O’Hara kept his voice soft, sympathetic. “I understand, but maybe there’s something that you don’t realize is important. What’s Beth like personally? Parents often have one view of their children even when they’re adults, and when kids get away from their parents they sometimes behave entirely differently. Did Elizabeth have a lot of boyfriends? What kind of men was she attracted to?”
Cheryl reddened slightly. “Are you like asking me if Beth had a wild side? I mean, sure we went to a lot of college parties together, but she was pretty careful about guys.”
“Careful in what way?” Ernie asked.
Cheryl’s discomfort was noticeable. “I mean she could be pretty reserved and it took a long time before she ever talked about really personal things.”
O’Hara caught her hesitation. “Personal things? You mean about relationships or more than that?”
“There are things Beth told me I don’t know if she shared with anyone else, including her parents, you know? But they happened years ago . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Leaning in closer, O’Hara tried to create a sense of a private conversation. “Look, Cheryl. I—we appreciate your loyalty and your respect for Beth’s privacy but we need to know everything we can about her, and we don’t know what may turn out to be important. Do you understand? We need to find her.”
Ewing became more emotional as the reality of the situation overwhelmed her. “Something happened to Beth a long time ago, before we met. I think she was maybe only fifteen or sixteen.” Cheryl looked around at the room and the investigators.
O’Hara’s voice took on a soothing tone, almost like a therapist trying to create deep trust before drawing out some buried secret. “What did Beth tell you?”
“All I know is about maybe a month ago she seemed very agitated all day. Eventually she said she had seen some guy that day who she thought was out of her life. She wouldn’t tell me his name, but she told me that when she was sixteen or seventeen she started to meet him secretly. I think he was a little older. Apparently it lasted about a year, maybe more.”
Ewing paused, taking a sip from the glass of water Ernie had brought to the table. Her voice had begun to tremble.
“She wouldn’t say very much, just that the whole relationship was a mistake and she had tried to get out of it. But he kept showing up wherever she was, leaving her notes, that kind of thing, and I think she ran off with him or something? I don’t know. She wasn’t very clear and after a few minutes, she just shut down. Wouldn’t talk about it. I don’t think her parents knew about it—that he had shown up again.”
O’Hara leaned back in his chair. “This guy that she saw the day you two talked, do you know if she started seeing him again or anything like that or was he possibly stalking her?”
“No, at least that wasn’t my impression. Like I said, she said that they just kind of ran into one another. I guess he just showed up behind her and said hello, but I’m not sure. She was really emotional. I didn’t want to ask too much. But whatever else happened, I don’t think she wanted to see him ever again. For a while after that she just wanted to stay home or go out with me. It was kind of creepy, but we’re friends and I tried to help. But she really didn’t want to talk any more about it, and I didn’t want to pry. Do you think maybe this guy did something?”
O’Hara seethed. This is what happened in investigations. Jamison knew it well. There were always disconnected bits and pieces, people who held back information, and here it was. This was as close as they had gotten all day to a potential suspect.
Jamison moved his chair closer to Ewing. “Ms. Ewing, as I told you when we were introduced, I’m Matt Jamison. I’m a lawyer, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office, and I handle cases like this. Are you certain Beth didn’t give a name, not even a first name when she talked about him?”
“No, all she said was that she hadn’t seen him for ten years and then one day, a couple of weeks ago, he just showed up out of nowhere while she was at the mall.”
“Did she ever say she saw him again?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And last night at dinner at the Packing Shed? Could he have been there?”
“It’s a place where we go whenever we get together. There are a lot of people our age there. It would be hard to know—busy place. You understand.”
Jamison smiled. “I’ve been there a few times. Anything else? Anything at all?”
Cheryl looked around the room and shook her head. “I’m really sorry. I should have tried to pull more out of her. And I should have insisted she come back with me last night.” The young woman’s eyes rimmed with fresh tears.
Jamison understood there wasn’t much more to be gained from Ewing, and gestured toward Ernie. “Okay, I’m going to ask you to sit down with Mr. Garcia and give him the names of any guys you can remember that went out with Beth or she may have mentioned, including college. Don’t worry about whether you’re sure or not. Let us handle that. Okay?”
Ernie moved over with his notebook open as O’Hara and Jamison left the room and walked to Jamison’s office.
O’Hara’s face was a black cloud, darker than usual. “Boss, whatever happened between Garrett and this guy was a long time ago, but even so, you never know. Some of these guys . . .” O’Hara’s mouth drew into a firm line.
“All right, Bill, I know there’s a possibility that this guy might be back, even if it doesn’t seem likely.”
Jamison had handled enough sex offender cases to know that some of these men lurked around for years, obsessing about women or, worse, kids. Whatever made them tick was buried inside a twisted mind, keeping track of a woman from some shadowy netherworld, stalking her furtively for months or years. Coming after her again wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. In any event, they couldn’t ignore it. Anything could slink into consciousness from the dark recesses of sexual obsession.
“Bill, I say we go back to the parents and just get right to the point. We haven’t got anything else. We just need to close that door. If the guy’s still around we’ll find him.”
A sharp burst of air popped through O’Hara’s tightly closed mouth. “If this woman has some asshole from her past following her, then that might mean . . . that maybe the other cases aren’t connected, even though there’s a similarity in the MO—I don’t know. But we can work on the relationship between the cases later. Right now, we need to find this girl before we find her on the side of a road somewhere. Let’s go talk to the parents.”
O’Hara slid behind the wheel after walking ahead of the others to the county car, leaving Ernie and Pooch to catch up with them at the parents’ house. While O’Hara drove, Jamison buried himself in the reports, not sure what he was searching for.
Maybe all four victims attending the same school had dated the same guy, but Jamison realized that since three of them were dead, it would be almost impossible in the time they had to find one person who each of them had known. But it had to be someone that Garrett knew also and they needed to concentrate on her. There was nothing they could do for the others now.
Jamison reread Puccinelli’s report on his interview with Garrett’s father while O’Hara turned on the country road to the Garrett home. The insistent drumbeat of reality filled Jamison’s head. Elizabeth Garrett’s life was balanced on their assumptions—assuming she was still alive and assuming the man who had killed Symes, Ventana, and Johnson had not decided to change his pattern. And that assumed whoever had taken her was the same person responsible for the other kidnaps. There was only one thing he knew for sure: there was no doubt what was going to happen if they didn’t come up with something and fast.
O’Hara turned down a side street. Both Pooch and Ernie were following closely behind them. The house was at least twenty-five or thirty years old. Ranch style on two and a half acres, it was a long and single-story house, beige-colored adobe brick decorating the front, the cedar shake roof showing the edges of wear from the brutal heat of summer and t
he dampness of Valley winters. The yard was well maintained, grass closely clipped, bushes trimmed. The rest of it was fenced-in pasture.
A man who appeared to be in his early fifties opened the door. His eyes visibly fatigued, he looked at them warily. The gray sweater he was wearing seemed to fold seamlessly into the ashen pallor of his face.
O’Hara spoke first. “Mr. Garrett?”
His eyes fixed on the badge O’Hara held out, the man quickly replied, “I’m Ben Garrett. You want my brother, Mike.” He said nothing more, simply motioned for them to follow him and led them down a short entry hall.
O’Hara knew what was coming. He had been here before too many times. The worst part was that it was never different. He already knew how Elizabeth’s parents would look, just as he could envision the faces of the parents of the other victims too. Regardless of how much they had steeled themselves for the worst, there was always a flicker of hope in the parents’ eyes when they saw him or another detective walk through the door. O’Hara knew that he had to keep that glimmer of hope alive until the moment when he’d walk through that door again, either with their loved one alive or with the image of death still fresh in his mind. It never got easier.
In some ways O’Hara envied Jamison. He was still a believer. When he held out hope, it was because he believed it. But O’Hara had reached that point in his life that he had to pump himself up in order to give the Garretts of the world what they needed instead of what he really felt. He didn’t consider himself a cynic or a pessimist. He was, he thought, a realist. Unfortunately reality had taught him to expect the worst. O’Hara turned the corner of the hallway and put on his comfort smile.
Detective Puccinelli arrived and joined the others in a large room overlooking the backyard. The furniture was comfortable and without pretense. Two couches cornered a large coffee table scattered with partially empty mugs of coffee and the remains of pastry on two dishes. In the far end of the room were two reclining chairs facing a television that sat against a wall dotted with the photographic memories of the center of a small family. The wall held every highlight of Elizabeth Garrett’s life, the small child growing through the moments that marked the passage of adolescence and signaled the woman who represented the future, the collage of the family dream.
There were several clusters of people standing or sitting in different areas and sounds of someone in a kitchen filled the room, blending with the low murmur of conversation. O’Hara led the way with the others close behind him, and a hush came over the room followed by utter silence. Ben Garrett extended his arm toward a middle-aged couple seated together on a couch. “Mike, these men are here about Elizabeth.”
Mike Garrett stood up slowly. Younger than his brother, his face was roughened and creased by years in the sun, consistent with the farmer they understood him to be. His eyes were dry from lack of sleep and now they were glaring at strangers who had come crashing through the sanctity of his life. He had the set of jaw that said he preferred control, but the way his mouth twitched told O’Hara that he knew he couldn’t control this. When Garrett failed as a farmer, he could accept the consequences of nature—the droughts and winds and storms. But now hard work and determination meant nothing.
Garrett stared at the tall black man walking toward him. Garrett looked at O’Hara’s hands. He thought he could tell a lot by a man’s hands. In O’Hara’s hands there was strength. These were the hands that held his daughter’s safety. He waited for a detective to speak.
Pooch had spoken to Mike Garrett earlier. He moved to the front and extended his hand. “Mr. Garrett, I’m Detective Puccinelli from the sheriff’s department. We spoke early this morning?” said Puccinelli, jogging the man’s memory. People receiving emotionally charged news often did not really see faces or hear much of anything after that.
There was a flicker of recognition as Elizabeth Garrett’s father nodded. “Yes, we spoke.” Puccinelli waited for the question, and they always asked. Garrett was no different. “Do you know anything more?”
Ann Garrett, who had remained seated, looked at him. Her eyes widened, waiting for his response to her husband’s question. Pooch deflected the direct question.
“We’re still investigating every lead. Right now these men would like to talk to you. This is Investigator O’Hara and Investigator Garcia from the district attorney’s office and Mr. Jamison, the prosecutor in charge of—” Pooch hesitated. He didn’t want to say “homicide” or “major crimes”—“The prosecutor assigned to help us with your daughter’s case.”
O’Hara took a deep breath as he prepared to speak.
Jamison remained silent and waited for O’Hara to take the lead. He had less experience dealing with families in these circumstances to know the best way, if there was one, to probe such an open emotional wound.
O’Hara took the father’s hand while placing his left hand on Mike Garrett’s arm. Jamison noted how this subtle gesture conveyed very real sympathy and allowed O’Hara to move inside the emotional defenses that were almost certainly present. “Mr. Garrett, perhaps we could speak to you and Mrs. Garrett privately?”
Garrett spoke softly to his wife. “Ann, let’s go in the living room.”
Rising slowly from the couch, she reached for her husband’s extended hand. She still hadn’t spoken. Only her eyes gave away that vacant stare that came with profound emotional trauma. Jamison could see the resemblance to the photographs of her daughter that lined the walls. With one major difference—in the photographs the face of her daughter radiated with the optimism of youth.
Mr. Garrett led the detectives and Jamison to the next room and then, with the uncertainty that came from using something that he had been told to be careful with, sat down next to his wife in a matching chair separated by a small table that displayed more photographs of their daughter bordered by small ornate frames.
Exhausted faces stared at Jamison, who decided the best thing to do was to edge his way slowly into the conversation.
“Mr. and Mrs. Garrett, my name is Matt Jamison. The district attorney, Mr. Gage, has assigned me, Mr. O’Hara, and Mr. Garcia to the investigation of your daughter’s disappearance. As you know,” He hesitated, searching for the right words.
Jamison desperately needed to find the common connection that tied Elizabeth Garrett to the other women, but it would terrify these people if he abruptly tied their daughter’s disappearance to the other victims and what had happened to them. The wail of grief from Terry Symes’s mother was still ringing in his ears.
The Garrett’s daughter was their only key and there was very little time to dance around feelings, but he couldn’t bring himself to ignore their emotions. In these cases there was a fine line between efficiency and cruelty.
“Mr. and Mrs. Garrett, first of all I want to tell you how sorry all of us are that you and your family are going through this. We want to do everything we can to help but we don’t have much time”—Jamison caught himself. “We need to get information out to all the other officers who are working on this case.” The last thing he wanted to do was frighten these people by implying that he thought their daughter had only hours to live.
“Does Elizabeth have a boyfriend, anybody that she dates regularly?” O’Hara interjected, drawing their attention away from Jamison.
Mike Garrett shook his head. “Our daughter is a beautiful girl, Mr. O’Hara. She’s dated a lot of young men but nobody steady. She’s a teacher and lives with us. Elizabeth is trying to save up a down payment for a house. I would’ve helped her, but she wanted to do it herself. That’s her way, always has been. If there was a young man she was seeing now, I think we’d know.”
Jamison picked up the thread. “Maybe she was meeting somebody?”
Elizabeth’s father shook his head. “She would have called, let us know.”
The quiet voice of Ann Garrett injected itself. “She was with her friend, Cheryl—Cheryl Ewing. She said she’s talked to you this morning. They had dinner together, and we didn�
��t expect Elizabeth last night. She was going to stay at Cheryl’s. She wasn’t going to teach the next day—today, I guess. That’s all I know.”
Puccinelli cut in. “Your daughter’s friend, Cheryl”—he glanced down at his notepad—“we just finished talking to her again. She said that Elizabeth left the restaurant around nine and said she was going straight home. She didn’t talk about meeting anybody.”
Jamison reflected to himself that sometimes young women didn’t share everything with parents or even cops. But they needed to probe further and gently. The detectives began to work. O’Hara asked, “Has she had any bad breakups recently, young men who were angry about the relationship? Anything like that?”
Mrs. Garrett shook her head. “Nothing that we’re aware of.”
Jamison caught O’Hara looking down at his notebook. He knew O’Hara had nothing written in it. The notebook was just a prop that he used to make people feel as if he had something. People watched too many television shows about cops these days. He had learned from watching investigators that if they didn’t do something people had seen on television, people would possibly think they didn’t know what they were doing because they had seen an actor do it differently. Slowly Jamison had come to the same conclusion as O’Hara. Now he never watched cop shows on television; he found them infuriating.
Mrs. Garrett sat quietly. Her husband had responded to most of the questions.
O’Hara concentrated on her, addressing her directly. “Mrs. Garrett, sometimes daughters tell their mothers things that aren’t shared with fathers or anyone else.” He glanced at the father, who nodded with an expression of understanding.
“Is there anything that you can recall? Did Elizabeth mention anybody she was interested in that she might be seeing? I’m sure you understand that any contacts Elizabeth might have had could be important. Is there anything in Elizabeth’s past—maybe when she was younger?”
Fractured Justice Page 7
