“Nicky, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re not the first girl to have gotten away?”
I can’t help myself. I stare at her blankly. No, I’ve never thought such a thing.
“Maybe,” Tessa continues now, “there are more of you out there. And that would be a good thing, Nicky. There’s strength in numbers. It bolsters your story. It takes some of the pressure off you. It would mean, by definition, you’re not alone.”
I can’t speak; I can’t breathe. Another girl. Would that be a good thing? Sisters in arms? Or . . . I can’t sit anymore. I get up and pace.
“Thirty years ago,” Tessa is saying, “the investigative landscape was very different. ViCAP, a database for linking criminal cases from around the country, was just getting started. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had barely been founded. All in all, it was very difficult for law enforcement agencies from different jurisdictions to compare notes. Meaning a six-year-old girl could be kidnapped from a park here, while a twelve-year-old runaway disappeared from a shelter there, and an eight-year-old delinquent never came home from the mall, and no one would necessarily connect the dots. We know better now, and I’d like to use that to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a friend. A Boston detective who currently has some time on her hands. I’m going to ask her to go back through thirty years of missing-kid cases, from all over New England, to see if she can connect some dots. If we can establish just how many girls they were taking, and how, and from where, that would enable us to corroborate your story. It might also help identify the players involved.”
I walk away from her. Check out the flat-screen TV. I’m rubbing my arms, though I’m not sure why. I’m not cold but I’m covered in goose bumps.
I miss Thomas. I wonder where he is right now. Where is he going and what is he doing? Right or wrong, I wish he was here.
“Why are you hiring someone else?” I mumble. “Can’t you just ask around yourself?”
Tessa doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her question takes me off guard.
“Do you know what a Chinese wall is?”
I shake my head, already confused. I need more sleep. My head hurts.
“A Chinese wall is an informational barrier constructed within a firm for the sake of ethical integrity. For example, in a law firm, if investigating one client’s case might result in identifying information that was detrimental to another client, the firm could construct a Chinese wall. Essentially, the company would establish two separate investigative efforts, operating independently and not sharing information, thus enabling itself to serve both clients without compromising ethics.”
I frown, still confused. “But I’m your only client. How is hiring someone not to tell you what they learn helpful?”
“She would tell it to you, just maybe not to me.” Tessa hesitates. When she speaks again, her tone is careful. “Northledge is a top-notch investigative firm. With an impressive list of wealthy and respectable clients. Now, according to you, the customers at the dollhouse . . .”
“Wealthy and respectable clients.” I spit out the words.
“Exactly. I could do the research. But what I might find and have to present to my own bosses . . . It’s cleaner this way, for both of us. And trust me, this detective I’d like to hire, D. D. Warren. If she identified the governor himself exploiting young girls, she’d slap him in handcuffs. If there’s something to find, any kind of trail to be picked up from thirty years ago, she can do it.”
I nod, but I don’t feel reassured. This Chinese wall protects Tessa and her firm’s roster of wealth and privilege. What I need is a Chinese wall for me. Some kind of defense to protect who I am now from what I once did. Except maybe there is no protection for that. Which is why I spend most of my days both forgetting who I am and yet still searching for Vero.
“One last thing,” Tessa says quietly.
“What?”
“Your mom. Nicky, Thomas may be gone, but you still have a family. Don’t you think it’s time to finally call them?”
“You don’t understand,” I whisper. “Vero is six years old. She is gone. She disappears.”
But then I remember something else. A view from outside a house on a rainy night. A young girl sitting on a sofa.
I open my mouth. No words come out.
Tessa is waiting for me to speak. She is patient. Wyatt is patient. The whole world is waiting for me.
I want to lie down in the dark, ice pack on my head. I want to cover myself in the quilt. I want to close my eyes and be alone with Vero.
We will sip scotch out of teacups. I will watch the maggots crawl around her shiny white skull.
I will apologize once more for everything I’ve done.
Maybe this time, she will forgive me. Because no one ever got out of the dollhouse alive.
“Nicole?” Tessa asks quietly.
The memories are shifting again. Cold, dark shadows that heave and menace. Nothing comforting, nothing enlightening.
I understand for the first time, the truth is not all out yet. And maybe not even the kind of truth that will set me free. Thomas had tried to warn me, but I hadn’t listened. Now here I am. Shivering in dread. Nearly choking on the bile of my own fear. Something, something in that darkness looms.
All these years later, is still waiting for me . . .
“Nicky?”
Tessa’s voice comes from a distance. I use it to anchor myself, pull myself back to the present.
She must see something in my eyes, because she takes my hand, helps me take a seat on the edge of one of the beds.
“Nicky, picture the dollhouse. A room, a piece of furniture, some aspect of that home, then breathe in deep and tell me what you smell. Nothing too scary or overwhelming. Just an association that comes immediately to mind.”
Funny, I don’t have to think too hard. As she said, a fragrance comes immediately to mind.
“Freshly mowed grass.”
Tessa doesn’t question or debate my choice. She simply rises to standing. “I need to run a few errands for us. I recommend using the time to freshen up. Because the moment I return, we are getting to work.”
Chapter 26
WYATT HAD STARTED to feel the burn of an endless night. He sat in his boss’s office, head sagging, as he did his best to talk his way through a case that posed way too many questions and not nearly enough answers.
“You’re sure this woman is Veronica Sellers?” Sheriff Rober asked now. “A missing girl from thirty years ago?”
“According to her fingerprints, yes.”
“You think she was kidnapped by some high-end madam, imprisoned in the woman’s home-slash-brothel until she eventually escaped. At which time she made it to New Orleans, where she married this guy Thomas, and, what, started over? Lived happily ever after for twenty-two years, until six months ago, when Thomas decided to kill her, resulting in three accidents and now a house fire.”
Wyatt nodded, though something about hearing his case as a laundry list of crimes . . .
“Can one girl be so unlucky?” the sheriff asked bluntly.
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Seems to me, you really got two cases. You have what happened thirty years ago. The kidnapping, followed by the sex crimes. Then you have today. The single MVA followed by arson. I guess followed by the missing husband.”
“We have an APB out on Thomas Frank now, as well as a trace on his cell phone. One way or another, we’ll find him.”
“But you don’t have him yet. What you have is a bunch of stories from an injured woman’s mind.”
“We know the car accident was more than an accident,” Wyatt interjected. “The stability system was disabled, the vehicle placed in neutral and most likely given a shove down the hill. That implies a second person
had to be present at the time of the accident.”
“The husband again?”
“Who was very reluctant to turn over his rain jacket and went out of his way to retrieve his wife’s own clothes from that night, I believe to further conceal any evidence of his actions. Add to that him torching his own home and running for it the second we homed in on him, and yeah, he looks pretty guilty to me.”
“Why?” Sheriff Rober asked. “Twenty-two years later, what changed? Forget the wild stories of brothels and missing kids. Return to the basics. Why does a husband kill his wife?”
“Insurance money, revenge, wanting out of the marriage but not wanting to divvy up assets.” Wyatt shrugged. “We have looked at the basics, trust me. At the moment, there’s no sign of a large life insurance policy, nor any sign that either of the Franks was involved in extramarital activities. Honestly, sir, my best guess is that whatever’s happening now ties back to what happened thirty years ago.”
“You think Thomas Frank was part of this so-called dollhouse?”
“Maybe. Of course, thirty years ago, he was just a kid himself. Which makes things more complicated.”
“Fellow victim? Sex trafficking isn’t just about girls.”
“I don’t know. Kevin is running a deeper background on the Franks now. According to Thomas, he and Nicky met and married twenty-two years ago in New Orleans. Upon further investigation, however, Thomas Frank doesn’t show any activity under that name until twenty years ago. As in he never had a credit card or a driver’s license until 1995. Same with Nicole Frank.”
“Fake identities?”
“Most likely. Well done, deep enough to stand up to cursory inspection, but when you start filling in the details . . . Sure, Thomas Frank has a birth certificate. But he still never lived until the past two decades.”
“Ask the wife about it?”
“Given the state of her memory, not sure how productive, or reliable, that conversation would be.”
“Meaning, all the more reason to find Thomas and grill him.”
“Agreed.”
“So what’s your game plan?” the sheriff asked. “You got a missing suspect and a scrambled victim. What next?”
“I need to contact the National Center for Missing Children, of course. Let them know about Veronica Sellers. Thought I might see if they could send over the original documents on the missing persons case. Maybe by going through the original witness statements, I can find something that will give me some traction on what’s going on now.”
“You could,” the sheriff said, but he was nodding in a way that Wyatt already knew meant he disagreed. “You have to call them, true. And maybe they’ll agree to give you access to some old case file. But consider this. Moment you call, they’re assembling a task force in a conference room. That task force is then going to locate northern New Hampshire on a map. By evening, they’ll be on a plane. First thing tomorrow morning, they’ll be walking through our front door. At which time, maybe they’ll hand you a box of paperwork. But definitely they’re going to take your best witness, Nicky Frank, as well as this entire case, away from you. Just like that.”
Wyatt sighed, then nodded heavily. The sheriff was right, of course. The recovery of a kid, missing thirty years, was big news. Hold-a-press-conference-wearing-their-best-federal-suits, taking-full- federal-credit kind of news. A mere county sheriff’s department didn’t stand a chance.
“Can you locate this brothel?” the sheriff asked now. “You got a description, something concrete that puts it in our county, gives us half a chance?”
“I got nothing,” Wyatt confessed. “Nicky described the home as a Victorian mansion, driving distance from Boston. Run by a madam who looks like a china doll, and also occupied by an evil roommate named Chelsea. That’s what we know.”
“Please don’t tell the feds that.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you have?” the sheriff pressed.
Wyatt was tired. He’d been up all night, and the coffee was wearing off. He stared at his boss blankly.
“You got Nicky Frank,” the sheriff spelled out for him. “Or Veronica Sellers, or whatever the hell her name is. That’s what you have; they don’t.”
“You mean the world’s most unreliable witness?”
“Whatever’s going on here, she holds the key. Get a doctor. Get a hypnotist, a therapist, whatever it takes. But start pushing, and don’t stop until you get some real answers out of her, including what’s up with the husband. You have less than twenty-four hours to find answers, Sergeant. Time to make your play.”
* * *
WYATT TURNED OVER the matter in his mind as he walked down the second-floor corridor to his own modest office. He didn’t like the idea of a hypnotist. He agreed with Nicky; her mind was messed up enough. But a therapist? Maybe an expert in PTSD? Could someone like that possibly coax Nicky into a walk down memory lane that finally ended with some answers? Of course, how to locate such a therapist and get him or her to his office ASAP? Clock was ticking, so definitely no rest for the wicked on this one.
He’d just made it to his office door, was debating whether more coffee would help or hurt at this point, when Kevin burst through the stairwell ahead of him.
“We got him.”
“Who?”
“Thomas Frank. Patrol officer spotted his vehicle parked behind a strip motel, Route 302, forty minutes north.”
Wyatt forgot all about caffeine. Quick swipe of his car keys off the corner of his desk; then he and Kevin were hammering down the stairs toward the parking lot.
“Did the officer approach him?” Wyatt asked as they hit ground level.
“Nah, called it in. Since you were tied up with the big boss, I instructed him to lay low, keep eyes on, but remain out of sight. He’s gonna work on getting the exact room number for us.”
“Perfect. All right. Mobilize the troops. We’re gonna want patrol cars north and south in case he runs for it. In the meantime, this is our party. We make the first contact.”
They clambered into the county SUV, Wyatt behind the wheel, Kevin working the radio. Forty minutes north. Wyatt figured he could make that thirty. And he did.
* * *
KEVIN HAD JUST spotted the long, white-painted strip motel on the left, when Thomas Frank’s silver Suburban turned out of the parking lot right in front of them.
“There, that’s him!” Wyatt called out. The driver didn’t appear spooked, but was driving at a moderate pace. Wyatt hit the sirens, however, and all that changed.
The Suburban shot forward, V8 engine gunning. Apparently, Thomas Frank wasn’t done running just yet.
“What the hell did you do, man?” Wyatt muttered under his breath. “Because you’re about to go down the hard way.”
Wyatt hit the accelerator, easily closing the gap. Beside him, Kevin was already alerting the two patrol cars five miles north that the chase was on. They careened past a gas station/local deli, a diner and a campsite; then civilization thinned out, and it was full speed ahead.
Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour on the winding road. The Suburban took one corner too fast, rocking onto two wheels. For one second, it remained suspended in precarious balance, then slammed back to four tires on the ground, lurching awkwardly forward. Another sharp left, followed by a winding right. As the Suburban slipped from eighty to sixty to eighty again.
Wyatt felt calm and focused, the way he always did on the hunt. His hands were steady on the wheel, his breathing controlled. This was his element. The moment a good officer trained and, frankly, lived for.
In contrast, the Suburban was beginning to weave erratically. Panic, exhaustion, impairment, but Thomas Frank appeared to be losing it.
The Suburban swung wildly into the left-hand lane. An oncoming car blared its horn, then belatedly spotted the pursuing police vehicle and pulled over. Better l
ate than never, as the saying went.
Now the Suburban overcorrected to the right, skidding almost sideways across the road, two wheels crunching into the soft shoulder and making it fishtail wildly.
Wyatt backed off his speed, frowning at the Suburban’s out-of-control maneuvers. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling so good about things. In fact . . .
A tractor-trailer appeared ahead. Logging truck, just coming around the corner, a little wide with its long, heavy load bearing down upon the Suburban.
“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare!” Wyatt shouted at Thomas Frank.
Who’d just swung his Suburban back into the path of the oncoming semi, as if playing chicken with a tractor-trailer was a good idea. In fact, better than surrendering to the local cops.
Wyatt could think of only one more thing to do. Not a great idea. Not his best idea. But in the spur of the moment . . .
He shoved the accelerator to the floor, fully committing 202 horsepower to his bidding. As he pulled alongside the lumbering Suburban’s dark-tinted passenger window. No view of Thomas. Wild-eyed with desperation, or dead set with determination, Wyatt had no way to know. And no time to find out.
The logging truck hit its brakes, sounding its deep horn. As Wyatt drove his own vehicle into the side of the Suburban. The crunch and grind of metal. A frozen instant of time, when neither vehicle gave way, but remained locked together with the other, a twin-size target for the oncoming semi. Wyatt lifted his foot from the gas, swerved one last time into the side of the Suburban. Then . . .
The Suburban was knocked left. Veered off the road onto the tree-lined shoulder just as the logging truck squealed through the space it used to occupy. Wyatt fought with his own vehicle, steady, steady, snap, back into his own lane, blowing by the logging truck as Kevin roared a few words the Brain rarely said.
Wyatt hit the brakes. His vehicle stopped. The logging truck stopped.
The world stopped.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Kevin got on the radio and called for backup.
* * *
THE SILVER SUBURBAN had done a face-plant into a tree. The hood was a crumpled mess, steam rising, fluids flushing down, as if in its last moments, the vehicle had lost control of its bowels.