When All The Girls Have Gone (18 page)

It was afternoon by the time they got back to Seattle. Max drove straight to his house to pack a bag.

His phone rang just as he shut down the car engine. He glanced at the screen.
Loring Police Department
.

“Cutler,” he said.

“Detective Walsh. Thought you might be interested in knowing that a road repair crew just found the body of Egan Briggs.”

“Briggs is dead?”

“The investigation is still ongoing, but it looks like Briggs was running. Unfortunately for him it appears he tried to do a drug deal before he pulled his disappearing act. Whoever he met got rid of him with a small explosive device. There was charred money and drugs at the scene. Briggs was shot once in the head, execution style. The killer wanted to be sure.”

“You think Briggs was dealing?”

“Might explain how he was able to take early retirement.”

Charlotte was listening intently.

“What about Roxanne Briggs?” she asked.

“Charlotte’s asking about Mrs. Briggs,” Max said.

“I went to see Roxanne Briggs personally to deliver the bad news,” Walsh said. “She didn’t seem particularly surprised. Not exactly grief-stricken, either. It was more like she had been expecting to hear that her husband was dead.”

“In other words, she probably knew that Briggs was going to meet someone and that things might end badly.”

“Yeah, but she denied it. She said Egan told her he was headed for Idaho or Wyoming.”

“Have you got anything else from the scene?”

“Not much,” Walsh said. “It started raining again about an hour after you left Loring. You know what water does to evidence.”

“Yeah.”

“One more thing. A road crew spotted your vehicle washed up on the side of the river. They hauled it out. Good luck dealing with the insurance company, by the way. But Ms. Sawyer’s handbag was still inside, all zipped up. Her phone probably didn’t survive, but her plastic is all intact—she won’t have to cancel her credit cards or get a new driver’s license. I’ve got her address. You can tell her I’ll overnight the bag and everything in it to her today. She should have it tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Max said.

“If you come across anything I ought to know, you’ll give me a call, right?”

“Right.”

Max ended the connection and looked at Charlotte. “You heard all that?”

“Yes. They found my bag and Briggs is dead.”

“At this point the cops think Briggs tried to pull off one last drug deal before disappearing. Things did not go well.”

“Well, it makes sense that he would want to vanish after failing to get rid of us. He had to know we’d go straight to the police and that he would be questioned. He probably needed cash to live on for a while, so I suppose the drug deal makes sense.”

“Maybe. But if we’re right about his past, he might have had something else to sell.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened in shocked comprehension. “The evidence box from Jocelyn’s case?”

“If Briggs was paid off to make it disappear, it doesn’t automatically
follow that he destroyed the contents. Maybe he hung on to it because he knew it might be worth a lot of money to someone.”

“Jocelyn would have given anything to get her hands on that box.”

“Yes, but there’s someone else who would have wanted it just as badly.”

Charlotte’s expression sharpened. “The man who raped her.”

“Yes.”

“If Briggs tried to sell the evidence box to the person who attacked Jocelyn all those years ago, it means the bastard is still around. He isn’t on the other side of the country. He’s right here—in Washington.”

“Until we know more, we can’t draw any conclusions.” Max thought about that for a moment. “Although there is one thing that links the Briggs hit to Louise Flint’s death.”

“What’s that?”

“Drugs were found at both scenes.”

He opened the door and climbed out from behind the wheel. Charlotte emerged from the passenger side.

The front door of the house across the street popped open. Anson appeared. He walked toward them and inclined his head politely to Charlotte.

“Ma’am,” he said.

Max remembered his manners.

“This is Charlotte Sawyer,” he said. “Charlotte, Anson Salinas, my dad.”

“A pleasure, Ms. Sawyer,” Anson said.

Charlotte smiled, clearly charmed by the old-fashioned formality.

“Glad to meet you, sir,” she said. “Please call me Charlotte.”

Anson chuckled. “I’ll do that so long as you don’t call me sir.”

“It’s a deal,” Charlotte said.

Anson turned to Max. “They find your car?”

“Yeah. Probably totaled. I’ll take care of it later. I don’t have time to deal with it or the insurance company at the moment. This case is getting very hot.”

“I could drive to Loring and take a look at it for you. Figure out what to do with it.”

Max was heading for the porch steps. He paused and glanced back over his shoulder. “Thanks. I’d appreciate it. I’ll call Detective Walsh and tell him that you’ll pick up Charlotte’s handbag, too, if that’s okay. That way he won’t have to bother with overnighting it.”

“No problem,” Anson said.

Max took a closer look at him. Anson sounded downright enthusiastic.
Because he’s got a job,
Max realized. Every man needs a job.

“Thanks,” Charlotte said. “I would be very grateful to you, Anson.”

She was practically glowing, Max thought. And he could have sworn that Anson was blushing.

“Not like I’ve got anything else to do,” Anson said. “You two are both okay?”

“Yeah.” Max unlocked the front door. “They found the body of that retired detective who dumped us into the river. Looks like he tried to do a drug deal before leaving the area. Got killed for his trouble.”

Anson squinted a little. “Drugs, huh?”

“They keep showing up in this case.”

Max got the door open, deactivated the alarm system and then stood aside. He summoned up a mental image of the extensive list of remodeling projects that he had made and his gut tightened. Compared to Charlotte’s neat, cozy little apartment, his place was a train wreck.

“Got a deal on the house,” he said to her, trying not to sound desperate or embarrassed. “Lot of work to be done. Haven’t had a chance to really get going on it, though.”

“Looks like a good neighborhood,” Charlotte said. “That’s the most important thing.”

“Right,” he said.

He wondered if
Looks like a good neighborhood
was a polite euphemism for
Too bad it’s the ugliest house on the street.

She went past him into the house. Anson followed. Max closed the
door. Together he and Anson watched Charlotte walk through the little foyer and stop at the end to survey the living room.

Then she disappeared around a corner into the kitchen. He thought about the ancient appliances and the old, stained flooring. He did not move. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but he figured he’d know it when it happened.

Anson frowned. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m going to stay with Charlotte for a while, just until this case gets resolved.”

Anson cocked a brow. “You think she needs a bodyguard, huh?”

“This thing is getting complicated and she’s right in the middle of it.”

Anson nodded.

Max made himself release the doorknob and walk through the foyer into the front room.

Charlotte appeared from the kitchen.

“You were right,” she said, enthusiasm warming her eyes. “You did get a good deal. This house has great bones, as they say. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, but when it’s finished it will be wonderful.”

Out of the corner of his eye Max noticed that Anson was smiling a small, secret, satisfied smile. He wasn’t sure what that was about, but one thing was certain—he suddenly felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

“I’ll go get my stuff,” he said.

Roxanne Briggs went into the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea.

The news that Egan was dead should not have come as a shock, but for some reason, it had. You lived for years with a man you had never really loved because the two of you were bound by secrets, you got used to each other, she thought.

She could have told Walsh that Egan had gone to meet Trey Greenslade in an effort to exact one last blackmail payment and that Trey had no doubt been the person who had killed Egan. But who would have believed her? She had no proof to offer. This was Trey Greenslade, after all, the heir to Loring-Greenslade.

It was so much simpler to let the police assume that Egan had been murdered in a drug deal gone bad.

When the tea was ready, she sat at the table and tried to decide exactly what she was feeling. After a while it dawned on her that mostly she felt relieved.

By the time she finished the tea, she was starting to wonder if she ought to be feeling afraid. Trey Greenslade might conclude that she was aware of the secret that Egan had kept. He might decide that he should get rid of her, too.

She should run, she thought.

She set down the mug, pushed herself to her feet and walked toward the bedroom to pack. When she went past the mantel, she paused to take
down the framed pictures of Nolan. They were the only things in the house that were important enough to take with her.

A short time later she put two bags into the back of the pickup. She tucked the pistol under the front seat and got behind the wheel. She drove down the long, graveled drive, across the bridge and onto the old mountain highway.

She never once looked back.

Egan had not given her a lot over the years, she thought. There had been some affection at first, when he had liked having sex with her, but that hadn’t lasted long. He had never shown her any true kindness. No true companionship. But he had provided her with something.

Thanks to Egan she had the survival skills she needed to disappear.

Anson had time to think on the long drive to Loring. He spent some of that time thinking about Charlotte Sawyer. When he wasn’t thinking about Charlotte, he thought about Max and Cabot and Jack. And he thought about the past.

He was damn proud of the three men he had raised. One way or another each of them had followed in his footsteps: each had pursued a career in law enforcement. True, they had taken very different routes—Max had become a profiler and was now trying to set up shop on his own. Cabot was the chief of police of a small town in Oregon. Jack had taken the academic path. He taught highly specialized classes that focused on obscure and exotic forms of criminal behavior. He had even written a book on the subject—
Warped Visions
.

But Anson also knew that all three of his sons had been scarred by their time in Quinton Zane’s compound and by the fire that had left them orphaned. It was no accident that each of them had wound up chasing criminals for a living. The events of the past haunted them and at the same time fueled them, providing the fire that made each of them so good at what they did.

But the fallout from the past also had a way of wreaking havoc with their most intimate relationships.

He had done what he could to give Max, Cabot and Jack the tools they needed to cope with their past. But he had not been able to provide them
with the answers they craved. He was well aware that each man was doomed to find his own path when it came to dealing with the ghost of Quinton Zane.

Anson went back to thinking about Charlotte. Something told him that she just might be the woman who could accept the part of Max that could not let go of the past.