Twelve Days

by Teresa Hill

  But until he knew, there was nothing to say at the moment.

  "It's late," he said, pulling away from her. "You should go to bed."

  She wavered back and forth on her feet for a moment, as if she'd taken a blow. And he felt like a heel once again. He thought she might argue with him once again. Or even worse, that he might touch her and simply not be able to let her go this time. But she didn't. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and without letting him see the look on her face again, she turned and headed for the stairs.

  He stayed down there, trying to close his mind to everything and everyone. Trying to block out everything but what he had to do.

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. He'd go to Shepherdsville, and he'd try to find out something about the kids' mother. And then...

  He had no idea what was going to happen then.

  Chapter 14

  On the eleventh day of Christmas, Rachel could have wept when she woke up and found Sam gone with nothing but a hastily scribbled note saying he'd driven to the next county. After all he'd told her last night, he'd turned around and left before she could say another word this morning.

  Two steps forward, one step back. Or maybe she'd gotten the ratios wrong. One step forward, two steps back. They couldn't make it that way.

  Rachel was standing there in the kitchen still holding his note when Emma came downstairs, Emma who looked as sad as Rachel felt. They stood there staring solemnly at each other, and finally Rachel held out her arms and said, "Come here."

  Emma dipped her head and stumbled forward, her arms outstretched, and soon they were standing there holding each other in the cool of the early morning in the kitchen.

  "What's wrong?" Rachel asked.

  "Nothing," Emma said, apparently having learned a thing or two from Rachel. "Where's Sam?"

  "Gone," Rachel said. "Work."

  "Work?" Emma frowned.

  "I assumed it was work. What did you think he was going to do today?"

  The girl looked surprised and then she looked guilty. What in the world? "Emma, do you know something about where Sam is?"

  "Yes. But I can't tell. It's a secret. I promised him."

  Rachel frowned. She would love to believe it was something other than work that had sent Sam out of the house so early this morning.

  She was running out of time. It was Christmas Eve. What had he said that day on the phone about leaving? Tuesday after Christmas? Just her luck, Christmas came on a Monday this year. Two days, and he was supposed to go.

  Merry Christmas, Rachel, and by the way, I'm leaving you.

  "Are you okay?" Emma asked.

  Rachel didn't know what to say, and then she remembered Father Tim and what he'd said. This was the hard part. The faith part.

  So it was going to be harder than she thought. She couldn't shy away from it for that reason.

  "Okay," she said, pulling herself together and looking at the worry on Emma's face. "It's Christmas Eve. We have things to do."

  "What things?" Emma asked skeptically.

  "Things." There must be something. And then she remembered, "Presents? Do we have enough presents? Besides the ones Santa's going to bring, I mean?"

  "I know Santa doesn't bring presents," Emma said. "But Zach doesn't. Neither does Grace. So I pretend."

  "Oh." Of course. Emma was almost twelve. She'd know.

  "You didn't get enough to do Santa?" she whispered, seeming truly worried now.

  "No. It's not that. I was just thinking about Sam."

  "You didn't get Sam anything?" Emma asked.

  "I did."

  She'd gotten him some very practical things. He was a practical man, after all, but some occasions called for more than the practical. Surely this Christmas was one of those times. Months ago, when Will had still been here, he'd been interested in her stained glass. They'd started a project together to give to Sam for his birthday. But Will left before the birthday, before the project was ever finished. It was still probably right there in her workshop in the basement where she'd left it.

  Looking at her watch, Rachel frowned and wondered what kind of shape it was in and how much she could get done today with the children here.

  "Will you help me with something?" she asked Emma.

  "Yes."

  "Okay. We just might make it." And it would keep them busy, keep them from wondering where Sam had gone and how the children would manage tomorrow if their mother didn't show up.

  * * *

  Sam drove into Shepherdsville around seven-thirty, spotting a diner a block off main that had a cluster of cars around it. He took a seat at the crowded counter and ordered coffee, thinking he'd make his way to the newspaper office, hoping it was open on a Sunday. On his second cup of coffee, he struck up a conversation with an older man sitting next to him about what a nice little town this seemed to be. The man had lived there his whole life and was more than happy to talk about it.

  Sam tossed out a casual, anything-interesting-happening-here remark, and the man told him a woman was found nearly beaten to death in a ditch on the outskirts of town almost two weeks ago. She was in a hospital on the outskirts of Indianapolis, and so far no one had figured out who she was or who had hurt her so badly. Last the man heard, she hadn't regained consciousness.

  Sam felt sick inside. Literally sick.

  He went across the street to the newspaper office and bought a copy of last week's paper from the rack outside, and there was the story, right on the front page. An unidentified woman, believed to be in her forties, average height, average build, no distinguishing marks on her. Nearly beaten to death on the outskirts of town. The sheriff speculated that she must be a transient and hoped the person who hurt her was, too. He'd even suggested someone might have gotten off the highway, dumped her body here, and taken off.

  Sam didn't think so. He was afraid her husband had done it and wondered how he could find out without leading anyone to the kids. He didn't have a great amount of trust in the law enforcement profession, and he couldn't tell Miriam. She'd be obligated to follow certain procedures here.

  He ended up driving to the hospital, forty minutes away, and saying he thought he knew the woman. The nurse in ICU eyed him suspiciously when he asked more questions than he answered about how he might know her. But she'd remained unconscious for two weeks and they let Sam see her.

  "I don't know what you're going to be able to tell us from looking at her right now. Her face is still a mess, and she's got tubes coming out of just about everywhere," the nurse said. "But at this point, anything would help."

  Sam nodded as he stood outside the cubicle. He didn't know what he expected to see. Something of Emma maybe. What he saw nearly made him sick. She was so pale, except for the bruising still evident and the reddish abrasions. Her face was still swollen, and he couldn't imagine what she'd been through. He also couldn't imagine bringing Emma here to try to identify her.

  The woman was so still, save for the motion caused by air being forced into her lungs by the machines, that if he hadn't been looking at the monitors that proved her heart was indeed beating, he wouldn't have believed she was alive.

  Why in the world had she come here knowing there was a man in town capable of doing this to her? Sam had to find out. Fast.

  "Do you know her?" the nurse asked.

  "I'm not sure," he said. "Is she going to make it?"

  The nurse frowned and offered a noncommittal, "She's been unconscious for a long time."

  Sam nodded, thinking of Emma and Zach, imagining the look on their faces if he had to tell them they'd lost their mother for good.

  "What's the name of the deputy in charge of her case?" he asked.

  She gave it to him, and Sam headed back toward Shepherdsville. He had to do something. He had to protect the children; he'd promised Emma he would, but he couldn't do this alone.

  He needed someone who understood the legal aspects involved, because Sam certainly didn't. And he needed someone to deal with the sheriff in Shepherdsvil
le, who wouldn't know Sam from Adam. He supposed the logical choice would be an attorney or another person in law enforcement. Sam had an attorney who handled the few business matters that required legal expertise, but he didn't think his attorney did much in the way of criminal law.

  He knew a lot of the deputies in Baxter, some of them from all the way back when he was a two-bit hood who got hassled by the law regularly and often without even having done anything. Of course, he'd known some of them for years now as an adult, as a businessman, and as Rachel's husband. They were all civil to him now and a few even friendly on occasion.

  Sam frowned. He didn't like it, but he had to trust someone. Deputy Joe Mitchell came to mind. They'd built a playground together at the community center last year with about a dozen other volunteers, and despite the fact that Joe had picked Sam up for questioning more than once when Sam was a teenager, he liked Joe and thought he was a fair man.

  Sam called Joe, asking to meet him at the cafe in Shepherdsville, and spent the rest of the drive there worrying about whether he'd done the right thing. When they sat down at the cafe, Sam decided the best thing to do would be to put the whole thing to Joe as a hypothetical situation.

  "You know about the kids found abandoned at the Drifter last week?"

  "Of course. I hope everything works out there, Sam. I know you and Rachel have wanted kids for a long time."

  "Let's say, just for the sake of conversation, that I thought I knew what happened to their mother and that maybe I knew where their father was, too."

  "If I knew that, I'd have an obligation to do something about it, Sam."

  "I know. But, just for the sake of more conversation, let's say those kids are scared to death of their father. That he hit their mother and they're afraid if they tell who their father is, they'll get sent back to him."

  "Without any proof of abuse, they probably would," Joe said. "I'm sorry. That's the law. He's their father. If he has legal custody, they go back to him."

  "I don't know who has legal custody."

  "The mother took them away from him? She ran away?"

  "Let's say she did."

  "Sam—"

  "There's more. Let's say that I think their mother went back to the town where they all lived. But she was scared of what he might do and didn't want to risk him seeing the kids, so she left them forty-five minutes away in a motel room, thinking they'd be safer there than anywhere near their so-called father."

  "Okay. The oldest girl's eleven?"

  Sam nodded.

  "Someone might be able to argue that's not abandonment. A judge might believe it."

  "It's not the real issue, I'm afraid. Let's say she found her husband or he found her and beat her half to death. I can't be sure, but that's what I'm afraid happened. There's a woman who was found in a ditch on the side of a road here the day after the kids' mother left them in the motel. A woman beaten so badly, it's hard to even know what she looked like before. One with no ID who hasn't regained consciousness. No one knows who she is."

  "Damn," Joe said.

  Sam nodded. "What do I do? If I start asking questions, it's going to come out that I've got those kids. If there's nothing to link what happened to that woman to her husband, the kids might go back to him, and I'm not going to let that happen."

  "That's a problem. If the woman can't tell us anything..."

  "She may never be able to. They don't know if she's ever going to wake up."

  "You don't think the daughter could identify her?"

  "I'd hate to ask her to, given the shape the woman's in."

  "You know where the husband is these days?" Joe asked.

  "I don't even know his name. I made Emma, the oldest girl, promise not to tell me. I figured if I didn't know, I couldn't tell anybody. But now... I have to do something."

  "Well, if the mother had trouble with the husband in the past—if the sheriff had been called to the house or the woman treated at the hospital before and someone had suspected abuse... That ought to be enough to point the finger in the direction of the husband, but—"

  "Not good enough," Sam said. "I promised those kids they'd be safe. I'm not turning them back over to a father who abused their mother."

  "I know the sheriff over here. We've worked together on a couple of cases over the years that straddled boundary lines. I guess I could have a hypothetical discussion with him, a lot like the one you just had with me."

  "I don't know, Joe."

  "He's a good guy. He's got kids the same age as mine. He's not looking to let anybody else's kids get hurt. But I guess I don't have to tell him anything about the kids, although if I show up asking questions, from a town where three abandoned children turned up around the same time this woman was found, he's going to put it together. But, as I said, he's a good guy. I don't know what else to do, Sam. We're going to have to trust somebody."

  Sam nodded. Trust had never come easily to him.

  "I promised these kids," he said again. "You'll be hunting me down one day if you ever try to send them back to a man who frightens them."

  "Hey, if that's the way it is, I'll give you a good head start," Joe promised. "Give me a few minutes. I'll see what I can find out."

  The wait seemed interminable, although in truth it was less than a half hour. Joe came back with a man who introduced himself as Sheriff Whit Simmons, and the three men sat down at a booth in the back of the room.

  "Whit thinks we're on to something," Joe said.

  "We had a couple named George and Annie Greene with two kids, a girl about eight named Emily Ann and a little boy who was about two. I don't remember his name. We never got called to the house, but Annie ended up in the emergency room a few times. Never would say what happened. Not the truth, anyway, but I think we all knew. One of my brothers went to school with George, and he always was a nasty little shit. Didn't lose his temper that much, but when he did, somebody got hurt," the sheriff said. "I wish I could have helped that woman, but without her testifying, there really wasn't anything I could do. She took the kids and left him a couple of years ago, I heard. George made some noise about his wife stealing his kids, and wanting me to do something about it. I told him I hadn't done enough while she was here. I sure wasn't going to help him find her now. He didn't like it much, and he could have made something of it. Lucky for us, he let it go. He's taken up with somebody else these days, and I think he probably beats her, too. But she's as scared of him as Annie was."

  "So you don't have any proof he was abusing his wife?"

  "We could probably get the hospital records from before. Show broken bones, reports of injuries. But when you come into a hospital, they ask how you got hurt. They'll likely have records of Annie herself telling them she fell down again," the sheriff said, shaking his head. "I never would have put this woman we found together with Annie. We were guessing she was about ten years older, but I guess life's aged her some. Other than that, she fits the general description of Annie Greene. I would have thought I'd know her, if I saw her again, but this Jane Doe's too much of a mess for that now."

  The sheriff looked troubled. "I know where you two are from, and... Well, I get the bulletins that go out to all the sheriffs in the state. I think I can put together what happened here, and I understand your not wanting to say too much. I don't want to do anything to put those kids in danger."

  "So what can we do?" Sam asked.

  "The way I see it, this Jane Doe is my problem. I need to know who she is. Now that you've given me a lead, I think I'll ask somebody from the hospital to pull the records from the time Annie Greene was there in the past. We'll check the blood types, maybe see that Annie had broken the same bones in the same places in the past as my Jane Doe. If they match, I'd say I have cause to go see what George's been up to in the past couple of weeks. Maybe I can scare him into talking. That woman dies, I'm looking for a murder suspect. I want that man in jail every bit as much as you do," the sheriff explained. "The way I see it, the safety of my town's my first
priority. I don't see any need to go looking for Annie's kids right now. Besides, she had two kids. Not three. And her oldest girl had a different name. I don't see the connection. At least not now."

  "Thanks, Whit," Joe said. "We appreciate it."

  The man nodded and got to his feet. "I'll be in touch."

  Sam waited until the sheriff was gone and then looked across the table to Joe, who'd been with the sheriff's office since Sam first came to Baxter. Sam laughed, thinking about the irony of what just happened.

  "What?" Joe asked.

  "I never expected to have a couple of cops helping me with anything."

  Joe smiled, too. "Hey, it's been a long time."

  "Yeah, it has."

  "I never expected you to stick around or to make something of yourself," he admitted. "I think I owe you an apology, too. I think we hauled you in for questioning a few times at least when you really hadn't done anything."

  "Don't worry about it," Sam said. "I think I did a few things you and your boss never found out about."

  Joe laughed with him then. "It's funny how things turn out."

  "Yeah, it is."

  "Which reminds me. Sally and I've been meaning to call you. She's got her eye on the Wallace place, has for years. I know the damned house has to be a hundred years old. Can't imagine what she's thinking, but she wants it and that woman's almost always found a way to get anything she wants from me. She thinks we might be able to make something of the place. Or that you could."

  Sam grinned. "You have a small fortune hidden away somewhere?"

  "I'm a small-town cop. What do you think?"

  "We could take it slow," Sam offered. "You could probably do some of the work yourself. Isn't one of Sally's brothers a plumber?"

  "Yeah."

  "That ought to be worth something to you right now."

  Joe rolled his eyes and swore. "Just what I need. A money-guzzling shack."