Brink of Death

by Brandilyn Collins

  My children trusted me. Whether they admitted it or not, particularly Stephen, they looked to me for safety. No sane mother would keep a copy of this file in her home. Detective Chetterling would take care of this. He would know what to do with my father’s notes.

  But what if Chetterling and the other detectives failed to find the Face? How could we sleep here night after night, wondering? At what point would the Face decide to leave us be?

  Still, if Chetterling couldn’t find the truth through this file, what on earth made me think I would?

  I couldn’t answer that. All the same, my fingers found the handle of the drawer in which I’d shoved the file. I pushed back my chair, giving myself room to pull it out. There lay the beige folder, as lethal as a ticking bomb. I picked it up. Set it on the desk without opening it.

  What would my sister do?

  Easy answer. Jenna would copy it.

  I opened the folder and gazed at the handwritten pages.

  Then before I lost my nerve, I switched on the printer. While it warmed up, I busied myself with placing the first page of the file just so on the copying surface. Making sure all the edges were straight, as if one skewed move at this moment would lead us all down a crooked path to destruction.

  The printer’s green light blinked on. I hit the copy button and waited while the machine whirred out a grayed replica of the original. New arguments crowded into my mind like malignant cells, but I pushed them aside. I copied the second page, then slid the original file back into the desk drawer.

  Where in the world should I hide the copy?

  A car door slammed. I turned to look through the window and spotted Gerri heading for our front walk, two large pizzas in hand.

  Bolting out of the office, I hurried up the staircase, calling for the girls to answer the door. The pages fluttered as I trotted down the hall and into my bedroom. Flinging to my knees in front of the bed, I lifted the covers and mattress and smacked the pages down on the box springs. When I was sure they lay flat and safe, I arranged everything back in order. I smoothed the bedspread like a child hiding a possession that meant certain punishment if discovered.

  From the great room I heard the sound of the front door opening, voices mingling. With a deep breath I turned to go downstairs and face Gerri—and soon the detective—hoping my expression would not betray the deed I had just done.

  Chapter 30

  Detective Chetterling sat rock solid in my father’s chair, his meaty hands on the desk, fingers spread, reading Sybee’s version of Barry Draye’s murder. I’d already filled him in on the details—how I’d remembered the Face, my encounter with the man on the Redwood City street, where I’d found the file. Chetterling knew the basic facts of the Sybee case, the trial having made local Redding news. No doubt the main point he remembered was that Edgar Sybee had gotten away with murder. The same thing I once thought. Now, watching him read the file, an unusual defensiveness of my father stole over me. If the detective believed those words, he’d have to admit that the acquittal was justified.

  Gerri and I had pulled the matching chairs toward the desk. Gerri’s presence didn’t seem to bother the detective, particularly after I insisted that she stay. Meanwhile the pizza had distracted the kids. The girls were eating their pieces in front of the TV, and Stephen had emerged from his cave long enough to fill his plate.

  Chetterling finished reading. He leaned back with an audible exhale and surveyed the ceiling, tongue stuck under his upper lip. One thumb tapped the top yellow paper. My eyes wandered over his wide shoulders, the square chisel of his jaw. The large office seemed filled with his presence, which exuded a mixture of street smarts, experience, and reliability.

  I tried to soothe myself with that, guessing at the number of cases he’d solved, from minor crimes to homicide. Dozens.

  Maybe hundreds.

  Gerri broke the silence. “Well, what do you think?”

  Chetterling dropped his narrowed eyes to the file. I sensed that what he’d read excited him more than he wanted to show. He hunched forward, eyes darting over the page as if it reflected his bouncing thoughts.

  “Normally, I wouldn’t give this kind of thing a second look. Suspects lie like dogs. You get them in jail, up for something as bad as murder, they’ll squeal any kind of story to get off. Especially to their attorney, who’s dying to hear something he can use in court, whether he believes it or not. But I can’t deny the tie here to our own case. Somebody must want this file very badly.” He rifled the edges of the two pages, then slapped a palm down on the desk. Swiveling the chair, he looked at me.”In the end, I don’t care much about the Sybee case. I’ve got my own to worry about, and this is the best lead we’ve had. This and your composite. Which, by the way, we obviously have to distribute in the Bay Area. No wonder it wasn’t bringing in any decent leads up here.”

  “What should I do?” I clasped my arms, hugging myself.

  “Tip has to know his mistake. He could come back to search this house. He probably will come back.”

  “Well, we don’t know that for sure. He made a fatal mistake once, and now he’s got to know we’re patrolling the area.

  But just in case, you can know that we’ll be watching your house. If you want to leave for a while, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. But you can’t go far. If we can find this guy, we need you to be able to get here quickly for a lineup.”

  “We’ve got guests for one more night. Some of Dave’s relatives. My sister’s flying in and should be here anytime.

  Tomorrow we could go back to her town home in the Bay Area. I’m trying to send my kids off to their father in Texas.

  But I’ll stay at Jenna’s, and if you need me, she can fly me back here in a hurry.”

  The detective nodded.

  “Seems ironic to go to the Bay Area,” Gerri noted. “You’d be moving closer to the suspect, not farther away.”

  “Yes, but it’s not us he wants. It’s the file. And he’s going to think it’s still here.”

  “I have to go down to the Bay Area and check all this out,”

  Chetterling said. “If Tip has his ear to the ground, he’ll hear I’m asking questions.”

  I thought about that. “So he’ll know I’ve found the file.”

  “It might come to that.” Chetterling ran his hand along the edge of the desk. “Then again, he might not know we’re on to him. From your perspective, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he did. If he knows we have the file, he won’t come back here looking for it. But from my perspective, it may drive him even farther underground. We’ll just have to hope we can wind this thing up quickly.”

  No kidding.

  But thank goodness Chetterling’s going to let us leave. I’d been afraid he wouldn’t want to let me go. I understood the need to be in contact with the Sheriff’s Department; in fact, I wanted that. I didn’t want to think of leaving and not being told what was going on. I pictured the kids gone to Texas, and Jenna and me waiting, waiting, for a good word. I wouldn’t feel safe coming back to Grove Landing until the Face was captured. But Vic probably wouldn’t keep the kids for more than a week, and what if the Face wasn’t caught by then?

  The movie projector in my head clicked into gear to flash scenes of fighting with Vic over keeping the kids; sitting on Jenna’s couch hour after hour, waiting for the phone to ring.

  My relief vanished like a phantom at dawn. What if there was no way out of this? We could be caught in a nightmare with no end, either trapped in our own purgatory at Jenna’s or never feeling safe again in our new home.

  I closed my eyes and sagged against the back of my chair.

  “Are you all right?” Gerri asked.

  No answer would come. Any control I’d had over my life seemed to be slipping away. I wished I could do something. I wished that I wore a sheriff’s badge, that I could pursue this evil man who had turned so many lives upside down.

  Gerri’s fingers pressed my arm. Somehow I sensed that she silently prayed for me. I graspe
d for that surreal peace again, knowing I would need it in the coming days.

  “Annie.” Chetterling leaned toward me, hands linked between his knees. “We will find this guy. Your family’s going to be all right; we’ll make sure of that.You’re doing the right thing, leaving for a while and trying to get your kids out of here.”

  “How will we know what’s happening?” I blurted. “Please promise me you’ll tell me everything. I want to know what you’re going to do—the minute you leave this house, and tonight, and tomorrow. I can’t just be left in the dark!”

  “Okay, all right, that’s fair. I can tell you some things right now. We’ll distribute your composite in the Bay Area, like I said. I’ll head down there myself tomorrow. I’ll work from there, and the other detectives on this case will work from here, contacting the Police and Sheriff’s Departments in the Bay Area to see who’s handling drug cases. We’ll talk to them, try to track down Tip. For all we know, they’re looking for him already. But we hope they’ll let us have first dibs on him.

  When we find him, we’ll haul him in for questioning and a lineup, hoping you and Erin can identify him. If he doesn’t cooperate in the interview, we’ll wave this file in front of him, threaten that he’ll also wind up on trial for Draye’s mur—”

  “He’ll see right through that. The story can’t be used in court. My dad’s partner, Sid Haynes, told me.”

  “I doubt Tip realizes that. If he did, he wouldn’t have gone to such trouble to find it. At any rate, we’re not bound by law to tell the truth when questioning someone.”

  My shoulders sagged at his words. Had mere mistakes and skewed thinking cost Lisa her life? A burglar in the wrong house, after a supposed lethal file that couldn’t even hurt him?

  Stupid, stupid man.

  “We’ll do our best to find him quickly, Annie. I promise you that. If things go according to plan, we could have him in custody within a couple days.”

  I looked at my father’s handwriting on the yellow pages.

  From my well of intuition rose a bubble of knowledge that all would not go according to plan. Why should I believe they would? What had gone right for me so far? My marriage to Vic? My move into this house? Lisa’s death?

  Hardly.

  Another thing I knew for certain: I had to do everything possible to help. I could not run and cower in Jenna’s town house, waiting for word to return for a suspect lineup. I owed Dave and Erin more than I could ever repay. I couldn’t bring Lisa back, but if I could do anything more to help track down her killer, I would.

  Not that I had the slightest inkling of what I could do.

  “And if you can’t find him?” I asked. “What then?”

  The detective nodded with the surety of having justice on his side. “We’ll find him. And I wouldn’t ordinarily tell you this, but I want to put your mind at ease. We’ve got some good evidence to use to convict him, too. The print we lifted from the Willits’ deck was perfect, and we now know the size and make of the shoe he wore. Plus we’ve got enough unique markings from wear to enable us to match it to an exact shoe, if we can locate it. Same thing with the black fibers, if we can pick up the gloves and shirt he was wearing that night. These pieces of forensic evidence, Annie, plus your and Erin’s ability to pick the guy out in a lineup—that’ll do it.”

  A memory thrust itself into my head. “What about the flashlight?”

  “Never found it. He must have thought to pick it up.”

  “So things aren’t totally bleak, Annie,” Gerri put in. “I have no doubt that they’ll find this guy.”

  I looked Chetterling in the eye. “And you will keep in touch with me, right? I’ll give you my cell phone number and Jenna’s number. I want to know what’s happening.” My voice flattened. “If you don’t call me, I promise I will call you every fifteen minutes. I just have to know.”

  He couldn’t repress a little smile. “I don’t doubt you will.

  You’re a strong lady, Annie; I admire you for that. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  For a moment I thought he merely spoke kind words to encourage me. But sincerity rested in his eyes. I gawked at him. Me, strong? I was the weakest woman on the planet.

  “Thank you. Um. One more thing I wanted to ask. What should we do about telling Dave? Seems to me, he deserves to know the truth.”

  “Well, yes, he should know. But he doesn’t need to know right now. He’s just come from the funeral today; he’s got lots of family still here. After everyone goes home, he’ll have plenty of time to turn his thoughts back to the investigation.”

  “I doubt he’s turned his thoughts away from it.”

  Chetterling patted his hand against the desk. “Look. Let me handle that part, okay? I don’t want you running over there tonight and telling him why you’re flying out in the morning. Just let him think you’re visiting your sister and friends in the Bay Area. The most I may tell him for now is that we’re working on some leads that involve another case.

  The less people who know about this file—” he indicated the pages with a tilt of his chin—”the better.”

  A plane droned overhead. I turned toward the window, although I knew I couldn’t see the aircraft. Most likely it was Jenna. Remembering the purchase I’d asked her to make, I almost asked Chetterling a question about gun possession but held my tongue. My sister had a secret hidden in her room and I had one hidden in mine.

  And that’s the way it would remain.

  Exhausted, I toyed that night with the idea of taking a sleeping pill but decided against it. Sleep seemed almost fearsome to me. Our guests were in their room, blissfully unknowing of the vulnerability of their quarters. All doors and windows were locked and double-checked. The alarm was activated, and outside, a deputy sheriff would watch our house until dawn. Even so, I worried about Tip’s somehow getting inside.

  I’d had a brief conversation with Vic in the evening— I had to call—about sending the kids to him immediately. He responded that he and Sheryl hadn’t “talked it out yet” and that he’d call in the morning before we left for the Bay Area.

  After I had a chance to inform Jenna of all the developments, we had sat down with the kids to tell them we were flying out the next morning. Stephen was overjoyed and embarked on a merciless mission to convince me he should stay at Nate’s. When I told him and Kelly that I hoped to ship them to their father’s, he turned sullen.

  “No way, I don’t want to go! I don’t like Sheryl anyway.

  She’s a—”

  I held up a hand. “Enough, Stephen.”

  “Let me go to Nate’s!”

  “Look. One thing at a time. For right now let’s just…get to the Bay Area.”

  “What about Erin?” Kelly wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t want to leave her.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry. But you’re going to have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d just…rather have you gone right now until this man is found. Erin has other friends here, and her dad.

  She’ll be all right and you won’t be gone that long.”

  God, let that be true.

  Tears glistened in Kelly’s eyes. “I can’t leave without telling her. I at least have to call her.”

  I hesitated. “Of course. But tell her we probably won’t go until the afternoon.”

  The hostess part of me hadn’t wanted to make our guests feel they had to be up and out early to accommodate us. In truth, I’d have liked nothing better, for once I’d decided upon leaving, I couldn’t wait to go. But after the last few days, Ed and Carol deserved to stay as long as they needed to.

  After the kids and our guests went to bed, Jenna and I had sat in the TV room, talking quietly. Behind drawn blinds that shut out the tyranny of the black night, we shared our fears, our sorrows, and the world’s injustices. We were both jumpy. The gun now sat loaded in the drawer of Jenna’s nightstand.

  I told her about copying the file. She gave me a sly smile of surprise and admiration, b
ut she couldn’t fathom any more than I could what we would do with it.

  “Make sure to bring it with you,” she told me. “Just in case.”

  I said I would.

  By twelve-thirty I’d lain in bed over an hour, staring at the ceiling. Tick-tock. It was now four days since Lisa’s death.

  Ninety-six hours.

  Please, let it not be too late.

  My scene-a-second mind wouldn’t leave me alone. It flashed through myriad imaginings of

  the Face hunched in the darkness, picking the lock on the sliding glass door off the lower deck…

  Kelly scrunched into a dim corner, hiding, trembling…

  Jenna’s double-fisted hands pressed around the handle of the gun…

  At the bottom of the bed, I could have sworn I felt a rise in the mattress, as if the copied file were growing, swelling in proportion to the havoc it could wreak.

  My last waking thought was of Dave alone in his bed, trying to sleep on the night of his wife’s funeral.

  Chapter 31

  The book on forensic art arrived in the mail Friday morning. Book was an understatement. It weighed in more like a college text. I opened the package without a clue as to its contents, my conversation with Jenna about her purchase temporarily forgotten. Pulling it out, I blinked at the cover.

  The World of Forensic Art by Diana Worling. A series of photos spread across the front—from a composite to drawings of a person at different ages to a clay model of a skull.

  Jenna crowed. “Oh great, perfect timing! You can bring it with you and read it.”

  “Sure, probably finish it in twenty minutes.” I sat at the kitchen table and flipped through some pages. “Just look at this thing.”

  “No, you look at it.” Jenna pulled eggs and bacon from the refrigerator. Our guests would soon be down for breakfast.

  “Therein lies your future.”