Finding Claire Fletcher (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 1) Page 4

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “No,” Connor said abruptly. “She sent me here.” He looked beseechingly at Tom.

  Tom shook his head. “It wasn’t her.”

  Brianna rose. “Dammit, Tom. Call Mitch right now.”

  “But she talked about being found. She said—”

  “Stop it!” Brianna screamed, putting her hands to her ears. “It wasn’t Claire. It wasn’t.”

  Connor swallowed and looked at Tom. “Could I just see a picture? Please?”

  Tom nodded and left the room. He returned with a framed five-by-seven photo. He handed it to Connor. “She was fifteen,” he said. “On her way to school. There was one witness who said she saw a man pushing a girl who matched Claire’s description into a blue station wagon about the time she should have been arriving at school. They never found any man or the car or Claire. I’m sorry, Mr. Parks.”

  Connor held the photo with both hands. He needed only a glance to recognize that the girl in the picture was indeed the woman he’d spent the night with. In the photo, the face was rounder, the skin more pristine. The hair was much shorter but had the same color and the same unruly curls. The fifteen-year-old smile was brighter, but it was the same curvy, wide mouth.

  “Her eyes were different,” Connor mumbled, almost to himself.

  “See!” Brianna said. “It wasn’t her.” She snatched the photo from his hands.

  “No,” Connor said. “She looked just the same—well, older of course—her eyes were the same color and shape, they were just different.”

  Her eyes had lost their innocence. Connor had felt panicked looking into them, as if he might fall in and get trapped on the other side. If the world had had eyes since the moment of its creation and witnessed all manner of natural and man-made violence and destruction, its eyes might never match the despair Connor had seen in Claire Fletcher’s eyes.

  “Call Mitch,” Brianna demanded again. She hugged the photo to her chest and eyed Tom fiercely. “Mitch will deal with him, just like he did with the others.”

  Connor’s head snapped up. “The others?”

  Tom pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it to Connor.

  “That number is for Mitch Farrell. He’s a private investigator. He’s worked on Claire’s case as a favor to my family for years,” Tom explained.

  Connor stood and looked from Tom to Brianna and back. “What others?” he asked.

  Tom ushered Connor to the door. “I’m sure you can see why this is difficult for us to discuss, but Mitch will want to talk to you, check out your story.”

  They were now standing on the broken-down front stoop. Connor looked at Tom. “What others?” he asked again.

  Tom glanced back at the door to be certain his sister couldn’t hear him. He sighed and drew closer to Connor. “Over the last eight years, there have been three other men, and like you, they showed up here out of the blue to see Claire. They all said they’d recently spent the night with her and that she left them this address.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the shower, I made the water so hot it scalded my skin. I scrubbed my neck raw where he had touched me. When I finished, I put on a pair of sweatpants, two pairs of socks, a T-shirt, and an oversized sweatshirt. I climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets all the way over my head.

  “Five minutes,” I whispered, and, as always, my actual voice sounded much calmer and more controlled than the voice in my head. As if it were not really me speaking but some other woman who knew what to do, knew how to handle things, knew how to live in the strange wasteland of Lynn Wood’s life.

  “Just five minutes,” she said.

  I concentrated on my breathing, inhaling deeply through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. I put one hand on my abdomen and felt it rise and fall with each breath. “Five minutes,” the woman said again. “All you need is five minutes. The door is locked. You’re safe. For the next five minutes no one can hurt you. No one can get to you. You don’t exist except right here where it’s warm and cozy and no one can get to you.”

  I breathed deeply and slowly and tried to make my mind as blank as possible. This was an exercise I’d done for years. My way of coping. I had to smuggle my freedom and security secretly in small five-minute increments.

  Sometimes I did it at the local veterinarian’s office where I worked. All I really did there was grunt work, but the animals soothed me. Sometimes I took my five minutes with them. Sometimes it was in a bathroom or the truck. But it always worked best when I was under the covers. It was here where I felt truly hidden from the world—from my bereaved family, my broken life, the memories I almost couldn’t bear, from whom I’d become, and most of all, from him.

  I still remembered those first months as if they had just occurred. I snuggled deeper under the blankets, shivering. Those first months I would have done anything for a blanket. I was so cold, so scared.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1995

  He took me right from the street. He used some clever ruse. When I walked by, he was crouched beside his car, looking underneath it, the back door ajar. He said there was a cat under the car.

  I knelt beside him and almost immediately felt rough hands at the back of my head. My face met steel, and the world faded to black as he pushed me inside the car.

  The next thing I remembered was being in the room. It was dark and I was lying on a bed. He’d stripped me naked and tied my hands and feet to the bedposts. I must have looked like a four-point star in the stifling darkness. I was cold, and there was no give to the ropes he had bound me with. Instinctively, my body tried to curl into itself but could not. My head ached.

  Before I was even fully aware of where I was or that I was awake, I struggled violently to break free. My voice took a long time to come. My throat was dry and my mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. My voice finally came to me after a lot of gasping.

  I cried out for help. I screamed for what seemed like days. I screamed until my throat was so raw and swollen that I could barely breathe through my mouth.

  Then came his disembodied voice in the blackness, cooing and issuing soothing words. He touched my face and my hair. He kept saying, “It’s okay, Daddy’s here.”

  It confused me because I knew it was not my father’s voice or his touch, although he sounded every bit as sincere as any adoring father.

  That was one of the things that came to sicken me most—he really believed he loved us. It wasn’t just an act. He wasn’t trying to manipulate us. He didn’t have to. He had ropes, duct tape, and handcuffs.

  The first several times he came to me, I begged him to let me go. I swore I would never turn him in, without ever thinking about what that really meant. Would I return to my family and never speak a word of what had happened to me?

  I tried everything I could think of, but he didn’t respond. He just kept stroking my hair, telling me it was okay. “Daddy” was there and he was going to take good care of me. It was like pleading with a tape recording.

  I don’t know how many days or weeks it went on, but he came and fed me, gave me milk and water. He untied me so I could relieve myself in a large bucket he kept in the corner of the room. I was stiff and unable to move well from being bound. He had to help me because I was too weak to sit up or clean myself. Sometimes I thought that was the worst humiliation of all.

  I begged for clothes—for a blanket—but he said nothing.

  He gave me sponge baths, and I sobbed with shame because the hot water and his gentle touch felt wonderful after being so cold for so long. He always whispered, “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

  I tried to keep track of the days, but there was no window in the room; he kept it dark except for when he was there. Whenever he came, he turned on a single lamp on the scuffed table beside the bed. It didn’t light the room very well, but I could see that the room was mostly barren. It held only my bed, the table, the lamp, and the bucket.

  He was relatively young. I didn
’t know it at the time, but he was only thirty-seven when he stole me. He was thin and wiry but tall with sandy-brown hair. He looked so average. The first time I remember seeing him, really seeing him, was the first time he raped me.

  I heard him come in. I began squirming earnestly against the ropes that bound me. By then my wrists and ankles bore deep welts that were scabbed over and bled anew each time I struggled.

  He turned on the light.

  I began my endless entreaties. “Why are you doing this to me? Please. I want to go home. Let me go. Please just let me go.”

  He ignored me just as he always did. Then he started taking his clothes off. A new terror gripped me. I was suddenly aware of my own stink and the fear that rose from within me, popping out on my skin as fat beads of sweat. I stopped protesting and watched him with growing alarm. He undressed slowly and carefully. I was young, and while I’d kissed boys and fooled around, I was a virgin. I’d never seen a naked man before.

  “No,” I said, but he climbed onto the bed with me.

  Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I begged. Oh, how I begged him not to do it.

  “Shhh,” he murmured. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Don’t do this,” I said.

  “It will be okay. I’m going to make you feel good. You’ll see.”

  I started to gag. It was involuntary. He sat up quickly and watched until I had control of myself.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. He stared at me differently. Up to that point, he’d been gentle, adoring, even tender. This time there was something else. Something raw, something explosive barely held in check.

  “You’re going to be mine now,” he said. “You will do as I say. You will give yourself to me and you will enjoy it.”

  Through clenched teeth, I replied, “I will never enjoy it. I hate you.”

  Then he slapped me, hard, across the face. My arms strained instinctively to cover my face, but they were bound tight.

  What I remember was how quiet it was. Eerily so. I turned my head and focused on the lamp beside the bed. The sound of the bed squeaking was like a sonic boom.

  When he was done, he collapsed beside me, his head on my shoulder. “You’re mine now,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you and we’ll be together forever. Your name is Lynn now. That’s what I’ll call you.” He stroked my skin. “My sweet Lynn.”

  Afterward, I turned my head and vomited. He dressed slowly, as carefully as he had undressed, and without a word left the room.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Beneath the covers, my whole body recoiled. I had tried so many times to expunge that memory from my mind’s record, but I never succeeded. Maybe it didn’t really matter because forgetting wouldn’t make it unhappen.

  I got out from beneath the covers and wedged a chair under the handle of the trailer door. It was about as flimsy as the door itself, but it made me feel better. It might not stop him from coming back, but it sure would piss him off.

  I padded into the kitchen and peeked out the window again. Across the road, I saw him standing on the porch of the brown house, facing off with Tiffany. It was an unusual sight to see her outside of the house. Something was wrong. I could see only their profiles, but I could tell by the rigid lines of their bodies and Tiffany’s crossed arms that they were arguing. The car keys in his hands jingled nervously.

  I leaned over the sink for a better look, as if getting closer to the glass panes would enable me to hear them. But I didn’t need to hear what they were arguing about. The arguing was not my concern. Tiffany’s incessant whining and clinginess caused daily disagreements between them. He had created his monster, and the consequence was to put up with her every day.

  It was the fact that their argument had carried itself outside that concerned me. I watched his keys drum against his thigh. A tingling began in the pit of my stomach, always a precursor to another beating or some violation—trouble.

  He was a nervous type. He had reason to be after all the things he’d done. But this was his domain. This tiny stretch of road that lay between my trailer and his dilapidated shack was the kingdom he had created, and here, he was in total control. He made sure of that.

  He moved off the porch, gripping his keys with both hands and fumbling with them, glancing back over his shoulder at Tiffany. She stomped her feet on the wooden floor of the porch, her face caught between a pout and a scowl. A familiar sight. He had stunted her growth literally and figuratively the day he brought her to live with us.

  Tiffany had the emotional acumen of a thirteen-year-old, and even though she was now twenty years old, she still looked like an adolescent. Clothes hung on her bony frame. Her skin was pale and sallow, her dark hair lank and dull from poor nutrition. She starved herself to stay so thin. She ate so little that she’d ceased to menstruate, a fact for which he was grateful.

  Unlike me, Tiffany was a runaway whose mind he filled with delusions of grandeur. It didn’t matter to Tiffany that she had to perform disgusting sexual acts with a man who could conceivably be her father. In the house of “Daddy,” Tiffany was number one, and no matter how he mistreated her, she would not trade all that attention for anything—not even an innocent person’s life.

  Repulsion washed over me like a cold wave of stinging ocean water. He flew off in his old car, obviously relieved to be free from Tiffany’s cloying presence. He’d fidgeted with the buttons on his shirt this morning while he questioned me for being fifteen minutes late getting home from work. Something he no doubt found out from Tiffany, who loved to make my life even more hellish than I imagined it could be under the circumstances.

  I turned away from the window and got a drink of water from the tap. I tried to think of the last time he’d barged in on me the way he had this morning, suspicious to the point of being flustered. It had been months, a year perhaps.

  My heart pounded as Connor Parks filled my head. I still smelled him—sweat, cologne, and scotch. In the last few days, I had tried without success to banish him from my thoughts. Had my abductor found out about Connor? Had Tiffany somehow realized that I wasn’t home that night and ratted me out? I had taken every precaution. I had been so careful.

  Connor’s sleepy smile played on a film screen in my mind. I ached in places I never knew I had and in places I thought were long dead. Flashbulb memory: He sighs in his sleep. His feet twitch. His arms tighten around me. Sleep without nightmares.

  The illusion of safety I had when I was with him was almost too real to turn away from. If only my life were normal. If only I were normal, I could see him again, date him, and talk to him. The girl I used to be could do it. She could call him on the telephone and say something trivial like “I had such a good time with you the other night.”

  Maybe she could cook him dinner, barbecue in his backyard. She could curl up easily in his arms as they lie together in a foldout lawn chair, soaking up the last rays of sunshine, maybe reading a book together, drinking wine, or whatever it was that normal people did on a date.

  I was not that girl any longer. I was not normal nor would I ever be. This was my life, and it did not have room for someone as beautiful as Connor.

  Still, if something happened to him as it had the others, I would be responsible. I was already responsible for so many lives that I could not bear another murder on my conscience. I had to find out how much my abductor and his pet knew, if they were on to Connor. I dressed hastily in jeans and a sweatshirt and stomped across the road to the little house.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mitch Farrell’s office was located in a small pocket of an old strip mall whose former businesses had moved on to more highly trafficked areas of the city. The square block of storefronts was dilapidated, most of the windows yawning empty, the signage above them leaving ghostlike letters of businesses past. All that was left was Farrell’s office and a Laundromat, which was unoccupied at the moment.

  The only sign that Farrell did business among the empty shops was simple gold lettering
on the front door bearing his name and title. A waiting room held a few scruffy chairs and a battered table with some very out-of-date magazines. There was no receptionist, just a small hallway to Connor’s right.

  “Hello?” he called. “Mr. Farrell?”

  “You must be the detective.” Farrell’s voice arrived a split second before he did.

  The man was in his sixties with salt-and-pepper hair and worry lines surrounding his dark-brown eyes. He was tall, dressed casually, but with the posture of someone who’d spent time in the military.

  “Connor Parks.”

  Farrell eyed him from top to bottom. “The Fletchers called me. Come into my office.”

  Connor followed the man down the hallway and took a seat in the chair opposite Farrell’s desk.

  Farrell’s office was the polar opposite of Captain Riehl’s. It was neatly kept and smelled like Pine-Sol. There were two large filing cabinets and a large oak bookcase lined with books. Not a single scrap of paper littered any surface in the room. The walls were decorated with framed photos, various certificates, and Farrell’s private investigator license. Farrell’s desk offered only a phone, computer, and ink blotter. The office was simple and well organized.

  Farrell arranged himself behind the desk and folded his hands, regarding Connor with an air of skepticism. “So you had an encounter with a woman claiming to be Claire Fletcher.”

  “I saw Claire Fletcher,” Connor corrected.

  Farrell sighed, pulled a notepad and pen from one of his desk drawers, and said, “Tell me what happened.”

  Connor recounted the salient points of his encounter with Claire, leaving out the intimate hours they’d shared in his bed. Farrell did not look at Connor while the younger detective spoke. He kept his eyes on the notepad. His pen moved slowly, as if he were doodling, wholly disinterested in the story, while Connor talked.

  “She left me a note with the address 1201 Archer Street on it. So I went to see her but—well you know the rest,” Connor concluded.