The Darkness We Hide

by Debra Webb

  Rowan stood at the newel post, looking upward as she often did. The wide stairs were lined with a Persian runner. The stairs rose up and spilled onto the landing. The ornate railing stood beneath the massive chandelier that lit not only the lower but also the upper level as well. Beyond the chandelier was the towering stained glass window depicting angels ascending to heaven. When Rowan was a child, her mother had painstakingly restored the beautiful stained glass.

  But that had been before.

  Before she tied a rope to that ornate banister and hung herself. Just in time for her only surviving daughter to walk through the front entrance and find her. The police had come, and when they had finished documenting the scene, her father had been allowed to pull her mother over that railing and cut her loose. He had held her in his arms and cried like a baby.

  Rowan couldn’t climb these stairs without thinking of how her own mother had betrayed her, which was why she more often than not used the back staircase. But sometimes these stairs were just handier. Besides, if she faced that hurtful part of her past often enough, perhaps she would grow immune to the pain.

  Next to her Freud whimpered.

  “Come on, boy.” Rowan started the climb and Freud followed.

  Before everything happened—before her closest friend and mentor, Julian Addington, had been revealed as a serial killer—Rowan had come to terms to some degree with what her mother had done. Since she had hung herself only months after Raven drowned, Rowan had always assumed that her mother had loved her dead daughter too much to go on without her. Too much to grin and bear life for her remaining daughter.

  During the past year Rowan had discovered many secrets about her mother. Not the least of which was that she had likely blamed herself for Raven’s death, which might explain why she couldn’t live with what happened.

  Still, she had left Rowan as a twelve-year-old child to grow up believing her mother hadn’t loved her enough to stay. But Rowan had had her father. He had always been the perfect parent. Loving, patient, kind.

  Sadly, he had been keeping secrets, too.

  So very many secrets had been buried and so many lies had been told. So much darkness to find her way through.

  It was difficult to distinguish what was fact from what was fiction.

  At the top of the stairs, she made the right into the corridor that led to the living quarters. The second floor and the smaller third floor had served as the family home for several generations of DuPonts. When the funeral home was built a century and a half ago, that had been the plan. All these years later, that reality had not changed.

  Rowan unlocked the door that separated her private space from the public funeral home space. This was new as well. Billy had insisted she have as many security barriers as possible between her and any trouble that found her.

  She smiled as she opened the door. Now she had Billy, too.

  On Halloween night last fall she had invited him to stay with her. It was the first time they were together in that way. She closed the door behind Freud and moved on to the kitchen. She opened the fridge door and scanned the contents.

  Being with Billy was exactly as she had imagined. Amazing. Beautiful. Perfect.

  At first she had been terrified. What if things went wrong and she and Billy’s friendship was damaged by the falling apart of their physical entanglement?

  So far that had not happened. Shortly after that first time together, he had moved in. They shared the same room she had slept in her whole life before going off to college. They had talked about cleaning out the larger bedroom that had belonged to her parents but until all these mysteries were solved she just didn’t want to tackle the job. It felt as if she needed everything to stay just as it had always been.

  Besides, for now they were taking things one step at a time. No rushing. No stress. Just enjoying this new aspect of their relationship.

  She grabbed the bologna and mustard. One of Billy’s go-to snacks. And made a sandwich. When she’d filled a glass with water, she gave Freud a snack and went to the table. As she ate she thought about dinner at Billy’s parents’ house yesterday. Dottie, his mother, had hinted repeatedly at the idea of a wedding. She wanted grandchildren. But first and foremost she wanted her son happy. Dottie understood that Billy wanted to be with Rowan. Dottie was a wonderful mother. She was kind and generous to Rowan and she would be an amazing grandmother.

  But what if things didn’t work out?

  She was so worried that her relationship with Billy would be over completely if this new, closer, more intimate relationship fell apart.

  Rowan looked down at Freud, who watched her every move in hopes of getting a bite of her lunch. “It’s complicated, boy. It’s not easy being human.”

  She laughed. “It’s not easy being a dog either, huh?” Freud had definitely survived a few complications of his own.

  Rowan finished off her sandwich and cleaned up the crumbs. She pushed in her chair and walked to the window that overlooked the backyard. Was she ready for the next steps? Marriage? Children?

  She shook her head, reminding herself she hadn’t been asked. Dottie and Charlotte were putting foolish ideas in her head.

  Her arms went around her waist as another cold, harsh reality invaded her thoughts. There was the ever-present concern about Julian. She couldn’t pretend he was gone forever. She could hope, but there was no way to be certain. He would destroy Billy just to get at her. The serial killer Angel Petrov, who had showed up at the funeral home with a body in her suitcase, had warned Rowan that Billy might not be long for this world.

  He has a very large target on his back.

  Whatever else she did, Rowan had to be sure there was no threat to Billy. Just because there had been no contact from Julian and no other killers had shown up with messages or bodies didn’t mean the nightmare was over.

  Rowan exhaled a big breath. It might never be truly over.

  Three

  Rowan stared at the expanse of wall next to her mother’s desk. The desk sat in front of a window that overlooked the backyard, but on either side of the window was wall space. Rowan had removed the family photos from this right side. The framed photographs still lay on the nightstand where she’d placed them almost five months ago.

  She had made a case board on the six-foot width of wall. At the top of her case board, probably six and a half feet or so off the floor since she would need a ladder to go higher, were photos of her parents. Edward and Norah DuPont. Norah was in her midthirties in the photo since it was one of the last ones taken of her before she died. The photo of her father had been taken Christmas before last, just before his seventieth birthday.

  Her father had been a handsome man, her mother a beautiful woman. Their many photographs together throughout well over a decade and a half of marriage showed a happy couple. But something had been wrong even in the photos from back then. Rowan could see it now when she studied the family albums. An ever-so-slight distance. A disconnect. It was more noticeable in the eyes or perhaps in the way they no longer looked at each other during their final years together. The photos from the early days of their marriage showed the two looking longingly at each other or touching in some way but not in the later photos, the ones that came after Rowan and Raven were born.

  What happened between her parents?

  The next photo on the board was of Julian Addington. Handsome, charming, intelligent. His blond-gray hair and blue eyes made Rowan turn away for a moment. He had come into her parents’ lives somehow and changed the definition of their relationship and the very journey upon which their lives were set. Turned everything upside down.

  Was Julian Rowan’s biological father? Was it an affair that came between Norah and Edward?

  Rowan forced herself to look at Julian again. There were far too many similarities to ignore. The line of her nose...the almost nonexistent dimple in her chin.


  Don’t obsess.

  She moved on to the next photo. In this one, her mother and father stood with Herman Carter, his wife, Estell, and the man they knew to be Antonio Santos. Santos, who had operated in Winchester under the alias Carlos Sanchez, had, it seemed, murdered at least twenty-six people. He’d kept their faces and skin from other parts of their bodies and made books. The Bureau called them the books of the dead. His victims, at least the ones they knew about, didn’t fit the typical profile of a victim. Each of the identified remains belonged to a serial killer. All had been in the Bureau’s database. The bones from the more than two dozen victims had been discovered in a cave right here in Franklin County.

  This photo with Santos showed another man whose identity remained a mystery.

  Rowan assumed this unidentified man wasn’t from the area since no one seemed to know him. Special Agent Josh Dressler, the head of the task force working on the Julian Addington investigation, had not been able to ID him either.

  Then came the pieces of evidence Rowan and Billy had discovered. The cocktail napkin she had found in a pair of her father’s trousers. There was nothing written on the napkin, only the imprint of the Night Owl, a local bar. According to the owner of the bar, Rowan’s father had met there with a man matching Julian’s description January before last. The two had a brief exchange and her father left.

  The silver necklace with the sun and moon charms was the first conclusive piece of evidence found that linked the DuPonts with the Addingtons. The necklace was uncovered with the remains of Alisha Addington, the daughter Julian had with his former wife, Anna. The daughter and wife he had kept secret from Rowan. Apparently, the daughter had learned about her father’s affair/fascination with Norah and she had come to Winchester to kill the competition. She had succeeded in murdering Raven but she had ended up dead before she could kill Rowan or Norah.

  Julian would have Rowan believe that her father had killed Alisha after learning she had drowned Raven, but Rowan didn’t believe him. No matter that she understood now that there were many secrets and lies in her parents’ history, she could not help the need to protect her father.

  Beyond the videos the Bureau had discovered that proved Julian had been watching Rowan since she was a child, there was little other proof of a connection between her parents and the man. Her mother’s stories—the copious pages of notes—pointed to numerous killers. One would think Norah DuPont had fancied herself a suspense writer, but Rowan wasn’t so sure her notes and stories were fiction. Santos had been one of the characters she had described and he definitely had not been an imaginary character.

  The Bureau—Dressler, in particular—had kept Rowan out of the loop in regards to the identity of the killers who, apparently, had been murdered by Santos. Without that information she couldn’t determine if any of the other characters in her mother’s writing had been real. She couldn’t deny the certainty that her mother had, it seemed, drawn killers.

  The big question was why?

  And did Rowan suffer that same curse?

  Rather than tackle that question, she went through the files and notes she had made over the past year. The trouble was, none of it pieced together the way she needed it to in order to make any accurate conclusions.

  Like too many afternoons, the hours slipped away with her in the past. She stilled and listened for the shower upstairs. Billy had come home fifteen or so minutes ago, given her a kiss on the cheek and headed for the shower. He’d alerted Rowan that his mother was bringing by a casserole.

  Rowan wondered if Dottie Brannigan worried that her son would starve living with Rowan. Admittedly, she was no gourmet chef. She wasn’t even a decent cook. Billy made dinner or lunch as often or more than she did. She had lived alone for most of her adult life. In Nashville she’d had dinner delivered more often than not.

  No matter that Billy reminded her that his mother had always brought food to his house, Rowan still didn’t feel any better about her bringing it here.

  Dottie had always been so good to Rowan. Maybe she had liked Rowan better as a friend to Billy.

  Rowan dismissed the worry and scanned the rest of the photos on her makeshift case board. The victims Julian had taken in Winchester had been to accomplish some goal—to gain access to the funeral home or to hurt Rowan. The same could be said for the final ones he had taken in Nashville.

  Finally, there was the bizarre message from that bald biker guy with the mustache and long beard. Rowan called him a biker guy when she hadn’t actually seen him speed away on a motorcycle but she’d heard the engine in the darkness beyond that shack in the middle of nowhere.

  He had insisted that Rowan’s mother had sent him to help.

  Obviously that was impossible.

  Her mother had been dead for almost twenty-eight years. What possible motive could the man have had for bringing her mother into this?

  Rowan stared at the drawing of the bald man. The forensic artist from Nashville had generously offered to create the drawing for Rowan. They had worked together for years when Rowan was with Metro. She was genuinely grateful for the contacts and friends she had made during her career there. Detective April Jones, the lead detective in the unit in which Rowan had been assigned, briefed Rowan on many of the things Dressler often left out of what he shared with Billy or with Rowan.

  Rowan suspected the agent still wasn’t entirely convinced that she was not somehow feeding information to Julian. He refused to see that she wanted nothing to do with Julian. She wanted him found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Actually, she would love to watch him die but that would be too easy for the bastard. He needed to pay dearly for his crimes.

  The most important reason for wanting him alive was that she needed answers. Answers that she felt reasonably confident only he could give.

  Assuming she could trust anything he told her. So far, she wasn’t so sure about the veracity of his statements.

  The cell phone in her pocket vibrated and Rowan startled. She exhaled a breath and dragged the device from her pocket. She smiled when she saw April’s number on the screen.

  “You must have known I was thinking about you,” Rowan said instead of hello.

  “That’s good to hear,” April said.

  The tone of her voice told Rowan that something was wrong. “What’s happened?”

  There was a span of silence, only four or five seconds but enough for Rowan’s stomach to tie in knots.

  “This news isn’t being released, Rowan, but you’ll be receiving an official call in the next hour or so.”

  Anticipation spread through her like fire through dry leaves. “Has Julian been caught?” Better yet, maybe he was dead. She closed her eyes. She had waited for this moment for almost a year now. The man had murdered her father and countless others. He was pure evil.

  But if he was dead she might never know the truth.

  “Dressler is missing.”

  Rowan’s eyes flew open at the same time that the air exited her lungs. When she could speak, she asked, “When did this happen?”

  As frustrating as the man had been since the murder of Rowan’s father—as many times as she had wanted to punch him—no one deserved to have this kind of horror taking over his life.

  “He didn’t show up at his office this morning. No one got excited at first. His colleagues assumed he’d had an appointment that he forgot to mention or that whomever he had mentioned it to had forgotten. It happens. An unexpected call can distract even the best. But by four this afternoon, it was obvious he was MIA. We haven’t been able to track his cell. We think someone disabled it.”

  “Of course they did. Anyone smart enough to kidnap a federal agent would know about the GPS capabilities of cell phones.” Her chest hurt with the need to breathe. “No one in his family has heard from him?”

  Foolish question. April wouldn’t have called if all those o
ptions hadn’t been exhausted already.

  “We’ve spoken to everyone close to him. He’s gone. Vanished. We found his car at the coffee shop he stops at every morning. No one saw him get out of the car and none of the baristas remember him coming in.”

  Rowan ran the fingers of her free hand through her hair. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  Another of those pauses warned that her old friend and former colleague’s request wouldn’t be one Rowan liked.

  “If you hear from Julian,” she said, her voice stiff, “let us know. If you have any potential way of getting a message to him, do what you can.”

  Rowan felt as if the other woman had slapped her, but she had known and respected April Jones too long to say any of the things burning on her tongue just now. “You can rest assured that I will do all I can. Please keep us posted on the situation.”

  “Of course.” Another strained pause. “We’ll talk again soon, Rowan.”

  The call ended and Rowan was left with the feeling that too much had gone unsaid. There had to be more that April hadn’t been able to say to her. Had someone been listening to their conversation?

  Rowan shook her head as she shoved her phone back into her pocket. There was only one answer: she was a suspect. For whatever reason the Bureau and Metro believed that she was aware of some aspect of Special Agent Josh Dressler’s disappearance.