The Longest Silence

by Debra Webb

  She paid her select few associates well to handle their end of things. Time had not changed the terms of their long-ago contract. Yesterday’s complication had been unfortunate but those potential issues had been resolved. Whoever had taken her asset out of play had done them both a favor. Miles Conway would have had to go shortly, in any event.

  Soon this would be finished and she would be free to move on with her life. Until then, there could be no mistakes—no more complications.

  “I was visited by a woman today who claimed to be the sister of the Durand girl.”

  A frown tugged at her. “The Durand girl doesn’t have a sister.” The backgrounds of both subjects had been thoroughly examined. “Your visitor was lying.”

  “I thought as much.” Ima sighed. “After she left, my mind wouldn’t let go of the visit. The more I pictured the woman’s face, the more I realized I had seen her before. Between that and what I discovered about the man who pretended to be her husband, I am very concerned that the police may know something.”

  “What man?” The police knew nothing relevant. Her asset in the department would have warned her.

  “He claimed his name was Gates, but he was actually Special Agent Anthony LeDoux from the FBI.”

  Not surprising. LeDoux was Durand’s uncle. He was actually one of the reasons the girl had been chosen. He would find the trail of prepared evidence she had left for him.

  “We have nothing to fear from the police. Every detail has been taken care of.” She exhaled a breath of impatience. “I will ask you again, Dr. Alexander, since I despise having my time wasted. How does this problem involve me?” So far her old friend had told her nothing for which she had not prepared.

  “The woman, she was test subject number one.”

  The news sent a quake through her. That was highly unlikely. Why would she come back after all these years? Clearly Ima’s paranoia was overriding her reason. “You must be mistaken.”

  “No,” Ima argued. “I am not mistaken. I remembered the birthmark on her abdomen. It was her. It was Joanna Guthrie.”

  A moment’s hesitation was required. She closed her eyes and calmed herself. “If you recognized her, then she certainly recognized you. Perhaps she came to your clinic because she remembered you.”

  “I... I’m not sure,” Ima stuttered.

  Being unsure was not good enough. “If you believe she recognized you, then I suggest you stop wasting my time and do whatever is necessary to protect your family.”

  She ended the call.

  Joanna Guthrie.

  If not for the shortness of time she would almost be interested in that development.

  But there was no time.

  The grand finale was already in place.

  24

  Day Three

  Eighteen years ago...

  I can’t guess what time it is or even how long we have been in this dark place. They haven’t given us any food but water is provided every day. A sixteen-ounce plastic bottle of water is there whenever we wake up.

  I have to watch the other girl. She tries to grab more than her share. She’s a bitch. All she does is laugh whenever Ellen cries.

  It feels weird sitting here in the dark. No clothes. No nothing but the smooth feel of this box or cage or whatever it is. Occasionally we bump into each other if we move around. There are the cylinder bottles of water. Nothing else. No other texture—except the roughness of our skin. We need more water. And there is no sound except the noises we make.

  Nothing.

  I talk Ellen into walking around the dark place with me. I keep one arm out to make sure we don’t run into anything. The other girl refuses to walk with us.

  “Your muscles will atrophy,” I warn.

  She ignores me.

  Whatever. I can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

  I laugh. I can’t even save myself.

  I have felt over every square inch of this place and I am unable to feel a seam or crack that would indicate a door. It has to be overhead. They—whoever they are—are getting water in here to us somehow.

  I suddenly feel so sleepy I can hardly hold my eyes open. Ellen is leaning against me. “We need to sit down.”

  I barely manage to lower myself onto the floor before my thoughts disappear into the darkness.

  * * *

  It is still dark when I wake up but this darkness is different.

  It smells different.

  I reach out with my hand. Nothing.

  I listen.

  Wait. I hear someone else breathing.

  “Fuck.”

  I jerk at the word. I am pretty sure the other person breathing is the no-name girl. Where is Ellen?

  My heart starts to pound, I rise up on my hands and knees and move around the room. I bump into No-Name.

  “Get the fuck off me.”

  “Where’s Ellen?”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “If you hurt her,” I threaten.

  “I just woke up,” she snarls.

  “Stand up.”

  Man’s voice. Where the hell did that come from?

  No-Name and I scramble to our feet.

  “Where’s that voice coming from?” she whispers.

  Hell if I know. “Sounds like a man.”

  But it’s kind of garbled. Like one of those machines that disguises the voice.

  “If you want to eat today, you will fight. The winner gets to eat.”

  “What?” I instinctively back away from No-Name.

  “You have ten minutes. The winner of the battle gets to eat.”

  No-Name rushes forward. She hits me hard in the face.

  Blood spurts from my nose.

  25

  Milledgeville Public Safety Office

  1:00 p.m.

  Phelps had called and demanded Tony come to his office. No doubt someone at the Student Center or one of Parton’s friends had reported his visit. Maybe Dr. Alexander had filed a complaint, but he doubted that scenario. The woman had been as rattled as Joanna over the visit.

  Tony issued a final warning to her. “Do not walk out that door until I’m with you.”

  “You said that already.” She dropped into a chair in the lobby. “I’ll be right here waiting, honey.” She plastered on a fake smile and dug out her cell phone. “I’ll just play on Facebook. See what all my friends are up to.”

  The visit to Alexander had unsettled her. Besides the breakdown in the bathroom at the gas station, she had picked at her lunch. Seemed distracted and distant. She’d said it was only because she remembered going to the clinic and being given her first prescription of birth control pills about a month before she was abducted. Dr. Alexander had been Dr. Kato then. Milledgeville was a small town, made sense that victims would have been to some of the same places and met some of the same faces. His thoughts on the matter had done nothing to calm her. If anything he’d made her more upset.

  As for Facebook, he had a feeling she had about as many friends as he did, all of whom could be counted on one hand.

  When the receptionist buzzed him through to the chief’s office, Tony glanced at her one last time. She never looked up from her phone.

  The short walk to the chief’s office gave him about ten seconds to consider what the hell he was going to do next. He was no closer to finding Tiffany than he had been when he arrived. Something had to give here.

  As he’d suspected, Chief Buckley from campus security waited with Phelps.

  Phelps said, “Have a seat, Mr. LeDoux.”

  “Where are we on the official investigation?” Tony settled into the chair next to Buckley. “I assume things are going well since the two of you are able to take valuable time and assets away from the search to speak with me.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, LeD
oux.” Buckley looked to Phelps.

  Phelps said, “You dropped by the walk-in clinic this morning and met with Dr. Alexander.”

  “Do you have someone following me?” He directed the question to Phelps. He didn’t expect Buckley to have the assets to spare. After all, he had two students missing.

  “Dr. Alexander was in a terrible accident about two hours ago,” Phelps said. “She survived but she’s in critical condition. They airlifted her to Macon.”

  “Will she make it?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Do you suspect foul play?” Someone would have had to act fast to make that happen. They didn’t leave the clinic before quarter of ten.

  Phelps shook his head. “Actually we suspect she was trying to kill herself. The one witness to the accident says it looked as if she drove straight into that power pole.” He shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” Whatever they wanted to know, he wasn’t drawing them a map.

  “The reason I called you,” Phelps went on, “is that my detective just told me Dr. Alexander’s nurse said she was very upset after meeting with you and your wife. The doctor said she needed to run home for a few minutes and left a clinic full of patients.”

  “We’d like to know what the two of you discussed.” This from Buckley.

  “The doctor and I didn’t discuss anything relevant to the case,” Tony clarified up front. He didn’t see the harm in sharing what he had so far. “Both Tiffany and Vickie had recently been prescribed birth control pills by Dr. Alexander. In fact, the nurse mentioned that Alexander did a complete physical on Tiffany and Vickie. I don’t know about Vickie, but my niece had a complete physical when she was home over Christmas break. I can’t imagine she would have bothered with another this soon, which tells me Alexander requested it as a requirement for issuing the birth control prescription.”

  Phelps considered the response, and then shook his head. “Maybe Alexander has been milking insurance companies by scheduling unnecessary tests and such but that just doesn’t feel like a reason to want to kill herself.”

  Tony shrugged. “You got me, Chief.”

  “We don’t have you, LeDoux,” Buckley spoke up. “That’s the problem. It seems as though you’re conducting your own, separate investigation and I, for one, don’t feel that’s conducive to finding these young women.”

  “Did you find Conway’s or Alexander’s cell phones?” Tony asked. He looked from one man to the other.

  “Not Conway’s,” Phelps admitted, “but we do have Alexander’s.”

  “If my visit and the mention of my niece upset her that much, I would suggest you find out who she called after we left. Maybe that call was the reason she aimed for the power pole.”

  “We’d do that right now,” Phelps tossed back at him, “except her text and call history was deleted, but we’ll get the records in a couple of days. Just like we got Tiffany’s and Vickie’s.”

  Frustration tied a big knot in his gut. Tony hadn’t seen those records yet. “You didn’t mention you’d received those records.”

  Phelps shook his head. “No point. The only unknown calls were to a burner phone, ironically the same one. So we know the girls were communicating with the same person. We just can’t track the number to that person.”

  Damn it. Tony gritted his teeth. Another dead end.

  “Who is this woman with you?” Buckley asked. “My students seem to believe she’s some big shot Hollywood producer.”

  Some of Tony’s tension eased at the idea that Joanna had pulled that one off.

  “I will get a warrant if she doesn’t voluntarily provide a hair sample,” Phelps reminded him.

  Tony barely stifled a smile. “She’s my girlfriend who’s helping with my search for Tiffany. Since she was with me during the time Conway was murdered, she has a firm alibi. Good luck with that warrant.” He stood. “Unless you have an update for me, I’d like to get back out there. This is day eight, gentlemen. How many victims are found alive this late in the game?”

  Since neither top cop seemed to have any news worth sharing, Tony walked out. In the lobby, Joanna wasn’t in her chair. He spotted her staring out the plate glass window near the door. The tension around his chest relaxed a fraction. The urge for a couple of shots of bourbon roared through him.

  Gotta stay focused.

  Joanna didn’t ask any questions until they were in his car. “What did he want?”

  “To know who you are.” He backed out of the slot. “A Hollywood producer?”

  She grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “It did.” He wondered how she would take the rest. “Alexander left the clinic and drove herself into a power pole. She’s in critical condition.”

  “I guess she wasn’t so happy to see me.”

  Tony glanced at her. “That’s cold.”

  “Yeah, well. What’s cold is being kidnapped, raped and treated like an animal for fourteen days.”

  That shut him up. If Tiffany had suffered that treatment, he would make whoever was responsible pay or die trying. If? He knew it was happening and he wasn’t smart enough to find her much less to stop it. He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “Goddamn it.”

  When a moment had passed, Joanna said, “We can still find her in time before the worst happens.”

  There was none of her usual smart-ass attitude or anger in the words. He glanced at her. Hoped to hell she was right.

  “We need to find Martin,” he said then. “We know she was connected to Conway. Maybe with his murder she might be willing to talk.”

  Joanna sent him a skeptical look. “If she’s not dead already.”

  Clinton Road, Macon, 3:30 p.m.

  Tony knocked on the door of the duplex and waited for Kayla Maples to answer. Another knock and then another and the dead bolt finally clicked. His frustration had maxed out by the time the door opened. Sean Waldrop, the Wild Things manager, stared out at him.

  “What the—” Waldrop tried to close the door.

  Tony easily forced it open. “We have a couple of questions for you and your friend Kayla.”

  Having just gotten out of the shower, hair wet and a towel wrapped precariously around his hips, Waldrop backed away as Tony and Joanna barged in. “She’s not here. She has class. What the hell do you want now?” He gestured to his face. “If you keep fucking with me, I swear I’m reporting your ass.”

  Tony felt badly that the guy was sporting a shiner because of him. He should have been more careful about where he punched him.

  Joanna moved close enough to stick her face in his. “I need to speak to Hailey. Now. But she’s not home. Have you seen her?”

  Waldrop backed up another step, his head moving adamantly from side to side. “I haven’t seen her in a week. I heard she’s all busted up over Miles’s murder.”

  “What do you know about his murder?” Tony asked.

  Another shake of his head. “I don’t know shit. I hardly knew the guy. Hailey’s the one you want to talk to about him.”

  Joanna took Waldrop by the arm and ushered him over to the sofa. “Why don’t you call your friend Kayla and ask her where we should look for Hailey?”

  Waldrop picked up his cell from the coffee table. “Sure. I got nothing else to do.” He glared at Tony. “Except prep a club for opening.”

  Tony sat down on the other side of him. “I’m sure your boss will understand your need to do your civic duty.”

  The call to Kayla provided a list of nightspots. Joanna entered each into her phone. Tony thanked the little creep and they headed for the first club on the long list.

  He glanced at Joanna. She hadn’t said much since her meltdown in that gas station restroom. “You okay?”

  “Just dandy.”

  “I know what happened to you and t
o Ellen was unthinkable.” Now might not be the time, but what the hell. He’d spent more time stepping on his dick the past few days than not. “But it feels like there’s something more. Like you’re not being completely forthcoming on what really happened.”

  She stared out the window, her face turned as far from his as possible.

  “Maybe there’s something you haven’t told me,” he suggested. “Maybe about the girl who died.”

  “Carrie Cole.” She glanced at him then. “That was her name.” She exhaled a big breath. “I’ve never told anyone about her. Ellen and I made a pact never to talk about what happened.”

  Outrage shot through Tony and before he could stop the words, he hurled them at her. “She was murdered by the people who took you and you never told anyone? You just pretended she never existed. Was it because you didn’t want to get involved with an even more complicated investigation? Or did you just not give a shit?”

  The scenario didn’t really fit with his perception of Joanna so far. What the hell was he thinking? He didn’t know this woman. His fingers tightened on the wheel when what he wanted to do was pull over and shake the hell out of her.

  “I guess you had to be there to understand. We were afraid to tell.” She glared at his profile then. “Do you have any idea what that kind of fear is like?”

  Actually he did. But he hadn’t been eighteen at the time. “Sorry.” He glanced at her, hoped she saw the truth in the word. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m certain you did the best you could.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but I did what I had to do.”

  It was quite possible he really had gone over the edge the way his former boss had suggested, but he believed her.

  Sometimes what you had to do was the best a person could do.