She placed the packet gently on the top of her desk, in the center.
“You asked if Cara came more than once. She did. I can’t say how, but I’d known that she would. I had looked into her.”
“Looked into her,” Roarke repeated. Coming from the nun, in this setting, it sounded almost mystical.
Mother Doctor frowned. “I called the school. It took some show of force, but I was able to find out . . .” For a moment it was if she didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “Who she was. All of it.
“The second time she came, I was able to speak to her a bit. And I believe she came once more, a few days later. I found these things in Ivy’s room. They weren’t there before, and Ivy did not go out, herself. I can only surmise that Cara left them for her.”
She unwrapped the cloth on her desk, one end at a time, to reveal the contents.
A glittering lump of gold stone. A plant frond that looked like palm. And a heavy silver ring.
Roarke looked up from the objects to Mother Doctor. Before he could speak, she lifted a finger.
“And yes, of course. I gave them to the police.”
He reached for the ring, picked it up. On the flat square surface was a tiny compass, embossed in gold. It seemed familiar, somehow.
A college ring? A lodge ring? There was no identifying inscription.
“That one I was able to figure out for myself,” Mother Doctor said. “The compass. It’s a Wayfarers ring.”
Roarke was aware of Wayfarers, in a general way. Service clubs like Wayfarers, Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, had been a pillar of small-town America, a more informal, more Protestant descendant of Masonic lodges. Vaguely churchy, very male dominated—even after they were forced to accept female members after a lawsuit in the late eighties.
And then he remembered. Laura had played the piano for the local Wayfarers Club.
He stared at Mother Doctor. “The police had this?”
“Yes.”
“What did they do with it?”
“They took those things, had them for a week, and then returned all the items to me. Nothing to do with anything, apparently. I could see they thought I was foolish. It didn’t help that one of the detectives was a Baptist.”
He glanced at her, not knowing if she was serious. “It was the Sheriff’s Department that you gave these to.”
“That’s right. They were the department heading up the investigation.”
Ortiz’s department, Roarke thought. Why don’t I like that?
“But in the end, I see their point. How was it evidence? A girl brings another girl presents.” She lifted her shoulders.
“It’s a man’s ring, though, isn’t it?” It was too big to be a girl’s.
“I would say so, yes.”
“And after you found these in Ivy’s room, how many days later did she die?”
She met his gaze from across the desk. “It was the next day.”
Roarke felt a hollowness in his chest. He asked the next question with no small dread. “Did Cara . . . was Cara there the night Ivy died?”
The nun shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her. I never saw her again.”
There was silence between them.
Then she reached for the surplice, folded the objects back into them, and extended her hand across the desk, offering the packet to Roarke.
He looked at the package stupidly.
She nodded at him. “I’ve been holding on to this for sixteen years. It’s obvious now why. It’s for you.”
His mouth was dry. “I can’t. I’m not on the job anymore.”
“Ah, Roarke. You’re not ‘on the job.’ You’re on a mission.”
He wanted to argue. No words were coming.
She shook her head. “I understand the conflict here. ‘Look too long into the abyss—’”
Roarke finished the quote automatically. “‘And the abyss looks back into you.’” The profiler’s creed, or warning. The nun had just summed up his whole state of mind for the last three months in one quotation.
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “But Roarke. They were fourteen. Three fourteen-year-old girls with no one to stand for them. In the end, I didn’t help them. Or couldn’t help them. Maybe you can set something—”
She started back and fell silent, and Roarke realized he was on his feet, that he’d shoved back his chair, and was staring down at her, shaking.
She finished gently. “Set something right.”
He contained himself however he could, and took the package. It felt heavy in his hand.
“This should also be of use to you.”
She handed across a file folder, plain manila, and not new. Roarke opened it to look down on a photocopied document. He could tell without even reading it what it was: a police witness statement. The name on the top line was Ivy Barnes.
He looked down at the form for some time, then up at the nun. “How did you get this?”
She gave him an inscrutable look. “I have ways.”
“How did they even . . . you said that her vocal cords were burned . . .”
“And her fingers, too, to stumps. And her eyes. And still, she learned Braille and typed it out herself. She wanted it known, what happened to her.”
He felt a wave of resentment that it had to be him. And he knew it had to be him.
“All right,” he said angrily. “All right.” He gathered up the surplice and the file, and stood.
“You’ll keep me apprised?”
“Of course,” he said tiredly, to the door.
“Nobody said it was easy,” she said behind him.
He turned to look at her. “What?”
“Life.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Roarke stood at the sliding glass door. Outside the sun shimmered through the water from the rain birds arcing over the golf course green.
The packet in the satin surplice was on the bed.
Roarke turned and paced the hotel room, postponing the moment that he would have to sit down with it. The urge not to touch the packet again was extreme.
Why? After all, it was in the past, wasn’t it? No one’s life was at stake any more. No harm he could do to anyone.
Except to you, a part of his mind whispered.
But finally he sat, opened the silky cloth, and looked down at the objects: the gold stone, the palm frond, the ring.
Relics, he couldn’t help thinking. Not just fragments from the past, but in the way of the religious meaning: the personal effects of a saint.
Were they clues to Ivy’s attacker? Clues for whom, then? To whom? If Cara had left them for the other girl, what was she was trying to say?
He reached for the ring, felt its weight in the palm of his hand. It was a bit big on his finger, made for a larger man. Had the killer worn it? But apparently the sheriff’s department had dismissed it as a clue.
The palm frond was dry as dust, and it was impossible not to think of Palm Sunday, the ritual anointment of ashes, from Masses he’d attended in childhood, before he stopped going to church for good.
He picked up the stone. The metallic glittering caught the sunlight. Pyrite, he was fairly certain. Fool’s Gold.
Were that and the palm frond clues to a place?
He could have them analyzed, wait to see what came back. Forensic geology, it was called. Forensic botany. If the palm frond and the pyrite could be traced to a specific area, it might be a clue to the place Ivy was taken and attacked. Even someone’s property.
Wouldn’t the detectives have done that?
Sixteen years ago, not necessarily. Even now, not necessarily. But there was also the fact that in sixteen years, the plant life of an area would have changed considerably. The results couldn’t be trusted. And would a fourteen-year-old girl be leaving a forensic clue like that, anyway?
He had no idea what Cara would have been thinking.
It took even more time to work up the nerve to read the document Mother Doctor had given him,
Ivy’s police testimony. He’d read the details in the news reports, but to hear it in Ivy’s own words would be another story altogether. The palms of his hands were damp even before he took up the faded file, opened it to remove the pages.
WITNESS STATEMENT
Statement of Ivy Marie Barnes
Age 14 Occupation High school student
This statement consisting of 3 page(s) and signed by me is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, I will be liable to prosecution if I have willfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.
On the morning of June 2nd, I was walking to school. It was early because I was going to a Palmers meeting before class, so it was still dark. There was a white van parked up the street on the side I was walking on. When I passed the van it felt like someone was inside it, but all I could see was dark.
I walked faster. Then someone grabbed me from behind.
Many stops and starts later, Roarke put the pages down and walked around the room. He pulled open the sliding door to let air into the room. And then he went to the mini bar and pulled out a small bottle of whisky.
There was a manila envelope inside the folder that he knew contained photos.
You don’t need to look, he told himself.
Of all the things in the world that he feared, burning was the worst. The idea of being set on fire was an incomprehensible horror. The idea of being burned that badly and living . . .
It’s what Cara saw, he told himself implacably. It’s what Ivy lived.
He put the whisky bottle down, stepped back to the desk, opened the envelope, and looked down on hell.
Some time later, he left the room with the file and an envelope, took the elevator down to the lobby.
He had to weave his way through a group of golfers, some kind of convention, already taking advantage of happy hour. Their drunken chatter seemed too loud, grating in his ears.
The young receptionist standing at the counter looked up from her computer with a smiling greeting. “May I help—”
Then she stopped, staring at Roarke. “Sir, are you all right?”
She looked so alarmed that Roarke made an effort to sound normal. “Just a rough day. Do you have FedEx pickup? I need to send something overnight.”
“Of course. I’ll get you a mailer.”
Roarke sealed the mailer with the lump of pyrite and the piece of palm frond inside, addressed it to the San Francisco Bureau, and deposited the package in the FedEx box.
In the hotel’s business center, he printed out the photos he’d taken of the relics.
As the printer whirred, phrases and images from the report flashed in his head. Ivy’s attacker had used a hood to cover her eyes during the attack; she never saw his face. He had kept her chained in the van for the entire two days, never taking her out until he dragged her outside to burn her.
And there was something else in those pages. Something right at the border of his consciousness, that he knew would come to the surface if he just let it.
On the way out of the business center he almost ran straight into Devlin in the corridor. The hotel manager gave him a smile that was meant to be amiable, but seemed strained. “Hello there. I didn’t know you were still with us.”
It was a lie, and not a very good one.
That’s interesting, Roarke thought. Why?
He felt a touch of suspicion that Devlin was outside the business center just as he had been scanning Ivy’s police statement.
Now that really is paranoid.
But in the same moment he remembered that Devlin had said his father had belonged to the Wayfarers Club, and knew he needed to stay alert.
This guy was never caught. He may still be out there. He may be right here in this town. So from now on, you assume nothing.
Devlin was still trying to make pointed conversation. “Still looking into Eden? I mean, Cara?”
There was a note in his voice that Roarke recognized. A desperate yearning. That addictive pull.
And at that moment, Roarke realized that he wasn’t looking for her anymore. Not the adult Cara. He had no expectation that this search would teach him anything that could bring him to her. It was about the girls, now.
Three fourteen-year-old girls with no one to stand for them.
“Just some loose ends,” he said to Devlin pleasantly. “Have a good day.”
And he walked down the hall, leaving Devlin behind him.
In his hotel room he typed off a text to Lam and Stotlemyre, the Evidence Response techs he’d always worked with at the Bureau. He knew they’d make the time to get the pyrite and the palm frond tested, no questions asked. He felt a ripple of guilt. And then he reached for the two yearbooks and laid them both open on the desk, to Ivy’s and Laura’s photos.
Looking down on their faces, the guilt vanished.
Like hell you didn’t make the connection, Roarke thought at the principal. There’s something you’re hiding here.
Then he looked more closely at Laura’s picture, at the clubs listed below: Glee Club, Honors, Palmers.
Palm frond. Palmers.
He grabbed for Ivy’s witness report. The name had registered when he’d first read it, then the other details of the attack had wiped it away.
“I was going to a Palmers meeting before school . . .”
Roarke felt a stirring of memory.
It was some kind of club, wasn’t it? It hadn’t been a club at his own high school in San Luis Obispo, but there had been one at some rival school.
And Ivy was in Palmers. Just as Laura Huell had been.
He turned to the photos of the relics spread out on the bed, picked up the ring from the opened surplice, and examined the embossed figure of the compass. He grabbed his iPad and Googled. A moment later he was staring down at the same image of the compass, on the national website of the Wayfarers Club.
Palmers was the junior branch of the club.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a long, mostly sleepless wait until morning, when he could reasonably start knocking on doors.
Laura Huell’s old house was on K Street, just as Devlin had said, a boxy ’50s style stucco. The landscaping looked minimally kept up and the trees and shrubs were old, on their way toward dying.
The woman who came to the door had the same unkempt look as the house. She was probably not sixty yet, but looked older.
“Mrs. Huell?” Roarke asked.
Her face tightened. “Who are you?”
He could see she was about to shut the door, so in a split second he decided to play his highest card.
“I’m Special Agent Roarke, FBI.”
That stopped her from closing the door, barely. But he knew he didn’t have long.
He could see past her into the house. Everything inside seemed to have a film on it: the floor was dingy, the walls greasy with fingerprints; a layer of dust furred the carpet in the shabby living room. Clutter was piled on tables and in corners, cardboard boxes and bulging plastic sacks stacked against the walls. Not full-on hoarding yet, but it was escalating.
“FBI, huh,” she said warily, but didn’t ask him for ID. Instead, she waited expectantly.
“I’m here to talk to you about your daughter.”
Her face turned stony. “She’s dead. Years ago.” She started to shut the door again.
“Then I’d like to talk to your husband—”
There was a sudden narrow, sneering look on her face. “You’d have to find him then, wouldn’t you? He took off. A long, long time ago.” And then she asked the question. “Let’s see your badge.”
It wasn’t a badge, but he didn’t have it, and even if he did, he didn’t guess he’d get much out of her. Sometimes you just had to admit it and move on.
“Sorry to trouble you,” he said, and turned away. Behind him, the door slammed on its hinges.
The local Wayfarers Club was just blocks from the school, and
another few blocks from Laura Huell’s old house.
Roarke had read up on the Wayfarers before leaving the hotel. The organization was made up largely of white and middle- to upper-middle-class businessmen and independent professionals. The clubs were high on traditional Christian values, more popular in suburbs and small towns than in larger cities, and the members tended to be members for life. And the Wayfarers were closely involved in their town’s schools, donating to athletic programs and scholarship funds.
He’d found confirmation of the last in the Las Piedras High yearbooks: the club had a full page ad in the back pages, and the Wayfarer name was scattered throughout the books as sponsors of the football team, and several scholarships. Meaning lots of money invested in the school.
But as he turned onto the block, he could tell even from a distance that the building attached to the address wasn’t big enough to contain a club. He stopped the car at the curb, looking out at a motorcycle repair and accessories shop. He checked the address he’d gotten from the yearbook.
The address was right, but the shop was wrong.
He got out of the Rover and headed for the building.
The doorbell jangled as Roarke stepped inside. A man looked up from the counter—tattooed and pierced, with a Hells Angels look to him, but the leather jacket was high end and his beard was grizzled. The owner, Roarke figured.
“Help you?” the man asked, friendly enough.
“I was looking for the Wayfarers Club. Must have written down the wrong address.”
The man nodded. “Used to be here. Over on Highland, now.”
Roarke glanced around the shop, the few display bikes, the travel gear and biker clothing. No way was the square footage enough for a clubhouse of any size.
“Is this a new building?”
“I wouldn’t say new. Wayfarers moved after the old building burned down.”
Roarke felt a buzz of significance. “The building burned down? When was that?”
“A while, now. Fifteen, sixteen years ago.”
Bitter Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 4) Page 11
