"You think there's someone else in there?"
"I think there might have been."
"This is a crime scene. The woman was hurt pretty badly."
She didn't have to scour her mind for places Carly might be. She knew. "Please let me look. If Carly's in there . . ."
He called to someone to escort her as Matt came up with her purse and keys. She sent him a silent thanks, then followed a female officer into the house. She went into the cheerful living room, now tumbled and strewn with broken knickknacks. Her feet crunched shards of china as she passed through to the kitchen. Drawers were yanked out, cabinets emptied. None of that mattered. It hardly registered.
Playing hide-and-seek, there was one place Carly had chosen more than any other. Sofie pulled open the closet door, pushed past the mops and brooms and vacuum to the enormous ironing board hanging upright near the back of the space. She tipped it sideways and looked down as time came to a halt.
"I knew you'd come." Carly raised her face from her knees.
Sofie drank in the sight and scent and feel of her little girl. Carly.
Oh, Lord!
Carly. She was no longer an adorable four-year-old, but no flicker of doubt entered her mind. They knew and were known. Pain seared her chest. "Come out, honey. Tell us what happened."
M
att had shown his credentials, and even though he was way out of his territory, they allowed him into the kitchen, where Sofie sat with a girl who won his heart the moment he saw her. Golden and spindly like a new foal, she had what he could already tell would be a great beauty. But there was something achingly sad in the eyes she raised to him.
Someone had wrapped her in an afghan, and Sofie had one arm around her shoulders. Carly looked small for eleven. Hair like spun gold. She'd be the last kid he'd pick out to have problems, but he knew it didn't work that way. Dysfunction had no boundaries. Hidden sins no restrictions.
Carly looked from him to Sofie. "That's not your brother."
"My friend, Matt."
Disappointment washed over her face. Had she read more into
friend
than Sofie intended? Did she want Sofie completely to herself? Ah. Maybe she'd hoped for a reconciliation with her dad. Not happening.
Sorry, kiddo
.
The female officer who had shown Sofie in came and sat at the table. Her blended ethnicity formed an attractive, tough exterior, but she gave the girl a soft look. "My name's Peggy Mantero."
"Hi," Carly said.
"So, Carly. Whatchu doin' here?" the woman asked. "Come to see your grandma?"
Carly nodded, but Matt saw immediately that wasn't the whole story. A flush pinkened a swatch across the child's cheeks.
"You do that often?"
She shook her head. "Not for a couple years."
Smart kid. Tell the truth when you can. Neighbors would say they hadn't seen a granddaughter around much.
"Why now?"
Carly swallowed. "Can I talk to Sofie first?"
The cop sat back. "Did you see what happened?"
Carly shook her head. "I heard it."
"I need you to tell me what you heard."
"I will, but . . . I have to talk to Sofie first." The hand on the table trembled.
Technically the officer shouldn't question a child without a parent present. He'd point that out if he had to, but he guessed Officer Mantero knew kids had a thin trigger. Shut them down and it took an awful lot to open them up again.
"Okay." She stood up. "I'll give you a few minutes and come back."
Carly looked as though she wanted him to go too, but Sofie said, "Matt works for Child Protective Services. He takes care of kids in trouble, all kinds of trouble. That's why he came."
Not really, but he let it go.
"I'm not in trouble. I mean I didn't do anything wrong. Or . . . I guess I did. I shouldn't have come here. Now Grandma—"
"This isn't your fault." Sofie looked firmly into the girl's eyes.
"She said we were both in trouble. But I didn't know she'd get hurt." The regret in her voice sent a pang to his chest.
Sofie's voice stayed smooth and calm. "Why were you both in trouble?"
"I ran away, and she told Daddy I wasn't here."
Sofie rubbed her shoulders. "I'm sure you had good reasons."
Did she believe that, and still consider Eric harmless? Maybe. Good kids ran away from good homes. Even in stable families things got blown out of proportion. His gut told him that was not the case this time, but there was still a difference between abusers and controllers. Carly might have been fed up, though not endangered. Then why hadn't she come out when Grandma got hurt? And why had Grandma lied?
Sofie leaned in. "Can you tell me why you ran away?"
Carly brought a black and gray box up from her lap. "I found two of these. The other box was all pictures of you, Sofie. But I don't think you knew they were being taken."
Matt asked softly, "You mean like someone watching her might have taken from a car or something?"
She nodded. "At first they were pictures of us, you and me. But then I wasn't in them anymore. It was only you, and you never smiled for the camera. The last ones had digital dates. They weren't taken very long ago."
He did not want to hear this. "How long?"
Carly shrugged. "I don't remember exactly. A couple months, three, maybe."
"Three months ago someone took Sofie's picture? Without her knowing?"
Carly shrugged again.
Sofie shot him a warning glance. "That's okay, Carly. You don't have to worry about me."
"Daddy said you . . . killed yourself."
Sofie sat back unguarded, something raw in her expression as she unconsciously drew her arms deeper into her sleeves. Had the man actually told his daughter Sofie was dead by her own hand?
"I didn't believe him. But why would he say that?"
Sofie composed herself. "You said that was a different box. What's in this one?"
Carly lifted her chin slowly, her dread obvious. "Other people he watched." Tears sprang to her eyes. "People he hurt."
Matt eased the box from her and lifted the lid. The first photos looked like surveillance on his daughter. Could be an obsessive control disorder, needing to know where she was, with whom, and that she was safe. Then he got to the shots of vandalism and emergency teams, dead animals.
That took it way beyond the pale. Sofie must see that. The names on the back of some of the photos seemed to correlate with the deeds preserved in the following photos. For someone who never raised his voice, Eric certainly expended his rage. Accidents like the icy stairs had obviously caused injury. And they hadn't heard yet what had happened here.
"One of the dogs was my friend Drew's. I think two of the others might have been Grandma's." She put her face in her hands and started to cry as he shoved the pictures back into the box.
Sofie nestled Carly's head against her shoulder. "You were brave to call, Carly. It was the right thing."
"I love my dad." Carly's plaintive voice hurt.
"I know you do." Sofie stroked Carly's golden hair, and he heard the unspoken
so do I
.
What did this guy have that generated that kind of devotion in people he'd victimized? Did men like that exude a scent, some pheromone that interacted with a female's brain chemistry and drew her to the most dangerous of the species? Matt frowned. What made him think he could break that connection when neither of them seemed to want it broken?
He walked away from the table as Officer Peggy Mantero came back. Carly reluctantly left Sofie's embrace when the officer sat down and took a digital voice recorder from her pocket. She turned it on and tapped it, then replayed back the tap.
"This is going to record what you tell me, okay? About what happened here?"
Carly nodded bleakly.
"So go ahead."
"We had just finished the supper dishes when the doorbell rang. Grandma asked if I wanted to talk to my dad, and I said I couldn't. Not yet. So she told me to stay out of sight and went to answer the door."
Matt noted the fairly direct line of sight between the front door and the kitchen. "You knew it was your dad?"
"We were just guessing."
"How come he didn't see you here?"
"I got into the closet."
"You thought it was your dad so you hid in the closet?"
Carly flushed and nodded.
"Then what?"
"Daddy asked Grandma if I was there, and she said, 'Go see for yourself.' He went upstairs and I guess she did too."
"You stayed in the closet?"
Carly looked down at the floor. "I should have gotten out."
Sofie laid a hand on her arm. "No one's saying that. Officer Mantero just wants to make sure she knows what happened."
"That's right, Carly. You might have seen something if you'd gotten out. But if you were in there the whole time you probably just heard things."
Carly gulped back fresh tears. "I heard them talking."
"Talking how? Yelling? Fighting?"
"No . . . Daddy never yells."
Matt met the glance Sofie flashed him before returning her attention to Carly.
"Did your grandma yell? Like, 'Get out of here' or something?"
Carly shook her head. "They talked real quiet. I couldn't hear the words."
"More quietly than we're talking? Maybe low and threatening?"
Carly looked at Sofie, then back. "Sometimes Daddy's scary without—I don't know how to explain it. He doesn't act mad, but I know something bad's going to happen."
"Does he hurt you?"
She shook her head.
Peggy's expression turned skeptical. "He never hurts you, but you hid in a closet?"
Matt shared the skepticism. Surprisingly Carly sent him a pleading glance. As though he could explain something like that. He said, "There are different kinds of hurt. Some are silent."
Carly nodded, tears pooling in her eyes.
"How does he hurt you?"
"He makes people hate me."
"Why would he do that?"
"So he doesn't have to share."
They all sat, silently processing that. Mantero said, "He didn't want to share you with your grandmother? Isn't she his mom?"
"Yeah, but we couldn't see her anymore because she wouldn't give him money."
"Did he need money?" She looked around the ransacked house.
"Sometimes he has a lot and sometimes we have to move."
"Right now?"
"He has a new job. But he gets tired of people and finds reasons to leave so it looks like their fault."
Sofie turned away. That must have struck a chord. He hoped it sank in that whatever had happened wasn't her fault either.
"So he talked to your grandma. Then what?"
Carly drew a jagged breath. "She must have tripped."
"She fell down the stairs?"
He thought of Annie taking a fall with resilient bones and the injury she'd suffered nonetheless. He didn't know how old the grandma was, but even a middle-aged person would not fare well on the long staircase.
Tears slipped down Carly's cheeks. "I heard her yelling and falling."
"What was she yelling?"
"Just . . . yelling." She pressed her hands to her face. "Then she was kind of crying."
"Did your dad call for help?"
"I don't know. He went all over the house opening doors and drawers."
"Looking for money?"
"I thought he was looking for me."
"Did he call for help after he finished searching?"
"I don't know. No one came."
"So then what happened?"
"It got quiet. I waited."
"For what?"
Carly's answer was almost inaudible. "Him to go."
Matt shared a look with Sofie. They'd come by late, and though the house had looked peaceful, an old woman had been lying in pain while a child exhausted by fear huddled in the closet. Why hadn't Carly called for help? Too afraid her father was still inside the house?
Eric had caused his mother bodily harm. Maybe he believed the injured woman would not implicate him. Maybe she wouldn't. Either way, his daughter had not risked discovery even to help her grandmother.
As though she'd read his thoughts, Carly looked up at Officer Mantero. "Is Grandma going to be okay?"
"I don't know. As soon as I know something, I'll tell you. But you've got to give me something too, Carly. Because I don't see how a man who can push his mother down the stairs doesn't hurt his daughter sometimes too. And I don't mean spoiling your friendships."
Carly's head shook adamantly. "He's never hit me or . . . anything."
Officer Mantero refused to accept that. "So maybe he's too close. Maybe he does other things."
Again the furious denial. "He loves me. But not like that."
Silence from the cop.
Carly's fingers whitened on the box about which Peggy Mantero had surprisingly not inquired. "If he's mad he punishes me by . . . hurting other people."
The officer raised her brows as Carly pushed the box over. "I found this. That's why I couldn't talk to him. I was upset. But not because he hurt me. Because he hurt them."
Sofie gasped as a glimmer of understanding caught her by surprise. For six years she had thought Eric was punishing her. Had he in fact been punishing his little girl for daring to love someone else? Had he taken away the one person Carly might have loved better than him?
She looked down to hide the sudden tears and missed Officer Mantero's reaction to the photos. The contents of that box were only now sinking in. Could Eric truly have—But he had. And recorded it. Why? Certainly not for Carly to have seen. She knew beyond a doubt he had never intended that. So if they were for Eric alone, did the pictures act as a conviction . . . or a reward?
She silently groaned. How could she reconcile that with someone who had made her feel so cherished, so essential? Or was that also obsession? If he'd been watching her all this time, no wonder she'd felt that creeping in the back of her neck. But why hadn't he come to her?
Did he prefer to see her suffer as he'd made these others suffer? He had told Carly she'd committed suicide, yet he'd known she was struggling back to some hope of normalcy. Had he hoped she would find it? Or did her struggle gratify him? It was too bizarre to contemplate. Their relationship had delved unhealthy depths, but she'd never suspected . . .