would never be able to love him with her whole heart? If she could give him a child, would that make up for the fact that she would always be in love with another man?
Oh, dear Lord, don’t think about him. He isn’t a part of your daily life and hasn’t been for a long, long time.
What was wrong with her tonight? Why was she in such a melancholy mood? Why was she thinking about him, remembering …? She didn’t want to think about him, didn’t want to remember the child she had aborted, a child who would be nearly fifteen now, almost as old as she had been when she’d gotten pregnant.
It had all been so hopeless, so impossible. And she had been so completely in love.
The saddest part of all was that he had loved her, too, just as much as she had loved him.
Tam gulped down the remainder of her wine and let the empty glass fall from her hand onto the carpeted floor beside her chair. She closed her eyes and allowed the memories to wash over her, warm and sweet like low tide in the heat of summer.
She could almost feel his lips on hers, feel their naked bodies joined, feel him buried deep inside her. She could hear his voice, deep and sultry, saying her name, telling her how much he loved her.
Tears escaped from the corners of her closed eyelids and crept slowly down her cheeks.
Tam wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself as she sucked back the tears. Don’t do this to yourself. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
If only Marcus were there she wouldn’t be wallowing in self-pity. But Marcus wasn’t there to reassure her, to make her smile, to remind her of all her many blessings.
Tam got up, grabbed the receiver from the portable phone on the nearby desk, and dialed her best friend’s number.
Audrey answered on the third ring. “Hey there.”
“Are you busy?”
“Not really. What’s up?”
“Marcus left on another business trip this afternoon and I’m lonely,” Tam said. “I’ve been sitting here downing a couple of glasses of wine and am on the edge of a self-pity jag.”
“Want me to come over?”
“Would you?”
“Give me thirty minutes.” Then Audrey asked, “Have you eaten dinner yet?”
“No, I—”
“Drinking on an empty stomach?” Audrey clicked her tongue to make a disapproving noise. “You know better.”
“I have salad fixings.”
“Good. Why don’t you take a shower and put on your pajamas and when I get there, I’ll prepare the salad. I have leftover chicken I’ll bring with me to add to the salad. But until you eat something, no more wine for you. Promise?”
“I promise.”
Tam hung up the phone. Audrey always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do to help her. Maybe it was because they knew each other so well, because they’d been close friends since childhood. If Audrey thought that Tam wasn’t completely in love with Marcus, she had never said a word. However, she suspected that her best friend knew the truth. She needed to talk to someone, to admit the truth out loud, and who better to be her father confessor than Audrey, her best friend who just happened to be a shrink? Well, a counselor, which was the next best thing to a shrink. Maybe even better.
Audrey parked her Buick Enclave, unbuckled her seat belt, and reached for the shoulder bag and the plastic sack containing the cold chicken she had promised to bring for their salad. Her phone rang. After retrieving it from an outer slot on her purse, she checked the caller ID. Zoe Davidson.
“Hi, Zoe,” Audrey said when she answered.
“Hi, Dr. Sherrod.” Zoe’s girlish voice sounded even younger than her fourteen years. “I—I … uh … You said if I needed to talk, to call you. You probably didn’t expect to hear from me, at least not this soon, but …”
“It’s all right,” Audrey assured her. “I don’t mind that you called. What can I do to help you?”
“You can get me a different father.”
“Oh, I see. I had hoped maybe once you and your dad got home, you might have been able to talk things out and—”
“He doesn’t want to talk things out. He just wants to issue orders. I hate him. And I hate living with him. And he hates me, too. He doesn’t want me. He just keeps me because he knows I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Oh, Zoe, you poor, sweet girl.
The similarity between the way J.D. Cass’s daughter felt now and the way Audrey had once felt about her relationship with her own father was too obvious to ignore. Audrey understood how it felt to believe your father hated you, that he tolerated you because it was his duty, not because he loved you.
“My guess is that your father doesn’t hate you,” Audrey said. “And even if you hate living with him and having to adhere to his rules, you don’t really hate him.”
Silence.
“Zoe, do you think your father would allow you to set up an appointment with me?”
“You mean as one of your patients?”
“Although my specialty isn’t family counseling, I am qualified—”
“J.D.’s the one who needs counseling,” Zoe said.
“That’s probably true and ideally I would counsel both of you, together and separately. But, honey, you need someone to talk to, someone who’ll listen and—”
“And care about me. About how I feel and what I think. Could you do that, Dr. Sherrod? Could you care about me, even just a little?”
A hard knot of emotion formed in the center of Audrey’s chest. She drew in and released a deep, cleansing breath. Would it be a mistake to counsel Zoe Davidson when she knew, even now, that she would become emotionally involved with this young girl?
“Zoe, if I counsel you, it would be my job to care about what you think and how you feel. And I already like you, you know.”
“You do?”
“Well, of course I do.”
“I—I like you, too.”
“Would you like for me to phone your father and ask his permission for us to set up your first appointment?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What if it pisses him off?”
“Why don’t you leave your father to me? I’ll call him in the morning from my office and either he or I will let you know the outcome.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sherrod. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, Zoe.”
Ending her call, Audrey slipped her bag over her shoulder, picked up the plastic sack, and opened the car door. Before Zoe’s phone call, Audrey’s main concern had been her best friend. She’d heard an odd hint of desperation—almost panic—in Tam’s voice. Now not only was she concerned about Tam, but her conversation with Zoe Davidson had aroused a barrage of mixed emotions. She felt a sense of kinship with Zoe, seeing some of herself at fourteen in the rebellious, unhappy teenager. Her desire to help Zoe went beyond the professional and into the personal realm. Would it be better if she referred J.D. and his daughter to another therapist? Yes and no. It would be better for her not to become involved with either the daughter or the father. But Zoe trusted her. She might not trust another counselor so easily.
All the while Audrey went from the parking area to Tam and Marcus’s apartment, her mind focused on one thing—making the correct decision where Zoe was concerned. It wasn’t until she rang the doorbell several times, waiting a minute or two between rings, that Audrey’s full attention returned to her friend. Tam was expecting her, so why wasn’t she answering the door?
Maybe she’s still in the shower.
Audrey rang the bell again. No response. Just as she reached down into her purse to find her key ring, intending to use her key to Tam’s apartment, the door swung open and Tam stood there smiling, the phone to her ear.
“It’s Marcus.” Wearing her pajamas and a matching knee-length robe, Tam mouthed the words as she motioned for Audrey to enter.
Audrey returned her friend’s smile. While Tam continued her conversation with her husband, Audrey headed for the kitchen. She placed her purse on one of the two bar stools and laid the plastic sack containing the chicken on the counter. After removing an unopened bag of fresh spring-mix greens from the refrigerator, along with cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, and bottled ranch dressing, Audrey set about preparing their salads. She sliced the chicken into small chunks, added it to the salads, and sparingly sprinkled the dressing over her creation.
When she heard Tam laugh, she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t often that Tam went into a blue funk, but when she did, it was usually a doozie. The last time had been more than a year ago and had been precipitated by two factors—Marcus was out of town and Tam had come face-to-face with her teenage sweetheart—factors that Audrey realized hadn’t been repeated until quite recently.
Still smiling, Tam came into the kitchen. “Marcus said hello and sends his love.”
“Feeling better?”
“Much, thanks.”
Audrey studied Tam briefly, then set their salad plates atop the placemats on the small kitchen table. “Do you prefer herbal tea or water with lemon or another glass of wine?”
“Before Marcus called, I’d have said more wine. But now, I think water with lemon. You get the crackers out of the pantry and I’ll take care of our water.”
Half an hour later, with their meal eaten and the dishwasher loaded, Audrey and Tam curled up together on opposite ends of the plush chenille sofa in Tam’s living room. Each held a cup of herbal tea.
“Want to tell me?” Audrey asked.
Tam glanced down at the cup of tea that she cradled in both hands. “No. I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to admit what a stupid, ungrateful bitch I am. I don’t want to say it out loud.”
“If you don’t want to, then don’t. But if you think it will help, maybe release some pent-up emotions, then tell me. Whatever you say, you know I won’t repeat it to another living soul. And I won’t judge you.”
“You never have,” Tam said. “My parents think I’m practically perfect. And Marcus … oh, Audrey, he does think I’m perfect.”
“No one is perfect, but you come mighty damn close.”
“How can you say that when you know …? Oh God, you know me better than anyone else on earth. You know how far from perfect I am. If my parents knew how I’d let them down, they’d be so disappointed. If Marcus knew …”
“You have never disappointed Geraldine and Willie, and if they knew, they would be loving and supportive. And if Marcus knew, he would understand. You were barely eighteen. You did what you thought was best for everyone involved. And I was right there with you, agreeing with your decision and holding your hand.”
Tam looked at Audrey, her brown eyes filled with unshed tears. “If you had been in my situation, would you have …? Would you have killed your own baby?”
Audrey set aside her tea, then took the cup from Tam and set it beside hers on the coffee table. She scooted across the sofa, draped her arm around Tam’s shoulders, and leaned her head over against Tam’s.
They sat there in silence for quite a while, two friends remembering a tragedy from the past. Audrey understood that even after all these years, Tam still felt regret, remorse, and guilt. She managed to keep that long-ago heartbreak buried deep inside her, but occasionally it resurfaced.
“What do I tell Marcus when he wants to have a baby?” Tam asked. “He hasn’t come right out and said he’s ready, but he’s dropped a few subtle hints.”
“Tell him the truth. Tell him about the abortion.”
Tam inhaled deeply and exhaled strongly. “I don’t know if I want a baby. Hell, I don’t even know for sure I can have one.”
“There is no reason to think that because of the abortion, you can’t get pregnant,” Audrey assured her. “But being able to get pregnant and wanting to have a baby are two different things. If you don’t want a baby because of what happened when you were a teenager, then I recommend some counseling to help you—”
Tam laughed, but when Audrey glanced at her face, she saw tears running down Tam’s cheeks.
“Well, that was a really impersonal and rather condescending statement, wasn’t it?” Audrey said. “I’m sorry, Tam. I let Dr. Sherrod inject herself into a situation where she had no business being. This talk is between you and me, Tam and Audrey, best friends since we were babies.”
“It’s all right,” Tam said. “And it’s not as if you haven’t been trying to get me into counseling for years.”
“I’m a bossy know-it-all.”
“Yes, you are, but I love you anyway.”
“I know. Thank you.”
“Audrey?”
“Hmm …?” She didn’t know if she was prepared for whatever Tam wanted to tell her. They had shared all their secrets over the years, trusting each other completely, but Audrey suspected there was one secret that Tam hadn’t shared with anyone.
“You know that I love Marcus. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He makes me so happy.”
“I know, and I’m very grateful to him. I love seeing you happy. I want only good things for you because you deserve only good things.”
“Do I?”
Audrey took Tam’s hands in hers. “Yes, you do.”
“I love Marcus, but …”
“But?”
“I don’t know if I can say it out loud. I don’t know if I dare.”
She squeezed Tam’s hands.
“A part of me—that stupid teenage girl—is still in love with Hart.”
Audrey released the breath she’d been holding and wrapped her arms around Tam, who clung to Audrey as she cried.
“How stupid does that make me?”
Oh, Tam, I knew. I knew, but I didn’t want to know.
And she also knew that no matter how much Tam and Hart had loved each other, how much they still loved each other, there was absolutely no hope for them as a couple. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter 9
Audrey balanced her briefcase in one hand and a mocha latte in the other as she approached her office. At the locked door, she maneuvered the latte out of her right hand into her left, then removed the key ring dangling from her clenched teeth and inserted the door key into the lock. Most mornings, she arrived before her receptionist, Donna Mackey, who usually arrived by eight-thirty, once she had dropped her twin grandsons at preschool. Her son-in-law, an army corporal, was stationed in the Middle East and her daughter worked the morning shift as a Burger King assistant manager. One of the reasons Audrey had hired Donna was because her grandmotherly appearance and personality immediately put patients at ease.
After making her way through the small waiting room and into her private office, Audrey dumped her briefcase in her swivel chair and set the latte on her desk. Just as she opened the window blinds to let in the morning sunlight, the phone rang. Before Donna arrived to take calls, the answering machine picked up and recorded messages, so Audrey continued moving through her office and back into the waiting room opening blinds and getting things in order for a busy Monday work schedule.
After the recorded message ended, a male voice said, “Dr. Sherrod, this is J.D. Cass.”
Audrey stopped and listened.
“I … uh … I was wondering if I could set up an appointment to talk to you.”
Audrey walked over to the telephone on her desk and laid her hand atop the receiver.
“It’s about Zoe,” J.D. said. “She seems to have taken a shine to you, and since she did … well, I thought maybe you could help her.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “Help us.”
Just let the answering machine take the call. Donna can contact Special Agent Cass later and arrange for an appointment. J.D. and his daughter are simply potential clients. Nothing more.
Her hand tightened on the receiver and before she could stop herself, Audrey disregarded what her common sense had told her.
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BEVERLY BARTON
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Ужасы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Prepare to lose sleep with this shocking and utterly engrossing thriller, for fans of Karen Rose and Karin Slaughter.The crime scenes are horrifying: the victims arranged with deliberate care, posed to appear alive despite their agonized last moments and the shocking nature of their deaths.For grief counsellor Audrey Sherrod it’s clear the murders are the work of a deranged serial killer. At first, the only link is the victims’ physical appearance. But then another connection emerges, tying them to a past series of horrifying crimes – crimes that hit all too close to home.As the truth is unravelled, its more twisted and terrifying than anyone could ever imagine.