The Investigator (17 page)

But right here, right now, none of it mattered. She was outside the house of her nightmares—outside the house her mother thought would be a haven for them both.

Kate took another breath and counted to ten. Releasing it on a sigh, she opened the car door, squared her shoulders and headed up the driveway. She could do this. She could. For her mother.

The front door opened long before she reached it. She shivered. He must have been watching. Nausea swirled in her stomach. Darryl strode down the path toward her, his lips turned up into a sneer.

“If it isn’t our high-flying daughter finally come home to rest. And here I was thinking not so long ago we’d never see you again.”

Kate came to a stop and braced herself against his taunts. His long-sleeved white linen shirt fit snugly around a still-muscular chest and was tucked neatly into the waistband of a pair of denim jeans that encircled a waist that had only marginally softened.

She was filled with jarring disappointment. She’d hoped his outward appearance had finally begun to reflect the degradation of his soul, but someone with far more influence than her over these things hadn’t seen it that way.

She glared at him from behind her designer sunglasses, glad she’d taken the time to dress in her best. Let him scoff all he liked; he couldn’t touch her now. Bravado surged through her.

“Shut the fuck up, Darryl.”

His eyes narrowed in surprise. He nodded, almost approvingly. “Well, well, well. Our little girl’s gone and got herself all grown up and she’s grown a bit of a mouth along the way.”

His gaze raked over her with slow insolence. Kate forced herself to remain still. Even covered from head to toe in her expensive winter woolens, she felt naked and unclean beneath his close scrutiny. She resisted the urge to protect herself with her arms and seared him from behind her lenses. He seemed impervious to the heat in her eyes.

“Not bad, not bad at all.” His gaze slithered over her again. “A bit on the scrawny side, but I can see what all the boys at the station are in a lather about.”

The insult drew blood. Anger clogged her windpipe. She sputtered and wheezed and tried to draw air into her suddenly depleted lungs.

“Cat got your tongue, Kathryn? It’s not like you to be short of words. At least, you never used to be.”

Nausea swirled once again in her stomach, depleting her short lived courage. She couldn’t go through with it. She had to get away. She turned to leave and then stopped.

White-hot rage boiled up inside her to the point where she could almost taste it. She spun on her heel and whipped off her glasses, her gaze intent on his face.

“I want the laptop.” Low and guttural, she could barely believe the voice was hers.

Surprise momentarily slackened Darryl’s features. He belched and she was almost overcome by the smell of alcohol. She stepped backward.

“Give me the laptop, Darryl. I know it’s here. Riley told me.”

A knowing grin split his features. He nodded and chuckled. “Ah, I see. Now it all makes sense. I knew there had to be a reason he came sniffing around here last week. You’re fucking the young detective.” He took a step toward her. Kate gasped, her tiny reservoir of bravery almost exhausted.

“Tell me, Kathryn. What’s it like to suck black cock?”

Bile rose in her throat, harsh and acidic. She turned away, fighting the sudden urge to vomit.

Darryl laughed. The pungent smell of alcohol reached her seconds before he grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her head around. Tears of humiliation burned behind her eyes.

The man she hated most in the world narrowed his eyes menacingly, his face only inches from hers. His voice, in stark contrast to the expression on his face, was soft and soothing, almost as if he was crooning a lullaby.

“Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn. You were always so feisty, always ready to argue.” He chuckled. “As if you could talk your way out of it.” He shook his head. “You never learned. Right down to that last time, you never learned.”

He leaned in even closer and pressed his mouth tightly against her ear. She shuddered and strained against his hold. Terror pumped through her veins.

“You do remember our last time, don’t you?”

She cried out in agony and would have fallen if his hold on her hair hadn’t tightened. She was going to be sick. Right there, on his perfect lawn.

Defeat settled inside her, heavy and hard and cold. She’d failed. Her mother was gone and she’d never find her.

Darryl’s voice, now strangely disembodied, floated into her ear.

“I remember that last time. It was such a special time. Just the three of us. My friend was so disappointed when you refused to let him play. Now I understand why. You should have told me you preferred black cock.”

Pent-up sobs seized her chest in a vicelike grip. Her lungs refused to function. Lights spun behind her eyes, like sparklers that had been lit and left to their own devices. She was going to die. Right there. In Darryl’s picture-perfect front garden.

A mighty thump hit her between her shoulder blades. She choked and gasped for air.

“Breathe, you little slut. I don’t want you dying in my yard.” Darryl’s hand came down hard once again and she gasped. The lights behind her eyes receded.

She dashed at the tears now coursing down her cheeks and stared into his face with all the hate and fury she could muster.

“I want my mother’s laptop. I bought it. I want it back.”

Darryl let go of her and took a step backward, shrugging as if what had just passed between them was of no consequence.

“Take it. Why would I want the fucking thing? Waste of time, if you ask me. Your mother was never off it. Why she found it so interesting, I’ll never understand.” He shook his head. “All this new-fangled technology. I say, bring back the old days, when you could get by with a visit to the library and a letter in the post.”

He offered her a conspiratorial wink. Kate bit down on her disgust. A few more minutes and she’d be out of there. She’d have what she’d come for and could leave.
Just a few more minutes.

“Why don’t you come in—for old times’ sake? You can wait inside while I pack it up.”

She froze. Nothing would get her to step inside his house ever again. “I’ll wait here.” She eyeballed him and prayed he’d let it go. She needed the laptop. She was sure she’d find the key to her mother’s disappearance hidden within its cyber walls.

Darryl gave her a long, hard stare. Kate’s breath caught again. After an interminable moment, he gave a half shrug and turned to head back inside. “Suit yourself.”

She rubbed her arms through her coat and waited. The night air was almost upon them, heavy and moist. She longed for a hot shower and the security and warmth of her cheap motel room. She longed for the nightmare to be over.

The light in the opened doorway was blocked momentarily as Darryl made his way back down the front steps, a black carry case in his hand.

“Here you go. See, it wasn’t all that hard, was it? Asking me for something? If you’d learned to do it sooner, life might have turned out a whole lot differently for you.”

He closed the distance between them and his jovial expression disappeared. “But you never asked, did you Kathryn? You were too proud and too stubborn to ask me for anything. I’d have given you anything you wanted.”

She held his gaze and clung to the last vestige of her courage. She was so close, so close to getting what she’d come for. “Give me the laptop.”

“Here. Take it.”

She reached out and grasped the case in nerveless fingers. His hand, huge and hairy, covered hers and tightened. Her heart almost doubled in on itself in panic.

“All the boys at the station breathed a sigh of relief for me when you left. I used to tell them every opportunity I got how hard it was trying to raise another man’s rebellious whelp. Some of them had teenagers of their own. They knew exactly what I was talking about.”

He released her hand and gave her a shove. She stumbled backward on the damp grass and struggled to maintain her balance. Clutching the laptop to her chest, she backed away and then turned and nearly ran toward her car.

His voice rang out in the crisp stillness. “They haven’t forgotten, you know.”

Kate willed her feet to slow. The last thing she wanted was to give him the satisfaction of watching her run away.

By the time she reached her car, she trembled like she had a fever. Sweat poured off her forehead and burned her eyes. She rested her cheek on the cold metal of the roof and dragged in mouthfuls of winter air.

The brick in her stomach moved and clenched and twisted. She spun away and bent over at the waist. Seconds later, she heaved and vomited all over the shadowy strip of asphalt beneath her six-hundred-dollar boots.

CHAPTER 13

Darryl stared after the fading tail lights of his stepdaughter’s rental car and watched until they’d disappeared. He had to give it to the girl, she’d grown some courage along with her curves. She’d surprised him by showing up on his doorstep and that wasn’t easy.

He turned and headed back inside, closing the door behind him. Tugging another beer out of his fridge, he swallowed half of it before returning to his spot on the couch.

He hadn’t expected her to ask for the laptop. The Munro prick had obviously worded her up. Not that it mattered. Darryl might bemoan the complexities of modern technology to anyone who would listen, but he wasn’t stupid.

Once he’d realized the detective had spotted the computer on his visit, Darryl had known what he had to do. He cracked Rosemary’s password on his first attempt and had combed through everything she had on her hard drive.

Not that there had been much. It was obvious his dear wife had spent most of her time surfing the Internet. He’d found a handful of folders in her Word program that contained copies of various newsletter services she’d subscribed to and not much else.

When he turned his attention to her email, things had become much more interesting. Scrolling through her Inbox, he’d noted the emails from her daughter. He’d opened all of them and had smirked at the girl’s increasingly concerned tone.

A series of emails received by someone by the name of Daisyblu had caused him a moment’s consternation. After reading their contents, he’d wracked his brain for who it might be. At last, it had come to him and he’d smiled, knowing there would be no danger from that quarter.

After deleting everything in Rosemary’s Inbox, he repeated the process with the Word files. When Kathryn had asked for the laptop, he’d offered token resistance, knowing there was nothing on the computer that could incriminate him.

He was disappointed though, when she hadn’t taken him up on his invitation to come inside. It would have been just like old times. Well, not exactly. She was no longer a teenager bending to his will.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was probably for the best. It was the same instinctive feeling that had caused him not to insist on her accompanying him into the house.

There was something different about her—a toughness that hadn’t been there before. Somehow, somewhere over the years, she’d found the courage to stand up for herself and the new steel in her spine left him feeling a little disconcerted.

He’d have to watch her closely, in case she got any wild ideas into her head. He hadn’t lied when he told her he still had plenty of friends on the force, but it wouldn’t do for his carefully laid plans to go askew this late in the game.

CHAPTER 14

Riley began the climb to Bill Cannington’s dairy shed which was perched high on a hill above the winter-brown valley. His breath puffed out on mini clouds of condensation. The air was even chillier than it had been in town and it didn’t take long for it to bite into his lungs.

As fit as Riley was, his body was still acclimatizing to the higher elevations of Watervale and he was only halfway up the steep path when he had to pause and catch his breath.

The farm’s owner had called him at the station. Although reluctant to impart too much over the phone, Cannington had hinted he had information pertaining to the Sampson case.

With Hannaford still on Riley’s back about finding the missing cow, he’d pulled on his heavy coat and had headed back out into the cold. Now he wished he’d waited until morning. In a couple of hours, night would set in and he had no desire to be out there when the temperature dropped below zero.

A tall man with stooped shoulders who looked like he was approaching sixty appeared in the doorway of the dairy, wearing dirty overalls and rubber boots. Recalling his last encounter with a milking shed, Riley vowed to steer clear of it.

“We might talk out here, if that’s all right with you,” he said as he closed the gap between them.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little cow shit?” Cannington smirked and Riley ground his teeth, wondering if Sampson had shared details of his humiliation with the entire farming community.

“Let’s just get this over with, shall we?” Riley tugged out his notebook and pen and flipped it open to a new page. “I take it you’re Bill Cannington?”

The man nodded.

“So, what do you know about Jack Sampson’s missing cow?”

Cannington kicked at a clod of dirt in front of him and took his time replying. “What do you know about dairy cows, Detective?”

Riley shrugged, unperturbed. “Not much. What do you know about policing?”

A faint tilt of Cannington’s thick lips was the only indication he’d heard, but when he met Riley’s hard gaze, there was a glint of respect in his deep-set eyes.

“Not much.”

“I guess that makes us even then, doesn’t it?”

Cannington scratched at the graying bristle on his chin with a dirty fingernail. “Guess it does.”

“Right, then. Now we have that out of the way, what do you know about Sampson’s missing cow?”

Hawking a glob of phlegm, Cannington spat in the dust at his feet. “That cow ain’t missin’. She ain’t even left the farm. Call up Jersey Australia and tell ’em to look up her registration number in the herd book and then go and check the livestock. You’ll find her right where she’s been all along—in Sampson’s back paddock.”