by Ken Casper
When the opportunity presented itself. Catherine steered the conversation to Derek. Kelsey insisted she could never face him again.
“You don’t believe me now,” Catherine said, positive and upbeat, “but you will be able to face him, and you’ll be able to tell him what happened—”
“No. I couldn’t.”
“He loves you, Kelsey. He’s been walking around in a trance since you left him. His first question when he sees me is about you, how you are, whether you’re all right. He loves you, and that’s why you’ll be able to tell him what happened. He deserves to know. He’ll be furious, of course. At Tyrone. And I have to warn you, he’ll be a little angry at you, too, for not trusting him with the truth. But he’ll understand, and he’ll still love you. If he doesn’t, then he’s not the man I think he is, and he’s unworthy of you.”
Catherine tipped up her daughter’s tear-wracked face. “You promised him he’d be the first man to make love to you. He still will be. What Tyrone did wasn’t love. In a perverted way it wasn’t even sex. It was a vicious exercise of power. It will take time, and it’ll take a patient and loving man to help you recover from what Ty did to you, but you can still be the wife and mother you’ve always wanted to be.”
She could see her daughter ached for what she heard to be true, but it would take weeks, maybe months of therapy for her to believe and embrace it.
“You need professional counseling, honey, and I’m going to see to it that you get the best.”
She hugged her daughter and kissed her on the cheek. “Now I need to talk to Mother Superior, because we have some other issues that have to be dealt with.”
As if on cue, and confirming Catherine’s suspicion that Sister Cornelia had been listening in the next room, the door from the hallway opened and the elder nun entered.
“I require your help. Sister,” Catherine said without preamble. “My daughter needs counseling, which of course I will pay for.”
She didn’t want to say in front of Kelsey that she might also be in physical danger. Catherine had to take seriously Radke’s warning that Rialto wouldn’t accept being cornered without putting up a fight. Considering the severity of the offenses he was likely to be charged with, kidnapping wasn’t out of the question.
Sister Cornelia nodded. “We have a retreat house devoted to situations like this, a place where she can get spiritual and psychological help.” Then, with a knowing glance to Catherine, she added, “She’ll be perfectly safe there.”
Catherine’s parting with Kelsey a little while later was tearful for both of them, yet she left with a renewed sense of confidence that her daughter was going to come through her ordeal.
But Catherine’s work was not yet done. She still had to deal with Tyrone and his family, corruption in the police department, Derek Pager and Jeff Rowan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
JEFF WAS STARTLED when he looked up from his computer screen and found Catherine walking through his office door. She strode toward him, her expression resolute, fuming.
He jumped to his feet.
She ignored his outstretched arms and plopped down in the visitor’s chair. “I just saw Kelsey.” She didn’t have to elaborate.
“I’m sorry.” He could see she had been crying, but she wasn’t now.
“I need you to do something for me,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Kelsey told me Tyrone keeps leathers in a closet in the small bedroom at the cabin.” She dug into her purse and handed him a set of keys. “These were given to Jordan and me for our use. I want you to go there and poke around. Stop by the sheriff’s office in Conroe. Bud Cleveland knows me. I’ll call ahead and tell him you have my autliorization to search the place and remove anything you feel is appropriate. Find the leathers, Jeff. The son of a bitch strapped her down to rape her.”
Jeff’s chest tightened at the thought of what the young woman must have endured. His immediate concern, however, was for her mother. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
He knew she wasn’t. How could she be? What she meant was she wouldn’t stop or allow herself to be sidetracked.
“And Kelsey?”
“She’s going away for counseling. She’ll be safe.”
“Good.” He nodded by way of encouragement. “She’ll come through this, Cate.”
Her jaw quivered. “A quarter of a century on the police force and I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone. But I want to kill Tyrone Tanner. I want him to suffer.”
“We’ll get him.” Jeff hoped it was true. He’d promised to locate Stuckey and failed.
“Find his playthings.” she ordered. “I just hope he hasn’t removed them. When you do, turn them over to the sheriff for DNA testing to determine who’s handled them. I know we’ll find Tyrone’s DNA all over them. If we’re lucky, we’ll find Kelsey’s, as well as some of his other victims.”
“I’ll leave now.” He studied her. She was tough, but she was also human. He stepped around the corner of his desk and pulled her to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her. He didn’t say anything, he just hugged her.
She rested her head against his shoulder. “I failed her, Jeff. I didn’t mean to, but I failed to protect her.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.” He held her at arm’s length so he could gaze into her eyes. They were dry, but just barely. The desolation in them wrenched his heart. “You love her, and that love is going to help her get through this. She loves you, and that’s what’s going to keep you both sane. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right.” But she didn’t sound very convinced. “Call me and let me know what you find.” She slipped her hand out of his.
“ I will.”
“And thank you,” she said.
“No need to thank me, Cate—”
She picked up the handbag she’d dropped on the desk and started for the door.
“Cate,” he called out. She turned. “Can I see you tonight?”
She paused, uncertainty in her watery blue eyes. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said, and walked out.
“I disagree.” he muttered, as she disappeared from sight. But he’d made a promise, and he would keep it.
ONCE OUTSIDE CITY LIMITS, the drive to the lake was a clear shot, and Jeff was able to make up for the time he had lost in Houston traffic. Forty-five minutes later he pulled into the parking lot beside the sheriff’s department in Conroe.
The office was quiet. Not much happened on a midweek afternoon. The man with the star was at a desk behind a high counter. Stocky, but fit, he had a full head of gray hair and a ready smile.
“You must be Rowan.” He rose from his seat and came forward with an outstretched hand. He was taller than Jeff had realized, close to six-four. His handshake was firm. “Catherine told me what we’ll be looking for.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Disgust tightened his mouth. “I have latex gloves and evidence bags outside. We’ll take my car so there won’t be any question that this is official business. Since Catherine was given a key by the family for her personal use, and we’ve been designated her representatives, there is no need for a search warrant.”
Jeff had gone as far as the property gate the first time he’d been here. The ranch-style house was barely visible through the dense pines. He unlocked the gate, and they drove up to the bungalow on top of a wooded hill. Bud parked under the three-car carport. Off to the right was a metal outbuilding, big enough to be a workshop. He would check it out later. For now, he was more interested in the house.
The door from the carport led through a cozy kitchen to a great room. A picture window offered a magnificent view of the lake. To one side of it was a fieldstone fireplace, on the other a built-in entertainment center featuring a four-feet-wide plasma screen. It looked like House Beautiful, but there was something about the place that made Jeff’s skin crawl.
Bud rubbed his hands along his upper arms, as if he were cold, yet the room was stifling, since the air-conditioning wasn’t on. “I don’t like the feel of this place.”
“I thought it was just me,” Jeff said.
Some experienced cops claimed they could feel evil at crime scenes. Jeff had encountered the sensation on a few occasions. This was one of them. That Bud reacted the same way was reassuring—and unnerving.
Across the room, a hallway gave access to a master suite and two smaller bedrooms that shared a bath. Following Catherine’s directions he went to the bedroom on the right, the one Kelsey said she’d been dragged into. The room was very feminine, almost childlike, with lace curtains, a frilly floral spread on the shiny brass bed and delicate gold-on-white furniture.
“Kelsey told her mother,” Jeff said, “that her uncle reached into the closet and removed some leather straps.”
He walked to the far side of the room and slid open a pocket door. The storage area behind it was long and shallow. A few metal hangers hung from the clothes bar, and a pair of flip-flops sat on the shoe shelf just above the floor. Otherwise the closet appeared to be empty.
Jeff stepped inside and scanned from right to left. Nothing. He was turning around when he realized there was a shelf over the door. Much too high for an average-sized person to use. But Tyrone was exceptionally tall. It wouldn’t be inconvenient for him.
Jeff dragged over a chair, stood on it and, with his gloved hands, reached up and felt something in back. He pulled out leather belts with buckled loops at both ends. His stomach did a sickening somersault.
“Brazen,” Bud said a minute later, as they stuffed them into paper evidence bags and labeled them. “Leaving them here for anyone to find . . . l guess he thought no one ever would.”’
“If they did.” Jeff said, “he’d claim utter mystification about what they were, maybe suggest vandals were breaking in and using the place for orgies.”
“Let’s check out the rest of the house,” the sheriff said. “No telling what else we’ll find.”
But they uncovered nothing.
“How about the linens?” Jeff asked.
“In the year since Kelsey was here, I’m sure they’ve been laundered several times,” Bud observed.
“But Tyrone and his girlfriends have been here since then,” Jeff pointed out. “It won’t hurt to be thorough.”
The sheriff fetched several collapsed cardboard boxes from the back of his vehicle. They filled them with all the bed linens they could find, labeling each with where they had been located.
Jeff locked up; the lawman hung yellow crime-scene tape across the doors and windows.
Jeff walked over to the outbuilding and punched in Catherine’s number on his cell phone. It rang four times before she answered.
“We found them,” he said. “Right where Kelsey said they would be.”
He heard a groan on the other end.
“We’ve also taken the bed linens.”
“I should have thought of that. Good.”
“What about the metal building?”
“That’s where they used to store the lake boat,” she said, “but they sold it years ago. Just junk there now. Did you find anything in it?”
“It’s locked.”
“Hmm. Didn’t used to be, but then I haven’t been up there in a couple of years.”
“It has a combination lock. Do you know the number?”
“No idea.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Cut it off.”
She sounded as if she was about to say something else. When she didn’t, he said, “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
After a brief pause, she disconnected.
“Have you got bolt cutters in the trunk?” Jeff asked the sheriff.
“You bet.”
THERE WAS NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT that the chief of police had obtained a court order for the exhumation of the body of Jordan Tanner, but Catherine wasn’t surprised when she received an irate telephone call from Marcus, protesting the desecration of his son’s remains.
“I have reason to believe Jordan was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Hesitation. “That’s ridiculous. He died of a heart attack.”
“Jordan was an experienced athlete in perfect health, who dropped dead at the age of forty-seven. Don’t you care that he might have met with foul play?”
“How dare you question my love for my children. He was my son, my firstborn.”
“And he loved you, in spite of the way you disappointed him.”
She heard a sharply indrawn breath at the other end of the line. Marcus Tanner wasn’t used to being talked back to.
“Why are you doing this?” he snarled.
Annette appeared in her doorway. “Chief, you have a call from Jeff Rowan. He says it’s urgent.”
Apprehension whipped down Catherine’s spine.
“On line two,” Annette said.
“I’ll call you back, Marcus.” She cut him off and stabbed the button for the blinking outside line. “Jeff?”
“Better call the feds, Cate. We just found twenty barrels of yellowcake in the boathouse.”
THE NEXT FIVE HOURS were as chaotic as any Catherine had ever experienced. She had just called the federal authorities and relayed Jeff’s message, giving them detailed instructions on how to get to the Tanner compound, when her task force team chief called from the wharf on the Ship Channel.
“You won’t believe what we just found,” Lt. Mei Lu Ling said, in her usual businesslike manner.
“It isn’t yellowcake.”
“No, but how about twenty-five crates of assault rifles, hand grenades and shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles, all marked as oil-drilling supplies, bound for the Middle East?”
“Have you notified anyone yet?” Catherine asked.
“No, I wanted to call you first.”
“Good. Have you secured the area?”
“For now. The place is deserted. We have all the doors guarded, but if anyone shows up in numbers we’ll need help.”
“Backup’s on its way. In the meantime, take whatever steps you deem necessary, including the use of deadly force to protect the site until the feds get there. I promise you they won’t be long “
“Will do,” the lieutenant said, then added, “Sorry it wasn’t the uranium you’re looking for.”
Catherine chuckled. “That’s quite all right.” She could picture the quizzical expression on the face of her protegee. “Keep me posted as things develop.”
She broke the connection and immediately dialed her contact at the FBI. Her pulse was thrumming with excitement. Finding terrorists’ weapons at one of Rialto’s warehouses established sufficient cause for a warrant to search all of his properties and to confiscate his business and personal records.
Two hours later, the results of fingerprint checks on both the illegal weapons and the yellowcake barrels had come in. Among the confirmed matches were those of Calvin Griggs, Tyrone’s racquetball partner, and Eddie Fontanero. An hour later Griggs remained at large, but the police sergeant was picked up at the airport, getting ready to board a plane to Mexico City. Catherine was hanging up the phone, when she saw Jeff standing in her doorway, a satisfied smile on his face.
“The feds are tripping all over themselves at Conroe,” he said.
“Any idea how long the barrels had been there?” she asked.
“The sheriff found several people in town who saw a moving van driving up to the compound a week ago. They figured the Tanners were getting new furniture. Since the property is secluded, no one saw what was unloaded. Your announcement that the feds were searching for the missing uranium must have panicked the bad guys. What better place to hide the stuff than under the nose of the chief of police.”
“There’s something I have to do before the feds close in down here.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number by heart.
“Marcus, this is Catherine. I’ll be over within the ho
ur. I want Tyrone and Melissa there when I arrive . . . I’m not asking you, Marcus. I’m telling you. If they’re not there, I’ll issue an all-points-bulletin and have them arrested wherever we find them, in public or private . . . . Yes, you have every right to get your lawyer and impede me any way you can, but I strongly advise you to hear me out first. You’re not going to like what I have to say or do, but I’m willing to handle this as discreetly as I can. Fight me and you’ll lose.”
She listened for a moment, then said, “I’m also grateful Jordan isn’t here. Within an hour.” She hung up and fell back against the leather of her chair. To Jeff she asked, “Would you be willing to do me one more favor?”
“Name it.”
“Come with me to the Tanners. You won’t have to say a word. Just be there.”
“I’ll go through the fires of hell for you, Cate. Don’t you know that yet?”
“The fires of hell,” she repeated and forced a thin smile. “This may come pretty close.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
CATHERINE PRESSED THE BUTTON on the brick pillar. Before she had a chance to identify herself, the gates of the Tanner estate swung open. She proceeded up the driveway. The house became visible after the first bend in the road. Even in the dark Jeff could see it was an imposing mansion, the kind that bespoke old money and refined tastes. Lights blazed on the lower floor. Exiting his side of the car, Jeff peered up at the dormers. They were dark and forbidding against the star-studded sky.
Catherine said nothing as three police cars pulled up behind her, their light bars turned off. While the occupants got out and dispersed around the house, Jeff followed her to the front door. It opened before she had a chance to reach for the bell.
“Good evening, Mrs. Tanner,” said a short, compact black woman in a maid’s uniform. “The family is waiting for you in the study.”
