‘Did you set the nice guy up?’
‘Yeah. Because your brother had Pam. I brought Ford to that alley where Doug was just supposed to talk. Instead Doug goes all Rambo with a taser in each hand and kills Ford’s bodyguard. Why does he call himself Doug if his name is Mitch?’
‘Our aunt’s last name was Douglas. This was her house.’ Oh God. Cole felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. ‘Mitch killed a bodyguard? In an alley? A big black guy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh my God. That was on the news. That guy was a cop.’
‘That’s what Doug said. Look, Cole, you seem like a decent kid. I need to get out of here. He’s got my sister. She could be dead.’
Cole thought of the new padlock on the door in the basement. It hadn’t been there three days ago. ‘When did he take her?’
‘Monday night. You know where she is, don’t you? Don’t you?’
‘Maybe.’ He looked up to the door that led to the garage. Matthew would tell him when it was safe to leave. He didn’t want her sister to die, but he didn’t want to go to jail for taking a gun to school, either. ‘We’ll wait a little longer.’
‘Why?’ She struggled to sit up. ‘Why?’
‘Because I said so. Shut up,’ he snapped when she started to yell. ‘If you want, I can tape your mouth. But we don’t leave until the coast is clear.’
‘I’m going to kill you,’ she muttered. ‘If my sister dies, you’re dead.’
‘Good to know,’ he said grimly.
Wheeling, West Virginia, Wednesday, December 4, 9.45 P.M.
There was a collective gasp and looks of shock from everyone but the local detective, McManus, who looked grim. He’d known the story, Daphne realized, but had let her tell it her own way. Whether out of pity or suspicion, she wasn’t sure.
‘Beckett was in your house?’ Novak demanded.
‘In my house. I couldn’t believe that he was there. In my house. I didn’t understand at all how he could be. I remember cowering behind the sheriff’s legs and him lifting me up, to give me to my father. Then Beckett drew his finger across his throat. I started to scream and my parents didn’t know what to do. Vivien was screaming too. “Where is my daughter?” Then Beckett went to her, put his arms around her, soothed her, called her “sweetheart” and “dear”. And that’s when I figured it out.’
‘He was Vivien’s new husband,’ Ford said softly. ‘Oh my God, Mom.’
‘Yeah. Then my mother told me that he was my Uncle Wilson. Beckett just smiled at me. My parents brought me here to this hospital to do an exam. That just made everything worse. They were relieved to find out I hadn’t been assaulted but I couldn’t say a word. I didn’t speak a word for almost eight months, I was so traumatized.’
‘Did you ever tell them?’ Agent Kerr asked.
‘No. My folks brought me home from the hospital and Aunt Vivien was there, waiting for me. She screamed at me again, but I couldn’t speak. My dad told me that I had to talk. We had to get Kelly back. Aunt Vivien shook me so hard my teeth rattled. The whole time Beckett stood where no one could see him and then he drew a line across his throat. My father dragged Vivien away and he and my mother had a huge fight with her. And while they were screaming, Beckett made it look like he was helping me, but he whispered in my ear, “Did you miss me?”’
‘Bastard,’ Ford whispered.
‘The next morning there was a commotion downstairs. I crept down, peeking through the rail. My cat had been hit by a car and my parents and Vivien were arguing over whether to tell me. Beckett saw me watching, drew the line across his throat. Then he winked and I knew he’d done it. Three days later they found Kelly’s body about twenty miles from the rest stop in Dayton where I’d been found. Her throat had been slit.’
‘And the investigation moved north,’ McManus said. ‘They assumed you’d both been held in the Ohio area. Nobody looked around here anymore.’
‘What happened then, Daphne?’ Hector asked.
Joseph had been quiet for a while, she realized. His fists were clenched, the muscle in his taut cheek twitching. He was angry, for her. That helped. A lot.
‘We had Kelly’s funeral. Beckett delivered the sermon. I . . . threw up.’
‘Your parents made you go to the funeral?’ Novak asked disbelievingly.
‘My dad thought it might shake me out of my “hysteria”, but it just made it worse. Then my mother compounded it by a million when she invited Vivien to stay with us.’
‘What?’ Ford exploded. ‘Why?’
‘Vivien was a wreck. Mama said she needed her family close. And it may have been guilt that Mama got her daughter back and Vivien didn’t. But that meant Beckett moved in too. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. I wouldn’t leave my mother’s side. I avoided my father because he kept trying to make me talk. He became almost desperate.’
‘Why?’ Agent Kerr asked. ‘Kelly was his niece by marriage. I would have thought the family pressure would be on your mother.’
‘There was tremendous pressure on my mother from her family. But my father wasn’t from around here. And Kelly had lived with us. Looking back, I think he was worried from the beginning that people would accuse him. I was oblivious to that then.
‘Everyone kept trying to get me to talk, but I just withdrew. We went on like that for a few weeks, through the holidays. Everywhere I turned, Beckett was there. He’d whispered, “Did you miss me?” Sometimes he’d whisper that I had to sleep sometime.’
Joseph’s eyes were closed, his throat working as he tried to swallow.
Beside her, Ford trembled with anger but kept his mouth closed.
‘They took me to a therapist who kept trying to get me to speak. She finally told me to draw the “bad man”. So I did.’
‘You drew a picture of Beckett?’ Joseph asked.
‘I tried to draw a picture of Vivien, Beckett, and Kelly – but I was eight years old and a very bad artist.’ She sighed, remembering the agony that had followed. ‘They thought I was drawing my own family. They thought I was accusing my father.’
‘Oh no.’
She wasn’t sure who’d said it, because she’d closed her eyes, battling back tears. ‘I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when the police came that night. The therapist had told them about my picture and they came to question him. He stared at me, so betrayed. And I couldn’t speak. I tried to scream, to tell them “No!”, that it wasn’t my father. They took him in for questioning and when he came home . . . he just looked at me. He was so damn hurt.
‘The news picked up on it. My mother’s family ganged up on him because they’d never really trusted him. He was a musician Mama had met in California. Beckett was a minister and he went on TV calling my father all sorts of names. It was a nightmare.’
‘What did your father do?’ Agent Kerr asked.
‘He and Mama had been fighting about me all along. My father had been saying they needed to make me talk. Mama protected me, saying I’d talk when I was ready. I remember hearing them fight that night – it would be the last time I heard my father’s voice. He accused Mama of believing the lie. She was crying so hard. So torn.’
She opened her eyes, met Joseph’s sorrowful gaze. ‘I’ve seen this happen in my job,’ she said. ‘A child is abused and the father is blamed, maybe by the child or maybe by a social worker. There’s that one moment that the wife has to choose – do I protect my child or do I believe the man I love could never do such a hideous, heinous thing? Mama found herself in that moment and she stood by him. But my father had seen that flicker of doubt in her eyes and he confronted her with it when he came home from being questioned. She tried to tell him she was sorry, but he was so hurt . . .
‘He came into my room that night and stared at me. Just stared, saying nothing at all. He looked so sad and I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs that it was not true! That he didn’t do anything. But I couldn’t make my mouth speak. I don’t know if he was waiting for me to say something, to do
something – I just don’t know. He looked . . . sorrowful, but so angry, all at once. The next day he went to work, and after work went straight to play with his band. After that, no one saw him again. He never came home.’ She swallowed hard. ‘The next morning I woke up and my mother was screaming. Someone had killed one of Fluffy’s kittens.’
‘Beckett,’ Ford said coldly and she patted his hand.
‘I knew that, of course. Mama thought it was somebody angry at my father. The community rose up against him, but my father was nowhere to be found. They assumed he was guilty, that he’d run before he could be arrested. It got bad, like pitchforks and burning torches bad. I withdrew even further.’ She sighed. ‘Seeing Beckett gloat over my father being the perpetrator was so hard. Vivien ripped into my mother, so furious that my father had butchered her child. The family sided with Vivien and Mama broke relations. She and I moved to Riverdale and Mama got a job cleaning hotel rooms. She got a divorce a few years later. In absentia, of course, because he never came back.’
‘Did you ever tell your mother about Beckett?’ Joseph asked.
‘Yes and no. When I finally started talking again I went to her and said, “It wasn’t Daddy.” I needed her to know that much. But I was afraid to tell her who it was. The morning after I told her that, I woke up to find my new cat dead. Mama had been on the phone with Vivien the night before, telling her what I’d said. It hadn’t made a difference to Vivien, but I knew she must have told Beckett. After I found my cat, I knew I could never tell my mother Beckett’s name. I knew he’d kill her, just like he promised.’
‘Did you ever see Beckett again after you moved?’ McManus asked.
‘He’d pop up from time to time.’
‘What do you mean?’ Novak asked.
‘He’d . . . pop up. I’d turn around in the grocery store or the library and he was there, whispering in my ear or slicing his finger over his throat. That didn’t stop until I moved in with the Elkharts. Their security kept me safe from him, but Mama was still living in Riverdale and still vulnerable.’
‘When did you check him out and hear he was dead?’ Agent Kerr asked.
Joseph still hadn’t said a word. He looked tortured. Furious. Deadly. She wanted to beg him not to do anything crazy for her, but she kept those words to herself.
‘When I was fifteen. I was pregnant.’ She looked at Ford, remembering the exact moment she’d decided to act. ‘I’d just felt you move and you were suddenly so very real.’ She smiled at him sadly. ‘I remember thinking that now I had another life to consider. I couldn’t risk him trying to hurt you, too. I knew I needed to tell, but I had a lot of questions – like could he even be prosecuted? What if the statute of limitations on his crime had run out and I accused him and the cops couldn’t even arrest him? I’d be putting my mother in even bigger trouble. So I wrote a letter to the FBI asking about statutes of limitations and whether a parent could be placed in witness protection.’
Detective McManus’s brows rose. ‘You wrote to the FBI? What happened?’
‘I got a visit from an Agent Baker. Claudia Baker was her name. We met a couple more times and then she told me Beckett was dead. She even got me a copy of his death certificate.’
‘Did you tell your mother then?’ Hector asked.
‘No. Beckett was no longer a threat. She believed me about my father, but there was no way I could prove any of it to anyone else. There didn’t seem to be a point. I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me.’ She sighed. ‘I never dreamed he was still kidnapping girls. When I saw him tonight it was fast and I wasn’t paying attention to his face, just to his hands and the pillow he had over Ford’s face. I had this . . . déjà vu, you know? But I thought it was just being here.’
‘But none of this tells us why he’s doing this now,’ Novak said. ‘Why draw you here? And how does Doug and his black van connect with Beckett and his white truck?’
‘It was a van that stopped for me last night,’ Ford said. ‘Could have been black. He shone headlights in my eyes so I couldn’t see.’ He frowned. ‘Beckett said that he and Doug’s granddad were Army buddies in ’Nam. That that’s how he knew him.’
Daphne sighed again. Joseph and Novak both swore.
‘What?’ Ford asked, concerned.
‘That’s how he got into Bill Millhouse’s trusted circle,’ Daphne said. ‘Told him that their fathers had served together in the Gulf War. We’ve had the Army searching for troops who went on to have sons named Doug. If it’s just a ploy, we wasted our time.’
‘Now we’re back to Kim as our key connection to Doug,’ Novak said.
Ford went still. ‘Excuse me? What are you talking about? Kim isn’t connected to this guy. She’s a victim.’
Daphne’s heart sank. ‘Ford, there are some things you need to know.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Wheeling, West Virginia, Wednesday, December 4, 11.15 P.M.
Joseph leaned against the doorframe connecting their rooms, holding onto both ends of the towel he’d hung around his neck, the jeans he’d pulled on clinging to his wet skin. He hadn’t taken time to dry off, worried about leaving Daphne alone. His concern at the moment was far more for her emotional state than her physical safety.
Her mother and Maggie had arrived, bringing Daphne’s dog. Tasha lay directly across Daphne’s door into the hall. Nobody was getting in Daphne’s room without getting past the dog first.
No, he’d sped through his shower because she’d cried through hers. He didn’t think she knew he could hear her. She’d waited till the water was full blast before letting go. But he’d heard. Her sobs tore at his heart.
Now she stood at the window, looking down at the street which was steadily being covered by the falling snow. She wore no wig. Someone from CSU had found it, but Beckett had touched it. She hadn’t wanted it anymore. Joseph had to admit he was glad of that small plus. In front of him stood the real Daphne.
Or as real as she could allow herself to be. She held herself gingerly, as if she’d break if anyone pushed too hard. But Joseph wasn’t fooled. There was nothing weak about this woman.
But she was . . . softer. The curls that been so tight out of the shower were drying into chaotic peaks, like a wind-tossed sea. Her face was bare, her silk pajamas a soft pink. She looked impossibly young. And so very sad.
She’d had to tell her son the truth about Kimberly MacGregor and at first he didn’t believe her, certain that she was mistaken. But one look at Joseph’s and Deacon’s faces told the boy it was true. He’d withdrawn, not letting his mother touch him.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him but Ford commanded her to go. No, not just to go. To ‘leave him the hell alone’. Deacon promised that he’d stand watch and would let no new harm come to her son. It had been the only thing that allowed her to leave.
Then she’d come back to the hotel to find her mother and Maggie pacing the floor of their room across the hall under Kate Coppola’s watchful eye.
Kate had texted Joseph of their arrival in Wheeling about a minute before he and Daphne had walked into Rampor’s office. Joseph had told Kate to keep the women in the hotel until further notice. Daphne had been poised to tell her story and he didn’t want anything to disrupt her. Plus, he figured anything that Daphne knew, Simone knew too.
He’d been very wrong about that, which he hadn’t found out until she’d told her story in Ford’s hospital room. And so after telling her story once, Daphne had to tell it again. Simone hadn’t moved a muscle – until Daphne got to the part about the picture she’d drawn, the one that had caused her father to be accused.
Simone began to cry, silent tears that had all but ripped Daphne’s heart out.
Mine too. He hadn’t been much help, though. He’d been strung so tightly while she told her story, it had been all he could do not to break something. Or someone.
Joseph had dealt with child molesters, kidnappers, murderers. In every case he’d wanted the perpetrators to be punished. He’d wanted t
o ease the victims’ pain.
But tonight . . . It had been a long time since he’d battled such a pagan urge to kill. Not since he’d held his dying wife in his arms. It had been Simone’s agony that had brought his rage to a grinding halt. Daphne’s mother had lost so much – her marriage, her daughter’s childhood, her family. But she’d also been denied the opportunity to heal her child because Daphne had been terrorized into silence.
Simone’s reaction had broken his heart. But Maggie’s . . . Maggie’s reaction had left him puzzled. He’d expected her to be there for Simone, to put her arm around her friend, to cry with her. But she hadn’t. Instead she’d separated herself from the group, almost an observer, her affect flat. Maggie’s ‘reaction’ was to have no reaction at all.
It might be the way she deals with loss. But Joseph’s instincts told him it was something different. He just didn’t know what. But he’d deal with that later.
Right now, Daphne stood at the window looking lost. He didn’t know which piece to address first – her son, her mother, her trauma, or his reaction to hearing it. He decided to tackle the easiest one first. Ford.
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with you, you know,’ Joseph said softly.
She didn’t turn to look at him. ‘Which thing? There are so many to choose from.’
He crossed to her, sliding his arms around her waist from behind. She leaned into him and her quiet sigh was one of despair.
‘Ford’s a man now, Daphne,’ Joseph said. ‘There are some things he’s got to get through on his own. When my wife died I pulled into myself. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want anyone to speak to me, even my parents. I had to lick my wounds and move on. This is worse than a death for Ford, in some ways. He’s just found Kim isn’t the girl he thought she was. He has to lick his wounds. Find his dignity.’
‘I know. I guess it’s not my job to spare him from it.’ He wasn’t sure if the subtle edge to her words was meant for him or for herself.
‘No, it’s not. But it’s your job to want to spare him from it. You’re his mother. That’s what good mothers do. Better mothers step back and give their sons room to grow.’