Hold Back the Dark (15 page)

“Manager,” the girl mumbled.

“And that would be you.” Elise sighed and looked over at Josh. “It’s always the same, isn’t it? The responsible ones taking the fall for the irresponsible ones. I hate to see that happen.”

“I’m not taking the fall for that creep,” the girl said hotly.

“You will be if you won’t give us his name and address,” Elise said. “You really think your boss is going to thank you when I have to go get a search warrant and get their lawyers involved?”

The girl looked stricken.

“I’m not asking for state secrets here. I just want the name, address, and phone number of one kid who’s already a pain in your backside,” Josh said.

“I’m not supposed to,” she answered, but she looked less sure of herself. “It’s against store policy. I could get into a lot of trouble.”

Josh smiled. “I promise you will not get into trouble for this. No one will ever even know you gave us the information. And if they did find out, they’d probably give you a raise.”

She chewed on the fishnet hoodie where her thumb came through. “Really?”

Josh straightened up. “Cooperating with the police on an investigation? Absolutely. It’s promotion material.” He turned to Elise. “Don’t you think?”

Elise nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

The girl went into the back again and returned in two minutes with a sheet of note paper. On it were scribbled a name, an address, and a phone number. “He’s scheduled to work tomorrow,” she said as she handed the paper over to Josh. “You really think I might get a promotion?”

“If there’s any justice at all,” he replied.

The cops didn’t frighten him. They were nothing but a bunch of self-important civil servants. What did he care if they were asking questions? No one had any answers that were going to help them.

He ran the cord through his fingers. He hadn’t intended to, but maybe he had committed the perfect crime. This just got sweeter and sweeter, didn’t it?

“
I
am the worst therapist ever.” Carol Warren put her hands over her face. “At least the worst couples therapist ever.”

“It’s not you, Carol,” Louis Siegel said reassuringly. “It’s just a bad run.”

“It’s not me, it’s them?” Carol looked up at him. “That is the worst line ever.”

Every Friday at three o’clock, all the therapists in Aimee’s office locked the front door and sat down in the waiting area with a tray of sandwiches and a fruit platter and talked over their cases.

“It’s a run of bad luck,” Julie O’Neal said. “A statistical anomaly.”

“I’ve had three couples come to me in the past five months. All three have now filed for divorce. It feels like more than a statistical anomaly.” Carol pulled her legs up to lotus position in the armchair. “It feels like I’m doing something wrong.”

“What do you think you’re doing wrong?” Louis asked.

“If I knew, I’d stop doing it, Louis.” Carol glared at him. “And don’t shrink me, okay?”

Louis held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. I still want to know what you think you did wrong, because without knowing that, I can’t be much help.”

Louis was such a man. Carol hadn’t wanted someone to fix the problem. She wanted to bitch a bit, to complain, and to be consoled. Fixing it, if there was anything to fix, could wait.

She waved Louis’s comment away. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling touchy about it. I’ll go over my notes and see if I can come up with something concrete to discuss next week.” She turned to Aimee. “You’re the one who probably really needs to talk. How’s Taylor? How are you?”

“Taylor’s still not speaking. And me? I’m exhausted.”

Julie reached over to pat Aimee’s leg. “I bet. Have you been out to see her at Whispering Pines?”

“Pretty much every day. Her aunt’s been there non-stop, too, and her dad’s business partner and his son have visited.”

“That’s great that she’s got so much support,” Carol said. “That should help her to start feeling safe again.”

“I hope so. There’ve been a few little signs. She touched my hand today, but she still won’t meet my eyes or speak.”

“Do you know what’s going on with the investigation? Do the police suspect her of being involved?” Julie asked.

“I don’t know anything concrete. I honestly don’t know what the police suspect or don’t suspect.” Aimee thought uneasily about Josh Wolf’s sudden chilliness today.

“What about you, Aimee?” Louis asked. “What do you suspect?”

Aimee looked up, a little surprised. “I have no idea who might have done this. I can’t imagine that Taylor could have been involved.”

“Are you sure?” He scanned Aimee’s face as if looking for clues.

“I’m sure, Louis.” Damn him. He had years more experience than she did, and had always been their unacknowledged leader and mentor. He was also almost always the one most willing to play devil’s advocate. While it was a technique worth using, it was the last thing she needed right now. She was second-guessing herself enough without him jumping on the doubting bandwagon. “Taylor’s anger has always been self-directed. That hasn’t changed. She cut herself pretty severely before she was found.”

“Do you think it was a suicide attempt?” Julie asked

Aimee shook her head, unsure of what she should and shouldn’t say. The agreement was that everything said within this room stayed within this room, but the stakes were much higher than they’d ever been before. “No. If anything, I think it was an attempt to communicate, like her cutting has always been.”

“By the way, I meant to tell you that you’re an idiot,” Elise said. It amazed her that such an intelligent man could be so stupid.

“Excuse me?” Josh turned to look at her in total shock.

“What part of that sentence don’t you understand?”

“I don’t understand any of it.” He tossed the map and the piece of paper with Brent Mullen’s—aka Flick’s—address on it to her. “Figure out where we’re going, would you? You might as well do something useful while you’re calling me names.”

Elise snatched the map from him. He truly
was
an idiot. Aimee Gannon had had a fiancé two years ago, but maybe the whole thing had fallen apart. Elise hadn’t noticed any rings. “Take one-sixty,” she said and folded the map back up.

“So why am I an idiot?” Josh flicked on his turn signal and changed lanes.

“I don’t know, Josh. Maybe it’s genetic. Or maybe your mama dropped you on your head as a baby.”

“Very funny. Tell me one thing I did wrong.”

Elise shifted in her seat to face him. “You got your panties in a twist because you found out she had a boyfriend two years ago, didn’t you?”

Josh glared at her. “My panties are not in a twist, and it was a fiancé, not a boyfriend.”

“Fiancé shmiancé,” Elise said.

“There’s a difference. Maybe not to you women, but to us guys there is. We’re the ones who shell out the big bucks for the fancy ring. We’re the ones who have to get down on one knee. We’re the ones who open ourselves up to rejection. A fiancé is something substantial.” His jaw was clenched.

Elise threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, what is this?
Sex and the City for Men
? So Holly dumped you and gave back your ring. It was three years ago. Pawn the damn thing and move on with your life, would you?”

“I already pawned it.”

“Seriously? What’d you get for it?”

That earned her another sidelong glance.

“And the moving on thing?” she asked, knowing the answer to that all too well. Her partner had only taken the occasional woman to dinner and a movie since Holly had moved to South Carolina to take an assistant professorship.

“I’m working on it.”

“Well, maybe you need to work on it a little harder,” she suggested.

“Maybe I need to solve this damn case,” he said.

“Maybe you need to turn right on Vallejo.”

Josh pulled the car over in front of a two-story single-family home whose garage was bigger than his apartment. “Nice digs.”

Elise took in the old trees, big lawns, and expensive cars. “It doesn’t suck.”

They walked up to the front door. He rang the bell and they waited. Elise was about to give the bell a second jab when the door opened.

The woman behind the door was plump, with mousy brown hair and glasses. “Yes?” she said expectantly.

Josh flipped open his badge. “Mrs. Mullen?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes,” she said, but her tone was a lot less friendly.

“Would you be Brent Mullen’s mother?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”

“We need to speak to Brent. May we come in?” He moved forward.

She stayed in the doorway, arms still crossed. “You got a warrant?”

“Excuse me?” Josh stopped short.

“A warrant,” the woman repeated slowly as if Josh were dim.

Elise knew she should be helping him out, but right now she was enjoying this.

“No. We’re not here to search your home or to arrest Brent. We just want to talk to him.”

“About what?”

Josh was clearly at a loss about how to proceed. So Elise stepped in. “Is Brent friendly with Taylor Dawkin? We understand they’re acquainted.”

“If you already understand that they’re acquainted, why are you here asking me if they’re friendly? You’re not going to believe anything I say, no matter what. That’s how you people operate, isn’t it? Make up your mind about a kid or a situation, and don’t let the facts muddy up your hypotheses.”

“Us people?” Josh repeated, looking over at Elise.

“Yes, you people. You police try to barge in here, civil rights be damned, wanting to question my son about this or that. You never have evidence, you never have a reason. I’m tempted to charge you all with harassment. What do you think about
that
?” Mrs. Mullen was right up in Josh’s face now, or as close as she could be considering the height difference.

“What else has little Brent been questioned about?” Josh wasn’t giving up any ground.

“You think that’s funny? You think you’re some kind of comedian? Your sarcasm isn’t going to make me want to cooperate with you. In fact, I doubt there’s anything that
would
make me want to cooperate with you. Now get the hell off my property and stay off it, unless you have a warrant.” Mrs. Mullen slammed the door in their faces.

When Josh turned and looked at Elise, his face a mask of bewilderment, she could barely keep from doubling over with laughter.

In almost perfect mimicry of Mrs. Mullen, Josh said, “You think that’s funny?”

She thought it was so damn funny, she damn near peed her pants.

Then Josh’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and flipped it open. “Wolf,” he said.

“Hey, Josh, it’s Ed.”

“Why, Ed, it’s delightful to hear from you.” Josh glanced over at Elise. She nodded to let him know she was listening as they walked back to the car.

“Remember those subcontractors you asked me to look into? The ones you said had done some work for Dawkin-Walter Consulting?”

“Yeah. What about ’em?” Josh motioned for Elise to drive.

“Well,” Ed said with a note of triumph in his voice, “they don’t exist.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s complicated. When are you going to get back to the office?”

“After we talk to Doreen Hughes,” Josh said as Elise pulled away from the curb.

“See you then.”

It only took them fifteen minutes to get Doreen Hughes’s house.

A ponytailed blonde with a narrow face and a wide mouth opened the door. Josh guessed her to be in her late twenties or early thirties. The hair looked expensive, glossy, with multiple shades of blond streaked in. The clothes were casual—capris in some kind of nubby-textured fabric and a silky tank top—but not cheap. “Doreen Hughes?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Who’s asking?”

Elise flipped her badge open. “Police.”

The skinny eyebrows raised on Doreen Hughes’s forehead. “Is this about Orrin Dawkin?”

Josh and Elise exchanged a glance. “Yeah, it is,” Josh said.

Doreen stood aside to let them into the condo. “I wondered when you’d get around to me.”

Killing the puppy had been a mistake. He knew that now. He couldn’t even really say how it had come about. A cluster of things had come at him too fast from too many different directions; otherwise he would never have lost control like that. He had a plan. He knew to stick to the plan.

He fingered the lamp cord again, sliding it through his fingers, wrapping it around his hand. He knew he should throw it out, but every time he looked at it, he felt a little bit of the rush he’d felt when he’d used it to choke the life out of Stacey Dawkin.

Here, in private, when he could really look at it and touch it, it practically sang to him of all the power he had now. He’d been playing with the cord when the puppy had scampered toward him and then squatted and peed on the carpet.

A submission pee-er, that’s what Sarah said the puppy was. When he sensed someone higher in the pack nearby, he peed. Well, little Bingo had gotten that right.
He
was the alpha dog, and he’d shown that little pee-er, too. It had struggled and writhed, twisting under his hands as he slowly, slowly, slowly choked the life out of it.

It had been so satisfying to watch the life drain out of it, and to know that only he had the power to grant the little shit life or death. It had been completely up to him. He needed a better hiding place for the body, though. The spot under the bushes would work for only so long. The body had to be better disposed of before someone stumbled across it.

But killing the dog had been an amazing relief of the tension that had been building. The police had been around asking questions. That psychologist was prying into things. His schedule had been disrupted. The noise in his head had been building, building, building, until he could barely hear himself over the roar.

Everything had stilled as the dull glaze had spread over the puppy’s eyes. It wasn’t gone, but he doubted anything could ever make it go away entirely. Killing Orrin and Stacey had brought him closer to peace than anything he’d experienced in years. He could think clearly.

Still, killing the puppy had been a mistake. It had added to the chaos in the house. Thomas was upset, which made Sarah distraught, which made the volume of the noise rise. He knew he should wish he hadn’t done it. It was like so many other things he’d done and pretended to say he was sorry about, but didn’t really regret.

The only important thing? Not getting caught.

“I can’t tell you much. They made me sign a confidentiality agreement.” Doreen Hughes sat on her leather couch.

“But there’s no love lost between you and Orrin Dawkin, right? You had some hard feelings?” Josh sat on a chair opposite Doreen Hughes.

Doreen laughed. “Why would I have hard feelings toward Orrin Dawkin? I get to live like this and go to school with no loans, all on his dime.”

“Must have been a nice settlement, then,” Elise observed as she sat back in her chair. Her arms were at her sides, open, nonthreatening.

“No more than I deserved.” A hard edge crept into Doreen’s eyes.

“He must have done something pretty heinous.” Josh took his cue from Elise and leaned back, too.

Doreen’s lips tightened for a moment and then she shook her head. “I can’t say anything. I signed the papers. I took the money. I’ll stick to it.”

Josh held his hands up in front of himself. “We understand. I was just saying it must have been a nice settlement. So, where were you on Tuesday night at around nine-thirty?” Josh asked, leaning forward again and watching Doreen’s face carefully.

She smiled, her generous mouth pulling wide. “At my uncle Howard’s birthday party with about twenty-five members of my family.”

“Got any names and phone numbers so we might check that out?” Josh asked pleasantly, wondering what the big joke was.