Labyrinth

by Catherine Coulter

  Griffin studied Sheriff Bodine’s face. He saw no particular dislike, but he did see lots of questions, and something more—surprise. The sheriff said slowly, “You must have some reason you came here, something you found out about the girl in Whytheville. Come in, I don’t want Rafer talking to you in the doorway.”

  Griffin and Carson followed Sheriff Bodine down the steps into the great room and seated themselves on one of the oversize leather sofas facing the huge windows and the darkening mountains beyond. It was magnificent, the sky turning a soft pearly gray. They smelled beef stew.

  Cyndia and Jessalyn came out of the kitchen, walked through the open dining room and into the great room. They stopped close together, wary and stiff. Cyndia said to Carson, repeating her husband’s question, “What are you doing here? You have no business here.”

  Carson gave them a friendly smile, waved toward the glass. “Agent Hammersmith insisted. Isn’t the view something? Like a painting. You’re very lucky to see it every day.”

  They both ignored her. Jessalyn watched her husband walk to stand in front of the immense fireplace, legs spread, his thumbs hooked inside his wide leather belt, an old habit, one she’d thought was sexy before he’d gained thirty pounds. She said, “Booker, we heard the agent say there’s another missing teenager. That’s very upsetting. But why do they want to see Rafer?”

  Booker locked eyes with Griffin, then his slid away, and Griffin wondered if he was remembering the duct tape removed from Rafer’s basement. Had he removed it himself? Did he have any doubts about his nephew’s guilt even now, with another young girl gone? Booker said to his wife, “It’s an investigation, Jess. He needs to speak to a lot of people.”

  “But it happened in Whytheville! What is he doing here?” As she spoke she turned to give Griffin a long look. He felt the hair stir on the back of his neck. He focused back on Jessalyn Bodine’s strong-boned face, looked directly into her eyes and said clearly in his mind, Your nephew is very probably a killer. You know it, I know it. Will you ignore it forever?

  She jerked back, shock on her face. Without a word, Jessalyn Bodine turned and walked back to the kitchen. Cyndia said, “What did you do to her? What?”

  Griffin smiled at her. “Nothing. You’ve been here, I haven’t said a word to your sister, haven’t moved from this spot. It’s like you and Agent Sherlock—you didn’t say a word to her, either, did you, Mrs. Bodine? And you were even across the room.”

  She looked like she would blast him, but Quint Bodine came into the great room with Rafer, his hand under his elbow, as if to support him. Rafer looked in no need of his father’s help. He looked tough and hardy with the dark beard scruff, tight jeans, black T-shirt, and scarred black boots. Then Rafer spotted Carson and took a quick step back.

  “Hello, Rafer, how’s tricks?”

  Rafer stared at her, said slowly, “Dad said Agent Hammersmith was here to question me about a missing teenager in Whytheville. Why are you here? You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” He gave her a knowing, hungry look that was potent indeed. He looked at Griffin. “Look, I don’t know anything about it, do you hear me?”

  Carson took a step toward him and he stumbled back against his father, no lust on his face now, only fear. “No, don’t you come near me. I don’t want you looking into my head again.”

  Quint Bodine’s voice was soothing. “Stay calm, Rafer, stay calm. She can’t hurt you, you know that.” He said to Griffin and Carson, “He’s still confused because of the pain medications. Let’s get this over with. Agent, I expect you to be professional.”

  Carson said, “You don’t look confused to me, Rafer. You look ready to play some pool down at the Five Star Bar. Well, maybe you could use a shower, a shave first.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Rafer!”

  Rafer glanced at his mother, who was holding a spatula in her hand. He shrugged, said nothing. He let his father lead him into the room, ease him down into a chair. Quint moved to stand behind him, his hand on his shoulder. “Ask my son your questions, Agent Hammersmith. Then leave and take her with you.” His gaze flicked over Carson.

  Cyndia came to stand beside her husband, her hand on Rafer’s other shoulder. She still held the spatula.

  Griffin told them how and where Linzie Drumm had been taken, as if he needed to.

  Rafer shook his head. “You can’t believe I took her, I was here at the house, right here, loaded up with meds.”

  Griffin said, “Rafer, how familiar are you with Whytheville?”

  “It’s a dip-crap little town, even less nightlife than Gaffer’s Ridge. I don’t go there often.”

  “When was the last time you visited the dip-crap little town?”

  “A long time ago, so long I don’t even remember—” He stopped cold, gulped, and shook his head. “Well, okay, maybe I did stop by Whytheville a while back, not that long ago, I don’t really remember what day.”

  Griffin said, “What did you do in Whytheville that day you don’t remember?”

  Rafer sent an agonized look to his mother, not his father. Interesting. Cyndia said smoothly, “Yes, I do remember. You told me you were going to Whytheville to check out a special lumber shipment you’d heard about at McComber’s Lumber Yard. You were thinking about ordering some for Mr. Zingara’s new addition since you couldn’t get it easily, right?”

  Griffin said, “That was very good, Mrs. Bodine, very fluent.”

  “That’s it exactly,” Rafer said. “Look, my brain’s all fuzzed up. I would have remembered.”

  “What is the name of the person you spoke to at the Whytheville mill?”

  “I don’t remember, I—”

  Cyndia said quickly, “I believe you said you were going to deal with Pete Crosby, the manager.”

  Griffin said, “Did you buy the lumber you wanted for Mr. Zingara’s addition?”

  Rafer shook his head. “No, the quality wasn’t what he was looking for.”

  “Did you have lunch in Whytheville?”

  “No,” he said immediately, then shook his head. “Wait, now I think about it, I might have stopped somewhere. What does this have to do with kidnapping?”

  Carson said, “According to Mrs. Buffett, owner of Buffett’s Hamburgers, you don’t have any manners, Rafer, which must disappoint your parents. She told us you were staring at a group of teenage girls while you ate your hamburger. Then you tossed your wrapper on the ground, not in the garbage can, which may be why she remembers you.”

  “The old hag’s always making stuff up—”

  Cyndia squeezed her son’s shoulder, and he added, “Yeah, I remember now. I didn’t much like the hamburger, and that kind of made me mad, so maybe I did toss the wrapper on the ground.”

  “Was that the first time you ever saw Linzie Drumm?”

  Griffin saw it, plain as neon lights. Rafer was scared. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about this girl.” He dashed his hand with the splint on the wrist over his forehead. “I don’t feel so good, Ma.”

  Cyndia looked at Griffin. “Is there anything else, Agent Hammersmith? May I put my injured son back in bed now you’ve browbeaten him?”

  Carson laughed. “It must really frustrate you when your injured son here screws up his stories, and you have to feed him his lines.”

  “Get out of my house!” Cyndia Bodine lunged toward Carson, death in her eyes. “Get out before I hurt you! Get out!”

  Sheriff Booker Bodine walked to stand in front of Cyndia. “That’s enough. Are you done, Agent Hammersmith?”

  “For the moment, Sheriff. But you know it isn’t only Rafer acting alone, don’t you? It’s both of them.” He nodded to everyone, took Carson’s arm, and they walked out of Eagle’s Nest.

  59

  * * *

  GEORGETOWN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SAVICH HOUSE

  FRIDAY EVENING

  Yet again Savich saw Sherlock looking at their bed. She was wearing a robe ov
er her tiger stripes, a rarity.

  She turned slowly to him. Her face was scrubbed clean, her blue eyes were shadowed. She’d combed the rich red nimbus of hair back from her face and he saw the small Band-Aid over her left temple. Savich said from the bathroom doorway, “You look like a teenager, which has to make me a dirty old man.”

  She blinked. To his surprise and pleasure, she laughed. “Nah, not with you looking so hot in those black boxers and black T-shirt. Hot and buff. Do I tell you that a lot?”

  He wanted to jump her, truth be told, but he didn’t move. “Yes, you do. Do you know we always try to go to the gym together?” The shower, too, but he didn’t mention it. “You’re getting good at karate. You’ve moved smartly forward for six years.”

  “What belt am I?”

  “Well, we haven’t formalized your belts, since I’m your teacher, but I’d put you right up there in a solid gold.”

  “Gold belt? I never heard of that.”

  “It was created only for you.”

  She smiled, but it fell off her face. “I didn’t recognize Sean’s voice.”

  He saw misery in her eyes. They’d spoken to Sean together for the first time, an hour before. His grandmother had let him stay up late to watch a Spider-Man movie with her and Senator Monroe, who’d asked Sean to call him Uncle Bob. And when he’d left, Savich’s mother had allowed Sean to call them to say good night. To Savich’s ear, Sherlock had sounded natural, pleased to hear from her son, telling him he’d be staying with his grandmother a bit longer, she was still contagious, and no way would she take the chance of making him sick. Yes, she was better now. Not much longer. She missed him.

  He said, “You’ll remember his whining before bedtime soon enough. Are you ready for bed?”

  “What about Justice?”

  “I checked him before I took a shower. He was sound asleep, blissed out on the pain meds Dr. Breaker gave him. Ned said they could hold him for the night.”

  “Having a doctor willing to come here to the house. Now that’s impressive.”

  “I keep telling Ned the debt—if there ever was one, which there wasn’t—was paid in full years ago. He tells me to shut up, that when I call him for help, he knows he’s in for some excitement. He said Justice will be fine in another couple of days. He also thought Justice will be thinking more clearly when he’s not so distracted with pain. He seemed well enough at dinner, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but I wish he’d eaten more. Dillon, he was so frightened and paranoid this afternoon, inviting him here was a great idea when he turned down going to Quantico. Have we ever done this before? Brought someone to stay with us?”

  “Before we were married, I brought you here, but that’s another story.” He paused a moment. “Thank you for letting Ned check the stitches in your head and do a quick neurological exam.”

  Sherlock nodded, touched the fresh Band-Aid over her temple. “He’s kind, a good doctor. It’s nice to get a clean bill of health. Well, almost.”

  “You told him the truth? No more headaches?”

  “Only a few, but they’re less and less and not nearly as bad. Don’t worry, Dillon.”

  Savich’s cell chimed with a text message. He walked over and read it quickly. “Good. That’s the message I’ve been waiting for. MAX broke the encryption on Bodine’s file.” He picked up his laptop. “Shall we take a look together at what MAX has got?”

  She fluffed up four pillows, something she’d always done, and climbed in bed. She patted the space beside her.

  Savich typed in his access codes, opened to Quint Bodine’s Documents file. He scrolled through only briefly before he saw one labeled Project C. He settled in beside Sherlock, opened the file.

  July 2: Subject K starts to show a bit of promise, with the new combination of drugs. At least she is willing to interact with Cyndia, watches old movies with her. She is rewarded, of course, with her favorite kettle corn and a movie of her choice, usually one of those absurd horror films. I pray she will be able to move forward as Cyndia expects, but I have strong doubts. She responds well to the medications, they keep her settled and calm, and I hope they don’t mask her abilities, if indeed she has any. Whether Subject K understands what Cyndia expects of her is another question entirely.

  July 27: Subject M continues to be mutinous, won’t cooperate, refuses to make eye contact, and continues to stare straight and ignore us, even Cyndia. She doesn’t seem to care about any pain and the drugs knock her out, so there’s no benefit at all. A poor choice, despite rumors of her odd abilities. She tried to escape yet again. Must decide what more we can do with her. I am not certain—

  Sherlock said, “These aren’t minutes, they’re personal notes on experiments. They call the file Project C. I wonder what that means? Dillon, wait. What’s happening? Look, the text is disappearing. What’s going on?”

  Savich cursed, began typing furiously. Bodine had installed a wipe program that kicked in if the file was opened without following a special series of passcodes. Even if Quint Bodine wouldn’t ever realize someone had copied and decrypted his files, he had yet another failsafe. Who had installed it for him? It was sophisticated. Savich tried everything he could to stop it, but still, line by line the file disappeared. He watched as Subject K simply faded from the screen. There was nothing left, nothing at all. Only a blank screen, and no way to retrieve the deleted file.

  Savich slowly closed MAX down. He sat back, rubbed his eyes. “Well, that stunt was worthy of Nicholas Drummond. Where did Bodine find an expert to install that wipe program? Even if we get a warrant for his computer, he’ll make certain that file is blank before we can access it.”

  “There was no way for you to know the file was booby-trapped?”

  He sighed, dashed his hand through his hair. “It didn’t even occur to me. If I’d known, maybe I could have figured out how to deal with it. I don’t know, Sherlock.”

  “Subject K and Subject M—they’re two of the missing girls. They must be the first two. Remember, Latisha was only taken in late July. And Rafer Bodine thought ‘Amy died hard’? Maybe she’s Subject M, maybe she tried to escape again and they killed her. What was the date he wrote about her?”

  “July twenty-seventh.”

  “The others could still be alive. All of them are subjects in some kind of experiment? Cyndia wants them to behave in some way and they’re using drugs on them—to do what? Control them, certainly, but what else? Drugs Bodine hopes won’t mask their abilities? What abilities? But the way he writes, I don’t think he believes they have any.”

  Savich reached for his cell on its charger, punched in Griffin’s number.

  “Griffin here. What’s up, Savich? You get Bodine’s computer files decoded?”

  “Yes. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Carson’s with me. Let me put you on speaker as well.”

  When Savich finished telling them what he and Sherlock had read, he paused a moment, then added, “The way Bodine wrote his notes, it didn’t seem to us he believed what he and Cyndia were doing to the girls would gain them anything. And it was about what Cyndia hoped and wanted, not Quint.”

  Griffin whistled. “And even with the wipe program installed on top of the encryption, Quint didn’t use their actual names. Talk about paranoid.”

  Carson said, “And K and M aren’t the initial letters of any of the girls’ names. I’ll bet Subject K is Heather Forrester, from Gaffer’s Ridge. Dillon, why didn’t the program wipe when MAX was decoding it?”

  “Different process,” Savich said. “It didn’t trigger the program.”

  Griffin said, “Okay, back up a minute. All the girls are sixteen. Wasn’t their daughter, Camilla, sixteen when she disappeared? And the file name, Project C. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with their long-missing daughter.”

  Sherlock cocked her head, said, “That’s brilliant, Griffin. And I had a thought. The Bodines’ missing daughter, Camilla—do you happen to have photos of the missing girls?”r />
  60

  * * *

  Savich divided MAX’s screen into four quadrants, a photo of a kidnapped girl in each quadrant.

  Griffin said after a moment, “The four girls do seem to resemble each other a bit, their general build, their coloring, but not enough to grab your attention. So I doubt those similarities are much of a factor. Now we need a photo of Camilla Bodine. Do you have one, Savich?”

  “Yes, from a local newspaper when she disappeared.” The four quadrants became two, one divided into four smaller squares, each with the photo of a kidnapped girl, the other half of the screen Camilla Bodine’s face.

  Savich said, “Anyone see a resemblance between Camilla Bodine and the four girls?”

  Carson said, “Not much, though the shapes of their faces are a bit similar. But wait—their eyes. Look at their shape, their color. Does anyone else see it? They’ve got what I’d call dark, brooding eyes. Camilla, too.”

  Savich said, “Yeah, okay. There’s the hair and eye color, but nothing else I can see to tie them physically to Camilla Bodine. Linzie Drumm, now her eyes are a very dark green, something like Cyndia Bodine’s eyes.”

  Sherlock said, “So you think their eyes might have something to do with why they were taken? That seems a bit thin. Has there been any hint these girls were thought by their friends or families to be different or unusual? To have anything like psychic gifts?”

  Griffin said, “Nothing like that appears in any of the police reports, not even in Sheriff Bodine’s notes on Heather Forrester, and you’d think he’d have heard if she was considered in any way psychic.” He shook his head. “If the girls were gifted, no one would say anything because of the parents, so who knows?”

  Carson said, “So we’re left with thinking these specific girls were taken because Cyndia and Quint believed their eyes are like their missing daughter’s and because they believed it meant the girls could be gifted? Like their daughter?”

  Sherlock said, “It sounds crazy, but it might be reasonable, given our meeting with Cyndia and what happened.”