Obsession (9 page)

“What if they catch us digging?” Macy cried. “They’ll do bad things to us.”

Andrea wondered if that awful man and woman had done bad things to Macy during all those hours she was up there? “What did they do to you?”

Macy made a desperate sound. “They made me take a bath. She washed me with a scrub brush.”

Andrea felt her tremble.

“It hurt. Then they did…like a doctor’s exam. They checked me
down there
.”

Fury lashed through Andrea. “They didn’t…?”

“They just looked.”

Callie rocked back and forth. “That’s…what…they…did…to me,” she said between sobs. “They make you do the lessons over and over and over.”

What kind of freaks were these people? Andrea licked her lips, wished the anger would keep the fear away. “You’ve been here longer than me. What else have they done…to you?”

“They make me memorize the names of people in pictures,” Callie said. She sounded straight for the first time since Andrea’s arrival. “You know, like family photo albums.”

Macy made a keening sound. “If you make a mistake, they lock you in the box.”

The shaking almost got the better of Andrea. She hugged herself. “What’s the box?”

“It’s like a coffin. There’s bugs in the box,” Callie said, her voice distant, quiet. “If you can’t recite the Bible verses right, they put you in the box, too. Call you a loser.”

“Spiders, too,” Macy murmured. “There are spiders in the box. I think they put them in there to make you scream.”

Andrea shuddered. She hated spiders. “You didn’t see anyone else? Just the woman and the man?”

“That’s all,” Macy said. Callie confirmed, “No one else.”

“What does it look like up there?” Andrea should be digging, but she needed to know.

“Rooms.” Callie cleared her throat. “Like a house.” Her voice still sounded rusty. “There’s curtains and shades on the windows. They keep them closed so you can’t see out.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Macy murmured. “I want to dig.”

 “Okay.” Andrea grabbed Macy’s hands and pressed them to the ground. Then did the same with Callie’s. “I think we can dig under this wall.”

Their movements were stiffer and slower than Andrea’s, but they didn’t give up. While they dug, she explained how they could pretend to swallow the pills by holding them under their tongues. Even if they couldn’t dig their way out, when they were strong enough they could fight the man and woman. Callie and Macy promised to try.

On their knees side by side, the trench turned out wider than Andrea had envisioned but it was getting deeper by the minute. The door would probably hide it sufficiently when those awful people came back. They never closed the door while they were in here so they weren’t likely to notice what was behind it. And they didn’t move around the room checking stuff.

Her fingers scraped across something that wasn’t dirt.  Fear ignited in her heart.

Macy jerked back. “What’s that?”

“You feel it, too?” Andrea prayed they hadn’t hit something that would prevent digging farther under the wall.

“It’s a box,” Callie whispered hoarsely.

Macy scrambled away. “I don’t want to touch it.”

Andrea tried to measure the box or whatever it was. She found two corners. The box or whatever felt hard, like metal. “It’s not very big.  Like a shoe box only metal and a little bigger.”

“A toolbox?” Callie said.

“Yeah.” Andrea dug around the sides, tried to find the bottom.

Callie helped. Macy stayed back. Too afraid of what it might contain, Andrea supposed.

Andrea grunted as she tugged. She’d gotten her fingers under the bottom of the box on one end. Callie kept digging on the other end, grunting with the effort of clawing and tugging.

The box came loose from the dirt. Andrea toppled over, bumped Macy. She righted herself.

“I think it is a toolbox,” Callie said.

They couldn’t see it in the dark, but their hands roved over the metal box with its handle on the top.

“Maybe a tackle box,” Macy whispered. “Like my dad uses when he goes fishing.” Her voice trembled on the last.

Andrea knew what a tackle box was. She and Dan had gone fishing a couple of times. Her dad was always too busy. But this was bigger than the ones she had seen. She picked it up, shook it, something inside rattled. She felt around for a latch. Anticipation raced through her as she found two latches, one on each end of what she decided was the front. She fumbled with them until the levers flipped down.

Upstairs, Reanne started screaming again.

Andrea froze. 

Macy started to cry. Callie scrambled around Andrea and tried to comfort the other girl.

Andrea struggled to ignore the awful sounds and to focus. They had to get out of here. Maybe there was something in this toolbox that could help them. If nothing else, getting it out of the ground would give them a deeper hole for the effort of removing it.

The lid opened with a squeak of protest. She wished she could see. The thought of sticking her hand in that box without seeing what was there first, made her stomach churn.

Okay, get over it, Andrea
. The box had been buried for who knew how long. It had been shut tight. Nothing inside it could be alive.

 She sucked up her courage, held her breath, and reached inside. Sticks or something like sticks. Different sizes. Andrea frowned. Smooth. Her fingers jammed into a cluster of the sticks. These weren’t loose and lined up together in what felt like two rounded rows. She felt around some more, found something solid and roundish. About the size of baseball. There were holes, like in a bowling ball.

She tried to pick it up, but it was attached to…

Her mind created images to go with what her fingers felt.

She recoiled in horror.

A skull…attached to a tiny body.

A baby
.

Andrea screamed.

Chapter Seven

BPD Main Conference Room, 9:50 a.m.

“We can’t be sure what this means,” Dan reiterated. He’d been attempting to get that point across for nearly half an hour to no avail.

Chief Patterson stood behind his chair, his shoulders reared back, his spine stretched to his full height, refusing to join the others seated around the conference table. “Lorraine told me her husband had been extremely depressed since the tragedy in April. How can anyone in this room be surprised that his daughter going missing would push him over the edge? What’s wrong with you people?”

Dan wanted to tell him to sit down and just keep quiet for a minute but the man was upset. His pain was palpable. No one assembled this morning understood that pain better than Dan. This case hit damned close to home.

The rest of the team, Jess, Sheriff Griggs, Detectives Wells and Harper kept quiet, waiting for his next move. “Patterson,” Dan said with as much composure as he could muster with his patience so close to snapping, “we can’t assume anything just yet. We move forward but we must look at all sides of this new development.”

“Dan’s right, Bruce,” Griggs rallied despite having stayed out of the disagreement so far. “We can’t pretend this didn’t happen. There are steps that need to be taken and the results analyzed.”

“The man killed himself,” Patterson roared. “His death is not relevant to the abduction of these girls! We can’t waste time making his suicide something it’s not. We need to move on. If Lorraine had any reason to believe this tragedy impacted our investigation, she would tell me.”

Jess turned in her chair and set her full attention on Patterson. Dan braced for the proverbial shit to hit the fan. The two had clashed like oil and water from hello. 

“Did she also tell you that her husband blamed himself for Reanne’s disappearance?” Jess asked. “That she believes Reanne may have run away from home. Possibly because she wanted to escape her parents’ strict rules?”

Patterson shot a loaded look at her. “You questioned her without my knowledge? It’s not bad enough you put surveillance on her home without consulting me first? Or that you removed evidence from the scene without informing me? I don’t know how they train you people at Quantico but down here we learn to respect the chain of command.”

Jess had mentioned something about having talked to Lorraine Parsons at the Lab but Dan had been too distracted and too exhausted to follow up. Now he wished he had. Giving himself and her grace, if Jess had learned anything earth shattering from the woman she would have told him right away. An agent didn’t move as high up the ranks as she had without doing her job, even if her methodology was a little off-putting.

“I talked to her in passing after the service, yes.” Jess stood, planted her hands on her hips, ready to defend her actions. “And yes, I found that Reanne had a cell phone hidden from her parents. The day she went missing she intended to meet someone named Tim, whose phone we’ve learned was registered under a nonexistent name and address. By her own mother’s account, Reanne wasn’t happy at home. Her father felt guilty enough about what happened to her, as well as other events in his life, to hang himself. This is a genuinely dysfunctional family, Chief Patterson. We have to seriously consider that Reanne’s disappearance may have nothing to do with the others.”

“That said,” Dan put in, hoping to defuse another explosion, “we’re not making any decisions until we know more. For now, nothing’s changed. We have a new avenue to consider. That’s what we’ll do.”

“None of this negates the fact that you withheld information from me. But, you’re in charge of this task force, Burnett” Patterson said. “You conduct your investigation the way you see fit and I’ll do the same with my own.”

He walked out.

Visibly stunned, no one said a word.

Disgusted, Dan followed, caught up with his long-time friend in the corridor. “Bruce, I know this is tearing you apart.” Patterson paused but didn’t give Dan the courtesy of meeting his gaze. “You’re too close and that’s adversely influencing your objectivity.”

Patterson pointed his building anger and frustration at Dan. “And you’re not? Who do you think you’re fooling, Dan? Christ’s sake, Andrea Denton was your step-daughter. Don’t try to tell me you two weren’t close and that this case isn’t tearing you apart inside, too.”

“I’m not denying that.” God Almighty, did either one of them have any business being involved in this case? The answer to that was unacceptable. “But we have to consider every possible lead otherwise we may overlook the most significant detail.”

Patterson shook his head. “You said Harris was the best. That she’d make a difference. You had all of us believing she was some kind of miracle worker. The only thing she has done is rip to shreds what little we had in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe that’s a sign,” Dan reminded him. “We had nothing to speak of and you know it. The truth is we don’t even have a case. Technically we’re abusing city and county funds devoting this many resources to a nonexistent crime. Jess is forcing us to look beyond our emotions and see what we’ve missed. She found that cell phone and we missed the whole notion of Reanne’s unhappiness at home. Jess is trying to help. Hell, man, she took vacation time to come here and do this.”

Patterson laughed, the sound one of defeat and misery. “Is that what she told you? That she took leave from her fancy career to come down here and help us redneck cops?” He shook his head. “Now who’s talking out of both sides of his mouth?”

The degree of fury that whipped through Dan was irrational but there was no beating it back. “What the hell are you implying?”

“I don’t know what went down at Quantico, that part’s confidential. But I do have a few sources of my own and the way I hear it, your friend is finished at the Bureau. If she’s the back-up plan you’re counting on to find these girls and solve this case, you’ve failed already.”

When he walked away this time, Dan didn’t try to stop him. He was too ticked off…too stunned. As much as he wanted to believe Patterson was way out of line, he was no fool.

Why hadn’t Jess told him about trouble at the Bureau? 

Because he hadn’t asked. He’d had his own agenda for getting her down here and nothing else had mattered. Desperation had driven him. He needed to find those girls alive and every minute that passed without success narrowed the odds of a single one of them being found alive.

He walked back to the conference room, his steps slowed by uncertainty as to how to proceed. Did he pull Jess aside and demand answers? He had no right to demand anything from her. Had his dissatisfaction with the results he’d gleaned from the local Bureau office been nothing more than an opportunity to try and connect with her again?

Jesus Christ. He braced against the wall. Four young women were missing and he was questioning his motives in this investigation. He had to pull it together for their sakes if not his own. Andrea and the others needed him to do this right. There was no room for distraction or indecision.

Jess’s voice drew his attention back to the conference room. He moved to the open door but didn’t go inside. Detectives Wells and Harper, along with Sheriff Griggs, remained in their seats, their collective attention focused forward. At the case board, she frantically scribbled notes, then faced her rapt audience. Jess didn’t like wasting time and she felt no qualms about stepping in when the momentum slowed.

“Detective Wells and Sergeant Harper,” she announced, “interview everyone you can find who knows Andrea, Macy and Callie. We need to know if those girls have interacted with a Tim. Go back over every detail with the parents. Those arrangements are already made so work the others in between appointments.”

“Ma’am, begging your pardon,” Harper spoke up, “none of the girls has a contact named Tim listed in their cells, computers, or social networks. Macy York has a cousin named Timothy but we eliminated him as a person of interest since he lives in L.A.”

A faint smile cracked Dan’s frustration. Harper was a good man. He’d worked in Crimes Against Persons for five years now. He’d tried harder and achieved more than most with twenty years of service on their records. Most of his life had been spent proving he was as good as his Caucasian colleagues. His mother was Hispanic, his step-father a murder victim in an unsolved case.