“Thanks, Paul. I’m sorry I can’t make it this weekend.”
When the investigation wrapped, she’d invite Paul over for dinner. She had been a good cook at one time and she sometimes treated Paul shabbily. It wouldn’t hurt to extend an olive branch.
But first she needed to find out what had happened to Caitlin Whittington.
Chapter 19
After Detective Godwin left, Grace lay down on the big bed upstairs. She covered herself with the red wool afghan Carl had given her last Christmas, closed her eyes, and retreated into a space that was hers alone.
Her body felt like lead—heavy and lifeless. Her mind was a murky pond. Thoughts came and went, images drifted past. Memories dropped in like uninvited guests, prickly and irritating.
Caitlin as a cooing baby, splashing in her bathing tub. Her first Christmas, her first day of school. The scraped knees and fevers, the tears and hugs and sloppy kisses. Shopping trips to Portland, quick trips to the store for everything from school supplies to shoelaces.
Grace curled into a ball. She drifted off to sleep intermittently, but always awoke to the same feeling of despair. At one point she heard voices downstairs. Lucy and Adam home from school. Water running in the kids’ bathroom. The heavy metal tones of Adam’s cell phone. Doors closing. Doors opening.
And then, later, Carl tiptoeing to their bedroom closet to change out of the slacks and jacket he wore to work. Grace pulled the afghan from her eyes. Outside, the sky was the murky gray of twilight. She could see the glow of street lamps reflected in the bare tree branches beyond the window. She didn’t have the energy to look at the clock but knew it was time to start dinner. Maybe past time. Still, she didn’t get up. And when Carl turned out the closet light and slid quietly from the room, she pretended to be asleep.
Alone again, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing but the long trail of empty days before her. A lifetime without Caitlin.
Finally, she washed her face and ran a comb through her hair. I am beginning to look like my mother, she thought. Sallow skin and puffy face. An old lady already.
At the top of the stairs, she jumped when she saw the door to Caitlin’s room open.
When Adam emerged, she said, “What were you doing in Caitlin’s room?”
“Nothing.” Adam shuffled his feet in that way Grace always found irksome.
“Why were you in there?” She looked to see if his hands were empty, and they were. Still, he had no reason to be poking around Caitlin’s things. “You must have had a reason.”
Adam avoided her eyes. The oversized black T-shirt hung loosely on his thin frame. “Just looking,” he said.
“Looking for what?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would upset you. I miss her, wanted to be . . . around her.”
“Around her?”
His color deepened and his face took on the red of his hair. “It’s a way to feel in touch, is all.”
Hadn’t Grace done the same thing herself, many times? Hasn’t she run her hands over Caitlin’s collection of books, smelled the scent of her pillow, lovingly examined each item of clothing in Caitlin’s closet? But that was different, Caitlin was her daughter.
And she was Adam’s stepsister, Grace reminded herself. Of course he’d miss her.
But Jake’s words echoed in her mind. He’s not family. He’s a boy her own age. An odd one.
Grace waited until Adam had gone to his own room before continuing downstairs.
Carl had already started dinner. Nothing elaborate, but all on his own he’d scrounged up ingredients for a sort of pasta carbonara and a salad. Knowing Grace’s penchant for having a green vegetable with dinner, he’d even found a bag of frozen peas in the freezer and put them on to boil. She felt a surge of gratitude and love.
“How can I help?” she offered.
“I’ve got it under control. Why don’t you have some wine and take it easy. The bottle’s open.”
“You’re the kindest man I know. Thank you.”
Carl wiped his free hand on his apron, tilted Grace’s chin, and planted a kiss and a soft nibble. “Cooking dinner is the least I can do.” He stirred the pasta with a long-handled wooden spoon. “It’s actually nice to be able to do something for you. I hate feeling so helpless.”
“You do a lot for me.” Grace poured herself a glass of merlot and topped off Carl’s glass.
“You looked pretty wrung out upstairs,” he said.
She sipped her wine. She hadn’t eaten all day, could feel the warmth spread quickly through her body. “Detective Godwin came by this afternoon,” she said, leaning against the counter. “They found Caitlin’s backpack in a Dumpster at the mall near where Karen Holiday’s purse was found. I think that’s when it hit me. It’s not speculation anymore. There’s tangible evidence. Whoever took Karen took Caitlin, too. Suddenly it all seemed so clear, so certain to me that she must be dead.”
Carl stopped stirring the sauce and looked at her. “It’s not certain at all, Grace.”
“Maybe not certain, no. But fairly likely if you look at it objectively.” He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off. “I know I’m supposed to stay optimistic. And I’m trying, I’m really trying to stay hopeful. I’m her mother, for God’s sake. I’m the last person who should ever give up hope. But I’ve never been very good at sticking my head in the sand.”
“There have been cases where kidnapped kids escaped. Sometimes the kidnapper doesn’t even hold the kid by force, just convinces her to stay. That girl in Salt Lake City, remember? It turned out she was with some religious nut as one of his wives. She had been brainwashed but not physically restrained. She’s back home now, doing fine.”
“Caitlin would never stay with someone like that voluntarily. I don’t think anyone could brainwash her to that extent.”
“And some guy locked another girl in a closet. For a couple of years, as I remember. But she managed to escape. And those boys who were kidnapped by some guy named Tree Frog or something. Lived in a bus, I think. It took years, but they escaped.”
Years of being held prisoner in a closet or the confines of a bus. Was that the golden ray of hope she was supposed to cling to for Caitlin?
“That’s not the norm, though,” Grace pointed out. She brushed her hair from her face. “Anyway, I’m doing better now. I mean, not better-better, but I crawled out from under my blanket.”
To Grace’s relief, Carl didn’t push his point. She knew he’d only been trying to boost her spirits. He was too much of a realist to buy into the happily-ever-after fantasy he’d been peddling.
“Whatever the future brings,” he said, “we’ll face it together. You’re not alone, Grace.”
She thought of Detective Godwin losing her daughter so soon after her husband’s death. “I know that. And it means the world to me.”
“Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you tell Lucy to set the table?”
“I’ll set it myself.” Grace laid the red checkered placemats on the kitchen table, her heart wrenching anew as she skipped Caitlin’s usual seat. “Detective Godwin’s daughter was murdered four years ago. It took almost two years to discover her body. They never found the killer.”
“Jesus. She told you this?”
Grace nodded.
“Why? It’s not very encouraging.”
Logically, Carl was right. Detective Godwin’s experience was anything but heartening. Nonetheless, Grace felt consoled by it. “I think I goaded her into telling me, Carl. I accused her of being unable to understand what parents of a missing child go through.”
“I don’t care what you said to her, she shouldn’t have told you.” Carl poured the pasta into a ceramic bowl. “It would have been different if her story had a happy ending.”
“She also told me her husband died of cancer a year before their daughter’s disappearance.”
“Seems to me the detective’s got issues with boundaries.”
Grace didn’t see it that way at al
l. Maybe it was because women shared in ways men couldn’t understand. “It was helpful, really.” She moved into Carl’s arms. “I couldn’t go through this without you. You’re the only thing that keeps me from drowning. Detective Godwin had to do it alone.”
Carl kissed her mouth, her eyes, her forehead. “We hold each other up, Grace. We’re a team.”
“All right already,” Adam said from the doorway, then loudly cleared his throat in case they hadn’t heard him. “Can’t you wait until after dinner for that?”
Grace thought he was teasing but she couldn’t be sure.
“No,” Carl said, one arm still around Grace’s shoulders. “Some things are more important than food.”
~~~~
Over dinner Grace relayed the information about Caitlin’s backpack to Adam and Lucy.
“Is it a good sign or a bad one?” Lucy asked, echoing Grace’s earlier question to Detective Godwin.
“I’m not sure,” Grace told her.
“Isn’t the mall where you said Karen Holiday’s purse was found?”
“Yes, but not the same Dumpster.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “The location’s got to be significant, though.”
“The mall would be an obvious spot for dumping anything,” Carl pointed out. “It’s central, it’s public, it gets a lot of traffic. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Adam hadn’t said a word. Nor had he taken more than a bite once the conversation turned to Caitlin. He seemed content to push the food around on his plate with his fork. Grace debated saying something about seeing him emerge from Caitlin’s room. It still bothered her, but she knew there were reasonable explanations and that Carl would gravitate to them without a moment’s hesitation.
Once again, Jake’s comment echoed in her mind. An odd one.
Lucy shook her head. “I bet it is important,” she said, clearly agitated. “And it doesn’t sound good. Some crazy killer is out there picking off teenage girls. Any of us could be next.”
“There’s no need to get hysterical about it, honey.” Carl patted his daughter’s arm. “I think you want to be careful, as always. Don’t go off alone. Keep alert. All the stuff we’ve talked about before. But don’t let it rule your life.”
Adam pushed back his chair.
“Where are you going?” Carl asked. “You’ve barely touched your food.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“You were the one who was prodding us to get dinner on the table.”
“I ate as much as I want.” He carried his plate into the kitchen and then tromped upstairs.
“What got into him?” Carl asked.
“He’s feeling bad about Caitlin,” Lucy said. “He doesn’t have many friends and Caitlin was”—she looked at Grace—“is a friend.”
Grace again debated telling Carl about seeing Adam in Caitlin’s room, but clearly this was not the place or time.
“Can you help me with my science report, Dad?” Lucy asked.
“Honey, you know I’m clueless about science. You should ask your mom.”
“But I’m asking you.”
Carl sighed. “You waited until the last minute, didn’t you?”
“Maybe I can help,” Grace offered. She’d been through the eighth-grade science project assignment with Caitlin only a couple of years earlier.
She expected Lucy to rebuff her offer. Instead, she got a grateful, “Are you sure? I don’t want to be any trouble. I mean, I know you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
“It will be good for me to think about something else for a bit.” And she knew her relationship with her stepdaughter was important to Carl, just as his with Caitlin had been to her.
Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
She really was, or could be, a cute girl, Grace decided. If only she’d lose some weight and do something with her stringy hair. Maybe, at some point, Grace could make a few artfully gentle suggestions.
Chapter 20
The small conference room was barely able to accommodate the seven of them crowded around the pockmarked laminate table. Rayna was wedged between Hank and Cliff Leavitt, their computer expert. Fritz Burns and another uniformed officer who’d been working the case sat on the far side of the table. Neal Cody and the chief were positioned at either end. The sense of frustration in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.
“It will be one week tomorrow,” Rayna informed them, although she knew the time line was firmly etched in everyone’s mind. One week since Caitlin Whittington had gone missing, and they didn’t have a single solid lead.
“I don’t need to remind any of you,” Chief Stoval added somberly, “the longer she’s missing, the less likely it is that there’ll be a happy outcome. So let’s go over what we’ve got. Maybe with a second look, something will click.”
It might be a “second look” for him, Rayna thought irritably. The rest of them had thought of little else during the past week.
“Let’s start with the backpack,” Rayna said, taking back the reins. “Anything more from the couple who found it?”
Fritz shook his head. “Their story didn’t change, even after a night in jail and the threat of prosecution in connection with the stolen credit card.”
“It’s only a threat?”
“The DA doesn’t want to follow through. They’ve got clean records and the boy’s family is well connected.”
“So either the person who took Caitlin tossed the backpack in the Dumpster,” Rayna said, “or a third party found it elsewhere and tossed it there.”
“Without removing her credit card or the twenty-three dollars that were in it,” Cody pointed out. “You’d think a random stranger would try to return it or contact us rather than simply dumping it.”
“Or he’d at least keep her credit card and the cash,” Hank added.
Cody nodded. “It’s almost like someone wanted us to find it.”
“Which supports a serial killer theory,” the chief said in disgust. “Someone who enjoys rubbing our noses in it.”
“In that case, the backpack ought to be our best bet for evidence.” Rayna didn’t like the fact that it had been Cody who pointed out the obvious, something she’d overlooked. She turned to Fritz. “What does forensics say? Any prints? Hairs? Fibers?”
“Nothing useful. Unless we can find a witness who saw it being tossed, I’m afraid the backpack isn’t going to help us.”
“Let’s run through the time line of the evening she disappeared,” the chief said, rising with marker in hand and flipping to a clean page on the large newsprint tablet that hung near his end of the table. “She was seen on campus around five-thirty, waiting for her ride home, right? And that’s the last we know anyone saw her.”
“Correct,” Rayna said.
He wrote the time on the tablet. “And the witness is reliable?”
“There were several. All friends of hers. And her stepsister, Lucy. One theory is that she decided to walk home.”
“And maybe she got a ride along the way.” Chief Stoval wrote “RIDE?” on his chart.
“Or was forced into a vehicle,” Hank pointed out.
Stoval added Hank’s comment to his list. “What about potential suspects? Anyone look promising?”
The detectives exchanged glances. “I’ll give it a shot,” Rayna said. “The rest of you speak up with thoughts and opinions. One of the people we looked at was a mechanic at the shop where both Grace Whittington and Beth Holiday have taken their cars. He’s a registered sex offender, but he was at work until six Friday evening. It would take him another fifteen minutes to get over to the school.”
She waited for the chief to make a mark on his chart, but he merely rolled the pen between his palms. “There was also some talk that Caitlin might have been interested in an ‘older guy,’ whatever that means. There’s a student teacher who caught our eye. He coaches the girls’ volleyball team, which Caitlin played on, and he’s pretty friendly with the kids. He’s ne
w this semester so there’s no connection to Karen Holiday, and he’s got good, solid recommendations, but he’s still a possibility. We know he would have been leaving the campus about the same time Caitlin disappeared.”
“Name?”
“Rusty Hanson.”
This time Stoval wrote the name on his board.
“Another area we looked into were clients in Caitlin’s dog walking business. Hank, you handled that.”
“We interviewed all of the men,” Hank said, “including an adult son living at home. There’s one guy in his forties, divorced, who’s a bit strange. Says he was in San Francisco over the weekend. Left Paradise Falls Thursday afternoon. We haven’t been able to verify it, but a neighbor remembers hearing the dog whining and whimpering like it was alone and hungry, so my guess is the guy’s telling the truth. Also, for what it’s worth, Caitlin’s father finally took the polygraph and passed.”
“But his fiancée has yet to volunteer,” Rayna pointed out. “And she’s the one who was closest to Caitlin in proximity. Cliff, why don’t you bring us up to date on the computer stuff?”
“Caitlin has a web-based email account we haven’t been able to access.” Cliff tended to mumble when he spoke, pulling his chin toward his sizable frame. And he rarely made eye contact. But Cliff hadn’t been hired for his gregariousness. In the realm of tech, he was tops.
“We’re working on it,” he added. “She also has an account on Facebook. Caitlin has a lot of ‘friends,’ which we all know aren’t actually friends at all. One in particular piqued my interest—a guy who calls himself Romeo. He’s sent her a few Instant Messages, general stuff asking about her life, her day, that sort of thing. But the tone is a little too friendly. Full of flattery and compliments and ways of telling her how special she is.”
“What do we know about him?” the chief asked.
“Nothing, so far. He’s got a Yahoo email address. But he appears to be posting from somewhere in Oregon.”
“There was an iPod in her locker,” Rayna noted. “Her mother says she doesn’t have an iPod. I called the school to see if anyone had reported one missing, and they hadn’t. Seems like the kind of gift a predator might give a girl he was trying to seduce.”
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