Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte)

by Janice Kay Johnson - Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte)

  Setting his emotions aside, Clay thought about the scene in ICU. He pictured how Jane’s sister had responded when her husband had expressed doubt. She’d been shocked. She had never imagined he wouldn’t believe every word out of her mouth. Maybe from arrogance, maybe habit. It was pretty clear Drew had been blinding himself to his wife’s behavior for a while. His jumping in and insisting she take their daughter with her on her supposed errand might have been his first rebellion against her recent dominance. From what he’d said, she had been furious—but she’d been the one to surrender.

  “I think you’re right,” he said slowly. “If he won’t do it, what about you?”

  “I don’t see that working.” Jane sounded sad. “I told you we haven’t been getting along very well. Even if we’d been doing better lately, she has this pattern of lashing out at me whenever I’m giving her advice she doesn’t want, or she imagines I’m asserting some kind of big-sister authority. Me trying might be the worst thing we could do.”

  “All right.” The uncomfortable density in his chest told him he’d already let go of his anger. He wished she was here, or he was there. He wanted to be able to put his arms around her. “Do you want me there?” he asked.

  “Um...let me talk to Drew and see what he thinks.” If she’d heard Clay’s double meaning, she wasn’t letting on. “Lissa really was hysterical. She’s still at the stage where she conks out after about ten minutes of conversation. We need to let her rest.”

  He grunted reluctant agreement.

  “I’ll call.”

  His hand tightened on the phone. “I’ll be waiting.”

  She said goodbye and was gone.

  Crap. He’d be pacing again.

  * * *

  DREW HADN’T KNOWN he was capable of such anger. He had always been laid-back. There was a time he’d considered being easygoing a virtue. The contrast between their personalities might explain why he’d fallen so hard for Lissa when he met her. He bored himself sometimes. He knew she’d never bore him.

  Lately, though, he’d had to admit to himself that he and Lissa weren’t equal partners, or anything close to it. He’d deferred, without even noticing he was doing it, because she was stronger. That might not ever have mattered—he might never even have become aware it was happening—if she had loved him as much as he loved her. If she’d wanted what was best for them, and for their family.

  He wasn’t sure there was an us anymore. Nor was he sure he wanted there to be. He had been praying for her to come out of the coma, partly for her sake, but most of all so she could help them find Bree.

  And then she’d lied. The woman he had loved was protecting herself at their child’s expense. The fact that she could do so was unthinkable to him. He would die for either of their daughters. He would have died for her. Today, even as he’d soothed her back to sleep, he kept thinking he didn’t know her at all.

  Right at this moment, he came close to hating her.

  Once she was asleep, he told Jane he’d be back in a few hours and went for a drive. He followed Highway 31 southeast into drier country, glad of the lack of traffic. He could almost empty his mind when he concentrated on shifting, pretended to take in his surroundings. Part of him wanted to keep going. Eventually he’d cross the border into California. Lissa had checked out for days. Why couldn’t he?

  Because Alexis needed him. Bree might need him. Because he didn’t think he could stand it if Jane thought he was weak.

  He was almost back to Angel Butte when he took an impulsive turn, following signs to the Arrow Lake Resort, but continuing on past it and the airport. He and Lissa had taken the girls swimming here—not last summer, but the previous one, he thought.

  Without having consciously made the decision, he found himself on 253rd, passing the Bear Creek picnic area, where some kind of large family gathering seemed to be going on. A huge banner he couldn’t quite read hung between two pine trees. The crowd of people was a blur, colorful, cheerful even without him being able to hear the laughter. Drew stared for a minute, his foot lifting from the gas pedal, before he accelerated again and left it behind.

  Torn vegetation made it obvious where Lissa had gone off the road. Just past it, he parked on the shoulder and walked back, looking in horror at the deep furrows and the gouges in the trunks of two small trees. If they hadn’t stopped the Venza’s descent—

  How much worse could it have been? A quick death for Bree might have been better than whatever had happened to her. Pain slammed into him. He threw back his head until muscles and tendons strained and a shout ripped from his throat.

  If the people at the campground heard, what would they think? He didn’t care.

  Once he started back toward town, Drew was vaguely surprised to discover he was hungry. He didn’t want to go into a restaurant; people would recognize him and might ask questions. Even if all they did was express sympathy, he couldn’t take it. Instead he went to Taco Time, using the outside window and keeping his face averted as he paid for and accepted his food. Parked at the far corner of the lot, he gobbled, shocking himself until he thought back to the past few days and remembered how little he’d actually eaten. Thank God Alexis was being taken care of. He knew he was running out of internal resources. He had been living in the belief that Lissa would open her eyes and tell them how they could find Bree.

  Now...now he felt as if he was hardening inside. Changing. He suspected he would never be the same man he’d been.

  * * *

  JANE HAD GONE home and cleaned house. If Lissa woke up, no one from her family would be there. So what, Jane thought vengefully. She knew it wasn’t in her to be supportive right now. Like Drew, she had needed to get away.

  Eventually she took a short nap on her own bed, then a shower. She had reached for her hair dryer when her phone rang.

  “I’m back at the hospital.” It was Drew. His voice was unnaturally calm. “I’m ready to talk to her. Do you want to be here?”

  “Yes. Give me ten minutes.”

  “All right.” He paused. “Do we need to have Sergeant Renner here, too?”

  She’d thought about it. “No. I think we have a better chance of getting answers from Lissa if he isn’t there.”

  “I think so, too,” he agreed.

  She should at least tell Clay what they were going to do, she thought during the drive. He might agree to let them do this alone...but he might not, too. She wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

  A guilty conscience gripped her as she walked back into the hospital a short time later, her feet knowing the way to ICU without conscious direction from her. Past the escalator. Long hall that widened in front of some windows looking out on a small courtyard. Double doors.

  No, she told herself, relaxing, of course Clay wouldn’t mind. She thought he’d given her tacit permission to go ahead. He might have lost some trust in her today, but not all of it.

  Drew stood when he saw her coming. Jane thought about hugging him, but something in his expression stopped her. She had never seen him so grim. So she only nodded, and they went in together.

  “Oh,” one of the nurses said with a smile. “She’s been asking for you both.”

  Jane forced a smile of sorts. Drew didn’t even manage that much.

  Lissa was awake, plucking fretfully at her blanket. Her gaze flew to their faces, her eyes widening at whatever she saw there.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? Both of you. Oh, God.” She sounded as if she was about to hyperventilate. “Not Bree.”

  “Do you care?” Drew asked, his tone one of clinical interest. He advanced to his usual place at the side of the bed, but didn’t bend down to kiss her or even take her hand.

  Jane stopped at the foot.

  “How can you say that?” Lissa cried.

  “At first,” Drew said, “we thought Br
ee must have stopped a car to ask for help. That she was unlucky enough to have fallen victim to a child molester. Every police department in central Oregon has been pursuing tips phoned in by the public. Do you know how many curly-haired girls Bree’s age there are?”

  His wife stared at him as if she was mesmerized. Jane wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

  “Do you know how I’ve felt, imagining my little girl in the hands of someone like that?”

  Lissa said nothing.

  He leaned toward her. “I was angry when Sergeant Renner began to speculate on other possibilities. Ones that meant you were involved in some wrongdoing. Not my wife, I insisted.” His voice became deadlier with every word. “But there was the fact you were so determined to go to Rite Aid by yourself. And the fact you never got there at all, although when you phoned me, you implied you’d been, but had just forgotten the athlete’s foot powder.”

  Lissa opened her mouth, then closed it.

  “There was the puzzle of why the accident happened where it did. What were you doing out there?”

  Still, she only stared, but her expression was stricken.

  “Then he got to asking about our finances. How were we paying the bills, with me having been laid off for so many months? Didn’t we have a heck of a steep mortgage? Car payments, too. My wife was handling all that, I said. But I’ve been asking, haven’t I, Lissa? And you’ve been blowing me off. I still didn’t have the guts to actually look, but Jane did. She pulled up our bank account. Saw what nice bonuses you’ve been getting lately.”

  Lissa gaped at Jane. “How could you?” she whispered.

  He flattened his hands on the mattress and bent forward, his lips drawn back from his teeth. “What did you do to earn that money, Lissa? You will tell me.”

  “I...I... Nothing!” she almost screamed. “Not what you’re thinking!”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  “I didn’t want us to lose the house!”

  “But we were going to sell it anyway once I got a new job.” He straightened and his voice went flat. “Or did you have no intention of moving, no matter what I did?”

  “No!” Lissa was gasping and crying now. “Drew, what is wrong with you? Why are you treating me this way?”

  “Because one of us has to care about Bree,” he said with such contempt even Jane stared at him with astonishment, “and it’s obviously not going to be you.”

  “How can you say that? I love her! I can’t tell you, or...or...” Her face contorted. “What if he kills her?” she wailed, before she flung herself onto her side, curling into a fetal position.

  Jane had had broken ribs once. That was what this felt like, every breath agony.

  “Who?” Drew asked hoarsely. “Who is ‘he’?”

  Lissa was either crying too hard to answer, or was refusing to.

  “James Stillwell,” Jane heard herself say. “That’s who wrote those checks to you.”

  Her sister’s head bobbed. “He said...he said he wanted to help, with Drew out of work...” she mumbled.

  “But he wasn’t being good-hearted, was he?” Jane said, her voice as cold and hard as Drew’s had been. “Were you doing something illegal for him?”

  “Or were you his mistress?” Drew didn’t sound as if he minded either way. “You sure didn’t care whether I was in your bed or not.”

  “No!” She unloosened the clench of her body enough to stare up at him in wild-eyed despair. “I wouldn’t do that. No!”

  Drew looked down at his wife as if he hated her. “Does he have Bree, Lissa?”

  “Yes!” she yelled, then sobbed. “Yes,” she said more quietly. “I think so. He must.”

  “Why? Why did he take her?” Drew’s face worked, and he ran a hand over it. “Does he like little girls?”

  “No! No. Nothing like that. It’s me. Oh, God. It’s me.” Lissa was winding down, the terrified understanding in every word making Jane’s skin prickle and burn as if she’d brushed against poison oak.

  Lissa uncurled and leaned against the pillows. Now she was staring at some dreadful vision neither Drew nor Jane could see. She seemed unaware of the tears and snot streaking her cheeks and upper lip. “I think he was going to kill me,” she said dully. “He’d been giving me checks at work. Then he said he was afraid someone would notice. He claimed he and his wife were going to be at her sister’s house on Bear Creek and that I could come by Saturday. Only...only when I got to the address he gave me, I saw it was this rundown cabin that looked as if it was vacant. I’ve met his wife’s sister. This wasn’t anyplace she’d live.” She shuddered. “It’s so...deserted out there. There wasn’t any traffic at all, and there were a few driveways, but I couldn’t even really see the houses, and I got scared. So I kept going. I should have turned into the picnic area. At least there were people there. But I thought I could just keep going and make my way home. I was calling you—” her gaze flicked to Drew “—when this car came up really fast behind me. I can still see it in the rearview mirror. And...that’s the last thing I remember. Except Bree.” Her voice was so soft, both Drew and Jane leaned forward. “She was screaming. I can hear her.”

  Her husband swore. His eyes had sunk so deep in his head, they were hardly visible behind the glint of his glasses. “Why was he paying you, Lissa? You have to tell us.”

  She closed her eyes. “Glenn called in sick one day. I went in to look for something on his computer, and I saw he’d left his laptop, too. I was curious. I couldn’t understand why he worked on it sometimes in the office instead of his PC. Of course it was password protected, but I tried a bunch of things, and... Well, he’d used his daughter’s birthday.” She looked at Drew. “We’d talked about our kids’ birthdays. You know.”

  Dread held Jane utterly still.

  “He had QuickBooks on there, but I could see right away that nothing was the same as what I worked on. Truck routing is computerized, too, you know.” She waited, and Drew nodded. “That was on the laptop, too, only there were routes and dates I’d never seen before. I don’t know whether they’re just hiding some income, or whether they’re transporting something illegal, but I thought—”

  “You’d blackmail them,” Drew said.

  Finally she looked at him, her expression piteous. “Finding out, right when we needed extra money, it seemed like it was meant to be. Anyway, I’ve earned more than I was paid. Stillwell is a creep! He talks about how we’re all one big family, but really most of us are nothing to him. Nothing,” she spat. “Do you know how much Glenn makes? And we do practically the same thing! Well, if he can make that much, I thought I deserved it, too!”

  Now Jane was the one to close her eyes. How had Lissa developed this sense of entitlement? She and Drew had had such a good life, and all the time she’d been seething because she was sure she deserved more.

  “Did you really think he’d just pay you forever?” she asked with disbelief.

  “He paid Glenn,” Lissa said sullenly.

  “Who is a CPA. Who would earn way more than you no matter where he worked.” Then she shook her head. Why was she wasting time? “Who was in the car behind you, Lissa? Was it Stillwell?”

  Now Lissa looked scared. “Who else could it have been?”

  “If Stillwell Trucking is running drugs, he has some ugly people on his payroll. He could have sent anyone. Somehow, he doesn’t look like a guy who’d do his own dirty work.”

  “I was supposed to come alone,” Lissa whispered. “I thought—I’d leave Bree in the car. Nobody would pay attention to a kid.”

  “Whoever it was, he saw you go by. Maybe hesitate and look down the driveway, then decide you weren’t going to stop. So he came after you. You freaked and went sailing off the road. Maybe he was going to kill you, only those two hikers popped out and started running up the road to see
if anyone was hurt. He might not have been able to get down to you, but Bree had scrambled out and he was able to grab her. He probably hoped you were dead, but decided he needed some insurance. With you in a coma, they couldn’t let her go.”

  Lissa’s eyes welled with fresh tears. “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see how they can ever let her go. She’s old enough to be able to identify whoever it was who grabbed her.”

  Drew turned his head to look at her. His expression was terrible. “Why hasn’t anybody found her body?”

  Jane pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I have to call Clay.”

  Lissa gasped. “Wait! You can’t tell him!”

  Jane walked out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CLAY LISTENED IN silence to Jane’s terse recitation, hearing the deep distress she was trying to hide.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. He had to step quickly aside when two deputies wrestled a struggling, handcuffed man past him in the corridor outside the detective unit.

  If Jane heard the screamed obscenities, she didn’t remark on it. Instead, after a pool of silence, she said only, “Thank you.”

  He shoved a hand through his hair. “You know I have to talk to her.”

  “Be my guest.” There was a hint of her more familiar tartness, if flavored with something darker than usual.

  “Are you still at the hospital?” he asked.

  “In the parking lot.”

  “Wait for me?”

  “You want me there?”

  “Yeah.” Of course he did. Hadn’t she noticed he always wanted her there?

  “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll see you in the waiting area.”

  He hit the traffic lights right this time and made it back to the hospital in under ten minutes. Jane was standing looking out the window at the small courtyard surrounded by the hospital. When he walked up behind her, he could see through the glass and courtyard to the cafeteria on the other side.