The Truth About Comfort Cove (8 page)

Leaving the office, he thought about going home, putting a steak on the grill, sitting inside while it cooked, nursing a shot of whatever he had in the cupboard above the refrigerator and seeing if there was a ball game on.

The fact that he wasn’t even sure what sport was currently in season—had the Super Bowl happened yet?—steered him away from any possibility that a game on television would be enough to distract him from the puzzles that haunted him.

He’d given the Boston girls as much as he had in him that week. He’d spent the night before reading and rereading their files and Boston news articles dating back to 2000. Time for a break, for the distance that would allow him to gain a different perspective.

Time, again, for Claire Sanderson to speak to him. Or rather, for him to clear his mind and listen to her. The toddler who disappeared from Comfort Cove without a trace spoke to him constantly. Every minute of every day. She’d lived in his town. Made no difference to him that he hadn’t lived in Comfort Cove when Claire had been abducted. He’d been a ten-year-old boy running wild and free on a Kentucky farm twenty-five years before. But he was in Comfort Cove now. She’d been born here. He lived here. She was his responsibility.

He was on the road out of town, driving along the coast, before he made a conscious choice of where he was headed.
Not that he was kidding himself. He’d been making the trek at least once a week since the previous spring. He’d taken a call on a one-year-old girl, missing from her own backyard. As it did every time he made this drive, the nine-month-old case played itself out in Ramsey’s mind as the ocean beckoned off to his right and trees stood proud, and now bare, on his left.
Ramsey had worked around the clock to find the little girl. It had taken three days, and Peter Walters had not stepped a foot outside of custody since Ramsey had personally put the bracelets on him.
Ramsey drove. And turned. And turned again. Walters’s place was not easy to find.
Pulling up the long, unpaved drive, he stopped his sedan in the side yard, the building looking nothing like the freshly painted white home he’d first descended upon. Walters’s version had had blue curtains in the windows—room-darkening curtains it had turned out—not boards.
A month later Ramsey had returned with a forensic unit from Boston, there specifically to pillage the basement.
Staring at the house, Ramsey could still hear the old man’s taunting jeers to Ramsey the day he’d been convicted of kidnapping and battery in the Kelsey Green case. Ramsey had been sitting in court with the prosecuting attorney, and as he’d passed by the defense table on his way out of the courtroom, the defendant had whispered that Ramsey hadn’t been able to save the others.
Why?
Why had Walters’s moment of truth resulted in a taunt?
Ramsey asked the question again. Did Walters feel even a minute fraction of the conscience Ramsey needed him to have regarding the children he’d hurt? And killed?
Kelsey was the lucky one. Her doctors and family had expected a full recovery, at least physically. And she was young enough, loved enough, to have no subconscious emotional baggage from the agonizing three days she’d spent with the devil.
Days that might have been prevented if Ramsey had been able to get to Walters sooner. If he’d put the clues together more quickly. He’d taken the missing-person call when it had come in, and it had taken him three days… .
When he’d put the facts together, he’d gone after Walters, sending Bill after the little girl, whom Walters had left alone in a locked storage shed.
Ramsey had been sitting by himself in a deserted waiting area the night that the doctor had finally finished with Kelsey. Her parents were with her. The rest of the world had been in bed asleep. And there sat Ramsey.
“You still here?” The white coated, middle-aged female doctor had asked him when she’d seen him sitting there on her way past.
“Yes.”
“Is there something I can do for you? Do you need to see the family? You have more questions?”
“No.”
He just hadn’t left.
“She’s going to be fine, Detective. And she has you to thank for that.”
He’d been working a case, just like any other. No more, no less.
“If you hadn’t acted so swiftly…”
It hadn’t been quickly enough. No sleep and it still hadn’t been enough. There hadn’t been an inch of that baby’s body that wasn’t bruised.
“How many bones were broken?” The question wasn’t necessary. The D.A. would have access to all of Kelsey’s medical records. But he’d put the answer in his report.
“Fourteen, counting the little bones in her left hand. And three ribs.”
He swallowed bile. He’d puked up the food he’d had in his stomach right after turning Walters over to the guys at the jail.
Steeling himself, he stared at the wall across the room from him. “What else?”
“Some internal bleeding, but we’ve got that under control. Nothing that won’t heal. No lasting damage to any of her organs.”
“And?”
“That’s it. A couple of days in here and she’ll be home in her own crib.”
He needed to know. Dear God, she was only one year old. And had been found without any clothes on.
But Kelsey deserved respect. And dignity. And while she was too young to demand that for herself, Ramsey would do what he could to preserve it for her. He wouldn’t ask.
The doctor turned back toward the hall. “If you need anything, the nurses’ station is just around the corner,” she said. “If you’d like me to give you something to help you sleep tonight, have one of them call me.”
Sleeping aids were the last thing he’d use. Ever. Alcohol, meth, cocaine—the drugs of choice posed no threat to Ramsey Miller. But something to help him sleep at night? He feared that if he helped himself once, he’d be addicted for life.
“Detective?” the doctor, he’d missed her name, called from the door.
“Yeah?”
“She wasn’t raped.”
Ramsey watched her until her back was out of range, and only then realized that he had tears on his cheeks.

T
here were support groups
for families who’d lost someone to abduction. Lucy had never attended a support group. Or counseling, either, for that matter. She’d been born into her situation. Living with the ghost of an abducted family member was normal for her.

Sitting in a hospital waiting room needing to hear about a family member was not.
Seven o’clock Friday evening and she was the only person in the small area of the emergency department dedicated to families of those brought in for serious illnesses. Had Sandy had a heart attack as they all suspected? Was it going to be fatal?
Marie had finally gone home, but only after Lucy promised to call her mother’s longtime best friend—and paid caregiver—the second she knew anything. And only because Lucy had convinced the older woman that one of them needed to get some sleep so that, together, they could take turns caring for Sandy. Lucy, as next of kin, was the obvious one of the two to sit there. Not only because there was no way she’d leave, but, practically speaking, because she was the only one legally able to make decisions regarding her mother’s care.
“Ms. Hayes?” The young male nurse who’d shown her to the room earlier was back. “The doctor would like to speak with you.”
Holding the shoulder strap of her small purse with both hands, Lucy jumped up and followed the nurse’s blue-scrubcovered back to a door down the hall.
Inside the small room, she took the seat indicated for her at the oval table. Dr. Paul Sherman introduced himself again, although she’d met him when she’d climbed off the back of the ambulance at the emergency-room door.
She waited for him to say more. Was afraid to ask. To preempt the news.
She was scared to death.
“Your mother’s resting peacefully.” It took Lucy a second to realize those weren’t the first words the doctor had said. Just the first she’d registered.
“She’s going to be okay?”
“She’s going to live.” The gray-haired doctor’s stern expression wasn’t promising. “I take it, from the little bit of medical history we were able to get, that Sandy Hayes is an alcoholic?”
And at forty-five the alcohol had affected her heart to this extent? Sandy had her problems, but she was young. Having Allie at nineteen, being raped at twenty, she’d given birth to Lucy a year later. Sandy had always had age on her side to help combat the toll her life took on her body.
“She drinks, yes.”
“In excess.”
Lucy had figured that the booze would get her mother’s liver first, not her heart. And not for a long, long time. “Yes.”
“Your mother is suffering from an alcoholic overdose, Ms. Hayes.”
“A what?”
“Her blood alcohol level was close to fifty percent. Most people face death in the forty percentile. As a comparison, the legal limit for motor impairment is point zero eight percent.”
“She didn’t have a heart attack?”
“No, your mother’s heart, believe it or not, is strong and healthy.”
Thank God.
Relief hit her hard. So much so that she felt the lack of the lunch she’d skipped and the dinner she hadn’t yet eaten, in the form of a light-headedness that took her breath for a moment.
Sandy was going to be fine. Her heart was fine.
She’d been scared. So scared.
The doctor was watching her. And Lucy took a firm grip on emotions that had been declaring war on her all week.
“How do BALs rise so high?” She asked the only question that she could grasp at the moment. She was a cop. She knew about legal limits. She’d tested more drunk drivers than she could count. And had never, ever seen anyone with levels higher than two or three times the legal limit.
“By consuming large amounts of alcohol in a very short period of time.” Dr. Sherman folded his hands on the table in front of him, his expression softening to one of…she hoped it wasn’t pity.
But was fairly certain that it was.
“We’re talking the equivalent of twenty-one or more shots of eighty proof in a five- or six-hour span.”
For Sandy, consuming an entire fifth in an evening wasn’t all that unusual. If she could get hold of one without Lucy or Marie knowing about it.
Which meant that not only had her mother had a stash, but she’d pretty much downed it all at once. Like she’d been drinking a bottle of water.
“It’s my fault,” she said aloud. Registering the sympathy on the doctor’s face, she added, “I made her face something this week that was too much for her. She told me, but I wouldn’t listen.”
Sloan Wakerby’s imprisonment wasn’t worth losing Sandy over. If her mother couldn’t testify, then she couldn’t testify. Lucy wasn’t going to push her anymore.
Or was it knowing that the man sat there in jail, with full knowledge of where Allie was without telling them, that was too much for Sandy to handle?
“It was your quick thinking, calling an ambulance for her as soon as you saw the state she was in, that saved her life.”
“She was having trouble breathing and showing all the signs of a heart attack.”
At forty-five. Sandy might drink a lot, but she was always there for Lucy. Always. Lucy couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“We’ve got her on an IV, fluids and vitamins, and she’s fully stable. As a precaution, I’m also keeping her on oxygen for the night. As soon as the alcohol has cleared her system, she can go home. Maybe as early as tomorrow morning.”
The constriction that had ahold of her throat was loosening. “I’d like to stay with her tonight, if that could be arranged.”
“Not a problem. Would you like me to write an order for a cot? Or there’s a reclining chair in the room.”
“The chair will be fine. Can I see her now?”
“We’re waiting for a room number. As soon as we get one, we’ll let you know and you can meet her up there.”
She’d be with Sandy soon. All would be well again. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Lucy wondered why they were still sitting there. Why wasn’t the man going about his next order of business?
Dr. Sherman looked up from what she assumed was her mother’s chart. “I see that your mother’s been through rehabilitation?”
“Yes, sir,” Lucy said quickly. “Several times. She wants to be well, Doctor, and I understand that that’s half the battle. You can rest assured that Marie, her caregiver, and I will be incredibly diligent from here on out. We won’t leave her alone at all.”
Dr. Sherman was shaking his head before she was finished speaking. “Your mother needs to be committed, Ms. Hayes. I’m sorry, but there’s just no easy way to say that. She needs to be in an assisted-living facility with locks on the doors and twenty-four-hour supervision for at least six months. Probably a year or longer.”
“You want me to lock her up?” Sandy was grief-stricken, not crazy.
“Those alcohol clinics are expensive and obviously not enough for your mother. My experience tells me that a program isn’t going to work for her. She needs something that lasts much longer—that doesn’t just dry her out, but that keeps her out of contact with any possibility of alcohol for a much more extended period of time. Assisted living, if I prescribe it, will be covered under your insurance.”
Lucy folded her hands on the table, too. “I appreciate your concern, Doctor, but I am not going to have my mother committed.”
She didn’t have a medical degree, but she knew Sandy. And it didn’t matter if they locked her mother up for ten years. If Allie was still missing, Sandy would take a drink the first time she was out. To fill the pain of her daughter’s absence.
Or she’d get herself addicted to sleeping pills in assisted living and sleep her whole life away.
No.
Lucy’s only hope of keeping her mother alive, of ever having a mother with any semblance of a life, was to find out what had happened to Allison Hayes.
Nothing short of peace of mind was going to save Sandy’s life.

E
ight o
’
clock came and went
. Sandy had been moved into a private room for the night and Lucy had spent the past hour sitting in the chair that was her bed for the night, watching her mother’s face, listening to Sandy’s easy breaths, paying attention to the blood-pressure monitor that was attached to her mother’s finger.

All was well. She could see the proof of that with her own eyes. And was afraid that if she quit watching even for a second, Sandy’s hold on life would weaken.

As soon as her mother was conscious, she was going to promise Sandy that she wouldn’t have to testify. Or ever be questioned about Sloan Wakerby again.