Girl of Lies (Rachel's Peril)

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  Crank looked over at her. It was out of character for Julia to ever admit weakness on any topic. “We’d better head in, then?”

  She looked back, meeting his eyes. “Right.” Her eyes darted to Anthony, in the back seat. “Tell me again why you’re along for this?”

  Anthony smiled. “I’m here to help you.”

  She shook her head then opened the door of the rental car. “Let’s go.”

  Crank opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, walking up to the door beside his wife.

  After twelve years together, he knew her moods well. But this was unusual. She was pensive and withdrawn in a way he’d rarely seen.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice quiet. He touched her arm and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded, brushing him off, and rang the doorbell to the house. Crank knew she had a key. But Julia had never actually lived in this house, so whenever they visited, she was scrupulous about knocking.

  Today, however, there was no answer. They waited, and she rang the bell again. And again.

  Crank coughed. “You’ve got your key on you?”

  “Yes,” Julia said. She sighed. “I don’t like using it.” She opened her purse and rooted around in it for a minute. Then she fitted a key to the deadbolt and carefully turned it. Crank heard the lock slide, then click, and she opened the door.

  “Well, then,” she said, her voice low. She paused for a moment more. Then she pushed the door open. It was immediately apparent no one had been home in some days. The mudroom at the foot of the stairs was cluttered with junk mail. Magazines and catalogues, bills and other mail had grown into a small pile behind the door. A rank smell radiated from somewhere inside—spoiled milk or worse.

  Julia looked at the pile of mail, then at Crank.

  “She’s fine,” he said. “Just out of town or something. She told your dad she was going to some retreat center.”

  “For how long?” she said. “I spoke with her on Friday, and this is a lot more mail than that. And that smell…”

  She started up the stairs. Crank followed, leaving a bewildered Anthony Walker behind.

  The house was quiet, empty. Eerily so. As they looked around the ground floor, with all the lights out and not a soul in the house, Crank realized that he had never once been in this house by himself. It was dark inside, and the quiet was eerie and uncomfortable. It was almost as if the fog outside had seeped into the house, rendering it cold and dark.

  Crank thought back. The last time he’d been here was the fall of 2012—Thanksgiving night. Andrea had been in Spain, but the rest of the Thompson clan was on hand, and that night, at least, they were full of drama. Jessica and Sarah were fighting. Alexandra had revealed her sexual assault at school and then Dylan Paris showed up on the doorstep after a cross-country flight. An altogether satisfying night.

  The house was very different now.

  Cold.

  Crank followed Julia into the kitchen. She froze at the door to the kitchen.

  “What is it?” he asked, coming up behind her. Then he saw and heard it.

  The floor on the far side of the kitchen table was covered in… vomit? Days old. Maybe weeks. Dried out, but crawling with ants and flies. This was the source of the smell. Julia stared for one minute, and then her shoulders shook. Once, twice, then she ran, covering her mouth, for the bathroom.

  Anthony came up behind Crank.

  “I don’t get it,” Anthony said.

  “I don’t either. Adelina would never leave her house in this condition unless it were a real emergency.”

  Crank met Anthony’s eyes. Then he said, “I don’t know what’s going on here. And I don’t know why Julia’s trusting you. But you better not screw her over.”

  Anthony said, “That’s not how I do business.”

  “I’m cleaning this shit up,” Crank replied.

  “Don’t. In case—in case the police need to get involved.”

  Crank sucked in a breath. Anthony was right, of course. You didn’t fuck with the scene of a crime, if that’s what this was. He’d absorbed that much and more from his father, a retired Boston cop, over the years.

  With that in mind, Crank tiptoed around the kitchen. More signs of an abrupt departure. The coffee pot was full, but cold, and it had a spot of mold floating on top of the liquid. Two glasses, dirty, in the sink. On the kitchen floor, near the vomit, a half-gallon of milk in its plastic container, laying on it’s side and bloated from expanding glasses. That wasn’t going to smell good.

  Crank didn’t touch anything. “Let’s go,” he said. “We leave everything as it is. Whatever the fuck happened, Adelina and Jessica left in a hurry.”

  As they stepped out of the kitchen, they found Julia sitting at the dining table. She had her hands on her laps, her posture straight, staring straight ahead at the wall.

  “Julia?” Crank asked.

  She looked up at him. “They’ve been gone a week. At least. How the hell didn’t we know? What kind of family are we? My mother and one of my sisters has been missing for a week and no one even knew?”

  Crank put a hand on her shoulder. “You talked on the phone with her on Friday.”

  “She sure as hell wasn’t here.”

  “So, maybe she’s at that retreat your Dad talked about?”

  “Why wouldn’t she say anything? Why leave the place such a disaster?”

  Crank sighed. “I don’t know. I… I don’t know. My suggestion… let’s take a look around. If we don’t see anything, we call the cops.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. All right. Check her bedroom and bathroom. Maybe there’s some clue there.”

  She stood and led the way, down the hall, past the closed door to Richard Thompson’s office, and up the stairs. The second floor had two bedrooms, Adelina and Richard’s.

  “Mother’s first,” Julia said.

  “Wait,” Crank said. “They have separate rooms?”

  “Well—yeah.”

  “Weird.”

  Julia nodded. “I guess. It’s been that way a long time.”

  She turned the doorknob.

  The room was spare. A queen sized bed, a small bookshelf, a bureau and a desk/vanity combo. Adelina had a large walk-in closet, hung with dresses on both sides.

  “She didn’t pack much stuff,” Julia said, looking in the closet. The desk and vanity told the same story. Adelina’s laptop was still on the desk, along with a charger cable for an iPhone. Did Adelina have another charger? Impossible to know. Julia walked to the desk and tentatively pressed the power button. The computer, a relatively new MacBook, began to boot up.

  “Who leaves for a trip without their laptop?” Anthony asked.

  “And without cleaning the kitchen floor?” Julia asked.

  They watched the computer boot up, and Crank felt a sick fascination. What would they see when the screen finally appeared? Possibly nothing. Possibly, Adelina’s computer would be password protected. Or infected by viruses. Or wired to a bomb which would explode when they finished inspecting it. Who knew?

  The computer finally booted to a password prompt.

  “Damn,” Julia muttered. She slid into the chair, chewing on her lower lip. She reached out and attempted a password. No good. Then she tried another. Nothing. “I could do this all day,” Julia said. She tried three more passwords in quick succession. Nothing.

  “What have you tried so far?”

  “Variations on my Dad’s name and birthdate. Her birthday. Her hometown.”

  Crank’s eyes darted across the hall to Richard’s bedroom. “Somehow I don’t think she’s going to use anything of his as a password.”

  Julia frowned. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Your parents aren’t close?” Anthony asked.

  “They’re WASP iceboxes,” Crank said.

  “Not my mother,” Julia said. “She’s no WASP.”

  “Fair,” Crank
replied. She tried another password. Crank wandered across the room. He opened the top drawer of the bureau.

  Crank frowned. Half a dozen prescription bottles. Buspirone. Three times a day for anxiety. Amitriptyline for panic disorder. Risperdal for bipolar symptoms.

  Crank said. “Your mom is on some serious meds. Take a look at this?”

  Julia stood and walked over. Her eyebrows scrunched together. ““Panic disorder? Bipolar?” Her eyes darted to Crank’s. Then she pulled the drawer out further.

  A battered and frayed Bible. Notes were stuffed in the Bible, her mother’s dense handwriting on them. She opened the Bible up to one of the well-worn notes.

  A verse had been underlined several times and circled in pencil.

  Zephaniah 1:9:

  On that day I will punish

  all who leap over the threshold,

  who fill their master’s house

  with violence and fraud.

  Julia frowned, confused, and flipped through the Bible again. Another heavily underscored verse.

  Psalm 37:

  For the wicked shall be cut off,

  but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

  “My Mom was always devout. But this is… I don’t know.”

  Julia lay the Bible down.

  “Wait—” she said. She bent down a little, peering in the top drawer. At the very back, another book. She pulled it out.

  It was a journal. Her eyes went to Crank’s. “I don’t know if I…”

  “She’s missing,” he said.

  “Right.” She took a deep breath then opened it up.

  It was in Spanish. Densely written in barely legible handwriting that covered every square inch of the journal’s pages. No margins. No paragraph marks. A solid block of text.

  On every single page.

  “Oh, my God,” Julia said. “I feel like I don’t even know who she is.”

  “Can you read it?” Crank asked.

  “I hardly know any Spanish,” she said. She flipped through. “Some of it I recognize, or… maybe.” Her eyebrows furrowed. “This can’t be right.”

  “What is it?” Crank moved closer to her.

  “I swear it says, He raped me again today. Or violated? I’m not sure, I don’t really know Spanish!” Julia swallowed and looked up to Crank. “I’m reading this wrong. It can’t be.”

  “Bring that with you,” Crank said.

  She began to pace back and forth. Finally, she marched across the hall, shoving open the door to her father’s bedroom.

  The room was spare. Clothing hung in the closet. Julia began to pull open drawers. Clothing. Another one. Then another. The fourth drawer, she pulled open and dumped out, tossing clothing across the bed. Her face was oddly frozen, confused. She pulled open another drawer.

  “Nothing,” she said. Then she looked up at Crank. “The office.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Your Dad’s office?”

  Julia nodded. She turned and walked out, then down the stairs.

  The office door was closed and locked. Unlike the rest of the doors in the house, this one had a relatively new doorknob, modern, with a metal plate.

  Julia let out another curse. Then she said, “Wait… stay here.” Then she ran downstairs.

  “I don’t get it,” Anthony said.

  “I don’t either,” Crank replied. “But—she’s onto something.”

  Two minutes later, Julia was back. And she was holding a small axe.

  “I’ll handle that,” Crank said. “If we’re doing breaking and entering, let me handle the breaking part.”

  She snorted. “All right. Have fun.”

  Anthony said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Julia shook her head. “If you don’t think so, go on without us.”

  Three minutes later, Crank had the door open. Mangled, broken to shreds. But open.

  The office was much as Crank remembered it from his one visit in here. Ten years ago? More? A large bookshelf extended from the ceiling to the floor, an entire wall covered in books. The wall with the door was covered mostly in photographs and plaques. Pictures of Richard Thompson with various Presidents: Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George Bush. A photo showed a much younger Thompson in military fatigues, his arm around another man, both of them standing in a desert.

  On the desk, a single family portrait with all of the daughters. No pictures anywhere else in the office of Adelina, but each of the daughters had a portrait somewhere on the wall.

  Except Andrea.

  “That stings,” Crank muttered.

  Anthony was looking at one of the photos, the one of Thompson in the desert. He said, “That’s Vasily Katatygin.”

  “Who?” Julia asked.

  Anthony shook his head. “Highest ranking Soviet defector to the Afghan rebels. He was a Spetsnaz Major—that’s the Russian Special Forces, like our Green Berets. He ended up joining Ahmad Massoud’s militia.”

  “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Crank said.

  “I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” Anthony said. “That was thirty years ago.”

  “My dad was never posted to Afghanistan,” Julia said.

  “Well, nobody officially was back then,” Anthony said.

  Julia wandered around the office, a frown on her face. She began to open desk drawers.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Crank slid open another drawer. Files. He pulled one out randomly. It was labelled Wakhan/Badackshan. Idly, he flipped it open, then his eyes widened. He dropped the file. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  “What is it?” Julia asked.

  She reached for the file, but Crank put his hand on it. “You don’t want to look at that.”

  “The fuck I don’t,” she replied, grabbing the file away from him. She laid it open on the desk and gasped.

  The first thing in the file was the photo Crank had seen. A dozen or more bodies, most of them children. Bloated, blackened. Crank winced and looked away.

  Anthony moved forward and picked up the file. “Holy fuck, that’s Wakhan. Why does your father have this?”

  “Wait. What?” Crank said as Anthony flipped through the file.

  Anthony said, “Back in December 1983. A group of rebels got their hands on nerve gas and used it on a village they felt was collaborating too closely with the Soviets. As a matter of fact it was Ahmad Massoud’s militia, or at least they were implicated.”

  Julia’s eyes darted to the picture on the wall. “Was that guy involved? Karatygin?”

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Anthony replied.

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t tell us where Julia’s mom is,” Crank said. “Let’s keep looking.”

  He pulled another file out of the drawer. Credit card bills. Another file contained what appeared to be a copy of Richard Thompson’s personnel file. Crank dumped those on the desk and kept looking.

  “Huh,” Anthony said, as Crank continued to rummage through the drawer.

  “What is it?” Julia asked.

  “Look at this,” he said. “I think your dad may not have been State Department at all. I’m starting to think CIA.”

  “What? Dad? No way.”

  Anthony said, “You never know. Take a look at this.” He laid the file on the table in front of her and pointed at something in it.

  Crank had frozen, looking at another file. He didn’t say anything as he looked at it. His heart was beating heavily.

  The file was a police report. February 13, 1990. From the San Francisco Police Department.

  The photos made it all too clear what had happened. Someone had beaten Adelina Thompson nearly to death. Swollen face, bloody lip. Jesus Christ, he thought, when he saw the sentence, Victim refuses rape examination.

  Crank looked up at his wife. She was having a lively debate with Anthony about the likelihood of her father being in the Central Intelligence Agency. Laughing a little.

>   Then she saw Crank’s face.

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head. Shit. She reached out and grabbed the file. Then her eyes widened, and she gasped, covering her mouth.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  A lab report fell from the file. Julia picked it up with shaking hands. Her eyes scanned it, then she handed it to Crank.

  It was from the DNA Diagnostic Center. The first paragraph read:

  Dear Mr. Thompson. Thank you for your recent examination at the DNA Diagnostic Center. At your request, we have examined the samples provided, and can rule within 99.9% probability that the individuals tested are not related.

  The lab report was dated February 12, 1990.

  “That son of a bitch,” Julia whispered. Her eyes scanned the file. The photographs of her mother. Beaten and raped. “It says… it says in here that she refused to press charges. The police referred her to the battered women’s shelter.”

  “Fuck,” Crank muttered.

  “That’s not it,” she said. “Alexandra was born November 9.” Julia began to breathe heavily. Hyperventilating. “She was born exactly nine months after this police report, Crank. Oh, my God. Oh my God, and do you know how badly I’ve treated my mother?” Julia’s voice sounded desperate as her eyes swiveled to Crank.

  “There’s no way you could have known,” he whispered.

  “She’s my mother,” Julia cried. “Look what he did to her! Is it any wonder she couldn’t be there for me? Can you even imagine what she went through?”

  She stood up, her fists clenched. Then she cried out. “We have to find my mother, Crank. We have to!”

  Crank looked up at the sound of brakes out front. His eyes darted to the window. A car had parked out front, and two men got out. Both of them had short, closely cropped hair and muscular builds. Both wore open suit coats.

  “Trouble,” Crank muttered.

  1. George-Phillip. 10:35 pm GMT

  AS WAS HIS HABIT, George-Phillip stopped in to check on Jane when he arrived home a few minutes after 10 pm.

  Jane, of course, was fast asleep in her bedroom, her tiny hand curled up, touching her lips, her knees drawn up to her chest under the blanket. She breathed in and out quietly, her raven hair spread out evenly around her head in a fan.