Don't Cry (12 page)

Hush, little baby.

When he was seven, his parents, with the assistance of the shrink he was seeing at the time, had explained exactly what had happened to him when he was three. The psychiatrist had told his parents that he was old enough to understand and that knowing the basic facts would help him fully recover.

“Those bad dreams you have are because when you were three, this woman—this mentally unstable woman—kidnapped you,” his father had said. “She took you out of our car where you were sleeping while your mom went into the service station to pay for the gas she'd just pumped.”

“This woman kept you with her for a long time.” His mother had wrung her hands continuously as she talked. “Months and months. We nearly lost our minds worrying about you, but…” His mother's voice had broken and she'd turned away from him in tears.

His father had taken his hand. “The police found you and took you away from this woman and brought you home to your mama and me. It was the happiest day of our lives.”

During the following years, Jeremy had learned more about the woman who had abducted him. Oddly enough, he had become fascinated by Regina Bennett. An unhealthy fascination. And he had visited her several times at the mental institution before she died. Even in her fifties, she had still been a rather pretty woman, bosomy and slender, with pensive brown eyes and thick, dark hair.

She had called him Cody.

And the last time he saw her, shortly before she died, she had caressed his cheek and hummed a familiar tune. “Remember, Cody? Remember how you loved for me to sing to you?”

Did he remember? He thought he did. Flashes of memory. Nothing definite. Maybe not even real memories, just thoughts planted in his head by an insane woman.

Ouch!
Jeremy had cut himself with the razor and a spot of blood appeared on his chin. The momentary physical pain snapped him out of his thoughts and temporarily relieved him of the emotional pain that never left him.

He didn't have time to question the past, to wonder what if. What if he'd never been kidnapped? What if his father hadn't died? What if his mother hadn't married an asshole? What if he'd never visited Regina Bennett and gotten to know her?

He needed to finish up here, grab a shower, and get dressed. He had places to go, people to see, things to do.

 

J.D. took a sip from his mug and frowned when the taste of the cool coffee reminded him how long it had been sitting on his desk. After dropping Zoe at school, he had come straight to the office, poured himself a mug of hot coffee, and tossed the two Baby Blue files he'd taken home with him on his desk. By the time he had finished thoroughly studying the Blake Sherrod files, it had been past eleven last night, so he'd never gotten around to the other file, the Jeremy Arden file.

This morning, he had decided to study the same aspects of each of the six cases simultaneously instead of going through each file separately, one at a time. First things first, the point where each case had begun—with the abduction.

Blond, blue-eyed Keith Lawson, twenty-nine months old, only child, abducted twenty-eight years ago from a sandbox in his grandmother's backyard when she went inside the house to answer a ringing telephone and left the child alone.

Blond, blue-eyed Chase Wilcox, twenty-five months old, the younger of two children, abducted twenty-seven years ago when the teenage baby-sitter was in another room having sex with her boyfriend.

Blond, blue-eyed Devin Kelly, twenty-seven months old, only child, abducted twenty-six years ago when his divorced father's girlfriend left him sitting in his stroller at a department store, outside the dressing room while she tried on a pair of jeans.

Blond, blue-eyed Blake Sherrod, twenty-three months old, one of three children in a blended family, abducted twenty-five years ago from his baby bed while his mother slept in her bedroom and his older siblings played outside.

Blond, blue-eyed Shane Douglas, thirty months old, younger of two sons, abducted twenty-five years ago from his hospital room where he was recovering after having minor surgery to put tubes in his ears because of chronic ear infections. The nurses had persuaded his mother, who hadn't left his side, to go to the cafeteria for a bite to eat.

Blond, blue-eyed Jeremy Arden, thirty-four months old, only child, abducted twenty-four years ago from his mother's car when she left him in his car seat to go inside a mini-mart to pay for the gas she had just pumped. Found four months later with Regina Bennett, who lived in a small house on her aunt and uncle's farm in Sale Creek, not thirty miles from his parents' home.

Regina's aunt and uncle had sworn they had no idea that their niece had kidnapped Jeremy or any other child. Although the authorities doubted their complete ignorance, they had no proof of the couple's culpability in the Baby Blue cases.

J.D. got up, went into the bathroom, and dumped his cold coffee in the sink. After pouring his mug full with semifresh hot coffee, he returned to his office. Standing beside his cluttered desk, he thought about the information he had just finished reading. The obvious came to mind first. Each child fit an almost identical profile. Blond, blue eyed, somewhere between two and three years old. Six toddlers, kidnapped a year apart over a period of five years.

No, that wasn't right. Six kids, five years. Something didn't add up. J.D. set his mug down as he flipped through the files until he found the exact dates. The five-year period was correct. That meant if Regina Bennett kidnapped all six boys, she had abducted two of them the same year. J.D. checked the abduction dates again and when he found the discrepancy, his gut tightened, but his mind cautioned him not to read too much into the information.

Blake Sherrod had gone missing in July and Shane Douglas had disappeared in August. Only a month apart.

J.D. triple-checked the dates.

Why had Regina Bennett changed her pattern of taking only one boy a year? Had something gone wrong with one of the kidnappings? Had she killed one of the boys too soon? Had someone else taken one of the boys?

Once again, J.D. skimmed through the files, checking the exact dates each boy had disappeared, thinking perhaps the month or the day might be the same. Keith and Chase had both disappeared in the month of June, a year apart. Devin and Blake had both disappeared in July, a year apart. Shane had disappeared in August, as had Jeremy Arden. The day of the month differed with each boy. The only similarity was that each of the boys had disappeared in the summer.

There had to be a reason that Blake Sherrod and Shane Douglas both went missing the same year. His gut instinct told him that this fact was significant. J.D. doubted that he was the first person to question why, if Regina Bennett had kidnapped both boys, she had changed her MO that year.

J.D. picked up the phone, removed the business card from where he'd clipped it to his desk calendar, and dialed George Bonner's number.

Jeremy caught a glimpse of the dark-haired waitress at the back entrance of Callie's Café as soon as he parked his motorcycle. The guy with her looked angry, his face splotched with red and his slim body coiled tight with anger. He was yelling at the waitress, but Jeremy was too far away to hear what he was saying. When he drew back his hand and slapped the woman's cheek, it was all Jeremy could do to stop himself from intervening.

If he hits her again…

Thankfully, it didn't happen. The guy turned and walked off, leaving the waitress in tears.

As soon as the man he assumed was her boyfriend got in his car and drove off, squealing his tires in the process, Jeremy approached the young woman.

Play it cool. Don't scare her. And whatever you do, don't touch her.

Approaching her slowly, Jeremy called out, “You okay?”

She jerked her head up and a pair of teary brown eyes stared at him, a look of surprise and unease etched on her pretty features. As she swiped away tears and sniffled a couple of times, she took several steps backward toward the restaurant's exit by the large metal Dumpster.

Realizing she was wary of him, Jeremy stopped a good ten feet from her. “Sorry. I couldn't help seeing what happened. That guy's a real jerk. You should get rid of him.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“If you're okay, I'll leave you alone.”

“I'm okay.”

When Jeremy turned around and headed toward the restaurant's front entrance, she called out to him. “Hey, I've seen you in here before, haven't I?”

“Yeah, a few times.” He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her.

“Thanks for…well, for asking if I was all right.” She studied him for a minute, as if trying to decide whether or not she could trust him.

Keeping his smile in place, he watched while she entered the restaurant's back entrance. Then he walked through the front door and found a stool at the counter. By the time he picked up a breakfast menu, she was pouring coffee into his mug.

He noticed that the cheek her boyfriend had struck was still bright pink and that she had taken her hair down from the neat ponytail and tried to drape it over the left side of her face. She had also put on her apron and name tag.

Whitney.

When she noticed him staring at the name tag, she said, “I'm Whitney Poole.”

He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Whitney. I'm Jeremy Arden.”

“Hello, Jeremy.”

He glanced down at the menu. “What do you recommend?”

She leaned across the counter and whispered, “That you eat at a better restaurant.”

They both laughed, and then she said, “But if you have to eat here, the pancakes aren't bad.”

“Pancakes it is.”

He tried not to stare at her, but when she left to place his order, he inspected her narrow waist, her long, slender legs, and the way her trim hips swayed as she walked. He had a thing for pretty brunettes. Always had. Every important woman in his life had been a brunette and quite a few unimportant ones, too.

You're going to be important to me, Whitney Poole. Very important. You just don't know it yet.

 

“Yeah, sure, we thought it odd that Regina Bennett would kidnap two boys in one year, if she actually kidnapped all the other boys,” George Bonner said. “We had no proof that she abducted either Blake Sherrod or Shane Douglas. Hell, we never had any proof that she kidnapped or killed any of the boys, except Jeremy Arden. And if it hadn't been for an anonymous phone call telling us where to look for Jeremy, he would have become just another statistic.”

“An anonymous caller?” J.D. asked. “I thought I'd skimmed through the records, but that info didn't jump out at me.”

“It should be in there somewhere,” Bonner told him. “Somebody called the Hamilton County sheriff's office, but he or she didn't leave a name.”

“The person who took the call couldn't identify the person's sex by their voice?”

“Apparently not. I remember him saying whoever called was whispering and if he had to make a guess, he'd say it was a woman because the voice wasn't as deep as most men's voices.”

“Regina Bennett lived on a farm in Sale Creek with her aunt and uncle, right? Could it have been the aunt who called?”

“The aunt and uncle swore they knew nothing about Regina kidnapping the Arden kid, or any other kid, for that matter.”

“How's that possible, if she lived with them?”

“She didn't actually live in the house with them,” Bonner said. “She lived on the farm, but in a separate house. It was a neat little two-bedroom clapboard. One of the bedrooms was a real pretty nursery. We found Jeremy Arden in a blue baby bed. He was clean and well dressed and healthy and unharmed in any way.”

“Physically, maybe.”

“What?”

“I said Jeremy Arden might have been physically unharmed when y'all rescued him, but he was nearly three years old. He had been stolen from his mother, from his parents. That had to be traumatic for a toddler.”

“Yes, I'm sure it was,” Bonner agreed. “Hell, I know it was. He didn't talk. Not a word. And he didn't cry. Not when we found him. Not when we turned him over to his parents. He just stared at us with those big blue eyes.”

“Were you able to question him? Later on, I mean,” J.D. said.

“Once he'd been given a complete physical after the rescue, and social services were called in, he was questioned. But like I said, the kid didn't talk. Not then. And later, weeks later, when he'd been home with his parents for a while, he couldn't answer any of our questions.”

“Couldn't?”

“His answer to every question was ‘I don't know.' So we had nothing. The doctors seem to think that he would probably never remember any details, that his mind had blotted it all out.”

“I guess that makes sense.” J.D. had one final question about Jeremy Arden. “Did anyone ever talk to him when he was older, as a teenager or a young adult?”

“Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious if he ever did actually remember anything about the months he spent with Regina Bennett.” J.D. paused, and then asked, “And as far as you know, Arden still lives here in Chattanooga?”

“He lives here now, but I think he's moved around a lot over the years. I haven't kept close tabs on him.”

“Hmm…The aunt and uncle, Regina Bennett's aunt and uncle, do you think they really didn't know anything?”

“I think they were hiding something,” Bonner said. “But we had no evidence against them, nothing concrete.”

“And they're both dead now.”

“Yeah.”

“Did Regina have any other relatives? Siblings? Cousins?”

“No siblings. And the aunt and uncle didn't have any children. We checked, but couldn't find anyone who would admit being related to her. Nobody else lived on the farm, although there were day laborers who worked for the uncle.”

“Was it one of the day laborers who raped Regina?”

“She didn't say who raped her. She claimed to have been forced to have sex.” Bonner cleared his throat. “The way she told it, she was repeatedly raped. And the only information we could get out of the aunt and uncle was the fact that Regina gave birth at home, with the aid of a midwife who was a member of that lunatic church they all belonged to. They claim they had no idea who Cody Bennett's father was.”

“The Holy Brethren Church,” J.D. said. “I never heard of it before.”

“They were a bunch of fundamentalist crazies. I don't think the church still exists, or if it does, they've gone underground.”

“And there was no way to substantiate the fact that Regina was raped, right? I mean she's the one who told the doctors at Moccasin Bend that she'd been raped.” J.D. flipped through the copied files. “According to the records, Regina told the doctors that he—whoever he was—hurt her, that he forced her to have sex numerous times.”

“She wouldn't name the guy. But we thought at the time that it was probably the uncle,” Bonner said. “There were rumors about the Holy Brethren Church. Rumors that the elders in that church, which Regina's uncle Luther Chaney was, had the right to initiate any of the young women they chose.”

“Did y'all follow up, try to prove—?”

“There was no point. The uncle died while the investigation was ongoing, less than a month after we rescued Jeremy Arden. Heart attack.”

“And the aunt?”

“She sold the farm a few months later and moved away. We didn't keep track of her.”

“Did she ever visit her niece at—?”

“I have no idea.” Bonner cleared his throat. “Look, once we returned Jeremy Arden to his parents and Regina Bennett was locked up in Moccasin Bend for evaluation and we thoroughly searched the Bennett farm for bodies or any other evidence and found nothing, the Baby Blue kidnappings became a cold case. After Regina was apprehended, there were no more similar kidnappings, so we felt reasonably certain we had the right person.”

“I understand. But now, if it turns out that the skeletons left with Jill Scott's and Debra Gregory's bodies belong to two of the kidnapped toddlers, your old cold case is going to be red hot again.”

 

Audrey met Porter for Wednesday lunch at the Big River Grill & Brewing Works, as she did every week when they were both free. Since it was such a gorgeous early autumn day, they chose to sit outside beneath one of the huge red umbrellas. As always, Porter was immaculate, from his perfectly styled blond hair to his expensive suit and matching silk necktie and handkerchief stuffed precisely in his coat pocket. Occasionally, Audrey had the urge to muss his hair or spill something on his suit, but she never had. Not even in their more intimate moments had she dared to run her fingers through his hair. Of course, their intimate moments were never wild and passionate and hadn't gone beyond a few kisses. Audrey had never been a sexually passionate person, and she suspected that Porter hadn't, either. That was one reason they had seemed so well suited. But recently Audrey had realized that she wasn't being fair to Porter or to herself. He needed to be free to find someone else, someone who could truly love him. And she? Well, she just needed to be free. She hoped that Porter wouldn't get upset when she broached the subject of their not dating each other exclusively.

She liked Porter, for all his faults and idiosyncrasies, and they shared some common interests which they could enjoy together. Also, it was nice not to have to find a date for social occasions where a date was required. And being in a relationship kept her friends and acquaintances from constantly arranging blind dates. Why was it that married people—or those who wished they were married—couldn't believe that a woman could be happy single and living alone?

“You're awfully quiet,” Porter said only moments after the waitress took their drink order.

“Sorry. I'm afraid I have a lot on my mind.”

He studied her for a moment. “One of your patients or—?”

“Let's have lunch first,” Audrey suggested. “Then we can talk.”

He lifted an inquisitive brow. “Talk? That sounds serious.”

The waitress returned with their iced teas. “Are you folks ready to order?”

Audrey didn't need to look at the menu. “I'd like the gorgonzola pear salad, please.”

“Yes, ma'am.” She turned to Porter. “And you, sir?”

“The low country shrimp and grits.” And before the waitress could ask, he said, “No salad.”

When they ate lunch at this particular restaurant, they always chose exactly what they had just ordered. Another thing they had in common—they were both creatures of habit and horribly predictable.

As soon as the waitress was out of earshot, Porter focused on Audrey, concern in his eyes and obvious tension in his neck and shoulders. “You aren't going to tell me that there's someone else, are you? Another man?”

“No, Porter, there is no one else, no other man.”

Visibly relaxing, he smiled. “Then there's no reason to ruin a perfectly lovely lunch, is there?”

“No, no reason whatsoever.”

Audrey listened as Porter talked, responding to his idle chitchat often enough so he didn't realize that, for the most part, she wasn't really listening. She was thinking about how a person could know something about herself and could understand why she was the way she was and still be unable to change. She was by nature a loving, caring person and quite emotional. In every aspect of her life, she was true to her nature, but when it came to romantic relationships, she guarded her emotions. She never truly gave herself, heart and soul, to another person, nor had she ever wanted that type of passion reciprocated. Oh, she knew all the textbook reasons. She and Hart had both gone through some minor counseling after Blake's disappearance and Enid's suicide. Garth had been opposed to their undergoing any type of therapy, calling it a bunch of crap. But in the end her father had taken advice from Geraldine and Willie, and months after Enid's suicide had allowed both children to see a therapist for a few weeks, just long enough to convince everyone that he'd done his job as a parent.

And of course, over the years, Audrey had psycho-analyzed herself more than once.
Physician, heal thyself!
Audrey groaned silently. A mental health therapist treating herself was as stupid as a lawyer defending himself.

She had commitment issues. Big-time. And her fear of being rejected and unloved colored every aspect of her life. And yes, it was all her father's fault, wasn't it? No, of course it wasn't. Sure, Wayne Sherrod had been a failure as a father. He had been and still was a cold, distant man who had instilled a sense of unworthiness in his only daughter. But she wasn't a child any longer. She was a grown woman. An intelligent, attractive, successful woman. And mentally, she understood that she had to own her problems and no longer blame anyone else. But emotionally, she often still felt like the lonely, unloved, and unwanted child she had believed herself to be.