Finding Claire Fletcher (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 1)

by Lisa Regan

  He stroked my face and hair and rocked me back and forth. “I’m sorry, my sweet Lynn,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I should not have blamed you. It’s my job to keep you safe and I didn’t. It’s all my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, my voice only a whisper.

  “I’ve made it right,” he said, rocking, rocking, rocking. “I’ve made it right.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

  “I’ve done it,” he said. “I’ve made it right. You’ll see.”

  He carried me into the living room, my small body crushed against his, my head lolling like the broken stem of a heavy flower on his shoulder. He lifted my chin gently and turned my head toward the front door so I could see what he’d done. He had to gather me up like a pile of falling leaves when the dry heaves set in.

  “I’ve made it right,” he said softly, lowering me to the floor.

  Rudy had been bludgeoned to death. At the sight of his body, I swayed back and forth on my hands and knees. My stomach had nothing in it to expel. My body tried to turn inside out. Then the room expanded so that everything in it seemed miles away. It snapped back, slingshotting toward me and knocking me to my side. I felt the boulder of panic crushing my chest. There was no air, but there was blackness. I let it take me.

  Rudy took his place in the backyard next to Sarah. I watched the dirt cover his body, one shovelful at a time until all that was left was a slightly raised mound of freshly turned earth. Now in my hell I had my own private cemetery of people whose lives had been taken in my name. A fictitious name, a name given to me by a man who had taken by force everything that mattered.

  Each night I sat in the darkness—forehead pressed against my window—and held vigil over the two unmarked, unconsecrated graves.

  I could never go back. I understood that finally.

  I had a new fantasy. In it, my captor left for work, or wherever he went when he was not devising innovative ways to twist my soul and body around his depravity. He did not return. Ever. Though I would have no way of knowing, I still imagined that he was killed in some random disaster. A car wreck, a fire, earthquake, flood, or some freak occurrence like being struck by lightning.

  I hated him with an intensity that rocked my entire being but knew I could never kill him myself. I could never do what he did so easily and without compunction. Having seen the things I had, I knew that taking a life, even one as abhorrent as his, was not within my capabilities.

  Each time he left the house, sometimes leaving me locked in my room but no longer binding me, I willed him not to return. I would pass my days reading and rereading the books he had brought. If I got out of the room, I would nourish myself until the house was emptied of its contents. Then if I were lucky, I would die. Maybe after a while someone would find me, and the mystery of my disappearance would be solved to some degree.

  My family could lay me to rest, and they would never have to know all the things I knew. Perhaps they could live peacefully in that way. The bodies in the back might be found and identified, more mysteries finally laid to rest. Their own families could give them proper burials, and no one would know my part in their demise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Connor didn’t believe a single thing Irene Geary had told him. He doubted she had knowledge about Claire’s abduction, but she was definitely hiding something. He’d have to put a call out to the Phoenix PD in order to see if they could spare someone to make a house call. But first he dialed Noel Geary’s number.

  She answered on the fourth ring. Connor identified himself, explained that he was investigating the disappearance of a woman named Claire Fletcher and the possible connection between her and a former tenant of Irene Geary, who’d lived at 1653 Larkspur Road in 1995.

  “A tenant?” Noel said. “We never had any tenants. Who told you that?”

  “Your mother,” Connor replied.

  Humorless laughter, sharp and derisive filtered through the phone line. “Is that what she’s telling people now?”

  Connor leaned his elbows on his desk and pressed the receiver close to his face. “You did not have a tenant at that address at that time?” he asked.

  “He wasn’t a tenant,” Noel said. “He was her boyfriend.”

  The spiral of excitement that had fizzled when Irene Geary hung up on him suddenly exploded, sending a buzz through Connor’s body.

  “Her boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” Noel said. “One of many. He was a freak, a real weirdo, that guy. I never saw him again after we moved, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did something disgusting to some unsuspecting female.”

  “Do you remember his name?” Connor asked.

  “Sure,” Noel said. “It was, uh, Rod something. Rod …” She trailed off. “Shit, I can’t remember his last name, but I could probably think of it if I tried.”

  “Ms. Geary, would you be willing to meet in person?” Connor asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “There’s lots I can tell you about that perv. But I gotta work tonight. You could come by tomorrow at like, noon.”

  “That would be great,” Connor said.

  “You got my address?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” Connor replied.

  “I’m on the second floor, number twenty-nine. Just knock.”

  “Great,” Connor said. “I’ll see you then.”

  Connor felt like he might be propelled right out of his chair by the adrenaline coursing at warp speed through his body. Whatever Noel Geary knew could very well break the case wide open. Connor tried to quell his excitement. Yes, Noel Geary could break the case, but it was also possible that the lead could go nowhere. Plus he had a whole day to kill before he met with Farrell.

  Connor spent the day at his desk. He tried Irene Geary several times, but she did not answer. He threw himself into paperwork. It wasn’t nearly as exhilarating as what he normally did in his capacity as a detective, but it kept him occupied. He left the office at six. Night closed in as he pulled into his driveway.

  Connor locked his car door. He heard a noise coming from the back of his house. The impending darkness cast dusky shadows over the street. Connor stood perfectly still and listened. He heard something muffled and quick, but he could not identify it. Normally he would have dismissed it as a neighbor’s escaped dog or cat, but tonight Claire’s words hung heavy on his mind.

  You might be in danger.

  Slipping his hand inside his jacket, he drew his gun and stepped quietly to the side of the house. He lifted the latch on the wire fence and opened it wide enough for his body to slide through. He stayed off the cement path that led to the backyard, padding his steps in the grass. He kept close to the house, gun held in both hands, pointed slightly downward.

  It was darker toward the back of the house, and Connor paused long enough for his eyes to adjust before turning the corner into his backyard.

  There was a figure cut from the shadows, tall and solid. The man’s back was turned to Connor. He peered through the sliding glass doors, seemingly unaware of Connor or the gun trained at the center of his back. Connor took two steps forward and said, “Turn around with your hands in the air.”

  The man’s hands shot up over his head, and he turned immediately. “Parks, it’s me,” he said.

  Connor squinted. “Mitch?”

  “I’m stepping toward you,” the man said.

  Connor backed up one step, and out of the shadows stepped Mitch Farrell, hands held aloft, grinning. Connor sighed and lowered his weapon. “Farrell, what the hell are you doing? I could have shot you.”

  Farrell looked as relieved as Connor felt. He put his hands down and shook his head. “I’m too old for this shit,” he said. “You almost scared the piss out of me.”

  Connor holstered his weapon. “I scared you? Farrell, I thought you were breaking into my house. I could have killed you.”

  The two men walked around to the front of the house. “I just got here before you. I told you
I wanted to check out your security measures,” Farrell explained.

  Connor let them in the front door and flicked on the living room lights. “By skulking around in the dark and peeking in my windows?”

  Farrell trailed Connor into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said. “But you know this place really isn’t that secure.”

  Connor opened his fridge. He handed Farrell a beer before popping one open himself and guzzling down nearly half of it in a single gulp. He looked at Mitch. “Not that secure? If I had put a bullet in you, you’d be singing a different tune.”

  Mitch rolled his eyes and took a drink. “Yeah, a funeral dirge. I’m serious, Parks. You don’t even have a security system. Anyone with half a brain could get in here.”

  Connor took off his jacket and hung it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Without alerting me?” he said.

  Mitch held a hand up in the air. “Since you’re the one with the gun, I’m not going to argue with you, but I’m going to call the home security outfit I use and have them come out here.”

  “You really think that’s necessary?”

  “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here,” Mitch said. He frowned and looked at Connor from under a thick furrow of brows.

  “What is it?” Connor said.

  “I checked out Teplitz, Speer, and Randall today,” Mitch said.

  The statement held no trace of menace, but Mitch’s tone was foreboding enough to make the hairs on the back of Connor’s neck stand up. He gulped down the rest of his beer and retrieved another from the fridge.

  “I found out something today too,” he said. “Come in the other room.”

  Farrell followed him into the dining room. He gasped when Connor flicked on the lights, taking it in. “Wow,” he said. “You’re a one-man task force.”

  Connor managed a grin. “I know.”

  They sat at the table, and Mitch fingered the pages from Claire’s file spread before him. Connor rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and put his elbows on the table. He took a long drink before looking at Mitch. “What did you find out?” he asked.

  Mitch cocked his head to one side. “It doesn’t look good,” he said. “I couldn’t find any of them, but I found their next of kin.”

  Again, Connor felt icy fingers stirring the hairs on the nape of his neck. “Next of kin?”

  “Teplitz disappeared two days after visiting the Fletchers, almost a week after he reported spending the night with Claire. He was living in an apartment just outside the city, working for some computer place. He went to work, drove home, parked his car out front, and was never seen or heard from again.

  “Apartment was undisturbed. Didn’t look like he’d even been in there after work. The door was still locked. The employer called his emergency contact when he didn’t show up for work three days in a row. His mother drove up there, had the super let her in. Nothing. Filed a missing persons report, asked around, but no one reported seeing anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. Nothing in or on the car. He just disappeared. Vanished. No sign of him for the last eight years.”

  Connor’s limbs felt chilled. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more but asked anyway. “Martin Speer?”

  Mitch took a long sip of beer. “Speer’s house burnt to the ground two months after he visited the Fletchers. He was asleep in his bed. The cause of the fire couldn’t be determined, but arson could not be ruled out.”

  “And Randall?” Connor asked, swallowing hard over the lump that had formed in his throat.

  “Another vanishing act,” Mitch said. “Three weeks after he went to the Fletcher home, he disappeared. Left his house, told his roommate he was going to the bar, never got there, although his car was found in the parking lot. No one in the bar saw him. No one remembers seeing him in the parking lot or seeing anyone else around that time. Car was fine, no sign of a struggle, assault, or homicide. When he didn’t come home after three days, the roomie calls his work to see if he showed up there. They hadn’t seen him either. Roomie calls the family; they file a missing persons. Nothing turned up.”

  “You didn’t hear about any of this before?” Connor said.

  Mitch shrugged. “Hey, I interviewed them, turned them over to the guys who worked the original case. With the exception of Speer, who was older, they all cleared as suspects immediately. They produced no real leads, and I couldn’t be sure that the woman they’d met was really Claire. It didn’t seem important to follow up.”

  Connor ground his teeth together and closed his palms around the cool, sweaty beer bottle in front of him. Farrell was right about the three men producing no leads. Even if he had followed up before and the men had been around to talk to him, it was doubtful Farrell would have discovered anything useful; however, the fact that now two of them were missing and one was dead seemed rather significant.

  Mitch studied Connor over his upturned beer bottle as he drained the rest of the fluid from it. “Bet that home security outfit doesn’t sound like such a bad idea now, huh?”

  Connor rubbed his face with both hands and then swept them through his hair. “Holy shit,” he said.

  He tried to think clinically, like he would on any other case that did not personally involve him. “So we have three guys, all meet Claire, spend the night with her in a motel. She leaves the address, they go to the house, find out she’s missing. They talk to you, talk to the police. Once they’re in the clear with the authorities, they go on with their lives, probably wishing they’d never heard of Claire Fletcher. Next thing anyone knows is they’re gone, either missing or dead.”

  “Yep,” Mitch said. “I think we can assume that now we know what Claire meant when she said you might be in danger.”

  “How does this guy know who she’s seen?” Connor said.

  Mitch shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s keeping an eye on her or maybe he is keeping tabs on the Fletcher family residence. Maybe both. Who the hell knows? I think you should come stay with me till we figure this thing out.”

  Connor shook his head. “No. No way. I’m staying put.”

  Mitch leaned over the table and pointed a finger toward Connor. “Whoever this piece of human garbage is, he’s smooth. Either he’s the luckiest damn criminal in the world or he knows what the hell he’s doing. We shouldn’t be taking any chances.”

  “Duly noted,” Connor replied. “But I have an advantage those other poor schmucks didn’t. I know he’s coming. I say we rig the house and let the bastard come.”

  Mitch grunted. “Don’t be an idiot, Parks. I want to get this guy as much as you do, but I don’t want to get killed doing it, and I don’t want you to get killed either.”

  “Farrell, I’m a professional. I deal with this kind of scum every day.”

  “Not the kind that knocks on your door,” Farrell pointed out.

  “I’m firm on this,” Connor said. “I’m staying put. Besides, after tomorrow, we might be able to knock on his door.”

  Mitch’s eyebrows shot up. “Tell me,” he said.

  Connor recounted his phone calls to the Geary women and told Mitch about his appointment with Noel Geary at noon the next day.

  “I’m riding shotgun,” Farrell said in a tone that brooked no objections. “Did you run the area for addresses belonging to guys with the first name Rod?”

  Connor sighed. “Yeah, for the better part of the day. I tried Rod, Roderick, Rodney, every variation I could think of and got nothing. But I think we’ll have a better handle on it after we talk to Geary.”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Where’d you get with the phone records?” Connor asked.

  “I have a call out but it’s going to take some time,” Farrell said. “Then again, the way things are shaping up, we may not need it. We could break this whole thing wide open by Monday.”

  Connor nodded, then frowned. “Monday,” he groaned.

  “What about it?”

  “The review board. I’m going on the spit,” Connor said.

  He
told Mitch about the shooting two weeks prior and about the case that led up to it. As he spoke, the memory of Claire in his arms, soft and intoxicating, asking to hear the details of the gruesome crimes teased his brain.

  “Well, it’s not the best case of officer-involved shooting,” Mitch said. “But you might be okay. Just act properly remorseful. You took a human life. Justice should never reside in the hands of a single man, even if he is an officer of the law. The guy had rights. He should have had his day in court. Protect and serve and all that crap.

  “Guy evaded arrest twice, had a long list of priors—which included possession of illegal firearms. He was hiding in the closet, which meant he was already aware that the police were on the premises. He went to draw a weapon, you made a call, it just happened to be the wrong one, et cetera. Show them you’re sorry, and they ought to cut you some slack.”

  Connor nodded along with Farrell’s suggestions, thinking that none of Farrell’s words coming from his lips would be a lie. It felt good knowing that the rapist was off the streets forever. No chance of acquittal or appeal on some technicality. No chance of parole. He would never hurt another person. A small part of him felt gratified—the part that still had nightmares about the battered faces of the victims, the horrible accounts of their ordeals told from trembling lips wet with tears. On the days that he thought about those women, whose trust in everything safe and good in the world had been shattered, whose bodies seemed to be made up more of fear than of flesh and blood, Connor felt good about the shooting.

  But those moments were not as plentiful as the ones in which he felt guilty and ashamed.

  Mitch looked around the room and sighed. “You want me to stay here tonight?” he asked.

  Connor shook his head. “No,” he said. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m okay for tonight.”

  They talked for another half hour before Connor walked Mitch to the door. Mitch turned to him before leaving. “Sure you don’t want me to stay?” he asked.