by Donna Ball
“On the one hand,” Carol said quietly, needing to voice her thoughts out loud. “Kelly never called me at all. She walked away all those years ago and never looked back, or—or she's dead. On the other hand”—and she had to draw another long and calming breath— “she's being held prisoner somewhere—and not just her, but this Tanya girl, God, maybe even more than that ... all this time, kidnapped, locked up, tortured by some maniac, and all within viewing distance of my house.”
She looked at her friend, her eyes haunted and torn. “Pick one,” she said simply.
Laura reached up and closed her fingers over Carol's hand, but she did not reply. There was nothing to say.
They both knew that.
~
Chapter Twenty-three
For two weeks every March and September, Chip Sanders and his wife rented a beach cottage on the channel end of St. T. He spent his days fishing while Margaret read on the beach, and at the end of the day, they met for a good dinner at Bay Breezes. Sometimes they went the entire day without hearing another human voice. In the real world Chip was a fifty-eight-year-old building contractor, and Margaret was a telephone operator. Those weeks at St. T. were the most peaceful of their lives.
Chip walked down early the morning after the rain, carrying his fishing tackle, a yellow bait bucket, and a cooler filled with ice for his catch. The beach was deserted in that cool purplish dawn, the shoreline slightly rearranged from the pounding it had taken during the night, and the surf dark and noisy. The fish would be jumping today.
He wore a pair of bright red hip waders and a straw hat. By the time Margaret came down with his lunch, the sun would be hot and he would have been standing thigh-high in the surf for four or five hours, if he was lucky. When they weren't biting, he fished from the sand. But if anything was swimming out there at all, the only way to go for it was to get right out there with them.
In March, whiting and flounder were beginning their spawning behavior, redfish were abundant, and so were speckled trout. And he could always look forward to the thrill—sometimes once or twice a week—of hooking a baby shark, particularly after a good storm like they had had last night.
Chip set up his camp chair and cooler on the sand far enough away from the tide line so that he wouldn't have to worry about moving it when the tide came in—which he had been known to forget to do on more than one occasion—and started to bait his hook. He scanned the surf, speculating on what might be biting, and decided to start out with the shrimp he had bought fresh from the bait shop last night.
Then something in the surf caught his eyes and he swore. A dolphin. He hated it when they fed this close to shore. They were always breaking his lines, not to mention driving the fish away. On the other hand, dolphins only went where the fish were, which could mean good news.
But it wasn't a dolphin. Chip's eyes narrowed and he took a couple of steps forward, searching the tide. He saw it again, and his throat went dry. Slowly, still not quite believing what he saw, he put his fishing pole down and moved closer to the surf.
There was no mistaking it this time. Long dark hair swirling around like seaweed, a white hand flip-flopping back and forth with the surge and crash of the tide. Chip took a few purely instinctive running steps into the surf, then stopped.
He shouted, “Hey!” for no reason at all. He looked frantically over his shoulder, calling again, “Hey!” But the beach was deserted, and Margaret, still asleep in their cottage across the dunes, was too far away to hear.
Lacking no other options, Chip splashed forward grimly to retrieve what the sea offered up.
~
Chapter Twenty-four
Derrick Long was thirty-two-years old, married, no children. Patsy, his wife of nine years, had M.S., dormant now and perhaps for years to come, but never far from their minds, never out of their lives.
Maybe because of Patsy's illness, maybe because of Patsy herself, every day was precious to him. He was grateful when he woke up beside her. He was grateful when he sat down across the table from her. He was grateful when he walked into a room and she was there and it didn't matter what he had been through during the day, it was all worth it because she was there. He would have felt like a sentimental idiot saying these things, of course. And perhaps the best thing about Patsy was that he didn't have to.
She was a nurse at Mid County Hospital, a job she loved even though Derrick worried it was too stressful for her. Still, with their combined incomes, they could barely afford the split-level house on three acres off County Line Road. Patsy wanted to live in the country, which was one of the reasons that when the job with the St. Theresa County Sheriff's Department opened up, he had jumped at it. He had never regretted the decision.
A lot of officers made it a policy never to discuss their cases with their family. Derrick made it a policy always to discuss his cases with Patsy. She had been so proud of him when he made investigator; he knew he wouldn't have made it without her. Sometimes he called her Mrs. Colombo and she laughed, but there was more truth to that than she knew. Things didn't really make sense to Derrick until he talked them over with Patsy.
But they had been discussing the Dennison case for days now, and it still didn't make much sense.
“I told you,” said Patsy, thoughtfully munching on a piece of toast, “that it wasn't the husband trying to get back at the wife. Not after all these years.”
Derrick shrugged uncomfortably. “That was never a serious theory.”
Patsy was working three to eleven this week, so she had been in the emergency room when Guy Dennison was brought in. She now felt she had a special involvement in the case, which was evident as she informed Derrick a trifle smugly, “And there's no way that tiny Mrs. Dennison did that kind of damage to her husband with a fireplace poker—not even if he was sound asleep at the time and she had been working out for six months.”
He gave her a dry look. “You're pushing it, baby.”
“Well, at least now you have a real criminal to track down—and a pretty good idea of who he is.”
Derrick nodded. “That was always the thing that bothered me,” he admitted, glancing at the clock on the wall over her head before he refilled his coffee cup. “That was the thing that never made sense. Why would the Dennison girl call now, after all these years, with those crazy messages? She was doing just fine living on the streets, but almost three years later, she comes home and gets into so much trouble she has to call her mother for help. But she can't tell her mother where she is or what kind of trouble she's in or how anybody can help her. Well, I mean, nothing about the whole thing made sense, but it's a relief to know we don't have a lost girl out there to track down.”
Patsy lifted her coffee cup to her lips with both hands, fingers delicately curved around the mug, “You don't?”
Derrick frowned a little. That was one of the things he still hadn't quite worked out. “Well, no. I mean obviously it had to be Saddler, disguising his voice somehow or using an accomplice to make the calls. He just got out of prison, that’s when this whole thing started. He blamed Dennison for his arrest. He's probably been brooding on it all these years, planning how he was going to get his revenge.”
Patsy said, “And one way to get that revenge couldn't be to seduce Dennison's daughter? To drag her into his scheme for revenge?”
Derrick's frown deepened. “Do you mean Kelly Dennison herself might be his accomplice?”
“Why not?”
“Kind of a coincidence, don't you think?”
“It's only a coincidence until you find out the real explanation.”
“Did somebody say that?”
She smiled. “Me.” Then, “Anyway, what about that other girl—that Tanya whoever? Why would he make up another name—one that means nothing to the Dennisons? Wouldn't he just stick with Kelly if he wanted to scare them?”
“So you're saying there really are two girls out there for us to worry about?”
She shook her head. “Not necessarily. One i
s all you need.”
'Tanya Little,” Derrick said thoughtfully. “Saddler's accomplice. But why would she give her real name?”
“Well, she wouldn't,” Patsy pointed out equitably, “if she were Saddler's accomplice—or at least his willing accomplice.”
“You're not being very helpful.”
“Sure, I am. Now you have two leads on Saddler—Tanya Little and Kelly Dennison. Find either one of them and you'll have Saddler.”
“Maybe.” His tone was doubtful. “Seems to me it would be easier to just find Saddler in the first place.” And he grinned, getting up to clear the table. “Of course, I'm just an amateur.”
“But gifted,” she allowed generously, then her expression sobered. “I don't know, honey. There's an awful lot about this case that still doesn't add up. I just can't help but wonder if you're not giving Saddler too much credit. Are you sure it was him who was in Carol Dennison's house yesterday?”
“We'll know as soon as the report on the fingerprints come back from the lab—which should be first thing this morning.” The phone rang just as he passed it, and he scooped it up. “Maybe that's the office now. I told them to call as soon as the report came in.”
It was the office, but not with the fingerprint report. Two minutes later, Derrick Long was out the door and on his way to what he knew already was going to be a very bad day.
~
Chapter Twenty-five
By the time the day nurse came on duty, Guy had showered, shaved—albeit a little shakily—and dressed in the wrinkled, bloodstained clothes he'd found stashed in a plastic bag in his closet. Carol had said something about bringing a change of clothes by for him that morning when she came to take him home, but he couldn't wait. He spent a few minutes arguing absently with the nurse who had some fixation about patients being dismissed by their doctors before they went home and Walt was waiting for him when he went outside.
“Man, you gotta start hanging out at better bars,” was all the big man said as Guy got into the Jeep.
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Guy gingerly touched the bandage on the back of his head. It still throbbed dully, but if he remembered not to make any sudden movements, the pain was manageable.
Walt pulled out onto the highway and the light traffic that constituted rush hour in St. Theresa County, chomping down on a tattered cigar. Walt Marshall had long hair, a bushy beard, and weighed three hundred pounds on a light day. He favored Jimmy Buffett T-shirts that were always too tight on him, and was rarely seen without the cigar, which Guy had never known him to light. He was arguably the wealthiest full- time resident of St. Theresa County, but most nights ate dinner from a TV tray in front of a fuzzy-pictured, nineteen-inch television set. That was why Guy liked him. Except for the part about being wealthy, they had a lot in common.
Walt said, “A sheriff's deputy was by last week with mug shots of some dude they said was gunning for you. Guess he found you, huh?”
“More like I found him.”
“Good going, Slick.”
“He got away.”
“Yeah, I heard about your troubles last night on the police scanner. I was going to send you flowers.”
“Thanks for not.”
“Shaping up to be one of them weeks,” Walt went on, chewing the cigar. “Moon's in Scorpio.”
Guy leaned his head back gingerly and closed his eyes. “Oh, yeah?”
“Damn straight. Had a floater wash up before sunrise this morning.”
Guy opened his eyes. “What?”
“Some kid, probably drunk, swum out too far.Girl, I think. Fisherman found her near the channel cut, what was left of her anyway.”
“Jesus.” Guy stared at him. Everything inside him went cold. A girl, dead. He would never hear those words, never in all his life, without thinking first of his daughter. “Who was it? One of ours?” By “ours” he meant a local, and he knew how self-serving it sounded the moment the word was out. But he was, first and foremost, a reporter.
“Don't know. That was when you called, and I had to leave.”
Guy said, “Listen, Walt, forget the marina. Take me straight to the office.”
But one of Walt's eccentricities was his peculiar notion of propriety. He refused to take Guy to the office looking, in his words, “like a bad highway wreck,” and he insisted on waiting while Guy changed clothes and then driving him to Carol's house to pick up his car.
Guy was glad to see Carol wasn't home; she had said she was spending the night with Laura. He scrawled a note—”Sweetie—I'm okay, call me at work. G.” and pinned it between the storm door and the frame to protect it from the wind. In the end, it was nine o'clock before he got to the office.
“I've heard of devotion to duty,” said Rachel when he came in, “but this is ridiculous. You look like death warmed over. Aren't you supposed to be in the hospital or something?”
“My, how news does travel.” Everyone was staring at him and Guy was embarrassed. He beckoned Rachel to follow him into his office.
“Maybe that's why they call us a newspaper?” she said, coming inside and closing the door. Concern was on her face, and Guy was touched—and even more embarrassed. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“A little headache, that's all. Listen, I need a favor. Tanya Little—that name sounds familiar to me. Get somebody to look it up, will you? Lindy, if she's free.”
Rachel had her notebook out. “Local?”
“I don't know. I doubt it. Seems like—oh, I don't know.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, trying to concentrate. “Three or four years ago.”
“Got it,” Rachel said briskly. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Get Deputy Long on the phone and if my”—he stopped himself before saying “wife”— “Carol calls, transfer her to my cell phone. I'm going to be out of the office most of the morning.”
Rachel closed the notebook, a stubborn look on her face. “We have reporters—” began a familiar argument.
“And I'll call one if I need one. Now try the sheriff's office, will you? If Long's not there, try to find out where he is.”
Ed Jenkins came in the door just as Rachel was leaving. They shared a look—hers fraught with meaning, his bland. Ed said, “How're you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
“Better than you look.”
“Thanks.”
“Carol okay?”
“Yeah. She stayed over with Laura.”
“Any word on the perp, as we say in the biz?”
“They're waiting for a fingerprint match, but if you took a wild guess, you wouldn't be wrong.”
Ed's face was grim. “So I figured. Listen, it's your call. The radio station has news about the break-in, but all they know is that you, and I quote, surprised a burglar in your ex-wife's home. They've been calling, but we haven't told them anything. If you want to keep it quiet, it never happened. You want headlines, you got them.”
Guy thought only a moment. “Quiet, for now,” he said. Then he added, “Thanks, Ed.”
“You bet. Now go home.”
Guy said, “What's the word on that kid who washed up on the beach?”
“I've got someone covering it.”
“Yeah. Me.”
“I don't think so.” Ed looked uncomfortable. “They, uh—well not much is coming in yet but apparently the body's in pretty bad shape. Sharks and, well, you know.”
“Come on, I'm not in that bad a shape. I can hold my cookies if that's what you're worried about.” But in truth he wasn't as anxious to get on the story as he once had been.
“Maybe, but that's not it.” Ed looked increasingly reluctant. “I just don't think you need this right now, okay?”
“Need what?”
Ed released a tense breath. “Look,” he said. “The kid—she was about Kelly's age. And they think she was murdered.”
~
Chapter Twenty-six
For Sheriff John Case, it was every spring break nightmare come true. News
vans from as far away as Mexico Beach and Tallahassee were parked outside his office. A convicted rapist and child molester was on the loose, a young student was dead, his waiting room was brimming over with reporters and microphones and there on the front row, looking gray and grim and as alert as ever, was the man who was at the center of it all, Guy Dennison. And Sheriff John Case, dry-mouthed and sweating like a pig, had to stand up before them all and say, “We are withholding the name of the victim pending notification of next of kin. Though we won't have any details until we receive the autopsy report, we can tell you that the victim was a female, eighteen years old, and a student from the University of Virginia. It does appear at this time that she has been dead for at least twelve hours. She had, uh, been sexually assaulted before death.”
Someone called out. “Are you calling this an ordinary drowning, Sheriff?”
A trickle of sweat rolled down the back of his neck. He did not lift his hand to wipe it. “No,” he said, “we're not.”
A babble of voices then. What, where, when, who...
Sheriff Case said loudly, “We are interviewing friends of the victim and others connected with this case. I have no other information for you at this time.”
He went quickly through the crowd and into his office, shutting the door firmly behind him. He thought, I reckon I could have handled that better. About a million times better.
The door opened on a cacophony of murmurs and clatters and he looked up sharply. Guy Dennison came in and closed the door. Case scowled.
“I thought we were rid of you for at least a week.”
“Nice attitude toward a crime victim. No wonder those vultures out there are after your blood.”
Sheriff Case noted Guy's pallor, the set of his jaw, the flat dark color of his eyes, and he correctly attributed all to symptoms of something more than the aftermath of injury. Guy Dennison had the look of a man forcing himself to walk through hell for the simple reason that no one else was willing to do it, and Case was instantly sympathetic. This story had to be Dennison's worst nightmare; the one reason he had left big-city reporting for the small-time news of St. T. Yet even here it followed him: the assault and murder of a teenage girl who could have been his daughter, and no one could cover the story as well as the man who had lived through it already.
