Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1) (22 page)

49

Baudin took the curves back down to the valley quickly and then realized the last thing he needed was to be pulled over by some highway patrolman. So he slowed down to under the speed limit.

The girl was more aware now. She was moving and crying. He glanced back at her. “Can you hear me?” he said. No response. “I’m taking you to a hospital. I’m here to help you.”

Baudin thought back to the shot that had killed the man he thought was Casey. A bullet through the cheek that flooded his lungs with blood. Baudin had killed before. The military had seen to that. He’d gotten over the moral repugnance, the aversion that was ingrained in people since they were children. But something about taking a man’s life still stuck to his ribs. Then again, he’d erased an entire line of victims that would’ve existed if that man had lived.

Burn in hell, asshole
.

“Please,” a meek voice said from behind him. “Please…”

The voice was hardly audible, like the chirp of a bird. Baudin pulled over to the side of the road. He turned back to her.

“Are you awake?” he said through the window.

“Please…”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m taking you to a hospital. Do you understand? Hospital?”

“Y—yes.”

“What’s your name?”

A long silence. “Rebecca.”

“Rebecca, I need you to relax. You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you. But I can’t take your mask off just yet, okay?”

The girl started crying again, kicking her legs and begging him. All she would say was “Please… please.”

He began driving again. The first hospital in his GPS was a ten-minute drive from where he was. Cheyenne Regional.

The hospital had a massive parking structure and consisted of separate buildings. Baudin pulled right up to the emergency room. He removed the girl, holding her in his arms, and debated going inside. Deciding against it, he laid her at the front entrance.

He got into the truck and drove across the street. People already surrounded her. A nurse or orderly ran out, and they helped her inside. One of them pulled off the mask. He couldn’t make out her face, but she was young, perhaps no more than eighteen.

He pulled away and took off.

Dixon got home so late that every light in every neighbor’s house was off. He had spent some time at the park, sitting on a bench and staring into the pond. After that, he made a quick stop at the ER and, luckily, didn’t require any stitches. They cleaned the wound and bandaged it before sending him on his way.

Murders had come across his desk, as had rapes, kidnappings, and every other thing they told you about in Police Officer Standardized Training. But a girl hanging like a doll from the ceiling, to be used and discarded as if she were a piece of trash… that was something he wasn’t prepared to see. He hadn’t thought humanity’s cruelty could surprise him anymore. Even with the death of Alli Tavor, it hadn’t affected him like this. She was dead. She was an object to be theorized over. The girl at the house was alive and suffering, and the more she suffered, the more aroused her captors got.

His house was quiet, the only noise the sound of crickets coming through an open window in the front room. He closed the window and decided that they would be getting an alarm tomorrow.

After checking on the baby, he undressed, brushed his teeth as quietly as he could, and climbed into bed. Hillary was rolled onto her side, but he could tell she wasn’t sleeping. Only a spouse could tell that about another spouse. Something in the pattern of their breathing, maybe.

“You wanted to tell me something?” he whispered.

She sniffled, as though she’d been crying, and said, “It can wait.”

50

The next few days, Baudin didn’t do anything. Dixon had called him every day, first checking on Heather and then asking what they planned to do.

“Nothing,” he would say. “Not yet.”

After five days of what was really an involuntary committal, Heather was released from the hospital’s psychiatric ward. Baudin drove her over to Molly’s. He would be getting a new house. They were just renting anyway, and breaking the lease here apparently was a minor inconvenience. Talk of lawsuits and lawyers didn’t even come up. All the landlord said was, “Well, sorry to see ya go.”

The house had an energy to it now. Baudin, someone who considered himself above superstition, was embarrassed that he held on to this minor irrationality: he fully believed that locations could hold the energy of events that occurred there, good or bad. The scenes of murders, no matter how many a detective had worked, always held an eerie feeling that couldn’t be shaken. He didn’t want the energy of Heather’s attempted suicide in their home.

He walked her inside, and Molly hugged her and wept. She took Heather to the kitchen table, insisting she looked thin as bones, and began frying breakfast for her.

Baudin sat on the porch and smoked. His suspension was over today. He could go back to work and get his badge and gun back. Somehow the allure of it wasn’t there.

Sometimes the work was all there was, the only reason to get up in the morning. But now he saw that was an illusion. His daughter was why he woke up in the morning, and the work only got in the way of that.

He had one thing he had to finish. After that, whatever came his way came his way.

He walked inside and wrapped his arms around his daughter, planting a big kiss on her forehead. “Back to school tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Good.” He kissed her again. “I’ll be back in a few hours, and then we’ll head out to see your counselor.”

The sun was bright without any clouds to dim the light. He stopped at a gas station and bought a pair of sunglasses, putting them on awkwardly. He didn’t like the feeling of them on his face, but he didn’t take them off, either.

The precinct wasn’t far—in fact, nothing was really that far. Not LA far. Not sitting-in-three-hours-of-traffic far. It amazed him that people still complained about traffic here.

He got to the precinct and went inside. Dixon was at his desk. When he saw Baudin, he rose and followed him out without a word. They stood on the sidewalk.

“We need to go see her,” Baudin said.

“You know where she is?”

Baudin nodded. “She was released from the hospital yesterday. Her name’s Rebecca Sapps. She lives in an apartment with her mother. Eighteen.” Baudin stopped and exhaled. “You wanna know the thing about freedom, Kyle? It’s painful. And people don’t want it. If you wanna make someone free, they’ll fight you. You break their ideology, and ideology is comfort. You wanna make someone free, you best be prepared to fight them.”

“I don’t know what any of that means, Ethan.”

“I’m saying, we may learn some things about this city and the police that you can never unlearn. You may not be able to ever live here again.”

He nodded. “I’ll drive.”

The Sapps lived in an apartment complex called Green Groves. The apartments were laid out like an H with a row in the middle that was unusually out of place. Anyone driving down would have to go around the row of apartments and enter a blind spot where children playing would probably get hit if they weren’t on their toes.

Baudin parked in front of complex X, a flat, square building that housed four separate units. They got out of the car and strolled up to the door. Outside on the pavement, children’s toys were thrown around, as were old beer bottles and cigarette butts.

Baudin knocked, and there was no sound from inside. He rang the doorbell and again nothing.

“Maybe she ain’t here?” Dixon suggested.

“She’s here. She can’t leave her comfort zone yet.”

He rang the doorbell again and then said, “Ms. Sapps, it’s the police. We aren’t leaving.”

After a while, the locks slid open, and the girl’s face appeared at the door. Baudin knew it was her, even though he’d only seen her from across a street and in the hospital’s dim lighting.

“Ms. Sapps,” Dixon said, “We’re detectives with the Cheyenne Police Department. We’re following up on your case and had a few questions for you. If you don’t mind, that is.”

The girl didn’t move, didn’t speak. She was like an alien who crash-landed on a strange planet and didn’t know the customs, Baudin thought. A look of bewilderment. He’d seen it before, in people who had accepted their own deaths and then suddenly, miraculously, had lived. The world was an alien place to them after that.

“How are you, Rebecca?” he said.

Her eyes went wide, and tears welled up inside them. He wasn’t sure she’d remember his voice, but there it was. He smiled, and she closed the door, slid the chain off, and opened it.

51

The café had a delightful smell. Melted chocolate, Hillary thought, because of the fondue they sometimes served.

She sat by the window and stared at the passersby. Some of them, the younger couples, seemed so happy. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She remembered when Kyle and she had been like that. Hell, she thought with a grin, Kyle was still like that. Only she had matured, grown up in a way that didn’t seem to affect Kyle. Maybe she’d just grown cynical, and he hadn’t.

After waiting ten minutes, she grew impatient. How dare he be late for this? This was her life, her entire life, unraveling. And he had the nerve…

No, it wasn’t his fault. He was just as lost in all this as she was. They had committed a great sin together. She didn’t mean a sin against God. Though she went to church and played the good wife as Kyle wanted, she didn’t believe in it anymore. Her faith had slowly dissipated over time until there weren’t even ashes left anymore. Kyle would never accept that, not in the way Chris accepted and understood it.

Chris walked in a good twenty minutes late. He sat across from her without a word and stared into her eyes.

“You’re late,” she said. “Don’t be late again or I’ll leave.”

He grinned. “You look beautiful. Even when you’re sad.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Tell the mother of my child that she looks beautiful?”

She recoiled at the words. “Why do you have to do that? Throw it in my face all the time?”

“I love you, you know that. I just want what’s best for you and for my son.”

“Then why don’t you leave us alone?”

He shook his head. “Do you honestly believe that that boy is better off living a lie? For how long? The rest of his life? You gonna take this to the grave with you, Hillary? Or are you gonna tell him one day? What’s he gonna think? Is he gonna thank you?”

“I don’t know.” She put her face in her hands. “I just wish I knew what to do.”

“You need to tell him and end it.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to serve him this week.”

“No, you can’t. I’m not ready.”

“Sorry, Hillary. It’s for both of us. I’m being strong for both of us.”

“Chris, that is the worst possible way he could find out.”

“Then tell him.”

She averted her eyes from him, staring out the window. “I used to think being married was going to be a dream. Like it just happened, and that was all there was to it. I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. But it’s work. Everything, in the end, is just work.” Hillary stood up. “Do whatever the hell you want. I won’t be with you, Chris. I’m sorry.”

She left, not looking behind her until she was out the door. Chris was staring at her, and smiled. She pushed through the door and hurried to her car.

52

Rebecca’s apartment reminded Baudin of his grandmother’s house in the best sense: comforting and clean. Lots of quilts and old paintings, the smell of lemonade, carpets so clean you could eat off them.

He sat across from her on the couch. Her eyes looked glossy—a sedative, maybe. Maybe more than that. He couldn’t imagine she would be this calm after what she’d gone through.

“Tell me what happened, Rebecca.”

She swallowed and looked down at the floor. “They called the police at the hospital. I already told them what I remembered.”

“We’re not that kind of police. Tell me what happened.”

She swallowed again. “I met this guy at a bar. I have a fake ID, and I thought… I met him there. He said his name was Casey and that I was the most beautiful girl in the place.” She wiped at tears that had formed. “I’m so stupid.”

“No,” he said soothingly, “you’re not. Please continue.”

“We flirted, and he said he would give me a ride home. On the drive back, he convinced me to stop at his place for a drink. We had some drinks, and we talked and laughed. He was so… I don’t know. I was used to immature guys. But he talked about what Paris was like and what hunting in Africa was like… he was so… I don’t know. And then I started going, like, numb. I couldn’t feel anything. And he smiled.” She began to cry. “He just smiled at me like I was a piece of meat… and he picked me up and took me upstairs. On the bed… and they… all these men, they…”

“Did you see any of them?” Baudin said softly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and wiping away the tears that were rolling down her cheeks, “no, they wore masks.”

“Did they ever take them off?”

“Only one did. He sat in a chair by the bed while the others…”

Baudin wanted to reach out and lay a hand on her to let her know she wasn’t alone and no one would hurt her, but she was so medicated, he wasn’t certain it would matter. What he was fearful of was when the medication dulled and the true horror of what happened hit her consciousness. He wondered if she would be strong enough to survive.

“Tell me about the one in the chair.”

She swallowed again, wiping at tears that were long gone. “He just wanted to watch. He sat in a chair and smoked a cigar. He had to pull his mask up to smoke, and I saw most of his face. I don’t think he meant for me to see it, I don’t know… and he just looked at me. He would laugh sometimes… he thought what they were doing to me was the funniest thing in the world…”

“A cigar? You’re sure of that?”

“Yeah. I remember the smell.”

Dixon pulled out his phone and showed something to her. A violent convulsion gripped her, and she nodded, immediately looking away. Dixon showed the phone to Baudin. It was the official photo of Chief of Police Robert Crest on the department website.

“What happened after?” Baudin said.

“When they were done, they put a mask on me, and then I felt myself hanging from somewhere. I don’t know how long, maybe just a night, I think. And then you came.”

Dixon said, “You’re not the first they’ve done this to, Rebecca. We had another girl a couple weeks ago that the same thing happened to. But they didn’t put her in the closet. They drove her somewhere and left her in the street. Do you have any idea why they put you in there?”

She nodded, the tears dribbling down again. “Casey said… he said they were going to kill me. They were… they were going to crucify me. I screamed, and he just laughed.”

Baudin felt his heart drop. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The arrogance of it… the cruelty. He wished he could kill that son of a bitch again.

“Excuse us one sec,” Dixon said. He rose and walked out the front door and stood there. Baudin followed him. “This is too big for us,” Dixon said. “We gotta take it to the FBI.”

“No, man. This is our fight.”

“We’re not in the Wild West. And I’m not a damn assassin.”

“I don’t wanna kill him. But answer me honestly: with the connections he’s got, is there any chance he’s not gonna slide on this? How many people, respectable people, are gonna come forward and say the Chief of Police was with them on the night in question? How many character witnesses are gonna take the stand and call that poor girl a liar?”

“What, then? You wanna take care of it Dodge City style and kick down his office door?”

He shook his head, staring at the girl. “No, man. I wanna force their hand. I want them to make a mistake.”

“Like what?”

Baudin looked at him. “You still got that friend in the news, right?”

Dixon was silent a moment. “You wanna use Rebecca as bait?”

“If she goes public, they gotta come after her. They don’t have a choice. The allegation, once everybody knows about it, is enough. It’ll ruin him. What they’ll need is her to commit suicide. Then they can say she was crazy and who knows what else she was making up. They can’t do that later, once the story’s taken hold. They gotta do it quick. As quick as possible.”

“How can you possibly be sure they would do that? They might not do anything. They might just lawyer up.”

“No, man. They gotta come after her. It’s what I would do.”

A long silence passed between them. Dixon looked in on the girl as well. “She’ll never agree to it.”

Baudin could see the girl’s hands trembling, either from anxiety or the medication to treat the anxiety. “No, I think she’d do just about anything to get at them.”