Presumption of Guilt

  But a nagging voice in the back of her mind reminded her:

  Bill Brandon has ways of finding out anything he wants. Everyone who knows him discovers that.

  Shivering, she carried the puppy back down the stairs, set him down, and went back to the phone to try Nick’s office. Just as she picked up the phone, she heard a car on the gravel outside. She froze. Keeping her eyes on the door, she dropped the phone back in its cradle, pulled open a drawer in the end table, and grabbed the pistol she kept there. The doorbell rang, and the puppy erupted into a round of high-pitched barks.

  He’s here, she thought, holding the pistol aimed at the door.

  Her heart flipped into a triple-time cadence, and adrenaline pulsed through her.

  The bell rang again, and a knock followed. “Beth? It’s me, Nick!”

  Nick. Not Bill.

  She let out a huge breath of relief and lowered the gun. Feeling dizzy from the sheer terror that had gripped her, she headed for the door and opened it. “Nick, you scared me. I didn’t know it was you. Where have you been? I tried to call.”

  Nick came in, his brown, slightly wavy hair tousled by the warm wind. His face looked tired, and the stubble on his jaw added to the picture of fatigue. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “What message?”

  “On your machine. Telling you I had an emergency and couldn’t meet you at my house, that I would just come over here.” He frowned as he saw the gun. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just got a little spooked, that’s all.” Embarrassed, she put the gun back into the drawer and closed it.

  “Did something happen? Did the interview turn out badly?”

  “No, no. It was fine.” She shoved her hand through her short honey-colored hair and looked up the stairs toward the answering machine that had been off when she’d checked it. “It’s just . . . a little weird.”

  “What is?”

  “That you left a message. My machine was off when I got home. Are you sure it was on when you called?”

  “Positive,” he said. “I left a message that the police had just done a drug bust, and there were these two boys—their parents were dealing cocaine. I had to go get the children and place them in foster care tonight until we could find some relatives.”

  Her face whitened. “You didn’t put them at SCCH, did you?”

  “No,” he said. “My supervisor would have, but I put them with a retired couple new to the foster-care program. They’ll be okay.” He paused and studied her for a moment. “Beth, you’re pale. What is it?”

  She breathed a self-conscious laugh and tried to calm herself. “Nothing, really. The interview went great. Better than I could have dreamed.” She sank down on her couch and covered her face, and Nick sat down next to her.

  She didn’t really know Nick all that well, having met him just a few days ago when she’d called to interview him about his take on the children’s home. Her questions had immediately piqued his interest because he’d also had suspicions about the home. So he’d spent a lot of time with Beth since that first meeting, trying to help her put the pieces together.

  Although Beth tried to deny it or, better yet, ignore it, there was something about Nick Hutchins that made her feel safe. Her life up to this point had been anything but secure—ironically, that meant she distrusted nothing more than feelings of safety and security.

  Still, something about Nick invited her trust. Maybe it was that he seemed to genuinely care about the children he watched over. It had been her experience that most social workers were so overburdened that they had little time to care about the people whose lives they affected. Nick seemed different.

  She drew her mind back to the conversation. “Marlene was ready to talk,” she said. “I taped our conversation. It was fascinating. She confirmed everything. Bill Brandon uses some of the kids in his care in a crime ring that breaks into people’s homes and businesses and steals things. He has a central warehouse where he stores things until he can sell them—or until his people can sell them. Apparently, there are more people than just Bill and the kids involved. In fact, she said he has someone big running interference for him. Like someone on the police force or in government. That’s how he’s gotten away with it. She didn’t know any names or where the stuff is stored, but she said that he uses horrible tactics to force the kids into cooperating. Besides the abuse that you’ve suspected, he threatens them with harm to their sisters and brothers, their parents if they’re living, or he makes them believe that they’re as guilty as he is—that they’re the ones breaking in, that his hands are clean, so if anyone goes down for the crime, it’ll be the kids. And they have no way of knowing otherwise, so they cooperate.”

  Angered, Nick bolted up and paced across the floor, his fatigue evident. He needed to shave, and his light brown hair was tousled as though he hadn’t given it a thought all day. Looking at his reddened eyes, she wondered if he ever got much sleep.

  “We’ve got to put him away, Beth. We’ve got to get those kids out of there. Sheila, my supervisor, says I don’t have enough evidence to start relocating the children. She thinks I’m nuts and Bill Brandon is a saint. I think she just can’t face all the work it would take to relocate the kids. But it has to be done, and I don’t care about the work.”

  Beth tried to think clearly. “First, we have to have enough evidence to convince the court. Maybe if you got some of the kids alone and told them you already knew what was going on, some of them would talk.”

  “I’ve tried. They all get this terrible look on their faces—fear, that’s all I know to call it—and insist that they’ve never been happier and they’ve never been treated better.”

  “It’s fear, all right. But we need more evidence. Marlene’s statements are good, but she’s just one person.”

  Nick frowned. “Why did she talk to you, anyway?”

  Beth hesitated. “Well, I already knew she wasn’t part of his organization anymore. She said that her life has changed in the past year. She seemed to genuinely care about the kids now, and she didn’t want to sit by and let Bill do what he was doing.”

  “Are you sure you can trust her? What if she’s just baiting you to see what you know?”

  “She told me things I didn’t know. It was real, Nick.”

  Nick sat slowly down and leaned forward. “Does Bill Brandon know that she talked?”

  She was unsure how much to tell him. “Yes. I mean, I’m pretty sure he does. He—or someone in a dark Buick—was following me most of the way home.”

  “What?”

  “Chasing me is more like it,” she said, standing up again and setting her fists defiantly on her hips, as if the stance could erase the image of helpless victim. “It’s okay. I made sure I lost him, so he couldn’t follow me home. My car’s got a few dents, though.”

  “He hit you? What was he trying to do?”

  “Run me off the road,” she said. “Near the seawalls.”

  “Beth, this is getting out of hand. He could have killed you!”

  She went to the window, peered out through the blinds. “He almost did. I called the police, but it took them forever. By the time they came, I had lost him.”

  Nick went to stand behind her, and she turned around and looked up at him. “Beth, how do you know it wasn’t a setup? The whole Marlene thing—all her deep confessions, and then her brother chasing you down and trying to kill you? What if they planned this together—”

  “I don’t think so,” Beth said. “Marlene seemed scared herself. And she was sincere. She really was.”

  He blew out a frustrated breath. “No wonder you had a gun when you answered the door.”

  “It was stupid, really,” she said. “He doesn’t know where I live.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” she said weakly.

  “Then why do you keep looking out the window?”

  “Just being careful. I mean, really, I can’t even be sure it was him. I’m just assuming it wa
s. Who else would come after me right after that interview? It had to be either him or someone who works for him.”

  “Beth, this is getting dangerous. You have to call the police again. Tell them who you think was following you.”

  She shook her head and plopped down on the couch. The puppy put its paws up on her shin, panting happily. She leaned over and picked him up. “I don’t want to call them again. I did it before because I was desperate. But now that it’s over, I don’t think I want to bring them into this yet.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Why would you wait?”

  Determination tightened her features. “Because this is my story,” she said, “and I don’t want every paper in the state getting it before I can get the whole story out. If I call the police, it’ll be public knowledge by morning. There’ll be a barrage of articles, none with much meat, and Bill Brandon will clean up his act for a while and walk straight, and they won’t catch him at anything, and everyone will write it off as hearsay and rumor, and go back to thinking he’s the clean-cut, unsung hero who molds broken young kids into model citizens. I want to get him, Nick. And I’m not going to depend on the cops to do it.”

  He shook his head. “And how long will all this take?”

  “I’m going to stay up late tonight transcribing the tapes of my conversation with Marlene. I’ll start writing the story. Maybe tomorrow I can track down some other witnesses. If I could just find out where that warehouse is—and who he has in government working with him—”

  “Beth, if you take too long, he’s going to catch up with you. Then what?”

  “I won’t take too long,” she said. “I’m as anxious to get this story out as you are. You have a list of kids in the home, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then start making plans to move them. I promise you, the story will be out within a week.”

  “I hope that’s not too late. Especially now that he knows something’s up.”

  She thought that over. “Maybe I can get it finished by tomorrow. If so, we could print it the day after—if I can convince my editor. Remember, I’m still just a grunt around there. The college kid, always looking for a front-page story. If he’s going to print it, it has to be great.”

  Nick wasn’t reassured. “What if he comes after you again? What if he does find where you live?”

  “I can protect myself, Nick. I’ve done it for a long time.”

  He breathed a laugh. “Right. You’re a junior in college. How old? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “How long could you possibly have done it?”

  “I’ll be all right, Nick.” She couldn’t help the slight edge in her voice. “Now, why don’t you go on home? You look really tired.”

  “I am tired,” he said, “but I could sack out here. Make sure he doesn’t show up. I’m really afraid to leave you.”

  She smiled slightly. “Spend the night, huh? I don’t think so.”

  He shook his head again. “Not like that, Beth. That’s not my style.”

  “Mine either.”

  “You have any objection to a guy wanting to watch out for you?”

  “You have enough people to watch out for, Nick. Don’t worry about me. If I can’t take a little heat, I have no business being a reporter.”

  “That’s what I figured,” he said. “You’re a hundred-ten-pound tough guy. What do you have for protection? Karate? Brass knuckles?”

  “I have my wits,” she said with a half-smile. “And the .22 in that drawer. Oh, and I have my dog.” She set the puppy down, and he wagged over to Nick.

  “Yeah, right.” He bent down and petted the puppy, who instantly made a puddle on the floor. “Uh-oh. You’re not walking him enough.”

  “We’re working on the house-breaking thing,” she said with a soft laugh as she ran to the kitchen to grab a towel. “I don’t know if he’s training me or if I’m training him. But he’s only six weeks old. What can you expect, huh, Dodger?”

  “Dodger?”

  “Yeah. Like the Artful Dodger in Oliver.”

  “Any chance that name came from the story you’re working on?”

  She stood back up. “Yeah, I guess so. That and the fact that he loves stealing socks out of my laundry hamper. He chewed a hole in the side of it so he could get to them.”

  He chuckled and went to the door, opened it, and peered out into the woods surrounding the house. “It’s kind of creepy out here. Are you sure you’re not afraid?”

  “One person’s creepy is another person’s refuge,” she said. “He won’t find me here, and very few people have the address. Reporters have to take certain precautions.”

  He turned back. “I guess I should feel honored that you gave it to me.”

  She smiled a little self-consciously, and looked down at the puppy. “Actually, you should. I don’t even know why I did.”

  “I like to think it was my trustworthy eyes.”

  “They are pretty trustworthy,” she said, bringing hers back to them again. For a moment, their eyes locked, and finally, she looked away, realizing her face was getting warm. “Look, I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what’s happening. If you find out anything, let me know, too, okay?”

  “All right.”

  He looked at her for a second, as if considering something else to say. “See you later.”

  “Yeah. Later.”

  She watched as he walked across the gravel, examined the dents in her car, then, shaking his head, went to his own vehicle. She checked the shadows of the trees on both sides of the house with a growing sense of unease, then shuddered and closed the door. She bolted it shut, then turned back to the puppy, who was curled up on a rug. “Yeah, that’s right,” she told him. “Go to sleep, just when the hard work is about to start. Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Your spelling’s pretty lousy, anyway.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nick tried to shake the uneasy feeling taking hold of him as he pulled off the dirt road leading to her property and back onto the paved street where occasional cars drove by. She was tough, that was certain, but it didn’t make him feel any better. A man like Bill Brandon had ways of breaking down toughness.

  On the other hand, Bill was used to dealing with children. Maybe he’d not yet met the likes of Beth Wright.

  Nick knew he hadn’t. She had blown into his life like an answered prayer, one that he was still reeling from. Just when he’d felt so helpless and frustrated that he wanted to quit his job, she had come along with some answers and the encouragement he had sorely needed.

  It hadn’t even been two weeks ago that he’d gotten the phone call from the distraught mother who’d had visitation with her son at the children’s home that afternoon and had found him bruised from a beating that the child told her had come from Bill Brandon. Since the mother was a drug addict going through rehab, Nick hadn’t taken what she said at face value. Instead, he had ordered a medical exam of the child. The doctors confirmed that he had suffered a beating.

  Finally, Nick had confronted Bill Brandon about it. Brandon told him that the child had been fine when he’d left for visitation, but that the mother herself must have beaten him. Bill had launched from there into an impassioned argument that parental visitations were detrimental to the healthy environment he tried to provide for “his” kids.

  There were obvious problems with Bill’s story. Why would the mother have called attention to abuse she’d inflicted herself? Besides, Nick had heard the despair in her voice, the urgency, the worry. Yes, her child had been taken from her due to neglect and drug addiction—but now she was clean. The sound of maternal worry in her voice had been authentic. Much more authentic than Bill Brandon’s arguments.

  Sheila, Nick’s supervisor, had blown the whole thing off, convinced that Bill Brandon was right and that the mother was just trying to cover up for something she knew would be discovered eventually. She suggested they file to revoke the mother’s visitation privileges.

  Nick ha
d allowed her to believe he would take care of it, but he hadn’t. Something about Bill’s and Sheila’s rationales didn’t ring true. Something about the mother’s pleas did.

  He had begun to look deeper into problems at the home. He had gone to the public school where Bill Brandon’s children were sent, and had studied the records of the SCCH kids. He saw a repeating pattern of children falling asleep in class, over and over and over. When he spoke to their teachers—no small feat since it was summer and some of them had been difficult to locate—he was told that they had contacted Brandon about the problem, only to be told that he would “take care of it” when the kids got home from school. Fearing what Brandon’s punishment might be, and sensing the terror on the kids’ faces when they thought they were being reported to him, most of the teachers had fallen into a routine of letting it slide without calling the home. They, too, suspected that things might not be all they seemed at the home, but they had little evidence to back it up. There had also been a few reports of some SCCH kids being caught committing crimes, but everyone had written those incidents off to bad parenting or to the typical rebellion of low-status, high-risk kids. None of his suspicions, none of the facts he’d compiled, added up to enough evidence to close down the home, or even to start an official investigation. He’d been at a dead end—and then he’d gotten a phone call from a young woman who had identified herself as a reporter with the St. Clair News and said she was working on a story about some alleged abuses in the St. Clair Children’s Home. It had been just the encouragement he’d needed to convince him he was on the right track. But when Beth had told him that she suspected Brandon was using the children in a crime ring that worked in areas within a two-hour radius of St. Clair, Nick had been stunned. Was that why the children were so sleep-deprived?