Almost Dead (31 page)

“We found a scrap of cotton fabric there. Fuzzy. Blue. Could be part of a blanket. We’re analyzing it.”

“That damned bitch! What’s she doing to my child?” Cissy was instantly livid. The dog whimpered, and she leaned over to let Coco down again.

Paterno asked, “Do you know anyone named Elyse?”

Cissy and Jack shook their heads.

“Elyse Hammersly?”

“No. Why?”

“That’s the name of the woman who rented the house where we found Marla. We think she’s also disguised herself as Mary Smith.” He pulled the copies of the lease agreement and ID from his pocket and handed them to the Holts.

Cissy just stared at the grainy picture on the copy of the Oregon driver’s license. Her pale skin turned ashen. “This woman is Elyse?” she whispered in disbelief.

“Wasn’t she here after the funeral? Serving?” Jack stared at the license photo too.

“You know her.” Paterno felt a jolt of adrenaline.

Cissy stared hard at the photo. Shock and fear registered in her eyes. “There has to be some mistake. This is a picture of Diedre Lawson, Detective. She works at Joltz. It’s a coffee shop I go to. She’s not really a friend of mine, but we know each other. No, you have to be wrong. I mean, I can’t believe that…
Why?
” Cissy started to tremble all over. “Are you telling me that Diedre killed my mother…and has my son?”

Jack swore pungently through clenched teeth.

Paterno’s brain was clicking. “Do you know that your mother had another child, a daughter, whom she gave up for adoption a few years before you were born?”

Cissy recoiled. “What are you saying? I have a sibling? No…The only sibling I have is my brother…half-brother…in Oregon. James, who lives with my uncle.”

“I know this is a shock, but we found out through your grandmother’s diary, and records at Cahill House, that before your mother was married, she had a baby girl and gave her up for adoption. She was at Cahill House. That’s how she met your father.”

“No way!” Cissy held up her hands. “I mean, I would have known. Someone would have told me. Gran would have…” Her expression changed from denial to something darker, as if the muscles of her face were drawn by the fingers of fear.

“I don’t know how to say this but straight out,” Paterno said. “You have a half-sister, Cissy. She was adopted by a couple named Engles. Sounds like she’s now Diedre Lawson.”

“And Elyse Hammersly?” Jack spit out.

“And she killed my—our—mother and kidnapped my son?”

“It’s speculation, but it fits. Do you know where Diedre lives?”

Cissy shook her head. “Rachelle would. She owns Joltz and works with Diedre.” Cissy held up a hand as if to stop the tide of information. “Are you sure about this?”

“You’re the one who came up with the name,” he reminded them. “When I showed you the picture, I only knew the name Engles.”

“This is unbelievable!” Jack was shaking his head, and he placed an arm around his wife.

Amen
, Paterno thought as he called Quinn again and gave her the updated information. Then, after telling the Holts he would let them know the minute he tracked down Diedre Engles, walked out to have a discussion with the FBI.

Cissy stared at the door as Jack closed it soundly behind Paterno. Seconds ticked by. The wet spot on the wood floor where the detective’s raincoat had dripped seemed to spread. Paterno expected her to just sit here and wait while her child was being held by a madwoman, a woman who could be her half-sister. But she couldn’t. “Something about this doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“None of it makes sense.” Jack was pacing in front of the fire, his gaze traveling to the pictures of Beej on the fireplace, then to the toy box where their son’s stuffed animals, little cars, and Legos lay stacked and untouched.

That great gnawing pain started up again, ripping through her guts, slashing at her heart. In her mind’s eye, she saw Beej standing over the toy box, and her throat burned.

“Do you trust the police to get our boy back?” Jack asked, his voice verbalizing the very question running through her mind.

She shook her head. “They haven’t been able to protect anyone, not since Marla escaped. Look what happened to Gran and Rory…”

“And Cherise and Tanya.” He plowed anxious fingers through his hair. Pain and despair darkened his eyes. “I can’t stand it. I have to
do
something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t sit around and wait one more minute. I’m going to find B.J.”

“If you leave, the police will follow you.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Do you think that we’re going to get a ransom call?”

“No.” She was certain of it.

“And even if we do, don’t you think this person…Diedre has our cell numbers? If we didn’t pick up here, she’d call one of our cell phones.”

“She’s got my number,” Cissy agreed. The feds had made sure she got her cell phone operational, as she hadn’t had the time. “It’s on the new phone.”

“Right. So if she’s got Beej, and it seems like she does, then she would call your cell, right?”

“I suppose. But what is it you want to do?”

“I want to look for our boy. Right now we’re doing everything
she
wants, everything
she
expects. She knows we won’t go against the FBI or the police. That we’ll stay here and wait. I agree with you. This isn’t about ransom money.”

“What do you want to do?” Cissy asked.

“Call Rachelle. She knows more about Diedre than anyone else, right?”

Cissy was nodding.

“She might tell you more than she would tell the cops.”

“I don’t want to screw up their investigation.”

“I want my son back. I’ve got a friend who was in the special forces. He owes me a big favor. I think I’m going to call it in. You talk to Rachelle, I’ll call Sam.”

A part of her wanted to hold back, to let the police do their jobs. They had the manpower, they had the equipment, they had the knowledge. But Jack was right. They weren’t related to Beej, and they hadn’t been able to stop this horrible wave of killings. Too many people close to her had died already. No one had saved Gran or Rory or Cherise or Tanya. “How long will you be gone?” She hated the thought of being without him, of not being able to depend upon his strength.

“As long as it takes.”

“You won’t have a car. The Jeep’s parked out front. If you take it, someone will see you.”

“Sam will come get me, or I’ll jog to Jannelle’s. I still have a second set of keys for her Lexus, and her house is less than two miles from here.”

“Uphill.”

“Yeah, but I’m in great shape.” He managed a thin, humorless smile.

“I don’t know,” she said, then looked into his eyes. Clear and determined, they held hers. She knew then she couldn’t change his mind.

Reckless, bold, irreverent, and bullheaded—when Jack became passionate about something, he didn’t back down, not even, it seemed, to the police or the damned FBI.

“I’m going, Cissy. Keep your cell on. One way or another, we’ll find our son.” He walked through the house, casually making certain all the shades were drawn, that no one could see inside.

“Maybe the police will find him first,” she said hopefully.

“Good. Then I just look like an overzealous nutcase of a father. I don’t care.” He reached for his windbreaker hanging on the hall tree, then stopped as if a sudden thought had cut through his brain. “But you, Ciss. You stay here.”

“After all your big talk about getting our kid back? You’re telling me to ‘stay,’ just like you would a damned dog? I’m in this too.”

“Someone’s got to remain here, keep the police thinking that we’re playing by their rules. There’s a chance we’re going to lose B.J., we both know that.”

“
No!
”

“Okay, we’re trying everything we know to keep that from happening, but if it does,” he said, conviction running through his words, “it’ll kill us both.”

“Don’t say it,” she begged. “Don’t even think it!”

“And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you. So you stay put. And safe.” He slipped the windbreaker over his sweatshirt and found his running shoes.

“I’ll be fine,” Cissy insisted, stiffening her spine. “Do what you have to do, Jack. I will too.” She felt a renewed sense of purpose as he laced the shoes. “You’re right about one thing, though. This monster who’s got him, Diedre or Elyse or whoever she wants to call herself, she’s never going to bring him back to us, never going to let him go.” She was keyed up, anxious, needing to do something. “Okay, go. Get our boy back.”

“Jesus, I love you,” he said, and she believed him. Strong arms surrounded her, dragged her tight as he kissed her hard, destroying the breath in her lungs with a passion that told her he thought he might truly never see her again.

That thought was crushing. She clung to him. What if she lost him? Lost their son.

He drew his head back. “I need a distraction, so that the police or feds won’t see me leave.”

“You act like you’ve done this before.”

“Don’t ask,” he said, and looked around the connecting rooms of their house. “We’ll turn off the lights in the back, just leave the one to the stairs and bedroom on, maybe a lamp here in the living room, but I want the kitchen dark. I’ll slip through the garage and crawl out the window on the side of the house while you make a quick call from the landline, just to get the FBI’s attention. Let the dog go outside to do her thing and take the receiver with you. If anyone asks about it, tell them you couldn’t find your cell and were just dialing the cell number hoping it would ring so you could find the damned phone.” He glanced around the house. “Tell them that the dog needed to go out, so you stepped onto the patio.” He looked at her again, his features taut. “I only need a couple of minutes to cut through Sara’s yard and get over her fence. Then I should be able to make my way to the street two blocks over. Two minutes. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he said and started for the garage but stopped. “Wait!” Taking the steps two at a time, he flew upstairs and turned on the bathroom light and shower, so that the water was running through the pipes. He was downstairs again within a minute. “If anyone asks, I’m in the shower.”

“And then what happens when the police wait around for you to come out as prune man?”

He flashed a smile. “Then, darling,” he said, kissing her on the forehead, “we’re screwed.”

“You were right,” Quinn said as she and Paterno climbed into her Jetta. “Diedre Engles was married briefly to Gene Lawson, her high-school sweetheart. And get this, now he’s a cop with the state police.” She rammed the keys into the ignition and flicked her wrist. The little car’s engine roared to life, and she hit the gas. “I already talked to him, and he told me that yes, she was adopted, grew up in Sacramento with upper middle-class parents she hated. She always wanted to meet—and this is a direct quote—‘the bitch who gave me up.’ She spent years searching for her birth mother, but she and Gene split up before she found her.”

“Why did she hate her adoptive parents?”

“Who knows? Gene didn’t. They were decent enough people, if a little distant. Anyway,” she said, rounding a corner fast enough that the wheels chirped, “Gene said the older she got, the more, as he put it, ‘psycho’ and ‘obsessed’ she became, to the point that when she refused counseling, they divorced. No kids.”

“Does he think she’s capable of plotting an escape and committing a string of murders?”

“He told me he didn’t know what she was capable of, but that she was extremely smart: high IQ, but really messed up. His diagnosis: she’s got some major wires crossed.”

“So he wasn’t surprised?”

Quinn stepped on it as a light turned amber, then switched lanes as if she thought she was a race-car driver. They were driving without sirens or lights, converging on the townhouse where Diedre Lawson lived. On this one, they were taking a backseat to the FBI, but Paterno would be damned rather than miss the snagging of the woman who had sprung Marla Cahill only to kill her.

“He didn’t expect her to turn out to be a serial murderer, but surprised? No. He didn’t have many good words to say about his ex-wife.”

“They never do.”

Quinn slowed to a stop two blocks from the townhouse. From here, they could watch the feds in action. Paterno stared through the rain-spattered windshield as the agents surrounded Diedre’s residence.

Would there be a gun battle?

Or would she lay down her weapon and surrender?

He wasn’t betting on it.

That would be just too damned easy. The truth of the matter was that he had a bad feeling about this showdown. It was true that the woman seemed to be slipping up, her actions in the last few murders not as carefully planned as Marla’s escape or Eugenia’s and Rory’s murders. She was losing it. Definitely, he thought as he reached into his pocket for a pack of gum. But he still thought this was just too easy.

He felt in his gut that Marla’s killer wouldn’t go out unless it was in a damned blaze of glory.

Would that kid never shut up?

Jesus H. Christ, she’d fed him, given him a bottle, and changed his damned diaper. She’d even attempted to bathe him, but he had squirmed and struggled. She just wasn’t cut out to be a mother, Diedre decided, just like that bitch who had borne her.

Marla!

Now there was a head case.

“Oh, shut up!” she yelled down the hallway to the room she’d set up for him, a room with a playpen and blankets and some of those dumb stuffed animals that always looked so insipid. She figured he’d wear himself out eventually, but man, oh, man, her head was thundering, pain throbbing through her skull. She popped another couple of ibuprofen, but she really needed something stronger, something prescribed by a doctor, a painkiller that would knock the throbbing ache out once and for all.

It was all because of Marla. Diedre didn’t remember having headaches before she’d finally tracked down her real mother—in prison, no less! Talk about bad karma! Worse yet, she realized everything she’d wanted in life: a family with social standing; a beautiful young mother; a world of privilege…everything that should have been hers. Gone. Gone! Because her damned mother had given her up for adoption. Not that her adoptive parents were all that bad, but they were just boring, ordinary people who didn’t really seem to care about her as she’d grown. She’d wondered about that, but it was all mixed in her mind. Then there was her father. All she’d learned about him, after digging for years, was that he and Marla had been involved in a very short, very hot affair, and guess what? Marla had ended up pregnant.