Close to Home (42 page)

Now he hurried across the tiles and peered past the chimneys, hearing the river, far below, rush through the gorge.

He tried to call from here, but, as it had before, the cell went dead in his hands.

Yelling again, his voice smothered by the rush of the river, the sirens finally sounding closer, he felt a dark, mind-numbing fear. They were gone. The house was empty. Just as he feared it would be. A kaleidoscope of images spun through his mind in horrifying detail.
Don't go there, Do not go there! Find them, Walsh, Just find them,

Hands gripping the short rail, he leaned forward, searching the coming night. From this point he had a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view, acres upon acres of the surrounding property, if the fog would rise faster, if the night weren't approaching.

Where are you?
He thought, just as he caught a glimpse of red and blue lights blinking through the thinning mist.

The cops.

Too little, too late,
he thought, but started back down to the first floor, trying to piece together what had happened here, forcing himself not to panic.

He knew that Sarah had been here and very recently.

The fire in the living room grate was bright, some of the logs barely burned.

Her vehicle was parked near the garage. No other car or truck had been driven out of the lane in the past fifteen minutes or he would have seen its lights, heard its engine.

No, she was here, he sensed.

The basement.

Quickly, he rounded the staircase to the doorway to the basement stairs and flung open the door. Down a rickety staircase he raced, landing in a vast underground storage space where artifacts from another lifetime had been stacked. He scanned the shelves, a milk-separating station, a clothesline from ages before, everything gathering dust.

Nothing that would help him locate his family.

No one hiding in the shadows.

A complete bust.

They weren't here. Just as he'd feared. Boots pounding a quick, desperate tattoo, he ran back up to the first floor and beelined for the open front door.

How long had it been since he'd heard that soul-rending scream?

Five minutes?

Ten?

Too damned many.

Hitting redial again, he leaped down the porch steps, only to stop short when he heard the sharp but distant sound of staccato barking. The dog was going out of its mind, sending up an alarm.

Breathing hard, Clint sensed the frantic barking was coming from the direction of the pond, on that piece of property that butted up to the fence line. For the love of Christ, what were they doing out there?

He ran to his truck, threw open the door, grabbed a flashlight he kept in the glove box, and whistled to his dog. “Come, Tex!” he commanded just as Bellisario's Jeep roared through the trees.

He didn't wait.

Tex sprang from the truck, and Clint, already running in the direction of the other dog's barks, commanded, “Sic 'em!”

 

Her phone died in her hand. Again. Clint was trying to reach her, and each time his number showed on her cell's screen, it faded out completely. “Come on, come on,” Sarah sobbed, pounding on the door, her skin seeming to shrink over her muscles whenever she thought about being locked in this vault with two long-dead bodies. “Gracie!” she cried, her fists raw from beating on the old panels, her shoulder aching from trying to wedge the damned door open. “Gracie! Open this door!”

Fear jetted through her bloodstream. What had happened? Why had Gracie screamed? Oh, dear God, had the twisted pervert who'd kidnapped those other girls somehow find Gracie? Was that possible? “Gracie!” she screamed frantically, beating wildly on the old wood.

Muted sounds reached her ears. The dog barking, a siren screaming, but not a sound from her daughter.

Please, please, please, God, if you're listening, keep her safe,

“Gracie!”

 

“Walsh! Stop!”

Bellisario's voice chased after him.

“Stand down!”

To hell with her. He was running for all he was worth, his feet traveling the familiar path of his youth, fear propelling him. God, why hadn't he brought his rifle?

Hopefully the police were at his heels, weapons drawn, but he couldn't count on them now, as he was in the lead, sprinting through dry grass and brush, catching a glimpse of the dark water of the pond. Footsteps pounded behind him: the cops.

He'd lost sight of Tex, but heard the other dog barking like he'd treed a bear. The sound wasn't coming from the pond, no . . . he veered to the left as he realized the dog was farther toward the river and . . . Oh, Jesus! The old cemetery? The place where he and the Stewart boys had shot BB guns? What the devil was the dog doing
there?
Breathing hard, at the top of the rise where the graveyard appeared, he saw what was left of the Stewart family plot: graying headstones listing badly, others completely tumbled over. He leaped over the fence and headed toward the center, to the single tomb in the enclosure, pointing the flashlight at the old vault with its weird carvings.

The dog had something or someone cornered. Snarling and snapping, Xena pinned a dark, writhing figure against the front of the vault.

He forced his beam onto the odd-shaped figure.

A tall man was holding a twisting, frantic Gracie McAdams hard against his chest, his face screened by her wildly moving head, as if he were using her smaller body as a human shield.

“Help!” Gracie cried, terrified. “Help!”

“Put her down!” Clint ordered. The bastard blinked rapidly against the harsh illumination of Clint's flashlight, but didn't release her.

In a heartbeat, Clint recognized the man and his insides turned to water.

“Police! Let her go!” Bellisario's voice ordered from somewhere behind Clint, just as Clint sprang forward. “Walsh! Stand the hell down!”

From the corner of his eye, Clint caught sight of the detective, weapon drawn, advancing upon the abductor and his squirming, frightened captive.

“Police!” Bellisario snapped loudly. “Roger Anderson, release the girl and put your hands in the air.”

T
he door opened suddenly, a rush of fresh air racing into the vault. “Sarah!” Clint's voice called anxiously.

She stumbled upward, over the tomb's threshold, to fall into his waiting arms, tumbling with him to the ground in front of the vault. “Thank God, you're safe!” he said, and his voice cracked a little. He kissed her forehead, and she was surrounded by the smell and feel of him, warm and safe, but she pulled back.

“Gracie?”

“Safe. Here,” he told her.

Her insides melted, and tears raced down her cheeks as her youngest daughter came rushing to them, and Sarah, still in Clint's embrace, held her daughter close. “Thank God, you're safe,” she said, sniffing. “I was trapped. The door . . .” And then she noticed the crowd that had gathered, three men and Bellisario and—

“He did it!” Gracie said, pointing to a tall man standing near one of the officers. A beard covered the lower half of his face, his hands were cuffed behind his back, and his eyes, when he stared back at her, flared with recognition.

“Roger,” she whispered. Mixed emotions clogged her throat as she stared into the sharp-featured face of her half brother, Roger Anderson. “What . . . ?” She clutched her daughter tight to her and felt something in her mind start to click, the tumblers of an old, broken lock falling suddenly into place.

She remembered being with him on the roof as a storm raged. He was holding her close, his body against her wet, shivering skin. “I'll keep you safe,” he vowed, water dripping from his face onto her naked flesh as rain lashed the cupola and slickened the roof tiles. Gently, he carried her into the little glass room at the top of the winding stairs.

Her heart had been beating painfully, shame and disgust roiling inside her as she looked over his shoulder and through the rain-drizzled glass to the widow's walk, where another man stood. Her queasy stomach released, and she threw up over Roger's shoulder at the sight of her father, rain darkening the sagging shoulders of his jacket, his belt undone.

“Daddy?” she whispered, remembering him taking her to the rooftop, holding her close, sliding the buttons of her nightgown through the little slits of buttonholes. “I love you, Sarah girl,” he'd said, lifting the hem of her gown and pulling the wet fabric over her head. “I just want to touch you a little, honey, because I love you so, so much.” His breathing had been shallow and swift, and she'd tried to pull away. “This will be our secret. Our place.” And then a big, rough hand had slid down her shoulder to graze her flat, undeveloped breasts.

“Oh, God,” she whispered now, her stomach quivering, even though Clint's arms were surrounding her and she was holding her own daughter. Wrenching free of them both, she leaned forward, hands on the ground, and vomited, her body heaving violently. Disgrace and shame swallowed her, and, as if her father were still looming over her, still threatening to violate her, she whispered, “Don't. Don't you ever touch me again!” Her body convulsed once more, and she spit, blinking, coming back to the moment, realizing where she was again: in the cemetery with Clint and Gracie and . . .

Roger. Staring up at him, the memory fresh and clear, she forced herself to her feet.

“Okay, Anderson,” Bellisario said, “Let's go.”

“No—It's not . . . he didn't . . .” She pulled herself together with an effort, realizing that Roger was in custody, that the police thought he was behind the recent attacks . . . “No, wait. You're arresting him?” she asked Bellisario, feeling Clint tense beside her and Gracie once again slip under her arms. “No . . . he didn't . . .” She could barely draw a breath when she finally blurted out, “Theresa, my sister. She's down there,” and weakly motioned to the vault. “I mean, her body.”

Gracie looked up at her. “Really?”

“Roger,” Sarah said to her brother, “you put her there? You knew?”

He frowned, but some of the tension left his shoulders, and he nodded. The cop beside him was staring at him as if he expected the ex-con to flee. “I failed her.” Roger's voice was raw, filled with emotion, his face twisted in guilt. “I failed my sister.”

Sarah tried to understand. He seemed to have shrunk two inches with the admission. “How?” she asked.

“This man was trying to abduct your daughter,” Bellisario said.

“No,” Sarah and Roger said at the same time.

Then Roger said to Sarah, “It was your father. He . . . he and Theresa. He wouldn't leave her alone. Oh, Jesus! I should have done something.”

The cops and Clint and Gracie all were silent, listening as his face hardened in hate for the man who had sired Sarah.

Shaken, Sarah had to be certain she understood. “My father killed Theresa?” The thought was a cold stake in her heart.

“It was his fault. Because of what he did to her, because . . . because after the baby was born Theresa was never the same. Because of him, she died.”

“Because of him?” she repeated, trepidation taking hold of her, a piece of his story not fitting. Clint's arms tightened over her shoulders, and a cold wind blew from the east, racing through the gorge, chasing away the fog.

“Let's go.” Bellisario had heard enough.

“No, wait!” Sarah insisted, holding her brother's gaze. “How did she die?”

“By ending it,” he said simply, his Adam's apple working. “She took her own life. To end the torment. By him. She hung herself in the guesthouse.”

Sarah felt as if she'd lived her life on quicksand, the truth and lies always shifting, never really knowing from one moment to the next what was the solid truth and what was a dark, guarded secret.

“I found her and cut her down.” His expression was tortured, filled with the regret of a lifetime. “I, um, I cleaned up the mess. It was all I could do and then . . . and then I brought her here, so she could rest in peace.”

There was a frightening thread of truth here running through the fabric of lies that had been her life, or what she'd thought was her life. “And you didn't tell Mother?”

“I didn't have to. She knew.” He said it with conviction, and Sarah remembered the anguished wails that had risen up the stairs as Roger had carried her down from the attic. All too vividly she recalled their white-faced, stricken mother and how she had crumpled in the hallway. “Bastard! No, no, no!” she'd cried, her fingers laced over the small statue of the Madonna as she'd pounded the floor. The little serene statue hadn't shattered, had remained intact as even Arlene had cracked, weeping and swearing, tears raining from her eyes. “I'm so sorry,” she'd said to Sarah, but hadn't offered to hold her, had clutched the figurine, Theresa's little statue, as if the last bits of her sanity had depended upon it. Roger said, “Mother took care of the problem.”

Sarah's chest squeezed tight. Memories flooded through her. The pieces of her life tumbling together rapidly as a cold, Canadian wind blew fast and hard to the west, chasing away the fog, Sarah Stewart McAdams saw the pictures of her past come into focus. “The baby . . . it was the problem?” she asked, but knew the answer before it passed his lips.

“No, Sarah, the baby was you.”

She stumbled back, wanting to deny it, but she remembered her mother's reaction at the retirement home when Mrs. Malone had introduced Sarah to her mother, reminding the older woman of a simple truth, but Arlene wasn't about to be fooled. “My daughter is Theresa,” Arlene had sworn, mistaking Sarah for the woman Sarah had believed was her older half sister. Now, if what Roger was saying were true, that simple fact too was a lie, a secret Arlene had hidden for more than thirty years.

“Theresa was my mother.” Sarah said the words, hardly believing them, but realizing how many questions they answered.

Roger didn't have to respond.

“And my father . . . ?” she whispered, but in a heart-stopping instant, she understood that sickening truth as well. It was all so clear now: Sarah was the child of the man she had always known to be her father, Franklin Stewart, but her mother was Theresa. Arlene had raised Sarah as her own child, somehow making the family and friends believe she'd been pregnant, perhaps becoming a recluse, who knew? Then, years later, when the same perverted man who had sired her had been sick enough to try it again, to intimately touch and sexually caress his own flesh and blood, Roger had intervened. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse uneven, her stomach filled with acid and hate.

“Sarah,” Clint said, his voice a rough whisper as he wrapped his arms around her again. “Sweetheart, it's okay . . .”

“No!” she cried. “It is not okay.”

To Roger, she said, “How did Mother think she fixed things? By adopting me? But there's more, isn't there? You said ‘she took care of the problem',” Sarah repeated, taking a step closer to her criminal of a half brother to stare him in the eyes. “What did you mean?”

“That she killed him, Sarah.”

For a second no one said a word.

“Explain that.” This time it was Clint.

“My mother killed her husbands.” Roger's words were without inflection. “Both of them. First my father, so she could marry Franklin, and when she couldn't take any more of Franklin's incest, when she saw that he would never change, she began poisoning him, as she had my father, watching him die, inch by inch, day by day.”

“And you know this how?” Bellisario demanded.

“I bought the rat poison for her. Not for my father, of course, I didn't really understand at the time what she'd done. But when she asked me to pick it up at the feed store, I did, then I knew that it was for Franklin, and I just let her.” He looked off into the distance, his expression blank. “It was justice. For Theresa.”

“Sarah, I've heard a lot of bullshit stories from cons,” Bellisario began.

“No.” Sarah cut her off. She was remembering her mother's satisfaction when she'd nearly drunk the fly in her milk, so many years ago, and then recently, she'd been accused of lacing a diabetic man's drink with sugar at the retirement home. “I believe him.” Sarah's mother was really her grandmother, a murderess, her father a sexual predator who'd raped her older sister and nearly done the same to her.

“This is some tale you're telling,” Bellisario said, unconvinced, as she motioned for the deputy to start hauling Roger away. “Why the hell were you here with the kid?”

“I told you,” Roger said, “I was saving her.”

“From what? Or whom?” Sarah demanded, then scanned the stern faces of everyone who had collected in the old graveyard near the open door of Angelique Le Duc's tomb. A new fear struck her. Why were they all here? How did they all know to come and save her when they should be out searching for the madman who was stealing girls from the streets of Stewart's Crossing?

No!

“Where is she?” she demanded, turning to Cliff, her worst fears congealing when she read the pain in his eyes. “Oh . . . God! Where's Jade?”

 

Bellisario glared across the interrogation table at Roger Anderson. Pale, with light eyes, unkempt beard, and a high forehead, he sat in clothes that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in a month. His legs were shackled, and his cuffed hands were clasped atop the table as if he were about to pray. Overhead, the fluorescents were harsh, giving him a sickly, beleaguered appearance.

“Let's start over,” she suggested, as they'd been at the interrogation for nearly an hour and she wasn't buying his story. “Where's Jade McAdams?”

“I'm telling you, I don't know. Ask Hardy Jones.”

“We have. He says he doesn't know anything.”

“He's lying.”

“That's what he says about you,” Bellisario said, knowing that the interview was being watched through the “mirror” on the wall, as well as every word and nuance videotaped.

“I was there to save them.”

“Sarah and her daughters? The way you saved Rosalie Jamison?”

“I don't know her.”

“What about Candice Fowler?”

“I told you—no.”

He was calm. Too calm. “I failed with Sarah,” he said for the fourth time, “but I wanted to help her girls. Make certain they were safe.”

“But Franklin Stewart is long dead. Your mother took care of that, according to you.”

“True.”

“Why did you think the McAdams girls were in danger?”

“They always are,” he said simply, and Bellisario fought back a desire to throttle the man with his cryptic answers. It had all been so bizarre, almost surreal. Finding Anderson at the tomb had been the first surprise; the second was Sarah McAdams and the dead bodies inside. Anderson swore he didn't know who the skeleton of the man was, though Sarah McAdams was certain the corpse was Maxim Stewart, the first of the line and the man who'd built Blue Peacock Manor for his wife Angelique Le Duc, a woman who had apparently cheated on him with his son, her stepson. Anderson had admitted to locking Sarah in the vault, to “keep her safe,” that he was planning to find a way to put her and her daughters somewhere outside the kidnapper's range, but Sarah had found the key to the vault and he'd seen her leave the house—he'd been watching it ever since they'd returned—and he'd followed her to the cemetery. In his deluded mind, he thought that the vault had become a safe house of opportunity. Which was all a little too convenient, another part of the Stewart family mess, in Bellisario's opinion.

The kicker was that the other corpse, that of a woman, was supposedly Theresa Anderson, Roger's full sister, who was pushed over the edge of sanity when she was raped by her father. All of that was conjecture at this point, but time would tell. Anderson also swore he'd stayed under the radar and away from his parole officer because he'd sensed, from Hardy Jones, that something was up as Jones, after drinking too much at The Cavern after his shift, had bragged to Roger that he was in for a major score. Though Hardy had played coy and hadn't said exactly what the scam was that he was running, he had mentioned how valuable “girls” were, how men would pay big money for them, use them as slaves or whores or even wives, if the situation were right. Anderson had gone on alert, knowing that Sarah and her girls were moving to Stewart's Crossing. He vowed to himself to protect them because of his broken promise to Theresa to keep Sarah, her baby, safe all those years ago. He included Sarah's children, Theresa's grandchildren, as well. He'd been living in the woods since their return to Stewart's Crossing, moving his camp every few nights, staying close