“What about his mom?”
“She died six years ago,” Braddock answered quickly. “I’ve hardly seen Quinn in days and he’s going out of town with his grandparents for several weeks here soon. And besides, I don’t obsess on work. It’s not healthy. I work hard and then I leave it at work.”
“No work at home?” Tori asked in surprise. She always worked at home.
“No. The case will be here in the morning and so will I.”
CHAPTER 10
“APPARENTLY I’M NOT THE ONLY CRAZY ONE HERE.”
Braddock dropped Tori off at her hotel and then sped away, off to catch the rest of his son’s Little League game. She went up to her hotel room and stripped out of her clothes and stepped into the shower, trying to forget about the day, the failure, but what she couldn’t shake was the state of Katy.
She’d simply not appreciated the warnings of Lizzy and Corinne about the depths of Katy’s mental state. And what was more, she was ashamed she knew none of this had happened and felt a certain amount of responsibility that it had. She dried herself, wrapped up in a towel, and sat down on the bed and turned on the television. But try as she might she couldn’t get Katy out of her mind.
Her other friends had figured out a way forward the past twenty years, acknowledging a tragedy, thinking of Jessie often but moving past it to live good, fulfilling lives. But not Katy. She hadn’t been able to get past it and make a life. She was stuck and afraid of the world.
Yet something Katy’s mother said also stayed with her. She said that Katy seeing Tori was good for her. Gail used the word vibrant, as if there were signs of life in there.
She wasn’t in the mood to be cooped up in her hotel room. Tori jumped off the bed, quickly dressed and slipped on her running shoes. Ten minutes later she was back on Katy’s front porch, knocking on the door.
Gail’s smiled and let Tori back inside. “She’s in her room.”
Tori lightly knocked and then cracked open the door and Katy’s eyes brightened. “Hey, it’s a beautiful night. Can we sit out on the porch?”
The two of them talked for three hours and slowly Katy emerged out of her shell. Tori saw flashes of the smart-aleck friend who was whip smart and always smiling. That Katy was still in there, fighting to emerge. Tori poked and prodded her to talk about it all: the mental hospital, what she felt when she left the house and how she basically stopped experiencing the outside world. Katy became more and more animated as they talked. She was fully aware of her phobia, of her fears and that she just couldn’t overcome them. “Enough about me and all my screwed-up issues. Can we talk about something else?”
“Anything you want. Let’s just keep talking.”
“I know you went to Boston College but then I lost track of you. How did the FBI happen?”
“It’s a long story,” that Tori proceeded to tell. “I’m based in New York City now, but I travel all over on cases.”
“Are you married?”
Tori shook her head.
“Boyfriend?”
“No, I’m notoriously single.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Look at you, Tori. You’re successful. One look at your clothes, your watch, your hair, heck, your skin tells me you have money. And my goodness, you just look so gorgeous.”
“Now stop that, I do not.”
“You do. You’re pretty and you clearly spend some money on yourself.”
“I must confess that I have a terrible, terrible online shopping habit. I have like four pieces of furniture in my whole condo, but three closets stuffed full of clothes. I could never wear them all. I also work a lot. I travel all the time and live half of my life out of suitcases and in hotels. And while you’re not seeing it here, I tend to at times have something of a prickly demeanor that I’m quite sure, based on a several years’ sample size, puts men off after a while.”
“You never did suffer fools gladly,” Katy remarked knowingly. “Even when we were kids.”
Tori eyed her friend. All this talking was therapeutic. Katy seemed to sense it, too. Three hours ago, she was curled up in a nervous ball. Now she was sitting comfortably with her body relaxed, twisting her hair in her fingers, laughing, smiling and even needling her a little bit.
“How long will you be here?” Katy asked.
“I don’t know. I came home looking for answers. I’m not finding any. The job could call any minute and I’m on a plane somewhere.”
“Just like that?”
“That’s my gig. Pick up and go at a moment’s notice.”
“No wonder you don’t have a beau.”
“Just go in for the kill, why don’t you?”
“I’m just saying,” Katy replied, serious. “Nobody’s going to commit if you’re not around. It’s a two-way street.”
“Well,” Tori sighed, “that is true. In my defense, I’ve yet to meet anyone who really made me want to do that.”
“I see,” Katy replied. “Well, while you are in town will you keep coming out here?”
“Yes,” Tori replied, grinning. “But I want you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“Go out with me—to dinner, for a drink. Will you do that for me?”
Katy hesitated.
“Come on, just with me.”
“Just with you?”
“Yeah.”
“O…o…okay. I’ll do it with you.”
Tori smiled and then reached for Katy’s right hand and pulled it close to her, holding it in both of hers. Looking down, she gently squeezed her friend’s hand. “It is inexcusable I didn’t know you were going through all of this. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No.” Tori shook her head. “No, it’s not. I should have been here for you and I wasn’t. I wasn’t here for anyone. I just bailed on…everyone and everything.”
“For good reason,” Katy replied understandingly. “Maybe I should have done the same.”
Tori snorted a grin and nodded. “I’m here now, though. And even if I’m in New York, you and I are not going to stop talking to each other now. On that I promise.”
“I’d like that.”
“And I’ll tell you something else. You’re young. You’re only thirty-seven years old and sitting here with you I can see your old self is in there.”
“Tori, I’m not the person that can…”
Tori suddenly had an inspiration, an idea. “Katy, you can do this. We’re going to do this.”
“Do this? What do you mean? Do what?”
Tori smiled, making a declaration. “Six months from now, I’m going to give you time to get ready, but you and I are taking a trip somewhere. You said you should have left. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“A trip? I can’t get myself to leave the damn house. A trip? Apparently, I’m not the only crazy one here.”
“We can do this. You and me,” Tori insisted. “You and an elite, armed special agent with the FBI. What could possibly be safer than that?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere you want. It’ll be the dead of winter so let’s go somewhere warm, maybe the Caribbean. We can sit on the beach, watch the waves, have drinks with umbrellas in them and get all tan.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“I have money. I’m buying and we’re going first class everything. We’re going to spend six months talking about it, texting about it, planning it, buying clothes for it and then we’re going to do it. What do you say?”
Katy was suddenly nervous, curling back up in a ball, paralyzed by the thought of it all. This wasn’t idle talk. She could see that Tori was serious and determined to do this. “Just you and me?”
“Yeah, just you and me. What do you say?”
“I’ll promise to try.”
Katy watched from the porch as Tori pulled away, giving one last wave and a smile.
“That sounded really good,” Katy’s mom said, grinning at
her daughter as she came back into the house. “A trip.”
“You were listening?”
“How could I not, you two carrying on and cackling out there?”
“Cackling?”
“Uh huh. I can’t begin to tell you how much I loved listening in. Tori was serious about that trip, you know.”
Katy sat down in a chair and sighed, “I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think I want to…try to do it.”
“Yeah!” Katy’s mom replied brightly.
“Yeah,” Katy replied, surprised with herself. “I hope Tori knows what she’s in for.”
“Tori Hunter is one tough cookie, always was. She can handle anything anyone, including you, could throw at her.” Gail Anderson pushed herself up out of her chair and came over and kissed her daughter on the forehead. “I’m going to bed. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
Katy stayed up, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen and then going back out and sitting on the porch for a while, listening to the crickets, watching the occasional car or truck cruise by and thinking about taking a trip. The thought of it thrilled and terrified her all at the same time. One thing she knew for certain was that if she was going to do this, she didn’t want to make Tori miserable dealing with all her issues. No, a trip like that she couldn’t go on cold turkey. If she was going to do that, she had to start venturing out, at least a little.
“No time like the present,” Katy muttered as she went back inside the house and took the keys for her mom’s Camry off the hook in the kitchen. She pulled on a light hoodie and a Twins baseball hat and went out to the garage.
Her mother didn’t know it, but a few times a year Katy would summon up the courage to take a late-night drive. She didn’t want crowds or traffic but late at night, especially on a weeknight in the early spring or late fall the roads would be quiet, the resort visitors and cabin owners long gone for the season and the remaining locals were all tucked in bed. She could drive through Manchester and look on in wonder at all the new development and growth by herself, the streets empty, the town asleep. Then each time, on her way back home she would finish the drive by stopping by the cross she’d erected for Jessie on County Road 48.
Tonight, she skipped the trip into Manchester and instead drove to the cross. Katy pulled onto the shoulder and parked, leaving the car running. She leaned against the front fender of her car and looked to the cross for Jessie. This was why she would occasionally get up the gumption to leave the house, to make sure the cross remained in good condition and lay flowers. Given the spur of the moment decision to go out she didn’t have flowers this time, but she nevertheless walked down into the ditch to the cross and knelt in front of it. She noticed that the ground around it had been tended to recently, the cross perfectly erect, no weeds around the base. She surmised that Tori probably had stopped by.
She walked back up the ditch as a car approached. The car slowed; there were two people inside.
Katy gave them a little wave and thumbs up. “I’m fine,” she hollered.
After a moment’s hesitation the car pulled away.
She gave the cross one last look. When she turned to walk back to the driver’s side door a gust of wind kicked up and blew her hat off her head. The hat went swiftly tumbling down the road behind the car.
“Oh no.”
Katy gave chase, trying to catch up to it as the hat bounded along, getting farther and farther out of her reach. Out of shape and therefore out of breath, she stopped and bent over, her hands on her knees and watched as a big wind gust blew the hat well down the road. As it was just about out of sight, the wind jolted the hat left down into the ditch and then bounded halfway up the hill before it stopped moving, caught up in some taller grass.
She looked back to her car, perhaps seventy yards behind her and then ahead to the hat that was now caught up on the hill. Still breathing heavily, she walked back to the car, got in, made a quick U-turn and then drove back east over two hundred yards before pulling to a stop. She walked across the road and then climbed up the hill to recover her hat, which was hung up in some tall grass guarding the opening of a deep ragged gouge in the bluff. As she brushed dirt and leaves off the hat, she caught a flash of light and movement to her right. She looked up into the crevice and saw a bright light and then the silhouette of a body moving through it.
“What’s that?” she quietly muttered to herself as she didn’t recall there being any development in the area. Suddenly curious, she walked toward the light, just wanting to get a peek. The incline of the crevice was steep but just gradual enough that she was able, with some effort, to climb up the twenty or so feet, only having to steady herself twice with her right hand. As she reached the top, she could see a portable camping lantern sitting on the ground to the left of a pile of dirt. There was also something wrapped in plastic to the left of the lantern and then she…saw…a foot, a human foot, sticking out of the plastic.
“What the hell?” she muttered.
Then behind the pile she saw a man move, digging down with a shovel and then turning toward the dirt pile to toss the dirt. He was wearing a stocking cap. She couldn’t see his face.
She took a step to her left, but her foot gave way and hit a branch.
CRACK!
He spun around at the sound and saw her.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”
He started pushing himself up out of the hole.
Katy pivoted quickly as she could to her right to get down the hill. She took a step forward but misjudged the slope. Her body got too far out over her feet and she flipped over forward, tumbling and rolling down the hill, pinballing off exposed rocks and downed trees. At the bottom she landed hard back first against a large exposed rock.
“Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!” she groaned as searing pain coursed through her body. She fluttered her eyes open. Through the dark fuzziness she could make out a moving blur coming down the hill.
She knew she needed to move, to stand, but her legs wouldn’t respond. Katy slowly rolled onto her stomach and tried to push up with her arms. She could hear him approaching, his steps getting closer.
He speedily shuffled his way down the steep hill of the crevice, using the shovel for balance, eyeing her as she slowly rolled her body over.
At the bottom, he set his feet and walked forward as she slowly pushed herself up on all fours. She wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Katy pushed up onto her knees as the pain that felt like she was being stabbed with a thousand knives radiated through her body. She struggled to move her left leg under her to push up.
She could hear him, feel him approaching and looked back.
It was Katy Anderson.
“Doing a little detective work, are we?” he growled as he raised the shovel over his head.
“No! No! No! No!”
He brought the shovel down with all his might.
The metal hit the back of her head in a sickening thud, Katy Anderson’s body collapsing. Yet she wasn’t done.
She reached forward with her left hand, her right leg pulling forward.
He swung again, this time a golf swing, hitting the right side of her head.
Katy’s body completely crumpled, spasming violently.
He took another step forward, set his feet and raised the shovel high again over his head.
This time to finish the job.
CHAPTER 11
“IS SHE LOST IN THE HOUSE?”
T ori’s alarm roused her at five-thirty a.m. She rolled out of bed, quickly pulled on a pair of running shorts, a sports bra and tank, and then slipped on her running shoes. She filled her water bottle, stuffed it in her waist pack, made a music selection from her phone and slipped in her ear buds. She walked out the front of the hotel, turned left and started jogging, making her way to the path that ran along the H-4.
Her daily runs, while vital for training also served as mental therapy. A chance to clear her hea
d and meditate on the task ahead. This morning she had two conflicting thoughts occupying her mind: Katy and the case.
She wasn’t sure what she was getting into with the whole trip idea. It was a spur of the moment inspiration.
Was it born of guilt? Without question, but guilt wasn’t always the worst motivator. It often lent a certain urgency of a call to action, to make amends and when it came to Katy, Tori felt some serious amends were in order.
Tori shook her head slightly. It might not end up the most relaxing endeavor. A trip with someone who’d been a recluse for the past ten to fifteen years, barely leaving home, afraid of the outside world would pose certain unique— challenges. But she was up for it. I can be pretty damn stubborn, too, Tori thought. She would not be easily deterred by Katy’s anxieties. Her friend was an only child who’d often been babied and spoiled. Tori thought Gail may still be babying her daughter and if Katy were pushed, she might be capable of more. Tori just so happened to be someone comfortable pushing.
Her watch beeped at the three-mile mark. She stopped, reached into her waistpack for her water bottle and took a long squirt of water before turning south to run back to Manchester.
As she started the three-mile leg back to town, her second thought was of the case. She reviewed in her mind everything they’d done, which was a by the book investigation. Get the forensics, evaluate the crime scene and interview witnesses and acquaintances. However, in the case of both Lash and her sister there didn’t seem to be a connection. Yet, she was home because of the article, so someone wanted her here for a reason.
That someone had gone undetected for twenty years, so finding him from forensics, from witnesses, from going over the old or new crime scenes was unlikely to bear fruit and the last five days were proof of that. The one thing they thought they knew for certain was a man came along and offered the victims a ride, and it was someone Jessie and Lash either knew, or if they didn’t know him, for some reason they certainly trusted him enough to get in his car or truck.
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