LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

  “I’d bet Alan Kent is too smart and too stubborn to go anyway,” Lennox said. “Dale City is specific. There’s a reason she went down there and a reason she’s coming back this way. We’ve just got to figure out what those are.”

  He opened his briefcase and tugged out a package. “Judge came through. This was waiting for me this morning.”

  I sat up straight. “Mary’s medical records from Mercer Hospital?”

  “And Mercer is a psychiatric facility?” Kelly asked.

  “State-funded,” Lennox said. “Which means they see it all, and a lot of the people have been struggling for years with mental illness and depression because they didn’t have the financial ability to get help for it. Some of them are pretty far gone, like schizophrenics and bi-polar patients, but others are able to learn how to manage their chronic depression with meds and therapy. They get less government money now, but back in the nineties, that’s about all they took.”

  Lennox began reading the various reports. “Looks like she admitted herself in January of 1992 for severe depression and suicidal thoughts. She’d been in a car accident with her father several months before. He was driving and lost control of the vehicle. Mary received the most injuries: nerve damage to the side of her face, a broken clavicle that wasn’t healing correctly, and a fractured wrist.”

  “What does it say specifically about her state of mind?” I asked.

  “At first she didn’t say much at all,” Lennox said. “She talked about the accident and its effects making her feel useless, but she didn’t want to open up to the counselors. It basically got the to the point where if she didn’t open up and start talking about her issues, they’d have given her medication and sent her on her way.”

  “And she started to talk?” I asked.

  “Looks that way.”

  “If she and her father had a falling out over the accident, maybe that scared her because she didn’t have anyplace else to go,” I said. “She’d been with him her whole life. I wonder if that’s why she used her real name instead of Weston.”

  Ryan perked up. “That was a big case–all those girls, and the little kid discovering them. Mary’s hospitalization was only a few years later. Maybe she didn’t want to have to explain her association to John Weston.”

  “Possibly.” Lennox continued to skim the report. “But she eventually did–I assumed she decided sharing the information worked to her advantage. She told the doctor she was the ex-wife of notorious killer John Weston, and he’d ruined her life and her chance at raising her son. She talked a lot about losing custody of the child and called his uncle a bitter man who used his position as a lawyer to make Mary look even worse.”

  “Christ,” I said. “And this is what Mary’s filling Chris’s head with–after he finds out his aunt and uncle lied.”

  “Why’d she want him though?” Ryan asked. “She didn’t treat her next son very well. Seems to me they were burdens.”

  “It’s not always about maternal instinct,” I said. “Some people view kids as having their own little corner of the world to mold and control. And I’d bet Mary’s main issue with losing custody of Chris was more about losing that opportunity than any love she felt for him. Does she talk about her father?”

  “Not much,” Lennox said. “Which is interesting. The doctor noted she seemed to grow highly agitated when her father was mentioned. She refused to talk about the accident. The few times she did mention it, her explanation didn’t make sense.”

  “How so?” The accident still bothered me. Ryan hadn’t found any record of it, which wasn’t unusual since we didn’t know the surname they’d used, but he hadn’t found anything in the tri-state area that matched the circumstances or known time frame.

  “‘My father took things too far.’” Lennox read from the file. “‘He’s more experienced than that, he knows how to keep control of the situation. But he wasn’t paying attention, and then everything happened at once. I paid the price. He barely got scratched.”

  My mouth went dry. “Does that sound like a car accident to you?”

  “Sounds vague,” Kelly said. “Have you found any other living victims besides Jenna? Are there any other girls out there with a similar story? What if her father got cocky and made a mistake, and Mary fought with the girl and lost? Any one of those injuries could be explained by a fight, even the nerve damage, if she was hit hard enough with something.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing. “Or they could have still been in a vehicle and had an accident. But it revolved around a victim and not just failure to control.”

  Lennox pointed to Ryan. “Get into ViCAP and check Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia for anything matching Mary’s known M.O. in 1991 and 1992. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something unsolved.”

  “The girl might not have succeeded in escaping,” I said. “She may have just delayed the inevitable. What about visitors? Did her father ever come to see her?”

  “No,” Lennox said. His breath caught, his large hands tightening on the paper. “But there’s a cousin. Lionel Kent. He visited once a month, for four months.” Lennox flipped through the pages. “He’s also listed as the emergency contact. And his residence was in Dale City, Virginia.”

  Ryan was already furiously pecking on the computer. Kelly’s fingers twitched, the tension rolling off her. I knew she wanted to be the one digging up the information.

  “Here we go,” Ryan said. “He’s still listed as a resident of Dale City as of last fall, when he renewed his driver’s license.” He swung the laptop around so we could all see it. “Look familiar?”

  The face was vague and average, the eyes too far apart and his thick chin covered with beard. But he had the same shaggy hair of the man on the gas station camera, and the height and weight matched.

  Lennox grabbed his phone. “I told you she went to Dale City for a reason.”

  Lennox had the local sheriff’s deputy at Lionel Kent’s front door. He lived in a small one-story ranch a few miles outside of Dale City, and according to his workplace, lived alone.

  “I made some calls on the way over,” the deputy’s voice cracked through the speaker. “Lionel Kent worked full shifts Tuesday and Wednesday. He called in and took the rest of the week off for illness.”

  “Which means he wasn’t in Maryland when everything went down,” I said. “Mary and her father might have shown up on his doorstep and given him no choice.”

  Lennox scowled. “There’s always a choice.”

  “This place is empty.” The deputy’s voice filled the room again. “No vehicle in sight.”

  “Virginia DMV has a 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee registered in Lionel’s name,” Ryan said. “Black.”

  “That matches the description from the eyewitnesses at the gas station in Dale City,” Lennox said. “Give me the license plate, and we’ll get an ABP on it.”

  Ryan rattled off a series of numbers while Lennox furiously jotted them down.

  “What about his cell phone?” I asked.

  “His work gave me the number, but it’s off right now,” Lennox said. “Of course. He turns it on, we can track the ping off a tower. In the meantime, I’m trying to get a warrant for his phone records. Deputy, can you guys go back and see if any of them recognize Lionel by his picture? Check with his work too. See if he’s got any known spots he likes to go: a hunting cabin, fishing shack, whatever. Any place they might hole up. We’re pulling his financials. He paid in cash, but if he’s been dragged into this, he might slip up and use a credit card we can track.”

  “Sure thing,” the deputy said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

  Lennox ended the call. The hangdog look had evaporated, replaced by a jittering brightness. “We’re getting close. Whatever Lionel’s story is, he’s not the pro Mary and her father are–or were. He’s going to slip up.”

  “He didn’t look ready to slip on the video,” I said. “He looked disgruntled, maybe. But not out of his element.”

/>   “He might not have any idea what’s going on,” Lennox said. “I’d hope he’s unaware of the monsters in his family. Who knows what he’s been told? Either way, we need to find out all we can about him.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be too hard,” Ryan said. “He’s got plenty of stuff on public record. Looks like he’s spent most of his life there, decent work history. Married once in the eighties, divorced. Couple of arrests for public intox a few years ago, but nothing beyond a citation.”

  “So unless he’s really good at hiding it, he’s no hardened criminal.”

  “But he knows about John,” I said. “He’d likely have to if he visited Mary in the hospital and she used the name Weston. Chances are, she told him. At this point, how can he not realize she was involved?” Lionel Kent looked nervous on the security video. He might be stuck in the middle of Mary’s mess, but he knew Chris was there against his will.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not going to open his door if she showed up,” Lennox countered. “We have no idea what their family dynamic is.” He reached for his coat. “But it’s time for you to pack up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you and I are going to Virginia, and we’re going to find out.”

  30

  Kelly didn’t want me to go. But I didn’t have a choice. Lennox had me right where he wanted. Deputy Frost had been bumped all the way down to desk duty, and most of her colleagues thought she’d be out on her butt by the end of the month. Lennox had pull, and he moved quickly. So I promised Kelly I’d be fine and back by tomorrow, feeling like a jerk for leaving her by herself.

  Now, my newest worst nightmare rose frightfully to life. Trapped in a car with Lennox.

  “We’re going to get them,” he said. “I can feel it. Every available cop in two states has that license plate number.”

  I hoped he was right, but my doubts far outweighed it. Switching plates wasn’t exactly hard. And Mary seemed to have a knack for hiding in plain sight. Our best chance was that some member of her patchwork entourage screwed up and left some kind of trail.

  Lennox drove too fast, causing the SUV to slide on the snowy roads. I double-checked my seatbelt.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a nervous rider.”

  “Only when the driver is putting my life in danger.”

  He laughed. “You know how many hours I’ve put in on the road? I started out as a sheriff’s deputy in Virginia, Hanover County. Big area with a lot of spread to cover. When I put in for the academy, I spent my first year as an agent in Columbia, South Carolina. My job as the new guy took me to all the rural cases. Part of our jurisdiction was the Catawba Indian Reservation, and they had a high assault rate. Mostly sexual. I spent many hours on those roads.”

  “Is Philadelphia your final choice?” I knew enough about FBI Agents to know they submitted a list of state offices they’d like to work at, with a ranking order, but there was no guarantee they’d ever get it. And if a shot at a promotion came up, most seized it, because they’d have to wait seven years for the next shot if they said no.

  “California,” Lennox said. “Somewhere out of this miserable muck of snow and ice. But Philly’s all right. We’re never slow, that’s for sure.”

  Was this the part when I was supposed to ask what made him want to be an agent? If I was supposed to shower him with praise over his bravado? Probably so, but instead I voiced the thing that had been bugging me since the night ADA Hale showed up with Lennox in tow.

  “Why’d it take you this long to get serious about finding Mary? Because Chris Hale’s a pretty face and his uncle is a major public figure? Is that what it takes to get the ball rolling?”

  Lennox grimaced, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve been looking. When she burned the house in Lancaster last fall, we found jack shit that could help us. We still haven’t managed to identify the man’s body she left behind. She vanished, and as we’ve discussed, she’s damned good at it. We’ve been watching for more girls to go missing, trying to narrow down a profile. But like I said, we’re always busy. We’re dealing with sex trafficking and gang murders, drug cartels–you name it. Sometimes you have to prioritize and wait until something bad happens. It sucks, but it happens.”

  “One of the many hallmarks of our justice system.”

  “No, it’s a simple cause and effect situation,” Lennox said. “You’ve got a fifty-something woman on the run, with no financial activity as far as we can tell. And yeah, maybe we missed something. But I like to think I’m better than that. In the meantime, you’ve got three runaways being prostituted and two fresh murders, and they’ve all got active information. Now you tell me, which one are you going to choose?”

  I shrugged. “I see your point.”

  “Sure the system is full of red tape, and not a day goes by I don’t want to bang my head against the wall because of it. Criminals have too many rights, and politicians have too much say. But what can I do against it? Spend my valuable time barking up a tree that’s never going to change its colors, or get out there and do the job I was hired to do?”

  “It’s easier for you,” I said. “You have the law working with you. When you’re in CPS, there’s a hundred other factors.”

  “Maybe we’ve got a little better budge,” Lennox admitted “Some people are genuinely afraid of jail, and a few of them still think the FBI has more rights than the average citizen. It’s bunk, but I use it to my advantage when I can. But it’s not that much of a difference. We still have to follow the law or risk everything getting thrown out by some criminal defense attorney with a fat wallet and a blind eye for what’s right and wrong.” He glanced at me.

  “That’s why I get the idea of going rogue,” he continued. “Black and white is cozy. Easy. Eye for an eye and all that. Black and white sounds like it would help everyone sleep at night, but you know what? That’s just an illusion. There’s no such thing as black and white in the world, Lucy. Not with skin color, not with personality, and certainly not with right and wrong. In the end it’s all shades of gray that don’t look much different from the other, and it’s my job–and sometimes yours–to figure out the best match.”

  “And that makes you feel good about your life?” I asked. “You feel like you’re making a difference, choosing your battles based on what you can and can’t win?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” he said. “If I think I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of finding out the truth, I’m going for it. But sometimes that’s just not an option, and there’s always another victim in the wings. And to answer your question, I know I make a difference.”

  He shrugged his phone out of his pocket, driving with his left hand and nearly running us off the road again. He handed the phone to me when he found what he was looking for.

  “It’s a wall with a bunch of pictures I can’t really make out,” I said.

  “Every one of those people, I’ve helped in my career. Every one of them represents a closed case, one way or another. And when the days hit where I wonder what in the hell I’m still doing this for, I look at that picture and remind myself. I gave them closure.” His voice caught on the last word–not the first time I’d sensed that particular emotion from him.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  I cleared my throat. “Your lack of closure. Who did you lose?”

  A single muscle in his jaw flexed, and then he sighed. “My younger sister. She got in with the wrong crowd in high school, turned to drugs. Ended up on the street. I thought being a cop, I could help her.” His laugh sounded hollow. “I even arrested her for prostitution once. She was out in less than a day.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know. She disappeared two years ago. I’ve used every resource I have, but she’s just vanished into thin air.”

  “Maybe she decided to start over.” I felt stupid even saying it.

  “She wouldn’t have done that to our mother,” Lennox said. “I keep hopin
g she’ll turn up, but I know in my heart she’s dead. Probably killed by a john or a pimp and dumped somewhere.” He stopped, his throat drawn so tightly the cords in his neck bulged. After a minute, he managed to speak again. “That’s what the cop in me says. But the brother still holds out hope. So yeah, I believe there’s something to be said for closure. And being able to do that for some other family makes it easier to sleep at night.”

  It was a nice sentiment. Lennox might be more of an idealist than I thought. One of the good guys, I supposed, even if he believed in playing by the rules. Part of me hated how much his rationale made sense. It only pushed me further to the conclusion that all my previous choices were made for my own personal inner demons instead of for my burning sense of justice. I was starting to think I’d made that all up. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  A call made his phone vibrate in my hand. He snatched it away. “Lennox.”

  The air in the SUV changed then, like a whisper from the backseat from a surprise guest we had no interest in hearing from. My toes flexed in my boots, my legs suddenly jerked. Lennox said nothing, listening to the voice coming from who knows where, the agent’s expression turning into thunderclouds.

  “You’re sure?” His tone said he already knew the answer, but he’d ask one last time, just in case he’d imagined whatever fresh nightmare we were about to run into. “On the state line?” Lennox hit the brakes, and this time we did slide, nearly rear-ended by a compact car. My fingers dug into the dash as he skidded to a halt onto the shoulder. He reached for the GPS and started punching in coordinates. Northeast of Dale City, towards Delaware.

  What the hell was Mary doing?

  “Don’t touch anything, and don’t call anyone,” Lennox said. “We’re about forty miles away. I want to make all the notifications. Just compile a list of people I need to talk to.”