by Lisa Regan
“Emily,” Josie supplied. “Have you met her?”
“Only twice, very briefly. Years ago. She was probably too young to remember me.”
“The safety plan,” Josie said. “Would that involve hiding? Keeping all dangerous or sharp objects away from Rory?”
“Yes, indeed. I had brought Rory here again when he was a bit older after some particularly violent episodes with Holly. His meds needed to be adjusted. Lorelei said she was going to convert her bedroom closet into some sort of hiding place for the girls to go while I had him here with me. After I sent him home that time, I didn’t hear from her again, other than to check in and refill Rory’s meds.”
“Does Rory have OCD?” Josie asked.
“Rory has many diagnoses, but no, that’s not one of them.”
Noah said, “You said you haven’t had contact with Rory for several years now, but you think that he killed Lorelei?”
“It would be the most obvious explanation. The last time I saw him, I believe he was starting to experience hallucinations as well as paranoid delusions. I spoke with Lorelei about it, but she believed she could still manage him with medication and her own efforts. However, I do not believe that Rory one day just stopped having violent outbursts or uncontrolled aggression.”
Josie said, “Lorelei had a gun. Did you know that?”
Buckley raised a brow. “No, I did not. That’s surprising. I assume she kept it out of Rory’s reach, however.”
Not far enough, Josie thought. “Where were you yesterday morning, doctor?”
“I was here. I’m always here. As I said, my car has been in the shop.”
“Does anyone live with you?” she asked. “Anyone who can corroborate that you were here?”
“No, it’s just me.”
Noah said, “Do you have any photos of Rory?”
Buckley shook his head. “I do not. Lorelei had many, though. Albums and albums of them.”
Josie met Noah’s eyes and she knew he was thinking the same thing: those albums were gone or destroyed. She asked, “Would Rory have destroyed them if he were having some kind of outburst?”
“Certainly. He destroyed many things over the years.”
“Can you tell us what he looked like?” Noah asked.
“Last I saw him he was tall and gangly. He strongly resembled Lorelei. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Oh, he’s got a lock of white hair right here.” Buckley pointed to the center of his forehead where his hairline started.
“Poliosis,” Josie said.
He smiled. “Yes! He had the white forelock and Holly the white eyelashes.”
Noah asked, “Did Lorelei have poliosis, do you know?”
“I don’t believe so,” said Buckley.
“The children got that from their father, then,” said Josie.
“I can’t say for certain,” said Buckley. “I’m no geneticist or expert on poliosis, but perhaps, yes.”
Emily had no white forelock or white eyelashes. “Do you know if all three of Lorelei’s children were fathered by the same man?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I assumed they all had the same father. It’s not like Lorelei got out much. Her entire life was those children. Could she have met someone else after Holly was born? I suppose. We never discussed it.”
Josie thought about what Paxton and Emily had said about adults lying. Buckley had been quite forthcoming with them even at the risk of tarnishing his career. With Lorelei dead and him retiring, the damage to his career would be moot, even if Josie and Noah reported him to the state. Without Lorelei alive, there would be no one to bring criminal charges or to file any civil suits. In a sense, now that she was gone, the only thing he had to lose was his reputation. Still, Paxton and Emily were both right—it seemed every adult in Emily’s life at least had lied about many things.
“Do you know a man named Reed Bryan?” Josie asked.
There was no flicker of recognition in his face. “No. I do not.”
Noah asked, “Did Lorelei ever talk about her family?”
“Her evil half-sister?” he laughed. “Yes, in broad strokes. When I first visited her, I wondered how she’d gotten her house and all that land given she had no job and no prospects. If you’re wondering what other secrets Lorelei shared with me, there are none. Only Rory.”
Josie said, “Dr. Buckley, what’s your shoe size?”
He raised a brow but answered, “Nine.”
“Can you tell us your blood type?”
“B positive,” he answered easily. “Would you like my fingerprints as well?”
It was a joke. Josie could tell by his smile. She said, “Actually, yes.”
Twenty
“You think that guy’s the father of Lorelei’s children?” Noah asked as he pulled out of Vincent Buckley’s long driveway and back toward Denton.
“I don’t know,” Josie said. She tucked a brown evidence bag holding one of her business cards with Buckley’s prints on it into the glove compartment. She’d have Hummel process the card when they got back, see if any of his prints matched up to those found in Lorelei’s house. “It seems like he would have confessed that. He told us every other damn thing, including that he made a pass at Lorelei.”
“All the stuff he told us means nothing now,” Noah said. “Not if he’s stopped practicing medicine. But if Rory and Emily are his children, that makes things a lot more complicated for him.”
“True,” Josie said. “But he screwed Lorelei over. He actively blocked her attempts to help a patient, and people died because of it. Then he let her lose her license and her career. I don’t know if that’s something any woman would be able to forgive—not enough to have three kids with him. Anyway, right now we need to focus on finding Rory. Can you drop me off at the hospital? My car is there. I’m going to drive over to Lorelei’s house and see if I can find anything that belonged to Rory.”
“While you do that,” Noah said, “I’m going to see if I can find a birth certificate for Rory Mitchell and draw up a warrant for any medical records. I know Lorelei kept him a secret, but she had to give birth to him somewhere. I know a lot of women give birth at home, but she had both of his sisters at Denton Memorial so maybe he was born there, too. If he was, his blood type will be on file. Also, I’ll see if I can get the Sheriff to send Deputy Sandoval and her dog Rini over to you. Using the dog would probably be the fastest way to find this kid if he is out in the woods.”
“Update the team,” Josie said. “We’ll need bodies out there with the K-9 unit. It’s a lot of area to search, and if this kid is as violent as Buckley claims, it might be better to have some back-up.”
“Remember when we were talking with Pax and he said something like, ‘my dad doesn’t even know.’ He meant his dad didn’t know about Rory, didn’t he?”
“I think so,” Josie said. “If Reed is telling the truth and he was only at Lorelei’s house a couple of times just to get Pax, it’s possible he never met Rory. But Pax also said his dad was lying, too. I’m just wondering what he was lying about, and it if has any bearing on this case.”
“You mean you think Reed was involved?”
“I don’t know,” Josie said. “Buckley made it sound so simple. Lorelei has a teenage son she’s kept from people for years because he has violent outbursts. This time things went too far.”
“If that’s what happened, why wouldn’t Emily just tell us that she has a brother, and he killed their mother and sister?”
“I don’t think that Emily actually saw the murders. I think that Holly told her to hide before anything happened.”
“Still, she knew about Rory and didn’t tell us. Why couldn’t she just tell us she had a brother?” Noah asked.
Josie thought about Emily’s reasoning for not telling secrets. It would make the bad things happen. That was her OCD. The irrational worry and the voice whispering in her ear, “Are you sure the bad things won’t happen if you tell these secrets?” Josie had explained to her repeatedly the need to tell
the police whatever she knew, and yet, she could not bring herself to do it. Doing so would provoke her fight or flight response. Panic. Josie had seen and heard her in the throes of it the night before. Feeling all her feelings until they went away. No wonder she didn’t want to go through that again. There was also the issue of bad things happening in her household on a regular basis if Rory was as aggressive and uncontrollable as Buckley made him out to be. Rory’s outbursts would certainly reinforce the distorted thinking and the need for secrecy. “I think that’s her OCD,” Josie told Noah. “Remember what I told you about my conversation with Paige?”
“Yeah. That makes sense. But what about Pax? Why wouldn’t he just tell us about Rory? He has no stake in any of this, especially with Lorelei gone. It’s one less thing for his dad to be angry about.”
“I don’t know,” Josie answered. “But if Pax is riding his dirt bike through the woods on that mountain, there’s a chance he could run into Rory—who now has a gun.”
“All the more reason for Pax to tell us about Rory. Unless Pax is hiding something.”
“It seems like everyone we talk to is hiding something,” Josie groused. An image of Pax fitting his index finger between the boxes of produce on the loading dock flitted through her mind. “It might be worth trying to talk to Reed again, but right now, Rory is our main suspect and the only member of Lorelei’s household not accounted for.”
Noah pulled up beside Josie’s vehicle in the hospital parking lot. Before she got out, he leaned across the center console and kissed her deeply. Then he pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ll get the team on this right away, and when this is over, I’ll make you my wife.”
Twenty-One
Crime scene tape fluttered around the perimeter of Lorelei Mitchell’s house. Josie parked in front of the porch steps and got out. Gone was the creepy pinecone doll. Chan had taken it in for processing. A light breeze sailed through the trees surrounding the house. Birds sang. The sun shone down overhead. Josie paused to take it all in. It was so peaceful here, and so secluded. There were no neighbors. The property went for acres in every direction and where it ended, the land owned by Harper’s Peak Industries picked up. Even so, the house was still miles from the main buildings on the resort. There was no chance of anyone accidentally pulling into her driveway, as even that was well hidden. This was a well-loved sanctuary that had been turned into a small pocket of hell.
Josie walked up the steps and let herself inside. The house was silent. She moved through the living room to the dining room, noticing that the basement door was open. Had they left it open? In the kitchen, Lorelei’s blood had dried on the floor and the side of the island countertop. Someone had closed the back door. The shattered glass on the other side of the island had been pushed aside, almost as if to make room to get to the sink. Josie’s heartbeat ticked up as she approached the sink. Inside was an empty mason jar turned on its side, the lid a few inches away. Had this been in the sink yesterday, or had someone been here?
She turned back and went to the stairs, now wanting to get out of the house as quickly as she could. All she needed was some item that she could reasonably conclude belonged to Rory. Something for the dog to scent. It also wouldn’t hurt if she found some other evidence of his existence—like a photograph of some kind. She started in the last bedroom—the one with the bare twin mattress, poster, and the drawing of the angry face. Josie wondered if Rory had drawn it. Was it a representation of the rage he sometimes felt? She stood in the middle of the room and turned in a circle. How could a fifteen-year-old boy live here without any personal possessions? Josie could understand wanting to keep any objects from him that could be used to injure others, but surely he had had clothes. She made a mental note to check the closets downstairs to see if there were winter coats stored away somewhere. She was beginning to get the creeping sense that he didn’t really exist. If Vincent Buckley hadn’t seen the boy, Josie might be inclined to believe that Lorelei had made him up completely and that the drugs in her medicine cabinet really belonged to her.
On the other hand, all of Lorelei’s documents and photographs had been destroyed. Had Rory done it? Did Lorelei’s attempts to keep his existence from being known to anyone but her daughters and Buckley extend even to Rory’s own mind? Had he felt the need to destroy all traces of himself once he’d killed his mother and sister? Surely, he would have known that eventually Emily, Dr. Buckley or even Pax would tell the police of his existence. Did that mean that someone else had destroyed all of Lorelei’s things?
A loud creak jarred Josie from her thoughts. Her hand went to her holster, unsnapping it as she crept into the hallway. Had it come from up here or downstairs? She didn’t know the house well enough to say. Keeping one hand on the handle of her pistol, she took slow and silent steps back down the hall, toward the top of the staircase, head swiveling to look into the bedrooms as she went. As she came to the end of the hall, something in the bathroom caught her eye. On top of the sink was a toothbrush holder. It held four toothbrushes. Lorelei, Holly, Emily, and Rory. If someone had been trying to remove all evidence of Rory’s existence, they’d overlooked this one detail. Josie would have to take them all into evidence and see if they could get DNA and prints from whichever brush belonged to Rory.
Another creak drew her attention back to the hallway. Heart thundering, she took her pistol out and held it pointed downward. She was turning to press her back to one of the hallway walls when something heavy landed on her shoulder from behind. The gun dropped from her grip. She tried to turn to see what or who was behind her, but punches rained down on the back of her head and neck. It was only then she realized she was dealing with a person. A very angry person. Josie’s arms immediately went up, trying to block her head from being clobbered. She dropped down, hoping to catch sight of her gun, to retrieve it, but the person kicked her, sending her sprawling on her stomach, and straddled her. Fists pelted her. Her head snapped from side to side. All she was aware of in that moment was trying to stay alive and the sound of grunting above her.
There weren’t many fighting options for her, pinned on her stomach with fists smashing into the meat and bones of her arms where they shielded her head. Still, her lower body struggled to somehow wriggle out from beneath the man, to get her knees under her so she could buck him off, anything to slow him down or stop his assault. Nothing worked. Although her arms absorbed most of the attack, she wasn’t sure how much more she could withstand. But if she used her arms, her head would be exposed. Would he wear himself out? Could she wait that long? Trying to overcome her internal panic, she concentrated on the hands pummeling her. She couldn’t stay here all day, she told herself. He’d beat her to a pulp. She would have to be fast.
Keeping her face toward the floor, she quickly pulled her arms in and down so they were between her and the floor, elbows bent. Pushing up on her forearms, she used the leverage to send him off-balance. There was a two-second-long delay in the punches, which she used to her advantage, bucking with her hips and sending him over and into the wall. On her back, she kicked at him to keep him away, one of her hands searching for the gun. Her fingers closed over it and as she brought it up at the man, he launched himself onto her again, knocking the pistol out of her grip once more. She was in a stronger position on her back, however. Using her arms to shield her face this time, she bent her knees and pushed with her feet. She tried to buck him off again, but the hallway was too narrow. Instead, they just moved in one mess of fused bodies toward the top of the steps. The next time she tried to buck him off, he fell away from her. He was falling down the steps, she realized, but a split second later, she felt her own body begin to tumble. His hands gripped her shirt, pulling her with him.
Together, they tumbled to the bottom. Josie’s adrenaline kept her from feeling anything on the way down. Once at the bottom, Josie realized she was suddenly free. She looked up from where she’d landed on her back in time to see the shadowy figure bolt out the front door. Scrambling to he
r feet, she limped after him, only then realizing her left ankle was throbbing. Ignoring the pain, she picked up her pace, banging out the front door onto the porch. Her eyes searched the front yard where her vehicle sat a few yards from Lorelei’s truck. A mountain bike lay between the two. That definitely hadn’t been there before.
She hurried down the steps, rubbing an ache in her shoulder. “Pax?” she called.
There was the snap of a branch to her left, so she went that way, following the sound into the trees. Her feet staggered over pine needles and an area of thick brush. Every few seconds she stopped, ears straining to hear any movement. The ground rose and then fell again. She had no idea which direction she was going. Her labored breath roared in her ears. The ache in her shoulder spread across the back of her neck. The throbbing in her ankle grew worse. She heard another branch snap to her right and turned that way. She thought she saw a flash of brown fabric in her periphery and adjusted course. As she went, her mind tried to work through any details her subconscious might have picked up about her attacker while her conscious mind and body fought him off. He’d been wearing earth tones, she remembered that much. Brown sweatpants, she thought. Possibly a drab-green hooded sweatshirt.
The sound of ragged breath that was not her own invaded her ears. She froze and tried to slow her racing heart. Turning toward her left, she saw him, back leaned against an oak tree. His chest heaved. His head dipped downward. A fine sheen of sweat covered his thin, pimpled face.
