Hold Back the Dark (10 page)

Aimee merged onto the interstate, heading back into Midtown. When raindrops splattered on the windshield, she rolled up the windows and switched the wipers on.

Detective Wolf wasn’t doing much to leave her feeling settled and calm, either. Aimee doubted he had any control over the heat that rolled off him like a palpable force, or the smooth grace with which he moved. He definitely couldn’t control the way her stomach tightened when he put his hand on the small of her back, or the way her heart had started to pound when he’d leaned into her car to talk to her, his lips close to hers. Or the way she’d practically devoured him when he’d kissed her.

She’d been glad to have him walk her to her car; he was so reassuring. Maybe it was his size. His height. The broad shoulders. The wide strong hands. The absolute maleness of him.

Aimee took another deep breath. That disturbing sense of being watched had been more intense than ever today. She had felt as if she was under observation from the moment she had left the condo. Ever since she’d been notified that Kyle had been released from the state mental hospital, she’d been on edge, convinced that danger lurked around every corner. She glanced at her purse where her pepper spray was stashed, and hoped like hell she was better prepared this time. She had a restraining order. She was on guard all the time. She was no longer as naïve and trusting as she had been. Kyle had taken that from her as surely as she had helped the authorities take his freedom from him a few months later.

On the other hand, it could all be in her head. She rubbed the back of her neck at the place where the hairs prickled when she walked alone, but the sensation wouldn’t leave.

Even while Kyle had been locked up, that feeling of being watched, tracked, and hunted had stayed with her. She jumped at shadows and lashed out at everything around her. It had stayed with her longer than Danny had. Danny with his eyes full of sympathy and soul-shattering pity. Aimee clenched her teeth. She didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. She didn’t want anyone to feel bad for her. She was fine. She just needed some more time. But Danny hadn’t understood that, and eventually he’d gotten tired of trying and left.

She shook herself. Naturally, having been attacked by another violent patient would stir up her anxieties; it was called retraumatization. It was why the nice young accountant Aimee saw on Friday afternoons was claustrophobic. Every time she had to go into a small, dark place, she reexperienced her mother locking her in a closet as punishment. She hyperventilated every time she had to retrieve a suitcase from the storage space in the basement of her apartment building. It didn’t matter how safe she knew the space was. On some level, she again became the seven-year-old girl who was trapped and didn’t know if anyone would ever come to let her out.

Which was exactly what Aimee suspected was happening to Taylor.

At least Aimee and the accountant had the advantage of knowing what had caused their original trauma. They knew why they behaved the way they did, which was a huge step in learning to deal with it. But Taylor had been as bewildered by her own behavior as her parents had been.

Aimee pulled into the parking garage for her office, gathered her briefcase and her purse before she unlocked her car, and stepped out. This feeling of being watched was only the accumulation of stress and tension coupled with a nasty case of déjà vu. Though being able to understand it intellectually didn’t make it go away, it lessened the impact.

She hit the remote to lock the car and headed for the stairs, repeating to herself that she was safe as she fingered the pepper spray in her purse.

When Aimee reached her office, a girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, although it was hard to tell under the white pancake makeup and thick mascara, shot up from where she sat in the hallway. “Where’s Taylor?” she demanded. “What have they done to her? Where the hell is she?”

A
fter talking to Lois Bradley’s sister, Josh stood up and spoke to Elise over the wall of his cubicle. “The sister’s lying.” No one would admit to having seen Lois since she’d hightailed it out of her neighborhood. “She says she hasn’t seen Lois or heard from her in over a week, but it sounded rehearsed. I don’t buy it.”

“Want to go check it out?” Elise offered.

“What else we got?” The crime scene techs had been working their asses off and evidence was starting to pour in. Until Josh and Elise figured out what mattered, though, it was just stuff.

“Doc Halpern called. Our perp has to be at least six feet, based on the damage to Orrin Dawkin’s skull.” She tapped her pen on her desk.

“That lets the girl off the hook.” Taylor Dawkin was only about five foot four.

“Depends on how tall the boyfriend is,” Elise said, flipping through a folder. “Clyde pieced together the wine bottle Taylor used on herself.”

Josh raised one eyebrow. “Was it a good vintage?”

“It was a custom bottle from an e-commerce company and the Dawkins had close to a case of the stuff. Might be worth paying a call on the company. It had Taylor’s fingerprints on it, but it had four or five other sets as well that they haven’t identified yet.”

Josh pinched the bridge of his nose. Finding Lois Bradley seemed like the hotter lead. “Let’s wait to see if they get hits on the other prints. Did you get hold of Sam Parker?” Parker was with the sheriff’s office. He’d had the misfortune of catching a weird-ass culty ritual murder the year before. Elise had thought it would be a good idea to let him take a look at what Taylor had drawn on the wall to see if he could make anything of it. Maybe the symbols were some sort of cult thing.

“Yep. I sent him photos of the crime scene. He said he’d take a look and get back to us ASAP.”

Josh had looked some stuff up on the Internet. He hadn’t seen anything connected with Satan worship that looked like what Taylor had drawn on the walls and, frankly, the Web sites had given him the heebie-jeebies. What the hell was wrong with these people? Didn’t they have any idea how much evil lurked right outside their front doors? You didn’t need to manufacture this stuff; it was out there waiting for you. They should be building barricades against it, not inviting it in.

Elise shrugged. “So let’s go talk to the sister. The wine bottle and the bloody walls will still be here when we get back.”

Josh rose. “And Lois Bradley might be halfway to Mexico already.” He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair. It was a hell of a lot easier to get answers in person than it was over the phone. It was too easy for people to lie when they didn’t have to look you in the eye. It was too easy to miss the telling detail that could help unravel whatever web of deceit the person had woven when you weren’t there watching them, too.

They were halfway through the maze of cubicles when Ed from financials caught them. Ed was a tall, lanky guy with a beaky nose, a bald head, and watery brown eyes half-hidden under droopy lids. He always reminded Josh a little of a vulture, but he was Josh’s kind of vulture. There was no one better to pick over the remains of someone’s financial life and pull out the tidbits that could really bring an investigation together. “Hey, guys, you might want to see this,” he said.

“You got something already?” Josh’s pulse quickened. He loved it when things started to come together.

“I got something. Maybe not what you’re looking for, but I thought you should know about it.” Ed rubbed his hand over his shiny pate. “Orrin and Stacey Dawkin were broke.”

Elise shifted her weight onto one leg and rested a fist on her hip. “In that crib? Those people were broke? How the hell did that happen?”

Josh wondered, too. That house was worth a ton. It wasn’t some crappy McMansion in Elk Grove.

“They had a second and a third mortgage, plus car loans and a boat loan. Credit card debt, too. Four cards totally maxed out and two more that were creeping up. They had debt up to their ears. I’m not sure your identity thief would have found much to steal.”

“She wouldn’t have known that, though,” Elise said, glancing over at Josh. “She would have thought the same as we did, that they had pockets worth picking.”

“Where was the money going?” Josh asked. Gambling? Drugs? Those would be two very popular choices for people getting in over their heads financially. They would also be two very popular choices that might lead to homicide. Neither of those worlds was exactly overflowing with law-abiding citizens.

“I’m not sure yet,” Ed said. “I’ve got some more digging to do. I thought you’d want a heads-up on their financial situation.”

They thanked him and he headed back to his basement cubicle.

“You still want to shake down the sister?” Elise asked as they headed out the door.

“Seems worthwhile,” Josh said.

“Anything worthwhile at the loony bin where they locked the kid up? Did Gannon’s hot lead pan out?”

Josh shrugged, acting nonchalant. “Can’t say, really. Taylor went apeshit when she saw the drawing, but I still don’t know what it means.”

“Did Gannon have any ideas?”

Other than to let him put his tongue down her throat? “Nothing specific. She thinks the murders are tied to something that happened when Taylor was a kid. Other than the drawings, I don’t see how they’re connected and that seems pretty loose.”

Elise shrugged into her jacket. “It didn’t hurt to make contact with the new shrink. Make sure we hear anything Taylor says or does that might help us.”

“Yep.” Josh pushed the door open and held it for Elise.

“She didn’t do this, Josh.” Elise slipped her sunglasses on.

“If she didn’t do it, she saw something. I’d put money on it.” He slipped his sunglasses on, too, even though the sun didn’t bother him one bit.

Aimee glanced behind her. She was alone. Her heart pounded in her chest and her mouth went dry. The girl took a step toward her. Aimee took a deep breath and resisted the urge to take a step back. She would not be pushed. Her hand dropped inside her purse and touched the pepper spray.

“Taylor isn’t here,” Aimee said, her voice calmer than she felt.

“Where is she, then? What are they doing to her?” the girl screamed, her fists clenched at her sides. “They’re brainwashing her, aren’t they? I won’t let them fucking do it. You’ve got to let me see Taylor! I’ll report you!”

“No one is trying to brainwash Taylor. They’re trying to keep her safe.” Aimee kept her arms at her sides, remaining as physically nonconfrontational as possible. Being aggressive in response would only fuel the girl’s fire. She swallowed her fear and stood her shaky ground.

The girl rolled her raccoon-ringed eyes. “Safe from what? Safe from thinking for herself? Safe from her friends? Who’s keeping her safe from
you
?”

“We’re trying to keep Taylor safe from herself,” Aimee said, not raising her voice.

“What do you mean, she has to be kept safe from herself? What’d she do? Did they lock her up? Where?” the girl demanded.

“Let’s sit down and I’ll explain to you what’s going on.” Aimee walked past the girl, unlocked the door to the office, and gestured to the couch and chairs. “What’s your name?”

The girl sat down, her eyes wary. “I’m Caitlin. You’re her shrink, right?”

“I’m Dr. Gannon,” Aimee said.

“She talked about you.” Caitlin relaxed a little bit into the couch.

So apparently whatever Taylor had told Caitlin about her was good. That would make this easier. “I guess you’ve heard about Taylor’s parents.”

“Who hasn’t? Everybody at school is talking about it, and nobody knows where Taylor is. No one will tell me anything. I called her house, her cell, the police station.”

“You must care about Taylor a lot to go through all that trouble.” Aimee kept her eyes on Caitlin and her voice low.

Caitlin’s eyes filled up with tears. “I do. I need to know she’s okay. I need to know what they’re doing to her. I wanted to help her. I mean, my parents are fucking idiots, but that doesn’t mean I want someone to kill them. They’re saying at school that she found them. She’s gotta be totally freaked.”

“I’m glad you understand how upsetting that was for Taylor. She
is
having a really hard time. So hard that she can’t have many visitors yet. Things are getting a little bit better. If you give me your phone number, I’ll call you when she can have visitors and you can go see her then.”

Caitlin looked hard at Aimee. “You promise they’re not doing a
Girl, Interrupted
thing to her?”

“I promise,” Aimee said, fighting a smile.

Caitlin chewed on her lower lip. “Taylor said you were okay. She said she kind of trusted you.”

“I’m glad.” Aimee pulled two business cards out of her wallet and handed them to Caitlin. “Jot your number down on one of them and I’ll keep it, and you keep the other one. You can call me and I’ll let you know how Taylor’s doing, okay?”

“Okay,” Caitlin said. She wrote down the number and handed it to Aimee, tucking the other card into her backpack.

Aimee stood and headed toward the door. “Caitlin, there is one thing you might be able to do to help Taylor.”

“Name it.” Caitlin got up from the couch.

“I need to know where I can find Taylor’s boyfriend, the boy she called Flick.”

Lois Bradley’s sister, Tammi Paston, was a hard-faced woman with teeth that looked like the “before” in a cosmetic dentistry ad. She lived in a rat-trap duplex on Northrop Avenue. “I’m telling you,” she said for the fourth time, “I haven’t talked to Lois since last Thursday night. She was supposed to come over, but she called and said she was too tired from cleaning all day. I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Is that typical?” Elise asked. “Do you often go for days without speaking to your sister?”

The woman looked over at Josh and rolled her eyes. He so was not used to being the good cop, but he smiled and shrugged. The woman turned back toward Elise, her eyes narrowing. “She’s my sister, not my kid. I don’t keep tabs on her.”

“So you’re not close,” Elise said.

“I wouldn’t say that, either.” The woman was getting impatient. Behind her, the theme music to
Sponge Bob Square Pants
played loudly. “Look. I haven’t talked to her. I haven’t seen her. Not in a few days. We usually talk once a week or so. It depends on what’s going on. What do you want with her, anyway?”

“She’s a person of interest in a homicide investigation,” Josh said, leaning against the doorframe and smiling down at her. “We need to ask her some questions.”

The eyes narrowed further. “You’re looking for the wrong person. Lois tried to cash a few checks that weren’t hers. Other than that, she’s harmless.”

There it was again. Nobody thought their relative was all that bad. It was just a few checks that didn’t happen to actually belong to her that had gotten her into trouble. No big deal.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Elise said. “We need to talk to her and find that out.”

Tammi chewed her lip. The volume of the TV behind her went up a few decibels. “You kids turn that crap down,” she yelled over her shoulder, then turned back toward Josh and Elise. “Person of interest, huh? In a homicide? Sounds important.”

Josh leaned forward a little more. “It is, Tammi. Very important.”

She smiled. “So is finding her worth some cash?”

Aimee sat in her office and tapped Josh’s card against her desk. Her heart picked up speed at the thought of talking to him again. She still couldn’t believe that she’d kissed him like that. She ran a finger across her lips, marveling at how his lips had sent her reeling.

She took a deep breath and dialed Josh’s cell phone number.

“Detective Wolf.”

The familiar growl of his deep voice started a vibration that ran down her nerve endings. “I’ve got some information for you on Taylor’s boyfriend.”

“On Flick? Great, what do you have?” Enthusiasm lit his words.

“I’m afraid it’s not much, but I did find out where he works.” It was all Caitlin would give her, but it was something.

“It’s a start. Where does he work?”

“Hot Topic. At Arden Fair Mall.”

“Great. Thank you.” He was clearly going to hang up.

“Wait. Could I talk to this boy when you pick him up?” Flick might know something about the symbols, or something that might help her get inside Taylor’s shell.

“You want to question my suspect?” He didn’t sound pleased.

“No, of course not. I’d like to ask him some questions about Taylor to see if I can find out anything that I might use to help her. Because we’re on the same side, right? Because helping my client doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive from helping with your investigation?”

“I did say that, didn’t I?” He chuckled. “Fine. I’ll let you know when we track him down. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try to get you a few minutes with him.”

“Thank you. Also, I’d really like to get back in to see Taylor again.” As long as she was on a roll, she might as well go for all the prizes in the basket.

There was a hesitation on the other end of the line. “Because she was so helpful the last time?”

Aimee closed her eyes, trying to block the image of Taylor clawing at herself. “No. Because I need to make sure she’s okay, and I doubt they’ll let me in again without someone forcing the issue.”

“So what will you do when you get there? Bring more drawings?”

“No! I really just want to make sure she’s all right. Maybe sit for a while near her.” She’d pushed hard enough for now.

“What the hell will that accomplish?”

“I need her to feel safe with me again, and that might take some time.”

“Aimee—”

She interrupted. “Please, Josh.”

There was that hesitation again. She felt like she could feel him breathe, sense his chest rising and falling. “Aimee, this is a homicide investigation. There’s not really time to sit around and do nothing.”

“Not for you, but for me. I just need you to get me in the door,” she pleaded.