Читать книгу Cold Case Witness - Sarah Varland - Страница 11
ОглавлениеGemma sat on her sister’s porch swing, trying to enjoy the warm night, hoping the back and forth of the swing would calm her mind down enough that she could sleep. She’d run from the Hamilton Estate and come straight back to Claire’s house, her home for now.
For a few hours, she’d debated her course of action—she could run and go back to Atlanta, find a job anywhere she could so she could at least live somewhere she loved...but she’d agreed to the trial period with the historical society, and she wasn’t a quitter. Her only other options were to ignore everything that was happening and continue with her normal life—or to jump into the investigation fully and end this for good.
So far, she’d decided nothing. So she sat. Swinging.
Darkness fell faster than she’d expected—it always seemed to catch her off guard. Soon it was too dark for her to feel comfortable out in the open. Surely by now word had gotten around town that a body had been discovered. If it was tied to the crime she had witnessed all those years ago like she was almost sure of...was she in danger again?
Still?
Katydids chirped a night song, just another sound that was familiar and yet foreign to Gemma. She’d forgotten how loud it was even out here in the middle of nowhere. The sirens, the traffic she’d grown used to in Atlanta were absent, but the night noises were just as loud.
She’d loved this town once. Before its lack of support for her had broken her heart.
Gemma couldn’t keep hoping this part of her life would go away with no action from her. She couldn’t keep sticking her head in the sand, and she certainly couldn’t run. Maybe going to Atlanta in the first place had been running, although of course her eighteen-year-old self hadn’t seen it that way. But now, all these years later, it was time to face this. Past time. Gemma walked down the porch steps, climbed into her car, backed out and took a deep breath. She needed to go back to the office at the historical society.
If they were half the society they claimed to be, they’d have records. Maybe even records that might tell her more about the crime she’d uncovered ten years ago when she’d walked up on a gang of thieves hiding stolen artifacts deep in the woods behind the Hamilton House. Gemma wasn’t sure yet what information about the items the thieves had stolen would do to help her, but she wanted all the information she could get. She’d never believed the case was fully solved. And the town couldn’t move on until it was.
Neither could she.
Gemma swallowed hard, fought back emotion as she kept her eyes focused on the beam her headlights left on the road for her to follow into the darkness of the night. She’d run today because she already believed she knew who the body belonged to. And if she was right about who the body belonged to, then there was a good chance she was right about several other aspects of this case, too.
Meaning the Treasure Point Police Department had been wrong to declare the case closed.
Meaning that as Gemma had always feared...the man most responsible for the crimes still walked free. Maybe right here in this little town. And there was one more crime to add to his tally that she had been sure of—murder.
She turned into the Hamilton Estate, drove her car to the construction site and parked but left the engine running. Was she sure about this?
It looked safe enough out there, although she knew looks could be deceiving. Gemma took a deep breath, shut off the car and opened the door. The minute she did so, an owl hooted. Startled, she slammed the door back shut, then laughed at her own cowardice. She was from here, not an out-of-towner. She should be used to those noises. Unafraid of them.
But the truth was that every heartbeat of the night, everything that should seem normal, took her back to that night when everything had started.
Being here again, seeing it at night, made her wonder if the setting would jog her memory in a way it hadn’t when she’d been here in the daylight earlier, make her remember anything about the crime that had faded in her memory.
So far there was nothing new. Only fear. But growing within was also the determination to be done with this, to do something good for this town and make her parents proud.
Gemma could do this.
She opened the door again, this time squaring her shoulders and ignoring any odd sounds she heard. She walked across the parking lot to the building, pulling the key out of her pocket as she did so. They’d handed it to her just before she’d left that afternoon. It fit right into the door and she unlocked it, walked inside.
Locked the door tight behind her.
She exhaled deeply, shut her eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks that she’d made it this far. Gemma wasn’t sure how God felt about her lately, with her losing her job, not attending church and all of that, but a prayer now and then couldn’t hurt in her present situation.
Gemma clicked the light on, flooding the room with a warm glow that made her relax even more. The hard part was over. She’d made the walk from the car to here without incident—surely if someone had been waiting for her, they’d have attacked. She was unharmed, so it was likely she was in the clear. At least for now.
The office smelled musty, like a mix of pine straw, cardboard and something damp. It smelled perfectly like the history of the South. A small smile crossed her face. Working here wouldn’t be so bad, especially if the committee members left her alone during the day and she got to immerse herself in other people’s stories, learning about the past and doing something for the town without interacting with anyone else. It could turn out to be something she enjoyed, especially if it meant as much to Claire and her parents as she was hoping it would. More than anything, she wanted them to be proud of her.
“Okay, where to start first?” She said the words aloud to herself as she walked to the first filing cabinet she saw, deciding to start there, hoping that hearing her own voice would somehow make her feel less alone. At least when she was working here during the day she wouldn’t be by herself. She’d be able to see the construction crew through the window. And even more interesting, Matt O’Dell would be here every day. Just as close physically as he’d been when they’d had almost all of their classes together their senior year of high school, and just as far away in every other way as he always had been.
If things were different between them, maybe she would have called him tonight. She trusted him more than she did any other officer at the TPPD. He hadn’t been one of those who’d questioned her memories, who’d shrugged off her worries. After doing some research, she knew now that eyewitness testimony wasn’t the ultimate form of evidence. If physical evidence contradicted it, it won every time. It was factual, unbiased. So part of the story she’d remembered had been ignored because nothing else had seemed to support it.
But tonight, she knew if she looked out the window toward the construction site, she’d see the crime scene tape from the scene they’d discovered earlier.
There seemed to be support for her memories now.
Gemma shuddered. It was time to delve into these files, the history of the town, and see if there was anything that could help her.
She searched through the green hanging folders, through weathered newspaper clippings and typewriter printed notes, for hours. She couldn’t find anything that remotely tied to the case she’d been involved in.
Sighing, hating that she had to admit failure, she closed the file drawer and stood up, heading for the door. She slid her phone out of her pocket and glanced at it. Almost eleven—even later than she’d thought. Gemma stifled a yawn as she twisted the lock on the door to unlock it. The adrenaline and fear she’d felt when she’d first arrived had long since dissipated. Gemma reached to turn the door handle to open it.
It twisted. But the door didn’t move.
Gemma frowned. She’d locked it when she’d come in. So turning it that way should have unlocked it...right?
She twisted the lock the other way. Tried the knob again.
Nothing.
Chills moved across her body. Sinister laugher came from the other side of the door. Deep. Soulless. Gleeful.
Gemma swallowed hard against the pounding of her heart, which was pounding on the side of her throat, making it hard to breathe.
Relax. She had to relax. She took a deep breath, looked around the room. There had to be somewhere she could—
The lights went out.
Gemma dropped to the floor, crawled behind one of the desks almost without thinking. Survival instincts seemed to have taken over and all she knew was that someone was after her, very likely wanted her dead, and she was trapped in here. But she needed to keep it together, to stay calm and think.
Maybe someone only wanted to intimidate her.
The laughter came again, seeming to be the very sound of evil personified.
And then Gemma started to feel a touch of a headache, which spread quickly into an all-over ache, as if she’d come down with the flu in a matter of seconds. Was it fear messing with her? Or maybe the missing criminal had finally found a way to eliminate his last witness. A gas leak that could fill up the room with carbon monoxide would be an easy way to kill her and make it look accidental.
Her breaths were coming fast now from her fear, and she tried to slow them down, desperate to slow her inhalation of carbon monoxide. Did it work that way? If she tried hard enough, could she keep herself awake?
A window. She just needed to find a window, crack it open and maybe get a few breaths of fresh air. Her head hurt and her eyes, though she couldn’t see in the dark, felt funny somehow.
Gemma pulled her phone out of her pocket, hesitated over the 9 that her fingers wanted to dial on gut instinct. Calling 9-1-1 would bring the Treasure Point police to her, but would they believe her this time anyway?
Matt O’Dell would believe her. She didn’t know why she thought so, but she did.
She had his number in her phone, from when he’d called looking for her earlier in the day and left her a message telling her he needed to ask her some questions about what she might have seen. She’d ignored him.
She hit the send button, tried to put into words what she wanted to say to him.
But she didn’t even get the chance to say “Help”—the only word she’d come up with so far. She’d only just dialed when her headache exploded.
And the black became blacker.
* * *
“Hello?”
Silence. Matt glanced down at his phone again, at the number he didn’t recognize, though it did look familiar. It had an Atlanta area code.
Wait. It was Gemma’s number. He’d called it earlier that day; that was why it looked familiar. “Hello?” he tried again, curious as to why she would be calling back at such a late hour.
No answer. He could hear background noise, although not enough to figure out where she was calling from or why. He’d expected getting hold of her would be challenging; was she really calling him back to talk about the case? Or could something be wrong?
He grabbed his keys, decided to try to find Gemma even though it was late. He’d head to her sister’s house, where he’d heard she was staying, but first he’d swing by the Hamilton Estate, in case Gemma was working late there and had gotten into some kind of trouble.
The more seconds passed the more anxious he got. It was late—surely she wasn’t calling to talk, especially since she wasn’t talking at all. It was possible she’d accidentally sat on her phone or something and hadn’t intended to call him at all, but she didn’t seem like the sort to be careless in that way. Something felt...off. And Matt didn’t know why she’d call him if she was in trouble, but that was what this felt like to him. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, pressed the gas pedal a little harder. Two miles had never taken so long to drive. Matt drummed his thumbs on the wheel as he drove. He turned into the driveway and his headlights caught...
Another car. Hadn’t he seen this one before?
Gemma’s.
Matt threw his patrol car into Park, opened the door and ran. He knew he was taking a chance of looking like an idiot if she was in there safe and sound and he was storming the place like this, but the lights were out. Why would her car be here if she didn’t have the lights on in the office, working or something? There were no good reasons that he could think of.
“Gemma?” He reached for the doorknob. Locked. He fumbled for his key ring, hands shaking. They’d given him an extra key when he’d been assigned this patrol, since the Treasure Point Historical Society wanted everything well guarded but also didn’t want the police to have to resort to damaging their building by breaking a door or a window. Matt knew because they’d told him so in a snooty way when they’d given him the key.
He shone his flashlight on the lock, shoved the key in, twisted.
He went light-headed almost instantly from the first whiff of propane. If Gemma was in here...
“Gemma!” He yelled it this time, no longer asking a question, but instead searching for her. Desperately. He reached for the light switch, but when he flipped it nothing happened. There went any hope this might have been an accident. Someone wanted her dead and Matt knew why.
You never could escape your past.
He searched for her, accidentally knocking into stacks of paper on the desk and hoping they weren’t anything too important. Not that any pile of paper could be more important than Gemma. A mental picture of her teased the edges of his mind, her dark eyes wide. Vulnerable even though she had always been one of the most independent people he’d ever met.
“Be okay, Gemma.” He dropped to his knees and felt around with his hands. The initial light-headedness he’d felt worsened. He stood, ran outside to breathe—through the door that he’d left propped open in the hopes of getting more oxygen into the room—and ran back in. “God, help.” He prayed as he ran. Where would he go if he were Gemma?
Under the desk. If she’d realized someone was after her, she’d be hiding, right?
He stumbled to the desk, knowing if he didn’t find her this time he was going to have to call dispatch and have them send the fire department, who had the equipment to do this kind of rescue.
His hand touched a shoe. Her foot. “Gemma?”
Still no answer. He removed his hand and felt along the floor about five feet. Her hand. That was what he’d been looking for. Matt moved his hands down the soft skin of her palm and felt for her wrist—and then her pulse. He breathed out a sigh of relief. Still alive. Matt gripped her upper arm with both hands, aware suddenly of how small she was, and pulled her toward him and into his arms. He inhaled and found the strength to stand. “Let him be gone, God. Whoever was here, please let him be gone.”
With no choice but to pray and hope for the best, he ran out into the darkness, unable to reach his gun if he needed it since he needed both hands to carry Gemma. And leaving her while he checked the outside for possible danger wasn’t an option—she needed fresh air if she was going to wake up...ever.
The darkness seemed thicker, more suffocating than it had when he’d arrived, even though the air was clean and fresh compared to the office. Matt took a deep breath, filling his own lungs with the outside air and then exhaling. He could only hope Gemma did the same. He laid her on the ground beside his police cruiser, deciding to give her one minute to wake up on her own before loading her in the car and driving straight to the small doctor’s office in town.
It only took a minute before she started to cough, and sleepily sat up.
“You got my phone call.”
Matt met her eyes and nodded.
Gemma nodded, too. “Thank you for coming.” She closed her eyes again.
“Gemma, Gemma, wake up.” Matt reached for her arm, helped her sit.
She did so, but she looked woozy to him, still.
“I’m taking you to the doctor.”
“No.” Gemma’s protest was weak. Not that it would have mattered. Matt had already made up his mind about what needed to be done.
He drove to the doctor’s office and at Gemma’s insistence waited in the car while she went inside to get checked out. He was unsettled, antsy, but he couldn’t very well go to the exam room with her anyway.
An hour later, she came back out. Matt got out of the car and opened the door for her, an action that was met with raised eyebrows. She’d been in the city too long. “How’d it go?” he asked as she climbed in.
Gemma shrugged. “Okay, I guess. He wanted to keep me overnight, but I told him I was fine.”
“You’re sure?”
The look she gave him before she pulled the door shut said enough.
Matt climbed in the driver’s seat and shut the door, then turned to Gemma. “You’re staying at your sister’s place, right? Where does she live?”
Gemma shook her head. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“If I go home, I’ll have to go to sleep. I’m not risking dreaming about tonight, not until I’m too tired to stand it. Is there somewhere we could go, just to talk about the case?” She looked away. “You know what, I shouldn’t ask you that. It’s okay, you can take me to Claire’s.”
“No, it’s fine. We should discuss the case anyway. And I know where we can go.”
“You’re sure?”
Matt nodded.
“Could I borrow your phone real quick, to let my sister know where I’m going?”
He handed it to her, trying not to eavesdrop on the call—an impossible goal when he was sitting two feet away from her.
“Claire, it’s me.”
Matt couldn’t make out the words on the other end of the line, but the tone sounded less than happy.
“I’m fine, I’m sorry... Yeah, I know you were worried. But I’m fine.”
More words from Claire.
“I was doing some investigating and someone tried to kill me. I just finished at the doctor and I promise I’m fine. It’s a long story...Yes, I promise I’m fine...Claire, really...Yes, I’m really okay, please calm down for now, okay?...Yes, they’re looking for the guy. Listen, I don’t want to go to sleep yet so I’m going to be with Matt for a little while...Yes, Matt O’Dell...I know. Okay...Mmm-hmm, I’ll be home soon, an hour or so tops, okay?...Love you, too. Bye.”
She handed the phone back to Matt. “You don’t have siblings, do you?”
“No.” Another thing he wished he could have changed about his childhood.
“I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Unit 807 to unit 225. Call my cell.” Matt’s radio crackled before he could reply.
He turned to Gemma. “Shiloh. I need to call and it’s about the case so I’m going to talk outside. You’ll be okay?”
“I’m good, Matt.”
He stepped out of the car and walked maybe ten feet away. Just enough to have privacy in the conversation and still be close to Gemma.
“Did you find anything to lead to a suspect?” he asked when she answered, unable to wait to hear what she’d discovered.
Instead, he got a couple seconds of silence. “Matt, there’s no suspect because nothing appears different than it would from an accidental leak.”
“What do you mean?” Matt glanced down at Gemma through the windows of the car. She was looking out the window, attempting to give him privacy, it seemed.
“There’s no evidence, forensic or otherwise, that supports the idea of deliberate sabotage. We found a gas leak that the fire department is taking care of right now, but it looks accidental. And as for her being trapped... Maybe she locked herself in?”
“And couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door?”
“Hey, don’t get sassy. I’m just telling you what I found. I didn’t say I was happy, either. Frankly, I’m not happy at all because this leaves me with too many questions and I was really looking forward to a good night of sleep tonight.”
“Okay, you’re right. That was out of line. But, Shiloh... She’s not making it up.”
“She’s telling you the truth about what she thinks happened. I believe that.” But Shiloh clearly didn’t believe it had been an actual attack. And she seemed to think that he shouldn’t have been so quick to believe it, either.
Had he lost all sense of his judgment at the sight of a pretty face? Matt was mostly sure the answer was no, but still, doubts haunted his mind. “I think she’s telling me what really happened.”
“Even though I have no evidence for you that backs that up?”
He hesitated. He didn’t know Gemma, not really. And he knew and trusted Shiloh.
“I don’t know.” He let out a puff of air. Frustration, plain and simple.
“Just be careful, Matt. I know what this job means to you and I’m afraid that from what I’ve heard, Gemma doesn’t exactly mix well with the Treasure Point Police Department. She may have helped with her testimony in that case, but it sounds as if she caused a lot of trouble, made them really work for the information they did get.”
She’d been seventeen. Was he the only one who remembered that?
“Careful. I hear you,” he promised Shiloh.
Matt hung up the phone and opened his door, slid into the car. “Sorry, quick work call. I’m ready to go.”
“No news, I’m guessing?”
Her brown eyes were hopeful. This wasn’t the face of a woman who was lying. Be careful... Shiloh’s warning faded in his mind the more he searched Gemma’s gaze.
He shook his head, started driving in the direction of the Hamilton House. They’d swing by there, pick up Gemma’s phone while officers were still there finishing their investigation. She could get her car another time, but Matt wasn’t comfortable with her being alone in this condition. Then they’d head to his house. She’d wanted to go somewhere safe to talk, and that was the best place he could think of.
Deciding who to trust was a big part of his job. Matt could only hope he’d chosen wisely.
