“July third?”
A look of pain crossed her face. “I don’t remember.” She looked away from Finn’s gaze.
“Sarah? What is it?”
There was a long silence. “July third is the anniversary of my mom’s death.”
Cabot cleared his throat. Finn leaned across the table and put his hand over Sarah’s. “One more then I’ll let Isaac take you home.” He looked at Cabot who nodded.
“Okay, Sarah, last one. May sixteenth.”
Sarah shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t understand, what are these dates?”
Finn reached over and took her hand. “Sarah, honey. There have been other murders of women across the country, starting within the last two years. Sweetheart, they all look like you – not just because they were of Asian background but they actually could almost be your siblings. They were all gutted. Sorry,” he said as Sarah flinched.
Cabot cleared his throat. “Sarah? May sixteenth? Please?”
Hot tears dropped down her cheeks. “May sixteenth, eight years ago. I wore a little white dress and Dan wore jeans with a bowtie over a blue button down. May sixteenth was our wedding anniversary.”
“So what did the bitch do? Did she cut Buddy up? It does run in the family, after all. Slicey dicey Sarah Bailey.”
Finn finally had enough and whirled around. Ever since he’d gotten home, Caroline had been at him to tell her what happened, not bothering to conceal her enjoyment of Sarah’s pain. He stared now at the redhead in front of him.
“You know what, Caroline? Go fuck yourself. You’ve lived a life of hatred, and spite and malevolence and now all that ugliness has written itself all over your face. You know why your parents rarely come to see you? Because they hate you. Your own parents. I know this because I talk to them all the time, on the phone, via email. You broke their hearts a long time ago. Now, I’m going to sleep – on the couch. Then I’m moving out as soon as I can find somewhere else. We are done.”
And he walked out of the room, leaving a dumbstruck Caroline to stare after him.
Isaac greeted Stan as he arrived at the small diner. Stan, a tall, broad African American smiled at him. “Hey, Mr. Quinn, good to see you.”
Isaac shook his hand. “You too, Stan. You ordered yet?”
“Just coffee.”
As Isaac removed his jacket, a punk waitress came over. Her name tag said “Yo”. Isaac grinned at her.
“Seriously?”
She grinned showing very even white teeth – except for one gold incisor. “Nah. It’s just what everyone calls me – the nickname kinda stuck. What can I get you handsome fellas?”
After they ordered, Stan gave him a knowing smile and pulled a file from his briefcase. “You wanted me to check out who Dan Bailey was screwing. Well, I got it and it’s a doozy. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.”
Yo was back with their coffee and for a moment, they chatted easily with her, the file burning a hole in Isaac’s hand.
When, finally, they were alone, Isaac opened the file. He looked through the photos in silence then looked up at an expectant Stan.
“Is it possible to be both astonished and not at all surprised at the same time?”
Stan nodded. “Yep.”
The woman in the pictures, the woman who was sleeping with Daniel Bailey, was Caroline Jewell.
The week since Buddy’s body had been found had been a nightmare. She’d gone over and over and over her story with Finn and Isaac, then with Cabot Marin, had been so kind to her. As far as she knew she was in the clear, but there were the stares, the whispers, the secretive nudges. Word had spread across the island and she knew people were looking at her and in her reasonable mind, she knew it was ridiculous, nothing new to her. She’d had that all her life. The daughter with the murderous mother - who’d blame her if she flipped out?
But she could feel her peace of mind slipping, her trust and her stability. Everything she’d ever fought for, worked for. Paranoia was creeping in and she didn’t know how to stop it. The dates that corresponded to the murders of the girls in the city. Cabot and Mike had reassured her she wasn’t a suspect, her swabs and prints had come back clean but still a sense of dread remained.
Perhaps, they’d suggested, the killer had returned to the scene of the crime and had verbally abused her to evade detection. She’d wanted to believe that, wanted to so much.
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart…
Her mommy singing in broken English. So sleepy, seeing her mommy’s tears, feeling the sharp, quick pain in her wrists, her mommy screaming…and the awful sudden silence.
Sarah stopped, trying to not to throw up. No, she thought, I am not insane. I heard the song. Whoever it was in that trailer knew me.
She waited for the nausea to pass, forcing her mind to focus on something else. It wasn’t just that. Isaac had been working later and later at the office and she wondered if he’d finally reached his limit of her drama. Sarah didn’t feel worthy of him; she wouldn’t blame him if he walked away.
God. She stopped, almost bent double with the pain of the idea of losing Isaac. Whatever happened, she would not let that happen.
But every day, her paranoia had increased, the sense that somehow something malevolent was coming and she couldn’t stop it.
Even here, at home, she didn’t feel safe. Anger raced through her. No. This was her home, her island. Suddenly she remembered something. Scampering up the stairs, she pulled down the ladder from the attic room and climbed up into the dusty room.
She flicked on the overhead light, the bare bulb swinging, disorientating her. So many shadows. She ignored the dark corners; instead, she went to the huge trunks of Dan’s stuff that George had packed up for her when Dan went missing. She opened the first one. It had Dan’s old books, yearbooks and she flicked through them.
That was weird. Dan had the yearbook for his senior year in high school – but he was nowhere in it. Sarah frowned. Why would he keep a yearbook like that? She poked deeper in the box and found a few more. All the yearbooks were from the same year but from schools all over the country.
The envelope was at the bottom of the pile, her heart leaped as she read the address. “Mr. Raymond Petersen”…It was their home address. She frowned. Who the hell was Raymond Petersen?
She pulled out the letter and unfolded it. It was a thick, heavy, cream paper, good quality and at the top, the header was in an elaborate cursive: William Corcoran & Associates, Family Attorneys. New Orleans, she noted as she read the note.
Raymond,
I have tried to contact you numerous times since we last met. If you don’t call me by Friday, I shall be forced to come to Seattle to see you. I will also place a hold on your father’s estate until such time as you inform that you have contacted me and your brother.
I hope these measures will not necessary.
William
Raymond Petersen? Brother? All the breath was knocked from her lungs, her legs trembled and she gripped the wall to steady herself. Surely Dan hadn’t lied about who he was, on top of everything else…no, no, please.
She moaned then shook herself. Think. A lawyer. A connection to Danny’s past. Sarah dug in the trunk and found a pen, scribbling the lawyer’s name and number down on her palm. She would call him, get this straightened out.
She opened another trunk. More yearbooks and as she pulled them out, a stack of photographs fell into her lap. She looked through them. At first, they seemed to be normal family photos then she realized that Dan wasn’t in any of them. They were all of her – and most of them had obviously been taken without her knowledge.
Sarah felt her skin start to prickle. “You fucking creep, Raymond.” At that moment any residual love for Dan left her; all that was left now was a burning hatred. Who the hell was this man that she’d lived and loved and slept with all those years?
The last photo was hidden inside a notebook. The notebook was blank except for two words:
Sarah – when? She frowned at that then turned her attention to the photo. She was wearing an old t-shirt, jeans, hair was down, flying around her face and she was laughing at something just out of the picture but her face looked a lot younger, fuller. An innocuous shot. Another photo she hadn’t known was being taken. She squinted at it, trying to remember where she had been that day. It wasn’t on the island, she could see that but she shook her head. She squinted at the background. Something so familiar and yet… she sighed in frustration, shoved the picture into her pocket. She didn’t know how long she studied the photos – moments of her life stolen.
Then, a thump from downstairs. She froze. Another thump. Her stomach lurched. It could be a branch, it could be a branch hitting the outside of the house. She steadied her breath, trying to remain calm. She went to the window, peering out into the gloom of the early evening, expecting to see the trees bending and swaying. But the evening was still. Nothing. A door slammed and the house shook with the impact. The fear was a stabbing knife in her gut. She crept to the top of the stairs and paused, listening.
Someone was in the house.
Isaac stared out of the ferry boats window. The skies were dark, the water choppy. He loved his hometown but damn – he needed to get away. He wondered if he could persuade Sarah to go away with him – it wasn’t like she didn’t need the break too but would she leave Molly again so soon after her attack? Selfishly, he wished she’d get someone in to run the business for her; then he remonstrated with himself. What are you, a caveman?
He thought about that night after Sarah had called him to say they needed to talk. After he’d brought her home from the police station, they had sat at her kitchen table, drinking scotch from china mugs and talking.
“Why did you hide what happened to Molly from me?” Her earlier anger had dissipated and now she was merely curious. Isaac sighed, running a hand through his short dark curls.
“It was a clumsy move at protecting you. Finn had told me that you had some depression after… well... because of what happened when you were a kid. Both he and I thought, especially after George, that this was something that could wait.”
Sarah stared out of the window for a long moment. “You know, that wasn’t either yours or Finn’s decision to make.”
Isaac nodded. “I do know and I’m sorry.”
“I need to feel I have agency in my own life,” she said, “no, scratch that, I do have agency in my own life. I spent years thinking I wasn’t able to make my own decisions – Dan was partially responsible for that. So, no, as much as I love you, you don’t get to make those kind of decisions for me.”
Isaac put his hands up. “I’m right there with you.”
Sarah visibly relaxed then rubbed her eyes. “Man, what a day. Too many of these kind of days lately.” She got up and went to him and he pulled her onto his lap, burying his face in her hair. She wound her arms around his neck. “We’re good, though, right?”
He bunched her hair in his fist and kissed her deeply. “Always.”
She nuzzled his ear. “Take me to bed, Isaac Quinn…”
He had watched them as they slowly stripped each other’s clothes off. Even the dim lighting of the bedroom, he could still see the way she looked up at Quinn as if she could see nothing else, her eyes shining, besotted, almost drunk with desire. Quinn dropped to his knees and buried his face in her belly, lifting her leg over his shoulder as he moved down, kissing down until his mouth found her sex. Sarah’s head fell back as she gasped at his tongue lashing around her clit, sweeping along the soft, peachy cleft.
He could Quinn, his large cock ramrod straight against his stomach, sweep her onto the bed, pushing her legs apart. He watched her smiling up at him, spreading her legs for him, begging him to fill her cunt. As Quinn thrust hard into her, she cried out and the sound made the watcher hard, too hard and uncomfortable. He began to jerk off, silently, stifling his cries, never taking his eyes from the beautiful woman on the bed. Soon, she would be dead and he’d never see her like this again.
He had come hard, spasming and vibrating, hot, silent tears to rage and desire coursing down his face.
Sarah climbed down the ladder to the attic onto the upstairs hallway and stood, listening. In her hand, the tire iron she’d used to open the trunks. Her hand gripped it tightly, but her hands were clammy from fear. For a second, she wondered if she had imagined it but then she heard a chair shift, footsteps into the hallway below her. She peered over the rail. A figure stood beneath her, his large build entirely dressed in black. She backed up, terror screeching through her now. Straining to hear, she realized he was talking to himself and she peeked over the stair rail. He had a hood pulled up over his head. For long moments, all was silent and still then suddenly the man let out a roar, a scream of such ferocity and rage that the house reverberated with it.
Shocked, terrified, Sarah gasped. His head shot up and turned towards the stairs Sarah backed off, turned and ran. She could hear his footsteps behind her, pursuing, hunting. In her panic, she skidded along the wooden floors, desperate for a hiding place. She whimpered with relief as she skittered into the last room – the guest bathroom and locked it. She darted into the room, looking around desperately as he began to slam his body against the door. She shoved up the window but the drop was a long way down, she’d break her legs if she tried to jump. She left the window open, though, hoping he’d think she’d gone out that way. Thankful for once for her small stature, she climbed into her laundry bin, trying to calm her breathing, terror screeching through her body. If he cornered her in here, alone, unprotected and unobserved, he could kill her, hide her body and get away before anyone found her. If anyone ever found her. She felt the desperate urge to scream but she clamped her hands over her mouth as the door to the bathroom opened.
Seconds stretched into years. She could hear him breathing. He came closer.
After a minute, she couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but she couldn’t hear his breathing in the room anymore. She braved opening the lid to the basket a crack and peeking out. The bathroom was empty. Listening, she could hear him moving around along the corridor. He was in the bedroom. She climbed out of the basket and padded carefully along the hallway. She crept down the stairs and was about to open the front door when she heard him burst from the room. “Fucking, fucking bitch!”
She wrenched open the door and ran.
“Vampire’s here.” Molly nodded over to Caroline. Finn nodded. Caroline sat at a table at the far end of the coffee house. The rest of the place was empty. It had been a week since he’d walked out on her and seeing her now, he knew he’d made the right decision.
“So I see. Can you grab me a coffee?”
“Of course, bro. I’ll bring over some fresh blood for the vamp.” Molly stuck her tongue in her cheek and grinned at him.
He walked over and sat down at Caroline’s table. She smirked at him.
“See you’re busy at work, officer.”
Their detente hadn’t lasted. For weeks now they had been sniping at each other and now Finn had reached his limit. He wanted out. For good.
He’d spent the last couple of nights sleeping on Molly’s couch, after long talks with his sister, lasting into the night. She’d even brought him coffee past midnight when he was alone, working a night shift at the station.
He’d looked up as his sister came into the office. Molly raised the coffee cup, her expression both irritated and amused.
“Your order, my lord. I hath come as thee summoned…me.” She gave up with a shrug and a smile. “What do you want? I had to sneak out while Mike’s making like a walrus on the couch. It’s quite a sight, his yawns. Sometimes I throw grapes, trying to get them in.”
Finn grinned. “How’d that work out for you?”
“Once I hit his eye, the other time I got it in his mouth and nearly choked him. He was pretty pissed but I figure, hey, at least I scored twice.”
“Sounds like your sex life in college.”
&nbs
p; “Oh ha ha ha, comedy king, and eww, dude, I’m your sister.” She glanced at his empty desk. “What did you really want?”
Finn hesitated. “I gotta tell you, sis, I’m thinking of quitting. No, seriously.” He added as she rolled her eyes.
“I hear this, what, every six months? You’ll never quit.”
“Aren’t you gonna give me the whole It’s in your blood speech?” Finn looked disappointed and she grinned.
“Anyways,” he added. “this time, it’s different.”
His sister raised her eyebrows. “Oh yes? You finally going to make some changes, get divorced, meet someone… human?”
Finn chewed on his lip and didn’t reply. Molly didn’t yet know about the baby. If she did… god, he didn’t want to think about that. He knew how she would react – horror that Caroline had trapped him.
She squinted at him. “Well?” He shrugged and she sighed. “Yep, I thought so. Pucarck.”
“What is “pucarck”?”
“It’s a chicken noise.”
“Chickens go “bok bok”. Not “pucarck”. And I’m not a chicken. I’m respectful of the sanctity of marriage.”
Molly snorted. “Firstly, it doesn’t count when you’re married to a Ring Wraith and secondly – that’ll really get the girls hot “Oh Finn, respect me, respect me hard, respect me real good!”“
Dirty Money Page 100
