by Claire Booth
She listened carefully, said a few words, and then turned to Jenkins, who was concentrating on staying even with the van without giving Emily the opportunity to swerve into them. Thank God the road was otherwise deserted.
‘I told him to set the spike strip on the left side of the road. So we’ve got to keep her in that lane. And there’s a sharp curve right before we’ll get there. That should slow her down.’
Emily must’ve known the curve was coming, too, because she started to decelerate. If she was smart, she’d slam on her brakes and let the Highway Patrol truck be the one to sail on into the trap. But Sheila had a feeling that despite her Machiavellian finesse with everything else she touched, little Emily was out of her depth here. She had no idea what awaited her.
Hank parked the minivan across the northbound lanes and hopped out. He heard sirens behind him now and he took a few steps to where he could see a BPD unit safeguarding that direction from any civilian motorists. Someone already had stopped the southbound lanes, and the road coming from the east, before traffic crossed into the intersection.
He took a deep breath and it rattled around his ribcage painfully as he ran across to Sammy.
‘No. Farther back.’ He pulled on Sam’s shirt. ‘I don’t want you getting hurt if that van veers off when it hits that strip.’
Before Sam could answer, the whine of an engine reached an unimaginable pitch and the sound of ripping metal echoed through the air.
Jenkins started to slow down. He needed to be able to stop before the van hit the spikes. It would likely keep going straight, but if it didn’t, they’d be a lot better off well back from it.
The curve came into view. It was a sharp right turn of almost ninety degrees. They saw the van’s brake lights flash twice and then Emily must have realized that wasn’t going to cut it. They went on and stayed on as the van began to steer to the right. It wasn’t going to be enough. Sheila and Jenkins both started shouting as the van’s back end swung wide and slammed into the paltry outer guard rail along the curve. It tore through the metal like a can opener and then the entire vehicle disappeared over the edge.
Hank and Sam stared at each other for a split second and then took off running. Everything had gone quiet, apart from one final tire squeal. That’d come from the Highway Patrol truck as it screeched to a halt just on the other side of the curve, skid marks trailing behind it. Sheila was sprinting toward them and Jenkins wasn’t far behind her. They all converged on the gap where the guard rail had been.
The drop-off could have been much worse. The hill only descended about ten or fifteen feet down from the roadway. Pete’s plumbing van had carved a path through the trees and now lay on its side in the middle of the fall foliage. The back-right wheel was still spinning. Hank looked at it and felt his head start to do the same.
He reached out for what was left of the guard rail and got Sam instead. The Pup grabbed him and Hank tried to concentrate on the feel of the younger man’s strong grip on his arm. It wasn’t working. His vision blurred. He could hear metal shrieking and smell the blood and the rubber and the motor oil.
Then he felt a hand on his other arm. This one squeezed. Hard. He looked over at Sheila.
‘Here and now, Hank. You need to be here and now. This is not that other accident. This is Emily Fitch. We need to get to her. She could be hurt. This isn’t those kids. This is different.’
This could be an answer. Hank stepped off the road and slid down the hill.
It looked like Emily Fitch had a broken collarbone and probably some bruised or broken ribs. The seatbelt had held and saved her from much more severe injuries. Hank eyed her through the window he had to crouch down to see through.
‘You’re going to be all right,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting on the ambulance before we move you.’
She had a cut above her pretty eye and blood trickled down her cheek. That didn’t stop her from giving him a look that said a couple of things. One, that she was not all right, seeing as she was laying on her side in a totaled van with plumbing tools pressed up against her. Two, that Hank was a cop and therefore full of shit.
He settled himself more comfortably on the broken branches and tried to ignore the pain in the side of his face.
‘You’re a hard person to find.’
She just stared at him.
‘That means you’re careful. More careful than just about anybody I’ve ever come across.’
Now she stared out the windshield.
‘But if you were really careful, you wouldn’t still be in Branson. You’d be long gone. And yet, here you are.’
She tried to blink blood out of her eye, but one arm was pinned under her body and the other under Pete’s plumbing equipment. He reached in through the window as best he could and used his sleeve to wipe it away. She thanked him by looking at the floorboard.
‘It seems you’d be the kind of person to strike out for better pastures. Unless there were business opportunities locally. You know, for the entrepreneurially minded.’
She still didn’t look at him, but he saw her visibly tense. Then Jenkins appeared in all his glowering glory to say the paramedics were on their way down, and Hank needed to get the hell out of the way. He took a last look at the enigma in the driver’s seat and climbed back up the hill.
FORTY-THREE
She sat in the BPD interview room, her arm in a sling. Someone had washed her face and bandaged the cut above her eye. Which allowed her to more thoroughly glare at the three other people in the room.
Hank had lowered himself gingerly into the chair on the opposite side of the table. Sheila suspected his head still hurt from the whack he’d taken when Emily smashed his minivan. Dale, who’d stored Mick Fitch in one of the station’s holding cells for the moment, was in the other chair trying not to look giddy. And she was lounging against the wall, staring at Miss Fitch with a look that didn’t reveal what was beginning to work its way through her mind.
‘Where were you Saturday night?’ said Dale.
She stared at him, looking both bored and tired.
‘We’re going to book you for murder. Because you’ve given us no alibi. And we’re going to book you for accessory to attempted murder, because all this shit you’ve been doing, it’s put others in danger. Someone went after your little sister, and pushed the wrong kid off a cliff. She’s still in the hospital.’
‘What?’
The word exploded involuntarily from her. She tried to push back her chair and stand up, but the chain anchored in the floor and attached to her ankle kept her right where she was.
‘Are you kidding me? That kid who was in the newspaper – that was supposed to be Hailee? Someone was trying to kill Hailee? How the fuck do you know that? They tell you?’
Dale crossed his arms.
‘No. They didn’t tell you,’ she said. ‘’Cause you don’t have shit. You don’t know who did it, so how could you know that they were really after Hailee?’ She sat back in her hard plastic chair and hardened her glare. ‘I want a lawyer.’
Great. She finally started talking and that was what she said. Dale glared back at her. Sheila shifted against the wall and considered things. She hadn’t protested the accusation of murder, just the theory that she’d put her sister in danger.
‘Based on what we’ve found out,’ Hank said quietly, ‘you didn’t care about your sister at all. You let her get completely ostracized at school. No one would talk to her. Nobody’s parents would let their kids near her. Because of you. Because of all the crimes you commit. And even with all that money you’re making, you couldn’t even be bothered to throw a little her way. She lived in that little box of a house with your mom and wore secondhand clothes. She had to be on free lunch at school.’
Hank kept at it, pounding her in as dead a monotone as Sheila had ever heard from him. It was brutal. And brilliant. Obviously, she cared about Hailee. Risking the funeral proved it. And now she was starting to shake. Tears rolled down that pretty white face.
‘Why w
ould you do that to Hailee?’ Hank asked. ‘What’s so important that you would ruin your sister’s whole life?’
It was barely a whisper. ‘I thought she’d be OK. She was so close to graduating and getting out …’
Sheila’s cell vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it. It vibrated again. She pulled it out, saw the text from Sam and stepped out of the room. He was watching through the two-way, along with the two Highway Patrol sergeants. He handed her a sheet of paper.
‘Handlesman, the crime scene guy, just came by with results from some of the prints he found in the secret room. Emily’s were in there. The only other ones that were in the system belong to a woman who was picked up on a prostitution charge about ten days ago.’
‘So she is running prostitutes?’ Sheila said, taking the paperwork. It was the same woman who’d been mistakenly let out of the county jail on bail.
‘Not necessarily,’ Sam said. He had his hard-thinking look on. ‘I just checked. That woman has a New Mexico ID. Just like “John Kalin” who rented Apartment 213.’
Sheila looked up quickly. ‘But that jerk BPD detective said she had a thick Southern accent. That’d be pretty unusual if you’re from New Mexico.’
They stared at each other.
‘Go find out how she posted her bail money,’ Sheila said. ‘And get everyone in both departments looking for her. I want her found.’
Sam took off. She turned to the sergeant pair. ‘Don’t you two have things to do?’
‘Nothing as interesting as this,’ Jenkins said. ‘Wait a sec before you go back in and start up again. I want to get a cup of coffee first. Don’t want to miss anything.’
DeRosia rolled her eyes. ‘Hank isn’t going to wait for you. He’s busy. He’s got kids, probably needs to get them from the babysitter.’ She turned to Sheila as Jenkins grunted and strode off. ‘I don’t know how he does it – being sheriff and a single father.’
Sheila blinked. That would explain the flirtatious interest on DeRosia’s part, which Sheila had seen increasing as the case progressed. At least the woman thought she was pursuing a single man, although where she’d gotten that idea, Sheila hadn’t a clue. And she was pretty sure Hank hadn’t even noticed DeRosia was interested. He would absolutely die if he had to have this conversation with her. Not exactly a typical duty as second-in-command, Sheila thought, but you solve the problems that come along. Especially ones that the boss doesn’t even know exist.
‘So … yeah,’ Sheila said. ‘Hank is married. Happily. Has been for years.’
DeRosia stared. And then turned the shade of red only found on tomatoes or fire engines.
‘He just said he had kids. I thought he was divorced. He didn’t mention anything about a wife.’ Realization crept over her face. ‘But our lunch that day was interrupted. Oh, God. He was probably going to get to that next. Oh, God.’
Sheila gave her time to take a deep breath, then said, ‘Everything will be fine. Just keep it professional, and nobody will ever know.’
DeRosia nodded and a relieved Sheila escaped back into the interview room.
‘We want to know how you know Patrick O’Connell,’ Dale said.
Emily was back to acting like a blank wall.
‘You know that name,’ Dale continued. ‘You gave it to him. He used to be Eric Michael Ganton. Out of Tennessee. Then you changed him into Patrick O’Connell from Minnesota.’
There was the barest flicker in her eyes. Poor Raker. She didn’t look like she was going to budge. Hank didn’t want him to start in on the murder just yet. He leaned forward just a little, resting his elbows on the chair’s arms and casually lacing his fingers together.
‘Where’d you do it? The apartment?’
No response.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Hank said. ‘Because we know where you are now. We have your equipment, we have your fingerprints, we have everything you’d set up in your secret little hidey-hole in the back of the theater.’
She was stoic until the last part. She snapped back like she’d been slapped.
‘Yeah,’ Hank said, ‘it’s quite the set up. Did you use your drug profits to buy all the hardware?’
She was so surprised that she nodded before she realized she was doing so. Hank didn’t move, and his gaze bored into her relentlessly. It only made economic sense to switch from drugs to fake IDs if she was courting a certain clientele. And it didn’t seem like that was the case. He was about to make a very big assumption.
‘That’s got to be an awful lot of fake documents you got to sell before you turn a profit, pay for that equipment,’ he said. ‘Why would you go into that line of work? It’s risky, and it’s a lot more work than dealing pot.’
She actually looked like she wanted to speak, but she stopped herself. So Hank kept on.
‘Are you helping out felons? Wanted criminals who need to change their identities? People who want to commit identity theft? Open up false bank accounts? Rip off banks?’
Emily pressed her lips together until they turned white. If Hank was right, she was running an even more impressive operation than they all had thought. He unclasped his hands and laid them flat on the table. The surface was cool. He didn’t take his eyes off her.
‘Or,’ he said very softly, ‘are you giving kids a fresh start? Are you making minors into adults so they can get out of bad environments and start over? Are you helping foster kids get out of the system?’
He heard Raker stifle a gasp, but he didn’t turn. Emily blinked once and then sank toward the table, burying her head in her arms. Hank let out the breath he’d been holding and waited. Not for her to compose herself, he didn’t want that, but for her to increasingly realize the hopelessness of her situation. After a moment, he was about to speak when Sheila walked over from her spot on the wall and knelt down next to Emily. She pressed a tissue into the girl’s hand. How that woman always had a Kleenex, he’d never know.
‘It’s really important that we get this right,’ Sheila said to Emily’s downturned head. ‘And we need to get it right, right now. We need you to talk to us. Before other agencies get involved. Before people have to be taken back. To where they were trying to get away from. So will you talk to us right now? Will you waive Miranda and work with us right now?’
Now everyone held their breath. Until Emily nodded, her face still hidden in her arms.
‘I need you to say it, honey.’
She dragged her head up and swiped at the tears on her face. ‘Right. ’Cause I’m being recorded. So, yes. Yes, I consent. ’Cause it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. You’re going to shut it all down.’
No one answered that. Because of course they were. She slumped back in her chair.
‘So yeah. I was helping people, people who been shit on their whole lives. A new birth certificate, a new driver’s license, and wah-la. They’re transformed. They’re legal age, they’re untrackable by the man, they’re good to go. Good to go live a life.’
She wouldn’t tell them exactly how long she’d been doing it or who her first client was. But O’Connell had found her about a year ago. He’d heard about her ID business from other foster kids he’d met in the years he’d been touring with some musician. The singer had played a one-night show in Branson, and O’Connell took the opportunity to look her up. He was a little unusual, because he said he needed a very specific name. Most of the kids didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t the name and the age they’d come in with. O’Connell said he was already using that name and needed ID to support it. She’d never known his real name.
‘I never knew any of their real names. I didn’t want to. That way, if people came asking, I wouldn’t have any information to give.’
O’Connell had been real militant, Emily said. He loved what she was doing and wanted to help – get as many kids out of bad situations and out on their own as he could. When he went back on the road with the old singer dude, he spread the word. That was cool. It grew her operation beyond what she’d expected, that was for sure.
A lot of the runaways only needed a birth certificate. If the fake one had them just then turning eighteen, it was plausible they hadn’t yet gotten a driver’s license when they showed up at an out-of-state DMV. They get a real, legit license there, and be on their way.
‘Birth certificates are better – there are so many different little variations to them, and it could be a state that the license worker had never seen before. I had my couple of states I was good at. I mostly stuck to those and then sent the kids off in other directions,’ she said. ‘The licenses are getting harder and harder. Especially with that nationwide Real ID bullshit the feds are trying to do.’
‘How many kids have you given new papers to?’ Raker asked.
She shook her head. ‘Nope.’
They stared at each other for a moment, and Raker blinked first. There was no way she was going to tell them. He tried a different tack.
‘Your traffic had to be increasing, or else why would you need that secret theater room?’
This she would talk about. They were to the point they were drawing in a couple of kids a week. They needed someplace safe to talk to them about where they wanted to go, what they wanted their names to be, take their photos for the IDs. They tried using the apartment, but they stood out too much. Too many eyes potentially watching her kids come and go.
‘This wasn’t a quick thing. They needed some time – to know that they’re not in danger anymore. One girl I was making an ID for, we had to wait for the bruises to fade off her face before we could take her picture. Another one still had cigarette burns all over his arms. Fresh ones.’ She shrugged. ‘So we needed a safe place – a permanent one.’
She went out and cased where her asshole dad was living. It was the perfect location, but barely had power, let alone high-speed internet. Plus, it was disgusting. So she reeled in one of her pot customers.
‘And you just, what, knew he was working on the theater?’ Raker said.
She gave him a look sharp enough to slice him in two. ‘I know what everyone is doing, all the time. You’re the ones that can’t find your ass in a toilet stall.’
