“I said she might be a danger to self or others.” Grady stuck with the wording that would keep him in the clear. But Caitlin hadn’t expected him to emphasize the others side of things.
Hatcher’s eyes widened like a ghost had just popped up and hollered boo. “You think Laura Chaucer might be homicidal?”
“I didn’t say so.”
“Actually, you did,” Spense said.
“I said she might be a danger to others.” Grady squirmed in his chair. “Or she might be in danger from others. You’re the detectives.” He gave Caitlin a look that made it clear she wasn’t a detective either, and he resented her inclusion in the task force. “And as investigators, I think you should know that Laura suffered more than a simple case of post-traumatic stress disorder. She was clinically depressed, and she was afflicted with paranoia, delusions, and occasional hallucinations.” He paused for effect. “She was plagued by the notion that she might have killed Angelina.”
“Surely you relieved her of that idea during her ten-plus years on your couch,” Caitlin said.
“I don’t employ a couch in my sessions. I’m a systems therapist not a psychoanalyst. You know that.”
“And you know what I mean. It’s not reasonable to suggest that a little girl strangled her nanny and stabbed her over one hundred times, after what? Convincing Angelina to hitch a ride with her into the mountains? From a logistical standpoint, it’s virtually impossible for an eight-year-old to have done it. I’d think you’d have made it your primary goal to hammer the facts home to Laura and lift that burden off her shoulders. Because as long as she believes she might’ve killed her nanny, she can never fully recover from the trauma inflicted upon her. She isn’t responsible for Angelina’s death, and you should’ve helped her to grasp that.”
“You don’t know everything, Caitlin. Laura argued with Angelina. She got very, very angry and shouted something like I could kill you. Next thing she knows, she wakes up in the mountains, covered in blood, near Angelina’s body and can’t remember anything about what happened. It wasn’t as easy to convince that child she didn’t do it as you might think—and in fact I had no luck in that department. The best I ever accomplished was to persuade her to give herself the benefit of a reasonable doubt.”
“I don’t understand it,” Hatcher said. “Why would she think such a thing? I know that even today the bloggers have some crazy-ass theories about what really happened, but Laura’s parents would have shielded her from gossip at the time. Where would the child get that idea?”
Caitlin twisted in her chair to face Hatcher. “Children are prone to magical thinking. They feel responsible for everything from their parents’ divorces to deaths in the family. Maybe a child tells his mother I wish you were dead, then a month later she’s diagnosed with cancer. He thinks that somehow his wish brought on the disease.”
Hatcher scratched his head.
“Step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” Spense said.
“Oh!” Hatcher nodded. “I still jump over the cracks.”
Caitlin turned to Grady. “I can see how a combination of magical thinking and survivor’s guilt could have caused a young Laura to believe she’d murdered Angelina. But as she grew older, and with your counseling and proper medication, when confronted with the facts, she should’ve understood, at least on an intellectual level, that belief was false—unless she’s suffering from a thought disorder—a full-blown psychosis.”
“She’s not. Though she has teetered in that direction from time to time.”
“So you’re saying she might be dangerous or maybe it’s the other way around—she might be in danger instead. And she’s not crazy—but she is a little. It’s a wonder, with you as her guide, she’s not a bastion of clear thinking.” Caitlin jumped to her feet, took a deep breath and forced herself to sit back down. It made her nuts to think someone charged with helping Laura might’ve confused her more instead.
“I guess as she got older, those bloggers with their wild speculations didn’t help the poor kid any.” Hatcher drum-rolled his knuckles on the table, randomly. “But tell me this, Dr. Webber, what does Laura say about all the evidence pointing to Angelina being in on the kidnap scheme?”
“Laura adamantly refuses to believe any of it. According to her, Angelina loved her, and she loved Angelina, even though she sometimes acted the part of an ungrateful brat. According to her, Angelina would’ve never harmed her. Not for money. Not for a boyfriend. Not for all the salt in the sea.”
“All the salt in the sea. She said that?” Hatcher tilted his head to the side.
“My interpretation. Figure of speech.” Grady didn’t hide the disdain in his voice.
“Never heard that one.” Hatcher shrugged.
“Like all the tea in China,” Grady explained.
“But tea is worth good money. Salt, not so much . . . and you can’t drink it.”
“It’s less cliché.”
“Me, I like a good cliché. At least I know what the hell it means.”
“Concrete thinking. Always a plus in any conversation.” Grady assumed his go-to expression—the superior smirk.
Spense tossed his cube in the air and sent Caitlin an oh-brother look.
She smiled back at Spense, glad the inane exchange seemed to have finally run its course. She hadn’t been paying much attention anyway. She’d been thinking about Angelina and Laura. Laura might be confused about what happened that night, but that didn’t mean everything she said should be dismissed out-of-hand. It hadn’t been proven, at least not by any overwhelming evidence, that Angelina was an accomplice. “It’s possible the nanny was kidnapped, too, like the police originally suspected. Maybe she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Laura and Angelina were asleep in separate bedrooms in the family home.” Hatcher turned all business on a dime. Caitlin smiled at the thought. Good cliché. Everyone knows what it means.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Spense said. “It’s possible Laura cried out, and the nanny went in to check on her, thus interrupting the kidnapper. Or maybe the kidnapper didn’t know how to take care of a child, so he dragged the nanny along to keep Laura calm. Since Angelina wasn’t ransomable, he didn’t mind killing her when it suited him.”
“Don’t think so,” Hatcher said. “Not a good enough reason to risk abducting an adult, who’d be a lot harder to manage. Besides, the kidnapper didn’t have to worry about keeping Laura quiet. He drugged her with GHB—the date rape drug.”
“Everyone here knows what GHB is,” Grady said.
“What about Angelina? Did they find GHB in her system, too?” Caitlin asked.
“We didn’t test for it.” Hatcher got busy shuffling papers.
Spense narrowed his eyes. “But an autopsy was done. Tox screen would’ve been part of that.”
“Yes. But GHB isn’t included in a routine serum screen. We could’ve specifically requested it, but we didn’t. We knew pretty quickly that Angelina’s cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation.” Hatcher’s shoulders hunched defensively. “Besides, we knew the ransom note was consistent with Angelina’s handwriting. We believed she was the one who drugged Laura. Still do.”
“Handwriting analysis isn’t an exact science,” Spense said.
“Someone could’ve deliberately copied both Angelina’s handwriting and her phrasing if they wanted to make her look guilty,” Caitlin put in.
“But what would they have to gain from that?” Hatcher asked.
“Misdirection?” Spense turned his palms up.
“Look, we can walk this path later if you like, but we’re wasting Dr. Webber’s time.” Hatcher seemed eager to shut down the conversation. Probably because it highlighted oversights on the part of the original investigators. He redirected back to Grady. “If Laura never accepted the idea that Angelina was in on the kidnapping, how does that impact her current state of mind? No figure of speeches, please. Just plain English.”
“It’
s the penthouse suite in Laura’s high-rise tower of guilt.” Grady ignored Hatcher’s admonition.
Thankfully, Hatcher didn’t take the bait other than to arch a graying eyebrow.
“It means, best-case scenario, she’s indirectly responsible for Angelina’s death. In Laura’s head, either she murdered Angelina or Angelina was collateral damage because she was caring for Laura. Either way, she believed it was all her fault. That is, until recently.” Grady shifted his glance to Caitlin.
The look in his eyes seemed imploring. Like he wanted something from her. Approval? Acceptance? She couldn’t quite get a handle on it.
“You’ll be glad to know, Caitlin, that of late, at least according to Whit, Laura’s changed her tune. She’s ceased saying she thinks she killed Angelina. She’s begun saying someone else must’ve done it.”
“After she started seeing this new therapist. Dr. Duncan?”
“Yes. What’s your point?”
“You tell me.”
“My point is Laura is gaining—or was gaining more independence. I’d think you’d be happy to hear that report.”
“Are you?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure she was ready to stop taking psychotropic medications.”
“Yet after she stopped them, she began to think more rationally. Maybe the meds did her more harm than good.” Maybe Grady had done her more harm than good.
“She moved out of her parents’ house, returned to the Denver area and enrolled in college. Whit worried, but hoped she was finally ready to put the past behind her. I was hoping so, too. But now she’s gone missing. A girl who once tried to cut her own throat.”
A prior suicide attempt. Grady had dropped it in like an afterthought. “And you think she’s attempted suicide again?” Caitlin asked.
“I’m not on the task force. That’s for you to determine.”
Spense leaned forward. “That’s what you said the last time we called you out on talking in circles. You’re waffling more than a politician. Maybe you’ve spent too much time with the senator and his cronies.”
“I’ve got Laura’s records for you—from my sessions with her.” He slid an envelope across to Hatcher, ignoring Spense. “And there is one more thing. I—I hesitate to bring it up, because the Chaucers are like family.”
“Family who keeps you on the payroll,” Spense said.
“I just think you should know . . . Laura has a history of violence. She once tried to strangle her mother, Tracy, and on a separate occasion she was found standing over her parents’ bed with a knife.”
“Before or after the kidnapping?”
“Before,” Grady said gravely. “Surely you can understand my concerns.” He hesitated. Looked toward the door. He was still holding something back. Or at least he wanted it to appear that way.
“What else aren’t you telling us?” Spense asked.
“I—I don’t know that it would help you find her. It may have significance, but I’m struggling because I—I don’t know how it figures into all of this. But . . .” He heaved a sigh. “I feel obligated to tell you.”
“If you withhold anything, and something happens to that girl, I’m going to make sure you’re brought up on charges,” Hatcher said.
“Don’t threaten me.”
Despite his protest, Grady looked relieved. And Caitlin thought she knew why. He could now claim they had dragged whatever it was out of him under duress. If this was something he was supposed to keep quiet about, his friend, Whit, would know the police had given him no choice.
Grady waited another beat before spitting it out. “There’s another reason Laura thought she might have killed Angelina. The day after Laura was rescued she found a lock of dark brown hair, tied with a pink ribbon. It was hidden inside a sock in her top drawer. Laura believed the hair was Angelina’s.”
Hatcher slammed his fist on the table. A few drops of Grady’s coffee, which hadn’t been touched, sloshed over the top of the cup and beaded onto the cellophane wrapped sandwich. “You’ve known this for thirteen years. You withheld physical evidence in a criminal investigation. I should slap the cuffs on you right this minute.”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality—”
“Doesn’t extend to withholding physical evidence in a criminal investigation.”
“I don’t have any physical evidence in my possession. I never did. So your point doesn’t apply.”
“What happened to the lock of hair?” Spense asked, for once the coolest head in the room.
Caitlin considered marking down the date.
“I have no idea.” Grady’s voice contained a slight tremor. The threat of arrest had shaken his usual implacability. “For all I know, there might not have been any lock of hair. For all I know, Laura dreamt it up. Maybe it was a false memory, created by that magical thinking we discussed earlier. Laura claimed it was in a sock that later disappeared.” He offered a halfhearted smile. “Maybe it went where all missing socks go. Maybe it wasn’t Angelina’s hair at all. Or maybe Angelina gave it to Laura as a memento and Laura forgot.”
There seemed to be no shortage of for all I knows and maybes.
“He’s right.” Hatcher’s hunched shoulders lowered. “That lock of hair might not mean a damn thing.”
Spense leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Or it might be the key that unlocks this entire case.”
Chapter 10
Afternoon
Frank’s Cabin
Eagles Nest Wilderness
Colorado
The note slipped from Laura’s hand, drifting slowly to the floor on a breeze from the cracked window. Her other hand clasped open and shut around the ribboned bundles of hair. Each time she looked down, she held her breath, waiting for them to disappear, willing them to be a dream, a hallucination, a wisp of her fevered imagination.
But each time, they remained, the soft strands of hair brushing innocently against her hand, like lovingly clipped souvenirs for a baby’s memory book.
You can’t feel imagination.
She brought the locks of hair close to her nose.
You can’t smell a person’s lingering scent in your dreams.
No. Just like every other thing about her current situation, these locks of hair were real.
Real hair that had once belonged to real human beings.
Angelina appeared before her in her mind’s eye. All true memories of her nanny’s face had faded away long ago. Now, when Laura pictured her, it was always the image from a photograph she kept secreted away in a shoe box: Angelina smiling down at her, pushing her on a swing in a green park on a sunny day. Angelina’s long dark hair lifting in the wind.
Laura’s eyes stung as though she might cry, but no tears fell.
She was too empty inside.
Her tears had been stolen from her along with her childhood, her innocence, herself.
Sometimes it seemed the woman who stared back at her in the mirror was more like a ghost than a flesh and bone human being. That she was nothing more than haze—night mist that drew life from the lake and rose predestined to die with the morning sun.
She gouged one of the wounds on her neck, hungry for the pain, because pain meant life, substance. That she hadn’t vanished yet.
Laura, you’re losing what’s left of your mind.
Losing it, or being driven out of it?
For a long time, she studied the objects in her hand.
This could be doll’s hair couldn’t it? Sure it could. There was no proof it was Angelina’s or anyone else’s. For that matter, it could be her own hair.
He must have put it here along with the note.
Written in your own hand?
Either she’d done something terrible . . . she slapped herself again and her cheek answered with a satisfying ache . . . or someone was setting her up to make it look like she had.
If she was the evil one, she didn’t deserve mercy.
But she remembered nothing about this note, these locks
of hair.
And how could she have done the terrible things the note said?
Not just to Angelina, but to the others?
It was impossible!
The others.
Were they real? Or had she merely concocted an insane theory to make herself believe she hadn’t killed anyone? Because if her theories were true, it meant she was innocent of any crime. It also might mean she was doomed. A monster that evil and that clever would never let her live. Once he found out she was alive, he’d come for her.
She had to find him before he found her.
Then another thought came to her that made her choke.
She should’ve realized it before, but she’d wanted so badly to believe she was safe, even if only for a short while. But now the unassailable truth confronted her. Whoever had done this might very well come back here. What if he’d had to leave in a rush and planned to return to dispose of her corpse? Or to set the scene to suit his purposes? Or to kill again?
There was no guarantee at all that he wouldn’t return.
She should go, and quickly. But . . .
She stared down at her palm for the hundredth time. She didn’t know what to do with the locks of hair—they were important evidence in a crime.
But they might get her locked up. The hair and the note made her look guilty.
She had matches.
She could burn everything.
But what if the hair could be tested for DNA and helped a family learn what had happened to a loved one?
From her purse, she took a handkerchief with little blue flowers embroidered in the corners. Carefully, she wrapped the locks of hair. Then she zipped them into an inside pocket of the backpack she’d prepared.
Time to go home.
Her parents would know what to do.
Or perhaps she ought to go straight to the police and tell them everything. That she’d been kidnapped. That she’d found these locks of hair. Show them the cuts on her throat that implied her innocence. Bring them back here to the cabin. But . . . would they believe her?
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