Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1)

by Ellery A Kane

  Emily could be in danger. Emily could be missing. Could be—he let himself think it for a split second—dead. But he’d told Olivia none of that. The exact opposite, in fact. He put his arm around her, reassuring her. He kept reassuring her as she put on her coat. As he helped her into his truck. Finally, he shut up, his windshield wipers the only sound, as they drove toward the heart of Fog Harbor.

  They didn’t make it far.

  Olivia’s BMW idled in a ditch off Pine Grove Road, its back end smashed. The bumper, dangling. Parked on the shoulder, a truck marked with a Tyrone’s Construction decal and a nasty dent to its front end. A large black man, presumably Tyrone, paced nearby, holding an umbrella, his phone pressed to his ear.

  Will said nothing as he pulled over behind one of three police cruisers. He’d already gone into full-on cop mode, turning off the part of himself that wanted to throw up. To run away from Fog Harbor and never look back.

  When he asked Olivia to confirm the car was hers, he catalogued her whimper as a yes. “It’s just an accident,” she said, her voice one-note. “She had an accident.”

  “Stay inside.” He knew she wouldn’t listen. Her hand already gripped the door.

  Will approached the car cautiously, looking back at the ruts in the mud, where it had crossed into the ditch and come to rest. He produced his badge and identified himself to the female highway patrol officer examining the BMW’s interior. Officer Rollins, according to the nameplate pinned to her uniform.

  He peered over her shoulder at the leather seats. A cell phone and a small purse, its contents scattered, lay haphazard on the floorboard. Lights on. The gearshift, in park. Will catalogued all these too. Same as the whimper.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  “We’re not exactly sure.” She gestured to the man with the umbrella. “Mr. Watkins told us he was driving northbound on Pine Grove Road with poor visibility due to the rainstorm. He got a call from his wife and briefly looked down at his cell phone. When he glanced up, the car was right there. It didn’t appear to be moving. The driver’s door was open. Mr. Watkins said he didn’t have time to swerve, and he struck the back end of the BMW, which traveled into the ditch. He reported no injuries but we’ve got an ambulance on the way.”

  “Where is my sister?” Olivia demanded. “I need to see her.”

  “Uh, ma’am, it’s not safe for you—”

  “The other driver?” Will asked. Officer Rollins hesitated, eyeing Olivia with concern. Will catalogued that too. He felt something bad coming but nothing and no one could stop it. “Her sister, Emily, was driving the BMW. Is she okay?”

  “Well, that’s just it, Detective. We don’t know. We can’t find her. She’s just… gone.”

  From behind him, Olivia made an awful, soul-scraping sound, and Will turned toward her, compelled. Though he didn’t want to see the way that sound looked on her face.

  His training taught him what to expect when the unthinkable happened. The way the body would shut down, all circuits firing and overwhelmed. How he had to rise above the biology, staying alert and alive by walling off a vital part of himself. Still, he thought he’d react differently than he had two years ago, watching numbly from the shadows as his brother ended a life.

  He wanted to hold her but he feared it would break him. She clung to him anyway.

  He wanted to say the right thing but no words came. Except the ones he always said, in his cop voice. “It’s going to be okay.”

  In the blank space of his brain, a single image from that awful night. His brother, sobbing, begging him to lie. Down to his bones, it felt real. As real as Olivia’s heartbeat throbbing against his chest.

  He’d known it then. He knew it now. Nothing would ever be okay again.

  Olivia lay on the couch, glassy-eyed. After she’d found a photo of Emily for the missing person press release, she’d dug through her sister’s closet convinced she could figure out what she’d been wearing. Her white sweater. Her blue raincoat. She’d finally relented and taken half—only a half—of a Valium Will had scrounged up from the medicine cabinet. The bottle’s prescription label read Louise Reilly. Olivia’s mother, Will figured.

  When the doorbell rang, Olivia didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge it, so Will opened the door and let Leah inside.

  “How is she?” Leah whispered.

  Will shook his head. “She thinks it’s her fault. That she should’ve been here.”

  Leah let out a long breath and peeked around the corner with him. Olivia hadn’t moved.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I have to call my partner and let him know. Get back to the scene. Figure out what the hell happened.”

  “You already know what happened.” Olivia’s voice scared him a little. The hollowness of it. Like she’d fallen down a deep, dark well. “The s word.”

  Whatever lie he’d planned to tell her, he never got a chance. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

  “Will Decker, Homicide.”

  “Will.” JB sounded shell-shocked, too. As if they’d all been fighting the same endless war. “Tammy’s friend from San Francisco came through. We’ve gotta get down to the lab to meet Tammy ASAP. I’ll see you there.”

  “The DNA?” He heard the quiver in his own voice.

  “They’ve got a match.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Olivia pretended she was dead. She held her breath until her lungs ached. Beneath the covers, she didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. Her stare, fixed on the dark figure watching her from the corner of the bedroom. Male or female, she couldn’t tell which. But she knew she’d find out soon enough.

  The figure stalked her, waiting for the exact right time to strike. To slip the garrote around her neck and pull it tight. She’d claw at it, the way the others did, but her struggle would only make it worse. Like an insect thrashing in a spider’s web.

  A soft knock at the door stopped her heart. The figure didn’t move.

  Olivia reached for the Smith and Wesson she’d secreted in the nightstand but the empty drawer gaped back at her. She opened her mouth to scream but it came out as a whimper.

  She watched in horror as the door opened. A blade of light from the hallway cut through the shadows, revealing the figure and the garrote.

  A coat rack in her temporary suite at Shells-by-the-Sea, Leah and Jake’s B&B. Where she’d hung her jacket, her stocking cap, her scarf.

  Leah peered inside the bedroom. “Just checking on you.”

  Olivia smiled weakly. “What time is it?”

  “Six in the morning.”

  “Oh. I forgot where I was for a minute.”

  Leah nodded, handing her another half of a little blue pill, watching closely as Olivia placed it on her tongue “Get some more sleep, if you can. I’m heading out with the search team to look for Emily, unless you need me.”

  Olivia waved her off. But as soon as Leah had closed the door, she sat up, tossed off the covers, and stripped the coat rack bare. Satisfied, she scurried to the bathroom and spat out the Valium she’d cheeked, flushing it down the toilet. Then, she splashed her face with the coldest water she could stand.

  For a psychologist who worked in the MHU, where pill-cheeking could be classified as a competitive sport, Leah had trusted her far too easily. She grabbed her phone from the dresser, scanning the Internet, a breaking news article from the Fog Harbor Gazette online the top story on all the major outlets. Her chest tightened. Her heart, in a vise.

  They didn’t think she could handle it. They being Leah and Deck. The something being Drake Devere’s DNA found on Shauna’s body, his early morning arrest. Probably with good reason, after she’d snuck out of the B&B last night, driving from the beach to Laura’s house to the drainpipe and back again until her eyelids drooped and every passing car had Emily’s dead body hidden inside it. Deck had found her at 2 a.m., parked in her thinking spot at Little Gull, listening for ghosts, scrawling suspect names, and staring out at the water. A profiling zombie, with a
gun on her lap. The only clear recollection, the liquid brown of his eyes when they’d met hers.

  She found her gun in the safe, where someone—Deck?—had helped her lock it. Her combination, the usual one, ironic now. Her sister’s birthdate. She dressed in a hurry and poked her head out of the Sand Dollar Suite. All clear. Unlike her memories of last night, which were smeared by a benzo haze.

  Olivia forced herself to choke down half of a banana nut muffin Leah had left for her. She tucked the Smith and Wesson in her purse and looped her lanyard around her neck, declaring herself cured. This zombie had work to do.

  Everyone looked at her but no one spoke. Just as well, because she had no acceptable explanation for showing up at the prison. Not with Em missing and presumed dead. They expected her to be with the search volunteers, combing the fields, the beach, the roadways. Or curled in a ball somewhere. Not walking down the runway, heading for Ad Seg, her face pinched with determination.

  She’d nearly made it when she heard her name called out down the long, empty hall.

  “What are you doing at work?” Warden Blevins strode toward her. His ingratiating voice a stark contrast to the one she’d heard at Willow Wood.

  “I need to talk to Drake.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible, especially with your sister missing. I’m under strict orders to keep him in isolation. No visitors except for his attorney, if he hires one. With the size of his ego, I wouldn’t be surprised if he represents himself.”

  Olivia kept walking as they spoke, so fast even the warden with his long legs struggled to keep up with her. “You asked me to keep an eye on him. To gain his trust. To get him gabbing. Remember? He told me things. Things he might be inclined to tell other people. Attorneys, reporters. People who wouldn’t understand. It would be in the best interest of Crescent Bay and the administration if those things stayed between me and Drake. So, let me talk to him. Five minutes. That’s all I need.”

  Warden Blevins didn’t speak until they’d reached the door to Ad Seg. “Those things he told you, I expect a full debrief. This stays between us. No more secrets.”

  Olivia felt the heat from his gaze before she met his eyes, simmering like black coals behind his wire-rimmed glasses. It was a wonder the lenses hadn’t fogged. She felt certain he’d seen the security camera, watched her sneaking around and jiggling his office doorknob.

  “Of course.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Will studied the plastic evidence bag on his desk, trying to make sense of the small tufts of synthetic hair inside. Bits of the white faux fur, stained with mud, had been recovered in the grooves of the BMW’s left front tire and the roadway.

  “You’ve been staring at that fuzz since I left.” JB returned to his cubicle with two subpar coffees from the machine that had been around longer than him. “What’s up, City Boy?”

  “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  Delivering those words to Devere’s smug face earlier—You’re under arrest for the murder of Shauna Ambrose—had done nothing for him. Not like the last time. When he’d slapped the cuffs on Devere outside his Modesto apartment, Will had believed he’d finally proved himself. Even after the DA had accepted Drake’s plea bargain, life in prison instead of death, he’d felt like a winner. But now, after what he’d witnessed at the salvage yard, after seeing Olivia dead-eyed and desperate, after all the wrong turns and red herrings, he didn’t trust Devere’s obvious guilt. Didn’t trust himself.

  “C’mon. Devere’s gonna die in prison either way. All we’ve got to do is get him to talk. We need to find Emily’s body, bring her home. That’s our angle. That’s our bargaining chip.”

  “So you’re sure then? Emily’s dead? She’s one of his?” The questions had played in his brain all night on repeat.

  “She disappears on a rainy night. Leaves her cell and her purse behind. No trace of her anywhere. All signs point to Drake.”

  “But we haven’t found her body.”

  “Well, Devere’s been in Ad Seg since yesterday morning.”

  “But we know he had help. He must have.”

  “Nobody is gonna move a body right now, partner.”

  Will clenched his jaw, breathing through gritted teeth, as JB patted him on the shoulder.

  “I know this one’s personal. I’m sorry about that. But we’re not gonna find Emily sitting in this popsicle stand twiddling our thumbs. Let’s go take one more crack at him before he lawyers up like James. You with me?”

  “I’m with you.” But as Will trailed JB from the station, he couldn’t stop seeing his mother’s face. Couldn’t stop thinking of Drake’s first victims, the women in Muir Woods. Of Bonnie, Laura, Shauna. Sometimes, finding someone was worse than letting them stay gone.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  A wave of nausea nearly bowled Olivia over just looking at Drake. Though she still only half believed it, the big sister in her wanted to pry apart that metal cage and beat him bloody. The professional in her clung stubbornly to her doubts. “You never answered my question. From the other day. Do you remember?”

  Drake nodded, one corner of his mouth lifting in a disgusting smile. “You wanted to know how I felt about the families of my victims. About what I’d done.”

  “And?” She disregarded her revulsion and approached the therapeutic module, where Drake stood, his face practically pressed to the wire mesh. She wanted him to see her up close.

  “I wouldn’t trade the person I’ve become. I needed those experiences. A mediocre author writes from imagination. A great author writes from experience. Draws their pen from the well of their own pain. I’m sorry others had to suffer for that, but I can’t change the past.”

  “What a load of crap. I defended you. To the warden. To the cops. How could you do this?”

  “You think I’m guilty then, don’t you? You think I hurt Bonnie? Laura? Shauna? Emily.” Olivia couldn’t tell if he sounded wounded or smug. But the way he’d said her sister’s name, taking his time with all three syllables, made her skin crawl.

  “Did you?”

  “What do you believe, Doc? That’s what I want to know. Your opinion means everything to me.”

  “They found your DNA on Shauna’s body. What am I supposed to think?” Saying it out loud broke her, and she clung to the side of the cage to stay upright. “Please, just tell me. Where is my sister?”

  Olivia shook the wire mesh.

  “Where is my sister?”

  Felt a scream rising in her throat.

  “Where is my sister?”

  She heard the door burst open behind her. Felt a pair of sturdy arms around her, pulling her backward from the room. Saw a scar on a hand she recognized.

  “Get off me.” She squirmed out of Deck’s grasp, still shaking, terrified and so, so angry. At herself more than anyone. She’d flaked on her promise to help the Murdocks. She’d asked Em to go. She might as well have wrapped the garrote around her sister’s neck herself. The image of that in her mind’s eye—her sister, strangled, her body cold in a ditch somewhere—made her double over.

  “What are you doing here?” Deck asked her, in his cop voice.

  When she didn’t answer, he turned to the guard. “Who let her in?”

  “Didn’t see. I was on a break.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Olivia insisted on waiting outside the room. He could see her through the small window, sitting on the edge of a folding chair they’d brought out for her. Her hands gripped the metal sides, and she leaned forward. No tears. Just a resolute stare that told him she expected answers. Answers Drake had withheld earlier that morning when they’d gone to Crescent Bay to formally arrest him.

  Devere didn’t look up as Will reminded him of his rights and the ever-present recorder. When Will asked if he still wanted to talk, he mumbled a half-hearted, “Whatever.”

  “You seem upset.” Will paced around the perimeter of the metal cage that held his ungettable get. The once-in-a-lifetime case you never g
et over. Twice-in-a-lifetime, apparently.

  Devere shrugged.

  “Is it Doctor Rockwell? Did she upset you?” Still no answer, so Will pushed further. “I get it. She understands you. She’s easy to talk to. You opened up to her. It must be hard to see her in pain, especially knowing you’re the one who caused it.”

  Will ran his hand along the wire mesh front of the cage, prompting Drake to raise his eyes. “You know what I don’t understand, Devere? If you care so much what she thinks about you, why’d you kill her sister?”

  Kill. Will took a necessary risk with that word, hoping it would prod something in Drake. Something human.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Okay, so we’re going to play that game again? You’re as pure as the driven snow. You have no idea how your goddamned semen ended up on a dead girl’s leg. You have no clue where Emily Rockwell could be.”

  “I didn’t kill Emily.”

  JB cleared his throat in the profound silence. “So she’s alive then?” He cut his eyes at Will.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s up to you.”

  Will felt himself teetering at the edge of a cliff. One push and that would end it. Devere would clam up, and they’d lose their chance forever. “Was she alive when you last saw her?”

  Devere closed his eyes, and Will tried to imagine the things that went on behind them. But he could only conjure a dark pit with no bottom. An abyss that had never been touched by light. “It wasn’t supposed to be Emily. I wanted her.”

  He thrust his head at the small window. At Olivia.

  “I was going to take her with me.”

  The recorder whirred on as Drake confessed. To killing Bonnie.

  “I stalked her from outside the theater. Dumped her body in the drainpipe. That bitch was robbing me blind.”

  To killing Laura.

  “Everybody knew she went running before work. She thought she was hot shit now after she got skinny.”