The Edge of Normal (25 page)

He has invested countless hours in this story. Evenings, weekends, so much of his time that his girlfriend is threatening to leave him. He has been working every angle from the very beginning, from the time the first girl was kidnapped. He has interviewed all the girls’ friends and families. He has taken thousands of photographs, including several of Dr. Ezra Lerner, a psychiatrist of national reputation who was called to Jefferson by Deputy DA Jackie Burke. Plus, he has several photos of the girl he now knows to be Reeve.

Poe had pinned all his hopes on Randy Vanderholt being nailed for multiple crimes—three kidnappings, perhaps even murder—but with Vanderholt dead and any hope for a trial gone, this story has dried up like yesterday’s toast.

Edgy Reggie, aka Reeve LeClaire, is the only new angle he’s got.

He studies the picture printed with his article: fresh-faced and attractive in an enigmatic way, but with angry eyes. She stands several inches shorter than Dr. Lerner, who isn’t a particularly big man. Poe has watched the way she moves—like a dancer—and even this still image seems to capture her posture, her grace.

He hears the white Jeep before he sees it, and he’s out of his car the instant he recognizes Reeve at the wheel.

The other reporters and cameramen also rouse themselves and climb out as Reeve’s Jeep stops at the gate. She rolls down the window to punch the intercom’s button and announce herself to the Cavanaughs, but ignores the newspeople that surround her like barking dogs, shouting:

“Reggie, when did you change your name?”

“What can you tell us about Tilly Cavanaugh?”

“How do you feel about her kidnapper’s death?”

Poe steps into an expectant pause following the reporters’ questions, holds up his card, and says, “Otis Poe,
Jefferson Express,
and I’d like to ask your opinion—”

Her eyes flicker in his direction, but she ignores his card.

“—about what Tilly Cavanaugh knows about the other missing girls.”

“Her privacy is important to her, obviously.” She glares at him. “Just as mine is important to me. So step aside, Poe. I’m going to disappear.”

Her window rolls shut, the gate rolls open, and she does exactly that. But not before the cameraman from Sacramento records a usable clip.

*   *   *

Reeve parks her Jeep and rings the bell. After a moment, Mrs. Cavanaugh shows her in, asking how she’s doing.

“Okay,” she says, coming inside, “but I just had a close encounter with the paparazzi at the gate.”

“How delightful,” Mrs. Cavanaugh says flatly. “Reeve, we were so sorry to see that photo in the paper. Do you know who the awful person is that revealed your new name?”

“No idea. Somebody on Poe’s blog, apparently.”

“I’m so sorry. Dr. Lerner is upset for you, too.”

“Where is he?” she says, looking around. “With Tilly?”

“Yes. That investigator’s got her pretty upset.”

“What investigator?”

“His name’s Krasny. You haven’t met him? He’s with the DA’s office, left about an hour ago.”

“Why was he here? And why is she upset?”

“Well, ostensibly, this investigator fellow brought Dr. Lerner over, as a courtesy. But really he wanted to interview Tilly.”

“Interview her?”

“Or grill her is more like it.”

“About what?”

“About her kidnapper. And about those two poor girls who’ve gone missing. You know, to see if she has any clues about what happened to them.”

“But she doesn’t.”

“Sadly, no. Would you like some banana bread? Fresh baked this morning.”

Reeve sits heavily at the kitchen table, weighing this new development, wondering if Tilly has finally cracked under the pressure. First the dead rat in the car, now this pushy investigator. The kid has been carrying around a secret that is almost too much even for Reeve, who is a champion at keeping things bottled up. She’s thinking about this, swallowing a bite of banana bread, when Tilly and Dr. Lerner appear.

The girl’s shoulders are slumped, her lips compressed.

“Dr. Lerner says I don’t have to talk to anybody if I don’t want to,” she spits out, climbing onto a kitchen stool. “And I don’t know anything that would help those girls, anyway.” She shoots Reeve a fierce look.

Dr. Lerner has entered the room without comment. Now he steps close to Reeve, touches her arm, and murmurs, “Could I have a moment?”

She senses immediately that something is wrong, gets to her feet, and follows him into the next room, feeling guilty for having lied to him about Tilly’s secret abuser, mentally preparing justifications.

He stops by the fireplace and faces her. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” he says grimly. “It’s not good. Sit down.”

She does, crossing her arms defensively, but he remains standing.

“I don’t know why they had to spring this on us at the last minute, and it’s grossly unfair,” he says bitterly, “but I just got the message. Daryl Wayne Flint’s hearing has been moved up. It’s tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she chokes.

“It gets worse.”

“Oh.” She inhales deeply, steeling herself. “There’s no time, of course. You can’t go.”

“No, actually, I think I can make it. If you can give me a ride to the airstrip, I’ll prepare my flight plan and leave right away.”

“Wow. Okay. So then, how does it get worse?”

“I won’t be the only forensic psychiatrist at Flint’s hearing.”

“What? You don’t mean Dr. Ick is getting involved again?”

“Yes, unfortunately. But I’m afraid it’s even worse than that.”

“Well, crap, what’s worse than Terrance Moody?”

FORTY-NINE

In preparation for his call to Kim Benioff—ostensibly from Reno—Duke turns away from the GPS tracking display and cues up the background noise that he has at hand: previously recorded layers of indistinct conversation and the incessant whirling, giggling music of slot machines. It’s a forty-minute loop, punctuated by the occasional dinging of a jackpot.

Benioff is in charge of surveillance while Duke is on vacation. She isn’t really qualified to do more than routine housekeeping, which made her Duke’s best choice. Before leaving, he wiped all evidence of his personal projects. And from his control room, he carefully filters sensitive information, so that he manages what she can and cannot learn.

Still, he can’t exactly bug everyone in law enforcement, so he assumes a casual tone and calls just to find out what developments he might be missing.

“Hey, Kim-bo, what’s going on?”

Duke has no interest in office gossip, but he listens while she blabs, then steers her toward the Vanderholt case.

Benioff tells him what he already knows: “The roll call of registered sex offenders turned up a zillion suspects, but they all alibied out.” She disses the profilers, saying, “And guess what, the Bureau says we’re looking for single, white males between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five. I can’t think of anybody, can you?”

Duke chuckles. “How about the shooter? Any news?”

Benioff fills him in on the ballistics, snidely adding, “So, he’s well trained. What a surprise.”

When Duke doesn’t respond, Benioff asks, “Late night playing blackjack?”

“Poker.”

“Win anything?”

“Of course.”

“Lucky you.”

“Not luck. Skill.”

“Whatever.”

“So, anything else going on?”

“Let’s see … oh, the deputy DA asked for Vanderholt’s cell phone records.”

“I provided all that already,” he says, annoyed, “and there’s nothing there. Nada. Zip-fucking-all.”

“Yeah, well, Burke’s on a tear. The other missing girls’ families are going nuts. Understandably.”

“That’s not news.”

“So, anyway, we’re broadening our focus. Since Vanderholt wasn’t even a registered sex offender.”

“Right. So what?”

“So, he was an ex-con, a carjacker, so now we’re looking more broadly at ex-cons who might have, you know, ‘tendencies.’”

Duke grunts. “Must be thousands.”

“Yep. We’re having all kinds of fun.”

“Hey, is Montoya around? Can you transfer me?”

“He’s out, too, remember? Cashing in his vacation time before the end of the year, like you. So I’m here slaving away and covering for you two boys while—” The tone of Benioff’s voice suddenly changes and she says, “Anyway, gotta go. Have a good time.”

The line goes dead, and Duke switches off the background noise, then leans far back in his chair, mulling over the troublesome loose ends that must be taken care of.

FIFTY

Reeve pulls off the road again to consult the navigator display on her cell phone. No service. She is stuck in an area that seems vague on any map.

She rubs her eyes, cursing in frustration. After dropping off Dr. Lerner at the airport, she decided to tackle Emily Ewing’s list, but despite her comment about the scarcity of homes with basements, the list details thirty-six such homes, all sold within the past three years. Reeve has studied the dates, hoping to connect the listings and sales with the kidnappings of Hannah Creighton, Abby Hill, and Tilly Cavanaugh, but found no discernible pattern.

After driving around for nearly two hours, she has physically located only four addresses, all of which were dead ends: vacant and still for sale.

She tosses the hotel’s useless map aside and glares at the map from Ewing’s office. The perspective makes the town of Jefferson seem tiny, a mere postage stamp of a grid fed by thicker lines: Interstate 5, which runs north and south, and the few arteries that run into surrounding wilderness. The mountain roads look like scribbles. Even loggers must get lost.

The wooded hillsides yield no clues to her location, and the few signs she has noted in passing seem to have no correlation to anything she can find on the map. Feeling defeated, she makes a U-turn and backtracks a few miles until she manages to locate a freeway on-ramp.

Jefferson City lies to the south, but she dreads going back, even if this whole expedition is pointless. Burke’s investigator, Krasny, has called her twice, and Tilly’s secret is too big to contain. The whole situation makes her itch.

She decides to take the next exit to see if there’s any way to salvage this goose chase.

The Old Cedar Road off-ramp spills into the weedy parking lot of an abandoned gas station. She pulls in, leaves the engine running, and consults the map. With a pulse of satisfaction, she identifies two nearby addresses, gets her bearings, and heads east.

The road is nicely paved but narrow, and there’s no traffic as it winds away from the freeway into an unpopulated area. Boulder-strewn hills with melting patches of snow climb from one side, pastureland stretches out from the other. Barbed wire fences sag and lean.

She checks the map, crosses a muddy creek, and prepares to make the next left turn. A smattering of old trailers bracket the corner. An ugly dog on a porch barks as she drives past.

Farther along, uphill, there are a few larger, newer homes, set farther apart. She slows to check each mailbox along the road, studying numbers until she finds the oversized mailbox for the address she’s seeking—2133—brightly painted in a black-and-white cow pattern, with horns and a tail. She peers up the driveway at a modern, ranch-style home. There is a basketball hoop set up beside the long, wide driveway that leads to the garage. The yard is strewn with colorful toys, and the top of a swing set is just visible above the fence.

She stops the Jeep in the middle of the deserted road and marks 2133 off her list. She checks her phone, which again has no signal. Biting a knuckle, she studies the list, then references the map. After a moment, she locates another address in the vague tangle of roads.

But forty minutes later, she’s on the opposite side of the freeway, lost again, searching for a spot to turn around. She has somehow ended up on a road that climbs in switchbacks up a steep hill, offering nowhere to maneuver. The late afternoon sun flashes through the clouds, blinding her, then disappears, leaving the hillside in deep shadow.

Tall pines crowd the road, which turns and dips and turns and rises like a crumbling rollercoaster. The asphalt is pocked with potholes. She passes a dead raccoon, lying swollen and rigid on a patch of dirty snow at the road’s edge.

At the top of a rise, the road abruptly flattens and a gravel driveway appears up ahead. It doesn’t give her much room to turn around, even in a vehicle as easy to maneuver as her dad’s Jeep. She slows and turns in, cranking the wheel hard to begin a three-point turn, then stops.

Reeve sits in the Jeep with the engine running, smack in the middle of someplace with no marked roads. No cell phone service. Nowhereland. There’s not even a number on the rusty, old mailbox, just a scrawled name:
Orr
.

A battered van is parked on a gravel driveway that stretches alongside an uneven yard landscaped with overflowing trash cans, a few old tires, and piles of brush. Wind blows trash around to where it catches against a sturdy chainlink fence. There are mesh-covered vents in the concrete foundation, and wide steps leading to a deeply shadowed porch.

FIFTY-ONE

Fourteen-year-old Hannah Creighton is glad she’s bleeding. That pervert upstairs is squeamish about blood, so this is her monthly reprieve. Unless the other guy shows up. He’s not bothered by blood.

They’re both tall, both way stronger than she is, but Jay, who lives upstairs, wants her to think he’s basically a nice guy. He brings her sweets and nail polish and magazines, as if that makes up for kidnapping her, for keeping her prisoner, or for raping her. He even gave her a teddy bear, which is pretty fucking weird when you think about it.

The other guy doesn’t care if she bleeds or screams or cries. In fact, that seems to turn him on more, so Hannah tries hard not to respond to anything he does.

Jay is ugly and fat and disgusting, but at least he doesn’t enjoy hurting her. He’s quick about it, and afterward, he squats beside the bed and strokes her hair, like he’s apologizing.

The other guy never makes a kind gesture. He’s all business. He makes Jay bring down a special sheet first, and then handcuff her to the bed. It’s his routine. Usually she’s blindfolded before he makes his entrance. Either that, or he wears that freaky hood. Which is probably better than having to look at that sicko creep’s face.