Читать книгу Behind Closed Doors - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 10

“M r. Moss, if you’re elected to a seat in the U.S. senate, what will you do about our growing border-control issues that our current politicians haven’t already tried?”

George Moss stepped away from the microphone, assessing the young man standing halfway back in the audience at the Tucson elementary-school cafeteria Saturday morning. He was twenty-something and well-dressed, his tie slightly loosened at the neck. Blond hair cut short and chin held high enough to command respect but not so high as to appear egotistical.

Returning to the podium, making eye contact with his questioner, Moss said, “I have the two things you need to make anything happen. Drive and energy.”

At the young man’s nod, he could’ve stopped.

“The number of illegal immigrants in Arizona is rising dramatically,” he continued, speaking for the brotherhood that had given his campaign the financial support that was taking him to victory. “Because there’s no record of these individuals, there’s no way to trace them, to account for them, and if they break the law, there’s no way to identify or find them.”

Sitting now, the young man didn’t smile but seemed satisfied with the response.

The questions went on, all of the current “hot button issues” being raised, just as he’d been coached to expect.

But the answers were less difficult than his advisors had warned him they’d be. He didn’t have to refer to his prewritten responses. He only had to say what he knew to be true.

“We need a renewal of family values if we’re to rescue this great country,” he told the audience at large, engaging with as many of them as would meet his gaze. “Women are successful members of the workforce, but they have another talent, a far more valuable talent, that most men will never be blessed with. A talent this country so desperately needs. They are the keepers of the heart, ladies and gentlemen. The nurturers. It is they who, day by day, moment by moment, instill values in our children.”

As the room erupted in applause, George Moss’s determination to win at any cost solidified. Someone had to save America.

Detective Daniel Boyd finally got a few hours sleep and woke Saturday morning with his mind still in gear.

Sean Williams. The name popped up in his first second of consciousness. The name he’d been looking for in the early hours of Friday morning, just before the Kendall call came in. Sean Williams. A forty-year-old schoolteacher who’d been apprehended late Friday afternoon and charged with the rape and murder of two fourteen-year-old girls—one of them Sherry O’Connor. The crimes had been committed five years apart. God only knew how many more there were that they hadn’t pinned on the bastard yet.

With the DNA sample they’d taken yesterday after the man’s arrest, they had enough to put him away for 150 years.

With a grunt and a sigh Boyd rolled out of bed, shuffled across the hard wooden floors of the bedroom that had belonged to his mother all through his growing-up years and into the bathroom that could also be accessed from the hallway.

He’d had new tile, vanity, toilet and tub put in the previous year, which still gave him pause on days like today when he was coming off a hard case—or starting a new one—disoriented, waking from a deep sleep.

And too little sleep.

He’d get up, somehow expecting to find the room just as it’d been during his childhood.

Williams was off the streets, but the two men who’d beaten Harry Kendall and raped his wife were free. Which led Daniel to the realization he’d accepted years before.

Only one thing in life was guaranteed.

There was always another case.

Harry stayed in bed until nine. He’d finally dozed off just before five. Throughout the long night Laura moaned in her sleep several times. Whimpered once. And slept on. Understandably. The events of the past thirty-one hours had exhausted her mentally, emotionally, physically.

And perhaps sleep was her mind’s way of protecting her from the memories that would surface immediately upon waking. The time spent asleep was a respite, an escape, that she needed.

When he could no longer stay still, Harry slid from the bed, careful not to disturb his wife. Moving barefoot across the carpet in the guest room to the hall, he glanced at the closed master-bedroom door before walking into the great room with its walls of windows and vaulted ceilings. Laura had painted it in off-whites with beige trim. Light and tranquil, he’d always thought. Just like her.

Today tranquility eluded him.

Harry stared out the window. Saturday. A sunny day with brilliant blue skies—not a cloud to be seen. Perfection. But things were rarely what they seemed. Beneath the surface hid an evil that cut so deeply hearts would be forever marred.

Out there, among all the moms and dads and kids enjoying a day off on that cheerful-looking Saturday morning, two heinous men existed.

Were they close? Maybe on the next street? Sleeping in? Or having coffee?

Did they have jobs? What kind of jobs? Would they go to work today, mingling with coworkers who thought they were normal guys—who trusted them?

Maybe they were married. At home in bed with their wives—women who hadn’t been emotionally damaged. Women who had no idea that the men they took into their beds, their bodies, had forced themselves on an innocent woman, leaving her stricken and lost.

Did they have children? Trusting little people who looked up to them? Who relied on them for all of life’s necessities—both emotional and physical?

Could they strip a stranger of her emotional safety, possibly forever, and at the same time provide it for their kids?

No! He couldn’t accept that. Couldn’t accept any of it.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Harry wondered if the tension would ever disappear. He needed aspirin. Lots of it.

So where did scum of the earth go on a Saturday morning? What did they do? Eat eggs in a dirty diner while assaulting the tired waitress with inappropriate innuendos? Wake up in old beds with stained sheets, suffering from hangovers that would be gone as soon as they stumbled to the kitchen for a beer?

Did they live together? Brothers, maybe?

Or did they live completely separate lives—except for those occasions when they got together to destroy the lives of people who’d never knowingly hurt anyone?

Eyes watering from all the brightness outside, Harry fell to the couch and, in an attempt to escape thoughts that were a slow torture, grabbed the phone.

He listened to the dial tone for several seconds, allowing it to soothe him with its monotony. And then he hit the third speed-dial button—for his parents in Oregon, where his father owned an accounting firm.

“Hi, son, how are you?”

The calm voice made him feel more tense because of what his father didn’t know.

“Not good, Dad.”

“What’s up? Laura’s not sick is she? Or you?”

No, but… What did you call what they were? Sure, they were sick, but their disease wasn’t something that could be detected in a lab. It wouldn’t show up on a microscope slide or respond to antibiotics. It couldn’t be healed with holistic remedies.

“No, we’re…not,” he said, after a failed attempt to say they were fine.

“What’s going on?” He could hear his mother in the background. “Kaleb? Is something wrong with Harry or Laura?”

“I don’t know, Alicia,” Kaleb’s voice held no impatience as he answered his wife. “Harry, what’s wrong? Did one of you lose your job? Was there bad news from the fertility clinic?”

What Harry would give to be a boy again, safe under his father’s care, always knowing that no matter what befell him, his father could fix it.

“Laura was raped.”

“What?”

Harry couldn’t repeat it.

“Oh my God.” Kaleb Kendall’s voice dropped—and filled with a horror Harry had never heard before. Not even when his father had first shown him a documentary about Martin Luther King’s assassination and told his young son about his black heritage. “When? Is she all right?”

“What happened to Laura? Where is she?” Alicia’s voice, closer now, brought tears to Harry’s eyes. If ever a woman personified the word mother, it was his mom.

“It happened the night before last—at home. Laura’s here now. Asleep. Other than…they…she wasn’t…there were…”

When the words just wouldn’t come, Harry stopped, stared at the grain of the polished wood floor. “Other than rope burns on her wrists, she’s physically uninjured.”

“He broke into your home? Were you there?” Kaleb’s tone rose only slightly, but Harry knew that his father was seconds away from rage.

A rage he would contain—and use in any way he could to right a wrong.

“Who did? Kaleb! What’s going on!”

“I was here.” The sun shining in the window seemed to mock the darkness inside him.

“In the room?”

“Yes.” He bit out the word, his self-loathing and anger clouding every thought, every feeling.

“I see.”

What did his father see? A broken woman? A man to be pitied?

“Did he have a gun?”

“A gun? Kaleb, you talk to me right now. Put him on speakerphone. Tell me!”

“No gun,” Harry closed his eyes. “Just rope. There were two of them.”

“Good God in Heaven! Did they both—”

“Yes.” Harry interrupted before his father could verbalize the image still persecuting him.

Kaleb’s sigh said more than any words could.

“Just a second, Alicia,” he heard his father say a moment later. “It’s bad and I need to help Harry first.”

Help him. And how did his father propose to do that? This wasn’t a lost position on a Little League team, or a failing grade. Could his father travel back in time, wipe out the grueling events? Could he clear away the sense of violation Laura would feel for the rest of her life?

Kaleb asked the same questions Harry would’ve asked, questions the detectives had asked. Alicia was strangely silent and Harry knew she’d pieced together enough to guess what had happened.

In his mind’s eye he saw the tears streaming down her face.

“It was because of me, Dad.” He said aloud what he’d known since those whispered words had struck his heart.

“Don’t you even start thinking like that, boy.” The sternness in Kaleb’s voice contrasted sharply with the compassionate outrage he’d shown Harry thus far. “Two against one? There’s nothing you could’ve done—except get yourself killed.”

Yeah, well, if they’d killed him, maybe they wouldn’t have gone after Laura. Without him in the picture there’d been no need.

“It was a hate crime—because I’m black and she’s white.”

Silence fell on the line. And then… “Times have changed, son. The world today is different from the one your mother and I grew up in. You know that. You’ve always known that. Look at us—two black people living in a white neighborhood and your mother’s president of the homeowners’ association. We live in a society of freedom and acceptance. At least as far as the color of our skin is concerned.”

Kaleb didn’t really believe that. And he knew Harry didn’t either. But it was the edict by which they lived.

And they’d found acceptance by doing exactly that.

“The guy with his hands around my throat spoke just as his buddy was approaching Laura.” The words stuck in his throat.

“What did he say?”

“White should stay with white.”

“Donahue.”

“Daniel Boyd here, Mr. Donahue.”

“Detective. It’s been months. Do you have any news on my wife? Is that why you’re calling?”

“You weren’t married to Amanda Blake,” Daniel said. For a brief time the previous year, he’d believed the missing Flagstaff woman had been kidnapped and was being held by a man at a motel in Tuscon, but she’d disappeared again before he had any real proof. A frantic Donahue had called him half a dozen times a day for two weeks, and while Daniel could have diverted the calls, he’d taken every one of them.

“She wore my ring. Bore my son.” Bobby Donahue’s words were softly spoken, his voice subdued.

His grief was real, which was why, in spite of what he and much of Arizona’s law enforcement believed about Donahue’s “business,” his “church,” Daniel had taken the time to speak with him.

“As far as I’m concerned, your wife’s case is closed,” he said now, before the younger man got himself worked up with hope again. “The woman who was seen at the Desert Stop motel fitting her description gave false identification and left no forwarding address. She is untraceable. She could be anywhere—or she could be dead. Unless she shows up again, there’s nothing more I can do.”

“Oh.” The deflation evident in that one word struck Daniel, despite his cynicism about Bobby Donahue. “So why am I getting a call from the Tucson police?” Donahue asked.

“Tell me you didn’t order a rape in Tucson. A white woman married to a black man.” The intricate and seemingly foolproof disguises Donahue used to cover his white supremacist activities didn’t fool Daniel for a second.

“What? Of course I didn’t.”

“You’re sure?”

“As God is my witness.”

“If I find out you’re lying to me, I’m going to hunt you down, my friend, and just like you, I don’t feel any particular need to play by the rules.”

“I understand, Detective. You helped me with Amanda. I owe you and I’m a man of honor.”

And that, Daniel knew to be true. In his own twisted way, Bobby Donahue was a trustworthy, loyal and God-fearing man.

“If I ever ordered a rape, which I would never, of course, do, I simply wouldn’t answer your question.”

Satisfied, Daniel Boyd nodded. And silently disconnected the call.

At first Laura didn’t recognize the despair that accompanied her waking to a bright new day. She stretched. And her entire body ached. She felt a chafing between her legs.

“Hi.” Harry, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair still wet from the shower, sat up against the pillows beside her, smiling down at her.

At least, his lips smiled. His eyes searched hers, sending love—and seeking it. Seeking reassurance.

It was something she couldn’t give.

“Hi.” Breaking eye contact, she sat up, pulling the covers over her chest.

“You should probably call your folks. Your mother will be starting to wonder why she hasn’t heard from you.”

Glancing at the small LED screen on the guest-room night table, Laura was shocked to see that it was almost eleven. Unless she was away she called her mother every Saturday morning. It was a kind of unwritten rule. Her mother didn’t meddle in Laura’s affairs—and Laura checked in regularly.

“I’m not ready to talk to them yet.” She thought about it. Tried to push herself. And felt tears choking her throat.

Her mother would take it hard—reacting to the attack as strongly as if it had happened to her. Laura couldn’t experience those feelings again right now. Couldn’t live through the commiseration and compassion that would allow her to fall apart completely.

If she did that, she’d never be able to pull herself back together.

“I called Dad.”

Thoughts of Kaleb and Alicia Kendall brought a tiny hint of warmth. Until she envisioned their reaction to—

“They want to see you, but will wait to visit until we’re ready. They asked if you want to go to Oregon and stay with them for a bit. And Mom says she’ll have her cell with her at all times if you need to talk.”

“Could you call them for me, please?” Laura asked. Harry’s parents had always been a safe place for her, for both of them. Not only accepting their love, but rejoicing in it. Welcoming her, a white woman, into their family. “Let them know I can’t answer any questions yet, if that’s okay, but I’d like to hear their voices.”

Harry had the phone to his ear before she’d finished the last sentence.

Daniel Boyd had worked easier cases than the Kendall rape. And harder ones. He was going over the scant information he had as he pulled up in front of their home late Saturday afternoon, then started up the walk to their door. He straightened his shoulders. Experience had taught him that there was no way to be prepared for whatever scene would take place inside that house. He was familiar with the range of emotions that might be released—anger, pain, grief, guilt—and could never predict which ones he’d face. Experience had also taught him that the sooner he uncovered more evidence, the higher his chances of finding the perpetrators of this particular nightmare.

Robert Miller was home with his wife and kids—certainly his right, since they were off duty. But Daniel couldn’t sit at home when a crime scene was getting colder by the second. And he didn’t have a wife or kids.

Cops relied on crime scenes for evidence. And in this case, Laura Kendall’s body—and to a lesser degree, her husband’s—was the crime scene. Her memory—and her husband’s—were about the only way he had to uncover any missing pieces….

He hated this part of the job. Nailing the bastards gave him a high unparalleled by anything else in his life. But looking a raped woman in the eye, having to imagine what she was feeling, figuring out how to get into her brain and find the information he needed, gnawed at his gut every time.

Forcing her to relive the worst night of her life was even worse.

He knocked on the door with two quick raps, praying to the god of cops that something he had to say, or ask, would trigger the inconspicuous clue that would let him do his job. If it came, he’d recognize it. Of that he was sure.

Harry could tell that Laura was doing better since speaking to his parents. She’d not only accepted his offer to make chicken parmesan for dinner, but she’d wanted to help. She was rolling boneless chicken breasts in his secret mixture on the counter while he broke spaghetti in half and dropped it in boiling water when they heard the knock on the door.

Her sudden tension seemed to bounce off the walls around them.

“Who could that be?” Her tone seemed to blame him, as though he’d invited guests without informing her. Something he’d never done. And never would.

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to hide his own concern.

Harry’s spirits sank back to that morning’s depths as he saw the detective on his doorstep. They’d been about to have the first normal moments since their ordeal had begun.

“Dr. Kendall, may I come in? I have a few things I need to discuss with you and your wife.”

“Of course. And please call me Mr. Or Harry. The title is just to impress my students.” Harry held open the door, motioned Daniel Boyd inside and invited him to have a seat on the couch while he waited to see if Laura would come in of her own accord.

He was relieved when she did.

Harry resented the reminder Boyd’s presence brought into their home, resented the intrusion on what might’ve been a return to ordinary life for him and Laura—a nice meal prepared and eaten together. But even more than he wanted that normalcy, he wanted the bastards who’d invaded his home to be caught.

And punished.

He needed them to pay for what they’d done.

And to know they wouldn’t be back. Not to his home—and not to the homes of any other innocent, unsuspecting couple.