Forgotten (22 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

T
he house Eloise Gorman lived in outside of York, Pennsylvania, was a tiny one-story with a neatly kept yard, in the middle of which was a well-tended rose garden. The shades on the windows were drawn to keep out the midday heat, and a small package sat on the top front step, looking out of place. Portia followed the tidy brick path to the front door. Before she got there, two identical black-and-white cats fell in line behind her.

“How nice,” she murmured as she rang the bell. “Feline escorts.”

The door opened immediately and Portia found herself looking up into the eyes of a tall, sturdily built woman with short, carefully trimmed brown hair.

“Agent Cahill, I’ve been waiting for you. You’re precisely on time.” Eloise Gorman smiled approvingly. “I feel that promptness is so important, don’t you?”

“I do,” Portia agreed and took the meaty hand that her hostess extended. She noted its strength.

“Well, come on in. Not you two.” The woman laughed and shoed away the two cats. “Ruth and Esther, you play outside for a while. Go ahead, go…”

She closed the door and brought Portia into a small living room that had a sofa, two club chairs, and a fireplace that Portia would have bet a month’s salary had never been used. The fire box was pristine.

“You have a lovely home, Ms. Gorman. Everything’s so…neat.” Portia sat on one end of the sofa.

“Neatness is next to cleanliness, and we all know what cleanliness is next to, don’t we.” It wasn’t a question.

“Oh, yes.” Portia nodded.

“Do you read daily?” Eloise Gorman sat on the edge of her seat and leaned forward slightly.

“Well, no. I don’t have a lot of time to read anymore. I do try to take a quick pass through the
New York Times
when I can, maybe a magazine or two…” Portia sat her bag on the floor next to her feet and looked up in time to catch the look of disapproval on Eloise’s face just before she noticed the open Bible on the coffee table in front of her. “Oh. You meant…” she gestured toward the Bible.

“A good reading sets the tone for the entire day.”

“I’m sure it does.” Portia crossed her legs and set her elbow on the armrest. “Ms. Gorman, on the phone I told you I wanted to speak with you about Sheldon Woods.”

“Dear Sheldon.” She smiled as if the rapture were near.

“You, uh, seem to visit him often.”

“I’m helping him find his salvation.”

“Do tell.”

“He’s seeking redemption. He’s going to be welcomed into heaven by a choir of angels, because he’s repented. He’s asked for forgiveness. I’m so proud to have been the one to have brought him to the light.”

“You spend a lot of time talking, do you, you and Sheldon?”

“Oh, yes.” She was still smiling. Portia was be ginning to wonder what sort of happy pills the woman was taking. “There’s nothing we can’t talk about, Agent Cahill. We’re soul mates.”

“Soul mates,” Portia said flatly.

“Yes. He’s confessed the secrets of his heart to me. I understand him, I know him, better than any one.”

“Then he’s talked to you about having been abused as a child?”

“Of course. We talk about everything. He’s told me all about that. How his soul was destroyed by that evil person.” She hastened to add, “Of course, he has forgiveness in his heart now, but I know that was what set him down that terrible path.”

“Did he tell you who his abuser was?”

“He said he could not speak the name.”

“Did he ever discuss his kills with you?”

“You mean those wayward boys?”

“Ms. Gorman, there was nothing ‘wayward’ about those boys. They were his victims.”

“Oh, he told me about them. How they were the ones who…” The smile was gone, and the face began to harden.

Please please please do not even say what I think you’re going to say,
Portia pleaded silently.

“…who enticed him. He tried to resist, but there was a demon at work in him then.”

They were children. Innocent children. He took their innocence, he took their lives,
Portia thought.

“There was a demon in him?” she asked.

“
Then
there was. We’ve exorcised it, he and I. Working together.” She smiled with self-satisfaction. “That’s the power of love.”

“Did he tell you where he buried the bodies of his victims?”

“No. Oh, he told me
how
he buried them…how he found just the right place to lay those poor unfortunate souls to rest. And of course, I knew where his thirteen victims were buried.”

“Everyone knew where they were buried, once they were found,” Portia reminded her. “I’m asking you if he told you where any of his
other
victims were buried.”

“What other victims?” Eloise looked blank. “There weren’t other victims.”

“Ms. Gorman, Sheldon is suspected of having murdered many more children than were originally found. He hasn’t denied it. We’ve recently found several of them, but we’d like to find more.”

The woman looked confused. “I don’t believe you. Sheldon said…”

“Sheldon lied.”

“He wouldn’t lie to me.” She rose, five feet ten inches of sheer indignation. “We’re spiritual soul mates.”

“Your soul mate is a murdering pedophile, Ms. Gorman. He murdered innocent boys because he liked it. He raped them because he liked it.”

“I don’t have to listen to this. How dare you. You don’t know him…you don’t know what a pure soul he is…”

“God help us all,” Portia muttered as she opened the front door and walked through it.

“He does, Agent Cahill. He helps us all,” Eloise called to Portia from the top step. “Even poor wretched misguided nonbelievers like you!”

It took almost the entire drive to the office for Portia to calm down. She went to a drive-through for a burger, fries, and a soda for her first meal of the day, acknowledging that she was too hungry and stressed to care at that moment about the state of her arteries. She picked up phone messages from Eileen on her way in, then went right to her office where she sat, turned on her computer, and opened the bag of food at the same time.

“Boy, someone’s buzzed.” A soft voice with a hint of the South drifted through the doorway.

Portia looked up to see Livy Bach—Special Agent Olivia Bach—standing in her doorway. “You’d be buzzed, too, if you’d driven all day to talk to a woman whose head is as far up her butt as the one I was with today.”

“Did you learn anything from her?”

“Yes. I learned that man has an infinite capacity for self-delusion. That you can sell anyone just about anything if they think you love them.” She thought for a few seconds before adding, “And I learned that God will help even wretched souls like me.”

“Well, John said you needed an extra pair of hands on this case of yours.” Livy grinned. “Looks like your prayers have been answered.”

“Hallelujah. Eloise Gorman was right.” Portia gestured to her old friend to take a seat.

“Who’s Eloise Gorman?”

“Would-be lady love of Sheldon Woods.”

“I thought he was a pedophile.”

“That was the
old
Sheldon. Eloise has exorcised that demon. They’re soul mates. She’s brought him to the Lord.”

“Dear God in heaven help us all.”

“That was pretty much my reaction. Eloise assured me that God does in fact send help. And she obviously knows what she’s talking about, because, hey, here you are.”

“You do understand what you’re putting into your body, eating that junk.” Livy pointed a well-manicured finger in the direction of Portia’s lunch. “Trans fats, cholesterol, and dear Lord…who knows where that beef came from?”

“Please, I’m aware of the dangers, but right now, I don’t care.” Portia waved a french fry. “Want one?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Livy reached across the desk and pulled the fries closer. “So tell me about your case. John just gave me the basics.”

An hour passed before they’d finished discussing the case and the information Portia was still seeking.

“Will’s tied up in Texas right now,” Livy reminded her.

“He is if he’s still with my sister,” Portia quipped.

“Hey, good one. I always heard she was the kinky one.” Livy looked back through her notes. “I don’t know that we should be depending on Will to locate all these people…Woods’s mother’s ex-husbands, this guy Patterson. Who knows when he’ll be able to get to it? Not to mention the brother without a last name. This is going to take some time.”

“I know. If I knew someone else as good…”

“Well, I suppose you can be excused, since you’ve been out of the country for a while.”

Portia looked at her quizzically.

“I’ve become quite proficient myself.” Livy grinned. “Maybe not ‘Will Fletcher proficient,’ but on a scale of one to ten, where Fletcher is a fifteen, I’m probably an eight and a half.”

“Sold.” Portia printed out a copy of her computer file for Livy and pushed it across the desk. “Just in case you need a refresher. I’ll be adding the notes from my recent interviews this afternoon and will e-mail them to you.”

“Thanks. I can’t wait to hear more about Eloise and her rehabilitated pedophile. And thanks for sharing the fries. I can feel the plaque sticking to my arteries even as I speak.” Livy stuck her hand in her pocket and took out a card. “This has all my numbers on it. Call me anytime, day or night. I’m with you on this, Portia. Let’s get this bastard.”

“That’s the plan.”

I
t was after seven when Portia looked up from her desk. She’d spent most of the afternoon typing up her notes on her meetings with Neal Harper, Rhona Naylor, CO DeLuca, and Eloise Gorman. What a motley crew, she thought as she forwarded a copy to Livy.

She was thinking how good it was to have a partner. Livy was a good agent, smart and even-tempered, and good-natured about the kidding she got about looking like a fashion model and always being dressed to kill. Years ago, there’d been a story going around about how Livy went to interview a suspect in the field while dressed in a designer suit, and ended up being covered with mud when she’d had to chase the escaping suspect during a rainstorm through several suburban backyards after he’d taken off. Livy had cuffed the fugitive and gleefully brought him back. When someone pointed out that her pretty suit was most likely ruined, Livy had grinned and drawled, “So what? I got this piece of shit off the street.” Portia smiled at the memory.

Portia started to pack up for the day, looking forward to getting to bed early, since she still had to catch up on that sleep she’d lost the night on Dufree Island. Then her cell rang.

“I was just thinking about you,” she told Jim as she answered.

“Somehow I knew that.”

In the background she could hear what sounded like cheers.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Tee-ball.”

“Having fun?”

“You betcha. I’d be having more fun if you were here, though.” Jim paused. “How was your day?”

“Oh, swell. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“Sometime soon, I hope.”

“I hope so, too.”

“Where are you?”

“Just leaving the office.”

“You’re about what, ten miles or so from Parker?”

“That’s the opposite direction from where I was going, but probably about ten, twelve miles from here, yes.”

“Why not swing by the field here—we’re at the park right off Route Forty—and you can meet my nephew. If you’re nice to me, I’ll even let you have pizza with us after the game.” His voice dropped.

“I know you’re busy, and we’re both going to have busy days tomorrow, but I’d like to see you, even if it’s just for a little while.”

“Sure. Give me about fifteen minutes.”

“We’re on the side of the field with the blue uniforms. I’ll be the tall guy in the green shirt watching the parking lot for you.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Tired as she was, the thought of seeing Jim—even, as he said, for just a little while—made her smile. She felt the tension slip away from her shoulders just a bit as she turned off her office light and headed for the elevator. Once outside, she tossed the briefcase holding her notes into the backseat and got behind the wheel. She turned on the radio and began to sing along as she drove toward the highway, blissfully unaware of the brown car that pulled out from the curb across the street after she passed by.

A
s promised, Jim was standing at the end of the lot with one eye on the field and one eye on the parking lot, when she arrived. He greeted her with a kiss on the mouth.

“That didn’t take very long.” He smiled and took her hand. “Come say hi to my sister. You can meet Finn after he bats. He’s up soon.”

“I don’t know anything about tee-ball. What’s the point of the game?” She fell in step alongside him.

“Just to hit the ball. They’re only six-and seven-year-olds,” he explained. “They’re just learning how to line up the bat with the ball.”

He guided her to the sidelines where Danielle stood with several other women, mothers of other players, Portia assumed. When she saw her brother approach with Portia in tow, Danielle’s face darkened but she said nothing.

“You know Portia Cahill,” Jim was saying, and his sister merely nodded.