Kisscut (28 page)

"I think so," Lena said, brushing back her hair. Dust fell out, and she guessed the ends might have been burned.

Jeffrey walked down the hall, stopping just outside the doorway of the room. He was being careful, looking for a second device. Finally, he stepped into the room and turned around. "There was a trigger over the door," he said, his hand over his chest. Lena wondered just for a second how he could be thinking so clearly. He could have easily been killed by the blast.

Jeffrey pointed over the jamb, saying, "There's a wire here that goes…" He followed something with his eyes, turning slowly around the room. "Here."

Lena peeked in to see what he was talking about. Three cans of gasoline were stacked in the corner. On top of them was a scorched bath towel and something that looked like it had been a clock radio at one time. The plastic was blown apart, and wires spewed out. The walls and ceiling were scorched and the plastic slats of the blinds in the window looked melted together, but remarkably nothing had ignited.

Lena looked at the device, wondering who could have built something so rudimentary. The metal cans were sealed tight, and the clock had not even been connected to them, as far as she could tell. She touched the towel, then sniffed it. Whoever had arranged the bomb had not even doused the towel in gasoline to help it ignite.

She said, "This was stupid."

"Yeah," Jeffrey agreed. "What exploded, though?"

"I have no idea," she said, looking around the room. For the first time, she noticed that this was the only room in the house that was still furnished. Carpet was on the floor, and posters of boy bands were stuck on the wall. There was a little-girl feel to the room, with its once pink walls, white wicker furniture, and shelves full of stuffed animals. A full-sized bed with a pink blanket over it was against the wall opposite the door. The material was stiff-looking, as if it had been saturated at one point, then air-dried in the heat. Lena touched the blanket, then sniffed her fingers.

She said, "Gasoline."

Jeffrey was looking around the room, too. "Everything looks like it was soaked in gas," he said. "The windows are locked tight. Maybe the fumes built up, and when the door triggered the clock, the fumes caught fire?" Jeffrey looked down the hallway. "Fire needs oxygen to burn. Maybe the open window at the end of the hall sucked it out?"

"It sure looked that way from where I was standing," Lena told him. "The bomb guys can figure that out."

"Right," he said, and pulled his cell phone out of his breast pocket. He made two calls, one to Frank at the station to get the bomb squad moving, the other to Nick Shelton at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He requested that a crime scene team come out to the house and search it with a fine-tooth comb.

"We've got some time before they show up," Jeffrey said, closing the phone.

"Great," Lena mumbled, thinking between the heat and the odor in the house, they might asphyxiate before reinforcements came.

"Why didn't she strip this room, too?" Jeffrey asked.

Lena shrugged. "Maybe it was too hard for her to come in here after Jenny died."

"I guess," he mumbled, wiping something out of his eyes. "But why go to the trouble to strip the house if they thought the bomb would burn it down?"

"Arson inspectors can find just about anything," Lena told him. "You can watch the Discovery channel and know-that."

"It's like she hated her," Jeffrey said, not letting it go. "I can understand not stripping the room, but this…"-he indicated the gas tanks-"this doesn't make sense."

Lena thought about Mark, and how he might have purposefully rigged the bomb not to explode.

"Who would do this?" he asked. "Grace? Dottie? Was it Mark? None of this makes any sense."

To give herself something to do, she looked around the room. A set of cat figurines was on the dresser alongside some makeup that could only belong to a little girl.

"Maybe she didn't want to be reminded of Jenny?" Lena suggested, and even as she said the words, she got a bad taste in her mouth. "The bomb would have taken out everything."

"Maybe Dottie was abducted," Jeffrey guessed.

"By whom?" Lena asked. "That doesn't jibe. And if she was, how did Lacey's coat get in here? Are you saying that whoever snatched Lacey came after Dottie, too? Then took the time to strip and clean the house?"

Jeffrey asked, "You think Dottie planted the bomb?"

Lena shrugged, even though she was sure in her heart that Mark had planted the bomb. The paint on his clothes, the chemical smell on his body, all pointed to him at the very least being in this house during the last few days. There was no telling what he had been doing.

Jeffrey was obviously thinking the same things as Lena. He said, "Mark had paint on his clothes. We can have the lab check it against the paint on the walls."

"It looked fresh," Lena reluctantly provided.

"Why would Dottie Weaver strip the house this way? Why would she leave without at least burying her daughter?"

Lena wondered again if he'd hit his head. He was repeating the same questions over and over again, as if she might suddenly come up with the answer. She was about to ask him if he wanted to sit down when he turned around and looked at the bed in the middle of the room as if it might start talking to him. After a couple of moments of this, he took his foot and kicked the mattress over.

"What's that?" Lena asked, but she could see well enough for herself. About twenty cheap-looking magazines had been stowed between the mattress and the boxspring. All of them had children on the covers doing the kinds of things that children should never be made to do. They all had the same title, too,
Child-Lovers
in a fancy script with a familiar heart drawing inserted where the "o" in lover should be.

Lena put her hand on the wall, trying to steady herself.

"You okay?" Jeffrey asked, cupping her elbow as if she might faint.

"The design."

"It's the same one Mark has on his hand," he said, pushing through the stack of magazines. He mumbled, "I used to hide shit under my bed, too."

"Why would Mark do that?" Lena asked, not able to move past this point. "Why would he put that on his hand?"

Jeffrey turned back to the bed. "Maybe it's his way of saying he likes younger girls. Maybe that's how those guys operate so they know each other," he suggested, picking up one of the magazines. He leafed through it, then picked up another. His jaw worked as he stopped on a particular page.

"What?" Lena asked, looking over his shoulder. A picture of Mark, probably taken a few years ago, served as the centerfold.

Lena picked up a magazine and skimmed through it until she found another picture of Mark. Jenny was in this one, and they were doing something Lena could not describe. Worse, in the back pages there were photos of Mark with older men and some women. The adults' faces were not shown, but Mark was revealed from head to toe. His expression was pained, and it brought tears to Lena 's eyes to see him compromised like this. Seeing what Mark had done and what he had obviously been made to do hurt Lena more than she wanted to admit. She finally understood why he had wanted to know what it felt like for her to be raped. He wanted to compare notes.

Jeffrey examined the magazines, his jaw clenched so tight she had trouble understanding him when he spoke. "These aren't exactly sophisticated. I guess a small press could handle it."

"Probably," she agreed.

"Christ," Jeffrey hissed, scowling at the magazine he was holding. '"This guy has on his wedding ring." The disgust in his voice would have peeled paint off the walls. "That's Jenny," he said.

Lena looked at the photograph. Jenny Weaver was pictured, a man's hand firm on the back of her neck as he guided her down. The gold of the man's wedding ring caught the light, and Lena wondered if that was part of the thrill for the perverts who looked at these pictures, thinking that the guy was married and having sex with little girls.

She said, "That's disgusting."

"Here's the same ring in another one," Jeffrey said, but he didn't show her the photo. He continued to flip the pages. "And another one."

Lena asked, "Are you sure it's the same-?"

"Fucking pervert," Jeffrey yelled, then twisted the magazine in his hands and threw it against the wall. "What the fuck is happening here?" he screamed. She could see a vein in his neck throbbing. "How many kids were involved in this thing?"

Lena tucked her hands into her pockets, letting him get it out.

Jeffrey turned, looking out the window at the backyard.

His voice was softer, but she could still hear the anger when he asked, "Do you recognize any of the other kids?"

Lena picked up a magazine, but he stopped her. "I don't want you looking at this shit," he said. "We'll get Nick's people on it." He put his hand to his forehead, like a bad headache was about to strike. "How many kids are involved in this thing?" he repeated. "How many Grant kids were wrapped up in this?"

She didn't have the answer, but he knew that.

He flipped open his phone again. "I'm going to get Nick here to look at this," he said. "I want you to go to the hospital and try to get something out of Grace Patterson."

She shook her head, not understanding.

"She's connected to Mark
and
Jenny. She has to know something," he told her. "I'd do it myself, but I'd probably rip her fucking throat out." She saw his grip tighten around the phone. "Voice mail." He waited a couple of beats, then said, "Nick, Jeff Tolliver. I need you to call me as soon as possible. We've got something new on the Lacey Patterson case." He ended the call, saying to Lena, "There's no way this isn't a priority now."

Lena nodded, thinking she had never seen him this angry, not even at her.

He dialed another number into the phone. While he was waiting for someone to answer, he instructed Lena, "I want you to confront Grace on what you know. I want you to tell her exactly what Mark told you, and I want you to find out what the fuck has been going on."

"Do you think she'll tell me anything?"

"Her daughter is missing," he reminded her. "We found her coat here."

Lena looked down at her hands. "Considering what she was doing to Mark, do you think she cares?"

He flipped the phone closed again, looking her in the eye. "Tell you the truth, Lena, I don't know what the hell to think about anybody involved in this case."

He was about to open his phone again when it rang. Before he answered it, he gave Lena his keys and nodded toward the door, telling her, "Go."

Thursday

Chapter Fifteen

Jeffrey felt like he had been blown across a hallway with a wooden door plastered to his body. His arms ached, and his knees felt like they would never bend right again. Working at the Weaver house had taken the rest of the day, but when he had cal led Sara at one in the morning, she had not hesitated to ask him over. Part of him was nervous about the way they had picked up so easily again. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Sara to say that she could not go through with this. Another part of him was just so damn happy to be back in her life that he wanted to enjoy every minute of it as much as he could. Even sitting in the tub with her, talking about what was probably one of the most horrible cases he had ever worked, he felt at home.

He watched Sara across the tub as she sipped her wine, obviously letting what he had just told her sink in. Jeffrey had forgotten how great the claw-footed tub in her master bathroom was. Six feet long with a center-mounted faucet, it was perfect for two people. They had spent half their marriage in this tub.

Sara rested her glass on her knee. "Where is Lena now?"

"The hospital," Jeffrey told her. "Patterson's still holding on."

"She saying anything?"

"Grace?" Jeffrey asked. Sara nodded, and he said, "She's pretty lucid, but she's got one of those morphine pumps for the pain."

"Breast cancer is an incredibly painful way to die."

"Good," he said, leaning over the tub to pick up his glass of wine. With his parents' shining example, Jeffrey had never taken to alcohol, but after today he needed something to take the edge off. Before he started talking to Sara, he had felt like his mind was spinning, not able to concentrate on one thing at a time like he needed to do. There were so many pieces to the case floating around, and so many questions that had yet to be answered. Somehow, the alcohol was giving him focus.

Sara asked, "Do you really think Grace Patterson will give a deathbed confession?"

"Not really, but you never know…" He paused, measuring his words. " Lena 's got this thing about Mark."

"What kind of thing?"

"She kept insisting that he was raped."

"He was," Sara pointed out. "Are you saying he willingly posed for those magazines, that he seduced his mother?"

"Of course not," he said, and he was glad she had made that point. "What I'm really worried about right now is Lena."

"She's doing the best she can," Sara told him. "Give her some time."

"I just can't take that kind of chance with her, Sara." He rubbed his eyes, still smelling gasoline on his hands even though he had scrubbed himself thoroughly with soap.

He said, "She's too close to the edge. I don't want to be the one standing there watching when she finally goes over. I don't think I could live with myself."

"It's going to take time for her to get past what happened," Sara said in a measured tone. "If she ever does at all."

"She won't even talk to anybody about it."

"You can't force her to do it," Sara countered. "She'll talk about it when she's ready to."

He stared into his glass, not responding.

"So," Sara said, obviously realizing he wanted to move on. "Let's change the subject."

"Okay."

She summarized what they knew, ticking the points off on her fingers. "Mark and Jenny were posing for the magazines at Dottie's house. Grace Patterson was involved with her son."

"Right."

"What about Teddy Patterson?"

"He could be the link here," Jeffrey said. "He's a truck driver. Maybe he picks up the magazines and takes them across the country."

"Where is he now?"

"Either at the hospital or at his trailer. Frank's been tailing him." Jeffrey took a healthy drink from his glass. "He doesn't seem too concerned that one of his kids might be brain dead and the other has been kidnapped."

"What's he doing?"

"Staying by his wife, mostly."

"Maybe he's focusing on one thing at a time?" Sara suggested. "His wife's dying, he's with her. That's something immediate he can do instead of just sitting around feeling helpless."

"Trust me, he's not the kind of guy to feel helpless."

"You think he'll do something?"

"I think he'll leave town as soon as his wife is dead," he told her. "I talked to Nick Shelton. We're thinking Teddy's going to be the contact for his collar over in Augusta."

"The guy Nick arrested who had the child pornography?"

He nodded, debating whether or not to tell Sara the rest, then deciding he should be open with her. "The meeting is being scheduled for tomorrow at noon."

"What meeting?" she asked, and he could see the concern in her eyes.

"Nick's guy, this porn distributor, got a call from a pay phone. A man's voice was on the other end." He paused, trying to gauge Sara's reaction. "I didn't recognize the voice, but they're meeting at the hotel over in Augusta to drop off the magazines."

"And I take it you're going to be there?"

"Yeah," he said. "I take it you've got a problem with that?"

She sighed. "I remember when we were married how I would cringe every time the phone rang and I didn't know exactly where you were."

He drank some wine, letting this sink in. "You never told me that before."

"I know I didn't," she said, then changed the subject again. "So, how does this work? Dottie and Grace do the magazines, Teddy Patterson delivers them, then Nick's guy distributes them around here?"

"Pretty much," Jeffrey confirmed. "We think Patterson probably makes stops all around the Southeast. Nick is going to pull his records from the Department of Transportation as soon as we bust him."

"Why not before?"

"Who knows who'd tip him off?" Jeffrey pointed out.

"Besides, Frank's glued to Teddy. It's not like he's going to be able to get away with anything."

"Why arrest Patterson now? Why not follow him on his route and pick up all the distributors?"

"Nick says they have a phone network. If one of them doesn't call the next with the okay, then they close shop. It's very sophisticated."

"I don't suppose anyone knows anything about where Lacey might be?"

"You don't suppose right."

"How long has the GBI been working on this pornography ring?"

"Years," Jeffrey said. "They just needed to know who was bringing them in."

"Is this where Dottie comes in?"

Jeffrey shrugged, because nothing was clear at this point. "I don't like to think about that woman having some kind of network. It means she's got a safe place to go and hide. It means she's connected to all kinds of people all over the world who are invested in helping her because she keeps supplying them with their sick porn." He felt his anger swelling again, and took a deep breath to calm himself. When that didn't work, he settled on drinking some more wine.

"You know they swap kids," Sara said, her tone measured. "Lacey could be in Canada or Germany by now." She paused, then continued, "Or, Dottie could be abusing Lacey herself. Dottie could be keeping her somewhere, doing God knows what." Sara's voice went up on this last part as the threat seemed to hit her.

Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, like he could wipe this away. "How could a woman, a mother, do that kind of thing to a child?"

"In my experience," Sara began, "women who abuse children are much more sadistic than men. I think it's because they know they can get away with it. They know no one will believe they're capable of hurting children." She added, "It's especially bad when it's a boy who is being abused. Let's take the incest out of it for a minute. A boy having sex with a woman twice his age is patted on the back. A girl doing the same thing is considered a victim. There's a big disparity there."

Jeffrey said, "I never even suspected his mother."

"Why would you? There was no reason to."

"I didn't have a problem with Teddy Patterson as a suspect."

Sara sat back in the tub and let him talk.

Jeffrey told her, "The crime scene techs are still at Weaver's house, but preliminary results show printer's ink in the basement."

"For magazines?" Sara asked. "I thought they needed a big press."

"They're not exactly slick," Jeffrey said. He drank more wine. "All the articles are about how to meet the right kid."

Sara pressed her lips together.

"I'll tell you what, Sara, I wish to God I hadn't seen any of it."

She stroked his leg with her foot. "Have you found the carpeting from the house?"

"Brad and Frank are going to check the dump at daybreak. Based on what they sampled from the floor, the carpets are coated in fluids."

"Body fluids?" she asked. "They soaked through?"

He nodded, not liking how that sounded, either. "There's also a room in the basement that looks like it was used as a darkroom." He rested his glass on the rim of the tub. "My guess is they used the house to take the pictures, and printed up the magazines there."

"An explosion would have destroyed all of that evidence."

"Yeah," he agreed. "I still can't figure out why she didn't strip Jenny's room."

"She didn't really need anything from Jenny's room, did she?"

"I guess not," he agreed.

"Did you find any evidence in the room?"

"Nothing. The gasoline might have covered semen traces. I don't know how that works."

"But there was nothing obvious?"

"Nothing," he said. "None of the pictures was taken in there. Maybe it was the only room in the house that was clean." He rubbed his eyes, feeling incredibly tired. "I can't believe this was going on in town and nobody knew about it."

Sara picked up the bottle of wine and filled his glass. "Do you remember what she said to me?" she asked. "She asked if I had cut Jenny open. Do you think she meant the castration?"

Jeffrey thought about this for a second. "She could have."

"I keep playing that interview back in my mind, and when I get to that point, I see how Dottie changed. You know what I'm talking about? She was almost relieved."

"I guess," Jeffrey said, though he could not remember. The interview seemed like a lifetime away.

Sara said, "I called the hospital. Mark still hasn't regained consciousness."

"Do they have a prognosis?"

"It's hard to tell with ABIs," she said, then, "anoxic brain injuries." He nodded, and she continued, "There's a lot of swelling in his brain. They won't know how much damage was done until the swelling goes down. The longer it takes, the worse it will be."

"Does he have a chance of being normal?"

She shook her head. "No." She paused, as if to let this sink in. "He'll never be the same again. That is, if he wakes up. There's going to be some damage."

"He just seemed like this punk kid."

Sara finished the wine and set her glass on the floor. "You think Teddy Patterson beat him up before he came to the clinic?"

Jeffrey had forgotten that detail. "I guess it's possible. What about Lacey, though? Why was Mark chasing after her?"

"She could have been threatening to tell."

"We didn't find any pictures of Lacey. Wouldn't Teddy Patterson handle something like that anyway?"

"Possibly," she said. "Maybe he was in the black Thunderbird."

"He was probably at the hospital," Jeffrey pointed out. "I'll have Frank check, but I'm pretty sure."

"If Lacey is the mother of that baby, who do you think the father is?"

"I don't know," he answered, because none of it really made any sense. Jeffrey put his hand over his eyes, trying to understand this. Lately, it seemed like every case he dealt with had some kind of weird twist to it that took a part of him with it. He longed for a simple money-motive or jealous threat gone wrong. He figured that he could take just about anything but knowing a child was in jeopardy.

Sara must have sensed his anguish. She slid toward him, and Jeffrey moved over so that she could put her head on his chest.

"You still smell smoky," she told him.

"Explosions can do that."

She ran her fingers along his chest, but it seemed like she was doing this more to make sure he was really there than to arouse anything in him. She curled a piece of his hair around her finger, saying, "I want you to be careful tomorrow."

"I'm always careful."

Sara sat up a little so that she could look him in the eye. "More careful than usual," she said. "For me, okay?"

"Okay," he nodded, pushing her hair back behind her ear. "What's going on with us?" he asked.

"I dunno," she said.

"It feels good, whatever it is."

She smiled, touching her fingers to his lips. "Yeah."

He opened his mouth to say more, but his cell phone rang, spoiling the moment.

"It's two in the morning," Jeffrey said, as if this made any difference. The phone was on the closed toilet lid, and Sara picked it up and handed it to him. "Maybe it's Nick?"

He checked the caller I.D. "It's the station."

Paul Jennings was a tall, barrel-chested man with a dark beard accentuating his round face. His white dress shirt was wrinkled, as were his brown polyester pants. But for the expectant expression on his face, Jeffrey thought he looked like a high school math teacher.

"Thank you for coming in," he said. "I was going to wait to call you, but I couldn't sleep. I had this feeling."

"It's all right," Jeffrey said, leading the man into his office.

"I know this is a shot in the dark. I just had this feeling," he repeated. "I took the first flight they had."

"I apologize for not returning your call," Jeffrey told him. "My secretary thought you were trying to sell me something."

Paul told him, "I work for a vinyl supply company up in Newark. I guess I should have made it clear why I was calling." He paused. "I've been looking for my daughter for so long, and I've been disappointed so many times." He held his hands up in a shrug. "Part of me couldn't believe they might be here, after all this time."

"I understand," Jeffrey told him, though he really had no idea what kind of pain this man had suffered over the last ten years. "Would you like some coffee?"