Gibson said he didn’t, which made sense since Shannon had made up the name.
“She was a friend of Linda’s. According to Candace, Linda was going to confront you and your wife over Thanksgiving about sexual abuse issues.”
Something flickered in Gibson’s eyes. Then he noticed the tape recorder and in a shaky voice told Shannon that he was lying.
“I’m not lying. If you need me to, I’ll get an affidavit from her, but I’m hoping–”
“You are lying,” he said, his voice more confident. He stood up, muscles bunching along his shoulders. “Get out of here now or I’ll throw you out.”
Shannon hesitated, hoping that Gibson would try something like that. He had had that hunch ever since he talked with Gibson’s wife, but when he saw that momentary flicker in Gibson’s eyes and heard the shakiness in his voice, he knew his hunch was on target. As he collected his tape recorder, Gibson warned him that he would sue Shannon for every cent he had if he ever repeated any of his scurrilous garbage. Shannon shrugged, told him he had a few thousand in the bank, and for Gibson to go for it. Fred Gibson stood rubbing his knuckles, but didn’t move as Shannon left his office.
Shannon stopped at the receptionist on his way out and asked if she knew of a good place nearby to get a piece of pie. She gave him an odd look, and he repeated himself. “I haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m in the mood for a good piece of apple pie,” he told her. She gave him the name of a diner a few blocks away, then checking her watch, asked if he’d like some company. “I haven’t gone on my lunch break yet,” she said.
“I’ll have to ask for a rain check. I plan to be meeting a few people.”
***
Detective Don Chase reached across the table and stopped the tape Shannon was playing for him and Wilson. “This is nuts,” he said, his face reddening with exasperation. “I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.”
Chase had one of those fireplug bodies; barely a neck, barrel-chested, and a thick trunk. Along with that he had a wide face that seemed stuck in a half scowl, half grin. He also had the same military-style buzz cut that Wilson had, which made Shannon wonder if the hair cuts were a departmental directive. There was something familiar about the guy that Shannon couldn’t quite put his finger on. Chase and Eric Wilson sat on one side of the booth while Shannon sat across from them. He held up a finger for Chase to wait while he chewed a bite of apple pie and vanilla ice cream, then said, “He sexually abused his daughter. I think that’s a good reason for your being here.”
“He sexually abused his daughter, huh? Where’s the evidence?”
“The mother sending the other daughter off to France. The way she acted, how she tries so damn hard to look like a teenager. The change in Fred Gibson’s voice when I asked him about Thanksgiving. How he nearly swallowed his tongue when I brought up sexual abuse.”
“You got to be shitting me.” Chase glanced over his shoulder, saw an elderly woman glowering at him. He lowered his voice. “You have Wilson drag me down here because of some circumstantial bullshit and a so-called change in inflection?”
Shannon couldn’t keep from smiling as it finally hit him why Chase seemed so familiar. He could’ve been Ed Poulet’s younger brother. Looked and acted like him. The one big difference was that Shannon instinctively liked this guy more than he ever liked Poulet. Chase asked him what the fuck he was grinning about.
“Nothing. You remind me of a guy I used to work with, that’s all.” Then more seriously, Shannon said, “He abused his daughter, probably both of them. That was what their Thanksgiving blowup was about. That’s why Linda brought Taylor Carver with her; so she’d have a witness to it.”
“And you know this how?”
“From my ten years as a police officer. I was always good at reading people, and there’s no doubt in my mind about any of this. Linda confronted her parents last Thanksgiving about the abuse.”
“Yeah, well, I know about your history as a police detective. That’s why you’ve got some credibility with me, and that’s why I’m here now. But shit, you’ve given me nothing.” He stopped himself in mid-scowl, looked away. “And if what you’re saying’s true, then what? They bump off their own daughter to keep her from making more accusations? This is fucking insane.”
“Chase, where are you from originally? You don’t have a New York or Philly accent, but you sure the fuck don’t talk like a Midwesterner.”
He grinned at that. “As much a Midwesterner as this clown,” he said, pointing a thumb at Wilson. “Born and raised in St. Louis. Getting back to my question you so adroitly sidestepped, are you trying to say they killed their own daughter?”
“I couldn’t tell you. At least not without knowing their whereabouts the time of the murder or if any unusual money transfers had been made. I’d also like to know what the phone records looked like between Linda and her parents. Maybe before her murder she had threatened to go public with the abuse. If they did kill their daughter, I wouldn’t know without further police investigation. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen stranger things over the years, and just as sickening.”
“Yeah, well, this still sounds pretty farfetched to me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But even if they had nothing to do with Linda’s murder you still have a child who was sexually abused by her father, and that demands an investigation.”
Chase gave Shannon a hard look and shook his head. “The only real witness to it is dead and buried,” he said. “Even if you’re right, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. Not without something concrete.”
“You could talk to the other daughter.”
“How would I do that? She’s locked away somewhere in France, and from the sound of it, she’s going to be staying there until she’s of age.”
“You could have the authorities there talk to her.”
“Oh, yeah, that would go over swimmingly. I can just imagine what the Cap would say if I asked him to do that with what you’ve given me. He’d laugh me off the force.”
“What do you think, Eric?” Shannon asked.
Wilson had been sitting quietly. He looked up at Shannon, his face a hard white. “I agree with Detective Chase. You’ve shown nothing to merit an investigation.”
“How about answering whether Linda was abused by her dad.”
“How the fuck would he know?” Chase demanded.
“He dated her in high school.”
Chase’s face turned redder as he stared open mouthed at Wilson. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, incredulous. “When the fuck were you going to say something about that?”
“Calm down,” Wilson told him. “I have no evidence of Mr. Gibson abusing Linda.”
“But you suspect it,” Shannon said.
“I never said anything to you about that.”
“No, you didn’t. But I told you, I’m good at reading people. And you had it written all over you in large print.”
“Damn it, Wilson,” Chase prodded. “Did Gibson abuse his daughter or not?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you suspected that he did,” Shannon said.
Wilson gave a slow and reluctant nod. “I don’t know if I suspected that exactly,” he said. “But I guess I knew something was wrong. Not that Linda ever talked to me about it. More by the way she acted around them, especially with Mr. Gibson. She’d get so quiet and withdrawn when she’d see him. With her mom, I remember times she’d fly off the handle over little things. Sometimes nothing at all. I guess there were other signals, but I was just too dense a kid to pick up on them. Maybe I never really wanted to admit it to myself that any of that happened. Listening to you and thinking back how Linda used to act, it makes sense.”
“Officer Wilson, you didn’t answer my earlier question,” Chase said, his tone completely business. “A simple yes or no. As someone who was intimately involved with the deceased, Linda Gibson, do you now suspect her of being the victim of sexual abuse by her father?”
Wilson gave a weak nod, said, “Yes.”
“Okay, then,” Chase said. “At least I can now consider going to the Cap about an investigation.” He leaned further back in his seat, his wide face looking a bit washed out. Eyeing Shannon’s pie, he asked if it was any good.
“Damn good pie,” Shannon said. “Almost worth a trip to Wichita for.”
Chase nodded grimly and waved the waitress over. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said to the sixtyish grandmotherly woman standing with pad and pen. “How about a piece of that apple pie? Make it big, something that will hold me to late ’cause I’ll be working ’til midnight now thanks to these two clowns. And hide a few scoops of ice cream on it, okay darling?”
Later, the waitress brought over what looked like half a pie with a pint of vanilla ice cream on top of it. Chase ate it quickly, barely coming up for air as he joylessly shoveled it into his mouth. When he was done, he nodded at Shannon and Wilson, and suggested that it would help if they all met with the Cap.
Shannon glanced at Wilson, who appeared deep in his own thoughts. “Eric and I have another matter to talk about,” he said. “How about we meet you at the station?”
Chase scowled suspiciously at both of them, but squeezed himself out of the booth and told them not to take too long. “Cap likes to take off early on Thursdays for Walleye fishing.” After he ambled out of the diner, Shannon asked Wilson if he still wanted to know more about the Winters cousins.
“At this point, I’m not sure what I want to know. I can’t believe I was in such denial about Linda and her parents all these years. Makes me wonder how I could be a police officer if I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.”
“Sometimes you’re too close to a situation, that’s all. But your instincts were right. At a gut level you knew what was going on. Over time, you’ll learn to listen to your gut more.”
“I hope so. But I’m going to take your advice and think about how much more I want to know about Winters. I might still call you in a few days.”
“Anytime you want, although I hope you don’t—at least not about that.” Shannon paused, scratched the side of his jaw that wasn’t swollen. “I apologize if I dragged you into something you didn’t want to be a part of.”
“No need to apologize,” Wilson said, his eyes as hard as stone. “This needs to be investigated. You really think they could’ve killed Linda?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see where this leads. If they didn’t, but it still comes out that Gibson abused either of his daughters, at least that will be something. At least in some way justice will be served for them.”
Wilson nodded, got to his feet and headed towards the exit. Shannon covered the bill and followed him out the door.
Chapter 10
The sun had already set by the time Shannon made his way through Denver International Airport. When he called Susan from his car to apologize for missing their date to watch the sunset, he caught her in the middle of a session with a client. She just seemed relieved that he’d be back in Boulder that night; she also didn’t think she’d be done until ten. They arranged to meet at the hotel at that time so they could go out for a late dinner.
He was able to reach Eli at the Boulder Mind Body Center and they set up to meet a half hour earlier the next morning at their usual spot. Next, he checked his cell phone for messages and saw there were twelve of them. The first two were from Eunice Carver asking about
People
magazine. She got testier in her second message, demanding to know whether or not they wanted her story; that if they didn’t, she would sell it elsewhere. The next message was from Paul Devens. He thought Shannon would like to know that his tap dance routine had gone over brilliantly. In other words, Shannon could now access the condo while Carver’s family was still barred. According to Devens, his performance would’ve brought a tear to Fred Astaire’s eye. After Devens’ message there was one from Mark Daniels who sounded depressed as he congratulated Shannon on his lawyer’s victory in court and asked if Shannon could let him know when he was planning to search the apartment so he could be present. The rest of them were from Pauline Cousins, all scattered throughout the afternoon. She didn’t say much, only that she needed to talk to him.
Shannon tried calling her motel room but she didn’t pick up. He then reached Devens on his cell phone.
“How was Wichita?” Devens asked.
“Interesting. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it. Ah, you should’ve seen me today. I had them absolutely dazzled with my footwork,” Devens told him, sounding a little drunk.
“Yeah, I heard. Celebrating?”
“A bottle of champagne, my detective friend. This is a big deal for a lawyer like me who never goes to court except to pay off speeding tickets. Come by the office tomorrow morning after eight. You can fill me in about Wichita, and I’ll give you keys to the condo and the police padlock.”
Shannon told him he’d see him then. He next tried Mark Daniels’ cell phone and left a message that he was planning to look through the apartment in the morning, that if Daniels gave him a call back they could arrange when to meet. After that he put the Red Sox—Rockies game on his car radio, and by the time he arrived at his apartment building, the Sox were up four runs in the sixth inning thanks to two David Ortiz homeruns. He couldn’t help smiling thinking how Maguire at that very moment was somewhere giving Rockies’ fans a hard time.
Shannon knocked on Emily’s door, waited until she opened it a crack and told her he was stopping off at his apartment for a little while. He frowned as he looked past her. “Is that a frying pan you’re holding behind your back?”
“So what if it is?” she demanded, her chin stuck out slightly. “You told me my Louisville Slugger’s no good. Anyway, how’d you know?”
“I could see it in your hallway mirror. Try to relax, okay? Odds are no Russian thugs are going to be coming here.”
“They better not, ’cause I’m ready if they do.”
Shannon was going to say something, but decided it would be a waste of breath. He gave Emily a short salute and headed back to his apartment. When he got inside, he found that his spy cameras hadn’t been activated, and felt more relieved than he would’ve guessed knowing that the two Russians hadn’t bothered breaking into his apartment. He then checked his email and saw a reply from Kathleen Tirroza. She was glad to hear he hadn’t fallen off the face of the planet like she had feared, and would get back to him when she had something about either the cult leader or the Russian. At the bottom of the email she included a photo of herself standing next to a good-looking guy about ten years older than her, an engagement ring prominently displayed on her finger as she smiled her typical cat-ate-the-canary smile. The guy next to her had a hardness about his face, and Shannon knew instinctively he was a cop. The tagline added to the bottom of the photo was:
Got tired of waiting for you, Shannon!
He knew she was joking about the tagline. They had developed a closeness during the four months they’d worked together, but it was strictly a big brother-little sister type relationship. Tirroza was stunningly beautiful, but this followed the aftermath of Charlie Winters. He’d just been released from the hospital, and Susan had already filed for divorce and had moved to God knows where. He was too messed up emotionally to get involved with anyone. He also still had too many unresolved feelings about Susan. In the emotional state he was in, the only thing he wanted to do was stay busy and work twenty-four hours a day if possible, and many times he and Tirroza did just that. When they were done, he had helped her tie Winters and his cousin, Herbert, to over a hundred other murders across the country. After that, he officially went on disability and moved out to Boulder. He spent the next eight months trying to work out his feelings about Susan, and ended up realizing that even with the hell Winters had put them through he still loved her as much as he ever did. Fortunately she must’ve come to the same conclusion about him because around that time she visited him in Boulder and never left.
Shannon sent Tirroza a reply that it would take something momentous like her getting married for him to take a trip back to Boston, and that he expected the invitation was already in the mail. After that he reset the spy cameras and left.
As he drove back to the Boulderado he kept thinking of the messages Pauline Cousins had left him. There was something about the tone of her voice that bothered him, especially her last message. Calm, but resigned. It reminded him of a jumper he’d once tried to talk down while he was on the force. He pulled over to the side of the road and tried Pauline Cousins again at her motel. When he still got no answer, he got back on the road, swung a left at the next light and drove towards Baseline Reservoir. The moon was in a waxing crescent, and with the area mostly undeveloped with no streetlights, he almost missed the Chevy Impala parked a few hundred yards from True Light’s compound. He pulled over, took a slim jim from his trunk and made his way quickly back to the Chevy. Seconds later he had the door unlocked and was checking the glove compartment. He found paperwork there showing that Pauline Cousins had rented the car. Dropping the slim jim back in his trunk, he got a flashlight, and started towards True Light’s compound in as fast a run as his bruised ribs allowed.
The flashlight caught her face about twenty feet from True Light’s main gate. She stared wide-eyed at Shannon, the muscles tight along her mouth and jaw. Shannon lowered the flashlight and saw the knuckles on her hand bone white as she gripped a handgun. From the size and shape of it, he guessed it was a .38 caliber snub nose; more than powerful enough to knock her over if she tried firing it.
As calmly as he could, he asked her to give him the gun, and held his hand out to her, palm up. Indecision froze her, then she took a step away. “I’m getting Melissa out of there,” she said, her voice cracking, barely above a whisper.
Shannon looked from her to the main gate. He knew what she was trying to work up the courage for: buzz the main gate until someone came out and then use the gun to force her way in. “You need to give me more time to do things my way,” he said.
She didn’t bother to respond—just stared straight at him, her lips pressed hard enough together to make them as bloodless as her knuckles.
“It won’t work. You’re only going to get yourself killed, maybe a couple of other people along the way.”
“It will work,” she said. “It has to.” In the glow of his flashlight he saw her swallow hard, saw the tenseness in her face and shoulders. Her gun arm jerked in kind of a nervous twitch and the thought flashed through his mind of her accidentally pulling the trigger and blowing off one of her toes, maybe even one of his. His own voice tightened as he told her again to hand him the gun, that he would get to Melissa without having to do it this way.
“How?” she asked. “They won’t even let the police see her. And look at you. They did that to you yesterday, didn’t they?”
“They did,” he admitted. “You know as well as I do there’s something very wrong about this place. But I’m going to find a crack into it, and I’m going to speak to Melissa. I promise you that.”
“How can you possibly promise me something like that? I tried calling you today and couldn’t even get a hold of you.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I was out of state today working on another case.” He smiled good-naturedly at her. “I do have good instincts sometimes. I knew you were here, didn’t I?”
The resolve bled out of her as she thought about that. Shannon saw the change in her eyes, stepped forward, and gently took the gun from her hand. He was right; it was a .38 snub nose. He cracked open the cylinder and dropped the bullets into his hand.
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“I asked around and found a pawnshop in Denver that was willing to sell it to me.”
He grimly studied one of the bullets. It was a hollow point. She would’ve done a lot of damage if she had gotten in there. He dropped the bullets into his pants pocket.
“Let’s get back to your car,” Shannon said as he lightly held onto her arm, both supporting and guiding her.
“They could be doing anything to Melissa in there,” she said, half under her breath. “I can’t feel a connection to her anymore. I have no idea if she’s even still alive.”
Something furry and thin, maybe a foot and a half long, darted past their feet. Shannon flashed his light on it as it scuttled away into some underbrush, and saw from its tail and the shape of its head that it was a weasel.
“Let’s keep the faith that she’s okay,” he said to her. “And I have someone in the FBI helping me with this. We’re going to get to Melissa. Until then, maybe you should go back to Portland and be with your husband.”
“If I went back home now I’d kill him. I can’t believe I let him bully me for six months not to do anything. No, I’m staying in Boulder until I see Melissa.”
They arrived back to her car. Shannon watched as she got into the driver’s seat. “You going to be okay driving back?” he asked. She nodded, her face bloodless and frail. “I’ll hold onto the gun for now,” Shannon told her.
He went back to his car, reloaded the .38 and hid it under his spare tire, then followed Pauline Cousins down Baseline until she turned onto 28th Street. Satisfied that she’d make it to her motel in one piece, he headed back to the Boulderado Hotel. He checked the dashboard clock, and saw that somehow he was going to be on time.
Susan was waiting for him in their room. The tee shirt and cutoff jeans she wore accentuated all the wonderful curves of her small, slender body. She flashed him a dazzling smile as she gave him a hard embrace and even harder kiss. Stepping back, she placed her palms lightly on his face and studied him. “Your swelling’s gone down,” she said, her smile more of a playful kind. “You almost look presentable. Have an eventful day?”
“Thanks, and yeah, I did,” he said laughing. “Damn, it’s good to see you.” He picked her up, spun her around in the air several times, kissing her again on the mouth, then on the neck and earlobe. Dropping her to the floor, he leaned back in and sniffed her hair.
“You haven’t been smoking pot, have you?” he asked.
Her smile changed from playful to something wry. “Of course not, my darling. Since when in all the years you’ve known me have I ever smoked pot?”
He made a
hmmm
noise, his brow furrowed deeply. “I was thinking we could eat at the hotel tonight,” he muttered, still distracted by Susan’s thin Cheshire-cat grin and the odor he picked up from her hair.
“We could do that. I was kind of in the mood for pizza, though.”
“Pizza it is, then,” Shannon said.
They were out of the room and walking down the hallway when it hit him what that odor was. Their eyes met as he turned to her, Susan still grinning her Cheshire-cat grin.
“You went to the Vishna yoga studio,” he said.
“That’s right, hon. I was going to surprise you about it later–”
“Damn it, Susan, what the hell were you thinking?” He stopped himself and swallowed back the rest of what he wanted to say. “What’s done is done, but you’re not going back there,” he said in a more controlled voice.
Susan stared at him with what could’ve been mistaken for amusement if he overlooked the intensity burning in her dark brown eyes. “Hon,” she asked, “how long have we known each other?”
“A long time,” he admitted.
“Since I was eighteen. Over sixteen years.”
He nodded.
“Do you think now’s the time to start ordering me around?”
“Sue, these people are dangerous. This is not something you should be fooling around with.”
“Hon, I think I can make my own decisions. Besides, all I’m doing is going to a yoga studio on the Hill. If by doing that I can help you, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Sue, please–”
She took hold of his hand, gave it a squeeze. “Darling,” she said, “I can take care of myself. You should know that by now.”
He nodded. What he knew was that there was no point trying to talk her out of it. He couldn’t help feeling a sick twisting in his stomach at the idea of her going there. “Just promise me going to that yoga studio is all you’ll do,” he said. “If they invite you to True Light’s compound–”
She got up on her toes and kissed him lightly on his nose, stopping him. “I promise you, hon, that’s all. Nothing else. So stop worrying, okay?” She shook her head, laughing. “I can’t believe that smell’s still in my hair. When I got back today I washed my hair for twenty minutes trying to get it out.”
“What is that smell? Are they smoking pot down there?”
She opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. “Oh, now you want my information?”
“Susie, my darling, quit being coy. You already put me through the wringer, remember?”