Hold Back the Dark (4 page)

“So why kill the male vic fast and easy, and torture the female vic?” Elise asked, clearly still disgruntled.

“A male is more of a physical threat,” Josh said as he buckled his seatbelt. “He or she could be more sure of physically dominating Mrs. Dawkin than her husband. Best to get him out of the way quickly and then take his or her time with her.”

“Stinking sadistic asshole,” Elise muttered.

“Absolutely,” Josh agreed. “Maybe killing the husband was way more of a rush than he expected, and he decided to draw out the pleasure with the missus.”

“Sick twisted bastard,” Elise muttered, starting the car.

“True that,” Josh said.

Elise gave him a dirty look before backing the car out of its space. “Stop humoring me.”

Josh raised his hands in the air. “You’re driving. I’m just trying to get out of this alive.”

As she threw the car into drive and edged into traffic, Josh’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. “Wolf here.”

“Hey, Wolf, it’s Reed.” Reed had taken over for Smitty at the hospital at about seven this morning. “I thought you’d want to know her aunt is here.”

“Thanks. We’ll be right there.” Josh hung up and told Elise, “Marian Phillips is at the hospital.”

“Someone should call the shrink and tell her. You know, so she can get permission to release those files to us.” Elise didn’t look over at Josh, but he saw the shadow of a smile on her face.

“You go right ahead,” he said.

“But it wouldn’t be safe to talk on the phone while I was driving,” Elise answered, her tone sickly sweet.

“I’ve seen you talk on the phone, switch CDs in the player, and drink coffee while you drive. You’re telling me you’re suddenly against multitasking?”

Elise smiled wider. “I read an article about that the other day. Multitasking is bad for your brain. I have seen the error of my ways, and I’m striving to be a better person. I think you should call the doc while I drive, to help me on my road to self-improvement. It’s the least you can do, as my friend and partner.”

“You are a sarcastic bitch. You know that, don’t you?” Josh pulled up the list of his most recent calls.

“Just one of the many reasons you love me,” Elise replied.

He laughed in spite of himself. She was right. “So tell me why you’re so hot to see me hook up with the headshrinker. You thinking I could get some free services that would set me right?”

“I have a good feeling about her.”

“A good feeling? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You want me to call her because you have a good feeling,” he repeated. “That’s so girly, Jacobs. I can’t believe you said that.”

“I
am
actually a girl, you know,” Elise answered. “So call her.”

“Fine,” Josh grumbled. “But I’m calling the station first to check in.”

“Assert your manhood however you see fit.” Elise moved into the left-hand lane. “By the way, does Dr. Gannon seem familiar to you? I keep thinking I’ve seen her or heard about her somewhere before.”

“No,” Josh said, dialing his phone. “I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered her.”

Elise grinned. “So you think she’s cute.”

Cute wasn’t the right word for Dr. Aimee Gannon. Cute generally didn’t do it for him. And Dr. Gannon? She definitely did something for him. He just wished she’d cut it the hell out. He didn’t need distractions right now.

Elise’s phone buzzed in her pocket. “Jacobs here,” she said and listened for a moment. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.” She snapped her phone shut and grinned at Josh. “After we deal with the aunt and the shrink, we’ll go look at what Maribel in the computer lab found on Taylor Dawkin’s laptop.”

Sean’s father broke the news to him first, before calling the rest of the office staff of Dawkin-Walter Web Consultants, Inc., the company that Carl Walter had cofounded with Orrin Dawkin almost a decade ago, into the conference room. Carl said he wanted to give Sean time to adjust before all hell broke loose. As if it hadn’t already.

Sean wished like hell it hadn’t given him a rush of pride that his father had confided in him first. It had both warmed him and worried him a little, too. Sean scrutinized his father’s face. Did he know more than he was letting on?

His father
always
knew more than he was letting on. Carl always knew every secret, every shame, every misstep. Why would this be any different?

“What about Taylor?” Sean kept his voice even, which wasn’t easy while his heart thudded in his chest like a bass drum. He knew how he should sound. Concerned. Compassionate. He had taught himself to make the right sounds and to have his face be right. Furrow the brow slightly. Tilt the head just so. He had watched other people and worked at duplicating it in the mirror, practicing for hours.

Carl’s brow creased, and it was almost like looking in the mirror. The same furrow in the forehead. The same tilt to the head. The same head of thick sandy brown hair. He wondered if his father practiced in front of the mirror like he had.

“Marian said the girl’s still in shock. She’s not speaking. She’s probably going to have to be institutionalized, at least for a while.”

The relief was so intense, Sean just nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Then, as always, the shame flooded in.

The worries rushed in behind the shame. Would Taylor start to talk? When? What would she say?

Sean followed his father into the conference room where the Dawkin-Walter staff had assembled, watching Carl’s every move. He was so slick. Sean felt another surge of pride as his father hit the absolutely right notes while he delivered the horrible news of Orrin’s murder to the staff. He analyzed the deft way Carl deflected questions about the future of the company without appearing not to answer. And the way he comforted Orrin’s assistant, who collapsed in tears, was masterful. There was a lot Sean could still learn from him.

Maybe there’d be time. Maybe everything could stay the same—but Sean doubted it. Secrets had a way of working themselves into the open, and he knew that once his secrets were out, nothing would ever be the same.

A
imee flipped through her initial notes about Taylor and her family.

The first thing she’d asked Taylor was if she knew why she was in her office. Taylor had looked up from her inspection of the fluorescent skull and bones pattern on her fingerless gloves and fixed Aimee with a look that expressed terminal boredom. “How should I know? It’s not like it was my idea.”

Fabulous. Defiance and angst all wrapped up in one goth-flavored package. “So you don’t see a problem with any of your behavior? There’s nothing that you’re doing that could indicate that you’re feeling overwhelmed? Or angry? Or sad?” Aimee had asked.

“Overwhelmed by what? School?” Taylor had slumped back in her chair, her lank dyed-black hair accentuating the pallor of her face.

“Okay, that’s one option. Are you feeling overwhelmed by school?” It wasn’t going to be that easy. It never was.

Taylor had shaken her head and twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “School’s a joke.”

“Really? Then why are your grades dropping? If it’s such a joke, it shouldn’t be that difficult.”

“It’s stupid and boring and pointless. Why should I bother?” Taylor had said, inspecting her split ends.

Aimee was sure Taylor had heard more than enough about getting into a good college and succeeding in life, so why not go directly to the real issue? “Taylor, do you cut yourself?”

Taylor sat bolt upright and stared at Aimee, her blue eyes suddenly moist. Had no one spoken to Taylor matter-of-factly about her self-mutilation? It was definitely a possibility. Stacey had reacted with alarm and revulsion. Orrin had shied away. Of course, that was part of what Taylor wanted, on some level. She wanted the attention. She wanted the horror. She wanted the drama.

She also couldn’t talk to anyone who reacted that way to her cutting. Taylor needed someone who could hear what she had to say without having their own brand of hysterics. Aimee could be that person. More important, Taylor needed her to be that person.

“Do you, Taylor?” Aimee pressed.

Taylor nodded. She swallowed hard once, then again. She held her body tense, every muscle clenched.

“Would you show me your arms, Taylor?” Aimee had leaned forward.

Without taking her eyes off Aimee, Taylor had slowly peeled down the sleeves of her fingerless gloves to reveal a patchwork of old scars and fresh cuts going up the inside of her arms—and then she’d begun to cry.

Aimee shut the file. If there was something useful here, she couldn’t figure it out yet. What she saw in her notes was a scared little girl who was holding herself together with a coping mechanism that was terribly flawed.

Aimee had her suspicions about what exactly Taylor was trying to cope with, but she needed concrete information. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone should guess about; lives were changed forever with those kinds of accusations.

She leaned her head back against her chair, too keyed up to sleep and too exhausted to move. She was grateful when her cell phone rang to shake her out of her doldrums.

She fished it out of her purse. “Dr. Aimee Gannon.”

“Dr. Gannon, this is Josh Wolf of the Sacramento PD again.”

How many Josh Wolfs did he think she met in a day? “Hi. What’s happening?”

“I wanted to let you know that Taylor’s aunt is here in Sacramento.”

“Great.” She rubbed at her face. “That will help in so many ways.” They could get Taylor out of the emergency room and into someplace comfortable; maybe a place where she felt safe enough to come out of the shell she’d encased herself in. Aimee had never met Marian Phillips, but Taylor loved her. She’d spoken of her in almost the same tone she used when she talked about Good Charlotte, and that was saying something.

“She’s at the hospital now. She was hoping you’d come down and help her figure out what to do with Taylor.”

“I’d love to. I’ll be there in half an hour.” At last there was something concrete she could do. She dropped the file on the desk and headed for the door.

The drive to Mercy General was a hell of a lot different in the daylight. McKinley Park lost its menace and looked like a nice place to eat a sack lunch. The hospital no longer loomed out of the residential area like a tower of doom. It just looked like a hospital, brick and glass and cement. She needed to rein in her imagination.

Aimee was soon walking down the hallway to where she’d left Taylor earlier that morning. Detectives Wolf and Jacobs stood outside the curtain next to another uniformed police officer sitting outside the curtain, giving Taylor and her aunt a little privacy. This officer was a woman, a squat blonde with her hair pulled back into two skinny French braids with bangs dusting across her forehead. She stood as Aimee approached.

“It’s okay, Reed,” Wolf said, dropping his large hand onto the woman’s shoulder. “She’s the doc the aunt has been waiting for.”

Reed gave Aimee a quick once-over and then a curt nod. Everybody but Aimee seemed to have a gun.

“Good morning,” Aimee said to everyone and then let herself behind the curtain.

It looked as though Taylor hadn’t moved since Aimee had left. She still lay on her side, facing the wall. Her eyes were closed, but Aimee couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or just trying to shut everything out.

The woman who sat with Taylor was in her early fifties. Silver strands of hair twined in among the dark brunette ones, and laugh lines crinkled around her red, puffy eyes. She wore creased white capris that looked like she’d driven down in them and a black V-necked sweater. She looked up from Taylor, whose back she was patting as Aimee entered.

“Dr. Gannon?” she said, her voice quavering.

“Mrs. Phillips?” Aimee said, putting out her hand.

“Call me Marian, please.” She took both of Aimee’s hands in hers. “Thank you so much for coming. I don’t know what to do for poor Taylor, and there’s so much to figure out. I can’t believe any of this is even happening.” Tears welled in her hazel eyes as she spoke, and her chin began to tremble.

“It is unbelievable,” Aimee said, drawing a chair up next to Marian’s so they could sit down.

“How could this happen?” Marian said, the tears spilling over and rolling down her cheeks. “Who would do this to Orrin and Stacey? They didn’t have any enemies. Who would dream of doing such a thing?”

“I don’t know, Marian. I can’t begin to imagine. It really is horrible—but let’s talk now about what we can do for Taylor to get her out of the emergency room.”

“At first I thought I’d take her home with me,” Marian whispered, as if that would keep Taylor from hearing. “But the police don’t want me taking her out of the city.”

Not to mention that keeping her under suicide watch required trained professionals. But there wasn’t any point in telling Marian that and upsetting her further. She’d just lost a sister and a brother-in-law and was already in shock. “I think there are some good options here in Sacramento,” Aimee said. “Places that will be able to offer her some therapy to get her through this time, and keep her safe, too.”

“Oh.” Marian pressed the wadded-up tissue in her hand to her mouth and her eyes grew wide. “Do you think she’s in danger? Do you think whoever did this will come after her now?”

“It’s hard to say,” Aimee answered.
Was
Taylor in danger? If she’d seen something at her parents’ house, could the murderer come after her as well? Regardless of the answers, Taylor was certainly a danger to herself right now. “I think it’s better to play it safe, don’t you?”

Marian nodded. “Yes, I do. I just don’t have the first clue how to do that.”

“It’s okay,” Aimee said, putting her hand on Marian’s arm. “I do.”

Josh rubbed his hand over his face as he read through the instant messages and e-mails between HardasRock and MyChemicalGirl42. MyChemicalGirl42 was Taylor. Maribel Butera, the forensic computer specialist who was combing through Taylor’s hard drive like a prospector searching for gold, was sure of that. HardasRock’s identity was another story. Maribel knew that he was male, involved with Taylor, and not a favorite of her parents. Other than that, they didn’t have many clues. Or they had too many. Josh wasn’t sure anymore. It was starting to give him a headache.

“I’m not even sure what half this stuff means. It’s all letters and numbers,” he complained. It was like getting e-mails from his niece. When he told her to write in English, she just rolled her eyes. He needed a translator who was fluent in teenagerese.

“You’re not supposed to know what it means,” Maribel said. She was thirty-two and had a computer science degree from Sac State. She also had such smooth, unlined skin that she could still do undercover work in the high schools when the department needed it. If anybody in the department spoke teenagerese, it was Maribel.

“It’s supposed to be confusing for adults. That’s part of the point. It’s like the cell phone tones that we can’t hear. They’re putting one over on us without hardly trying.” Maribel leaned over the computer and her dark hair swung forward over her face.

“There are cell phone tones I can’t hear?” he asked.

Maribel looked up at him, then over at Elise, and rolled her eyes. “Yes, grandpa. There are cell phone tones that you can’t hear and the kids can. They use them at school. That way they can text message each other without the teachers catching them.”

“Great.” One more thing to make him feel old and out of the loop. He gestured at the e-mails on the computer. “So what are we supposed to do with these?”

Maribel shrugged. “I’m not sure. I read through a lot of it before I called you. You want a rundown, or you want to wade through it yourself?”

“A rundown would be great,” Elise said. “I don’t need all the details. Yet.”

“Okay, then,” Maribel said, shooing Josh out of her chair and sitting down in front of the monitor. “This HardasRock dude is clearly Taylor’s boyfriend. I’m pretty sure she’s been sneaking him into her house at night. Was her bedroom on the first floor?”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Her room was off the living room on the other side of the house from her parents. She could probably have snuck the whole Russian army in without them knowing.”

Maribel shrugged. “It wasn’t the Russian army, but he definitely was an invader. It looks like he was sneaking in there two, three nights a week and they weren’t playing pattycake.”

Josh’s eyebrows went up. “What were they doing?”

“The usual. Smoking a little weed. Fooling around. There’s a couple comments that make me think they were dropping some X.”

“Yeah? Why do you think that?” Josh asked.

Maribel scrolled down. “There’s a part in here where he says something about their friend Adam dropping by. It’s another term for X.”

“That’s some pretty heady stuff,” Elise said.

“Can be,” Maribel confirmed. “It’s also just about everywhere. The kids like it because they don’t have to inject it or smoke it. It’s just a little pill. Plus, if they were having sex—you know about X and sex, right?”

He did. Why the hell would kids need something to jazz up their sex lives? At seventeen, you were nothing but a walking erogenous zone anyway. “So who is this HardasRock kid? Where can we find him?”

“I’m trying to track down who he is, but it takes time and I may not ever be able to get any results. These things are made to be anonymous.”

“Well, that’s a big help,” Josh said.

Maribel threw him a dirty look. “I know that he’s seeing her without her parents’ permission. In fact, from what I can tell, they forbade her to see him.”

“Oh, super. Why not slap a big ole ‘Forbidden Fruit’ sign on him and spray him down with pheromones?” Elise said.

That was true. Was there any way to make a boy more attractive to a teenage girl than letting her know her parents hated him? Josh was pretty sure he’d made it to third base with Trisha Jakowski in tenth grade based solely on Trisha’s mother’s loathing for him. He was grateful then and he was grateful now. It had been a life-changing experience for him.

“Somebody’s got to know who he is, though. Have you talked to her friends?” Maribel asked.

Josh looked at Elise. “We haven’t interviewed the study buddy yet.”

“No, we haven’t. I think it’s time we gave little Jenna Norchester a call, don’t you?”

Elise sat down at her desk. Josh was in his cube calling the Norchester home to set up a time to chat with their daughter, who was one of the last people to see Taylor before she went all freaky. Elise hoped Josh didn’t piss off the girl’s parents before they even got there. He certainly was in a mood today.

The case was obviously getting to him. It was a righteous response. What had happened in that house was nasty business. If it didn’t get to them a little, they probably shouldn’t be cops anymore. It was a fine line to walk. If you didn’t harden your heart to some of the things you saw, you’d self-destruct. Yet if you didn’t care anymore, then why were you still wearing the badge?

But there was something more going on with Josh. Something besides a hunger for justice for people who could no longer speak for themselves. Something besides a need to try to set things right when they’d been knocked so terribly, terribly wrong.

Elise wondered if it had anything to do with Aimee Gannon. She’d certainly made him sit up and take notice. No one else had since Holly had broken his foolish heart. Elise had thought Josh was going to fall right out of his chair at the hospital the night before, or go all silent and drooly like Taylor. Now he was all moody and grumpy—which wasn’t entirely out of the norm.