Читать книгу The Girl Who Couldn't Forget - Cassie Miles - Страница 11

Yesterday, when Brooke dashed out the door from Franny’s apartment, Sloan hadn’t made the mistake of thinking that she was running away. Fear hadn’t been her motivation. Anger had driven her. She’d left to avoid a fight, and he’d been grateful. Unless he missed his guess, Brooke Josephson was a formidable adversary who might have eviscerated that cop with the big mouth.

In order to verify that opinion and learn more about the victimology of the young women who had been kidnapped, he paid a midmorning visit to George Gimbel. At the retired agent’s home in the foothills west of town, the two men sat on rocking chairs on the front porch, drinking black coffee and watching the pecking chickens outside their coop. A dappled, swayback mare with a big belly that mimicked the girth of her owner grazed in the corral attached to the small barn. Though Sloan could make out the downtown Denver skyline in the faraway distance, the peaceful setting made him feel like he’d gone back in time to the Old West.

Gimbel took off his cowboy hat and dragged his fingers through his unruly gray hair. “There hasn’t been a day in the past twelve years that I haven’t thought about those women. Never felt like we did right by them.”

Sloan had read the files on the case. “From the record, it looks like you were thorough.”

“Oh, yeah, the proper forms were filed. But when it came to an investigation? Nada.” His thumb and forefinger formed a zero. “They were abducted over a period of four or five months. Six girls went missing, one after another. Where were the cops? Where was the FBI? We dropped the ball. And why? Well, these were all foster kids—teenagers or younger. Everybody assumed they were runaways.”

All too often, victims fell between the cracks. These women had been taken from different homes that were as far apart as Colorado Springs to the south and Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the north. They hadn’t known each other, and there hadn’t seemed to be a connection...except for one. Sloan pointed it out. “If someone in law enforcement had lined up their photos and noticed the similarities in appearance, they would have paid more attention.”

“That’s exactly what happened when the public learned about the kidnappings—intense publicity. Some of the victims were traumatized by the spotlight.”

“Like Brooke.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Gimbel said. “She’s hard to read.”

Sloan remembered her trembling hands, rapid breathing and darting gaze. “From the minute we met, it seemed like she was about to have a panic attack.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Oh. Hell. No. She blasted me with pepper spray and tried to kick me in the groin.”

Gimbel chuckled. “Brooke avoids confrontation, but she never backs down.”

“How did the FBI get involved in the case?”

“When the women escaped, they went to the Jefferson County police, who realized that they were dealing with kidnapping. Since two states—Colorado and Wyoming—were involved, JeffCo was only too happy to pass this big, fat, complicated case to us, where it landed in my lap.” He leaned back and folded his hands across his gut. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw all six of them together. Skinny little things with black hair and blue eyes, they looked so much alike that they could have been sisters. Actually, two of them are identical twins.”

“Hardy Dolls,” Sloan said.

“Brooke hated when the media started using that moniker, and I don’t blame her. If that girl is a doll, she’s sure as hell an action figure. To survive in captivity, she had to be tough. To engineer an escape with five other girls, she had to be smart.”

Sloan agreed. In the testimony given by the others, it was obvious how much they respected Brooke. Their descriptions of the escape showed an extreme degree of planning from the fourteen-year-old. Oddly, Brooke had said very little. Her statement was limited to short answers and claims that she didn’t remember. A complex woman, there was something about her that fascinated him. “She took charge, but she wasn’t the oldest.”

“Layla was sixteen.”

“And Layla Tierney is the reason I’m following up. When Franny started getting threatening phone calls, she contacted the others to find out if they’d received similar anonymous contacts. She never reached Layla.”

“She disappears from time to time,” Gimbel said. “Brooke will know how to find her.”

He was glad for another reason to be in touch with her. “I appreciate any advice. Victimology is new to me. My training put more emphasis on the criminals and psychopaths.”

“Three months ago, when you got assigned to the Denver office, they said we were lucky to have you.” There was a hint of bitterness in his tone. “You’re only a few credits short of a PhD in psychology. Is that right?”

Sloan nodded. “I’m working on my dissertation.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m more impressed with the fact that you served in the navy.”

“Which is how I paid for college.” He hadn’t joined the navy out of a sense of duty or patriotism, but he’d gotten more from his service than he ever expected. His dad had told him that the US Navy would teach him to be a man. In this case, Dad might have been right.

“I never enlisted,” Gimbel said, “but I figure I paid my dues with a twenty-seven-year career in the FBI.”

Sloan rose from his chair and went to the banister, where he watched the hens and avoided making direct eye contact with Gimbel. He didn’t want their meeting to turn into a confrontation between the grizzled old veteran and the smart-ass college boy. Not that he was a kid at thirty-two.

“I’ve only got a couple years’ experience in the field,” he said. “Dealing with six different victims who have each developed their own coping behaviors is complicated to say the least. Your insights would really help.”

“Let’s get to it,” he said.

“From your notes, it’s clear they’re all experiencing a degree of post-traumatic stress.”

“You don’t need a PhD to figure that out.” Gimbel was kind enough not to scoff. Instead, he took a sip of his coffee. “Give me your profile of Franny.”

He didn’t like making a snap diagnosis but didn’t have time to analyze his subject. Unlike therapy, profiling drew broad conclusions. “The clutter in her house and immature behavior points to ADD. She hides her feelings behind a bright, happy exterior—shiny enough to deflect close examination. Inside, she’s a drama queen.”

The older man nodded. “You got that right.”

“Not being able to contact Layla for a few days shouldn’t have been a big deal, but Franny was extremely agitated. The anonymous phone calls triggered her fears.”

“Tell me about the calls.”

“There were references to her time in captivity.” Sloan repeated the words verbatim. “Everything the caller said was public knowledge.”

“Did you check out the number?”

“It traced to a burner phone. Even the dumbest perverts use throwaways.”

“But you investigated. Good.”

Sloan was glad he hadn’t immediately dismissed Franny’s complaint. As Gimbel had pointed out, the law enforcement system hadn’t paid enough attention when these women disappeared the first time. He refused to be the guy who failed them again. “I see two possibilities. The first is that Franny is getting targeted by a prison groupie who idolizes Martin Hardy. He’s a copycat and bears watching but probably won’t go further than crank calls. The other, more disturbing scenario suggests unresolved issues from the original crime. In your reports, you listed other men who knew Hardy and might have assisted in the abductions.”

“There’s no shortage of creeps out there,” Gimbel said. “I hope Franny’s fears are nothing but a feather on the wind, but you can’t take that chance. It’s your job to protect them.”

“That’s what you did.”

“Damn right,” Gimbel said. “I had to be sure they weren’t just dumped back into the foster care system. And I got a lawyer to manage their interests. I’ll give you his name.”

Gimbel was turning out to be a valuable resource. Sloan folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the banister. “Tell me about Brooke.”

* * *

AFTER A LATE LUNCH, Sloan parked his SUV outside Brooke’s gleaming white stucco house with a red tile roof. Hers was one of several Spanish Mission-style homes in this architecturally diverse urban neighborhood. The two-story house was surrounded by a tidy lawn, perfectly trimmed shrubs and colorful flower beds. And the place was well protected. He spotted two security cameras. One was mounted over the front door. Another peered down from the attached garage. Wrought iron latticework—in a decorative pattern—shielded the door and the arched windows on the first floor.

As soon as he exited his vehicle, the August heat hit him like a blast furnace. He straightened his striped necktie, smoothed the wrinkles from his linen suit jacket and tried not to sweat. He was eager to see Brooke again. Her personality—an impossible combination of fire and ice—fascinated him.

Not that their relationship could be anything but professional. She was a witness, possibly a victim, and he had to keep his distance. His reason for being here and talking to her was to determine his starting point in this widely disparate investigation. In addition to the anonymous phone calls to Franny, threats had been made to the other women. He needed Brooke’s sensible approach to sort the real from the unreal, ultimately making sense of the situation. And, first and foremost, he needed to locate Layla.

As soon as he rang the bell, Franny yanked the door open and dived into his arms. After a giant hug—so much for professional distance—she bounced away from him. This young woman was as energetic and enthusiastic as a puppy looking for a pat on the head.

“Hey there,” she said brightly. “You did a pretty great job of contacting everybody. They all called me, except for Layla.”

“You said Brooke would know how to find her.”

Franny grabbed his hand and pulled him into a two-story foyer with a terra-cotta floor and a curved staircase on the right. Compared to the hot weather outside, the house was cool and serene. He felt like he’d walked into a shaded glen in a perfectly organized forest.

“Those two, Brooke and Layla, are birdies of a feather,” Franny said. “Both really smart and focused and, you know, tidy.”

He grinned. Franny’s casual description matched Gimbel’s more technical analysis of OCD tendencies brought on by post-traumatic stress. “They like to keep things orderly.”

“And I make them crazy,” she confided.

An alarm shrieked, and Franny ran to a keypad near the door, where she punched random numbers. “I forgot to turn it off. Oh my God, that’s loud. Can you help me?”

Brooke charged into the foyer. “Step away from the keypad.”

Franny leaped backward as Brooke plugged in the numbers to turn off the alarm. She placed a cell phone in Franny’s hand. “The security people are going to call and ask if we need help. Do you remember what you’re supposed to tell them?”

“The code words,” she said. “Happy trails to you.”

“And then?”

“They’ll tell me to repeat, but this time I’ll say, ‘Hi-ho, Silver, and away.’”

When Franny left to handle the call from the security service, Brooke turned toward him. “Good afternoon, Special Agent Sloan. You didn’t mention that you were coming over when you called earlier.”

“I was afraid you’d bar the door.”

A hint of a smile twitched the corner of her rosebud mouth. If she ever actually laughed, he suspected she’d have dimples. “Given our previous encounter,” she said, “I understand.”

This was the cool version of Brooke Josephson. Her raging tension was gone, and she appeared to be completely in control, probably because she was at home. Safely tucked away in her lair, Brooke could relax and be comfortable. She was shoeless and bare-legged, wearing an untucked dark blue shirt and knee-length white shorts. Her black hair tumbled loosely to her shoulders.

Though he could have spent an enjoyable few moments studying her features—the classic nose, sculpted brow, wide forehead and pointed chin—Sloan went straight to business. He reached into the inner pocket of his navy blue blazer and extracted a small spiral notebook. “I know you don’t like to waste time, so I made a list.”

“Efficient.” She gave a small nod of approval. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Juice?”

“A glass of water would be fine.”

Franny bounded back into the foyer and returned the phone to Brooke. “I handled the security call. This is the third time, so I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

He gave her a smile. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.” She mimicked a gunslinger doing a fast draw—an image this little pixie couldn’t really pull off.

“You answered the doorbell as soon as it rang. Were you watching from a window?”

“We’re way more techie than that.” With a giggle, she picked up a computer tablet that was sitting on a rectangular wooden side table below the staircase. Franny tapped in a code and showed him a screen divided into four separate video feeds. “These are live pictures from the three cameras outside the house and the one in the office. I saw you park and watched you walk to the door.”

“Impressive,” he murmured.

“The cameras might seem excessive,” Brooke said, “but I work from home, and I have a lot of very expensive electronic equipment to protect.”

“No need to explain. I like all this tech stuff.”

“And yet you carry a spiral notebook.”

Not exactly a subtle put-down. His attempt to bond with her by pretending they shared an interest in electronics had fallen flat. She wasn’t buying it. He stifled an urge to explain his lousy relationship with computers. Giving her too much information gave her an edge, and he needed to stay in charge. An uncomfortable silence filled the entryway.

“Wow,” Franny said. “There’s some real chemistry between you two. I mean, it’s combustible. And that’s my cue to leave you alone. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

He watched her scamper up the stairs to the second floor. “I understand that she’s marching to her own drummer, but I don’t know this tune.”

“Franny has decided that you and I are some kind of match, and we should start dating. I told her it wasn’t acceptable, not according to the rules.”

“And I’ll bet she doesn’t care.”

“Not a whit.”

He followed Brooke as she bypassed the pristine living room, decorated in earthy Southwestern colors, and went down a corridor to the kitchen. The sleek black cabinets and polished marble countertops were clean and organized. Brooke had her life choreographed down to the smallest detail. “I have a question that isn’t written down in my spiral notebook,” he said. “You and Franny are very different in habit and temperament. How do you put up with her when she stays with you?”

“We have an agreement,” she said. “No cats are allowed in the house. And her clutter is confined to the upstairs guest bedroom and attached bathroom.”

“Does she follow those rules?”

“Not always, but I can’t blame her for living her life the way she wants. Like the clown at the end of the circus procession, it’s my job to follow the Franny parade and sweep up the mess after she rides past on a bejeweled elephant.”

Her comparison surprised him. In no way did he think of Brooke as a clown. Playing the fool might hint at low self-esteem issues, but he was more interested in her willingness to set aside her own requirements for neatness when it came to someone she loved. She liked order but wasn’t rigid about it.

She took two blue glasses from the shelf above the sink and filled them with purified water from a pitcher in the fridge. “What’s first on your list?”

He made a point of consulting his notebook. “When we talked on the phone, you mentioned that your car alarm went off while it was parked in the garage. Now that I’ve seen your security precautions, I’m even more curious about how that could happen.”

“I don’t know.” She stood behind the center island and slid the glass toward him. “I checked at the time. Nothing had fallen and bumped the SUV. All locks were secure.”

“Did your cameras pick up any sign of an intruder?”

She shook her head. “The only explanation I’ve been able to come up with is a glitch of some sort. I’m not an expert in car mechanics.”

When he’d talked to the other women, they had all reported similar issues that amounted to minor annoyances. One of them thought a man had been following her. Another reported personal items that had gone missing from her house, but she wasn’t sure if she’d just misplaced them. The one who had left Denver and moved to Las Vegas mentioned that she was contacted three times by a documentary filmmaker.

He glanced at his list. “Have you had other threats?”

“Not recently. People have always wanted to get close to us, and they act like we’re some kind of notorious celebrities.” Anger wove through her voice. “In the early days after we escaped, there was a great deal of unwanted attention. For some reason, folks thought it was all right to call or write letters or walk up to us on the street as though we were old friends. Not exactly threatening, but I considered their behavior to be intrusive. I hated it.”

“Gimbel said he put you in touch with a lawyer.”

“Tom Lancaster,” she said. “It was handy to have his card to warn people away. And he was useful in other practical ways. He set up a fund for us to handle various donations. There was enough money to fund private school for Franny and the twins.”

“What about you? You didn’t return to high school.”

“There was no way I’d go back and be gawked at. I got my GED and enrolled in community college. Layla did the same, and she continued to law school. She recently graduated and has been studying for the bar exam.”

According to Gimbel, Brooke breezed through college, earning scholarships and completing her course work for a business degree before she was twenty. After an internship with an IT firm, she set up a home-based business doing medical and legal transcriptions. “You and Layla have much in common. Both intelligent. Both ambitious and successful.”

She pushed a wing of black hair away from her face and gave him a smile. “You’re a profiler, aren’t you?”

“Not yet. But I’ve had psychological training.”

“Well, you hit the jackpot with this case. Me and my friends are every shade of crazy.”

Though he didn’t approve of labels, he appreciated her relaxed attitude. Yesterday she’d been as prickly as a cactus. “Do you know how to reach Layla?”

“I tried. Yesterday Franny and I stopped by her apartment, and I tried to contact her on a computer link. I tried the link again, about three hours ago. No Layla.”

“Would you give it another try?”

“Sure, come with me to my office.” She gave him a more genuine smile, and her dimples appeared. “I’ll send out the bat signal.”

Sloan followed her down a corridor into a large room with a wall of file cabinets and three distinct workstations, each equipped with computers and ergonomic chairs. A wide window, covered with wrought iron grillwork, showed a shaded, verdant backyard with two peach trees and a vegetable garden.

He went to the window. “You grow your own food.”

“Gimbel accused me of planting a garden so I wouldn’t ever have to leave my house.” She slid into place behind a computer. “He might be right. I love being able to step outside and pick a salad. My tomatoes this year have been brilliant.”

He stood behind her so he could see the screen as her slender fingers danced across the keyboard, clicking icons and tapping in passcodes. “I’m not very computer savvy,” he said.

“I guessed.”

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

“This program activates a camera that provides a live feed from a one-room mountain cabin that Layla and I share. We’re both reclusive. Sometimes we need a hideout where we can be completely alone.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Layla uses the cabin when she’s studying. After a big work project, I like to go there to decompress.”

“But you don’t want to be completely out of touch,” he said. “That’s why you set up this system. What did you call it? The bat signal?”

“It’s a safety concern,” she said, “only to be used in urgent circumstances. Though I’m not sure this investigation rises to the level of emergency, I’ll feel better after we’ve checked in with her.”

When she tapped the final key, a picture appeared on the screen. He saw a wood-paneled room with a desk, a fireplace and a bed. The only light came from a window.

“There she is,” Brooke said as she pointed to the bed.

He needed confirmation on where Layla had been and if she’d been threatened. “Can you talk to her through the live feed?”

“Sure.” Loudly, she said, “Layla, it’s me. Get up.”

“Zoom in closer?”

“Come on, sleepyhead.” Brooke tapped a few keys.

The screen filled with a close-up of Layla’s image. Though her nightgown reached up to her chin, Sloan noticed the discoloration at her throat. Layla’s face was drained of color. Her cheeks were hollow. She lay unnaturally still.

He’d witnessed enough autopsies to know that this woman would never respond to Brooke’s calls for her to wake up.