Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  Nicky’s voice trailed off. “Looking in the window, seeing Vero. My head exploded. So much bright light. Flames. I saw flames everywhere. Vero learned to fly. I wanted to run into the house. I wanted to hold her so badly. Tell her over and over again that I was sorry. She mustn’t hate me. I didn’t mean . . . Except she wasn’t Vero, right? Couldn’t be Vero. I was crying too hard to function. No cell reception, so I made my way to a pay phone and called Thomas.”

  “He came to you.”

  “He told me where to meet him. Right after that gas station. Bend in the road. Pull over there.”

  “You went to meet your husband. Were you wearing gloves, Nicky?”

  She shook her head. “No, I was driving, focusing hard. My head, the alcohol. I had to concentrate to stay on the road.”

  “When you got to the meeting spot, Thomas was waiting for you. Was he carrying a shovel?”

  Nicky closed her eyes, seemed to be trying to think. “No.”

  “Gloves?”

  “He . . . he handed me gloves. Told me to put them on. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked. ‘Do you trust me?’”

  Nicky opened her eyes. She peered up at Wyatt. “I said, ‘Yes.’”

  “Then what?”

  “Then . . . he . . . he disappeared. And I was flying through the air. And I died again. A woman twice returned from the dead.”

  * * *

  WYATT KEPT ON her. He made her walk over to the gloves, examine the shovel. Revisit each photo of her stops that night.

  “Is she . . . is she okay?” she asked, looking at the picture of Hannah Veigh Bilek, who, frankly, with her long dark hair and light-blue eyes, looked exactly like Nicky’s younger sister. “Nothing happened to them, right? I mean, there’s blood on the gloves. But I know I didn’t. And Thomas . . . He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Right?”

  “Sounds like you have doubts.”

  “He’s a good man,” she said, but the words sounded more automatic than convincing.

  “Where is he, Nicky?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does he love you?”

  “He’s never left me.”

  “Not even now? Burned your house, disappeared into the wind.”

  She hesitated. It occurred to Wyatt immediately what she couldn’t say. Thomas wasn’t gone. At least Nicky didn’t think so. Even now, he was around, somewhere local, waiting for her. Such was the power of their bond.

  A husband who most likely engineered her auto accident and burned down their home. And yet still, in her heart of all hearts, Nicky knew he loved her.

  One of those kinds of relationships, Wyatt thought. Cops saw them all the time. Yet he remained troubled.

  He made her review the night, over and over, but he couldn’t get her to crack. She’d worn the gloves. Maybe the blood was her own, from the accident, all that glass everywhere, hence the shredded remains. She had a vague recollection of taking them off, shoving them in her back pocket. They were too awkward to wear and she didn’t want to litter. The shovel was a mystery to her. She didn’t know why Thomas had it.

  And, yes, she’d followed Marlene Bilek. She had wanted to speak to her, but she’d lost her courage. Wanting to change wasn’t the same as changing. Trying to remember your past wasn’t the same as being able to confront it.

  Finally, Kevin led her away for fingerprinting. While technically they had Veronica Sellers’s prints on file, they were thirty years old. Wyatt, not to mention the evidence techs, would prefer a fresher, cleaner set for use when comparing her prints against others collected from the shovel, gloves, et cetera.

  After Nicky and Kevin left, Wyatt and Tessa took a minute to catch their breath. He pulled out the chair next to her, swiping a hand through his already mussed-up hair. God, he could use a shower. Not to mention a nap.

  “Get any sleep?” she asked him.

  “No more than you.”

  “Then you must be very tired.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry to pull you away from Sophie for the weekend.”

  “Not the first time. I mentioned the puppy to her. I believe you had her at hello.”

  “I get to help pick it out?”

  “I hope so.”

  She was smiling softly, saying the right things. And yet he felt it again. That something was off. A shadow in her eyes that didn’t quite match the curve of her lips. Maybe he was simply too tired. Or maybe that was the problem with dating a woman like Tessa. She would always be a bit of a mystery to him.

  “Sophie doing okay?” he asked now.

  “As far as I know.”

  “Just . . . you seem”—he wasn’t sure how to term it—“preoccupied.”

  “D. D. Warren told me something interesting at lunch,” she said at last, gaze on the sketch pad. “I’m still processing it.”

  “Good interesting or bad interesting?”

  “I’m still processing it. Wyatt, you know I’m not perfect, right?”

  “I would never say such a thing.”

  “Three years ago . . . some things went down. I can’t say I regret them.”

  “Having met Sophie, I don’t regret them either.” He paused. “Are you in trouble, Tessa? Because you know I’m here for you, right? Whatever you need . . .”

  She smiled again, that smile that didn’t dispel the shadows from her eyes. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So far, I’ve heard some interesting news—”

  He stopped her, took her hand because it seemed the least he could do. She startled at the contact but didn’t pull away. “I’m here for you, Tessa. As in solidly, absolutely, one hundred percent. I know you have a past, but personally, I’m vested in our future.”

  It might have been his imagination, but he thought for a moment, her eyes glistened with tears.

  “D.D. says I’m a lone wolf,” she whispered.

  “I think Sophie and Mrs. Ennis would argue otherwise.”

  She nodded, didn’t speak right away. “Nicky wants to be free,” she said abruptly. “I know you have doubts about the dollhouse story, but having spent the afternoon with her, I think she also has a past, and a pretty horrible one at that. Where not only things happened, but I have a feeling . . . You don’t survive in that kind of environment without doing some things yourself.”

  Wyatt’s turn to nod.

  “Maybe twenty-two years seems like a long time. She should’ve come forward sooner, contacted her mother sooner, but she’s trying now. Isn’t that what matters?”

  “She says she drew some pictures this afternoon?”

  “My own attempt at memory therapy. Here.” Tessa lifted the cover of the sketch pad, withdrew half a dozen oversize sheets. “As you can tell, she’s a good artist, with a great eye for detail.”

  At first, Wyatt wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A rounded room with a rose mural and gauze-enshrouded bed. A marble fireplace in a formal parlor. But the third sketch presented the big picture: a vast, wood-shingled Victorian, the kind built by wealthy families in the nineteenth century as summer homes for their families away from the heat and stench of cities. The house included a gorgeous wraparound front porch, a three-story turret, and an expansive right wing dotted with multiple dormers. Impressive house. Expensive house. And indeed, given the diamond-paned windows and gingerbread trim, a dollhouse.

  He looked up from the sketch, eyed Tessa thoughtfully. “You think it’s real?”

  “I think she thinks it’s real.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  He flipped a page, coming to a portrait of an older woman, hair up in a bun, face stern, eyes cold. He couldn’t help himself. He shivered.

  “Madame Sade,” Tessa provided.

  “Looks like a woman who could kidnap small children,” he agreed.

  “I asked D.D. to examine past missing-kids cases,” Tessa mentio
ned. “I’m curious. Given the databases we have now, maybe we can determine if thirty years ago there was a spike in missing-girl cases in the greater New England area. It would give Nicky’s story some weight.”

  “It would.”

  “And as long as we’re entertaining the notion this house exists, look at the background. The view through the window of the tower bedroom.”

  He had to flip back. He hadn’t noticed it at first, still getting his bearings and all, but sure enough, the round room included several impressive windows. Nicky had meticulously drawn in each diamond pane of the glass. Then, behind that . . . the mountains. A view so familiar he felt that if he studied it just a minute more, it would come to him.

  “The White Mountains. You think this is New Hampshire.” He glanced at Tessa.

  “She asked to move here, not Thomas.”

  “Because Marlene Bilek is here.”

  “Maybe. But you heard her talk. She’s looking for answers. I think instinct brought her here. Closer to the truth.”

  “Sheriff asked me a good question this morning,” Wyatt said abruptly. “If Thomas is the one responsible for the accidents against his wife, why? Only a few reasons a husband tries to kill his spouse. Revenge, money, power. After twenty-two years, what changed in their marriage?”

  He knew the answer, but Tessa did the honors: “Nicky decided it was time to move forward. She was tired of being sad.”

  “A move toward independence can be threatening to any man, but especially to a husband who likes to tend as much as Thomas wants to tend,” Wyatt agreed.

  “I don’t buy the story of them meeting in New Orleans,” Tessa stated.

  “Me neither. Always sounded rehearsed.”

  “I tried to get her to talk more about Thomas while she was sketching. It sounds to me like there is part of her that loves him. But more than that, she believes she needs him. He takes care of her. I’m guessing for his own reasons. Think of their pattern: always on the move. That seems less like a couple who’s living happily ever after, more like a pair on the run.”

  Wyatt turned back to the picture of the madam. “If Nicky was truly kept in this dollhouse, and Thomas was somehow part of it, I can think of at least one person who’d never want them talking to the police.” He tapped the cold-eyed woman. “Tessa, if this is all true . . . How’d Nicky, Vero, get out? That’s what bothers me the most. An operation like this, a woman like this, she didn’t simply let one of her girls go. Something happened. And I’m not just talking Vero learned to fly, and all that nonsense.”

  Tessa hesitated. “I have a theory. Maybe I’m biased, having my own . . . past and all. But I think Vero was kidnapped thirty years ago. I think she was held by this woman in this house. And I think . . . I think something really terrible happened that enabled her to escape. No. I suspect Vero did something really terrible that got her out. And all these years later, that’s what she can’t stand to face. Except.” Tessa shrugged, that sad smile back on her lips. “The past has a will of its own. It wants to be heard. Her own purposefully blocked memories are starting to break free.”

  “November is the saddest month,” Wyatt murmured. “A woman twice returned from the dead.”

  “I think Nicky’s trying to remember. I think some part of her even wants to tell us what happened, get it off her chest. She just needs a push.”

  “Another scented candle?” Wyatt arched a brow.

  “No. I think we put her face-to-face with her mom. Let them finally speak.”

  Wyatt thought about it. “All right. I’ll call Marlene, break the news. She’s already taken an interest in Nicky. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t want to see her missing daughter after all these years. We’ll need to keep it under wraps, though. God knows the press is about to descend upon us any minute.”

  “True.”

  “But it’s gotta be tonight. And I don’t just mean because the feds will change everything in the morning. Thomas Frank fled from his burning home nearly twenty-four hours ago, yet we pinged him only forty miles from here. Know what that tells me?”

  Wyatt paused.

  “He still considers Nicky a threat. And he isn’t finished with her yet.”

  Chapter 29

  VERO AND I are sipping cups of tea. The rosebush mural has been obliterated on the wall, scribbled over in angry black marker. The pink gauze that once surrounded the bed is now sliced into ribbons. The mattress has been reduced to a gutted pile of shredded foam.

  I can’t even look at what she did to Fat Bear.

  “You’re scared,” I tell her knowingly, though it’s my own heart pounding in my chest.

  “Fuck off.” Vero hasn’t bothered with clothes. Or the memory of skin. I sit with a grinning skeleton, bits of hair and decaying flesh plastered to her skull. When she drinks, I can watch the scotch cascade down her moldering spine.

  “She’s your mother,” I try again. “You’ve dreamed of this moment for years and years. Remember?”

  “I liked this room best,” she says abruptly. “Of all the places in this stupid house. This room looked like it was meant for a princess. All little girls dream of being a princess.”

  “Your mother still loves you,” I tell her.

  She suddenly smiles. “Don’t you mean your mother?”

  “It’s okay,” I hear myself say, to her, to me, to the sad remains of eyeless Fat Bear. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Vero smiles again, tosses back another shot of scotch.

  “Ah, Nicky,” she assures me. “You always were an idiot.”

  * * *

  BY 9 P.M., I can’t stay on the bed anymore. I get up, pace around the hotel room. Sitting on the second bed, Tessa does her best to give me space. She is checking all the news channels, trying to see if the story has gone national. There were news cameras arriving when Wyatt hastily shuttled us out of the back of the sheriff’s department hours earlier, word of the discovery of a missing child, thirty years lost, having finally leaked out.

  I’d just returned to the conference room, mesmerized by my black-stained fingerprints, when Wyatt dropped his second bombshell: Marlene Bilek wanted to meet with me. Immediately. Tonight. Not a discussion, not a debate. He’d already set it up. End of story.

  I would speak with my mother. After all these years, doubts, wonderings . . .

  Tessa got us back to the hotel, using every back road and evasive-driving technique she knew. Once we were safely ensconced in the room, she advised me to eat a good dinner, then rest up. It was going to be a long night.

  Now Tessa works the remote. So far, a startling break in a thirty-year-old cold case seems to be local fodder only. The news producers are most likely in a holding pattern, Tessa informs me, waiting for the right confirmation, interview, photo op, to blow the story to the next level. Lucky me.

  I pace around the beds again, my mind going in a million directions.

  I think of that tiny, desperate little apartment. Of the woman who once tucked Vero in the closet for her own safekeeping. The mother who brought her ice cream and played hide-and-seek and would sleep, when he wasn’t around, with her arms holding her daughter tight.

  I pause to finger the yellow quilt, inhaling a fragrance my head knows can no longer be there, though my heart still hopes for otherwise.

  And I miss Thomas. I wonder what he’s doing right now, even as I struggle to understand what happened Wednesday night. I did call him. And he came, because he always came. For twenty-two years, he’s been my anchor, my rock. I might scream in terror at night, but he greeted me each morning with love. At least, that’s what I thought it was.

  Or was it? For all of his talk of our closeness, I’d moved into the guest bedroom. More proof that at least some part of me knows more than I’m ready to consciously face? When I first woke up in the hospital, my initial response wasn’t love but anger. I wanted
him gone, away. I loved him; I hated him. The concussions may have scrambled my brains, but maybe there were head games going on way before that.

  Why haven’t I ever called my mom, made some kind of contact with my family? I got out. Somehow, someway—

  Vero learned to fly.

  But I never went home. I stayed with Thomas. Always Thomas.

  Do you trust me? he asked Wednesday night, handing me the pair of gloves.

  Except why did I need to wear gloves? And why did I say yes?

  I’m angry with him, I think. For torching our home, for disappearing in the middle of the night, for leaving me with so many unanswered questions.

  “Run,” Vero speaks up in the back of my head. And I know she isn’t talking about the upcoming meeting with my mother. She’s talking about Thomas.

  Ten fifteen. The sound of a car engine breaks the unbearable silence. I pop off the bed, follow the noise of the vehicle approaching, the crunch of tires as it turns into the parking lot. Instinctively, I head toward the door. Tessa gives me a stern look and orders me to sit back down. I notice her hand has gone to her side, as if reaching for a gun, and the nervousness officially becomes too much.

  I rush back into the bathroom to vomit. When I return, voices are now in the hall, followed by the sound of a key jiggling in a lock. The door of the room next to ours. This is what they planned. Tessa has reserved this room here; then, under a second name, the adjoining premises.

  Nothing to trace back to the sheriff’s department, which the press must be watching like a hawk. Nothing to suggest my presence. Or Marlene Bilek’s.

  Now, when no media vans suddenly scream into the parking lot, when no photographers suddenly bound down the hall, when the midpriced hotel remains just its normal level of off-season quiet . . .

  The connecting door slowly swings open. Sergeant Detective Wyatt Foster steps into the room.

  Then . . .