by Diana Palmer
“No, it isn’t,” he confirmed tautly. “It takes several minutes of concentrated pressure. A noose with a stick twisting it is easier than using your hands, but it still takes more than a minute or two to kill a person.”
“I remember his hands most of all,” she said uncomfortably. “They were bony and pale, weak-looking. I got a glimpse of them, under my blindfold. I think one had deep cuts on it. They were nothing like my grandpa’s, who was a deputy sheriff and worked with horses. He had lean, strong, tanned hands. Good hands.”
“They took you to a doctor,” he prompted, because she’d gone silent.
She drew in a steadying breath. “Dr. Coltrain had just gotten his license. I was one of his first patients,” she added with a smile. “I learned some new bad words listening to him when he examined me. He was eloquent.”
“He still is,” Marquez said.
“Anyway, it took some minor surgery and a lot of stitches. I lost an ovary and my spleen and even my appendix,” she added. “They said it would take a miracle for me to ever have a child. As if I’d want to get married and give a man power over me, after that,” she said sadly, and tried not to remember how comforting Garon’s strong arms had been in the darkness. He’d walked away from her so quickly when he knew she couldn’t have a child. It was just as well, though, that she was barren, after the way he’d treated her.
“A reporter heard something on his police scanner. Not enough to tell him the truth, but enough to make him curious. He came over here snooping around. My grandmother called Chet Blake. Chet told him I was attacked by a crazed man and that I had amnesia, that I couldn’t remember anything about it. That seemed to satisfy the reporter, because he left and nobody saw him again. But after he left, Granny was afraid the man who abducted me might come back and finish the job if the true story got out. Even though I was blindfolded the whole time, he might think I could still identify him. So our police chief, Chet Blake, hid the file, and talked to the local media. He said I had been slightly injured by a mental patient, that I had amnesia and couldn’t even remember how I got hurt. Everybody around me swore it was the truth. The paper ran a story saying a juvenile had been injured by an escaped mental patient and I couldn’t remember anything that happened. The mental patient, they said, was taken back to the institution he came from, and I was fine. It was too small a story to make the big city papers, so that was the end of it. If the man was checking about what I told the police, and he read our local paper, he’d have felt safe.” She glanced at him. “I was so afraid that he’d do it again, to some other little child. And he is, isn’t he, Rick? He’s still out there, but now he’s killing children. I didn’t want to be protected at the cost of someone else’s life, but nobody would listen to me. I was just a kid myself. I’ve had to live with that ever since.”
“Damn!”
She sighed heavily. The memories were stifling, frightening. Her hands gripped each other. “I feel guilty because I didn’t come forward and tell the truth.”
“You were a child, Grace. You had no say in what was done.”
“But I’m not a child now,” she said earnestly. “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, Rick, but I’d remember his voice. At least you could look at the file and see what evidence they saved. I know they had swabs, and they took my underclothes,” she choked, swallowing hard. She didn’t want to remember the rest. “There might be something else that would help with the investigation.”
“Yes, but, Grace, if Chet hid the file, how will we find it?”
“You can find out. I know you can. I want you to go to El Paso and talk to Chief Blake. I want you to tell him that we have to give that information to the task force. I’ll try very hard to remember what he talked about, anything that might help identify him. I was in that place for three days.”
He didn’t speak for several seconds. “Grace, what purpose would it serve to open the file twelve years after the fact?” he argued. “We’ve got DNA evidence from the latest victim. We’ve got leads. If they open that file, someone’s going to let the cat out of the bag. Any gossip about the case would put you in danger. He might come back and kill you, to silence you.”
“I know that,” she replied. “But he’s killed a lot of little girls,” she said sadly. “Maybe I could have saved some of them if…”
“Stop right there,” he said firmly, catching her cold fingers in his own. “Child predators are everywhere. You couldn’t prevent a kidnapping if you were living in the same town as the perpetrator right now! There’s been plenty of press coverage about this predator. Parents know to watch out for their children, but this guy is very smart. Warning people won’t stop him.”
She shifted. “Maybe not. I do think I might have been his first victim,” she continued. “He was nervous the last day he kept me. He used a pocketknife, but I’d gained a lot of weight that year. I had a fat stomach and it saved my life. He left me for dead, panicked and ran. I managed to scream. Someone heard me and I was found in time.” She stared into the darkness. “He took me right out of my own bed, in the middle of the night, with my grandmother sleeping in the room beside mine. If she hadn’t been drinking, she might have heard him. She hated me for the rest of her life, because everybody knew she’d been too drunk to lock up properly. She pretended to be such a moral pillar of society. Then I got abducted and she was exposed.”
“She should have been charged with criminal negligence,” he snapped.
“She’s dead. Everybody’s dead but me, Rick,” she said sadly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Catching this lunatic does. You have to make Chief Blake tell you where that file is. There may be something in it that will give you a clue leading to the killer, especially if I really was his first victim. He might have made one mistake that he’s too savvy to make now. And that one mistake might help you catch him.”
He smiled gently. “You’re quite a lady.”
She leaned against his shoulder. It was the first time she’d ever touched him voluntarily. He was a sweet man. “I wish I could be what you want me to be, Rick,” she said honestly. “You’re the nicest man I know.”
His heart ached. Having her curled up beside him so trusting, made him feel humble. He wanted to wrap her up against him and kiss her until she moaned, and make her love him. But it was never going to happen. He loved. She didn’t. She was only his friend. But even that was better than nothing.
His arm slid around her hesitantly, resting there when she didn’t protest. His heart hammered at his ribs, but he drew her close in a comforting, platonic way. “You’re the nicest woman I know,” he replied.
He heard her soft sigh as she relaxed against his shoulder. It was sweeter than honey, this interlude. At least she liked him. She trusted him. Who could say that one day she wouldn’t realize what a good catch he was. He just had to be patient and not rush his fences.
He rocked the swing back into motion. Around them, the night was peaceful and quiet.
* * *
IN THE DAYS that followed, Garon went to work trying not to think about Grace. He turned out with everyone else to respond to a new bank robbery. It was the same crew, with automatic weapons. This time they wounded a guard and a customer. He gave his squad a pep talk and had four of them staking out banks. In the meantime, he coordinated with the serial killer task force, organized his cases and doled assignments out to his squad, escorted visiting dignitaries around town, caught up some of his paperwork. But his conscience still hurt about Grace. He could have been less cruel. She was like a child, in so many ways. She wasn’t used to people deliberately hurting her. Maybe it was like Marquez said, it was a coincidence that she’d been at the same places he was.
Two weeks after she left town, his brother Cash called him one afternoon and invited him over to the police station.
“Why here and not at home?” he asked his brother with a smile when he walked into the office.
Cash didn’t smile back. He was somber. He closed his office door and sat dow
n behind his desk.
“Marquez flew to El Paso and talked to our cousin Chet Blake,” Cash said. He had his hands folded over a manila file folder. “There was an attempted child murder here in Jacobsville twelve years ago. It’s identical to the case you and Marquez are working. The file was sealed and hidden, because Chet was afraid the man would come back and finish off the child if he knew she survived.”
Garon frowned. “The child lived? There’s a witness?”
“Yes,” Cash replied. “It’s a tragic case. She was abducted out of her own bed and carried to an abandoned cabin just outside town. She was held there for three days,” he said with tight lips. “Nobody knows what he did to her. She never spoke of it to anyone. Her injuries were life-threatening. She spent weeks in the hospital. There was a search for the perpetrator, but they never found him. He just vanished.”
“The child was a girl?” he asked.
“Yes. She was twelve at the time. Like your other victims, she had long blond hair and light colored eyes.”
“Why in God’s name didn’t they share that information with the Bureau?” Garon demanded hotly. “It might have saved lives! Especially with a living witness who could identify him!”
“She was blindfolded,” Cash said. “The whole time. She heard his voice. That’s all.”
“But to cover it up…!”
“Jacobsville is a small town, and her people were powerful,” he said. “You know Chet. He doesn’t like confrontations. He was told what to do, and he did it. Against his better judgment, I might add.”
Garon let out a rough sigh. “Well, what’s in the file? Is there anything about a red ribbon?”
“Yes.” Cash slid the file folder across the desk. He was watching Garon with an odd expression.
Garon couldn’t decide why until he opened the file folder and saw the first of the photographs that were taken at the scene of the crime, and of the child at the time of her rescue.
The little girl was pudgy, as children sometimes are when they reach the outer edge of adolescence. She was covered with blood. Her long blond hair was matted with it. Her tank top was shredded, like her cotton shorts. There was dirt on her legs and her bare feet. The next series of photos were taken in the hospital, without her clothing. Her stomach showed multiple stab wounds. There were bruises all over her arms and legs. She had a black eye, and her mouth was bloody. There was blood around the tiny, pink buds of her breasts.
The damage matched that of the dead child Garon had seen at the autopsy, except that this poor victim had lived. He studied the photos and then turned to lift the police report, which gave the child’s name.
Garon’s breath exploded in the silence of the office. His heart seemed to stop beating. The child’s name was Grace. Grace Carver.
Memories flashed in front of his eyes. Grace, shy and afraid of him. Grace, letting him pick her up with wide, frightened eyes. Grace, clinging to him. Grace, in his arms, in his bed, loving him. Grace holding his hand and radiating joy. Grace, cringing from him in Barbara’s Café…!
The puzzle fell into place. Grace was innocent because she’d been abducted, assaulted and very nearly killed by a homicidal maniac. And he’d made light of her experience. Worse, he’d seduced her and then pushed her out of his life, like a man discarding a used towel.
He put his face in his hands and tried to justify what he’d done to that poor, tortured soul out of his own fear that she was getting too close to him. God in heaven, he thought poignantly, what have I done!
Cash wasn’t blind. He’d heard the gossip about Garon and Grace, especially in the past couple of weeks since she’d been forced to leave town to stop the whispers. He and Garon weren’t close, so he hadn’t asked any questions. But the man across from him didn’t seem very arrogant now.
Garon leaned back in his chair. His eyes were blank. He’d lost color in his lean face. The shock was all too apparent.
He was trying to come to grips with his own actions. No wonder he’d been an outcast after his treatment of Grace. The important people in this town knew the truth of what had happened to her. They were delighted that she’d found someone who could heal her emotional wounds, give her a little happiness. It hadn’t been malicious gossip about the two of them, or an attempt to marry them off. It had been happiness that, after all Grace had endured, she might have a loving future to comfort the pain of her past.
Instead she’d been kicked in the teeth one more time by fate. By Garon.
Garon let out a slow breath.
“Marquez wanted to tell you himself,” Cash remarked after a minute. “But I didn’t trust him that close to you, once he knew the facts of the case.”
Garon looked at his brother blankly. “He didn’t know?”
Cash shook his head. “Grace told no one. Chet gave him the details, along with this file. To date, not one person knows what that animal did to her in the three days he kept her a prisoner.”
He was remembering the dead child, the horrible mutilation of her young body. That could have been Grace. She could have been dead, instead of emotionally and sexually crippled and left for dead. It was like a nightmare. He’d never thought of himself as a monster. Before.
“Was there any trace evidence?” he asked, forcing his numb brain to work.
“Yes. I’d bet my baton that the DNA will match what you found on the latest victim.”
“DNA.” He stared at Cash while the truth drilled a hole in his heart. “DNA.” His teeth ground together. The son of a bitch had raped Grace…!
He got up from the chair in one powerful movement, almost shaking with rage and self-loathing.
Cash got in front of him before he could start for the door. “Sit down.”
“Like hell I will!”
“I said, sit down!”
Cash pushed him back into the chair and stood over him, powerful and immovable. “Remember who and what you are,” he said forcefully, his dark eyes even and steady on his brother’s. “You can’t go raging out of here like a mad dog, chasing shadows. You don’t even have a suspect. What are you going to do, run cheek swabs on every male in Jacobs and Tarrant Counties?”
Said like that, it sounded absurd. But Garon wasn’t thinking straight. He was furious. He wanted to hurt someone. He wanted to find the sexual predator and strangle him slowly with his own hands. He couldn’t remember feeling such mindless rage. At least not since he’d lost his own love, so long ago…
But he’d lived in the past too long already. He’d used it to ward off any emotional ties, to keep himself safe from another relationship. He was alone, by choice. But Grace had paid the price for his escape. He’d savaged her to save himself. She would never forgive him…
He stared up at Cash with dawning realization. Grace had come out of the dark nightmare that was her life to reach out toward Garon with hope and breathless anticipation. He’d knocked her back, savaged her verbally and emotionally. He’d frightened her so badly in the café that she’d backed away from him, shaking like a leaf. He’d done that to her, when her only crime was that she wanted to love him.
His eyes closed on a wave of pain. Grace had sent Marquez to El Paso to dig up the most horrible chapter in her life. She’d done it not for herself, but to try to save some other child from what she’d endured. She was willing to take the risk that reopening the case might bring the killer back to finish the job he’d started.
In a flash he saw what he’d missed from the minute Cash gave him the file folder. Grace was the only person alive who could identify the child killer. And sharing the case with police might get her killed, as well.
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE to Victoria. Saturdays in early spring brought all the weekend adventurers out on the highway. Usually Garon didn’t mind bottlenecks, but he was anxious to get to his destination. He wasn’t sure how he was going to manage it, but he had to coax Grace into coming home.
He’d phoned Marquez’s cell phone, but he hadn’t gotten an answe
r. Probably the younger man was still furious and unwilling to talk to him. He couldn’t blame him. The detective loved Grace. It wouldn’t sit well with him that Garon had caused her so much pain.
He was wearing a lightweight jacket, which he probably wasn’t going to need. It was a warm, sunny day. The SUV ahead of him had a canoe lashed to its rack and fishing poles sticking out of the back window. Fishing. He grimaced, recalling how he’d overreacted when he found Grace at the local fishing pond.
Her cousin lived back off the road in a grove of pecan trees. There was a dirt driveway that led up to the house. It was an old house, simple white clapboard, one story, with two chimneys and a long front porch that contained rocking chairs, a settee and a swing, all painted green. Off to the side was a large pond with a pier. He glanced toward it and blinked. Grace was out there, dressed in knee-high cutoffs and a red T-shirt, bending over what looked like a minnow bucket.
He got out of the SUV and walked down to the pond, sunglasses hiding the apprehension in his dark eyes. The sunglasses were an individual thing now. But when he was in the elite Hostage Rescue Team, everyone copied the team leader’s sunglasses. Those had been good days, working tight with an expert group of men. His job now, even heading a crime unit squad, was less exciting. It was less stressful as well. Maybe that would seem like a benefit, one day.
Grace saw him coming and straightened. Her chin came up. She was barefoot and wore no makeup at all. Her long hair was in a braid that reached between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses and she wasn’t smiling. In one hand, she held a long cane pole with a cork, sinkers and a hook on the fishing line.
