by Sandra Brown
She watched as she walked into the frame, her back to the camera. When she turned, a beam of light shone directly into her face. She raised a hand to shade her eyes. “Lower that, please. It’s blinding me.”
She remembered him moving the flashlight a few degrees to the right, but she was still visible to the camera as she took in her surroundings. “This is his office. There won’t be anything in here. We need to find an examination room, a storage closet where he keeps supplies and meds.”
“Lead the way, Doc.”
She walked out of frame. The room went black, and so did the computer screen. Then a menu materialized, giving the viewer the options to replay, pause, or exit.
Grange paused it and returned to his place against the wall.
Emory sat as though petrified. She could feel Jeff’s incredulous gaze. After a few ponderous seconds, he stood up and moved to stand behind her chair, gently placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Emory, who was that? What was that?”
Through her sweater, his hands felt damp. Or, more likely, it was her body that had broken a sweat from sheer mortification.
Knight placed his hands on the table. She noticed that a rubber band was wrapped tightly around two of his fingers. He was plucking at it, making light snapping noises.
“Dr. Charbonneau? Emory?”
She quit her study of the rubber band and looked him in the eye.
“Dr. Cal Trenton was in Coral Gables, Florida, with his wife to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. He gave his whole staff the week off. They didn’t reopen till yesterday. When they did, they discovered that the office had been burglarized, and everybody went into a tizzy. It wasn’t until this morning that the doctor remembered the nanny cam he’d put in his bookcase a few months back.
“Seems he keeps a bottle of hooch in his bottom desk drawer, and he suspected the after-hours cleaning ladies of helping themselves. He hoped to catch them at it. But,” he said with a wave that dismissed the backstory, “in the long run, he just replaced them with a crew of teetotalers.
“He didn’t know if the camera was still recording. It was on one of those cycle-timer things. A loop, I think somebody called it. Anyhow, he took out the disk and brought it here to the deputy who’d investigated the break-in yesterday.” He raised his beefy shoulders in a shrug that was almost apologetic. “He recognized you right off, of course. Called me at home.”
She was looking at him, but her eyes had glazed, thinking of the catastrophic damage this had done to her credibility. She was armed with nothing more than an unexplained reference to sunglasses. The authorities had a video of her burglarizing a doctor’s office.
Knight spoke her name, softly but with a definite prod behind it.
She brought herself out of her daze. “Will I go to jail?”
Knight looked over at Grange, who seemed to share his senior partner’s dismay. When Knight turned back to her, he said, “That’s all you have to say?”
“Yes.”
“No explanation?”
“Is one necessary?”
“Emory, don’t say another word until we get an attorney here,” Jeff said. He tugged on the back of her chair as though expecting her to stand up and leave.
“You can play it like that,” Knight said.
“I should have played it like that when you started questioning me about her disappearance. We know how wrong you were then, and I’m certain that Emory has a logical explanation for this…” At a loss, he motioned toward the laptop. “But she won’t say anything else until she has a lawyer present.”
Knight patted the air. “Calm down, Jeff. We don’t want to book Dr. Charbonneau just yet. We feel sure there were extenuating circumstances, and we’d like to hear what they were. While we get some clarification from Emory, why don’t you wait outside?”
“Why don’t you kiss my ass?”
“Jeff.” She turned in her chair and looked up at him. “You’re probably right about having defense counsel. I’m sure our business lawyer could refer someone. Would you please deal with that for me?”
“And leave you in here alone with them?”
Grange stepped away from the wall. “Actually, it’s not up to you to decide who stays and who goes. We can have you escorted out.”
Before the situation got entirely out of hand, Emory clasped Jeff’s arm. “Call our lawyer and get that process started. I’ll be careful of what I say.”
He glared at the two detectives. “If this ever results in an arrest or trial, I’ll testify that you denied my wife an attorney’s presence when you questioned her.”
“Duly noted,” Grange deadpanned.
Jeff bent down and kissed her temple, whispering, “Why didn’t you share this with me?”
“I couldn’t.”
He hesitated, obviously wanting to know more. Then he gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “I believe in you.”
“Thank you.”
He stalked out and slammed the door shut behind him.
A tense silence ensued. Finally Knight said, “Well? Care to share what you were doing in that video?”
“Isn’t it apparent?”
“You don’t want to tell us why you burglarized this doctor’s office?”
“No.”
“You holding a grudge against Dr. Trenton?”
“I’ve never met him. I didn’t even know his name until you told me.”
“You picked his office at random?”
She didn’t answer.
“You were just cruising through that one-horse town, spotted his office, and decided to bust the lock on the back door and help yourself to some medical supplies?”
She remained silent.
Knight leaned forward. “Emory, let’s cut this BS. Excuse the French. Why’d you break into that doctor’s office and take—” Grange stepped forward and extended him a sheet of paper he withdrew from the manila envelope. Knight shoved on his reading glasses. Reading aloud, he itemized the things she had collected into a plastic trash can liner for easier toting, which had been her accomplice’s idea.
When he finished, she said, “Plus a box of latex gloves.”
Knight shook the paper in his hand. “Why’d you take these things that you could’ve gotten from your own office?”
“I was more than a hundred miles away from my office.”
“And you needed this stuff right that minute?”
She said nothing.
“Did you need these things to treat a patient?”
Again, she remained silent.
“Yourself? Were you treating yourself? Don’t look at me like I’m loco. Did you need these items for yourself?”
“No.”
He sat back, took a moment. “Okay. The man with the flashlight, he called you Doc, suggesting some level of familiarity. Is he the man from the cabin, who took good care of you but whose name has escaped your recollection?”
“It hasn’t escaped my recollection. I don’t know it.”
“He was your partner in crime, and you don’t know his name?”
Without admitting to the commission of a crime, she said, “I don’t know his name.”
Knight and Grange looked at each other. Grange raised his eyebrows expressively. Knight glanced toward the door, then, lowering his voice, asked, “Emory, is he a boyfriend you met up here for the weekend?”
“A boyfriend?” It was a laughable term when applied to him. “No. I’d never seen him before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I regained consciousness inside his cabin.”
Still speaking in a hushed voice, Knight said, “We don’t want to cause a rift between you and Jeff. Y’all will have to sort out the marriage angle on your own. But you need to tell us who this burglar is.”
She looked at each of them in turn. “If you want his name from me, you had just as well save your breath and put me in jail now. I don’t know who he is.”
Knight released a long sigh. �
��Technically you committed a Class H felony, which, if convicted, is punishable by several years in prison. However, in North Carolina we have structured sentencing, and we use a point system to rank a crime, taking into account the severity of it, the perp’s motive, and previous criminal history.”
“I’m not sure what—”
“What that means is,” he said, cutting her off, “nobody wants to lock you up. This was no crash and grab. There was a bank envelope with a couple hundred dollars of petty cash in the office manager’s desk. It’s still there.
“A locked cabinet containing painkillers, uppers, and downers, which would have sold on the street for a bundle, was left untouched. Well, not untouched, exactly. The lock on it was broken, but nothing was taken except for two weeks’ supply of antibiotics, which, I’m told, in Europe you can buy at the CVS or whatever.”
He let all that sink in before continuing. “Dr. Trenton said it looked to him like the missing articles had been shopped for, so to speak, by a professional. A medical professional, not a professional thief. He said the only things taken were what would be needed for a procedure. Say, the termination of a pregnancy.”
He’d been cataloging her reactions, and when she cast her eyes down she cursed herself for being so transparent.
Knight sat forward again, all earnestness and compassion now. “Did that man force you to steal that stuff and get rid of a problem for him?”
She said nothing.
“Emory?”
She refused to respond.
As though receiving a silent signal from Knight, Grange pulled out a chair and sat down with them at the table. He had lived up to Jeff’s description as the “bad cop.” She prepared herself for some arm-twisting.
He said, “Sam and I don’t believe you got it into your head to commit a B and E and steal some country doctor’s plastic gloves. Dollarwise, the medical equipment stolen didn’t add up to much. If Dr. Trenton is reimbursed for it, I doubt he’d want to see an esteemed colleague like you charged, much less tried. Granted, the medications that were stolen are controlled substances, but somebody could get a lot higher on a bottle of NyQuil.”
He paused. “Sam and I think you were forced or coerced into committing that burglary. What we don’t get is why you’re protecting him, the guy we can’t see. The guy with the raspy voice. Who is he, Dr. Charbonneau?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
“Well, we may be able to help with that.”
Surprised by that statement, she watched Grange remove a map from the manila envelope. He spread it open. It was a duplicate of the map she’d used to chart her run on that otherwise innocuous Saturday when, without any foretelling, her life had turned upside down. If the last five minutes were any indication of things to come, it appeared likely that her life would never be right side up again.
Someone had drawn a star in red ink on the map. Grange put the tip of his index finger on it. “This is the parking lot where you left your car. Your starting point, right?”
She nodded.
“The Chevron station where you were dropped off yesterday is here at this crossroads.” He pointed it out to her. “And here’s the town where Trenton’s office is.”
“What we did,” Knight said, “was sorta connect those dots to form a circle. Then we started checking arrest records, looking for anybody with priors who lives within that circle or close enough.”
Grange said, “Several names popped up.”
She held her breath.
“One was a guy who is currently serving time for armed robbery,” Grange said. “Another’s wife killed him eight months ago, so he’s not our man. But we got several other names.” Knight smiled at her. “And one in particular looks real good to us.”
Chapter 29
Emory thought she might throw up. She lowered her head and cupped her hand around her mouth.
Was yours a violent crime?
Extremely.
“Name’s Floyd.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“There are two of them, actually,” Grange said. “Brothers. Norman and Will Floyd.”
It was an effort not to give away her relief.
“Will, the younger, is particularly ornery,” Knight said. “Dropped out in tenth grade, and nobody in the school system was sad to see him go. Always in trouble. Noted bully. Ne’er-do-well. He has a couple of B and Es to his credit. Vandalism. Shoplifting.
“Last summer, he harassed a young woman at a baseball game, got rough with her in the parking lot, but she got cold feet about pressing charges, so he was released. Here’s his mug shot. Look familiar?”
He withdrew a rap sheet with Will Floyd’s photo. In it he looked like the belligerent, depraved individual he was.
“And this is his big brother, Norman, who has a similar rap sheet.”
Knight passed it to her. “Take a good look at them. But before you say anything, you should know that we already sent a deputy up there to question these boys.”
Her burble of elation was replaced by dread. It seeped through her like a paralyzing poison.
“What we heard back from the deputy? He was informed by their mother that her sons are presently sharing a room in the county hospital. The deputy went to see them there. Will is real bad off. He has a…mandi…mandubur—”
“Mandibular fracture,” she said quietly.
The detective nodded. “That’s it. His jaw’s wired shut with rods sticking out his face. The deputy described the apparatus as looking like something out of a torture chamber.
“Norman’s face looked like ‘a hunk of pork gone bad that had been run through a sausage grinder anyway.’ That’s a quote. Plus he’s got four broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a kidney that has turned his urine red. The deputy took his word for that.”
Grange picked up the thread. “But when he wasn’t wheezing in pain, Norman could talk, and before his brother wrote down on a piece of paper for him to shut the eff up, he alleged it was their neighbor who inflicted the injuries.
“He claimed they’d never had any trouble with him until night before last, when he and a lady doctor, a Dr. Smith, intruded on what should have been a private family matter and made a house call to treat their ailing sister, Lisa.”
After a time, when she still didn’t speak, Knight said. “Emory? This guy who lives down the road a piece from the Floyds, we’re bettin’ he’s the man in the video. Correct?”
Both settled gazes on her, but it was Knight whom she addressed. “Was Lisa there?”
“At the house? No,” Knight replied. “Mrs. Pauline Floyd told the deputy that somebody came early this morning, before daylight, and took her.”
“Took her?”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t say who.”
“Don’t forget about the dog,” Grange said.
“Oh, yeah,” Knight said. “He also drove off with the family pet.”
At the tender memory the dog evoked, she smiled.
Grange said, “That’s funny?”
“No.” Feeling weary, she pushed back a strand of hair. “I assure you that the situation in the Floyd household was no laughing matter.”
Grange pounced on that. “So you were there? You were Dr. Smith?”
Declining to answer that, she asked, “Was Pauline all right?”
Grange held her gaze, as though considering how much to tell her. “Depends on your viewpoint. She was fine. But she frustrated the deputy by claiming not to know the individual who thrashed the living daylights out of her sons, although according to them she witnessed the altercation.
“The deputy described her as uncooperative because she flatly refused to answer his questions about the unnamed someone who carted off her daughter, saying only that he was a ‘right decent sort.’”
He’d won Pauline’s loyalty by treating her with respect and dignity, probably one of the few people in her whole life who had.
Knight was saying, “Those boys told the deputy
that relatives in town had been persuaded by Pauline to take Lisa back. Whatever that means. We got the name of Mrs. Floyd’s sister and called. She confirmed that the girl and dog were dropped off at her place around dawn by a man driving a pickup truck. He didn’t stick around. Left his passengers at the curb and drove away. Exactly the way it was with you yesterday.”
She didn’t address his last statement. She was thinking about Lisa’s welfare. “Has anyone spoken to Lisa?”
“Not yet. We will.”
“Send a female officer to question her. She should be gently dealt with.”
After a short but telling pause, Grange asked, “Was she raped?”
Emory said, “She’s fifteen.”
“Did you terminate her pregnancy?”
“That’s privileged information.”
“Did the mystery guy get the girl pregnant and—”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Again. Privileged.”
“The Floyd boys don’t share their mother’s opinion of this man. Before pulling the dumb act, Norman referred to him as a brute.”
She snuffled with disgust. “Norman would know.”
After a short pause, Knight tried again. “Emory, did you witness the beating he gave those boys?”
“I want my lawyer.”
Knight leaned toward her again. “You scared?”
“Of arrest?”
“Of him?” he asked with annoyance.
“No.”
Knight angrily popped his rubber band. “What gets me, is all y’all refusing to talk about this guy. The deputy told us that no sooner had Norman mentioned him than Will went bonkers right there in his hospital bed. He was mm-hmming and shaking his head, best he could with those rods sticking out his jawbone.
“Then he motioned for paper and pen and scribbled that note for Norman not to say any more, and Norman heeded the warning. Went mute from there. It was like they were scared, and these two have never been timid a day in their lives, and they don’t frighten or back down easily.”
She just looked at him.
He exhaled heavily. “I’ll repeat one of the questions I asked you yesterday, Emory. While this man held you captive, did he threaten you, harm you?”
